(Updates with closing price in fourth paragraph.)

Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Societe Generale SA maintained a “buy” recommendation on OAO Sberbank, Russia’s biggest lender, while cutting its price target because of a change in methodology, analyst Alan Webborn said in a report today.

Societe Generale lowered the price target on the stock to 165 rubles from 167 rubles.

“Sberbank is immensely strong,” Webborn said by phone from London. “On the national scale, the only competition is VTB. You got too many small banks in Russia and Sberbank is massively dominant in that market.”

Sberbank rose 0.2 percent on the Micex to 87.71 rubles. American depositary receipts of the bank fell 3.3 percent to $11.46 in New York. The Moscow-based bank reported profit that exceeded analysts’ estimates and raised its forecast for the year yesterday.

--Editors: Marie-France Han, Glenn J. Kalinoski

To contact the reporter on this story: Halia Pavliva in New York at hpavliva@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Papadopoulos at papadopoulos@bloomberg.net