Investors could find themselves in shark infested waters if they are not careful with the prices of several stocks now at very high levels. Investors need to be careful of being sucked into attractive profit results that are not based on sustainable earnings.
A case in point is Scotia Group. In the July quarter the interim results showed a big jump in profits, but that was based on an unsustainable rise in foreign exchange earnings due to the slippage of the Jamaican dollar, resulting in nearly $2 billion raked in for the quarter. For the October quarter only $396 million is reported for that line item, but the year shows a big jump from $2.5 billion to $4 billion. Net interest income is on the slide, falling from $26.64 billion in 2017 to $25.2 billion in 2018 and in the quarter the decline continues with October falling to $6.1 billion from $6.3 billion in July and $6.7 billion in the October quarter in 2017. While loan provisioning is down, year over year to October, to $1.9 billion from $2.2 billion it rose in the final quarter to $744 million from $695 in 2017 and $620 million in July this year. Net fee income has been steady for the various quarters at just over $2 billion but fell in the fiscal 2018 year to $8.1 billion from $8.6 billion.
Operating expenses rose to $5.74 billion in the October quarter from $5.1 in July and $5.18 billion for the 2017 final quarter. For the full year operating expenses rose to $22 billion from $21.3 billion. The group had a gain on disposal of a subsidiary of $753 million which saved profit from falling for the latest year with a rise to $12.78 billion from $12.17 billion in 2017. For the quarter, profit dropped to just $1.6 billion from $3.36 billion in 2017.
Importantly, the loan portfolio that rose strongly in the July quarter to $177 billion is up at a slower pace of 3.2 percent to $183 billion, an annual pace of 13 percent, but it needs to increase further to really deliver a reasonable increase in profit going forward.
The stock closed at $54.05 on the Jamaica Stock Exchange on Thursday, but its recent profit performance does not send very encouraging signals to buy.
