Tuesday's Financial Winners & Losers
Updated from 2:11 p.m. EDT with new stock prices
The financial sector spent most of Monday in positive territory, brightened by a string of positive earnings releases and the climbing broader market.
American Express
(AXP) - Get Report
reported a third-quarter continuing-operations profit of $1.07 billion, or 90 cents a share, for an
18.4% leap from last year. Thomson Financial's estimates had income at 85 cents a share, less special items. Shares of the New York credit-card issuer rose $1.79, or 3.2%, to $58.66.
TD Ameritrade
(AMTD) - Get Report
achieved a penny EPS beat with earnings of $200.4 million, or 33 cents a share, in the fiscal fourth quarter. The Omaha, Neb., company also issued in-line bottom-line guidance for fiscal 2008. Shares added 0.4% to $19.20.
Fellow online broker
optionsXpress
( OXPS) saw 53.8% year-over-year income growth to 40 cents a share in the third quarter vs. analysts' 38-cent per-share targets. Daily average revenue trades ramped up 53.1%. Shares of the Chicago firm gained 2.4%.
Investment managers
Waddell & Reed
(WDR) - Get Report
and
T. Rowe Price
(TROW) - Get Report
each posted mounting third-quarter profits that were flush with Wall Street projections, and insurer
Everest Re's
(RE) - Get Report
$3.68 per-share operating income smashed the $3.13 average estimate. Shares added 8.4%, 7.4% and 0.3%, respectively.
Assurant
(AIZ) - Get Report
, a New York insurer, was in the green after KeyBanc Capital Markets upgraded the stock to buy, citing an above-average return on equity and higher returns in its specialty property division. Shares jumped out of the gate before pulling back to a 22-cent gain at $56.55.
Calyon Securities upped
PartnerRe's
(PRE)
price target by $20 to $100 following far-better-than-expected third-quarter results, after which the insurer's shares lifted 2.7% to $80.62. And Ohio bank
FirstMerit
(FMER)
, whose third-quarter income was also above par, ballooned 5.1% to $19.51.
On the flip side,
PFF Bancorp
( PFB) saw one of the sector's steepest price drops after posting a surprise fiscal second-quarter loss of $7.5 million, or 33 cents a share, due to a loan-and-lease loss provision that spiked more than 50% sequentially to $94.4 million. Analysts were seeking a profit of 47 cents a share; a year ago the Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., bank earned 56 cents a share. PFF shares took a 17.9% dive to $11.45.
Mortgage lender
Countrywide
( CFC), meanwhile, announced it will
offer to refinance or modify up to $16 billion in loans through a new program designed help Countrywide borrowers who are facing an adjustable-rate mortgage reset by the end of 2008.
This will help more than 80,000 customers, said the California-based company, including about 52,000 subprime borrowers with a strong payment history, for whom a special refinance unit has been created. Countrywide shares traded higher out of the gate but then fell 63 cents, or 4%, to $15.05.
Elsewhere,
Merrill Lynch
( MER) saw heavy trading ahead of tomorrow's scheduled earnings release -- which, as the New York brokerage
warned earlier this month, will reflect a third-quarter loss. Shares closed up 1% to $67.12 after spending most of the day in negative territory.
Broad sector trackers were mixed. The
NYSE
Financial Sector Index tacked on 0.2% to 9,100.38 while the KBW Bank Index shed 0.2% at 101.