Given that you clicked on this article, it seems safe to assume you either own stock in First Horizon National (FHN -0.94%) or are considering buying shares in the near future. If so, then you've come to the right place. The table below reveals the nine most critical numbers that investors need to know about First Horizon stock before deciding whether to buy, sell, or hold it.
First Horizon is the bank holding company for First Tennessee Bank, a "community-focused regional bank" headquartered in Memphis. Tracing its roots back to 1864, First Horizon has since grown into one of the nation's largest lenders. With $25.5 billion in assets on its balance sheet, it's slightly smaller than Columbus, Georgia's Synovus Financial at $27 billion (click here to see Synovus' nine critical numbers), but larger than Green Bay, Wisconsin's Associated Banc-Corp at $23.5 billion.
As you can see in the table above, First Horizon struggles relative to its competitors on a number of fronts. In the first case, its net interest margin is 57 basis points less than the average of the 100-plus banks surveyed for this article series. This is indicative of poor interest rate risk management. Second, its nonperforming loans ratio is 42 basis points higher than the average. This is indicative of subpar credit risk management. And finally, its efficiency ratio exceeds both the average of the sample set and 100% -- the latter means that its expenses exceed its revenue. Over the last five years, in fact, First Horizon has only recorded positive annual net income once, in 2011. And to make matters worse, it's trading for 1.26 times tangible book value -- a far cry from a bargain given these performance metrics.
