East West Bancorp, Inc. (EWBC)
Financial Services · NMS · US
Fundamentals
Valuation and ratings
East West Bancorp, Inc. trades at USD132.41, which is 118% below the USD289.10 our discounted cash flow model puts on the business. On that measure alone it screens as undervalued, though a DCF is an argument rather than a measurement, and the market is frequently right about why something is cheap.
Our moat model scores it 55 out of 100, which is a moat, but not a deep one. A moat is a structural reason competitors cannot take the profits away, and it matters more to a long holding period than any single quarter's numbers do.
It changes hands at 13.1 times earnings. Be careful reading that in isolation: for a cyclical business a low P/E arrives at the top of the cycle, when profits are peaking and about to fall, which is exactly when the shares look cheapest and are not.
About East West Bancorp, Inc.
East West Bancorp, Inc. operates as the bank holding company for East West Bank that provides a range of personal and commercial banking services to businesses and individuals in the United States. The company operates through three segments: Consumer and Business Banking, Commercial Banking, and Treasury and Other. It accepts various deposit products, such as personal and business checking and savings accounts, money market, and time deposits. The company provides various loan products, such as mortgage and home equity, commercial and residential real estate, construction finance, commercial business lending, working capital lines of credit, trade finance, letters of credit, affordable housing lending, asset-based lending, asset-backed finance, project finance, equipment financing, loan syndication, and equipment loans, as well as financing services for clients to facilitate their business transactions between the United States and Asia. It also provides foreign exchange, treasury management, wealth management, and interest rate and commodity risk hedging services; and mobile, and online banking services. The company was founded in 1973 and is headquartered in Pasadena, California.
EWBC passes 6 of our 30 screens today
Each screen prints the exact criteria it used, and the circumstances in which it is wrong.
Smart money ownership
5 of the funds we track reported a position in their latest SEC 13F filing. Largest first:
- Li Lu, Himalaya Capital Management LLC$296.40M · 9.3% of book
- Capital Research Global, Capital Research Global Investors$197.73M · 0.0% of book
- Cliff Asness, AQR CAPITAL MANAGEMENT LLC$184.19M · 0.1% of book
- Ken Fisher, Fisher Asset Management, LLC$78.53M · 0.0% of book
- Ken Griffin, CITADEL ADVISORS LLC$43.40M · 0.0% of book
A word of warning on reading these figures: a 13F reports the market value of a holding, so a fund that traded nothing at all still appears to have sold when the price fell. We found 102 companies where the standard reading gives the opposite answer. Only the share count is honest.
Common questions
Is East West Bancorp, Inc. (EWBC) undervalued?
Against our discounted cash flow estimate of USD289.10, EWBC at USD132.41 is 118% below fair value. That is one model's answer, not a recommendation, and most of a DCF's output sits in a terminal value nobody can forecast.
Which funds own EWBC?
5 of the institutions we track reported a position in EWBC in their most recent SEC 13F filing. A 13F is filed up to 45 days after quarter end, so it tells you what a fund held then, not what it holds now.
What is EWBC's P/E ratio?
EWBC trades at 13.1 times earnings. A low P/E is not automatically cheap: on a cyclical company it is usually a warning that earnings are at a peak.
The full research page for EWBC, with financial statements, ownership detail, peer comparison and alerts, is free inside the app.
Data from company filings, exchange quotes and SEC EDGAR 13F disclosures. Quotes are delayed. Metrics we do not have are left out rather than estimated. Educational information, not financial advice.