Chart of the Day: Here's how much Singapore banks' net interest margin dropped since 2008

And earnings will shrink 6%.

According to Barclays, all three Singapore banks will report their 4Q13 results on 14 February 2014, with DBS and OCBC before market open and UOB after market close.

Barclays expects earnings (ex. one-off profit) to contract by 6% q/q and 8% y/y for the Singapore banks in aggregate for 4Q13, mainly driven by: 1) weaker market-related income; 2) seasonally higher operating expenses; and 3) slightly higher credit cost.

Here's more from Barclays:

We expect largely flat margin, as slightly higher loan yields from the bottoming-out of the downward loan repricing drag (on mortgages and corporate loans) and slightly higher funding costs.

We estimate loans grew ~3% q/q in 4Q13, largely led by strong growth in corporate loans, trade finance and non-housing retail loans. For UOB and OCBC, we expect a small drag on Indonesia and Thailand’s loan growth given the Indonesian rupiah (IDR)’s 4.9% and Thai baht (THB)’s 3.9% depreciation against the SGD q/q in 4Q, although the overall impact is immaterial.

IDR loans account for 3% of OCBC’s loans book, while IDR and THB loans account for 7% of UOB’s loan book. Despite recent property cooling measures by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and a slowdown in transaction volume, the housing loan pipeline remains strong due to housing approvals granted on primary market transactions previously.

For the Singapore system in 2013, loans grew by 19.5% y/y and deposits rose by 8.6% y/y.

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