We have the most recent earnings announcement from Maybank and as usual, research houses would post their opinion, outlook and price targets in reports similar to the one below.

CIMB - Maybank May 2016
CS - Maybank May 2016
HSBC - Maybank May 2016

If you look into the report, you find that the Malaysian research house CIMB has a better insight towards Maybank compared to Credit Suisse or HSBC. Give it some credit since it is home market for CIMB but analyst from Credit Suisse and HSBC are also Malaysia based.

The most recent quarter had Maybank reporting a higher gross impaired loan from 1.86% a quarter ago to 2.11% this quarter.

Based on the table below, the Singapore segment pretty much point to the reason for a rise in gross NPL.

According to the report from CIMB, it explained clearly that the impaired loan increase was there to account for the rescheduled and restructured loan for corporate accounts amounting RM800m+.

An easier way of putting this is that the loan isn't really lost but due to classification purposes, the spike would be seen as temporarily and goes back to the normal level when the borrower services the loan repayment in the next six consecutive months.

In contrast, the Credit Suisse and HSBC reports jumped into conclusion pointing straight to a deteriorating asset condition and that led to a price target cut calling for a reduce/underperform rating on the stock.

The reason why we brought this up was to ensure that as retail investors, we still need to know what's going on doing our own research and have plenty of reading materials to cross check our facts. In this case, it is clear that even analyst or so called 'professionals' overlook things.