We have a BUY call, premised on loan growth (driven by SOE and corporate business), higher non-NII and lighter LLPs. Moreover, there could be upside to our NPAT projection if KTB’s OPEX were to be lighter than our current assumption.
Result was below our expectation
KTB posted 4Q21 earnings of Bt4.9bn, up 43% YoY but down 2% QoQ. The result was 8% below our projection (but was in line with the Bloomberg consensus), due to heavier OPEX than assumed. Pre-provision operating profit came to Bt15.2bn, up 4% YoY but flattish QoQ. As such, 2021 earnings of Bt21.6bn missed our estimate by 2.0%.