Wilmington Trust’s (WL) second-quarter earnings came in ahead of the Zacks Consensus Estimate, aided by strong growth in client services business and improvement in net interest margin.
However, credit quality deteriorated drastically during the reported quarter. In 2009, both S&P and Moody’s lowered their outlooks on the company to negative and downgraded the ratings based on concerns related to its real estate lending concentration. Though loan growth has been impressive relative to many of its peers in the past, the pace of growth has started to moderate in the last few quarters.
We expect the pace to slow down further in the near to medium-term, based on the ongoing weakness in the economy. Thus, we are maintaining our Underperform recommendation.Zacks Investment Research
