We have a BUY call on KBANK, premised on loan growth (driven by corporate and retail business) and a sustained NIM. There could be upside to our NPAT projection if its loan portfolio (especially high-yield lending) were to grow faster and/or LLPs were to be lighter than we currently assume.
Result was above our expectation
KBANK posted 4Q21 earnings of Bt9.9bn, down 25% YoY but up 15% QoQ. The result was 14% above our projection (and 28% ahead of the Bloomberg consensus), due to lighter LLPs than expected. Pre-provision operating profit came to Bt22.0bn, up 22% YoY but down 3% QoQ. As such, 2021 earnings of Bt38.1bn beat our estimate by 3.4%.