COMMONWEALTH BANK OF AUSTRALIA. (CBA)

Business Description:
Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) is a leading Australian retail bank and one of the 'Big Four'. Its core business is the provision of a broad range of banking and financial products and services to retail, small business, corporate and institutional clients. CBA conducts its operations primarily in Australia, New Zealand and Asia Pacific region. It also operates in several countries including United Kingdom and USA.

Strategy Analysis:
CBA generates superior shareholder returns by optimising revenue growth, productivity, capital efficiency and staff culture. The strategy is to invest in the competitive advantages that are difficult to replicate. The bank specifies its three primary sources of advantage as industry-leading application of technology to financial services, a customer-focused staff culture and a strong balance sheet. Each of these respectively supports returns on equity by making CBA more attractive to customers in a multi-channel banking world (an intangible asset), enhancing customer loyalty and satisfaction (another intangible asset), and reducing bad debts expense below peers´ (a cost advantage). Lower losses on bad debts give CBA more room to price keenly to win and retain business while remaining sufficiently profitable. The group will continue to invest in all three sources of advantage. CBA´s industry-leading technology initiative is the $1.1bn Core Banking Modernisation project, which rolled out real-time banking and same-day settlement across the depositor and borrower customer base. The project is effectively complete and CBA will be the only major bank offering these features across its customer base, an advantage which will take competitors years to replicate given the project was launched in 2008. CBA´s policy on acquisitions is to acquire only when it can create more value for shareholders than they can create for themselves. Commonwealth Bank of Australia reported NPAT up 1% to $3.66bn for the half-year ended 31 December 2012. Cash NPAT for the current half was $3.78bn, an increase of 6%. Revenues from ordinary activities were $22.92bn, down 4% from the same period last year. Diluted EPS was 221.7 cents compared to 222.1 cents last year. Net operating cash flow was $3.62bn compared to $8.34bn last year. The interim dividend declared was 164.0 cents compared with 137.0 cents last year. While many of the group's customers are facing challenges, this is not translating into a deterioration of credit quality. However, given the uncertain outlook for both the global and domestic economies, the group remains cautious maintaining a strong balance sheet with high levels of capital, provisioning and liquidity - $128.0bn as at 31 December 2012.