Mr. Ryan: I cover commercial banks and am currently focused on community banks.
TWST: You believe Metro Bancorp may have the best-performing stock over the next five years. What do you like about the stock and why is now the time to invest?
Mr. Ryan: Metro Bancorp is basically taking the old Commerce Bancorp operating model of high convenience with low fees and bringing it into the metro Philadelphia market. Metro is sort of a unique bank in that it started life as a franchise of the old Commerce Bancorp. That franchise agreement went away when TD Banknorth bought Commerce Bancorp, and so they've rebranded themselves. As a franchise, Metro had been relegated to the markets of Central Pennsylvania, which are not the most economically robust markets. Now they are free to bring that business model to more affluent and faster-growing markets. So I think what we are likely to see over the next several years is Metro emerge as the same sort of organic growth story that Commerce Bancorp was for most of its existence. It will create value by garnering high-deposit growth at relatively low interest rates. I think we will see a secular improvement in the company's growth rate as they move east from Central Pennsylvania into metro Philadelphia.
Tickers included in this excerpt: CLFC, METR, NARA, WIBC
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