Latest news with #Blostein
Business Insider
06-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Franklin Resources (BEN) Receives a Rating Update from a Top Analyst
Goldman Sachs analyst Alexander Blostein maintained a Hold rating on Franklin Resources (BEN – Research Report) yesterday and set a price target of $21.50. The company's shares closed yesterday at $20.01. Protect Your Portfolio Against Market Uncertainty Discover companies with rock-solid fundamentals in TipRanks' Smart Value Newsletter. Receive undervalued stocks, resilient to market uncertainty, delivered straight to your inbox. Blostein covers the Financial sector, focusing on stocks such as Franklin Resources, Invesco, and Raymond James Financial. According to TipRanks, Blostein has an average return of 19.0% and a 72.10% success rate on recommended stocks. In addition to Goldman Sachs, Franklin Resources also received a Hold from TD Cowen's William Katz in a report issued yesterday. However, on May 4, Bank of America Securities maintained a Sell rating on Franklin Resources (NYSE: BEN). The company has a one-year high of $24.86 and a one-year low of $16.25. Currently, Franklin Resources has an average volume of 4.42M. Based on the recent corporate insider activity of 43 insiders, corporate insider sentiment is neutral on the stock. Last month, Charles B. Johnson, a Major Shareholder at BEN bought 420.00 shares for a total of $7,442.40.
CNBC
25-04-2025
- Business
- CNBC
This online brokerage is a buy in this uncertain market environment, Goldman Sachs says
Charles Schwab 's compelling earnings growth makes the stock attractive in an uncertain investing environment, according to Goldman Sachs. Analyst Alexander Blostein upgraded the financial services name to buy from neutral. his Price target of $100, up from $91, implies shares stand to gain nearly 26%. Shares, which are up 7.3% this year, added roughly 1.5% in premarket trading Friday following the upgrade. "In an environment that remains highly uncertain, SCHW offers one of the best EPS growth outlooks in our space," Blostein said in a note to clients. "While many pieces of the SCHW bull case have been in place for a while, we think the stock's recent results create enough evidence to underwrite much faster EPS growth." SCHW 1Y mountain SCHW stock performance over the past year. The analyst estimated that Charles Schwab's earnings per share will see compound annual growth of 25%, or CAGR, through 2027, compared to 15% for brokers on average and 10% for the Financial Select SPDR Fund (XLF) . This estimate is supported by the firm's strong balance sheet, which Blostein is driving mechanical net interest income acceleration and reducing risks from lower short term rates. Charles Schwab is also building "excess capital" that should reach roughly $20 billion by the end of 2027, giving the firm capacity to ultimately begin share buybacks, Blostein said. Additionally, the analyst believes the stock is trading at an attractive level, consistent with its past three-year average in absolute terms and relative to the S & P 500. "Against an improving and increasingly durable fundamental jumping-off point, SCHW's valuation remains compelling," he said. "The stock is trading at 17X Consensus NTM P/E — in-line with the 3yr average despite current under-earning and closer proximity to the EPS acceleration." Analysts are mostly bullish on the stock. Of the 23 who cover it, 18 rate it a buy or strong buy, per LSEG. The average analyst price target also suggests about 10% upside. Get Your Ticket to Pro LIVE Join us at the New York Stock Exchange! Uncertain markets? Gain an edge with CNBC Pro LIVE , an exclusive, inaugural event at the historic New York Stock Exchange. In today's dynamic financial landscape, access to expert insights is paramount. As a CNBC Pro subscriber, we invite you to join us for our first exclusive, in-person CNBC Pro LIVE event at the iconic NYSE on Thursday, June 12. Join interactive Pro clinics led by our Pros Carter Worth, Dan Niles, and Dan Ives, with a special edition of Pro Talks with Tom Lee. You'll also get the opportunity to network with CNBC experts, talent and other Pro subscribers during an exciting cocktail hour on the legendary trading floor. Tickets are limited!
