By Angela Palumbo, Rupert Steiner, and Brian Swint
PacWest Bankcorp plunged nearly 40% Thursday, triggering another day of selling in regional bank shares as investors tried to assess the latest news from smaller firms.
Wednesday evening, PacWest (ticker: PACW) said in a statement that its deposits were rising. "Core customer deposits have increased since March 31, 2023, with total deposits totaling $28 billion as of May 2, 2023, with insured deposits totaling 75% vs. 71% at quarter end and 73% as of April 24, 2023," PacWest said in a statement.
Shares of the Beverly Hills, Calif.-based bank had dropped 37% since JPMorgan Chase stepped in to acquire First Republic, another troubled regional bank, on Monday. PacWest's statement followed a further plunge in the bank's stock price of as much as 55% in after-hours trading after Bloomberg News reported the bank was weighing strategic options, including a sale.
PacWest said it was in discussions with partners and investors and that the talks were ongoing.
"Recently, the company has been approached by several potential partners and investors -- discussions are ongoing. The company will continue to evaluate all options to maximize shareholder value," the lender said.
In addition, the company paid down $1 billion of borrowings with its excess liquidity and said its cash and available liquidity remains solid and exceeded its uninsured deposits, representing 188% as of May 2.
PacWest is one of the banks that has come under the most pressure since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. Since then, banks with high levels of uninsured deposits or higher risk loan books have seen a run on deposits.
D.A. Davidson analyst Gary Tenner said PacWest stock was "not trading on fundamentals, given market fears." He downgraded the shares to Neutral from Buy. RBC Capital Markets analysts were more bullish, maintaining their Outperform rating following PacWest's update, which they described as being "helpful."
Shares of other regional lenders were also lower Thursday. On top of concerns about PacWest, banks reacted to the news that the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates for a tenth time this cycle on Wednesday. Higher interest rates put pressure on banks by raising the costs of borrowing, potentially pressuring customers and limiting the amount of people applying to take out loans.
The SPRD S&P Regional Banking exchange-traded fund $(KRE)$ fell 3.7% in premarket trading. The S&P 500, by comparison, was off 0.2%.
Western Alliance Bancorp $(WAL)$, down 16% in premarket trading, also issued a statement Wednesday, saying it hasn't experienced unusual deposit outflows in recent days and that its capital base remains strong. Its shares fell 4.4% on Wednesday.
Comerica $(CMA)$ slipped 6.4%, and Valley National $(VLY)$ dropped 5.2%. Shares of both have seen selling earlier in the week.
Activist investor Bill Ackman called for a systemwide deposit guarantee regime to be implemented, adding "we are running out of time to fix this problem."
"How many more unnecessary bank failures do we need to watch before the FDIC, the U.S. Treasury and our government wake up?," he said on Twitter late Wednesday. "Confidence in a financial institution is built over decades and destroyed in days. As each domino falls, the next weakest bank begins to wobble," Ackman said.
Write to Angela Palumbo at angela.palumbo@dowjones.com and Brian Swint at brian.swint@barrons.com
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 04, 2023 09:25 ET (13:25 GMT)
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