Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控) rose to its highest in almost four years in Taipei trading after Bear Stearns Cos rated it "outperform" and Goldman Sachs Group Inc raised its price target on the stock.
Fubon, Taiwan's second-largest financial services company by market value, gained 2.9 percent to close at NT$35.50, the highest since March 11, 2004. The benchmark TAIEX added 1 percent.
The group should sustain 10 percent income growth from loans and 15 percent from net fee income this year and next, Bear Stearns wrote in a report on Thursday, when it initiated coverage on the company.
Fubon will "benefit from robust loan growth, strong wealth management and life insurance business, and a sharp rise in Fubon Bank [Hong Kong]'s net profit," the report said.
Bear Stearns analysts Francis Chan (陳永富), Steven Chan (陳昔典) and Jim Antos have a 12-month target price of NT$41.20 on the stock.
Goldman's Vincent Chang (
Cathay Financial Holding Co (
Taiwan's financial stocks will rise another 15 to 20 percent in the next three months as investors buy shares on optimism the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) landslide victory in parliamentary elections will lead to an easing of curbs on investment in China, UBS said.
"We think the rally is only halfway through," Pandora Lee (李懿璇), an analyst at UBS wrote in the report dated yesterday. "Too early to sell and not too late to buy."
Cathay Financial added NT$1.70, or 2.1 percent, to NT$83.50. Lee raised the brokerage's share-price forecast for the stock to NT$96.30 from NT$88, citing lower-than-estimated writedowns in investments related to the US housing market.
Yuanta Financial Holding Co (
The company's share-price forecast was raised to NT$29 from NT$22.10 while the recommendation was lifted to "buy" from "neutral" by Goldman's Chang, according to a report dated yesterday.
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