SunTrust Banks, Inc. (NYSE:STI) is the holding company and publicly traded side of SunTrust Bank, one of the country’s biggest regional banks. SunTrust primarily does three kinds of banking: consumer banking and private-wealth management; wholesale banking; and mortgage banking.
SunTrust Banks, Inc. (NYSE:STI) puts up some impressive numbers, but there is at least one thing to watch out for. Thinking about investing in SunTrust? Here are seven things you need to know:
1. SunTrust is bigger than you think
2. Great share-price performance over the past year
Since June 12 of 2012, SunTrust Banks, Inc. (NYSE:STI) has returned 49.24% to its shareholders. It’s true, investor darling Bank of America Corp (NYSE:BAC) has returned 83.79% over the past year, but that outsized return comes at the cost of greater balance-sheet and share-price volatility.
3. Solid year-to-date share-price performance
For the past six months, SunTrust Banks, Inc. (NYSE:STI) stock has returned 10.22%, not far off B of A’s own 11.22% performance for the same time period. B of A stock has been on a rocket ride since the start of 2012, but it can’t go up like that forever.
4. Impressive return-on-equity
Return-on-equity, or ROE, is a measure of management performance and gives you some idea of how much profit a company generates with shareholder money. SunTrust’s ROE is an impressive 10.50% 12 months trailing. Lean, mean, profit machine JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) has an ROE only slightly higher: 11.55% TTM.
5. Attractive valuation
SunTrust’s price-to-book ratio is 0.85: low enough to make it an attractive buy, but not so low it sets off alarm bells. Speaking of which, B of A’s P/B is 0.66, which is low enough to set off alarm bells. Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC)‘s P/B is 1.46. As Wells is rightly seen as one of America’s top-notch banks, the number is high enough to make the bank a potentially unattractive buy: too expensive.
6. A reasonable price-to-earnings ratio
SunTrust’s P/E is a very reasonable 8.6. Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC)’ P/E — again, one of the country’s most highly thought-of public banks — is only 11.71. Since I’ve already picked on B of A so much, I might as well continue: Its P/E is a sky-high 46.6. And you get a complimentary stomach ulcer with that.
7. A mixed quarter
Here’s where I’ll pick on SunTrust a bit. Maybe more than a bit. In the most recent quarter, it had year-over-year earnings growth of 40.80% on revenue growth of 0.10%. According to the press release: “Our expenses declined meaningfully, not only related to the continued abatement of cyclically high costs, but also as a direct result of our concerted efforts to improve our efficiency.”
So at least in part, the bank’s high net-income growth is the result of internal cost cutting. But you can’t do that sort of thing forever: You can only cut off so much fat before you start cutting into muscle. If SunTrust doesn’t start growing its revenue, shareholders won’t continue seeing sky-high income growth of this sort.
