Earnings season is now in full swing, and most major U.S. banks have reported. In today's Industry Focus: Financials, host Jason Moser and Fool.com contributor Matt Frankel, CFP, discuss the results from 10 of the most important banks and what investors need to know. Plus, the pair discusses Schwab's (SCHW -0.41%) decision to allow trading of fractional shares of stock, as well as the potential implications of the WeWork saga.
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This video was recorded on Oct. 21, 2019.
Jason Moser: Welcome to Industry Focus, the podcast that dives into a different sector of the stock market each day. It's Monday, October 21st. Joining me in the studio via Skype: Certified Financial Planner Matt Frankel. Matt, how's everything going?
Matt Frankel: Great! Nothing smells better than bank earnings in the morning!
Moser: [laughs] Well, if that's truly the case, on today's Financials show, we have got a lot to offer. We are digging into what's been a very big week of earnings from companies like Bank of America (BAC -0.47%), Wells Fargo (WFC -0.91%), Ameris Bancorp (ABCB -1.42%), American Express (AXP -0.97%). Seriously, I could keep on going. I'll stop there, but rest assured, we've got plenty more. We're also going to check in on Schwab's latest effort to bring more value to its trading platform. We're going to check in with the Millionacres team and see what they're thinking about the recent WeWork fallout and how that's impacting the commercial real estate space. Of course, we'll have a couple of "What's the last stock you bought and why? and a couple of Ones to Watch for you for the coming week as well.
As you may have gathered to this point, we have got a jam-packed show. Somewhat limited time. So, folks, let's get right into it.
Matt, let's start with Bank of America. This is a company, obviously, you like a lot, you talk a lot about it. You've chosen it a number of times as your One to Watch. I think you own shares personally, if I'm not mistaken. It did look like it was a strong quarter for them. Particularly, the investment banking side of the business seems to be doing well. What were some of your takeaways from Bank of America's most recent quarter?
Frankel: Yes, investment banking was great. Consumer lending was great. The biggest takeaway from Bank of America is that unlike any of the other ones, there wasn't anything I could find that was really disappointing. We're about to talk about JPMorgan (JPM -0.81%). Even if you dig into that, you'll find a few things where it missed. I think equities trading, they missed, or something like that. Bank of America was good all around.
Just like last quarter, they have the best consumer loan growth, the best deposit growth. They grew their earnings 14% year over year despite the interest rate environment. They're buying back stock hand over fist. They repurchased 8% of their outstanding shares over the past year. Mortgage originations is another thing that stood out. That's an area of the business that really benefits from lower interest rates. Mortgage originations were up 58% year over year for them. That was a big deal. But, yeah, they beat expectations pretty much all around. In my mind, they're the winner of bank earnings so far.
Moser: What struck me, we were talking about this last week, I believe on Market Foolery for a spell, having gone through the presentation, looking at the transcript and everything, the thing that struck me was the success that they're having with Zelle. We've talked about Zelle on the show here. It always takes a bit of a backseat to the PayPals and Squares of the world. That's probably our fault more than anyone's. But the fact of the matter is that Zelle is actually bringing some results for Bank of America. They're gaining some traction where this is concerned. When you talk about the digital opportunity that exists there, 38 million users. Zelle transactions are growing. They have 8.9 million users of the Zelle platform that were responsible for just under 81 million person-to-person transactions for the quarter. That essentially doubled from a year ago. The amount of money that was flowing through that network of $21 billion almost doubled from a year ago as well. So, while we don't put Zelle on the forefront of how it impacts the bank in the big picture, clearly, their investments in technology are paying off, to a degree at least.
Frankel: Yeah, and people don't often think of Bank of America as a fintech company. But when you look at the numbers, they've consistently been a leader in mobile banking growth, consistently been a leader in the amount of transactions taking place online, how many consumers they have signed up for their online portal, things like that. Zelle, you just mentioned. Bank of America has won No. 1 mobile app in terms of functionality several times. I use Bank of America's app, and I think it's extremely functional.
