When High Charge-Offs Start Looking Good (COF)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Capital One Financial Corp. (NYSE: COF) has some more dismal data regarding the monthly credit card defaults and delinquencies.  The defaults rose again in June, bolstered by weak economic data and higher unemployment.  But there is actually some good news buried in here along with what may be the trend of “less-bad” news.  The same holds true on the international side of its operations.

An SEC filing this morning showed that net charge-off rates on an annualized basis for U.S. credit cards rose to 9.73%, up from 9.41%.  These are the debts that the company believes it will never collect on.  The delinquencies of at least 30 days have now come down for the fourth month in a row. This is now down to 4.77% from 4.90% in May.  Charge-offs in US-auto loans rose to 3.89%, up from 3.62% in May.  The delinquency rate in US-autos also rose to 8.89%, up from 8.59% in May.

There was a positive development in Capital One’s international operations.  The charge-off rate came down to 9.26% from 9.77% in May.  The international delinquency rate was flat at 6.69%.

We have yet to see any directional trading after yesterday’s $23.11 close.  The stock’s 52-week trading range is $7.80 to $63.50.  Cheering of any sort along this line is a hard sell.  But there are at least some green shoots here.  If delinquencies are coming down or stay flat and if the company is charging off its bad debts, then stabilization in the interest generating operations is a very easy outcome to see.

Jon C. Ogg
July 15, 2009

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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