Jim Cramer - Mad Money
Capital One Financial Corp
COF-N
BUY
Jul 11, 2025
The stock has run up recently after buying Discover, a major payment network that issues its own cards, but also processes payments. Visa and Mastercard don't do both. COF can scale up to a global payments platform. There's a prediction of a $7-10 billion share buyback after an internal review. Sells at a cheap 11x 2026 PE vs. AmEx's 20x PE. This has a lot more room to run.
Likes some of the credit card companies. They make sense. Secular push from cash to electronic payments. Likes this name, but watch its auto loans and sub-prime lending. Technically, has performed well since the lows of last year. See his Top Picks.
Their just-released quarter shot the lights out, with great loan growth and defaults well below pre-Covid levels. Shares surged over $9 today. The street expected their credit card business would be plagued by defaults, but those folks were wrong.
The company itself is fine, but the capital/lending cycle concerns him, where bankruptcies will increase and decrease earnings, buybacks and dividends.
With regulation ahead, it's now more likely that their deal with Discover Financial will finally close--it's been taking forever. If so, COF could go up 25 points. No matter what, COF will be fine.
Banks are a winning sector and his favourite here is COF. It just closed a deal with Discovery Financial, which will turn COF's credit card business into a bigger business.
The stock has run up recently after buying Discover, a major payment network that issues its own cards, but also processes payments. Visa and Mastercard don't do both. COF can scale up to a global payments platform. There's a prediction of a $7-10 billion share buyback after an internal review. Sells at a cheap 11x 2026 PE vs. AmEx's 20x PE. This has a lot more room to run.