CBC
25-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Toronto, American artists capture wild Canada goose vs. bald eagle fight photos in an ice sculpture
If there's a perfectly Canadian material an artist can use to capture that wild moment when a Canada goose fought off a vicious attack from a bald eagle, it might be ice. "As strong as ice is, as heavy as it is and as dangerous as it can be, it's also really fragile," Toronto artist Sarah Blostein said. "If it doesn't have the right conditions ... it just melts, or shatters or disappears." Blostein said the photos by Oakville, Ont., photographer Mervyn Sequeira sent the message of "strength and resilience" that she needed in the middle of "so much depressing news" to create a unique piece — an ice sculpture inspired by Sequeira's images. When he spoke to CBC Hamilton, Sequeira said while he doesn't like getting into politics, he found the encounter between the two birds "very symbolic." Since becoming president again last November, Trump has commented repeatedly on wanting Canada to become the 51st state, and has imposed hefty tariffs on steel, aluminum and other goods entering the U.S. from Canada. Canada has responded with tariffs of its own. Blostein said that from the moment she came up with the idea for the ice art, she wanted it to be a two-person project, with an American sculpting the U.S.'s national bird. So Blostein enlisted her colleague, Riley Knaus, to complete the piece with her. 'Crazy geese pulling ninja moves' First reported by CBC Hamilton, the pictures travelled far. News outlets from around the world — including the U.S., India and the U.K. — covered the story of the Canada goose-bald eagle fight. Sequeira originally posted the pictures to his Instagram account on Feb. 25, telling CBC Hamilton a few days later that, from his perspective, "that is how nature works." "But we're living in a slightly polarized world just now, so some people looked at it differently," he said. He said the eagle made "several attempts" to attack the goose at the LaSalle Marina. "When we thought that it was really over for the goose, strangely, the bald eagle just gave up and left." Blostein said she found the pictures "funny" and they "looked like a political satire cartoon." "I have never seen a Canada goose go like full 'ninja,' and that's what was so great about it," she said. Blostein was the only Canadian in her group when she saw the photos and said her American colleagues often teased her about the idea of Canada becoming the 51st state. Blostein said the pictures evoked a "sentiment of '51st state, my ass,'" inspiring her to leave her mark and show "Americans don't know what they're in for if they try to [annex Canada]." "We're proud of everything that makes us Canadian and we might be crazy geese pulling ninja moves," she said. A cross-border collaboration Blostein said she is "obsessed with Halloween," which brought her to pumpkin carving and, eventually, ice sculpting. She arrived in Fairbanks, Alaska, in January to volunteer at the World Ice Art Championships with only one three-day sculpting class under her belt. She participated in one contest, but it wasn't until she was helping out with the children's competition that she saw extra pieces of ice and thought to sculpt the goose. Knaus heard Blostein talking about the pictures for "a few hours" before he looked closely at the interaction between the two birds. The pictures "spoke" to him and so he agreed to the collaboration. "We weren't carving [the same piece] together, but we were able to create a finished piece together," he told CBC Hamilton. Knaus, 22, is a chainsaw artist based in Coos Bay, Ore. This was his third year at the ice championship in Alaska. He said the tense U.S.-Canada relations were not on his mind until after he finished carving the bald eagle. "You do start to see the bigger picture rather than being so dialled in ... it almost becomes metaphorical at that point," he said. "Because I was focused on my side, I wasn't really too concerned what was going [on with Blostein]." Knaus and Blostein ended up picking different pictures from Sequeira's photo shoot to reference. Blostein went for the "dynamic" goose pose in the most recognizable picture, while Knaus went for a more reserved pose for the eagle. Knaus said he liked the expression of the eagle feeling "taken aback" in one of the photos and thought it would be better to give the goose more of a spotlight. "I felt towards the emotion of the goose more so than I did the eagle at that point," he said. Knaus said Canadians are "beautiful people" who should be "fighting for what you guys believe in." He said carving the sculpture was also a good opportunity for the youth to see other artists in action, "rather than just take some pointers." Blostein and Knaus wanted to name the piece Honk, Mother-Flocker, Do You Speak it? as a nod to the Samuel L. Jackson line from 1994's Pulp Fiction, but chose the more family-friendly Fowl Play, seeing as they were helping out in a children's competition. "Seeing that picture, which was both nature and art, through the eyes of the photographer, and being able to amplify that with another form of art — there's just something really special about that for me," Blostein said.
