Company Reports

Discover experienced good growth across its card, student loan and personal loan businesses. More enhancements on its Cash Back Rewards and mobile channels is sustaining the growth. Credit still benign.

Capital One welcomed strong credit card performance after a rough 2Q, enough for a $0.03 cent EPS beat.  But all is not well.  Energy and taxis are still hitting the commercial bank hard while the consumer bank languishes with low rates.

Synchrony continues to show operating metric progress in loans and volumes. Final separation from GE with a share exchange is last step as a standalone SLHC.

Strong quarter in Global Network & Merchant Services swamped by weakness in cards. This coincided with USD headwinds and the long anticipated post-Costco spending. Quarterly buybacks and dividends to shareholders in excess of 100% of earnings (partially debt financed) shows AXP is shareholder oriented.

Despite new business mandates, macroeconomic factors weigh on earnings growth. STT announces the next phase in tech re-engineering to increase efficiencies and create the new generation of revenue driving products. Successful reduction in excess deposits should help leverage ratios, but negatively affect earnings in 4Q.

Regions showed a criticized loan energy spike this quarter but seems to be confident even though a sizeable amount is to oilfield services. Loan growth moderated and the margin declined with some growth in fee income. Began to implement a swaps strategy to help margin.

Credit Suisse’s new CEO Thiam linch-pins his franchise turnaround to the wealth management business with a right-sized investment bank. Combination of fixed cost reduction and major capital raise with rights issue will significantly boost capital levels. Still this vision is not unique among global banks in a highly competitive arena.

AUCA and AUM benefited from new wins in custody and asset management contracts, but was partially offset by lower equity market valuations and currency translation impact of a stronger U.S. dollar.  Positive operating leverage from strong revenue growth and controlled expenses.

Slow loan growth and energy loan credit concerns and their ripple effects continue to aggravate Zions. Focused on charter consolidation to drive further efficiency gains.

Upcoming new CEO will focus on driving efficiencies as the loan and revenues challenge continues at Fifth Third. Some lift in commercial construction and other C&I, but consumer is less of a factor.