Credit Suisse Initiates Outperform Rating on Huntington Bancshares (HBAN)

Credit Suisse is out with a research report this morning, where it initiates its Outperform rating on Huntington Bancshares HBAN; it has a $9.00 price target on the stock. The CS analysts said that HBAN's clear and measurable path to growth, and its solid track record of execution in the credit clean-up and implementation of its strategic plan, has driven stock outperformance in 2010. Be that as it may, they expect further upside as the "grow-the-core" mantra drives strong operating leverage, pushing ROTEs to the midteens by FY12-13 and the stock price to $10-11 in two to three years. As for valuation, the analysts remarked, “Our $9 target price reflects a P/E of 12.9x to our FY12 core EPS estimate, 1.74x estimated 4Q11 TBV per share, and a P/E of 11.3x to normalized EPS, near the lower end of our coverage universe.”