In This Article:
Central Pacific Financial Corp (NYSE:CPF), a US$814.1m small-cap, operates in the banking industry, which now face the choice of either being disintermediated or proactively disrupting their own business models to thrive in the future. Financial services analysts are forecasting for the entire industry, an extremely robust growth of 40.0% in the upcoming year , and a massive growth of 56.0% over the next couple of years. However this rate still came in below the growth rate of the US stock market as a whole. Today, I’ll take you through the sector growth expectations, and also determine whether Central Pacific Financial is a laggard or leader relative to its financial sector peers.
See our latest analysis for Central Pacific Financial
What’s the catalyst for Central Pacific Financial’s sector growth?
The threat of disintermediation in the payments industry is both real and imminent, taking profits away from traditional incumbent financial institutions. Over the past year, the industry saw growth in the teens, though still underperforming the wider US stock market. Central Pacific Financial lags the pack with its negative growth rate of -8.6% over the past year, which indicates the company has been growing at a slower pace than its banking peers. Although Central Pacific Financial is poised to deliver a 29.9% growth next year, moving it from negative to positive territory, it still lags its industry average rate of growth of 40.0%.
Is Central Pacific Financial and the sector relatively cheap?
Banking companies are typically trading at a PE of 18.21x, in-line with the US stock market PE of 20.14x. This means the industry, on average, is fairly valued compared to the wider market – minimal expected gains and losses from mispricing here. However, the industry returned a lower 8.1% compared to the market’s 10.7%, potentially indicative of past headwinds. On the stock-level, Central Pacific Financial is trading at a PE ratio of 18.56x, which is relatively in-line with the average banking stock. In terms of returns, Central Pacific Financial generated 9.3% in the past year, which is 1.1% over the banking sector.
Next Steps:
If Central Pacific Financial has been on your watchlist for a while, now may not be the best time to enter into the stock. The company is a banking industry laggard in terms of its future growth outlook, and is trading relatively in-line with its peers. If growth and mispricing are important aspects for your investment thesis, there may be better investments in the financial sector. However, before you make a decision on the stock, I suggest you look at Central Pacific Financial’s fundamentals in order to build a holistic investment thesis.