Fell asleep in class

Q2 ROE was 10.1% and EPS 4% above our forecast, mainly from a lower effective tax rate, while pretax profit was 3% below, driven by higher loan losses. Retail lending growth continued to slide and HELG admitted that it found it more challenging than initially expected to capitalise on the reduced local presence of one competitor. We have raised our underlying 2018–2019e EPS by ~1% due to higher NII, but have lowered our growth forecasts. We reiterate our HOLD recommendation and have raised our...