Stock price when the opinion was issued
Doesn't have a bright outlook for its future. Not a good bank. Multi-decade series of strategic blunders. Increasingly, scale matters, and this one is sub-scale. Put themselves up for sale, but why would anyone buy it when they can just eat their lunch for free and take their market share?
Different from NA takeover of CWB; both of those banks are good banks.
Bought in his conservative strategy when all the analysts on the street hated it. Stock has a definite bottom, and he bought near that for a swing trade. Now at, or near, the top. His target was $31 -- obtained, as that was the level of support in late 2022 and mid-2023. Today it's around $29.50, so he's on the verge of selling.
Could move a bit higher, as the banks tend to move as a group until the end of December. Might get another $1 out of it. "Bulls make money, bears make money, pigs get slaughtered." Once it hits $31, he's out.
LB traded sideways for the past year, with a nice level of support around $24, and after its recent earnings it popped higher to $30. To help confirm an uptrend, we would like to see it rise above $32. We do not see any news regarding a potential sale, but it trades at a decent valuation of 9.5X forward earnings, and some major banks raised their price targets on the name following its recent results. Given the negative momentum and slow growth, we would prefer assessing this one from the sidelines.
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Announced some problems with mortgages resulting in a knee-jerk selloff. This bank is similar to Canadian Western Bank (CWB-T). They are not large compared to the big Canadian banks, so they are not as diverse and don’t have as many revenue lines. They generally have more volatility. The valuation is not that much different from some of the bigger banks, so unless it was sufficiently cheaper, it would not be his first pick.