oder alles doch nicht so schlimm wie erwartet? Sept. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Wall Street's third quarter would be the worst since 2001 if it weren't for the timely sale of a power company by Goldman Sachs Group Inc.Goldman, the world's largest securities firm by market value, recorded the $2.15 billion sale of Horizon Wind to EDP- Energias de Portugal SA in the third quarter. Analysts have to estimate the size of the gain because Goldman never disclosed how much it paid for Houston-based Horizon Wind in March 2005. Schorr figures it's between $750 million and $1 billion.
Bear Stearns Cos. probably will report a 41 percent drop in earnings per share, Morgan Stanley may post an 11 percent decline and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. may say profit fell 5.1 percent, according to a Bloomberg survey of analysts. Goldman's earnings probably jumped 33 percent after a gain of as much as $1 billion from the sale of Horizon Wind Energy LLC.Fixed-income trading, the industry's biggest source of revenue, faltered as sales of mortgage and asset-backed securities dropped 36 percent in the quarter, Lehman estimates. Banks also stopped financing new leveraged buyouts, which provided $8.4 billion of fees in the first half, as they struggle to clear a backlog of $350 billion in loan commitments. While revenue from takeover advice, stock trading and underwriting probably rose, it may not make up for writedowns to reflect the declining value of corporate loans and mortgage bonds.
``This is a more important period than the turbulence of 2001,'' said Peter Solomon, chairman and founder of New York- based investment bank Peter J. Solomon Co. and a former executive at New York-based Lehman. ``This is credit and this is risk. This turmoil is aimed right at the heart of their business, so everybody is interested in how they have managed.''
If the analysts are right, and they've underestimated the firms' profits for the past six quarters, it would be the worst year-on-year decline in earnings per share since the second quarter of 2005. When Goldman is excluded, it becomes the biggest drop since the fourth quarter of 2001. While Cole said the securities industry probably reached its earnings peak for this economic cycle in the first half, when Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Lehman, Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch reported net income totaling $18.4 billion, he and other investors don't expect results for the fiscal quarter that ended in August will be as bad as analysts are forecasting. Wall Street is collecting more investment-banking fees than a year ago, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Completed takeovers rose 35 percent to $861 billion in the fiscal third quarter. Equity offerings climbed 76 percent to $170 billion, and sales of high-yield debt jumped 26 percent to $42 billion.
Trading also has been busier, indicating a probable increase in commissions. The average daily trading volume in mortgage-backed securities rose 55 percent in the past three months from a year earlier, while in corporate debt it swelled by 11 percent, Federal Reserve data show. On the New York Stock Exchange, average trading volume rose 7.6 percent.
The CBOE SPX Volatility Index, which measures the rate of price swings in stocks, averaged 19.3 during the quarter, up 27 percent from last year. Greater volatility typically means bigger trading profits on proprietary positions.
``With the volatility on the equity market and the fact that trading on all of the exchanges has been at record or near- record levels, these companies should all benefit from that,'' said Erin Archer, an analyst at Thrivent Financial for Lutherans in Minneapolis, which manages $75 billion, including shares of all four firms. ``They could all report very strong equity numbers.'' ... Lehman will set the tone for this week's earnings reports because it reports first and is expected to post its biggest quarterly profit decline since 2004.
Of the 16 analysts who follow Lehman in Bloomberg's survey, 13 have reduced their third-quarter earnings estimates in the past four weeks. They expect Lehman, the biggest underwriter of U.S. mortgage bonds, to post profit of $1.49 a share, down from $1.57 a year earlier and $2.21 in the second quarter. ``Lehman is pretty well positioned to report a decent third quarter,'' said Thrivent's Archer. ``Fixed-income expectations may have come in too much.''
Morgan Stanley may report on Sept. 18 an 11 percent drop in earnings per share, the first decline since John Mack, 62, returned as CEO in mid-2005, according to the analyst survey.
Some bright spots remain.Morgan Stanley, the industry's second largest by market value after Goldman, managed 81 percent more in stock sales during the fiscal third quarter....Bear Stearns, the smallest of Wall Street's five largest firms, may report its worst results since the first quarter of 2001, when profit fell 42 percent. Analysts expect earnings per share of $1.79, down from $3.02 a year earlier, according to estimates compiled by Bloomberg.Mortgage-backed securities and related products provide about 30 percent of fixed-income sales and trading revenue at Bear Stearns, compared with about 20 percent at Lehman, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/...d=20601103&sid=a3e60HBySgPk&refer=us |