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Hot Stocks: Wall Street Banking “Axe” Bove Slashes Price, Profit Targets for BB&T

By , Money Morning •

Money Morning Staff Reports

Ladenburg Thalmann Financial Services (LTS) analyst Dick Bove is one of the few Wall Street banking analysts who has been consistently "getting it right" in terms of analyzing the impact the financial crisis has had on that critical sector. As a result, he's viewed as one of the true "axes" - top sector analysts - on U.S. banks.

And yesterday (Tuesday), Bove slashed his targets on BB&T Corp. (BBT), dropping his price target from $35 to $22 and trimming 2009 earnings from $2.79 a share to $1.56 a share, Reuters reported.

Bove said that the Winston-Salem, N.C.-based BB&T's shares have continued to fall, even though the bank is gaining market share and seeing lending opportunities emerge.

Investors believe the bank may have "severe real estate problems in Atlanta with land loans and [in] North Carolina with condo loans [and] to this point, nothing that management says will change investors' views on this subject."

In a related story, BB&T Corp., the nation's 12th-largest financial holding company, said Friday that its executives will not receive 2008 bonuses under the company's short-term incentive plan, the Charleston Regional Business Journal reported.

BB&T's statement issued Friday did not say why its executives would forego bonuses. It did state that the company earned $1.5 billion in net income in 2008. But the banking firm had earlier reported credit losses totaling $528 million for the 2008 fourth quarter, an increase of  $344 million from the comparable quarter a year earlier.

As part of the executive bonus announcement, BB&T said the "increases in net charge-offs, non-performing assets and the provision for credit losses were driven by continued deterioration in residential real estate markets and the overall economy with the largest concentration of credit issues occurring in Georgia, Florida and metro Washington, D.C."

BB&T, which received $3.1 billion under the U.S. Treasury Department's Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), operates more than 1,500 financial centers in 11 states and Washington, D.C.

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