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Posted
May 22 2008, 10:26 AM
by
Matt Koppenheffer
Rating:
Earth to Angelo: learn to use your email!
Maybe the fact that Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo hit "reply" rather than "forward" when typing his "disgusting" heard-round-the-world email isn't all that outlandish. After all, if you google "email blunder" you get well over a million hits -- most of them telling embarrassing stories of how a mistyped or misaddressed email put the sender in a precarious position.
But of course this isn't any Tom, Dick, or Harry who has sent an email to his boss accidentally disclosing that he's still drunk from the night before. This is the chief executive of a multi-billion-dollar company that is embroiled in controversy, about to go to trial, and trying to make sure a proposed takeover doesn't fall apart.
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Posted
May 06 2008, 01:06 PM
by
Matt Koppenheffer
Rating:
After Countrywide's ugly $890 million first quarter loss, speculation has been rampant that Bank of America will try to pull a Houdini and wiggle out of its agreement to buy the mortgage lender. Speculation took to new heights this week when Friedman, Billings, Ramsey analyst Paul Miller strongly cautioned BofA against the deal, and suggested that the bank may try to renegotiate the price down to the $0 to $2 per share level.
The question at hand here really isn't whether Countrywide is going to suck for the foreseeable future -- despite what CEO Angelo Mozilo said late last year, that's pretty much a given. The issue is whether Countrywide will suck more than BofA's proposed buyout price suggests. Since BofA's original buyout offer was at about $4 billion, it's possible that it's already expecting at least another $9 billion hit to Countrywide's book value. That would assume a buyout at one time projected book value, which would be relatively cheap given Countrywide's trading history.
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Posted
Jan 11 2008, 01:58 PM
by
Matt Koppenheffer
Rating:
The best person to ask would be Ken Lewis, CEO of Bank of America, since B of A went ahead and announced an agreement to buy Countrywide for roughly $4 billion, or $7 per share.
Ken is a bit busy, though so I'll go ahead and tackle it. Here are three scenarios from most to least optimistic:
- Countrywide's stock has been beaten down so far that Bank of America could no longer resist buying a valuable asset at a price well under its true value. Plus, B of A sees the opportunity to build its mortgage lending arm and lower borrowing costs for Countrywide.
- Having already sunk $2 billion into Countrywide, B of A decided that it'd rather take matters into its own hands than continue to watch the value of its investment sink.
- And finally (tip of the hat to Herb Greenberg on this one), Countrywide was really on the edge of bankruptcy and the Federal Reserve got into the mix by pushing for the deal and offering government backing for any losses from Countrywide.
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Posted
Oct 26 2007, 10:13 AM
by
Matt Koppenheffer
Rating:
Countrywide Financial may have lost $1.2 billion during its third quarter, but as we all know, Wall Street is always looking to the future. So what's in the cards for Countrywide going forward? According to Countrywide's President, profitability. He said that after swallowing its first quarterly loss in the past 25 years, Countrywide expects to be back in the black next quarter.
Investors are going bananas over the projection for next quarter, and as of this writing the stock is up almost 17% on the day.
Players on The Motley Fool's CAPS don't seem quite as convinced. At one star, the stock is at the bottom of the barrel as far as CAPS ratings go. The projections for next quarter didn't seem to help much -- 34 of the 47 new players to rate Countrywide today were bearish on the stock. One CAPS player, devoish, warned that he "[believes] there is more bad news coming beyond just today's layoffs and writedowns."
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