Posts tagged ‘mortgage banking’

Nov 2

Summing up Earnings: Impac Mortgage, Rurban Financial, PremierWest Bancorp

In the next few posts I will summarize my thoughts on the quarterly earnings reports released so far for the companies I own. In this post I am going to look at Impac Mortgage, Rurban Financial, and PremierWest Bancorp. I will follow that up shortly with another post that looks at Radian Group, PVF Capital and Community Bankers Trust.

Impac Mortgage

In my post last week on Impac Mortgage, I noted the following concern:

In my opinion, the biggest short term risk is that the third quarter GAAP number disappoints. This could easily happen as a result of further charges to the repurchase reserve or mark to market changes to the trusts that overwhelm the profitability of the operating business. Given the run-up in the stock, a low GAAP number could cause some of the short term holders that haven’t looked closely at the businesses to run for the exits.

As it turned out my fear of a poor GAAP number was realized, but the strength of the underlying mortgage origination business was impossible to ignore, and the stock shot up higher anyways.

I was pleasantly surprised with the results. The mortgage origination segment outperformed even my most optimistic expectations. Lending volumes increased 33% quarter over quarter. Earnings from the segment increased an astonishing 100% quarter over quarter. Further, the company said on the conference call that October volumes were $290 million, which, if extrapolated for the entire quarter, would be another 22% quarter over quarter rise in the fourth quarter from the $709 million originated in Q3. Read more

Oct 18

Falling NIMs, Rising Mortgage Banking and two new bank stocks: Monarch Financial and PVF Capital Corp

One consequence of the quantitative easing campaign that was initiated by the Federal Reserve is that is caused a rise in mortgage backed securities, and a corresponding drop in interest rates for those securities. To illustrate, below is the 30 year Fannie Mae.

This drop in rates is bad for holders of MBS debt who depend on the yield that it returns. As a consequence many mREITs have been under pressure.

To varying degrees banks are in same boat. You saw this with the release of results on Friday from JP Morgan and Wells Fargo. The subject was discussed here in the Financial Times.

But I think you have to be careful before painting all banks with a broad brush. The extent of the damage depends on the percentage of assets that each bank has in securities in general and in mortgage backed securities in particular. This can vary quite a bit, especially among the smaller community banks.

I have looked at each of the banks I own. Most are not overly exposed to mortgage backed securities or to securities in general. The table below shows the total investment security exposure vs. loan exposure for each bank, and then breaks down the investment securities by type. Read more