The team at Societe Generale has applauded the move by Lloyds Banking Group (LON:LLOY) protect its share of the mortgage market.
It has cut its rates on home loans by 0.2-0.3 percentage points to make them more competitive.
Previously the owner of the Halifax chain and Britain‘s biggest mortgage provider appeared happy to sacrifice market share for an improvement in margins.
WATCH: Our investment guru takes a closer look at Lloyds and RBS
Now it seems to have rowed back on that strategy with a more competitive product mix.
“In isolation, this is negative for the margin, but it should help volumes and, in any case, Lloyds’ deposit base is still around 30 basis points dearer than peers, leaving the margin with more tailwinds than headwinds,” said analyst James Invine.
The SG number cruncher repeated his ‘buy’ recommendation and 80p a share price target.
At 12.15pm, the shares were changing hands for 66.77p, little changed on the day.
Of the 17 analysts logged as following Lloyds by the Brokerforecasts website, 10 have ‘buy’ recommendations, four are sellers and the remainder reckon the shares are fully valued.
It takes two to tango
Proving it takes two opposing points of view to make a market, the German Bank Berenberg earlier this week cut its recommendation on the stock to ‘sell’ with a 55p price target.
Berenberg believes Lloyds is highly exposed to cyclical loan losses in the UK amid the risks of Brexit and rising interest rates by the Bank of England (BoE).
At the full year results last month, Lloyds chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio said the bank's future underlying performance was tied to UK economic growth.
While the lender’s net interest margin has risen about 80 basis points to 2.70% over the past four years, Berenberg noted that revenues have fallen 5% as its interest-earning assets have fallen by 20%.
Berenberg said its dividend per share expectations are 15-20% below consensus and its earnings per share (EPS) forecast its 15% below market estimates.
“Despite an attractive dividend yield, we believe Lloyds is overvalued, trading at 1.3-times tangible book value and more than 12-times EPS, particularly given skewed risks to earnings,” it said.