In short: Pro pick #1 (met them in Korea last September; buyable as an NYSE listing). Trades below book vs Canadian banks at 2–3× book, single-digit P/E vs mid-teens — "the gap is at one of the widest junctures I've ever seen in my career." Dividend growing more aggressively post-regime-change; the memory boom is making Korea raise rates while Canada is on pause, and "who benefits when rates go up? Banks." Already runs a fully automated branch.
Shinhan is one of South Korea's five big banks, and you can buy it in New York rather than in Seoul. Morrison's argument is almost entirely a price argument: Korea's banking system looks structurally like Canada's — a handful of players, huge scale, deposits that don't move — but the shares trade for less than the accounting value of the bank ("below book"), and for single-digit multiples of profit, while Canadian banks trade at two-to-three times book and mid-teens multiples. He says the gap between two similar industries in different countries is about as wide as he's seen in thirty years.
The catalyst is the rate cycle running the other way. Korea's AI-memory boom is so strong (chip employees getting outsized bonuses) that its central bank is raising interest rates while Canada's is on pause after cutting. Banks earn more when rates rise, because they lend at higher rates faster than they pay out on deposits. Add a government change that has pushed Korean companies to pay and grow dividends, plus his own visit to a fully-automated Shinhan branch, and you get a cheap bank with improving profitability — his favourite shape. It's also, in his words, a cheaper "derivative play" on the memory boom than buying the chipmakers.
48:13They trade at a singledigit multiple of earnings versus Canadian banks that trade at mid- teens multiple of earnings, right? They are growing their dividend more aggressively now because there's been a regime change in South Korea, right? So again, I have a tendency to encourage our team to run to areas of difficulty.
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