Acquisition strategy. There have been no developments concerning the acquisition strategy. On the positive stance, Andrzej Podsiadlo, CEO of PKO BP stated that the bank would not compete with price. In our opinion that should be positive for shareholders, giving latest deals valuations. At the other hand the CEO stated that if PKO BP’s funds are not enough it would consider rising capital by subordinated debt or issuing of bonds.
PKO BP’s target countries are now Serbia and Croatia. According to PKO BP’s management those deals are not yet over. While according to Reuters National Bank of Greece offered € 500m for a 99.43% stake in Vojvodjanska Banka, which has some 6% market share, assets of USD 571m and operates 175 branches across the country. According to the same source BA-CA offered € 450m and PKO BP bid was the lowest. Furthermore, Croatian newspaper Slobodna Dalmacija, reported that UniCredito’s Splitska Banka is expected to be acquired by French Societe Generale. The value of the deal could be € 950m (earlier last year, the market speculated the price to be set within a range of € 700-800m)
Panonska Banka, yet the privatisation agency has shortlisted 6 bidders with PKO BP among them.
At the same time the CEO stated that PKO BP does not target in Russia or Belarus, as the political uncertainty in those countries is substantial.
PKO BP disclosed some details concerning strategy of CredoBank, the Ukrainian subsidiary that had a net profit PLN 6.5m in 2005 and operates 70 branches. PKO BP prepared a strategy of expansion with main focus on retail segment and opening some 100 new branches until 2008. It is possible that PKO BP would transfer some funds to this subsidiary.
Corporate segment. One would see positively the ‘wind of change’ in PKO BP’s corporate division, with its ambition to aggressively increase its market share (from 2-3% in 2005 to 10% in mid-term) along with its contribution to the PKO BP’s revenues (from 7% in 2005 to some 30% in 5 years). While the bulk of the results is still dependent upon the volatile low-margin state treasury and local authorities segments, and minority in actual corporate segment. The threat is also that PKO BP tries to compete with price in short term.
In our opinion market has already discounted the strategy, and we do not expect any positive trading impact.
We reiterate our Hold recommendation with a fair value of PLN 31.7.