RE:CHW ANALYSTSchw management has been careful not to dilute shareholders with equity issues. brokers with publishing analysts get paid when companies issue stock and reason why most serial issuers have lots of analyst coverage. brokers allocate an analyst, maybe trade some blocks and then have good chance of being in equity issuance syndicate ($$$).
this is a tightly held small cap without much liquidity who don't do equity issuances.
chw does issue debt (abs) and has some debt lines with various cdn banks, but this is different animal to equity issuances and block trading.
so lack of analyst coverage may be frustrating, but is actually a + for chw and shareholders and one of the reasons i like chw and its approach (becuase it illustrates discipline around unnecessary equity issuance transactions).
buying back stock and bumping up div periodically while diversifying/growing the lending book and improving the treasury operations shud bring its own rewards over time vs impact of some analyst initiating coverage. most of instiutions who would take position in chw would be doing own work and meeting management imo.
chw currently returning over 10% of current market cap (annualized) thru comb of dividends and buybacks even in this poor economic climate. lots of available liquidity on the balance sheet.