Shares of MGIC Investment Corp. tumbled more than 20 percent Wednesday after the private-mortgage insurer posted a wider-than-expected fourth-quarter loss and said it can't predict when it will become profitable again.
The Milwaukee-based company reported a narrower fourth-quarter loss than it did a year earlier: $186.7 million, or 93 cents per share, compared with $280.1 million, or $2.25 per share, in the year-ago quarter.
Still, the latest quarter's loss was wider than the consensus estimate of analysts surveyed by FactSet, who expected a loss of 57 cents, on average.
Shares of MGIC dropped $2.39 to close at $9.26. The stock has traded in a 52-week range of $5.78 to $13.80.
For the full year, MGIC reported a loss of $363.7 million, or $2.06 per share, compared with a loss of $1.32 billion, or $10.65 per share, in 2009.
The earnings news release included a warning that the company doesn't see a return to profitability anytime soon: "We have reported net losses for the last four years, expect to continue to report annual net losses, and cannot assure you when we will return to profitability," the company said.
Analysts had been forecasting that it will lose 4 cents a share this year and earn $2.15 a share in 2012, according to FactSet.
In the latest quarter, revenue fell 11 percent to $361.1 million from $405.5 million in the previous year's fourth quarter.
But total losses and expenses fell 46 percent to $509.4 million from $943.3 million.
Net premiums written fell 5 percent to $271.4 million from $286.9 million.
New insurance written in the fourth quarter was $4.2 billion, compared to $3.0 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009.
The percentage of delinquent loans, including bulk loans, was 17.48 percent as of Dec. 31, down from 18.41 percent a year earlier.
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