Given that you clicked on this article, it seems safe to assume you either own stock in BOK Financial (BOKF +0.58%) 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 BOK (which stands for "Bank of Oklahoma") before deciding whether to buy, sell, or hold its stock.
But before getting to that, a brief introduction is in order. BOK traces its roots back to 1910, when it was founded as the Exchange National Bank of Tulsa by a group of four men, including Harry F. Sinclair, the noted oil industrialist. While the bank is still headquartered in Tulsa -- in BOK Tower, a smaller scale replica of the World Trade Center towers -- it has since changed its name and transformed into a bank holding company, with a portfolio of lenders located primarily throughout the plains states and Texas. It owns the Bank of Arizona, Bank of Arkansas, Bank of Kansas City, Bank of Oklahoma, and Bank of Texas, among others. And as of the end of last year, it had $28 billion in assets on its balance sheet.
As you can see in the table above, BOK exhibits a number of core strengths. Its nonperforming loans ratio is below the sample of 100+ banks examined for this series. Thanks to robust income from mortgage and brokerage activities, it generates roughly half of its revenue from noninterest sources. And its efficiency ratio is well below the other banks in the sample set. The most obvious area of opportunity is its net interest margin, which comes in below the sample's average, though well within the first standard deviation. Taken together, these factors go a long way toward explaining its double-digit return on equity.
It's also worth taking a look at this chart, created by SNL Financial and linked to on BOK's website. What it shows is BOK's ability to almost invariably grow both its net income and earnings per share every year -- the two exceptions to this are 2008 and 2009, though it made money in both, unlike many larger regional and money-center banks. Indeed, since 1991, its earnings-per-share compound annual growth rate is 13.5%; an impressive accomplishment given the intervening financial crisis.
