Word: banke
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...sure, Wells Fargo still has plenty of fans, and its bottom line has held up better than expected - the bank's first-quarter earnings of $3 billion were up 50% over the prior year's first quarter, despite a tough economy. Executives at Wells are also reassuring investors that the bank's loans will perform better than rivals; they point to the $39 billion in loans the bank wrote off when it acquired Wachovia last fall as proof of its conservative posture...
...Buffett and other investors may be putting too much faith in the bank management's ability to gauge future loan losses, something no major bank has gotten right during this downturn. And if there's even a bit of disappointment, Wells Fargo shares have further to fall than its rivals. The stock trades at a price-to-book multiple of 1.6; JPMorgan, another bank deemed to be in relatively good shape, has a price-to-book of just 1. On earnings, Wells trades at 16 times its expected bottom line this year. That's better than even Goldman Sachs, which...
...With unemployment rising and house prices continuing to fall, Wells' unpleasant earnings news could persist past the end of the year. Bank examiners in the recent government stress tests estimated that Wells Fargo will have as much as $86 billion in loans that go unpaid over the next two years. The bank has already put aside some money to cushion that blow - $22 billion as of the end of March - and Wells would be able to tap another $24 billion of loss provision that it set up when it acquired Wachovia. But that still leaves another $40 billion in loan...
...greater threat to investors springs from the fact that Wells Fargo's loan losses could exceed the government's expectations. In calculating the stress tests, government bank examiners applied different loan-loss rates for different banks. For instance, bank examiners were relatively tough on Wells' primary mortgage-loan portfolio, predicting that nearly 12% of the loans would default over the next two years. This compares to an estimated loss for Citigroup of just 8% for its primary mortgage loans. That makes sense. More of Wells' mortgage loans are concentrated in California than Citigroup. And California has had more foreclosures than...
...commercial real estate loans, it was just the opposite, as bank examiners were particularly easy on Wells Fargo. The government estimated that even if the economy turns worse, slightly less than 6% of Wells' commercial real estate loans would default this year and next, which was much less than the industry average expected loss of as much as 12%. Some economists think it will be even worse than the government thinks. New York University economist Nouriel Roubini estimates that as much as 17% of commercial real estate loans could eventually go unpaid. Regulators wouldn't say why the government predicted...