Dallas, Texas 10/23/2013 (Financialstrend) – Itau Unibanco Holding SA (ADR) (NYSE:ITUB) is a Brazil based banking and financial institution with a market cap of $77.28 billion. It has been in operations since 1943. It has organized operations around four stand alone divisions. These are “Commercial Banking, Itau BBA, Consumer Credit and Corporate and Treasury”.
Analysts have been speculating that the Commercial banking division has a lot of potential to grow exponentially over the next few years if it can leverage its credit cards business effectively. They highlight that the institutions existing insurance, loans and pension scheme operations provides a highly potential target audience to increase its credit card business. Its second most important division is the “Corporate and treasury” operations. Thanks to Brazilian economy being driven by huge investments going into mining and raw material production, this division is well placed to increase its revenue in line with the growth of corporate entities in the country.
Over the past fiscal year the financial institution has paid out $0.08 dividend per share. This translates to a 0.5% dividend yield. In addition to dividend receipts, its share holders have also seen their investment in this banking stock zoom up 22% in the past 90 days. As of close of business on October 22, the stock was trading at $15.55 per share 1.17% up from its previous day close. Its trading volume also increased appreciably with close to 14.2 million shares of the stock changing hands in comparison to daily average of 11.5 million.
The bank has announced that its 3Q operations results will be announced on October 30. Share holders would be hoping to see the bank post more profitable earnings per share. In the previous 2Q, the bank had shown a 20.1% increase in its earnings per share in comparison to 1Q. Analysts have a PT of $15.33 for this stock.
