Bank Of Ireland

[dublinred]

Are the shares worth buying @.89cents ? I paid more for a Wispa today , surely a good buy for the longterm??

[dahamsta]

It's kind of on the cusp; I realise it's an Irish institution that's unlikely to go bang, but it really is in bad shape. If I had the dosh, I'd wait for an upswing, but you'll need to get your timing right.

[pete]

Market Cap of less than 1 billion.
600m profit in last 12 months.
30 billion in property loans & only a few hundred million debt written off in the last year.

I presume they are now valued at Assets (buildings etc...) - projected (property) bad debts.

Any one know what the markets are speculating their property debts could be? Would 10% be high or low?

It isn't so long ago that BOI made 1 billion profit in 1 year alone....

[anto1208]

Its a gamble they could fly up once everything settles again and it could go all wrong and get nationalised and then i think your shares could be worthless.

Ive gone for the construction industry very large companies with similar priced shares they wont go up to 20 euro like the banks could but i think they are a little safer as there is tons of work being sat on at the moment.

I wouldnt use it as an investment more a bet so dont risk what you cant afford to loose.

[sligoman]

How would you go about buying shares in BOI? Also, anyone know what they cost before all this 'recession' lark hit?

[Poor Student]

Any one know what the markets are speculating their property debts could be? Would 10% be high or low?

OneRedArmy will know better but I think even 3 or 4% would be massive and 10% would devour its capital base. BOI and AIB are constantly revising their bad debt predictions upwards. I think 6 months ago they were predicting somewhere closer to half a percent bad debts and now they're up over a percent. The market obviously doesn't have faith in their predictions hence the falling values. We seem to be edging closer to the state having to recapitalise some or all of the Irish banks.

[MariborKev]

OneRedArmy will know better

I suspect he is lying in a dark room somewhere, or wandering around in a Tom the Gom stylee muttering about the death of the free market.

[OneRedArmy]

I suspect he is lying in a dark room somewhere, or wandering around in a Tom the Gom stylee muttering about the death of the free market.

How close you are!!

Peak was at 18.60 in Feb 2007.

Should you buy them now?
I honestly don't know. Falls firmly into the other thread on when will the recovery start.

I really find it hard to pick out much between the Irish banks at the minute and I still believe the Government will force consolidation (ie mergers) as part of a re-capitalisation which everyone knows has to happen (why the banks won't admit it I've no idea, its not like they have much to lose in terms of credibility at this stage).

As for the losses, its depends on what type of loans are hit. Property development loans are absolutely, positively up the swanee without a paddle. Losses will be catastrophic. But even without a re-capitalisation the banks could just about survive this.

The worry is residential mortgages and customer credit, where defaults are still very low (despite what Primetime might have you believe). There is upward movement here and as I've said over the last 6-9 months, if unemployment keeps going up strongly, then all bets are off.

So in summary, there's probably value in the bank shares if you are willing to hold for the long-term, but when you consider that in order to be re-capitalised to the same core tier 1 ratio as RBS and HBOS, the Irish banks would have to issue 100-200% of existing shares (!), then there is a huge degree of dilution of existing shareholders coming down the tracks.

[Macy]

Are the shares worth buying @.89cents ? I paid more for a Wispa today , surely a good buy for the longterm??

As others have said, treat it as a long term gamble rather than an investment. If you look at other boards, you can go back and see people asking the same question when they went under a fiver, and under €2, saying they can't go any lower!

[rebs23]

Just registered with Fexco, so going to put a punt of €1,000 of the wifes redundancy on BOI! Thats the way the modern recession works, the market collapses out of peoples greed, people loose their jobs and then we use their redundancy to pump it back into the market. Isn't Capitalism great.

[dublinred]

As others have said, treat it as a long term gamble rather than an investment. If you look at other boards, you can go back and see people asking the same question when they went under a fiver, and under €2, saying they can't go any lower!

Still thinking about buying some but worried about possible effects of dillution if as expected the government pumps 2bln into them which would in theory give them 67% ownership.

[dahamsta]

Doesn't it take 10 days or so to open an account? Might be 10 days too late.

Spread betting is another option, but I'd guess the odds are awful.

adam

[rebs23]

Just came through today and it does take a few days, passport required etc. Still worth doing, I reckon.

[dahamsta]

What kind of account did you apply for? Was the process onerous and/or expensive? I've been meaning to open a stockbroking account for ages but they all seem to require a ridiculous up-front deposit and lengthy registration process.

Anyone else any experience of this? Any recommendations?

adam

[OneRedArmy]

Why not just spread bet or do contracts for difference?

Much cleaner from an admin perspective.

[Dodge]

For the record BOI shares are 115 at the moment.

[dublinred]

What kind of account did you apply for? Was the process onerous and/or expensive? I've been meaning to open a stockbroking account for ages but they all seem to require a ridiculous up-front deposit and lengthy registration process.

Anyone else any experience of this? Any recommendations?

adam

Sharewatch have an instant account but you can only buy upto 15k worth of shares , its about 50quid a trade also so you would want be buying at least 5k worth to make the chage around 1% which is normal.

[rebs23]

What kind of account did you apply for? Was the process onerous and/or expensive? I've been meaning to open a stockbroking account for ages but they all seem to require a ridiculous up-front deposit and lengthy registration process.

Anyone else any experience of this? Any recommendations?

adam

Fexco seemed the easiest, which is why I went with them. Just €20 to set up, proof of address and passport required, took a few days and for your first trade you need to have the money in the account you set whether by bank draft, cheque, cc, etc.
They have offices in Cork and Dublin and just ring them up to do a trade on the balance of your account.
Well worth doing and you have a lot greater control of your investments, however small. Best of luck.
PS; Don't forget to have a look at the charges for trades. eg 1.25% up to 9,000 and Min Commission of €5 and admin charge of €7.50, etc so you'd have to calculate all of that into your decisions to buy or sell.

[dahamsta]

Thanks for the info reb23. Do they not have a web interface?

[Dodge]

http://www.fexcostockbroking.com/

lazy....