Moser: I agree. I use it as well, and I'm impressed. We've been using it for a long time, and it really does work well.
Frankel: It's not just the fintech-y things like Zelle. They've invested in technology all around. In my opinion, that's why their efficiency is one of the best in the banking business. Five, six years ago, that would have been unheard of. It's a lot cheaper to make a transaction through a mobile app or an online portal for the bank as opposed to going through a teller. It's translated to a much more efficient operation, and at a faster pace than most of its rivals.
Moser: Let's talk about a bank that's making some more investments on the consumer side. Certainly, CEO Jamie Dimon sees that as a big opportunity, as well as the digital space. JPMorgan, what'd you see with their most recent quarter?
Frankel: Like I said, JPMorgan's quarter was good. It wasn't perfect, but they're a good barometer for how the overall industry is doing just because of, one, the diversification of their business. They are the biggest bank in the world. Their assets grew to $2.7 trillion this quarter. That's an amount of money that I personally can't fathom, and I'm a math person.
Moser: [laughs] Yeah, it's like Apple's balance sheet and Facebook's total user base. Numbers that don't make any sense anymore.
Frankel: Right. Just like I mentioned with Bank of America, they're doing a good job of migrating their consumer base to mobile and online technology. I saw active mobile customers were up 12% year over year, similar to Bank of America's results. That's been a driver of efficiency. JPMorgan's the most profitable of the big four. Return on equity of 15%. Pretty outstanding for such a big bank.
There are just a couple of things that I didn't really like. Trading revenue's been a weak spot throughout the industry. Most peers actually beat expectations. JPMorgan beat expectations on the fixed income side but not on the equities trading side. Not that it's that concerning. Trading revenue, I've talked about on previous shows, is probably the least predictable part of bank earnings. So take that with a big grain of salt. And it wasn't a giant miss. But trading revenue remains weak throughout the industry.
Return on equity, I mentioned 15%, the highest of the big banks. That's actually down from 16% in the second quarter. Net interest margin compression is probably to blame for that. Just something worth keeping an eye on. Again, unlike Bank of America, not perfect, but definitely more good than bad.
Moser: A bank we've known for a long time as being the leader in the mortgage space, but unfortunately, we've been talking more about it recently due to its failures of leadership and culture issues, and then you top it all off with essentially regulators telling them to hit pause on growth, Wells Fargo has had a tough go of it here the past couple of years. It does feel like maybe they're finally going to be able to turn the page here with new leadership getting going. What did you see in regard to Wells Fargo's quarter? And even more interestingly, the road forward for them now that they have that leadership question answered?
Frankel: I mentioned that falling rates are generally bad for bank interest margins. Wells Fargo's were even worse than people thought. That combined, they took a $1.6 billion legal charge in regards to their bad behavior over the past few years. There's no guarantee that's the last of the cost of their scandals.
But on the path-forward side, it's actually worth mentioning their new CEO Charles Scharf starts today. So, today is the new day for Wells Fargo. I honestly think the Fed is going to lift its penalty pretty soon because they put a non-Wall-Street-er in. They went outside the bank for the new hire. I thought previous leadership had done pretty much everything they could have done to move the bank forward without actually bringing in new leadership. This is the last stone to turn over in that case. There could be some more legal risk, but I think the bank's done pretty much everything that they could have done to get past what was wrong.
It's worth mentioning also that their asset quality is still the best of the big banks. At the core, they've always been known for responsible lending decisions, things like that. That hasn't changed. Their asset quality is still fantastic.
The business is doing OK. It's just the interest rate environment and the legal risks that are weighing on Wells Fargo right now.
Moser: Yeah. And a lot of that stuff is known. Not a lot left to be discovered, I would think, at this point. You have to believe that the market is starting to look a little bit more forward, particularly to that time where that cap is lifted. There's a nice tailwind there, perhaps, for Wells Fargo in the coming quarters.
