Citigroup 花旗：中国银行业－预期利率上调对收益的影响
24 April 2007 | 5 pages
Chinese Banks Earnings Sensitivity on Expected Interest Rate Hikes




 A near-term rate hike — Considering the 11% plus GDP growth in 1Q07 and 3%
plus CPI inflation in March, we believe a near-term rate hike is highly likely and
the only uncertainty is whether the PBOC will raise savings deposit rate by the
same magnitude of the lending rates, after leaving the rate unchanged in the
past three rate hikes.
 Sector’s significant liquidity to cap savings deposit rates — We continue to
believe the PBOC still tends to raise lending rates at a pace faster than the
savings deposit rate given the significant and rising liquidity of the sector.
Demand/savings deposits growth rate accelerated to 16.2% yoy in Dec 2006
(2005: 15.6%), despite stable rates, and there were no signs of migration to
time deposits.
 Earnings sensitivity — We estimate that if the PBOC raises lending rates by
54bps and savings deposit rates by 27bps, the Chinese banks’ PBT will rise by
1.5% and the only victim is ICBC (-0.2%). In the less likely scenario that both
rates are lifted by 54bps, their PBT will fall by 4.2% and the sensitivity for ICBC
is minus 6.8%. CMB (-0.4%) and BoCom (-1%) would be affected least.
 ICBC benefits the least from higher rates — Our analysis shows that rate hikes
are generally positive to Chinese banks as long as their asset quality remains
strong. Among the Chinese banks, ICBC should benefit the least from the trend
given its sizable exposure to fixed rate and low yielding bonds, which accounted
for almost 37% of its total debt investment and offered an average yield of
2.28%. The respective ratios for CCB and BOC were 20.7% and 14.4%.