【出版时间及名称】：2009年11月希腊银行业研究报告
        【作者】：EuroBank证券
        【文件格式】：PDF
        【页数】：49
        【目录或简介】：
Executive Summary
We have been early in identifying that tides turned for Greek banks (see our Strategist’s note,
dated April 6th 2009) and despite the steep rally we witnessed during the last months, we
have reiterated our top down call many times before. We always argued that this is a beta
play and ahead of massive earnings upgrades all Greek banks should rally. Consensus has
been too cautious for longer, missing entirely the impact a steep yield curve had on core
profits. Investors had priced in high solvency risk and overlooked G20 and ECB commitment
to provide enormous liquidity and support to the banking system.
We think investors will begin looking beyond the current downturn and realize that recurring
ROEs will stabilize substantially higher than current levels and eventually will begin reverting
to the mean in 2011/2012 (but still far away from historic highs). The main drivers will be:
(1) Pre‐provision profit which will keep coming robust making new historic records. We
believe that ECB will keep rates lower for longer, liquidity will remain abundant into the
system, hence ensuring the yield curve will remain steep (although should come off from
extreme highs); policy makers are following a more pragmatic approach aiming to recapitalize
the banks through retained earnings and make it easier for banks to withstand any higher
impairment charges.
(2) Normalized cost of risk will become evident as soon as 2011. We believe low interest
rates and swift policy response will put a brake on NPL formation sooner. As high preprovision
profit enables banks to earn their way out of the crisis, coverage ratios will also
gradually improve. By 2012 we expect LLPs to converge towards their pre‐crisis mean,
significantly enhancing profitability.
(3) Higher capital requirements and relaxed liquidity withdrawal will eventually take its toll
on profitability. As regulation toughens up and at the same time excessive liquidity is
withdrawn, ROEs should come off. We think this will take place after 2011/2012, but Greek
banks will keep enjoying profitability levels higher than the European average.
Nevertheless, we believe Greek banks now have to climb another wall of worry. The Greek
macroeconomic condition has turned sour and a sluggish economic recovery alone won’t be
enough to restore fiscal imbalances, suggesting a less fertile banking environment. One way
to improve returns in such market conditions (post 2011), is consolidation. We think that as
volume growth stales, cost of funding becomes more expensive and lack of scale in SEE
becomes more evident for further growth, consolidation will be brought to the forefront.
In this environment, we set our 2011 bottom line estimates higher than the suggested
consensus since we think the market has yet to fully price in the impact of the
aforementioned dynamics. A persistently steep yield curve and the gradual decline in the
cost of risk shall provide for significant earnings capacity in our universe. The sector beta
trade is still on but the upside for NBG is rather limited at these levels as per our