KBE

Image: Banks and financials were among the most aggressively beaten down groups during the COVID-19 crash, and the sector failed to participate meaningfully in the bounce back. The leveraged and arbitrary nature of banking business models makes them much less attractive than entities with strong net cash positions on the balance sheet and solid expected future free cash flows. Source: Kastner, David, Charles Schwab. “Schwab Sector Views: Changes Are Coming.” 18 June 2020. By Brian Nelson, CFA Better-than-feared third-quarter reports are not going to change our minds on the banking and financials sector. The group has been among the worst performing sectors amid the COVID-19 market crash and failed to bounce back meaningfully since the March bottom. Banks are being … Read more

Select the link to download the pdf report below. Thank you! We’ll talk about how banks make money, and the three most important costs of running a bank. The Great Financial Crisis revealed the tremendous risks of banking equities, and we’ll walk through these in depth. We’ll discuss how to conceptualize where we are in the banking cycle, and how that helps inform our valuation process for banks, which is different than traditional operating entities. The stress tests have helped many of the big banks from pursuing hazardous endeavors during the past decade, and we’ll go into how to think about the yield curve in the context of banks. Investors should expect ongoing digitalization of banks and increased M&A as … Read more

All in all, we think Citigroup management is doing a decent job of navigating this economic downturn. The shares trade at a discount to tangible book value. We think a large part of the reason for this is that this is a very complex bank, operating across a wide variety of products and geographies. If the team can make it through this downcycle without any skeletons coming out of the closest, we think the stock has the potential to re-rate higher. By Matthew Warren On July 14, Citigroup (C) posted a difficult second-quarter set of results, though the firm did manage to beat analyst consensus estimates on both the top and bottom lines. Outsize revenue gains in investment banking and … Read more

Image Shown: Overview of JPMorgan’s 2Q2020 earnings. Image Source: JPMorgan 2Q2020 Earnings Presentation There was a fair amount of discussion on JPMorgan’s conference call about how the company (and the rest of the banking industry) are taking large provisions now for charge offs that they expect to come in the future. The future and the timing and magnitude of the eventual write-offs are quite murky indeed, which helps explain the volatility of banking shares in general, and especially for those institutions that might fall over in an “adverse scenario.” JPMorgan is not one of those banks that is at risk. It stands on high ground in the industry thanks to its scale, diversification (a huge benefit this quarter), high quality … Read more

Wells Fargo is so far out of line with its large US banking peers that it is truly competing with one arm tied behind its back. Or perhaps both arms. While some might try to be heroic and bet on a huge turnaround, we think it is more prudent to watch from the sidelines. What an epic disappointment this bank has become, so far a fall from grace as compared to when it used to be regarded as one of the best in class of the biggest US banks. What a shame! By Matthew Warren Wells Fargo (WFC) delivered a stinker of a second quarter July 14, missing on both the top and bottom lines, and cutting the dividend by … Read more