3 Regional Banks You Can Buy Right Now: Huntington Bancshares Incorporated (HBAN) and More

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3. Huntington Bancshares Incorporated (NASDAQ:HBAN)
With a market cap of $5.98 billion, our third and final bank is the smallest of our three, but still boasts good geographic coverage: 690 branches and 1,380 ATMs in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Indiana, West Virginia, and Kentucky. Huntington is headquartered in Columbus, OH.

By the numbers, Huntington has a P/B of 1.12 — again, a number we like to see because it potentially augurs good growth and therefore potentially good profit when you sell. And its ROE of 11.44% is healthier than either BB&T’s or SunTrust’s, and crushes Citigroup’s ROE of 4.27%.

Bigger isn’t always better: A smaller organization like Huntington, with considerably less bureaucracy and layers of management than a behemoth like Citi, should be more efficient in its operations and more responsive from top to bottom.

In the fourth quarter of 2012, Huntington also did very well, giving investors year-over-year income growth of 25.1% on year-over-year revenue growth of just 5%. Talk about efficient.

Final Foolish thought
It may be easy to get overly focused on the big banks you hear about in the news every day, but it isn’t necessarily overly profitable. As we’ve seen here, in banking bigger isn’t always better. And sometimes it’s even worse.

The article 3 Regional Banks You Can Buy Right Now originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by John Grgurich.

John Grgurich owns shares of JPMorgan Chase. The Motley Fool recommends Wells Fargo. The Motley Fool owns shares of Bank of America, Citigroup, Huntington Bancshares, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo.

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