Barron's reports on Wednesday's Ira W. Sohn Investment Research Conference in New York. While many different stocks were pitched I thought it was interesting that two speakers presented both sides of the Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) investment case. The short case is that Citi shouldn't pay dividends while raising capital and the long case is a $5 EPS forecast for 2009.

Former mutual-fund star Michael Price said Citi was foolish to be paying dividends while raising enormous amounts of capital. He also said that Citi's perpetual preferreds have nowhere to go but down. Rich Pzena of Pzena Investment Management was long Citi because he thinks its earnings power is largely unimpaired and that it could net over $5 a share in 2009 -- making it look cheap at its current $21 a share price.

I would like Pzena to be right. But I find Citi's financial statements to be so complex that I don't understand how he arrived at that $5 a share forecast. Nevertheless, I continue to hold the stock because I think that the pressure to fix Citi is so great that eventually someone will figure out how to do it. I think it should be split into two.

Continue reading Is Citigroup a buy?

Is Citigroup a buy? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 24 May 2008 11:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.