Asia Plus Securities
Q1 2013A: As good as anticipated BUY
Asia Plus Securities Plc (ASP)
Q1 2013A as good as expected. 1Q13 profit leapt 114% YoY and 147% QoQ to Bt394mn, in line with our forecast.
Key points:
1. Brokerage income: +92% QoQ thanks to the very high daily market turnover and sharp rise in market share. Daily market turnover excluding proprietary trading shot up 75% QoQ to Bt58bn, a record high, in the main driven by domestic money, largely retail investors. Market share rose 49 bps QoQ to 3.94%. Commission rate slipped to 0.18% from 0.19% in 4Q12.
2. Other fee income: +20% QoQ, mainly from asset management and advisory fees.
3. Investment gain: +184% QoQ to Bt189mn, as a result of the SET rally (+12% from YE2012.
4. Cost to income ratio: Down QoQ to 51.8% in 1Q13 from 62.4% in 3Q12, backed by strong top line growth.
Raised 2013F forecast. We raised our assumption of daily market turnover to Bt40bn from Bt35bn since the strong turnover has continued in April, and this bumped up 2013F by 7%.
Maintain Buy with a TP hike. We maintain Buy on ASP with a hike in target price to Bt5.2 (12 x 2013F EPS) as a result of our upward revision of daily market turnover. ASP is attractive as a liquidity play, luxuriating in the stock market’s record-high daily turnover that is unusually being dominated by local retail investors as seen in the jump in proportion of local retail trade against total trade.
