Low loan losses make Home Capital a buy

Article Excerpt

HOME CAPITAL GROUP INC. $58 (Toronto symbol HCG; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 34.6 million; Market cap; $2.0 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 3.8; Dividend yield: 1.2%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.homecapital.com) offers mortgages to borrowers who don’t meet the stricter criteria of larger, traditional lenders. Home Capital continues to do a good job of identifying problem loans early, which makes it easier to adjust repayment terms. That’s why bad loans fell to 0.58% of its total loans in 2010 from 0.85% in 2009. The stock has gained 2,800.0% since we first recommended it in the July 1998 issue of Stock Pickers Digest, our newsletter that focuses on aggressive investments (we moved Home Capital to The Successful Investor in December 2007). Even so, we feel it still has lots of growth ahead. Home Capital Group is a buy. buy…