Yahoo
13-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Is Summit State Bank (SSBI) the Worst Performing Bank Stock in 2024?
We recently published a list of . In this article, we are going to take a look at where Summit State Bank (NASDAQ:SSBI) stands against other worst performing bank stocks in 2024. On December 12, 2024, Goldman Sachs global investment research managing director & senior analyst Alex Blostein joined Yahoo Finance to discuss the top trends for the banking sector heading into 2025. Goldman Sachs had held financial conferences with banking executives before Alex Blostein appeared for this interview, thus his analysis of the sector brings in the perspective of industry experts. Blostein noted that they have hosted more than 100 executives from the industry ranging from bankers to brokers and asset managers. The key takeaway from the perspective of all the experts points towards optimism around the economy and some data points support this optimism. He noted that the pent-up capital market activity seems to be translating to more actionable steps, therefore the capital markets and the merger and acquisition activity are likely to accelerate materially in 2025. Another theme that Blostein noted is that all sub-sectors around private markets are feeling healthy and the years of concentration around private credit have started to broaden into private equity. Blostein further mentioned that from his talks with banking executives, it seems that real estate has also started to get a little better than it was previously. He also emphasized that one of the key themes for the industry is the large amount of capital sitting at the sidelines. Blostein estimates there is around $7 trillion of capital sitting as money market fund, which has now started to make its way into the market, initially through fixed income, but may extend to equities. Therefore all of these themes advocate for a bullish financial sector in 2025. While talking about what the positive change for the sector will look like, Blostein noted two areas that people keep under the spotlight the capital market and M&A. On the M&A front, the sector is running around 10% to 15% below cyclical averages. This means that the markets have gone up considerably, which presents an upside of 15% to 30% for M&A volumes over the next couple of years. On the other hand, the equity capital markets in 2024 were running around 30% to 40% below the 2021 peak levels. This topped with the pent-up demand from the clients puts the private market and equity firms to return some of the capital back through M&A and equity capital market routes. Therefore the overall economic condition plus the themes discussed above makes a bullish case for the financial and banking sector. To curate the list of 10 worst-performing bank stocks in 2024, we used the Finviz stock screener. Using the screener we aggregated a list of bank stocks both diversified and regional banks that have fallen by at least 15% over the past year. Next, we checked the performance of each stock and ranked the stocks in descending order of their 1-year performance. We have also added the number of hedge funds holding each stock sourced from Insider Monkey's Q3 2024 database. Please note that the data was collected on February 11, 2025. Why do we care about what hedge funds do? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter's strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (). Pachai Leknettip/ State Bank (NASDAQ:SSBI) operates as a community bank that provides various financial services to individuals and businesses in Sonoma County, California. It offers different types of accounts like checking, savings, money market, and time deposits where customers can keep their money. The bank also provides loans for businesses, individuals, and non-profit organizations. It also supports local communities through volunteer programs and financial support to nonprofits. Summit State Bank (NASDAQ:SSBI) has been facing significant credit losses which has led to a decrease of 28% in its price performance over the past 12 months. During the fiscal fourth quarter of 2024 reported a net loss of $6.6 million, compared to a net income of $1.9 million in the same period in 2023. The loss was mainly due to provisions for credit losses of around $6.65 million and a one-time non-cash goodwill impairment charge of $4.12 million. To manage the losses the management has aggressively pursued solutions for non-performing loans, reducing them by $9.16 million in Q4 2024, and is expecting further reductions by $18.19 million in H1 2025 through loan payoffs from collateral sales. It is one of the worst-performing bank stocks in 2024. Overall, SSBI ranks 3rd on our list of worst performing bank stocks in 2024. While we acknowledge the potential of SSBI to grow, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than SSBI but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the . READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and Complete List of 59 AI Companies Under $2 Billion in Market Cap Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey. Sign in to access your portfolio
