The price-to-book (P/B) ratio of a company's stock is often used by investors as a quick tool to gauge whether the shares are being priced too cautiously or too aggressively, as marked differences between the price of a company’s share in the equity market compared to its book of accounts are often a sign of under- or over-valuation. But sometimes, skewed P/B ratios have a different story to tell. Very low P/B ratios may actually be because of serious problems with the company’s business model, whereas high P/B ratios could very well be because of strong optimism about the future potential of a company’s business model.

And as it turns out, no other sector captures the wide range of P/B ratios and their meanings so well as the banks do. While banking giants Bank of America (BAC) and Citigroup (C) trade at considerable discounts to their book value, JPMorgan’s (JPM)

2013 Annual Shareholder Meeting Conference Call

May 20, 2013, 10:00 am ET

Executives

Jim Miller - Chairman

Ernie Draganza - Senior EVP, Chief Risk Officer & Secretary

Todd Brice - President & CEO

Mark Kochvar - Senior EVP & CFO

Analysts

Presentation

Jim Miller

Good morning. And I would like to welcome everyone to the S&T Bancorp Annual Meeting of Shareholders. The first question is if everyone voted or cares to do so; if you haven't please raise your hand and we will take care of you, okay.

I am Jim Miller and as Chairman of the Corporation I'll serve as Chairman of this annual meeting. I have asked our Corporate Secretary, Ernie Draganza to serve as Secretary for this morning’s meeting. With me also are Todd Brice, our President and Chief Executive Officer; Mark Kochvar, our Chief Financial Officer and Ernie Draganza, our Chief Risk

The financial sector has been the best-performing group over the recent one-year period with a gain of 39.5%.

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In this article I will feature three financial sector stocks that have seen intensive insider buying during the last 30 days. Intensive insider buying can be defined by the following three criteria:

1. The stock is purchased by three or more insiders within one month.
2. The stock is sold by no insiders in the month of intensive purchasing.
3. At least two purchasers increase their holdings by more than 10%.

1. Harris & Harris Group (TINY) is a venture capital firm specializing in early stage investments.

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Insider buying by insider (last 30 days)

• Douglas Jamison purchased 5,000 shares on May 14-16 and currently holds 192,334 shares or 0.6% of the company. Douglas Jamison has served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer since January

In order to identify attractively valued dividend stocks, I follow a monthly screening process, where I go through the list of dividend champions and dividend achievers to look for bargains. In addition, I often stumble upon quality income stocks during my review of the dividend raises for the week or on an ad hoc basis through interactions with other dividend investors.

Some investors that I know have been purchasing Wells Fargo (WFC), which is one of the best run large banks in the country. The most prominent buyer of Wells Fargo is Warren Buffett, who has been accumulating the stock for the past four - five years in his personal portfolio and for Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) (BRK.B). Buffett finds that the key competitive advantage for Wells Fargo is its low cost of funds. The bank took out 25 billion from TARP, and as a result had to slash

This article originally appeared on Friday in BankThink, American Banker's blog about ideas, trends, and other developments in financial services.

Let's say I offer you a bet on the flip of a fair coin. I'll pay you $2 for every $1 you bet if the coin lands on heads. If it lands on tails, you lose your bet. But we'll do this only once and you have to bet your entire net worth. Would you play?

This is a bet with very large positive statistical expectation to you per dollar wagered, but it's so risky you'd be justified in taking a pass. And you'd be crazy to take the bet if I paid you only 75 cents for every $1 you bet. You'd be making a "sucker bet," one that offered insufficient odds.

It's easy to calculate the expectation of the above bets, harder in games of imperfect

Mortgage REITs (henceforth referred to as mREITs) are an interesting investment sector with periods of both exceptional performance and devastating crashes. These investments are typically broken down into two categories; agency mREITS and commercial mREITs, each of which have their advantages. This article will be focused on the commercial mREITs. When the financial markets are healthy, each tends to thrive, so the aspect that most differentiates these companies is their abilities to handle adverse situations. Specifically, we will be looking at how each one handled the financial crisis and how well they maintained their dividends (or didn't).

Commercial mREITs can be further broken down into legacy companies and new ones. As this article is focusing on disaster preparedness, it will only cover those which were around through the Great Recession. This narrows the field to 5 companies of interest

1. Gramercy Capital formerly traded as GKK now known as Gramercy Property

Western Asset Mortgage Capital Corp. (WMC) is a mortgage REIT. It is a new company, which IPO'd May 15, 2012. Its investment strategy focuses on Agency RMBS; but it also invests in non-Agency RMBS, CMBS, and other Asset-backed securities. WMC is externally managed by Western Asset Management Company, a global leader in diversified fixed-income management since 1971. This firm has approximately $459.4B in assets under management. This includes $58.3B in total mortgage exposure. $39.2B of this is invested in Agency RMBS. $8.8B is invested in non-Agency RMBS. $1.3B is invested in CMBS; and $8.8B is invested in ABS.

