According to a research report released by Goldman Sachs, HSBC Holdings (00005) and some of its peers have shown asset return on investment (ROA) performance, thereby determining further potential for return on investment and valuation. It is pointed out that among the selected banking peers, the increase in ROA of the group is the largest, so the group also has the highest beta coefficient against rising USD interest rates, mainly due to the improvement in the group's performance and prudent cost control. It is rated as "buy" with a target price of HKD 81.

The bank predicts that the gap between HSBC's expected ROA and the industry average will narrow by 10 basis points from 2021 to 2026. This will drive the company's stock price to outperform the industry average performance for two consecutive years, with a market-to-book ratio currently about 0.9 times. However, Goldman Sachs warns that HSBC's ROA and return on equity (ROE) still lag behind the best-performing DBS Bank in the industry, which is believed to be due to DBS's higher proportion of commercial banking business and relatively low contribution from large enterprises and investment banking businesses, as well as the recent underperformance in the scale of loans and wealth management assets of the Hong Kong banking industry compared to Singapore.