Three Cheap Banks You Have Never Heard Of

Actionable bank stocks that will juice up your portfolio.

My goal over the month of April is to highlight cheap hidden banks Wall Street has never heard of. This will be issue one for a multipart series part on cheap banks you have never heard of.

Everyone is freaking out about a banking crises. Regional banks have plummeted to levels not seen since the Great Recession. Major banks have been taken out for pennies on the dollar. Financial “gurus” are pumping the threat level of potential bank runs to ultra high.

Sure, there is a reason to be frightened over a banking crises. When one bank goes down, more tend to go down with them. And it is very likely more regional banks head to zero over the next twelve months.

But not every bank will fail. Some will. And others will thrive. The banks that tend to do best during a crises are the small community banks that have strong core deposits and a ton of cash on their balance sheets.

The banks I will be highlighting this month will all be extremely well capitalized, cash rich and totally off the radar from almost everyone on Wall Street. These are special situation banks that are putting cash to work in a high interest rate environment, making acquisitions and returning significant capital.

The three banks I am highlighting today were all recipients of the Emergency Capital Investment Program (ECIP) and each of them are in an envious position with a pile of cash on their balance sheet. All three of them are cheap, trading for single digit P/E ratios with EPS likely to grow substantially in 2023. The large pile of cash on their balance sheet will protect them from any prolonged downturn, giving investors a real margin of safety. And one of these banks is aggressively doing acquisitions of other cheap banks, leveraging their cash pile and rapidly growing book value.

These banks are all illiquid, but actionable enough for anyone managing their own money. All three of these banks could be pitched to any Wall Street hedge fund and they’d instantly see the opportunity. Nonetheless, few hedge funds could take advantage of these cheap banks given the sheer size of them.

Hope you enjoy. I haven’t found much research on these names anywhere else. These banks are as cheap and hidden as you can get.