Topic: How To Invest

The Successful Investor Hotline – Friday, September 2, 2022

Article Excerpt

BANK OF MONTREAL, $121.78, Toronto symbol BMO, remains a buy. The bank recently agreed to acquire California-based Bank of the West from France’s BNP Paribas for $16.3 billion U.S. Bank of the West provides a variety of retail and commercial banking services to over 1.8 million customers through 514 branches in 24 states, mainly in the Western and Midwestern regions of the U.S. It has assets of $105 billion U.S. and customer deposits totalling $89 billion U.S. To help finance the deal, the bank sold 20.84 million common shares at $149.00 each for a total of $3.1 billion. The new shares increased the total outstanding by roughly 3%. If you exclude costs related to that pending acquisition, Bank of Montreal’s earnings in its fiscal 2022 third quarter, ended July 31, 2022, fell 7.0%, to $2.13 billion from $2.29 billion a year earlier. Due to the extra shares outstanding, earnings per share declined at a faster pace of 10.2%, to $3.09 from $3.44. That missed…