10 High Volume Bank Stocks with Upside

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Based on consensus price targets among analysts polled by Thomson Reuters, TheStreet has identified the 10 actively-traded bank stocks with the most upside potential over the next year. TheStreet's recent look at 10 Banks with Real Earnings Improvement included some speculative names that still owed the government for bailout assistance through the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, and some that still needed to work through relatively high levels of problem loans. This new list is even more speculative since it is based almost entirely on the mean price targets among analysts polled by Thomson Reuters, although the group is limited to holding companies with average daily trading volume of at least 100,000 share over the past three months. Some of the listed companies have significant problem assets to work though. Still, some analysts consider them sufficiently undervalued relative to future earnings for patient investors who can handle volatility to consider as part of a balanced investing approach. We did exclude one holding company meeting the criteria -- Capitol Bancorp CBC of Lansing, Mich. -- since it reported negative regulatory capital ratios as of September 30. Keep in mind that the consensus price targets can be skewed, since most analysts with neutral ratings on shares don't provide price targets. Out of the 10 holding companies listed below, only four have strong positive sentiment among analysts and only two have a majority of analysts rating the shares a buy. Still, even among analysts with neutral ratings have price targets indicating tremendous upside Here's the list in ascending order by upside potential based on Friday's market close and consensus price targets. 10. Capitol Federal Financial Company Profile Shares of Capitol Federal Financial CFFN of Topeka, Kan. closed at $23.29 Friday, declining 15% over the previous year. Based on a quarterly payout of 50 cents, the shares have a very attractive dividend yield of 8.59%. The company was recently featured in Dan Freed's 5 Bank Stocks with Big Dividends. Capitol Federal is organized as a mid-tier holding company, with 29% of its common shares owned by the public, and the rest controlled by a mutual holding company. The mutual holding company generally waives its dividends, only collecting payments when they're needed to cover operating expenses. The mutual holding company structure can be confusing, because at first glance it appears the company is paying out more than it earns. For example, during the company's fiscal year ending on September 30, Capitol Federal Financial paid-out $2.29 in dividends per share, while earning 93 cents a share. But since the dividends were only paid on public shares, the company was really paying out far less than it earned, since net income came to $3.22 per public share. Moving forward, Capitol Federal is in the midst of a "second-step conversion," where the 71% of common shares controlled by the mutual holding company will be sold to the public. Then the mutual holding company will disappear, leaving just the successor holding company, Capital Federal Financial, Inc. The initial offering will close on December 7. To read the rest, head over to TheStreet.com