Congrats to Home Trust on an excellent quarter, despite a tough credit market. The parent company’s earnings rose 18.1% year-over-year, to $24.2 million. Their funded mortgages rose 73.1%, to $899.8 million!
In a conference call, CEO Gerald Soloway offered a soothing message. He said, “For the whole year, we’ve been in a battle-stations mode waiting for the attack on the Canadian real-estate market. We haven’t seen it, we don’t see it now, we don’t see it on the horizon.”
Below are a few other tidbits from their earnings report and conference call:
- The company attributes a lot of success to its relatively young commercial mortgage wing.
- Home Trust also benefited notably from the “withdrawal of some of (its) competitors from the residential mortgage marketplace.” (Perhaps Accredited’s departure will help them further.)
- Home Trust thinks it can “meet or exceed” 20% earnings and mortgage growth in 2008
- Government-backed securitization is still going strong. The company says CMHC-insured mortgage-backed securities and the Canada Mortgage Bond program “have been only modestly affected by current credit market conditions.”
Home Trust is a subsidiary of Home Capital Group Inc. (TSX: HCG).