Let's take a look at Goldman Sachs (GS -0.87%) real quick. Goldman Sachs, obviously better known for the investment banking side of the business. I thought it was interesting in the call how they talked about the Apple Card specifically in partnership with Apple and MasterCard. They feel like this is the most successful card rollout ever. Now, it's worth noting, they provided zero data to back that up, so it's just a feeling I guess we're going to have to trust them on. Whatever, that's fine. I think Apple Card is a great value-add for iPhone users. I think it's another tremendous form of engagement that should benefit Apple over the long haul. It's nice to see Goldman Sachs and MasterCard as partners in that venture.
What struck you? What stood out to you here with Goldman Sachs' report?
Frankel: Goldman has a pretty consistent history of shattering expectations when it comes to earnings, and they didn't do it this quarter. They actually missed earnings. You saw the stock go straight down the morning right after they made the report. The big culprit was their investments performed poorly. Goldman has a stake in WeWork, for example. They have a big investment portfolio.
Moser: That's not good.
Frankel: The main reason Goldman underperformed was because they had a 40% year-over-year decline in their investment revenue, from their investment portfolio. On the note of the Apple Card, as soon as they mentioned that on the call, the stock shot higher.
Moser: It's fascinating to me that you can say stuff like that and not back it up. It's just funny, the psychology that goes with investing. Sometimes it's shoot first and aim second, but there you go.
Frankel: It's worth mentioning, when did they start rolling out the Apple Card? I know Dan Kline was on the show, and he discussed just getting it. But it was during the third quarter. Even if someone got the card and charged a bunch of stuff on the Apple Card, the bill isn't due until essentially the fourth quarter. So none of this is reflected in their earnings yet. If anything, marketing costs and things like that would make this negative for earnings in the third quarter.
Moser: They talked about that as a drag also in the coming quarters. They're going to be investing in that product and that relationship. I think we can look forward, for lack of a better term, to that dragging down or being a little bit of a headwind. But it's all in the name of progress. It's seeing the forest for the trees, I guess.
Frankel: Yeah. Credit cards, you're not exactly selling a product right away. You're planning on getting it in the hands of as many consumers as possible, and then they're going to gradually build up balances over time on average, and it's going to be a gradual add of a few billion dollars of loans. It's not going to be nothing, but for the time being, it's pretty much nothing on their revenue.
Moser: Well, all right, those are the big four there that we wanted to talk about. Now, we'll pivot over into a couple of companies that reported, and we wanted to lump Ameris Bancorp and BB&T (TFC -0.75%) together because these are banks that are dealing with some big acquisitions here recently now. Ameris just wrapped up this Fidelity acquisition. That's closed. BB&T, still working to close the SunTrust deal. In looking at Ameris, I go into any quarter with Ameris and I'm looking for the red flags first and foremost. It's a well-run bank. They continue to lob up good metrics. Efficiency ratio continues to remain in check. It, for me, is all a matter of, are they integrating this Fidelity acquisition? Are the two cultures working together? And how do they see this playing out down the road? Ameris, the acquisition added considerable assets to the combined entity. It added $5.2 billion in total assets, $3.8 billion in total loans, and $4 billion in total deposits. Those numbers now stand, total deposits at $13.7 billion, total assets just under $18 billion. You can see that the bank is a good bit larger than it was thanks to this deal.
One point I wanted to note, this was part of the justification for this acquisition of Fidelity. One of the justifications was, it's going to give Ameris this access to this very attractive commercial real estate space. That's true. It's going to. They also noted it's going to give them access to a lower-cost deposit base. They lobbed this metric out in the call, and they talked about the deposit mix such that non-interest-bearing deposits represented just about 30% of total deposits, up from a little bit over 25% a year ago. To me, that's important to note because that was the justification for the acquisition, was getting access to a lower cost of deposits. For a bank, particularly in a low interest rate environment, that's going to be important. As they continue to scale up and get bigger, it does seem like new CEO former Fidelity president Palmer Proctor has stepped into the role nicely and has a good grip on the business. I suspect we're going to continue to see good things from Ameris in the coming quarters. And really, that's what we're paying attention to, is making sure that Fidelity acquisition is rolling in nicely.
