Each week, Industry Focus: Financials host Jason Moser and fool.com contributor Matt Frankel, CFP, each discuss a stock that's on their radar. Here's why Frankel is watching Green Dot (GDOT 0.73%) ahead of its earnings while Moser has Amalgamated Bank (AMAL 1.02%) on the top of his watch list.
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This video was recorded on Aug. 5, 2019.
Jason Moser: OK, let's go ahead and wrap this up for the week here, Matt. As always, we want to give our listeners One to Watch. I'll go ahead and let you start it off here. What's your One to Watch this week?
Matt Frankel: It shouldn't surprise anybody because I talked to their CEO. Green Dot, I'm watching this week, not just because I talked to their CEO, but because they're set to report earnings later in the week. This is their first earnings report since the one where they announced their ramped up investment plan that caused the stock to plummet in the first place. I'm curious what new comments they have to say about how they're actually deploying that capital. I know they're putting a lot of their marketing spend into this new account that they talked about. He confirmed that's part of the increased spending. I'm curious to see how the spending is translating into new products, higher technology. I'm curious to see how their vision plays out.
Moser: Cool. All right. I'm going to go with America's socially responsible bank, talking about Amalgamated Bank here. Listeners will recall, we had Amalgamated CEO Keith Mestrich on not all that long ago. Their earnings came out late last week. I think the bank continues to do what it's setting out to do. Average deposit growth was 19.4% annualized, now stands at $4.1 billion vs. $3.9 billion a quarter ago and $3.6 billion a year ago. Net interest margin ticked up 10 basis points from a year ago. We know that it's a very difficult interest rate environment, particularly for these smaller banks. Loan growth ticking in the right direction. Efficiency ratio as well. You recall that efficiency ratio essentially tells you that the bank is earning more than it's spending. Their efficiency ratio clocked in at 63% vs. 65% a quarter ago and 70% a year ago. Generally speaking, like the direction that they're going. Still a pretty new publicly traded company, but a neat bank with a neat message. I bet you we'll be able to have Keith on here again soon to talk more about what they've got coming up these next several years.
