Investors should buy Fifth Third Bancorp’s stock, an FBR Capital Markets Corp. banking analyst said Monday in restarting coverage of the downtown-based bank’s stock.
Fifth Third’s strong capital position and a view that it could rebound from banking industry problems faster than its industry peers caused FBR Capital Markets analyst Paul Miller to relaunch his firm’s coverage of Fifth Third (NASDAQ: FITB) stock with an “outperform” rating and a $12 price target. Fifth Third’s stock closed Oct. 12 at $10.19. The rating means Miller expects Fifth Third’s stock to do better than those of its industry peers over the next 12 to 18 months.
Fifth Third’s capital levels are stronger than its peers, Miller said in a research report. Its tangible common equity level of 6.7 percent of assets tops peer banks’ 6.1 percent ratio. The bank raised $1.5 billion in capital earlier this year after the federal government completed its stress tests of major banks. On top of that, it sold 51 percent of its payment processing business for $1.1 billion, further bolstering capital.
“We believe that the company’s capital levels provide adequate cushion for credit losses, and we are confident that the bank will be a survivor of this credit crisis,” Miller said.
Commercial loans, which tend to cause the most problems for banks late in economic cycles, make up 58 percent of Fifth Third’s loan portfolio. Analysts expects that category to cause the next set of major problems for banks. But Fifth Third is in better position than most, Miller said.
“We are less concerned about Fifth Third’s commercial loan book, versus those of peers, as we believe
that the company has been proactive in addressing problem credits,” he wrote in the report.
Fifth Third, Cincinnati’s largest locally based bank and one of the nation’s 15 largest banks, has $116 billion in assets and runs 1,318 banking centers.
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