We have a BUY call, premised on loan growth (driven by SOE and corporate business) and lighter LLPs. Moreover, there could be upside to our NPAT projection. Because we have raised our 2022 profit forecast, our YE22 target price increases from Bt14.50 to Bt16.10, pegged to a PBV of 0.59x (KTB’s long-term mean is 1.02x) with a fair dividend yield of 3.5% for this year.
Result was far above our expectation
KTB posted 1Q22 earnings of Bt8.8bn, up by 57% YoY and 78% QoQ. The result was 59% above our projection (and 51% ahead of the Bloomberg consensus), due to lighter LLPs than assumed. Pre-provision operating profit came to Bt17.4bn, up by 11% YoY and 14% QoQ. 1Q22 earnings comprise 38% of our old full-year forecast of Bt23.1bn.