Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Bank on this: Huntington Bank (HBAN)

Wow! I can't say that I expected THIS!

Huntington Bank (HBAN) announced their 2010 1Q Earnings today, and they were expected to have a small loss. Instead, they announced a PROFIT.

This is good, but it's hardly surprising. The banks have been getting money from the government at a low rate. They have been getting to use customers' money from savings and CD's at historically low interest rates (between 0.01% to maybe 3.00%). It's not hard to understand where they would get their profit.

However, the market must have been expecting rotten things, because the stock has gone up almost 15% within the first hour the market opened today.

Yesterday's Closing Price: $5.83
Today's Price (as of 10:50AM): $6.65

Earlier this week, HBAN announced that it would pay a $0.01/share dividend, which is the most allowed by the terms of the federal TARP loan. So there are not any surprises here, either.

So...where is the top for this stock? I remember noticing that regional banks seem to be the recent-day darlings, I no longer have any idea. How high can this go?

It barely makes sense. Yet, I'm not comfortable saying "sell," either.

Good luck trying to figure out this one. Let me know if you have any insight.

No comments:

Post a Comment