麥格里中國銀行業報告：我們對中國銀行不太樂觀展望變得更加艱難

新聞 11-17

關鍵觀點

?我們對中國銀行不太樂觀，並更新我們的行業偏好。

?然而，我們仍然認為廉價的中國銀行是防禦性的。

?我們將BoCom提升至中國最佳銀行選擇，而CMB是我們的最「買」。

China Banks

Outlook turns tougher

Conclusion

?Getting less excited.After our ground visits to China, we turn less positive onChina banks due to a mixed outlook as we expect the big four banks will facesignificant pressure on NIMs but their asset quality will improve further. Jointstock banks』 NIM will be moreresilient but credit quality to private corporateswill deteriorate. Given low valuations, we still believe banks will be a defensiveplay in this volatile market but we suggest investors to accumulate joint stockbanks with strong credit card franchises and less exposures to wealthmanagement products (WMPs) like BoCom.

總結結論：

別那麼興奮了。在我們對中國進行實地考察之後，由於前景喜憂參半，我們對中國銀行的看法不那麼積極，因為我們預計四大銀行將面臨對凈息差的巨大壓力，但其資產質量將進一步提升。股份制銀行的凈息差將更具彈性，但私營企業的信貸質量將惡化。鑒於估值偏低，我們仍然認為銀行將在這個波動的市場中起到防禦作用，但我們建議投資者積累擁有強大信用卡特許經營權的股份制銀行，並減少對BoCom等財富管理產品（WMP）的風險敞口。

Key sector trends

?NIM will come under pressures.To rebuild local governments』 financialdiscipline, we believe fixed asset investment (FAI) growth and loan growth willdecelerate. We also expect loan prices to fall because of local governmentdebt replacement and bail-outs of the private sector. On the funding side,despite falling interbank rates, we expect competition over deposits willintensify due to slower monetary growth and pressures to retain WMPcustomers. As such, we expect sector NIM to fall by 6bps and 11bps in2019E/20E. In our view, the big four banks will be the most impacted.

?Fee mix to shift toward credit cards from WMPs.We project sector creditcard fees to grow at a CAGR of 17% from 2020E to 2018E but wealth mgmt.fees to decline by 22% during the same period. We believe interest inpurchasing compliant WMPs remains low and profitability will converge toward24-30bps for the mutual industry due to lack of implicit guarantees. Instead, weexpect the credit card business to deliver double-digit growth over the next twoyears, and banks like BoCom and CITIC should benefit the most.

?Provision costs will diversify.Asset quality is still improving in the state-owned enterprise (SOE) sector, but we expect more defaults in the privatecorporate sector because not all borrowers could be saved via nationalization.In particular, we』remore concerned about developer loans and stock-pledgedloans where joint-stock banks have larger exposures. In contrast, we believethe big four banks will see lower credit costs because most of their borrowersare SOEs which became finally healthier post supply-side reforms.

Lifting BoCom to our top pick

?Refreshing China bank preferences.We raise our TPs for BoCom-H andBoCom-A and upgrade BoCom-A to OP from N to reflect:

(1) strong credit card growth; (2) less pressure from funding costs; and

(3) relatively conservative business model. While its asset quality is likely toimprove further, we expect less upside for the big four banks due to lower NIM.As the A-shares of the big four banks have outperformed by 13-24% YTD, wedowngrade them all to N from OP. We prefer BOC among the big four banksdue to its largest exposure to FX deposits (~25% of total deposits). Wereiterate our UP on CMB, which is on our Marquee Sell list.