Loews Swings to a Loss in Q4 (L)
NYSE: L), a holding company whose subsidiaries are engaged in casualty insurance, commercial property and drilling and marketing of offshore oil and natural gas, swung into fourth-quarter loss as it took a huge impairment charge linked to HighMount Exploration & Production LLC while its insurance division, CNA Financial Corp. incurred losses owing to devastating storm sandy.
As natural gas and natural gas liquids (NGL) prices in the U.S. remain depressed due to glut of shale gas supplies, Loews Corp, which is led by New York’s Tisch family, is feeling the pinch on its bottom line. HighMount business unit was forced to write-down the closing value of natural gas and NGL stock, reflecting a sharp drop in both properties.
Loews another subsidiary, CNA Financial Corp, meanwhile, was hit hard by Hurricane Sandy which stuck the North East Coast in the last week of October. For Loews Corp., CNA Financial accounts for nearly 2/3 of the entire revenue. In the latest concluded quarter, CNA Financial posted a loss of $9 million, or 3 cents a share, compared to a profit of $190 million, or 70 cents a share.
For the fiscal fourth quarter ended December 31, Loews reported a loss of $32 million or 8 cents a share compared with a profit of $271 million or 68 cents a share.
Excluding onetime items, such as catastrophe losses of $243 million (mainly linked to hurricane sandy) and impairment charges of $433 million associated to falling prices of natural gas and NGL, net income for the recently concluded quarter stood at $236 million.
Revenue during the period jumped 7% to $3.71 billion from $3.48 billion, in the year earlier quarter.
For the fiscal 2012, Loews reported a profit of $568 million or $1.43 a share, down from $1.06 billion or $2.62 share, in the same period of last year. Total Revenue in fiscal 2012 rose 3% to $14.55 billion from $14.13 in fiscal 2011.
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Post Written By: Ed Liston
Ed Liston is a senior contributing editor at TheStockMarketWatch.com. An active market watcher and investor, Ed guides an independent team of experienced analysts and writes for multiple stock trader publications. He is widely quoted in various financial publications on the Internet. When Ed is not writing about stocks, investing in stocks, talking about stocks, or otherwise doing something stock related, he likes to go sailing and fishing in his yacht.
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