Star of the Week: Again, the stock should be no stranger to KeyStone’s Canadian Small-Cap Growth Stock and VIP clients as it has been a Focus BUY recommendation for several years. Tremendous growth over the past year. Let’s look at the Star Performance
This is the stock has performed well – driven by strong results in its core Canadian market, but it is the potential of the company’s recent move into the U.S. market that is driving current optimism in the stock.
Let’s give you an expanded version of what VersaBank does?
Today, VersaBank primarily makes money from Point of Sales loans. If you need a loan to buy a motorcycle or a hot tub – you are in luck. The vendor you purchase from may run your credit and offer you a loan on the spot. That loan isn’t coming from Teds Motorcycle shop, it’s coming from a bank like VersaBank. In fact, the majority of VersaBank’s growth these days is from POS loans for HVAC replacements. Something that often costs $10,000 to $20,000. These are nearly car-sized loans!
VersaBank has pioneered the technology to make these kinds of loans easy to offer through merchants.
VersaBank, structures their loans in a way that gives them way less risk than a typical lending bank. Their average provision for credit losses as a % of average loans is an incredibly low 0.01%. That’s to say, there are virtually no credit losses on their loans!
How do they manage that? It’s the way they structure their POS loan agreement. If a loan goes unpaid for 90 days and falls into arrears, the point-of-sale partner repurchases the loan and reimburses VersaBank. This way, VersaBank is not responsible for collections. In other words, merchants are the ones that end up with collections and defaulted loans, not the bank.
Valuations.
Despite the surge in its share price, the valuations remain not overtly stretched – particularly if the company can deliver on its expansion potential in the US market – but this may take time.
Conclusion:
Historically Operated in Canada only – highly successful – increasing revenue by a 134% in the past two years!
The fastest-growing bank Canada on an EPS basis.
Undervalued based on Canadian assets alone.
US Market Entry: recently acquired an American bank which will give them access to offer POS loans to US consumers.
the US market is 10x larger than Canada – and the appetite for credit and point of sale loans is even greater – so the opportunity is potentially greater than 10x.
POS lending is on the rise and becoming extremely popular with both consumers and merchants.
Conclusion:
VersaBank’s POS solution is new to the US market and has the potential to grab the market’s attention.
VersaBank has high operating leverage, meaning profitability increases significantly the more POS business the company does without much need for additional capital.
Clients will be updated over the next week.
VersaBank’s 123.81% gain over the past year and 211.49% since KeyStone’s original BUY recommendation make the company our Star of the Week.