Word: banke
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Shares of Wells Fargo, which uses a red horse-drawn carriage as its corporate mascot, have risen nearly 200%, to $24 per share, in less than three months. And while the stocks of all banks are up over that period, Wells Fargo's increase is more than double the rise of the KBW Bank Index. As a result, Wells' shares are starting to look pricey - and the bank is still facing tens of billions of dollars more in loan losses in the next two years...
...Analyst Ed Najarian, who follows bank stocks at independent research firm ISI Group, says Wells will weather the current economic crisis better than its rivals, but that investors shouldn't take much comfort in that. "We think Wells' earnings may be lower than expected in the second half of this year as credit losses rise and mortgage-origination revenue declines," says Najarian, who rates Wells shares a "hold." (Watch TIME's video of Peter Schiff trash-talking the markets...
...sure, Wells Fargo still has plenty of fans, and its bottom line has held up better than expected - the bank's first-quarter earnings of $3 billion were up 50% over the prior year's first quarter, despite a tough economy. Executives at Wells are also reassuring investors that the bank's loans will perform better than rivals; they point to the $39 billion in loans the bank wrote off when it acquired Wachovia last fall as proof of its conservative posture...
...Buffett and other investors may be putting too much faith in the bank management's ability to gauge future loan losses, something no major bank has gotten right during this downturn. And if there's even a bit of disappointment, Wells Fargo shares have further to fall than its rivals. The stock trades at a price-to-book multiple of 1.6; JPMorgan, another bank deemed to be in relatively good shape, has a price-to-book of just 1. On earnings, Wells trades at 16 times its expected bottom line this year. That's better than even Goldman Sachs, which...
...Vladimir Osakovskiy, strategy and research head at Unicredit Bank, "The major message was that in the future the government will develop the budget using conservative oil price estimates. What we're seeing right now is an effort to clean up the mess." And what analysts will be eyeing with increased interest in coming months is whether the differences over the budget mark a new stage in Russia's most important political relationship: the one between Medvedev and Putin...