For Q1 2013, WMC reported a net loss of -$28.5 million (or -$1.18 per basic and diluted share). This was versus an estimate of +$0.90 per basic and diluted share (a miss of -$2.08). This included a net unrealized loss of $54.8 million on RMBS; and a $13.9 million net

Last week I wrote an article Picking An All-Star REIT Team To Defend Against Interest Rate Risk that included many of my SWAN (sleep well at night) picks. Although I didn't include all of the REITs that are in my Intelligent REIT Investor newsletter, I did include many. As I explained in that article, it's important to build out a team and it's even more essential to designate each REIT for its unique value proposition.

I like using the team analogy because that's exactly how an investor should think when he or she is modeling a REIT portfolio. You are the coach, and you should look at each REIT as a prospective player in hopes of determining whether the individual prospect can be optimized and integrated into your overall playbook.

Better yet, you (the coach remember) should look at each REIT in an effort to filter out the disadvantageously

The demand for income has certainly fueled the fire, making it more difficult to find value in stocks, and REITs aren't immune. However, it's plain to see that REITs continue to look attractive today, especially when compared with the world of low-yielding stocks. Unlike stocks, REITs offer the best of both worlds: the potential for long-term capital appreciation and steady income.

Intelligent investors must recognize that REIT dividends are regarded as a "holy grail" of sorts, and unlike ordinary stocks, REITs must pay out at least 90% of taxable income in the form of dividends. That is especially important to recognize in uncertain times when a dividend is often regarded as more important than the market price of the shares.

I often argue that REITs should be a core asset class (as opposed to an alternative) simply because of the dramatic shortage of quality yield in the marketplace.

The Travelers Companies, Inc. (TRV) is the sixth largest property and casualty insurer in the U.S. with a market share of 4.5% in terms of premiums earned. [1] We have revised our price estimate for Travelers to $94, implying a premium of 10% to the market price.

In our valuation model, we have divided the company into three business divisions: Business and Financial Insurance, Personal Insurance and Investment Income. In this article, we focus on Business and Financial Insurance, which accounts for 60% of the company’s revenues and 65% of operating income.

Workers’ Compensation

Travelers’ main insurance product line in this division is workers’ compensation accounting for almost 30% of the net written premiums. The line covers employers for workplace injuries to employees. The benefits offered include medical benefits, disability benefits, death benefits and vocational rehabilitation benefits. The products included in this line of insurance include both fixed premium policies,

Citigroup (C) is making great progress to rise from the 2009 financial meltdown ashes as it continues to shed its bad assets to focus on its main businesses, including international commercial and investment banking. Citigroup has the assets it wants to keep in "Citicorp" while "Citi Holdings" holds the assets Citi wants to sell.

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I added Citigroup (More Citi Charts) to my "Explore Portfolio" in September 1998 at $187.50 split adjusted because it was cheap and it provided diversification for my original "Explore Portfolio" that was 60% in technology stocks. In 2000, I sold enough Citi to get all my original investment out and then some. I was happily on "house money plus." Since 2000, I have used the remaining shares to trade its long-term volatility while collecting a dividend. For example, in 2002 I added 100 shares at $355 then sold those shares in

Annual Shareholder Meeting

May 16, 2013 3:00 pm ET

Executives

O. B. Grayson Hall - Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, President, Chief Executive Officer of Regions Bank, President of Regions Bank and Director of Regions Bank

Presentation

O. B. Grayson Hall

At Regions, our mission really is to achieve superior economic value for our shareholders over time by making life better for our customers, our associates and the communities that we serve and by creating what we call shared value as we help our customers meet their financial needs and their financial aspirations. So what does this exactly mean? If every day when a Regions Banker leaves their job, they can honestly answer that we've made life better for someone, then we will undoubtedly reach our goals. We will earn the loyalty of our customers and associates and create a strong, consistent, sustainable business model.

Creating shared

Anyone who has followed me for a long time knows that my favorite type of investment is something where the company's financials obscure its true value. For example, I noted that Gramercy (GKK) was trading way below liquidation value, but that liquidation value was hidden by the consolidation of some non-recourse debt. Long story short, the company eventually disposed of those non-recourse assets and the stock shot up as a result.

Whenever I find one of those situations and it works out successfully (i.e. the stock rises and I start to sell), I find myself thinking "The easy money has been made here." With all that in mind, I present Imperial Holdings (IFT). The stock has run up 50%+ in the past few weeks on some extremely favorable announcements, but in this particular case, I can't help but wonder if all of the "hard" money has been made and