Fannie Mae this afternoon said it lost nearly $3.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2007 as home-loan delinquencies mounted. The company said it expects additional losses this year as the housing slump continues.
The quarterly loss at Fannie Mae, the largest US buyer and backer of home loans, contrasts with a profit of $604 million in the same period a year earlier.
Fannie Mae reported the late 2007 loss was equivalent to $3.80 a share. It earned 49 cents a share a year earlier.
The government-sponsored company was forced to set aside billions to account for bad loans.
The company's loss for all of 2007 was $2.05 billion, or $2.63 a share, compared with a profit of $4.05 billion, or $3.65 a share, in 2006.
"We are working through the toughest housing and mortgage markets in a generation," the company's president and CEO, Daniel Mudd, said in a statement.
He said the company's losses reflected "the significant decline in home prices in a number of large regional markets and the growing number of borrowers struggling with their mortgages."
Agencies