Snoopy Loses His Nose (MET)

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Apr 28, 5:03AM EDT · Published Oct 8, 8:22AM EDT

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Metlife_logo MetLife Inc. (NYSE: MET) is joining the other major financial stocks of late with its shares getting clocked this morning to new multi-year lows. Last night, the insurer said earnings would be $0.83 to $0.93 per share, much worse than expectations. Estimates from First Call are $1.44. On top of this, it posted wider losses on assets and it is raising cash.

MetLife noted that variable investment income was $0.16 per share underplan and investment gains included $490 million in credit-relatedlosses. Unrealized losses on fixed maturity securities were$17 billion.

To add fuel to the fire, the insurer said it will sell 75 millionshares to prop up liquidity. It must not have seen the reactionelsewhere on financial firms announcing stock sales.

Shares closed at $36.87 yesterday, which is at the very bottom of its range of the last 52-weeks. Unfortunately, that is anold range now. Shares are trading down almost 20% at $29.50 inpre-market trading.

Barron’s recently noted "Snoopy Braves The Turbulent Skies" and said shares could rise by 50% when shares were around $45.00. That would imply a $67.50 price if you took it at face value. That 50% call would now be a more than 100% gain if it comes to fruition.

The beatings continue.

Jon C. Ogg
October 8, 2008

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.