As part of our Banking Report we conducted a Roundtable Forum with Anthony Polini,Senior Vice President, Financial Services, Raymond James & Associates and Christopher Nolan, Vice President Equity Research, Maxim Group who had some differing views ;

Mr. Polini: Like I said before, I’ve never been more bullish. I’ve been following the banks since 1985 and in many ways banks are all in the same boat. I think some boats are going to rise a little more over the next three to six months. But we’re still looking at the big macro picture. I’m very eager to find out what happened to consumer delinquencies this quarter to see a follow through, if you will, on early signs of positive news on the consumer credit front. The commercial loan losses and NPAs are probably at least six months away from peaking. So we still have a difficult environment. Like I tell people, you can make money walking around in Beverly Hills buying bank stocks and over the next year I think you’re going to make a lot of money, but you’re not walking in Beverly Hills, you’re walking in my old hometown, Flushing.

 

Mr. Nolan: My only “buy”-rated stock is SVB Financial (SIVB), with a price target $44. It’s a bank focusing on the technology inventory capital sector and has very little commercial real estate exposure. The company is basically trading at about 1.5 tangible book. The stock has increased by 40% or so since reporting second-quarter earnings. I tend to think that because the stock is not really tied too much to commercial real estate, has a very strong liquidity position, I think credit quality is stabilizing and earnings are positioned to go to outperform peers. That’s my only “buy” rating, but I’m favorably disposed to two “hold”-rated stocks. The first is Signature Bank (SBNY), which is a New York-based bank using a private banker model, targeting small and mid-size companies in the New York metropolitan area. It has been an extremely successful core deposit growth story, and it has limited commercial real estate exposure, which really dates back to 2008. So it doesn’t really have too much legacy

This entry was posted on Friday, October 9th, 2009 at 12:14 am and is filed under Financial Services Stocks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.