por admin » Mié Abr 20, 2011 7:44 am
Las ganancias de WFC suben 48%, el costo del credito baja. Mejor a lo esperado. Las ganancias netas subieron a $3.76 billones o 67 ces.
Wells Fargo’s First-Quarter Profit Increases 48% as Credit Costs Subside
By Dakin Campbell - Apr 20, 2011 8:05 AM ET
Wells Fargo & Co. , the largest U.S. home lender, said first-quarter profit climbed 48 percent, Photographer: Jin Lee/Bloomberg
Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), the largest U.S. home lender, said first-quarter profit climbed 48 percent, beating analysts’ estimates, as costs for soured real-estate and business loans fell.
Net income rose to $3.76 billion, or 67 cents a diluted share, from $2.55 billion, or 45 cents, a year earlier, the San Francisco-based bank said today in a statement. Fourteen analysts surveyed by Bloomberg estimated non-adjusted profit of 66 cents a share.
“It’s clear that credit has come in better across the board,” Andrew Marquardt, an analyst at Evercore Partners Inc. in New York, said before the results were announced. “Credit costs have improved both in terms of charge-offs and reserve releases.”
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Stumpf, 57, is relying on reserve releases as revenue gets pressured by weak loan demand and new financial rules that cap the fees banks can charge for account overdrafts or debit-card transactions. Limits on debit-card fees charged to merchants “make no sense” and distort free-market economics, Stumpf wrote in his annual letter to shareholders, published in March.
Total mortgage originations for one- to four-family homes will decline 32 percent to $1.07 trillion in 2011 from $1.57 trillion in 2010, according to forecasts published by the Mortgage Bankers Association.
Wells Fargo, ranked fourth by assets in the U.S., has declined 3 percent this year on the New York Stock Exchange, closing at $30.07 yesterday, compared with a 3.3 percent decline for the 24-company KBW Bank Index. (BKX) Its largest shareholder is Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which held 342.6 million shares, or 6.5 percent, at year-end.
Four Biggest Banks
Wells Fargo is the last of the four largest U.S. commercial banks to announce first-quarter results. The largest U.S. lender, Bank of America Corp. (BAC), said April 15 that first-quarter profit fell 36 percent to $2.05 billion.
JPMorgan Chase & Co., the second-biggest bank by assets, said April 13 that net income rose 67 percent to $5.56 billion. Citigroup Inc. (C), the third-biggest, said on April 18 that net income fell 32 percent to $3 billion. JPMorgan and Citigroup are based in New York, while Bank of America is based in Charlotte, North Carolina.
All four banks were among 14 mortgage servicers that will be forced to pay homeowners for losses on foreclosures or loans that were mishandled in the wake of the housing-market collapse, according to the terms of a settlement with banking regulators announced last week. JPMorgan said it may face $1.1 billion in costs tied to the agreements and require an additional 3,000 employees, according to a conference-call transcript.
Dividend, Buyback
Last month, Wells Fargo announced a special first-quarter dividend of 7 cents a share, boosting the payout to 12 cents, after receiving approval from the Federal Reserve. It was the first increase to the payout since the company slashed the dividend to 5 cents a share from 34 cents in May 2009. The bank has said it may buy back an additional 200 million shares.
Wells Fargo is in the final year of integrating Wachovia Corp., the Charlotte, North Carolina-based lender purchased in the credit crisis. It has reported more than $25 billion in profit after buying Wachovia, once the fourth-largest U.S. bank.
To contact the reporter on this story: Dakin Campbell in San Francisco