Michael Simpson, CFA Laurentian Bank LB-T WEAK BUY Jul 04, 2019

Company struggles reflect cheap stock price. Would be very careful investing in company. Lots of errors within in management team. Believes credit will become a problem in going forward. Better / cheaper names in financial sector to invest in. Unsure on quality of balance sheet and assets. Would not recommend investing in right now. 

Put itself up to buy, and no one bought. Difficult environment has gotten worse. New management. Banking is a business of scale and technology, and they can't compete. Buy something else.

Would not recommend buying bank. Broken business model. Cheap business for a reason. Sub scale in terms assets. Very behind in competitive nature of business. Dividend yield tempting - but is too risky to justify investment. Cutting dividend very poor sign. 

Tough one. Up for sale, no offers accepted. Power outage. Management changes. Very low ROE compared to peers. Still thinks it will get gobbled up. Results on slow decline, need to turn ship around.

He made that call right before they put themselves for sale. So it would have been a good time to sell. He's baffled why BNS bought CWB and not the cheaper LB. He would hang onto this. It's so cheap and eventually somebody will buy it.

Don't buy today, but you can continue to own it if you already do. Pretty nice dividend yield, safe payout ratio. Trap. Not a lot of great opportunity. Needs improved growth, better operational efficiency, more consistent revenues.

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.

Excellent trend. Likes setup of the chart - would recommend buying at this price. Seeing value in the current share price. Bank appears to be a M&A candidate, or a turnaround story. Support appears to be there for a recovery. A stop loss strategy could also protect investors. 

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.

(Note the short timeframe.)
His target was $31, and it hit that. He got about 60% of his holding offloaded at that level. His only bank with about a 1% position. Holding for the nice dividend, expecting an eventual bounce off $28 level.