Thursday newspaper share tips: Virgin Money, Challenger banks

Homes are not always a safe repository of value, as property busts show, but at the moment they are the safest corner of the UK banking space.

That was reflected yesterday in Virgin Money’s full-year figures for return on tangible equity, which at 10.9% easily trumped those of the main High Street banks, RBS, Lloyds and Barclays, the Financial Times’s Lex column said.

The lender also has plenty of room to continue growing given it only had a 3.4% share of the market for new mortgages.

Virgin Money’s share price also puts it at 1.2 times’ tangible book value, near the top of the range for the industry.

Indeed, it still lags the 1.3 on offer at Lloyds despite the big legal liability for mis-sold payment protection insurance weighing on that bank.

Too worried about risks in the housing sector? “If that worries you, perhaps you should avoid UK retail banks altogether,” Lex said.

The scale of the recent crunch in the European banks sector is staggering.

Lenders have been weighed down by worries about an economic slowdown, banks’ own efforts to restructure, regulatory fines and the fear of more regulatory changes to come.

One option for investors seeking to avoid the carnage are challenger banks, the Daily Telegraph’s Questor column said.

For starters, they suffer none of High Street banks’ legacy problems, whether it be pertaining to historic bad behaviour or their “glitch-prone” IT systems.

This was evident in Virgin Money’s latest set of full-year results.

Thirty-five per cent owned by Richard Branson, Virgin Money has kept a lid on costs in part by not expanding its branch network beyond the 75 sites it inherited from Northern Rock.

It has also managed to increase its net interest margin, Questor pointed out.

Other challengers such as Shawbrook and Aldermore are also sticking to the mantra of ‘keep it simple’ and benefiting from it.

Their shares are trading at twice the price-to-book values of rivals such as Barclays.

Older challengers such as Close Brothers are also thriving.

“As big banks continue to struggle and the challengers show they are thriving, the sector overall is a buy,” Questor says.