Our BUY call is premised on loan growth (driven by the corporate and retail portfolios), lighter LLPs, and ongoing non-NII expansion (led by stronger brokerage, wealth, and retail business fee income). Because we raised our 2022 profit forecast, our YE22 target price increases from Bt70 to Bt74. BUY!
Result was far above our expectation
KKP posted 4Q21 earnings of Bt2.0bn, up by 83% YoY and 37% QoQ. The result beat our projection by 29% (and the Bloomberg consensus by 37%), due to substantially higher non-NII and stronger loan growth than expected (we had assumed non-NII of Bt2.2bn; the bank reported Bt2.8bn). As such, 2021 earnings of Bt6.3bn beat our estimate by 7.8%.