CIBC to be ‘patient’ on U.S. bank deal
First quarter earnings jump 43 per cent
• Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce is not giving up on its ambitions to expand into the U. S. market, its chief executive said Thursday, but it will be “disciplined” when deciding whether to raise its offer to buy Chicago-based PrivateBancorp Inc.
Victor Dodig’s comments came as Canada’s fifth-largest bank posted fiscal first-quarter earnings that exceeded expectations with net income of $1.4 billion, up some 43 per cent from a year earlier and driven in large part by a 52 per cent rise in earnings in its capital markets business.
CIBC, the first of Canada’s big banks to report its quarterly earnings, is sticking to its strategy to grow its footprint in the U. S. but “we will be disciplined, we will be patient,” Dodig said during a conference call.
“( PrivateBancorp)’s better under CIBC ownership, much stronger, much broader ability to grow across its platform,” he said. “So we think we bring a lot to the party, and we think that the long-term strategic interests of their shareholders and our shareholders are best served by coming together.”
CIBC announced the PrivateBancorp Inc. deal, which if completed would mark its largest ever acquisition, last June. But a special Dec. 8 meeting of the U. S. bank’s stockholders to vote on the transaction was postponed as bank shares soared south of the border in the wake of the election ( and U. S. President Donald Trump’s plans to cut banking regulations and the corporate tax rate.)
CIBC offered US$ 18.80 in cash and 0.3657 of a CIBC common share for each PrivateBancorp share, which at the time worked out to US$ 47 per share. Based on CIBC’s U. S. share price of about US$ 90, that now equals US$51.71 a share.
Shares of PrivateBancorp closed at US$57.21 on Thursday.
Investors, while l i kely pleased by the strong earnings beat, are left with lingering questions about the PrivateBancorp transaction, analysts say.
“What the market is talking about is just the lack of information ... leading us to wonder how serious CIBC is in terms of pursuing this,” said John Aiken, an analyst at Barclays in Toronto.
Both parties have until June 29 to walk away from the deal without penalty, said Dodig.
However, CIBC also left its options open, announcing that it is seeking Toronto Stock Exchange approval of a normal course issuer bid to buy back up to eight million or two per cent of its common shares over the next 12 months.
“We want to make sure that we have every avenue open to us for our shareholders ( for capital deployment),” Dodig said. “And we may have to in fact simply be more active in terms of buying back more stock over time if we are not able to consummate that deal, in this period of time.”
Aiken said the buyback was a prudent measure to put in place in case the deal falls apart, as a secondary option.
Another analyst, Desjardins Capital Markets’ Doug Young, however, said in a note that the size of the potential buyback was “not an overly material amount.”
Even without the U.S. acquisition, Dodig said he expected the bank to deliver five per cent earnings- pershare growth.
“We have plenty of organic growth to deliver from our existing footprint as well.”
Indeed, all CIBC divisions beat estimates for the quarter ended Jan. 31, with adjusted earnings per share of $2.89, beating the consensus analyst estimate of $2.57, according to Bloomberg data.
The earnings- per- share beat was largely driven by a 52 per cent jump in capital markets profit, but also helped by a $ 0.62 gain from the sale and leaseback of branches, Young said in a note.
The bank also announced it was increasing its dividend by $0.03 to $1.27.
Overall, it was a “good quarter” and credit trends were better than expected, Young said, with an increase in business banking offsetting weakness in its consumer book.
The bank’ s closely watched capital measure, the CET1 ratio, rose 60 basis points to 11.9 per cent.
CIBC shares closed up $ 1.20 at $ 119.40 in Toronto on Thursday.