Malayan Banking - Hint of slowdown HOLD

- At our recent company visit, we understand that Maybank has seen some impact on retail loans from the Responsible Lending Guidelines. Loan approvals have been affected by the requirement for additional documentation under the guidelines. This has led to a more cautious stance adopted by some consumer borrowers recently. 

- Maybank has thus seen some slowdown across the board for the residential property segment. In addition, the company is also taking a more cautious stance in providing bridging financing to property development companies, given that it now expects endfinanciers to be affected by the recent slowdown. 

- In terms of trade financing, Maybank disclosed it has the largest market share at 26.7% as at end-March 2012. Given the latest external slowdown, Maybank indicated that it has also experienced a deceleration in trade finance activities in recent months. 

- NIM is expected to be compressed largely due to competitive pressure on assets, with the bank observing that some mortgage loan rates have dipped to as low as BLR minus 2.5%, although the normal board rate is still around BLR minus 2.3% to 2.4%. Maybank had earlier guided that NIM will likely see a compression of about 10bps YoY. 

- Gross impaired loans are expected to hold up with no significant worrying signs to-date in terms of impaired loans. However, Maybank does monitor requests for additional lines, special waivers in repayments or extended utilisation. There have been some increased signals from these recently, in most cases related to property development companies. Maybank’s credit costs guidance is unchanged at 36bps for FY12F.  

- In terms of total exposure to Eurozone assets, these total about RM1bil. These are largely securities papers with the bulk of it related to commercial banks’ papers in Germany, France and the Netherlands. We believe the accumulated marked-to-market losses to-date is less than 5%. 

- Maybank will likely continue with its dividend reinvestment plan (DRP) up to FY13. Beyond this, we expect the company to reassess its DRP plan, which has been well received so far, to take into account varying concerns over possible dilutive impact on its ROE. Thus, its DRP plans may change in terms of features; for example, changes to the cash and DRP portions, or possibly in terms of discount to the volume weighted average price. We maintain HOLD on Maybank.   

Source: AmeSecurities