New Purchase: Royal Bank of Canada Stock
September has historically been a bad month for the stock market, and this year was no exception. This is why I didn’t invest aggressively last month. However now that it’s October, I decided to get back into buying more equities. 🙂
So after looking through my watch list of different companies, I’ve decided to invest in shares of Royal Bank of Canada. 😀 I usually don’t keep disposable cash lying around so last week I borrowed $4,000 from my TD margin account and transferred the money into my TFSA to buy 55 Royal Bank shares (RY.TO) at $71.30 each.
I know purchasing about $4K worth of stocks with no money down sounds a bit risky, but I think I’ve made the right decision here. 😀 The stock pays me a 4.43% dividend yield, which happens to be more than the 4.25% interest I’m being charged for the margin loan. As long as I plan to hold the stock until my retirement and can service the cost of the loan, then I don’t see any downsides to financing this entire purchase with debt. 🙂
Royal Bank Stock Analysis
After doing some research and analysis on this company here are some reason why I chose to buy this stock.
- It can print currency. Due to fractional-reserve banking, all chartered banks can create new money through lending. This license to manipulate the money supply in the market has many unique advantages.
- Safety and stability. RBC is currently the largest company in the country, worth $106 billion by market capitalization. An economy of scale offers RY a competitive edge against smaller rivals. Even if Canadian banks run into solvency problems in the far future, the CMHC or other Crown corporations will probably step in to bail them out. In the U.S. the government’s TARP program in 2008 transferred $431 billion to struggling U.S. banks.
- Growing profits. Royal Bank continues to deliver earnings growth year after year. According to stock analysts the estimated earnings in 2017 will be around $7.35 per share, which would make RBC 19% more profitable than last year’s actual earnings.
- Attractive valuation, relative to historical averages. The P/E ratio is used to determine how much investors are willing to pay for a stock. A high ratio signals that buyers are willing to pay a premium for the shares. But lately the trailing P/E ratio of Royal Bank (Blue line below) is at the lowest it’s been in years! This P/E compression won’t last forever so right now looks like a good time to start accumulating a position.
- Growing dividends. According to its investor’s relations, RY has increased dividends by more than 400% since the year 2000. It increased dividends almost every year, except during the financial crisis period.
- Protection against rising interest rates. RBC holds about $463 billion in net loans. If it can charge even 0.25% more interest on average, then that’s an additional $1.16 billion of revenue every year, minus loan lost provisions. A rising interest rate environment benefits all banks. The more interest homeowners pay for their existing mortgages over the next 25 years, the more money Royal Bank can make from those loans. 🙂
- Potential split soon. The stock tends to split 2:1 when each share reaches around $80 to $90. The most recent split was in 2006, and then in 2000 before that. The share price is currently around $74 today. Stocks splits create more demand since each share becomes more affordable to own for new investors.
As a value investor, I think RBC is an attractive buy at its current price. And as a dividend growth investor, I can’t complain about its growing distributions. 😉 This is why I’m confident enough to put $4,000 into a stock using only other people’s money. I’m locking in my cost now, so I don’t have to pay more for it later. One potential risk for this stock is the possibility of a collapse in the housing market which could affect the bank’s earnings. But I currently see no signs of a real estate correction in the foreseeable future. 🙂
For more information about the stock, here’s a company overview presentation made by RBC.
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Random Useless Fact:
In Russia there is a monument dedicated to all the lab rats that have died in the name of science.
The Canadian banks are pretty popular amongst the dividend investing community. I’ve initiated a small position in BNS, and would consider other banks, as they have a very large proportion of Canadian financing.
Awesome purchase with BNS. I have some as well. Can’t go wrong with the biggest bank in Canada. Quality for sure.
Canadian banks also enjoyed bail-out money from both US & CAN governments. ?
What percentage do financial stocks hold in your portfolio?
About 10% of my stocks are banks. Add another 5% for insurance companies like Great West Life. So roughly 15% total in financials. It’s probably more like 20% to 25% if we include asset management stocks and real estate income trusts, but I don’t know if those are considered to be in separate categories. Most financial companies I own are Canadian, but I also have JP Morgan and Bank of America. 🙂
RBC and TD are the only ones that I don’t own at this time. Great dividend stocks for sure. I will be more focused on energy stocks for a while but RBC is definitely in my watch list. Thanks for sharing!
BMO and CIBC are the only large Canadian banks I do not own right now. It’s like collecting baseball cards. Maybe we’ll both complete our sets of the big 5 eventually.
Liquid,
Nice purchase price on RY. Glad to be a fellow shareholder
Hey, since we’re both invested in the same company I guess this makes us business partners. 🙂
Like the RY buy. No need to convince me to own any of the large Canadian banks. Still like TD, BNS, and RY at these beaten down levels. Solid names with safe dividends and incredible yield. What’s not to like? Clearly, the near term headwinds for RY are huge which no doubt is giving us much better buying opportunities. Commodities will rebound, oil, the Canadian dollar, etc. It’s all about the ebbs and flows of stock prices. Buy when other are selling. Thanks for sharing.
My thoughts exactly. What’s not to like for long term investors? Securities are relative. Right now in a sea of overvalued stocks at least the banks appear to be priced fairly.
I own TD and BNS and was happy when TD split about 2 years back. Both are good dividend players and I wish I had started down the dividend road sooner. I average $70 a month in dividends but I need a lot more than that before I can retire.
Aecon is on my stock watch list. They pay a solid dividend. No cash to make any buys this month. I don’t go in to debt to buy so I have to save up from my little pay cheques until I have enough.
$70 is a great start. I was making roughly the same in my first year of dividend investing. This is the first time I’ve heard of Aecon. It appears to be doing quite well, beating the market. 🙂
Not exactly my first year investing. I am painfully behind on saving for retirement due to an ongoing lack of funds.
If you borrowed on margin to buy RY in your TFSA you can’t deduct the interest on the credit line. The non-deductible interest you’re repaying on margin is being repaid with after tax $’s, so effectively, you’d have to earn a pretax return on RY of 1/(1-marginal tax rate) in order to be on equal footing. Why not do the trade in a non-registered account? If CRA challenges the interest deduction, they’d look at the transaction from inception to trace source of funds.
That’s a great point, Dan. The reason I bought the shares in my TFSA is because I still have lots of contribution room this year. I want to use up at least some of it to take advantage of tax free growth. I also plan to pay back the loan principle over the next month or so, making this more of a bridge loan than a permanent part of my balance sheet. Any tax benefits from a tax deductible loan would have been short lived anyway.
Have you looked at Interactive Brokers. Interest you would be paying is 2%, instead of what you are paying now.
Hi Andrew. Yes, they are a great broker for using margin to invest and trading options. I’m currently trying to save CAD $13,000 to apply for an IB trading account because that’s the minimum requirement needed to open an account there. The problem is I don’t have the discipline and keep spending my savings before I reach my goal. >_<
[…] taken steps to appropriately address this risk. In October I wrote about borrowing $4,000 to purchase Royal Bank shares. Banks are in the business of lending money and collecting interest, so they stand to gain when […]
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