Public Bank (1023)

Public Bank is my favourite bank and company in Malaysia.I'm using Public Bank and my first investment ever was with Public Bank :) PBBank going to pay share and cash dividend end of this month .Trading at 3x book value sounds risky but is it really worth to buy Pbbank just for thier dividend? TA wise also not attractive. What if I couldn't sell at profitable price after the ex date? Since I'm very unpredictible with decision, shall wait and see. Maybe I'm going to buy if the price looks attractive enough.

EX-date	:	26/02/2009
Entitlement date	:	02/03/2009
Entitlement time	:	05:00:00 PM
Entitlement subject	:	Final Dividend
Entitlement description	:	Final dividend of 25% less 25% income tax

EX-date	:	26/02/2009
Entitlement date	:	02/03/2009
Entitlement time	:	05:00:00 PM
Entitlement subject	:	Others
Entitlement description	:	Distribution of share dividend on the basis of 1 Public Bank ("PBB") treasury share listed and quoted as 'Local' on the Main Board of Bursa Malaysia Securities Bhd for every 35 ordinary shares of RM1.00 each held in PBB, fractions of treasury shares to be disregarded ("Share Dividend")

"Khoo said although Citigroup and Cazenove had downgraded their calls on PBB, Maybank-IB had maintained its buy call on the banking group’s current weakness, given that PBB was still the best among local banking groups in terms of performance.

“PBB is also not as exposed to external export markets and has a healthy balance in retail banking and trade financing, making it stronger in withstanding the global slowdown,” he said, adding that the banking group should still be giving high dividend yields compared with other local banking groups.

Nevertheless, he said there were expectations that Public Bank would lower its cash dividend this financial year to preserve capital in challenging times, and PBB might tap into its treasury shares again and distribute them to shareholders in place of a lower cash dividend.

Cazenove said PBB’s final dividend per share of 18.8 sen was significantly below the 40.8 sen expected in the market, and it would anticipate share price weakness on the counter.

“We cut our fair value from RM10.20 to RM7.40 based on a fair 2009 PBR (price-to-book ratio) of 2.5 times (versus the previous 3.5 times) from a higher cost of equity,” the research house said.

Cazenove added that it believed PBB’s strong double-digit earnings per share growth cycle since 2002 had peaked." The Edge Daily ~