Credit Industrial et Commercial, EPA:CC

[jch548]

I was looking at some french banks via the Euronext web site and noticed quite a few well below book value. Credit Industrial is a plain vanilla home and small to medium enterprise lender. They are trading at around 60% of BV and five times 2010 earnings. Credit Industrial is the fourth largest bank in France. The bank is setup as a mutual or cooperative type bank. Only about 7% of the shares trade as a holding company controls the rest.

 

What I liked about them is they managed to turn a profit throughout the financial melt down. The shares traded at 1.2 times BV at 12-31-07. Looking at their long-term chart I don't think the shares have ever traded at such a discount to BV. They have a market cap of 5.6B euro and BV of 9.6B.

 

I picked up a few shares. Could be a value trap. They pay around a 3% dividend but due to their structure the dividend might be capped to 10% of net income though it appears they have exceeded this level. Their equity has nearly doubled but the divi hasn't really been upped that much. They have financials in english you can access at their web site.

 

I looked at some other small cap banks but being unable to read french I passed on them. According to google finance some of the stocks listed below are selling at a third of BV. I figure there must be some french speaking canadians around here so I'll let you take a shot at them.

 

CAT31 CRCAM

CRAP CRCAM Alpes Provence

CRSU CRCAM Sud Rhone Alpes

CRBP2 CRCAM Brie Picardie 

CCN CRCAM Normandie-Seine

CNF CRCAM Nord de France                                                                                                                                                      CRCAM du Languedoc