margin compression is the real story here, not the loan book. rates coming down eventually but deposits are sticky expensive now, cost to income only buys you so much time. absa and fnb already feeling it too but cpi's retail base is cheaper to fund, that's the edge. long term yeah but next 12 months sideways ish.
the deposit franchise they've built is genuinely different to absa and fnb, cheaper to fund on a per capita basis which buys them runway while the margin picture sorts itself. cost to income at 42 odd percent still looks decent relative to peers getting squeezed harder, so the multiple compression we've seen might be overdone if rates eventually normalize. positioned perfectly for a patient investor but k_maphosa's right, next year or two is probably sideways territory.