Sometimes, a company's problems aren't entirely its own fault. But so what? Just because a management team may not be the only (or even primary) cause behind uninspiring performance, you don't have to offer up a "pity buy."

That seems to be the case for Huntington Bancshares (NASDAQ:HBAN). While some of this company's troubles may be geographical, there are too many other good stocks, banks or otherwise, to hang around here.

To its credit, Huntington did manage to post earnings growth. Net income rose 8% this period, and earnings per share were up 10%. While Huntington's return on assets was generally lower than that of peer institutions like KeyCorp (NYSE:KEY), National City (NYSE:NCC), Comerica (NYSE:CMA), and Fifth Third (NASDAQ:FITB), its return on equity was stable and within the group average. (However, this is a challenged group, to say the least.)

Net interest income was up 4% this period, helped by an increase in earning assets of about 5%. While non-interest income was down 5% as reported, adjusting out income from operating leases would result in 16% year-over-year growth.

In my opinion, things start to get ugly on the balance sheet. Loan growth was just pathetic, whether you look at year-over-year comparisons or annualized sequential numbers. In fact, without the benefit of an acquisition, loan growth was less than 3%. Deposit performance was just as bad; while total deposits (again, without the acquisition) rose at the same pace as loans, core deposits were flat.

So while Huntington gets some credit from me for having a nice percentage of non-interest income in the total revenue picture, its anemic growth in earnings assets is a problem. A recently announced 15 million-share buyback is nice, but it doesn't improve Huntington's raw earnings power.

I'll grant that Huntington is taking some hits from the uncertain state of the auto industry and that the Midwest is probably the nation's most brutally competitive market for deposits right now. That might absolve management to some extent, but it doesn't strike me as a compelling bullish thesis -- particularly when the stock is no discount relative to its peers.

Further fiscal Foolishness:

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Fool contributor Stephen Simpson has no financial interest in any stocks mentioned (that means he's neither long nor short the shares).