And their stock got punished for it.
Fifth Third is planning a $1 billion offering of convertible preferred shares. It also plans to raise $1 billion by selling unspecified operations, expecting those sales will be completed over the next several quarters.
The company is cutting its quarterly dividend by nearly two-thirds to 15 cents from 44 cents. The smaller dividend will be paid on July 22, when the company will report second-quarter earnings, to shareholders of record on June 30.
This was one of the stocks I looked at for potential short candidates along with Suntrust, Regions Financial, and Keycorp. The problem I had was that they were still making decent money and in some cases about the same as they did in previous quarters. In other words they seemed to have righted the ship. I guess if they keep getting cash infusions and cut their dividends then they are spooking investors into dumping them. In any case when the smoke clears there are some real bargins in this space.
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