JPMorgan Reiterates Overweight Status for MVB Financial Bank

For several years now, MVB Financial has been “betting” heavily on gaming, offering its services to the regulated sector in the United States.

Essentially, MVB Financial is the bank that stores customer deposits for players of popular gambling brands in the country, which offers strong capitalization and invites investors interested in placing a bet on the fast-developing gambling industry to do so without necessarily putting money down on gambling stock per se.

MVB Financial In a Good Position for the Future

Alexopoulos issued an “overweight” rating for the bank’s stock and called the financial institution an important part of the existing regulated gambling framework in the market. The analyst said that there was a clear indication that gambling entities in the country would continue to entrust the bank with player deposits.

MVB itself is actually making a big move into the industry, as it’s optimizing its services and focusing on catering to gaming companies specifically. MVB has had a first-mover advantage, too, argues Alexopoulos, as other banks were more reluctant to engage with these entities in the first place and did not develop the necessary expertise and understanding to better approach the now-booming sector of online gambling in the United States.

However, Alexopoulos acquiesced that a former outlook of the bank’s stock for $35 was not realistic presently and adjusted the forecast to $24. This forecast needs to be taken with a caveat, though, as historic data does not exactly back the rosy outlook offered by Alexopoulos.

Curb Your Enthusiasm – A Bit

For one, the overall share value in MVB Financial dropped by 40.78% in the past 12 months, and despite the bank’s overall strong profile, recent big failures, such as Silicon Valley Bank should be a warning to banks and the financial sector in general.

The downfall of Silicon Valley Bank did cause a depression in the overall results, which saw MVB’s share slump another 15% on the news. Then again, MVB has made sure that it’s in a good position as well. All of its deposits are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and it isn’t obligated to pay interest on the deposits that it currently holds for gaming companies, which is a lot of its focus.

Meanwhile, MVB is also advancing in fintech solutions through its MVB Edge Ventures division, which focuses on onboarding new niche clients that have a high-added technical value, argues Alexopoulos.