Demand for loans coming back – SBI

Update on the Indian Equity Market:
On Thursday, Nifty 50 ended at 13,134 (+0.2%). Among the stocks, MARUTI (+7.3%), NTPC (+4.2%), and ONGC (+4.2%) ended with gains while SBILIFE (-2.0%), HDFCBANK (-1.8%), and TCS (-1.4%) ended the day with losses. Among the sectoral gainers, PSU BANK (+4.8%), MEDIA (+2.8%), and METAL (+2.5%) led the gainers and IT (-0.5%), PRIVATE BANK (-0.5%), and FINANCIAL SERVICES (-0.3%) led the laggards.

Excerpts of an interview with Mr. Dinesh Khara, Chairman, State Bank of India (SBIN) published in Business Standard on 3rd December 2020:
• The bank is cautious about loan demand from vaccine manufacturers given the huge investments which may turn sour if central approvals are not forthcoming. Proposals worth Rs 1,000 crore have been received from the pharmaceutical segments.
• When there is unlocking, there is demand revival, which is going to be the main growth engine in the current scenario. He expects the demand to be back with a vengeance after covid.
• There has been a significant improvement in sanctions and disbursements to unsecured personal loans and express credit loans. In September, in the personal loans space, there was 55% growth year-on-year. Disbursements went up as high as 61 percent. In the home loans segment, there was a 49% growth.
• SBIN has taken stock of the special mention accounts (SMA) 1 and 2 and there is time till March 31 for carrying on the restructuring exercise. There is an internal target of completing 50% of restructuring by December, and the rest by February.
• They have given unsecured loans to customers who have been maintaining their salary accounts, employed with either the government or well-rated private sector corporates.
• Recovery is ensured through the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, restructuring, and the non-discretionary one-time settlement schemes. One major resolution went through in the early part of this quarter.
• There has been a delay in big accounts in financial sectors looking for resolution due to litigation. In such cases, an elaborate process is laid out, and timelines given for such accounts are stringent.
• In the recent past, they have raised tier I and tier II capital with prices set at the benchmark.
• SBIN had the work-from-home policy in 2017 and the pandemic has helped SBIN leverage this policy. They have reframed this policy to ‘work from anywhere’ and digitised some of the non-customer facing activities as well. They can’t have a work-from-home policy for everyone as they are a customer-facing organisation and need to engage with customers.
• When YONO, SBIN’s digital banking app was put in place, it was to be a distribution platform for the bank’s products. The definite and concrete plans in terms of listing it will be shared in some time.
• In the post-Covid world, some in-person meetings will probably come back. There will be a paradigm shift when it comes to the way SBIN has been conducting themselves in the past to the way they will conduct themselves in the future.

Consensus Estimate: (Source: market screener and investing.com websites)
• The closing price of SBIN was ₹ 256/- as of 03-December-2020. It traded at 1x/ 0.9x/ 0.8x the consensus book value estimate of ₹ 262/ 286/ 318 for FY21E/ FY22E/FY23E respectively.
• The consensus target price of ₹ 276/- implies a PB multiple of 0.9x on FY23E BV of ₹ 318/-.

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