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Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

The First Quarter's 10 Best Bank Stocks

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By John Maxfield, The Motley Fool

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With the first quarter of 2013 officially over, it’s time to take a look back at the best performing bank stocks over the three-month time period.

As you can see in the table below, the list was led by little known First Financial Holdings . First Financial primarily operates as the holding company for First Federal Bank, a regional lender with 66 branches located throughout North and South Carolina.

Over the past two years, the holding company has been shedding assets at a considerable clip. In May of 2011, it disposed of its insurance agency subsidiary, First Southeast Insurance Services. Four months later, it completed the sale of its managing general insurance subsidiary, Kimbrell Insurance Group. And one month after that, it sold roughly $200 million in loans to a private investment group. If its performance in the first quarter of this year is any indication, this simplification has struck a chord with investors, as its shares were up more than 60%.

Bank

First-Quarter Performance

Market Cap ($ millions)

First Financial Holdings

60.74%

346

Virginia Commerce Bancorp

56.98%

456

Bank of the Ozarks

33.10%

1,568

Western Alliance Bancorp

31.43%

1,203

Bank Mutual Corp.

29.21%

257

Glacier Bancorp

29.03%

1,366

BofI Holding

29.02%

460

SVB Financial Group

26.75%

3,182

The Bancorp

26.25%

518

SCBT Financial

25.97%

857

Source: Finviz.com. Only banks with a market capitalization over $200 million were included in the analysis.

Another notable mention here is Bank of the Internet , a “nationwide branchless bank” that provides deposit and loan services to its customers principally over the Internet. As its website proclaims, “Because we do not incur the significantly higher fixed operating costs inherent in a branch-based distribution system, we are able to provide a better value to our customers. This means our interest rates on deposit products are generally among the highest available and our loan products feature low rates and fees.”

Using this model, BOFI has been able to nearly triple its asset base over the last five years. And it’s seemingly been able to do so without compromising on the quality of service. Two weeks ago, for example, it was named the 2012 top service provider by Costco Mortgage Services, a division of the membership retailing giant. According to Costco’s director of mortgage services: “We hold our service providers to the high standards that Costco members expect to receive from Costco services programs. We are pleased to award the honor of Top Service Provider to Bank of Internet for providing service above and beyond our already high standards.”

And finally, SVB Financial continues its impressive ascent, ending the quarter up by 27%. Short for Silicon Valley Bank, SVB counts among its clients some of the nation’s most innovative companies and, according to Forbes magazine, it “played an important role in the early days of companies including Cisco Systems, Electronic Arts, and Intuit.” Leveraging this model …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Which Top 5 S&P 500 Performer Has the Best Shot at Outperforming in Q2

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By Sean Williams, The Motley Fool

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With investors enjoying a rare three-day weekend thanks to Good Friday, and basking in a fresh all-time closing high for the S&P 500, I thought it important to take the time to review the index’s top five performers in the first-quarter to see if they offer any clues as to which may roll its gains into the second quarter.

Netflix + 104.4%
Netflix was the best performer within the S&P 500 by a mile. Netflix more than doubled up for shareholders after showing the benefits of content streaming, both domestically, and abroad. Despite seeing a continued slowdown in its traditional DVD business, Netflix added 2 million streaming customers domestically, and an additional 1.8 million abroad. Furthermore, streaming gross margin came in higher than anyone had expected, resulting in a $0.13 fourth-quarter profit, when Wall Street had been anticipating a $0.13 loss per share. 

Best Buy + 88.4% (dividend-adjusted)
Big-box retailer Best Buy turned in a phenomenal performance in the first-quarter for a company that many had left for dead. Best Buy‘s turnaround strategy – which involves downsizing its stores, focusing on mobile products like smartphones and tablets, incentivizing its employees with sales bonuses and, most importantly, matching competitor’s prices — appears to be working like a charm. The company left its dividend untouched at $0.17 per quarter, and reversed a string of same-store sales declines by posting a 0.9% same-store sales increase over the year-ago period. 

Hewlett-Packard + 68.4% (dividend-adjusted)
Like Best Buy, HP was left for dead by shareholders at the beginning of the year after unveiling sweeping reforms and job cut plans last year. However, HP put some of those dissenters on the back burner after reporting better-than-expected first-quarter earnings in February. HP‘s revenue of $28.4 billion, and its EPS forecast for 2013 of $2.30-$2.50, was markedly higher than the $27.8 billion that the Street had expected, and the $2.10-$2.30 that HP‘s management had previous projected.

H&R Block + 59.5% (dividend-adjusted)
Tax preparation service H&R Block delivered a nearly 60% gain in the first-quarter to shareholders despite just weeks ago running into a snafu with its at-home tax preparation software that modestly delayed up to 660,000 returns. H&R Block, which derives nearly all of its profits between the end of January and April 15, anticipates filings will be up by 1%-2% this year, and CEO Bill Cobb noted three weeks ago that he felt H&R Block was outperforming its competitors.

Micron Technology + 57.3%
Memory chip maker Micron snagged the fifth-best performance within the S&P 500 this quarter in anticipation of stronger margins and decreasing costs, which should help its bottom line performance. Handily topping Wall Street‘s revenue expectations in its second-quarter results, Micron has benefited from robust smartphone and tablet sales, as well as demand for data center infrastructure.

Source: Finviz, Yahoo! Finance.

Which of these five can head higher in Q2?
It really …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance