Loan Banking Revenue of Wells Fargo Soars

Thanks to gains in mortgages and other lending areas, Wells Fargo enjoyed a 13% leap in quarterly profit, the nation’s second biggest mortgage lender said today. This helped to offset previous losses from consumer bankruptcy and Hurricane Katrina.

Cloaked in a rise in home loans, mortgage banking revenue almots tripled, the company reported, boosting company net income to $1.98 billion for the thid quarter. This represents $1.16/share, as a panel of analysts polled from Thomson Financial were almot head on with their prediction that Wells Fargo would reveal $1.15/share. Wells Fargo fared better than most of its rivals in keeping its lending margins from shrinking.

A year earlied, net income had been $1.75 billion, or $1.02 per share. In 15 of the last 16 quarters, earnings for each share have increased at least 10%. Anyone looking for stock tips only needs to read that sentence a couple times over. During that same time period, the company’s revenue rose 16% - to $8.5 billion.

“People have been predicting the end of the mortgage cycle every quarter for eight quarters,” Chief Financial Officer Howard Atkins said in an interview. “But interest rates remain at relatively low levels, and consequently the mortgage business remains robust.”

Despite this fact being evident, Wells Fargo set aside $100 million for damage caused by Katrina, making mortgage payment defaults more likely. It may still set aside more.

The company’s stock was trading at $59.02 shortly before 12pm EST today, down 12 cents from its opening price this morning.