Q3 2009 Earnings Call

October 16, 2009 10:30 am ET

Not such a good week!

Last week was FANTASTIC. We had 28 winning trades out of 36 with an average gain of 42% on the winners and an average loss of 12% on the losers - now THAT’S A GOOD WEEK. We were stopped out of most of our bearish trades on Monday but we took a lot of new ones, which I’ll get into later... Of course, since we are rangish and play both ends, the good news is we still had our "losers" and puts that we sold on long positions. Those turned into huge winners in just 5 days:

Standard & Poor's recently updated the list of dividend growers from the S&P 1500 Index. In addition to the list containing decent growers, the companies exhibit a strong dividend coverage ratio. The criteria used in assembling the list include:

• paid increasing annual cash dividend for the past 10-years

Q2 2009 Earnings Call

July 17, 2009 10:30 am ET

• paid increasing annual cash dividends for the past ten years

• 2009 estimated coverage and 2010 ratio of at least 2-to-1 (based on street estimates divided by the current 12 month indicated dividend rate)

Source:

Standard & Poor's (.xls)

The Federal Reserve will not be releasing the results of its stress tests of the nation's biggest 19 banks until Thursday, and undoubtedly there is some element of folly in daring to beat the Fed to the punch. After all, according to The New York Times, the tests have been in the works for two months and have involved more than 150 regulators who, in addition to poring through voluminous bank data, have had the benefit of the banks' analyses of how various hypothetical situations will affect their loss rates.

Still, one can't help but wonder if there are other tools at hand that can get the job done properly without taking so long. In fact, I introduced such a tool in my last post – a bank’s asset quality (AQ) index. It enlists an engine of analysis that dwarfs even the Fed's 150 regulators -- namely the equity and debt markets. Quite simply, it compares a bank’s share of market capitalization to its share of revenues -- the interest it earns on producing assets plus fees for banking services. This provides a quick insight into how the share of value investors assign to these institutions compares with the share of revenues they earn on assets, which constitutes a direct measure of their investment quality.

Q1 2009 Earnings Call

April 17, 2009 10:30 am ET

As a bit of an experiment, I decided to examine insider activity at a large group of commercial banks. I appraised over 230 different commercial banks for this survey and gathered my list of banks off of Motley Fool's tagged “commercial banks”. I did not examine some of the banks with extremely small market caps and I only examined a handful of banks that were not on this list, so it is by no means exhaustive, but it is a fairly large sample that should provide some ideas and insight.

The goal of this survey is to classify insider activity at various commercial banks, take a closer examination at some of the banks that get emphasized, and track the results over time. This article is essentially “Part I” of this experiment and deals exclusively with categorization of the banks.

Q4 2008 Earnings Call Transcript

January 27, 2009 10:00 am ET

When I first started dividend investing, I erroneously focused on current dividend yield. I was fortunate enough to accidentally buy some good dividend stocks and hold them long enough to figure out the "secret" of dividend investing. Dividend investing is about future yield, not current yield. It is not necessarily starting with a high-yield investment, but ending up with a high-yield investment. This usually occurs by buying investments with a moderate yield, a history of growing dividends and letting time do its job.

Here is a list of companies that are building future yields for their shareholders by raising their cash dividends:

• Aflac (AFL) Raises Quarterly Dividend 16.7% to $0.28/Share (2.48%)
• Brown & Brown (BRO) Boosts Quarterly Dividend 7.1% to $0.075/Share (1.71%)
• Eaton Vance (EV) Increases Quarterly Dividend 3% to $0.155/Share (3.49%)
• Microchip Technology (MCHP) Increases Dividend 9.4% to $0.30/Share (5.72%)
• Airgas (ARG) Raises Quarterly Dividend 33% to $0.16/Share (2.11%)
• Hanover Insurance Group (THG) Boosts Dividend by 12.5% to $0.45/Share (1.37%)
• Shenandoah Telecommunications (SHEN) Increases Dividend 11% to $0.30/Share (1.42%)
• Prosperity Bancshares (PRSP) Increases Quarterly Dividend by 10% to $0.1375/Share (1.79%)
• Tamalpais Bancorp (TAMB) Increases Quarterly Dividend 9% to $0.06/Share (2.34%)
• Arrow Financial (AROW) Increases Quarterly Dividend by 4% to $0.25/Share (4.21%)

Disclosure: Long AFL.

Q3 2008 Earnings Call

October 17, 2008 10:30 am ET

BUYS

Wachovia Corp. (WB)

For traders with a more short-term time horizon, we have compiled a list of the S&P 1500 stocks trading above $25 per share that have the largest intraday high-low ranges (based on the average percent spread between the intraday high and low over the last fifty days). We then grouped the stocks based on whether they have rising (uptrend) or falling (downtrend) 50-day moving averages.

As shown, following several weeks of selling pressure, commodity related names are now showing up on the list of volatile stocks with falling 50-day moving averages.  Former market darlings such as PCX, MEE, CLF, ACI, AKS, are now in the same boat as market outcasts ZION, BAC, and COF.  Is it just a three hour-tour for these names, or is the weather getting rough?

Q2 2008 Earnings Call Transcript

July 23, 2008 10:30 am ET

Q1 2008 Earnings Call

April 18, 2008 10:30 am ET

F4Q07 Earnings Call

January 25, 2008 10:30 am ES

Mortgage companies and other similar consumer financial institutions are feeling the brunt of the slowing housing market. At least 20 subprime lenders, who give high-interest loans to customers with poor credit, have gone out of business, and unease over the health of the housing market has spilled over to other areas. Lumber futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, for instance, are down about 30 percent from a year ago. There's reason to worry: About one-fifth of new home loans in 2006 were subprime, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Consumer financial companies are taking steps to mitigate the damage from a slowing market. Countrywide Financial Corp. (CFC), one of the largest mortgage lenders in the United States, recently instructed employees to stop offering no-money-down mortgages. Still, Countrywide has already felt some sting. Its net profit margin has contracted from a five-year average of 25.1 percent to 23.4 percent over the trailing 12 months [TTM] and its return on assets [ROA] has slipped from a five-year norm of 1.84 percent to a TTM figure of 1.43 percent. On Monday, the firm warned investors that, even though subprime loans account for just 7 percent of its loan portfolio, there might still be an impact on earnings.

Upgrades:

Amcol International Corp. (ACO) -
FQ2 2006 Revenue Estimate: $160.15M
FQ2 2006 EPS Estimate: $0.40
FQ3 2006 Revenue Estimate: $160.37M
FQ3 2006 EPS Estimate: $0.46
Last Quarter FQ1 2006 reported on 04/21/06
EPS Estimate: $0.28 ¦ EPS Actual: $0.33
04/21/06 Close: $28.87 Change($): $1.22 Change(%): 4.4%
04/24/06 Close: $29.87 Change($): $1.00 Change(%): 3.4%