Buy ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, says PN Vijay

Buy ICICI Bank, IndusInd Bank and Axis Bank, says PN Vijay, Portfolio Manager.

Vijay told CNBC-TV18, "In the private banks I would still maintain my buy calls on ICICI Bank, IndusInd Bank and Axis Bank, because they are very top class banks. In the case of ICICI Bank I think if you compared to the last two years price performance, it is still far below what it’s capable of doing and I think they have done a lot of wonders to their balance sheet, which the markets not fully recognize.”
He further added, “Axis Bank and IndusInd Bank are very sweet banks, very well run banks. I think all their internal numbers look good and the beta is also fairly decent, so that the moves in the market would be supported by higher moves in these stocks. So in the private sector banks I will go for these.”
“In the public sector banks I think State Bank has gone up too much, though it’s a nice bank. I would go for Bank of Baroda, Bank of India and Allahabad Bank. All three look very interesting. All three have improving asset quality, I won’t say good asset quality, but improving asset quality and I expect public sector banks to report decent earnings with less appropriation to bad loans and fairly strong NIMs as credit loan quality has picked up.”
“So in a nutshell among private banks I would still support ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and IndusInd Bank and among public sector banks, Bank of Baroda, Bank of India and among the smaller ones Allahabad Bank."