Bank of America (BAC 1.70%) stock is up by more than 100% over the past year, but could it still be worth a look? In this Fool Live video clip, recorded on Oct. 18, Fool.com contributor Matt Frankel and Industry Focus host Jason Moser take a look at the bank's latest results to see how things have been going for the massive financial institution.
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Jason Moser: Well, let's move on to Bank of America. Again, I know this is a bank that you follow closely, a bank you like, it seemed like it was a pretty good quarter.
Matt Frankel: Yeah. I'm going to sound like a broken record in some of these just because -- I aged myself with that phrase, broken record. Most people listening don't know what a record is.
Moser: Boy's making a comeback. Something that repeats.
Frankel: Broken record is something that repeats itself for young ones out there. Bank of America beat on both earnings and revenue. They beat expectations on both. Earnings were up 58% year over year, which is really nice because remember there weren't these big reserve releases last year, things like that. It was more going the other direction, banks were setting aside money in anticipation that things were going to get bad.
Bank of America released $1.1 billion in the quarter. Not quite as much of a reserve release as JPMorgan (JPM 1.44%), but still over $1 billion. A billion is a billion. Net interest income grew 10% year over year, which was nice to see, given that the interest rates, like I mentioned, are just starting to tick up, which was much better than expected. Annualized loan growth is up 9% quarter over quarter. I think that was the best out of the big banks. Their loan portfolio is growing nicely led by commercial lending, which was nice to see. Meaning companies are willing to borrow and spend money more than people thought.
Investment banking fee income is up 23% year over year. Advisory revenues, M&A, and equity underwriting, which is IPOs, were the strongest parts. That part was up 65% year over year and they beat their trading revenue which is, like I've said, notoriously tough to predict, beat on both the fixed income and the equity side, unlike JPMorgan Chase. Really solid quarter if I were to give JPMorgan a B for the quarter, I'd give Bank of America probably a B+ or A-.
Moser: One thing that stood out to me, they have 41 million customers now using their digital platform, which I'll just tell you from the perspective of one of those 41 million and we've been Bank of America customers for a long time, one of the reasons we are Bank of America customers, frankly is just a headache trying to switch banks. But, even if I wanted to, which we don't, I think that's the key there is that we really have no reason to. The service is good. We think the digital platform is good. It just feels like that's such a sticky form of engagement that will keep people in that universe. It really is very user-friendly digital platform, which to me it feels like they're only going to continue to make those investments and grow that capability up.
Frankel: Well, out of the five we're talking about, I feel like Bank of America took the lead on investing in technology.
