In March and April, a series of banks will organise annual general meeting (AGM), officially announcing plans, targets of operation in 2018, along with important information related to personnel, management, bad debt settlement process, dividend payment, etc.
Experts assess that the issue that investors are most interested in this year’s AGM season is capital increase and listing of banks because this information has strong impact on King stocks, especially when this group of shares had a year with impressive growth.
Accordingly, last year, shares of listing banks rose about 40 percent, except for EIB, STB-coded shares. Catching the trend, some banks quickly listed shares on the stock exchange at the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018 such as HDBank, VPBank and share prices of these two banks have grown spectacularly at more than 40 percent.
Currently, TPBank has submitted application and planned to list in Q2/2018. Earlier, TPBank shareholders approved the chartered capital increase plan by separately issuing more than 87.6 million shares and listing shares on Hochiminh city Stock Exchange (STC).
Leaders of OCB said they will promote the plan to list on STC when there are appropriate market conditions which can be at the end of 2018 or beginning of 2019.
Apart from the aforementioned banks, in the near future, many other banks also plan to officially list on the stock exchange such as VIB, Techcombank, etc. or on Upcom such as Bac A Bank, VietBank. Currently, share prices of some banks on OCT are high such as Techcombank’s shares at about 50,000 dong per share.
In this context, some people worry that share prices will suffer from pressure as supplies surge, not to mention the capital increase pressure to meet the implementation of Basel II standards. In this regard, Dr Nguyen Van Thuan said the large supply of bank shares in this year threatens to overwhelm demand, so the influence on price is unavoidable.
However, the good news is that according to a recently released survey of Vietnam Report, not real estate construction or consumption but finance and banking is the group of shares that is worth investing in the most in 2018.
Specifically, more than 45 percent of respondents chose shares of finance and banking sector with high expectation on the growth and profitability of this group, while the proportion in the real estate-construction and consumption is 29.2 percent and 20.8 percent respectively.
According to financial experts, besides the economy that is forecasted to continue maintaining the stability, the factor that makes investors target at King shares is because the internal health of banks is gradually improving in the positive direction, especially after issuance of the Resolution No.42/2017 on bad debt settlement.
This is the factor causing bank share prices to grow stably, contributing to the strong growth momentum of the stock market over the last period.
Besides the listing, dividend has always been the matter of concerns by investors. Especially, last year, profits of most banks have increased, of which, some banks plan to make dividend payment at 25-30 percent by shares and cash such as HDBank.
Noticeably, this year’s AGM season is forecasted to have significant fluctuations in senior personnel of banks. Specifically, Kienlongbank will appoint CEO, Sacombank will elect two additional board members for 2017-2021 term including one independent board member; Eximbank also plans to appoint two board members at the AGM meeting on April 27.
In addition, the profit target for this year of banks is also paid attention to by share investors. In spite of having no official figure, many banks have initially set positive plans for 2018.
At Vietcombank (VCB), after setting record on total assets and profits in 2017, this bank set modest growth targets with the credit to improve about 16 percent, mobilisation to swell 17 percent, total assets to inch up about 14 percent and pre-tax profit target at 12 trillion dong compared to more than 11 trillion dong last year.
Meanwhile, Vietinbank targets to raise the total assets by about 15-17 percent, the capital mobilisation by 18-20 percent; credit by 16-17 percent. BIDV targets the maximum credit growth target in 2018 at about 17 percent, and the capital mobilisation growth at 17 percent.
The common point in these three banks is the limited increase in chartered capital over the last three years, causing the Capital Adequacy Ratio (CAR) to be close to the minimum level following the regulation of the State Bank. Therefore, growth criteria are mostly less than 20 percent.