On the BB&T side, there's still some questions to be answered there as far as the actual integration. But right now, this is all about SunTrust. If you don't like the name Truist, which is ultimately what this is going to become, if you don't like that name, TS, because they got shareholder approval and this deal is basically done now. The acquisition's green-lighted and the name is green-lighted as well. It's going to be something that closes in quarter four.
We got an interesting tweet, a fun tweet from @chasesfish earlier in the week. He says, "Could the market finally be tired of quarter after quarter of 'adjusted' EPS on BB&T? I would love to hear your thoughts on Industry Focus." Listen, let me tell you, you may be tired of adjusted, but I've been saying for a while, it feels like we live in an adjusted world now. Every earnings report -- banks, tech companies, restaurants -- they're all reporting adjusted numbers. BB&T, which will eventually become Truist, get used to adjusted and pro forma because that's going to be part of the earnings reports here for the foreseeable future.
But the underlying business is fine. Modest earnings growth of 3.7%, adjusted. Return on assets 1.5%. Not bad. They've been able to keep that return-on-assets number at that 1% or better range over the last several years, which is nice. Efficiency ratio ticked down a little bit. Average total deposits up 5.2%. So I think BB&T is in a good position. There's going to be a lot more certainty once this acquisition is finished up. Then it'll be kind of like Ameris. We're really just paying attention to the two cultures, making sure they wring out the efficiencies that they're promising to wring out. But thus far, it does seem like things are going well for both Ameris and BB&T.
Matt, let's jump over into the other four names that we had been talking about here last week. First and foremost, let's jump into Morgan Stanley (MS -0.99%). Not a heck of a lot out there for investors to worry about as far as Morgan Stanley, but what was one of the takeaways you had from their quarter?
Frankel: They definitely had a stronger quarter than Goldman Sachs. They're not as reliant on an investment portfolio as Goldman is. They didn't have that hurt them as much. They actually grew revenue year over year as opposed to most other investment bank-related companies. They beat trading estimates handily across the board. A really strong quarter overall. Like you said, Morgan Stanley investors don't have a whole lot to worry about.
Moser: U.S. Bancorp, how'd that report look to you?
Frankel: Boring in the best way.
Moser: [laughs] That's good. Does Berkshire still have a big stake in that?
Frankel: Yeah. They've raised it a few times in the past year.
Moser: It's right up Buffett's alley.
Frankel: Right. They always put up the best numbers of any of the big banks. Return on equity over 15%. Return on assets, almost 1.6%. Efficiency ratio about 53%. Lower is better in that most banks are happy to run under 60%. And it's consistent. You'll see these numbers quarter after quarter after quarter. Like I said, their earnings reports are almost boring, because what you're going to read before you even look at them.
Moser: Boring is good in a lot of cases, right? The most successful investing, as Charlie Munger says, you just sit back and not worry about anything. The less you do, the better it works.
American Express. I've always been torn on this one. I felt like they were going to be in a little bit of a bind as these card wars started to heat up, and it becomes more and more about the incentives and the rewards. Certainly American Express is paying a little bit more on the reward side to make their card offerings more attractive for the members. But, I said that word there, members. American Express still is a strong membership business at the end of the day. I do like that. I feel like they've adapted very quickly in the face of what has been a changing card environment.
It's worth noting, this marked the ninth straight quarter of currency adjusted revenue growth of at least 8%. They are hanging in there. The stock hasn't lit the world on fire, but it's been a good one to own over the past several years. I like to see the tie-up now with companies like PayPal. They're doing things here now with PayPal and Venmo so you can split card purchases. They're even enabling it to where customers can pay with American Express points where PayPal is accepted. That's a good forward-thinking company, don't you think?
