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1-Star Stocks Poised to Plunge: Capital One?

By Brian D. Pacampara | More Articles
February 23, 2009 | Comments (1)

Based on the aggregated intelligence of 125,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool's free investing community, financial services company Capital One Financial (NYSE: COF  ) has received the dreaded one-star ranking.

With that in mind, let's take a closer look at Capital One's business, and see what CAPS investors are saying about the stock right now.

Capital One facts

Headquarters (founded)

McLean, Va. (1993)

Market Cap

$3.9 billion

Industry

Consumer Finance

TTM Revenue

$8.79 billion

Management

Founder/CEO Richard Fairbank
CFO Gary Perlin

Return on Equity (average, last five years and TTM)

12.1% and 0.3%

Competitors

MasterCard (NYSE: MA  )
American Express (NYSE: AXP  )
Visa (NYSE: V  )

CAPS members bearish on COF also bearish on:

Citigroup (NYSE: C  )
General Motors (NYSE: GM  )

CAPS members bullish on COF also bullish on:

Bank of America (NYSE: BAC  )

Sources: Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's, and Motley Fool CAPS. TTM = trailing 12 months.

Over on CAPS, fully 203 of the 327 All-Star members who have rated Capital One -- or 62% -- believe the stock will underperform the S&P 500 going forward. Among the entire bearish population are hopetocap and ferjen.

Three weeks ago, hopetocap noted that Capital One "is struggling with its credit card portfolio and the way it treats its customers. The customers that stick around are the poor souls that can't leave them. Hence, they will default on their obligation and move on. Bad news for 'what's in your wallet.'"

In a pitch from one day later, ferjen agrees with that bearish line of thinking:

Higher credit risk folks are really getting crushed. ... There are a lot of people out there who WERE faithfully making their payments month in and month out. NOT ANY MORE! They [Capital One] lost a lot of money last quarter and will lose way more going forward doing stupid backward thinking stuff. ... The smart thing to do would be to cut rates to keep those faithful people committed. Dumb, dumb, dumb...

What do you think about Capital One, or any other stock for that matter? Make your voice heard on Motley Fool CAPS today. More than 125,000 investors are waiting to hear what you have to say. CAPS is 100% free, so simply click here to get started.

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Fool contributor Brian Pacampara owns no position in any of the companies mentioned. American Express is a Motley Fool Inside Value recommendation, and the Fool owns shares of it. The Fool's disclosure policy always gets a perfect score.


Comments from our Foolish Readers

Help us keep this a respectfully Foolish area! This is a place for our readers to discuss, debate, and learn more about the Foolish investing topic you read about above. Help us keep it clean and safe. If you believe a comment is abusive or otherwise violates our Fool's Rules, please report it via the Report this Comment Report this Comment icon found on every comment.

  • Report this Comment On June 01, 2009, at 12:34 PM, edhlarry754 wrote:

    Talk about dumb... after having used a CapitalOne credit card for years I started using a lower-rate Visa card from Simmons. Shortly after I got numerous calls from CapOne asking why I wasn't using the card as much anymore. They bent over backwards to give me a new competitive rate and mileage points to boot. Now they are saying that in Feb '10 my rate will go from a 6.2% rate to over 20%, even though I am a good customer. If they change the rate for all customers, how many will they have left? Also, what better way to make it even harder for late-payers to pay up than to up the monthly rate??!! Do they want customers to default?

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