If you owned Vietnam bank stocks over the first half or so of 2021 then you would be well aware of the sector’s outstanding performance towards the middle of the year. The latter months of 2021 though saw them take a breather, so what now is the outlook for Vietnam bank stocks in 2022 and beyond?
Here I take a look at specific valuation metrics and key drivers of the top Vietnam bank stocks, read on to see how they shape up as we begin 2022.
As I want to discuss valuations and company specific factors here, I won’t go over old ground again on general potential sector growth tailwinds today. If you want to read about that you can refer to my recent blog post below:
OVERVIEW OF TOP 5 VIETNAM BANKS
Click below to learn about growth tailwinds and a brief description on the top Vietnam banks on the stock market.
LIST OF TOP BANKS IN VIETNAM – VIETNAM STOCK MARKET (vietnamesestockmarket.com)
VIETNAM BANKING SECTOR VALUTIONS
| Bank | TRAILING P/E | FWD PE | FWD PE 2022 | P/B |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VIETCOMBANK (VCB) | 20 | 16 | 15 | 3.6 |
| TECHCOMBANK (TCB) | 10 | 9 | 9 | 2.0 |
| BIDV (BID) | 21 | 17 | 16 | 2.3 |
| VP BANK (VPB) | 12 | 11 | 10 | 2.5 |
| VIETINBANK (CTG) | 10 | 11 | 9 | 1.7 |
KEY DRIVERS FOR TOP VIETNAM BANK STOCKS IN 2022
I simply chose 5 of the Vietnam banks stocks that I found when searching for the largest bank stocks by market capitalization, as thought that would interest readers the most. It is worth noting that I am sure there are at least half a dozen others that are worthy of investing consideration and reasonably liquid.
Here are the top 5 Vietnam bank stocks I am focusing on for the time being in terms of analyzing some company specific factors to watch.
TOP 5 BANKS IN VIETNAM BY STOCK MARKET CAPITALIZATIOn
- VIETCOMBANK, Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (HOSE:VCB)
- TECHCOMBANK, Vietnam Technological And Commercial Bank (HOSE:TCB)
- BIDV, Commercial Bank For Investment And Development Of Vietnam (HOSE:BID)
- VP BANK, Vietnam Prosperity Joint Stock Commercial Bank (HOSE:VPB)
- VIETINBANK, Vietnam Commercial Bank For Industry And Trade (HOSE:CTG)
Let’s now give some colour on factors we should be on the lookout for to see which Vietnam banks will outperform or not in 2022.
For some more perspective I shall include a chart (source: reuters.com) that shows their share price trend for 2021. It is interesting to observe how as I mentioned at the start, they had a great run towards the middle months of 2021.
VIETCOMBANK, Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (HOSE:VCB)
Vietcombank experience solid growth from retail in the first half of 2021 in terms of home loans and to SMEs. It will be interesting to see if they can maintain this in a challenging environment for demand, but perhaps it is more important to focus on how things look in the back half of 2022 when hopefully things are more normal.
I would also be cautious on their loss provisioning numbers, as it is challenging to assess what the impact of the aggressive lockdowns did to retail customers.
They enjoy the stability of their large customer base of deposits but will be interesting to see where this trends given the decline in deposit rates observed in recent years.
TECHCOMBANK, Vietnam Technological And Commercial Bank (HOSE:TCB)
The stock market has given Techcombank more of a positive re-rating in recent times. The market is becoming increasingly attracted to their vision of capturing the trend towards the digitization of banking. Watching their innovation and execution of such strategies might be the key to continuing to do well with Techcombank shares.
Watch also the sentiment on capital markets in Vietnam and the property market cycle. Techcombank business model is to focus on relatively high net worth customers and associated services, for example high end residential real estate, capital markets advisory and issuance.
BIDV, Commercial Bank For Investment And Development Of Vietnam (HOSE:BID)
BIDV, like Vietcombank, trades with a richer valuation and continues to rank number one in customer deposits and loans.
With such a large and diversified exposure to the Vietnam economy in general, the overall country’s prospects will tell a large part of the story in how BIDV shares go in the future.
Non-performing loans understandably ticked up in 2020 compared to the previous year. The bank believes in during this time they tilted their loan book more towards higher growth industries so it will be interesting to watch if that can help keep non-performing loans in check.
VP BANK, Vietnam Prosperity Joint Stock Commercial Bank (HOSE:VPB)
VP Bank has interestingly traded on cheaper valuation metrics compared with its peers in the Vietnam banking sector. We can in part attribute this to being smaller than some of its rivals, and it being more of a bet on consumer finance.
We did see VP Bank shares though do very well in the first half of 2021, sentiment was helped when they announced they would sell their 49% stake in their main consumer finance subsidiary. How the bank manages such big picture strategic decisions, and their balance sheet will continue to be important in determining whether the market will expand their trading multiples or not.
VIETINBANK, Vietnam Commercial Bank For Industry And Trade (HOSE:CTG)
Vietinbank on some measures in terms of the size of the bank is significant and draws comparison to the likes of Vietcombank and BIDV. Some fund managers have been drawn to Vietinbank however looking relatively favourable in terms of valuation in comparison.
Helping sentiment is that this year they announced their intentions to pay cash dividends in the future. They also have been working on divesting certain subsidiaries so if this gets executed well that could be a further positive catalyst.
ARE VIETNAM BANK STOCKS GOOD BUYS IN 2022?
Overall I would say that with the context of numerous structural growth tailwinds for the sector that I covered in my previous post on Vietnam banking stocks, valuations look reasonable. Even though the sector had a huge run up towards the middle of 2021, on EPS forecasts for 2022 valuations do not look too stretched.
I note that that likes of Vietcombank & BIDV demand richer valuations in terms of forward p/e and price to book, like circa mid-teens forward p/e. I am not surprised however when we consider these 2 banks and their massive footprint in Vietnam with large base of customer accounts which is highly desirable in terms of managing funding costs.
The other Vietnam banks I have discussed above are not far off single digit forward p/e ratios and price to book ratios of around 2 times. This may be viewed quite attractive to Vietnam investors. I could also see how Vietnam retail investors give them plenty of thought, given if they have idle funds in shorter term bank deposits in recent years they will be well aware that rates on offer have been in decline.
If you are a Vietnam retail investor, I would be interested to hear about this temptation to search for returns outside of the bank deposits. i.e., instead buying the bank shares. Feel free to let me know in the comments area below.
TIKR TERMINAL REVIEW
Lastly, in terms of TIKR where I sourced the valuation data above, I have found it an excellent investing resource to use for these sorts of purposes. i.e., checking historical income numbers, balance sheet position, ratio analysis, analyst forecasts, use as stock screener etc.
TIKR have a “freemium subscription model”, so there is tons of free information and the full access pro plan you only have to pay for if you feel comfortable in doing so. If that interests you, here is the free link, it is as simple as just requesting access via the link below.
https://app.tikr.com/register?ref=valueinvestliving
For full disclosure, if at a later date you decided to become a paid customer, I may receive a small commission from you joining up via my affiliate link above. That is no extra cost in any way to you though.
Below is an example of one screen where I looked data such as historical P/E, forward P/E and historical price to book ratio for Vietinbank.
Is Vietnam a good investment?
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