Commercial banks lining up for IPOs

The A-share market has reopened its doors to commercial banks after a regulatory halt from 2010, with 14 banks now waiting for initial public offerings.

Among these banks, five are rural commercial banks and nine are city commercial lenders. Most of them are small and medium-sized lenders whose total assets range from tens of billions of yuan to more than 1 trillion yuan ($150 billion).

Bank of Jiangsu Co Ltd, which received approval for its IPO on June 17, has announced that it will launch an online roadshow next week, as well as online and offline applications for purchasing its IPO stock, with an intended issue price of 6.27 yuan per share.

"The banks preparing for IPOs are all regional banks that rely heavily on regional development," Qiu Guanhua, an analyst at Guotai Junan Securities Co Ltd, said in a research report.

"Plowing deeply into the local market, they share the fruits of local economic growth on the one hand; but on the other hand, they have weaker risk resistance ability than national banks due to a high concentration of business, especially if the local economy is under downward pressure," Qiu added.

Among the 14 banks, Bank of Chengdu Co Ltd in southwestern China recorded a nonperforming loan ratio of 2.35 percent at the end of 2015, almost double the ratio of the previous year and much higher than the average of 1.67 percent for commercial banks.

Its net profit attributable to shareholders fell 20.6 percent to 2.82 billion yuan, according to its annual report.

In the Yangtze River Delta region, the NPL ratios of Jiangyin Rural Commercial Bank Co Ltd and Rural Commercial Bank of Zhangjiagang Co Ltd also reached nearly 2 percent, respectively, at the end of last year.

Banking analysts at Guotai Junan expect the increase in NPL ratios will become lower in the Yangtze River Delta region, as the banks gradually dispose of their bad loans.

The report also found that the asset quality of banks in the coastal areas already began to stabilize in 2015, as banks started tackling their risk exposures.

But in central, western and northeastern China, it found banks' asset quality is worsening.

The report found that asset growth diverged sharply among the banks planning to launch an IPO.

Last year Bank of Guiyang Co Ltd posted total asset growth of more than 50 percent, whereas those of the five rural commercial banks were below 15 percent. This was due to their insufficient ability to obtain assets, restricted by their operation only in limited regions.

For most of the 14 banks, investment-related businesses contributed more than 70 percent of their new assets. For instance, bond investments represented 83 percent of the new assets of Bank of Guiyang.