RESIDENTIAL
Saying Impac Mortgage Holdings Inc. has a rocky relationship with analysts is like saying Michael Vick is having some career trouble.
Impac, the Irvine-based mortgage lender and investor, has spent much of August in a spat with of one of its primary analysts, UBS’ Omotayo Okusanya.
The battle started earlier this month when Okusanya raised the specter of bankruptcy for the struggling company, cutting his target price for Impac’s shares from $3 to zero.
Impac shares were trading at about $1.70 last week with a market value of some $120 million.
The company “is unlikely to find the capital to maintain operations as its situation deteriorates,” Okusanya wrote.
Impac announced it was laying off 350 workers last week, most of them at its new headquarters off Jamboree Road.
The company reacted with a strongly worded press release, calling the analyst’s report “largely speculative” and noting that Okusanya hadn’t consulted the company before making his determination.
More barbs flew the following week during Impac’s quarterly investor call.
Following prepared remarks by the company, which detailed changes in the lending business and the company’s financial situation, Impac took a few questions from analysts.
Okusanya’s questions: Could Impac talk about what changes it was seeing in lending and could it give an update on its financial situation?
The company officials sounded exasperated by the questions, asking if the analyst had even bothered to listen to their earlier comments. It made for an uncomfortable few minutes.
The squabbling is rare for a publicly traded company whose executives typically bend over backward to appease analysts.
The company appears to be low on the interest list of other analysts.
Impac’s Web site counts eight analysts that follow it. Besides Okusanya, only Richard Eckert of Newport Beach-based Roth Capital Partners LLC participated in the quarterly call.
Cashing Out
For mortgage lenders whose financial status appears shaky these days, it’s not just analysts pressing the panic button.
Stories earlier this month detailed customers of Countrywide Bank lining up to withdraw their savings from the bank, whose parent company, Countrywide Financial Corp., was speculated to be near bankruptcy because of subprime lending issues.
Among those waiting in line: Impac president Bill Ashmore, who reportedly waited half an hour to cash out $500,000 from Countrywide, which he then wired to a Bank of America account.
Subprime Sales
Of the roughly 17,600 homes on the market in OC, about 5% are tied to the downfall of the subprime mortgage market, said a recent report from the Aliso Viejo-based office of Re/Max Real Estate Service.
Short sales and foreclosures are affecting the lower end of the market, which for OC represents everything less than $750,000 and includes condominiums, Re/Max President Steven Thomas’ report said.
Of all the short sales and foreclosures on the market, half are priced less than $500,000. And 95% are below $750,000.
About 1,800 homes were placed into escrow in the past month, giving sellers a 10% chance of selling their homes these days, the report said.
COMMERCIAL
In January, I wrote about Chicago’s First Industrial Realty Trust Inc. making its first big OC acquisition in a few years,a 366,629-square-foot industrial facility in Santa Ana, next to the Tustin Legacy development.
First Industrial, one of the country’s largest industrial landlords, already has sold that building, said Bob O’Neill, investment officer for the company’s office in Irvine.
Newport Beach-based development and investment firm Greenlaw Partners and partner Commonfund Realty Inc. of Wilton, Conn., bought the Santa Ana industrial buildings at 2001 to 2007 E. Dyer Road.
The sale was valued at $46.5 million. First Industrial reportedly paid $35 million to $40 million when it bought the property in January.
Jeff Chiate and Rick Ellison from Cushman & Wakefield Inc.’s Irvine office represented First Industrial, while Greenlaw Partners was represented by Maury Panza of Collins Commercial Corp.
First Industrial still is buying in OC. Its most recent deal here was the $26.6 million buy of a 291,000-square-foot manufacturing and distribution center in Buena Park.
The real estate investment trust just inked a sale-leaseback deal with Amcor Sunclipse North America, a nationwide distribution company that’s part of Australia’s Amcor Ltd.
