Maintain HOLD for yields. BAT's 1H12 net profit of MYR415m (+15% YoY) is largely in line, accounting for 53% and 56% of our and consensus full-year estimates respectively. Illicits continued to dwindle in Mar-May 2012, benefiting the legal cigarette industry. BAT is fully valued at 20.5x FY12 PER, more than 1SD above its mean PER of 17x. We maintain our HOLD call with an unchanged DCF-based TP of MYR55.00 for its decent net dividend yield of 4.4% (2012).

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Source: Maybank Research - 20 July 2012