Frankel: Yeah, they're definitely putting out some new, innovative products. Like you said, they are paying for it. This quarter, actually marketing and benefit costs went up a little bit more than revenue did. Not a cause for alarm. You have to spend money to make money. These are customers they're acquiring potentially. I know a lot of people who have never been a high-dollar credit card person who are getting the Platinum card because they're seeing the value in it. I have a platinum card in my wallet. It sounds expensive until I don't have to pay for Ubers when I go up to HQ, I don't have to pay for baggage fees when I fly. There's a lot of good benefits to it, and that's on top of the rewards it earns. They're really doing a great job of getting millennials. The Uber benefit especially is something that attracts millennials. The airport lounges are just nice, being honest with you. I have personally scheduled longer layovers intentionally a few times since I got the Amex Platinum just to be able to use the lounge benefit.
Moser: The last time that I had Dan on the show, we were talking about Apple Card, and he had gone back to a couple of stories that you were telling him about the benefits of that Platinum card.
Frankel: He actually got it last week.
Moser: Did he?! OK, so he bit the bullet! I have the American Express Gold Card. I've had it for, I don't know, 10 years or something. A lot of my spending has migrated over to my Amazon Prime Visa card, but I do keep the American Express card. Traveling, it's great. There are perks that you get when you travel with it. I do find it to be a very helpful, reliable card. It's one I'll likely have for the rest of my days. And they're going to get that membership fee from me every year along the way.
Frankel: Don't be too worried that they're spending to get new customers, because these are going to be customers for life. If they're getting these high-dollar cards, they're generally good-spending customers. They're spending money in the right way, this is the takeaway.
Moser: Yeah. Good brand power there, too. Talk a little bit about Citibank (C -0.49%). Citigroup, Citibank, whatever. Do you feel like this is a company investors need on their radar? Remember, it was 10 years ago, these guys were reverse splitting just to make their stock price look a little bit more palatable.
Frankel: Well, I'd say yes. They're the cheapest of the big four banks. There's a good reason. They're much more international than the others. They have a whole other level of risk. But they are on a lot of investors' radars because they trade for a big discount to book value. They actually had a pretty decent quarter. The biggest red flag I saw was that their net interest margins were even worse than we thought they would be. They dropped a full 10 basis points more than the market expected. Not necessarily cause for alarm. They're not my favorite bank stock. I'm not a swing-for-the-fences guy when it comes to bank investing. Citigroup, I feel, is the highest-risk, highest-reward of the big four. If you're right about it and the global economy really does well -- because remember, Citigroup is a very global bank -- Citigroup investors are going to be in a really good position. But remember, it's not just about the U.S. like it is with a lot of the other banks.
Moser: I'm curious to know your opinion here. When we talk about a lot of these big banks, and we're talking about companies like Bank of America and Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs and U.S. Bancorp, American Express, these are all banks, I believe every one that I just named there, that Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway still have significant ownership stakes in these banks. Do you feel like, in some cases, perhaps, is it worth investors looking for that bank exposure? Is it worth buying a few shares of Berkshire Hathaway and calling it a day? Or is that a little bit too simplistic in thinking?
Frankel: There's nothing wrong with buying a few shares of Berkshire in any case. But Buffett's bank portfolio is under $100 billion. It's well under 20% of the company's value. I wouldn't call it a bank investment per se. The banks have a ton of potential to produce great returns. Like I mentioned, some of them are buying back almost 10% of their shares per year. That's a 10% return on your investment before you think about increased profits or dividend or anything like that. There's a lot of long-term profits to be made. I would not be surprised if banks were the best-performing sector over the next decade or so. And I would invest directly. To better answer your question, I would invest directly.
Moser: All right. I'm sure investors and our listeners will appreciate that.
Let's take a quick look here at some recent news from Schwab. I want to open this up with a tweet that we got from @natetheblade. @natetheblade says, "I'm patting myself on the back, worth discussing on Financial Industry Focus to see if other brokerages will follow suit." The point that @natetheblade is patting himself on the back for is that Schwab has now introduced the ability to purchase fractional shares on their platform, which is something we were all hoping we'd see at some point as we race down to this zero-cost commission model. What do you think this means for Schwab?
