Topical & Timely Stock Comparisons

We have had full year results today from Lloyds Bank (LLOY) - which you can read the full 62 pages of if you so wish by clicking the link in the name. These seem like a decent set of numbers as you would expect with low unemployment and steady if unspectacular growth.

The shares trading this morning  at around 60p are at a modest 13% premium to their tangible book value of 53p which seems justified by their 12% of so return on that equity. While the dividend was increased by 5% to 3.21p, this was slightly shy of forecasts of around 3.3p, but does leave them on a yield of 5.35% which is a lot better than you can get on money in a bank "savings" account!

They suggest in their commentary that they hope to get their return on equity up to between 14 to 15% this year which by my reckoning could justify a share price in the range of 64 to 80p, thereby offering potentially some modest upside on the current share price in addition to the 5% plus yield. Of course it will not be without its risks if we do end up in a post BREXIT / Global recession later this year or next, but for now it seems like a reasonable value, if slightly boring banking stock, but then you probably don't want a racy or exciting banking stock.

Meanwhile having had some success with holdings in Moneysupermarket (MONY), which had result recently, both personally and for the Compound income Scores Portfolio, I am tempted by price / value comparisons between this one and one of its competitors Go Compare (GOCO). On a cursory inspection this may be explained by differences in the balance sheets, cash v debt, assets v negative assets etc. and a better earnings revision trend at MONY perhaps.

​Nevertheless GOCO does seem cheap on the face of it and it may be a good time to check it out further as there are some potential catalysts coming up. Firstly they have their own full year results due on the 28th February 2019 & we already know that MONY traded and continues to trade well. Plus after that they have a Capital Markets Day scheduled for the 20th March 2019 too, all of which I guess could help generate some renew interest in the shares perhaps, as they trade on less than 10x with a well covered 2.5% yield and are on a big discount to MONY. See the comparison below from Stockopedia between the two below, while I note they label them as Balance, Mid Cap, High Flyer versus an Adventurous, Small Cap, Contrarian - which seems to sum up the situation well.

A catalyst seems to be needed as GOCO shares, in contrast to MONY, are trading near their lows for the year, but they do seem to have formed a nice base from which they could stage a recovery if the results are OK and they can break out of their recent range between about 65p and 82p. As ever you pay your money and take your choice or not as the case may be - always do your own research and Go Compare and see what you think?

For what it's worth the Compound Income Scores suggest there is not a lot to choose between the comparison companies, but they are definitely scoring better than Lloyds Bank. So don't forget if you would like to see how these three compare on the Compound Income Scores and see daily updates to these and 500+ other UK stocks, then do check out the Scores page for more details of how you can do this & go compare if that is of any interest to you.