Deutsche Bank lifts HSBC target price, retains 'hold'

Deutsche Bank bumped up its target price on shares of HSBC, hailing the restart of dividend payments in the US but cautioned that investors would need to be patient when it came to expectations for capital upstreaming from the States.

Analysts David Lock and Stephen Andrews welcomed the first dividends from HSBC's US unit in nearly 10 years.

While symbolic, they expected it would help fund future buybacks.

As well, they said the lender's first quarter results printed ahead of analysts' estimates, helped by a better performance from life insurance manufacturing and investment distribution.

However, commentary from management on the pace of capital upstreaming from the US was absent.

Lock and Andrews said it would still take more than three years for between seven to eight billion dollars of excess capital in the US to be returned to the holding company.

They penciled in $2.5bn of buybacks for 2017 with similar amounts for 2018 and 2019.

Also, despite $3.5bn of buybacks completed over the past 12 months, the share count was still higher, with the share count topping 20.0bn for the first time.

"$3bn of buybacks are needed each year to bring the cash dividend yield of roughly 4% to the headline dividend yield (5.9%)."

Hence, while the analysts lifted their target price from 616.0p to 640.0p, they retained their 'hold' recommendation.