Member Info for joxer22

This weeks ECB meeting should be interesting, especially to see what hints they give about future rate hikes. Some commentators are speculating that they may start easing off after the expected 50 basis point rise. Any unexpected hawkishness would certainly give the Irish banks a boost (and vice versa).

The share price has certainly shown a lot of resilience over the last few weeks. It quickly recovered from the dip under nine and it's just gone positive again today. The volumes have been quite low on the recent dips and the sp has bounced back each time from any sell volumes. I think this will be over €10 pretty soon.

The 21% target was for AIB and the 44% target was for BIRG

Looks like the re-iteration yesterday about future interest rate hikes is getting reflected in the euro banks index today (up about 1.6%). The Irish banks are certainly pushing ahead, AIB and BIRG both hitting 52 week highs today

Davy also increased their AIB target but only marginally to €4.51. The bank they seem most positive about price wise is PTSB where they see a 70% upside.

Davy have raised their target SP for BIRG to €13.17

At that time Bank of Ireland had 980 million shares in issue versus AIB with 870 Million.

A correction was definitely overdue for both AIB and BIRG given the rapid acceleration of their share prices over the past few weeks. The volumes of shares traded in the last few days has not been unusually high so I'm not reading anything significant into the price movement.

I agree, €10 is a reasonable target price. It's difficult to compare the Irish banks with either the euro area or UK banks as the dynamics in the Irish market are somewhat unusual. The higher targets are mainly from the Irish brokers, especially Davy. Reading their analysis it's hard to dispute that BIRG deserves a premium valuation but I will be happy enough to take some money off the table @ €10.

The 12 month median price target for BIRG is €10 (from a total of 13 analysts). The high target is €12.30 and the low target is €7.00 - Take your pick!

Very impressive performances from both BIRG and AIB over the last few months - AIB had been lagging BIRG for a while but it has really accelerated over the past six months (+92%). I own both stocks but decided to reduce my AIB holding by 50% on Friday - who knows, it may keep going up but it's close to NAV and the government are selling so there will probably be some pullback in the price. I consider BIRG as a hold at present - let's see how things stand in March.

Share price movement yesterday and today is not BIRG specific, just tracking the momentum in the euro stocks index (up about 2.5% today). Still, it's all positive.

If the CFO is happy to pay €8.82 per share that's certainly a very good sign. He is probably the most clued in person in the bank regarding the overall financial position and outlook.

The Euro Banks index is up over 2% today and the Irish banks are tracking that move. As usual the smaller banks tend to exaggerate any moves in the index.

Absolutely agree - too many punters (as opposed to investors) think they can play the unpredictable daily movements on stocks. If a company has sound fundamentals and is undervalued it will always come good in the long run. Anyone who bought into BIRG at less than the NAV i.e. anytime over the last few years just had to sit back and wait for it to get re-rated to a more sensible valuation. The long game always pays off when the fundamentals are good.

Some very big trades into the close.

Ignore the day to day noise around the BIRG share price. BIRG is a small component within the Euro banking sector so It gets tossed around a bit due to buying and selling of the various Euro bank index funds and ETFs. From a fundamentals point of view BIRG is solid and in the current interest rate environment it will be very profitable over the next few years. As the saying goes - in the long run the stock market is a weighing machine.

Good volumes in AIB over the last few days - JPM held BIRG at neutral but raised AIB to overweight with a target price of €4 which would be roughly a 30% gain from here.

AIB and BIRG are both up today - probably helped by the Eurostat figures for Q3 which show Irelands GDP growth rate at 2.3% (versus .3% across the euro area)

Seemed to breeze through €8 with very little resistance this morning. It's getting closer to NAV now so it may pull back a bit but it's probably still reasonably valued. Upside from this point will depend to a large extent on the premium that investors are willing to pay for the BIRG growth story.