Wells Fargo & Co. WFC stock is up about 2.7% in premarket trades on Wednesday as its upward momentum continued after announcing a $30 billion stock buyback plan and a quarterly dividend boost of 5 cents a share to 35 cents per share. The stock is holding on to gains from after-hours trading on Tuesday. Citigroup analyst Keith Horowitz reiterated a buy rating on Wells Fargo and said the bank had repurchased 100 million shares in the second quarter “so they needed to increase their authorization.” Citi is projecting $13.5 billion of stock buybacks over the next four quarters, for a total of about 300 million shares. “While stock is up, we view this more as a formality rather than incremental insight on near-term buyback appetite,” Horowitz said. Wells Fargo and other banks are facing uncertainty ahead of final Basel 3 endgame rules coming out from the U.S. Federal Reserve on Thursday.
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