Bank stocks may not be as exciting as some of the growth stocks associated with the tech world, but many of them have other reasons to stir excitement, including attractive dividend yields. The right bank stocks can give you steady returns and a consistent stream of passive income. And some of them are available right now at what some would consider bargain prices.
Here are two great dividend stocks that also look pretty cheap as we head into 2022.
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1. New York Community Bancorp
New York Community Bancorp (NYCB 0.17%), a large regional bank with nearly $58 billion of assets, offers a massive 5.5% dividend yield. Part of the reason for that high yield is that, over the past five years, the stock price is down a dismal 29.5%. But this year, there have been clear signs of a turnaround story in the works.
New York Community Bancorp has long operated on a thrift model, which is typically categorized by high-cost funding and a fixed-rate loan portfolio. The model has not produced great returns over the years and has failed to excite investors. But at the start of 2021, Thomas Cangemi took over as the new CEO and has been pushing to remix the balance sheet, focusing on stickier lower-cost funding and more revenue diversity to increase profits and be better positioned for a rising interest rate environment.
Earlier this year, the bank announced its plan to purchase Flagstar Bancorp (FBC), a regional bank in Michigan that will propel New York Community Bancorp to around $87 billion in assets. It will also help further Cangemi's desire to shift the balance sheet mix by adding deposits the bank doesn't have to pay any interest on, more commercial loans, and mortgage warehouse loans. New York Community Bancorp has also been doing a good job transforming the balance sheet on its own. The bank has added close to $2 billion of noninterest-bearing deposits in 2021, while running down higher-cost certificates of deposits, and has also started to grow its business loan portfolio and do some other innovative things like minting stablecoins. Trading at about 140% to tangible book value, which is what a bank would be worth if it were liquidated, New York Community Bancorp has upside if the bank can execute the transformation. Investors are being nicely compensated by the dividend while they wait for the turnaround to take hold.
2. Northwest Bancshares
A small, roughly $1.1 billion asset bank based in Pennsylvania, Northwest Bancshares (NWBI 2.09%) currently offers a whopping 5.76% dividend yield. While this is another stock that has not performed well over the past five years, the banking fundamentals are looking solid.
Through the first nine months of 2021, Northwest has generated a 1.46% return on average assets, which shows how well management uses assets to generate earnings (1% or higher is considered strong). Northwest has also generated a return on average equity of nearly 13%, which is also quite strong for a small bank like this. The efficiency ratio, a measure of bank's expenses expressed as a percentage of revenue, is 51%, which is great.
Given its nonperforming asset levels, it looks like Northwest runs a slightly riskier loan profile, but charge-offs -- debt unlikely to be collected -- have remained low. The bank currently trades at less than 150% of tangible book value. That's not necessarily good or bad right now, but the market has seemingly been giving a higher premium to large banks over smaller ones, regardless of performance, so there is certainly a chance the gap will narrow in the future. If Northwest keeps producing results like these, I think it will get rewarded with a higher valuation long term.
