Wells Fargo New CEO Reminds Investors How Good It Is!

Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) announced that John Stumpf will now become both the president and CEO. He replaces Dick Kovacevich, who continues as chairman but relinquishes the CEO role. Well OK I guess.

With any changing of the guard you would expect some comment or announcement about future plans. Or maybe you can at least say something about current activities and how well or not well they are doing.

Or like most companies you can just announce the change and leave it at that.

Wells Fargo announces the change and then throws in a very promotional investor fact set about how well they have done over the past. The fact set goes back twenty years and every single metric is very attractive. Total Stock Return (TSR) is 21% compared to S&P of 12%. Thats pretty good beating the S&P like that. Net income grew 17% but diluted EPS lagged with a 13% growth rate. Hmmm.

The message is clearly stay the course with our management. The past year has garnered criticism and the stock has traded in a very narrow range. The dividend yield is approximately 3.2%. Does management feel anxiety about the stock price? The fact set is clearly designed to keep the long term investor engaged. Nothing wrong with that.

Methinks management is worried. Long range radar must have some blips on it. Watch for an increased PR/IR effort to put Wells Fargo into a long term everything is fine perspective. What this really means is short term some bad news probably will bubble to the surface.