Financial Institutions: What Drives Value v2

In a follow up to my last post on the subject, that was driven by my friends from Performance Trust, I was asked in the comments section of that post if there was a correlation between non-interest bearing checking accounts and price-to-tangible book multiples.

That nugget was asked by Mike Higgins, a bank consultant from Kansas City, who penned a guest post on these pages in the past. Rather than answer Mike in the comments, I opted for the wider audience distribution of a standalone post.

It's my blog. I can do what I want.

I am somewhat limited to how financial institutions report their deposit mix. Call report categories are easiest, and the closest metric is transaction accounts to total deposits. I thought this would give us what we needed.

So, is their a correlation between a bank's relative level of transaction accounts to their price-to-tangible book trading multiple?

See for yourself.

The data, courtesy of S&P Global Market Intelligence, is all publicly traded US banks with trading volumes greater than 1,000 shares per day, and that have non-performing assets to total assets less than 2%. That filtered out most of the very small, inefficiently traded financial institutions, and those with asset quality issues. I also eliminated banks that had NA in the transaction accounts/total deposits ratio.

The filters resulted in 306 financial institutions, which I divvied up into quartiles based on transaction accounts to total deposits. The top quartile, with 56.78% transaction accounts to total deposits traded at 208% price to tangible book at market close on October 4, 2018. The bottom quartile, with 24.71% transaction accounts to total deposits, traded at 145% price to tangible book. The line is linear. Which reads funny as I proofread.

So I would say: yes, community bank investors reward banks funded with a higher proportion of checking accounts with greater trading multiples. So when I wrote in June 2018, in a post titled Branch Talk, my Point 1 was that banks needed to build a cost of funds advantage by having a relatively higher proportion of checking accounts, the above chart is why.

In reviewing the data that fed the above chart, size was likely not a significant issue. All of the numbers above are medians, not averages. And the median asset size from bottom quartile to top were: $1.6B, $2.2B, $3.2B, $2.1B. Wells Fargo and JPMorgan, the nation's largest FIs, were both in the 3rd quartile.

A bonus table:

So there is a neat line in Return on Average Assets too. Price to earnings is not so neat, but I find it rarely is. Still, the message is clear. More checking, better performance, higher trading multiples.

Do you see it differently?

~ Jeff

For Financial Institutions, What Drives Value?

Not all financial institutions are publicly traded. But there are enough of them to help those that do not trade to measure what metrics drive the value of their franchise. 

So what metrics drive value? Umrai Gill, Managing Director of Performance Trust in Chicago presented his findings to the Financial Managers Society at their East Coast Regional Conference this month. Some results were surprising.

He first cited a survey performed by PT, asking their clients "what are the generally accepted drivers of institutional value?" Without identifying ranking or more details about their survey, the preponderance of responses were as follows, in no particular order: loan-to-deposit ratio, investment portfolio size, net interest margin, efficiency ratio, return on average assets (ROAA), return on average tangible equity (ROATE), capitalization, and asset size. 

Some were not very interesting to me, such as investment portfolio size, which might have been influenced by PT's specialty. Others might have been too investment community-like, such as ROATE, which doesn't count high premiums bank buyers pay for bank sellers that results in goodwill on the buyers' books, which is deducted from their regulatory capital. But others struck my curiosity to see if there were correlations between the metric and market valuations. 

And I thought I would share with my readers.The charts in the slides below was PT's analysis of data from S&P Global Market Intelligence based on June 30, 2018 financial information using market data from 08/17/18.

First, the metrics that showed correlation to price to tangible book values. Not surprising, in my opinion.

Asset Size

Efficiency Ratio

Profitability / ROAA

Next, the ratio that did not show a correlation to price to tangible book multiples, at least not over 3.5%. I was a little surprised at this one.

Net Interest Margin

Lastly, and most interesting from my point of view, were ratios that showed mixed results. In other words, they showed positive correlation to price-to-tangible book ratios, up to a point. After which, they showed a correlation, but not what bankers would hope for.

Tangible Common Equity / Tangible Assets

Loan-to-Deposit Ratio

The highest market multiples were afforded to banks with a 70%-80% loan to deposit ratio. Now that may be related to size of institution, as the very largest, JPMorgan Chase (67% loan/deposit ratio) and Wells Fargo (76%) tend to have lower ratios. But there is likely something to the fact that a bank that still has strong liquidity as represented by a relatively lower loan-to-deposit ratio in a good economy has room to improve earnings by growing loans faster than deposits. While the less liquid must price up their deposits to get funding.

And capital, well, I refer you to a prior post where I clearly stated there was such a thing as too much capital. Investors will not pay a premium for hoarded capital. Performance Trust's research puts that sweet spot in the 9%-10% tangible common equity / tangible assets range. Enough capital to grow and/or absorb recessionary losses without selling off assets at a discount to bolster capital during hard times.

Where are your sweet spots?


~ Jeff