Capital One shares rebound after Warren Buffett makes near $1 billion bet on bank

By Chibuike Oguh, Niket Nishant and Chuck Mikolajczak

(Reuters) -Shares of Capital One Financial Corp (NYSE:) rose on Tuesday, rebounding from two weeks of losses after billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:) Inc disclosed it had taken a stake of nearly $1 billion in the credit cards-focused bank.

Berkshire acquired 9.92 million shares in Capital One, a stake worth $954 million based on the closing price on March 31, regulatory filings showed on Monday.

Famous for its credit-card advertising slogan “What’s in your wallet?”, McLean, Virginia-based Capital One also has a huge auto lending and commercial banking business. Its peers include American Express Co (NYSE:) and Bread Financial Holdings Inc.

Capital One’s stock rose 2.1% to $90.95 per share, its highest since May 1. The bank’s shares have shed around 17% since early March as the banking crisis has clobbered shares of U.S. regional lenders.

Morgan Stanley (NYSE:) analysts said the selloff of U.S. regional bank stocks was overdone as markets have focused on deposit outflows instead of deposit costs, a better gauge of their financial stability.

Since regional bank deposits are quite sticky and data does not show outflows accelerating, the analysts said their shares are now cheap and are headed for a rebound in coming months.

“Recent declines seem overdone as quarter-to-date deposit outflows are tracking in-line with seasonality,” the analysts said.

Bank of America (NYSE:) Global Research analysts changed their rating of Western Alliance (NYSE:) Bancorp to “buy” from “no rating,” relying on the bank’s huge share of insured deposits and ability to absorb deposit outflows with strong profitability.

Western Alliance “does not share a ton in terms of business model and balance sheet characteristics relative to the three failed banks,” the analysts said. Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank (OTC:), and First Republic Bank (OTC:) have collapsed during the crisis.

Western Alliance shares gained 2.7% while PacWest Bancorp lost 14.6%, nearly reversing all the gains from Monday’s session The KBW Regional Banking Index fell 1.9%.

After the closing bell, Western Alliance shares shot up 7.5% to $33.95 after the company disclosed in a filing that it has sold $2.3 billion out of $3 billion in loans on sale in the quarter-to-date. PacWest shares climbed 5.7% to $4.83 after the closing bell.

The Federal Reserve will unveil its plan to ratchet up capital rules for banks this summer and will ensure supervisors more aggressively police lenders following several recent bank failures, its top regulatory official told Congress.

Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr said the central bank was “carefully considering” rule changes for larger regional banks.