Frankel: For Schwab and its investors, it means two big things. One, it makes it practical to invest any amount of money. If I have an extra $2 and want to buy Berkshire stock, I can do that if I'm buying fractional shares. So it really helps you put more of your money to work. It makes dividend reinvestment not as necessary, because in my mind, that's been one of the big perks of enrolling in dividend reinvestment, as I get commission-free fractional shares. Now I can do that anyway. And it makes high-dollar stocks investable to smaller investors. A lot of people just starting out can't afford a share of Markel or Amazon, for example.
The better question I pose to you and to our listeners is, does this make stock splits obsolete?
Moser: I was just wondering about that as well. I was going to ask you that. Thanks for beating me to it! I think that's a really good question. We had that question posed to us from a number of different people on Twitter over the course of the last couple of weeks. I don't know that companies are going to split or not split based on what platforms will accept fractional share purchases, but it sure does seem like this is one more reason a company could say, "We don't need to split our shares because we don't need to open ourselves up to a larger investor base."
Frankel: Apple, for example. A few years back, when Apple did a seven-to-one split, a lot of new, smaller investors, especially, were cheering because now the stock price went from about $700 to $100 and it became more accessible. But now, if you could take your $100 and buy one-seventh of a share, why does the company need to go through the hassle of splitting? I don't know this off the top of my head, the numbers, but I'd imagine there's quite a bit of regulatory costs involved with doing a stock split.
Moser: That's the main downside. You have to pay to do it. There are transaction costs that are affiliated with doing that. They're just rounding errors at the end of the day when you talk about a lot of these big businesses. We've talked about some of these companies before, Amazon or Markel, where leadership maybe would rather have that high stock price because it encourages a shareholder base that's able to focus a little bit more on the long haul. That's all fine and dandy. I remember back in the day, many years ago, when I was able to finally get enough to buy my first share of Berkshire Hathaway B stock before it had split. It was a $3,500 share price. That was an aspirational goal, but I got there, and I did it, and it was cool and everything. And then of course, shortly thereafter, they went ahead and split for that acquisition and opened it up to an entirely new shareholder base as well.
But, yeah, if you have that ability to buy fractional shares, I don't know why a company would then say, "Let's go ahead and split our stock." That's one more problem that you're not trying to solve.
Frankel: Definitely. And the dividend reinvestment thing that I brought up a little bit, that could be obsolete for investors now, too. The two biggest benefits of dividend reinvestment were that you avoided commissions, your money was automatically reinvested, and you were able to put all your money to work in fractional shares, both of which you can do now with Schwab. And I have a feeling they're not going to be the last brokerage to roll out fractional shares.
Moser: No, I think you're right. We're seeing the trends, they're very clear. This is a big win for investors in both cases. It gives you the opportunity to invest in many more businesses than you ever might have been able to invest in before. I don't think we'll see a lot in the way of splitting. I think that with a lot of these big businesses that have the big share prices, those are big share prices for a reason. Those businesses are doing really well. I think we'll continue to see them grow.
Let's jump into real estate here real quick. The world of Millionacres. You mentioned WeWork earlier in the show. This fallout with WeWork has been nothing short of phenomenal. We've gone from a multibillion-dollar potential IPO now to a company that's essentially in need of a bailout to keep existing. It's going to have some impacts on the commercial real estate market. This is right up your alley. This is what you guys are doing over at Millionacres. What's the feeling on the team right now in regard to WeWork and these potential implications on the commercial real estate market?
Frankel: It's definitely something we're watching closely. I'm not going to go through the whole IPO saga because it's not that long of a show. But to make a long story short, they released a prospectus ahead of a proposed IPO. The financial conditions pretty much made investors run away. To name one scary statistic that I would never go near, they had $34 billion in lease obligations they're committed to. That's on top of $1.4 billion in other debt that they've racked up.
Moser: Good lord!
