Boston, MA 06/17/2014 (wallstreetpr) – Despite the odds that National Bank of Greece (ADR) (NYSE:NBG) faced and the fact that investors are preferring to stay away from it, the Greek bank has shown some improvement making it a good bet for the forthcoming time.
ADR Stocks Not Truly Reflective
As per Barrons, the bank’s non-performing loans are lessening as it is gradually coming towards profitability and defying rivals. In addition to this, the bank’s recent finance raising activity has put up in a well-capitalized position. At the same time, the Barrons report claims that the bank could be one of the biggest benefiter from the recovering Greek economy and is also generating healthy profits from its business in southeast Europe and Turkey. Further, the report highlights that the progress made by National Bank of Greece (ADR) (NYSE:NBG) is not truly reflected in its stock prices listed on New York Exchange, which proves its point with the current market price being $3.77 of NBG stock.
Towards Profitability
The analysts see a 20% value gain in the stock over the next one year. Infact, the market consensus price for the stock is around $4.54, which indicated the potential upside that the bank has from here. Also, the bank has acted proactively to raise money from private investors in order to prevent its complete nationalization. Even the bank’s management has taken aggressive steps, including reduction in operating expenses, to steer it towards profitability. Moreover, the bank’s loan book is also improving as it succeeded to lower down the provision by a 15% year-over-year. Experts believe that as the Greek economy progresses in its recovery, the bank should be able to reduce its loan provisioning further.
The Greek bank currently accounts for 25% of the retail banking in Greece and has nearly 25% of deposits. The bank is steadily seeing the surge in its deposits, taking its loan-to-deposit ratio to 93%, thereby, curtailing its reliance on the Euro funding. Thus, from all angles, National Bank of Greece (ADR) (NYSE:NBG) appears to be in a stronger position, and that should comfort investor’s skepticism about it.
