NIM Recovery Strengthens Business Fundamentals
发布时间:2026-03-30 来源:华泰证券
China Merchants Bank (CMB) has reported 2025 attributable NP, operating revenue, and PPOP growth of 1.2%, 0.0%, and -0.1% YoY, respectively. The growth rates were 0.7pp, 0.5pp, and 1.1pp higher than in the first three quarters of the year. For 2025, ROE and ROA fell by 1.05pp and 9bp YoY to 13.44% and 1.19%, respectively. The company delivered marginal earnings improvement. Net interest income growth improved, fee income trended better, and the NIM recovered QoQ in 4Q25. The NPL ratio stayed stable with mild improvement, and overall asset quality remained solid. Given the company’s deep moat in its technology + retail strategy, we expect operations to keep improving. We maintain our BUY/OVERWEIGHT ratings on the A/H shares. CMB-A is on our Huatai Conviction BUY list.
Continued scale expansion, NIM marginally recovered in 4Q25
At end-2025, total assets, loans, and deposits grew by 7.6%, 5.4%, and 7.9% YoY, respectively. Compared with end-September, the growth rates changed by -0.9pp, -0.2pp, and -1.0pp. In 4Q25, retail, corporate, and bill financing accounted for 19%, 54%, and 27% of incremental loans, respectively. The NIM was 1.87% in 2025, flat versus the first three quarters of the year. In 2025A, the yield on interest-earning assets and the cost of interest-bearing liabilities were 3.04% and 1.26%, down by 4bp and 5bp from the first three quarters of the year, respectively. Deposit cost fell by 5bp from the first three quarters of the year to 1.17%, showing clear liability-side improvement. The quarterly NIM was 1.86% in 4Q25, up by 3bp QoQ from 3Q25, indicating a marginal rebound. Net interest income rose by 2.0% YoY, with the growth rate 0.3pp higher than in 9M25, showing stabilization at the margin. As time deposits mature through 2026, deposit costs should still have room to improve. That may partly offset downward pressure on loan pricing.
Fee income growth accelerates
In 2025, net fee and commission income rose by 4.4% YoY, with the growth rate 3.5pp higher than in 9M25, showing marginal improvement in fee income. Wealth-management fee and commission income reached RMB26.7bn, up by 21.4% YoY. Specifically, distributed wealth products, funds, trust products, and securities all delivered solid growth, up by 19.0%, 40.4%, 65.6%, and 62.6% YoY, respectively. Insurance agency income fell by 9.4%, being the main dragging factor for fee income. Retail customer AUM reached RMB17.08tn, up by 14.4% YoY, showing strong resilience in wealth management. We expect fee income to maintain its growth trend in 2026. Other net non-interest income fell by 13.7% YoY, and the growth rate was 2.3pp lower than in the first three quarters. Fair value changes turned from positive to negative, at RMB-8.16bn versus RMB6.09bn in 2024, mainly due to bond-market volatility. In financial investments, we expect the company to capture trading opportunities in 2026 through account-allocation adjustments, while staying prudent on duration and risk management.
Maintain A/H valuation multiples at 1.02x/1.00x 2026E PB
Given volatility in other non-interest income, we forecast 2026/2027/2028E EPS of RMB5.90/RMB6.21/RMB6.55, with 2026/2027 EPS cuts of 1.0%/0.2% from our previous estimates. We forecast 2026 BVPS at RMB47.52, implying 0.83x/0.91x PBs for CMB-A/CMB-H. Over the past five years through 27 March, the company’s average A/H PBs (MRQ) were 1.30x/1.29x. The company’s retail strategy has a moat effect, and liability costs continue to improve. However, given volatility in other non-interest income, we maintain our target valuation multiples at 1.02x/1.00x 2026E PB for CMB-A/CMB-H, for our target prices of RMB48.47/HKD50.99 (previous A/H-share target prices at RMB50.55/HKD55.37). We maintain our BUY/OVERWEIGHT ratings on the CMB-A/CMB-H. CMB-A is on our Huatai Conviction BUY list.
Risks: policy implementation falls short of our expectations; the economic recovery is weaker than we expect.