The Fed Gives the Big Banks the "All-Clear" Back in the second quarter of 2020, the U.S. Federal Reserve imposed a limit on the amount of dividends that banks could pay and placed a complete ban on share buybacks. Instead of dividends and repurchases, the Fed wanted that cash to strengthen bank balance sheets. Priority No. 1 was having a strong banking system that could help our economy manage through the pandemic. Late in December, after putting the banks through another round of stress test exercises, the Fed announced that the ban on share repurchases would be lifted. This showed that the Fed believed banks had officially weathered the worst of the pandemic and emerged in great financial shape. This is terrific news for those of us who have been pounding the table on banks since the pandemic started. This Stock Can Still Double This news from the Fed makes me even more bullish on one bank stock in particular: Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC). While Wells Fargo's share price is up 50% from its pandemic low, I believe there is still tons of upside left. Over the decade prior to the pandemic, shares of Wells Fargo traded at a price to tangible book value of 1.8 or higher. Today, Wells Fargo trades at just 0.98 times price to tangible book value. To get back to where the stock normally trades, the share price still has to nearly double. I believe that it will. There is a massive catalyst coming to help it get there... A huge boost to earnings. While competitors like Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) and Citigroup (NYSE: C) have streamlined their operations over the past decade, Wells Fargo hasn't. New management at Wells Fargo has identified $10 billion of low-hanging cost cuts that will be fairly easy to realize. That would add $2 per share to earnings for Wells Fargo. With banks normally trading at roughly 10 times earnings, that could mean a $20 increase to Wells Fargo's current $30 share price. Again, this $10 billion reduction in costs isn't something that is going to happen overnight. But over the next 12 to 18 months, those cost cuts will start working into Wells Fargo's earnings. As that happens, the market will start acknowledging that with a much higher share price. I think this could be a $60 stock two years from now. Good investing, Jody |
No comments:
Post a Comment