Frankel: They're not making any money. They're running out of money fast. They were counting on the IPO to have enough money to keep operating for more than a couple of more months. It's something we're watching really closely because -- a lot of people are surprised -- they're the largest private-sector office tenant in a lot of major markets, specifically New York and London. They have 5.3 million square feet of New York real estate. Now, that's only about 1% of the market, but it represents a much more substantial percentage, about 5% or 6%, of the total new office space that has been absorbed in the market. I was reading a statistic that New York especially, without WeWork over the past few years, new office space would actually have a negative absorption rate, meaning that supply would outpace demand. For the time being, we're in OK shape because there's talk of either JPMorgan or SoftBank leading a round to save the company and keep the lights on, so they're not going to have to break all their leases. But if pretty much the big reason that we've had positive market trends for the past few years goes away, that could set off a big chain reaction in markets like New York, London, everywhere else they have a big presence. We invest in one office REIT through Millionacres or through Mogul, rather, that has no exposure to WeWork, and that was one of the specific reasons we picked it. But most of the real estate investment trusts that own New York office space have some WeWork exposure. We could see a little ripple effect if WeWork actually does happen to go under.
Moser: We'll be keeping an eye on that one, for sure. I know you will, too. We'll follow up with you over the coming weeks to see exactly what transpires here.
Let's move over to what's quickly becoming a very popular feature on the show: "What's the last stock you bought and why?" We have a couple of more for you this week. One from @cricket99238, Neeraj Kapoor. Neeraj says, "I bought Shockwave Medical as I have too much biotech but needed to diversify to a product development company with a moat. I heard even Abiomed has a 6% stake in it." Neeraj, that's true. I did confirm that on Cap IQ. Abiomed does have a 6% stake in Shockwave. Hoping that works out for you!
From @imcn90, not only does he say we had an interesting podcast with TD Ameritrade and its loss of revenue from commissions, could their dividend be in danger of a cut? I answered that question, I don't think so. But then he goes on to say, "My last stock I bought, Vail Resort. Fresh air, experiences, dividend." I like that one. Vail Resorts, that's one we're looking at here for a couple of other services as well. Man, I tell you, land is limited. When you talk about all of those mountains, they did make this interesting acquisition recently that gives them a lot more exposure here on the East Coast. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out for them. Regardless, it is a company that's done very well for a long time. Shareholders have benefited from hanging onto those shares.
Great stuff, folks! Thanks for chiming in there! Hey, listen, we want to read the last stock you bought and why. Make sure and email us at [email protected], or hit us up on Twitter @MFIndustryFocus. Let us know the last stock you bought and why. We'll read it on the air.
OK, Matt, it's been a long show. We've got one more segment here. Let's make it count! We got One to Watch for our listeners. What is a stock you'll be watching here for the coming week?
Frankel: Every earnings season I do this, but I'm going to go with my winner of bank earnings, Bank of America. Like you, it's a stock I've owned for a long time. One that I plan to own for the foreseeable future. I think the repurchase is going to give investors a nice return on their investment all by itself. That's not including any future earnings growth or the dividend, which is actually pretty decent right now. Bank of America has raised their dividend tremendously in the past few years. It's about 3% and rising. I think banks are still undervalued. I think Bank of America is really still undervalued. If you want some banking exposure, that's the way I would go.
Moser: All right. Post-earnings, you have to take that to heart, man. I know you liked what you saw. I did too.
I'm going to be taking a look at Live Oak Bank shares, ticker LOB. It's not one we talk about a lot here. Live Oak has earnings coming out on Wednesday. It's a little small-cap bank based out of North Carolina. Interestingly, it looks like we're going to have the bank president and former Goldman Sachs partner, Huntley Garriott, on the show here in November. Excited to dig into the company, learn more about it and Huntley, and bring that interview to our listeners eventually. That's Live Oak Bank. One I'm going to be paying attention to for the coming week and beyond.
Hey, listen, Matt, thank you for digging in and being a part of this big Earningspalooza festival that we had today on Monday's Industry Focus! This was a big one! We may not have quite the same volume of companies to cover here in the coming weeks. But, no doubt, earnings season is just getting started. I bet you we'll have a few more to cover as the weeks go on.
Frankel: Definitely! Looking forward to it!
Moser: All right. You have a great week! We'll talk to you next week. As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. Today's show was produced by Austin Morgan. For Matt Frankel, I'm Jason Moser. Thanks for listening! And we'll see you next week!
