At close to 63p, the Lloyds Banking Group (LSE: LLOY) share price is steady as I write on 23 October.
But this is the firm’s third-quarter results day, so I reckon it’s safe to assume there were no great surprises for the market in the report.
It’s unlikely we’ll see fireworks with the stock today, or any time soon with a bit of luck. After all, most shareholders probably want stability, and a continuation of the fat dividends dropping into their share accounts.
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Oh, and a bit of share price elevation as the economy gently rises to new and easy-living sunny uplands over the coming years.
Keeping up its dividends
But it’s worth noting City analysts were not expecting much from the business. They’d pencilled in a decline in normalised earnings for 2024 of almost 13%.
Dependable old Lloyds hasn’t disappointed. Today’s figures for the nine months to 30 September are a veritable feast of negative numbers. For example, net income declined 7% year on year, underlying profit’s down 12%, earnings per share dropped by just over 10%, and so on.
However, all of this was expected and the numbers for the third and most-recent quarter actually came in ahead of analysts’ forecasts. It’s not that they turned positive or anything. It’s just that analysts expected worse! For example, net income declined by a mere 4% — you get the picture?
Despite all this, it’s far from having been all doom and gloom for Lloyds’ shareholders. Since early January, the share price has risen by just over 30%.
But the main attraction for many here is the dividend, and it’s been climbing higher each year since the directors rebased it lower when the pandemic hit in 2020.
Meanwhile, those analysts have confidently predicted more increases ahead for the shareholder payment. On top of that, there’s no indication in today’s report of any threat to dividends.
Looking ahead, the forward-looking yield for 2025’s running at a chunky 5.4%, or so. However, that looks like much-needed compensation for the risks that shareholders face when holding the stock.
An upbeat outlook statement
We saw in the pandemic how vulnerable the business can be to general economic upsets. The record of multi-year earnings performance is all over the place, and the share price has been wigglier than a fiddle player’s elbow.
There’s no escaping the cyclicality here, which means it’s as easy to lose money as it can sometimes be to make it with the shares. Nevertheless, chief executive Charlie Nunn delivered an upbeat assessment of the prospects for the business, calling the performance in the third quarter “robust”.
The company’s making good progress with its strategy and is “on track to deliver higher, more sustainable returns”, Nunn said.
Should I buy the stock? I can’t, I’m not worthy!
Lloyds has so many moving parts that negative surprises may pop up at any time without me noticing their stealthy approach.
Full-on cyclical outfits like this are hard to nail down. Lloyds’ business and the share price may surge higher from here. But I’m putting the stock on the ‘too difficult’ pile because I have little confidence in my own ability to invest right with the timing on this one.
