Bei Kurs-Listen aus dem Nasdaq. Daher kenne ich den Namen.
Mehr wußte ich bisher auch nicht. Aber sieh mal, was ich gefunden habe.
Hoffentlich kanntest Du das noch nicht.
So, nu mach mal dass endlich dieser Aufschwung kommt!
Das ist ja nicht mehr auszuhalten, dieser Frust!
Gruß
baanbruch
Thursday March 14, 3:37 pm Eastern Time
SmartMoney.com - Stock Watch
Wallflowers No More
By Matthew Goldstein
IN THE FINANCIAL-SERVICES industry, Citigroup (NYSE:C - news), Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE:GS - news) and American International Group (NYSE:AIG - news) are the glamour stocks — the three that usually make everyone's ``must own'' list. But sometimes the true stars in a given sector aren't the stocks that generate the most headlines, but lesser-known names that provide steadier returns.
A good illustration of reliability trumping glitz can be seen in the stock performances of Commerce Bancorp (NYSE:CBH - news), Investment Technology Group (NYSE:ITG - news) and Fiserv (NASDAQ:FISV - news), three unglamorous financial stocks. Over the past year shares of Commerce Bank, Fiserv and ITG are up 45%, 39% and 41%, respectively (and all three are trading higher so far this year). Those one-year gains handily beat the piddling 1% rise in the price of Citigroup, the best performer among the financial world's glamour set.
It's also been no contest in a head-to-head battle between any one of these stocks and the major market indexes. Despite the market's recent surge, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite are down 6% and 13%, respectively, over the past 52 weeks, while the Dow Jones Industrials Average has eked out a mere 1% gain. Even more remarkable, shares of Commerce Bank, Fiserv and ITG far outshine the gains tallied by those indexes over the past five years. Factoring in dividends and stock splits, the share prices of Commerce Bank, Fiserv and ITG have risen 318%, 320% and 444%, respectively, compared with a 53% return for the Dow Jones, a 47% gain in the S&P 500 and a 44% increase in the Nasdaq. What's Citigroup's return over that five-year stretch? A relatively modest 177% gain.
Don't feel bad if you've never heard of these three midsized stars. It's fair to say they fall below the radar screens of most individual investors. Even though New Jersey-based Commerce Bank is one of the fastest-growing regional banks in the nation and Fiserv and ITG are important niche players to big financial institutions, their respective stocks hardly rank among the most actively traded. Only Fiserv, a big provider of back-office technology services to the financial industry, manages to trade more than one million shares a day. Neither Commerce Bank nor ITG, which operates an electronic stock-trading system, crack the 500,000-share mark on a regular basis.
But perhaps it's time for investors to start paying attention. After all, these companies have proven that they have what it takes to shine in good economic times and bad — something we pointed out about Fiserv and ITG a year ago.
Last year, Commerce Bank, Fiserv and ITG all bucked the economic trend by posting strong year-over-year earnings growth, while big U.S. companies watched their annual profits fall an average of 17%, according to Thomson Financial/First Call. Net profits at Fiserv and ITG each rose 18% in 2001, while Commerce Bank recorded a 21% gain, compared with an average 7% decline for the financial-services industry, according to First Call. And the strong earnings gains are expected to continue. A First Call survey of the Wall Street analysts who follow the three companies forecasts 2002 year-end earnings growth of between 20% and 28%. Those would be pretty respectable numbers for a robustly growing economy, let alone one that's just beginning to creep out of recession.
The steady performance is a result of each company's success in carving out a niche in the crowded financial-services landscape. Wisconsin-based Fiserv handles the check-clearing and processing work for many of the nation's biggest banks, and clears and settles stock trades for thousands of small brokerage firms. (Many on Wall Street consider Fiserv an information-technology firm, but since the vast majority of its clients are in the financial world, we consider it a financial-services firm as well.) New York-based ITG's core business is the POSIT share-crossing platform, an electronic trading system that's used by institutional investors and hedge funds to unload or scoop up large blocks of shares in a particular stock quietly. POSIT matches bulk trades for institutional investors at specified times of the day, making it easier for buyers and sellers to move big stock blocks. Meanwhile, New Jersey's Commerce Bank has become a major regional player by offering unheard-of customer service — particularly in this age of the Internet and superautomation — with features like Sunday banking hours and free coffee and bagels at some of its 184 branches.
All three have been rewarded for their success with fairly rich stock-market multiples. Based on First Call consensus earnings estimates for 2002, the price/earnings ratios for Commerce Bank, Fiserv and ITG are 25, 33 and 26, respectively. While Commerce Bank's and ITG's multiples aren't wildly out of line with the S&P 500's 23, they're well above the standard mid- to high-teens P/Es that most other financial-services stocks sport. And Fiserv's multiple is even lofty for information-technology companies, which generally trade at P/E ratios in the mid-20s range.
To some degree, the high multiples are deserved given the returns these stocks have generated the past few years. But even the bulls say that when a P/E ratio on a stock gets too high relative to its peers, it may be a time for investors to wait for a drop in the share price before buying. Richard Repetto, a brokerage analyst with Putnam Lovell Securities, says his Hold rating on ITG has more to do with the already outsized 31% year-to-date gain than any fundamental problem with the company's earnings outlook. Says Repetto (who doesn't own any shares in ITG and whose firm hasn't done any investment banking work for it): ``I think it's a great company, but it's richly valued.''
Richly valued stocks also tend to fall hard when bad news hits. Right now, there don't seem to be many dark clouds looming on the horizon for any of these stocks, but each could face significant challenges in the coming months. The verdict is still out on the success of Commerce Bank's ambitious plan to open branches in Manhattan, where it faces stiff competition from banking giants like J.P. Morgan Chase (NYSE:JPM - news), Citigroup and FleetBoston Financial (NYSE:FBF - news), as well as a raft of thrifts including Washington Mutual (NYSE:WM - news), the nation's biggest savings and loan. Every few months there's talk in the industry about a new online-trading system that could cut into ITG's dominance in the share-crossing business. So far it hasn't happened, but if a big brokerage firm or electronic communications network like Island ECN decided to muscle its way into ITG's business it would surely pose a threat. And Fiserv's dominance in providing back-office operations to the financial sector could be threatened by a new wave of bank consolidation and cost cutting.
But again, those threats aren't immediate. And given each company's solid operating history, there's a good chance that each would be able to rise to its respective challenges — and reward investors in the process.
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