M&T Bank Preannouncement Shows Alt-A Mortgages Not Immune

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Apr 11, 3:10AM EDT

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

By Chad Brand of The Peridot Capitalist

Was anyone else surprised that news of a first quarter profit warning from M&T Bank (MTB) hardly had any effect on the market and received fairly little attention on Wall Street?

One of the arguments we have heard from many Alt-A mortgage lenders is that the sub-prime mess is confined to that part of the spectrum, and Alt-A mortgages (given to home buyers with high credit scores but without verification of income, etc)are doing okay so far. M&T’s warning directly contradicts that view.

For those of you that missed it, M&T Bank (a regional bank in the Mid-Atlantic) projected first quarter earnings of $1.50 to $1.60 last week, far below consensus estimates of $1.86 per share. The culprit: Alt-A mortgage loans, which make up 30% of the bank’s mortgage portfolio. The company was forced to repurchase non-conforming loans and also decided to not sell some new loans due to inadequate pricing and a lack of bidders.

This news did hit MTB shares, which fell about 10 percent on the news, but very few others were affected. Other mortgages lenders heavy into Alt-A offerings such as IndyMac (NDE) have come out publicly saying their mortgages are performing fine. The news from M&T, hardly an aggressive lender, show that the odds are good that Alt-A mortgages will become a problem for mortgage lenders as well as more diversified regional banks who make these types of loans.

This trend should continue to show up in first quarter earnings reports when they begin rolling in over the next month or so. As a result, playing the regional banks for a trade going into earnings season seems to be dangerous from the long side. Opportunities to get long may present themselves later, and companies highly levered to Alt-A may be good shorts heading into earnings, but I’d be cautious on the regionals heading into the upcoming reports. A good way to hedge existing positions would be to sell out-of-the-money calls to generate some additional income.

Full Disclosure: No position in MTB and short NDE at time of writing

http://www.peridotcapitalist.com/

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.