What John Stumpf Thinks About Housing

John Stumpf, the CEO of Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC), loved the way the bank performed in 2Q despite failing to extend 17 quarters of uninterrupted earnings growth. The company reported revenue ahead of the consensus estimates while earnings met expectations.

As such, the bank earned $1.01 per share in line with the expectations and generated $21.29 billion in revenue against the consensus estimate of $20.83 for the quarter.

Stumpf revisited the second quarter performance on CNBC and even shared his thoughts about loan demand, which was a key factor for the positive 2Q results. He also looked into the housing segment where the company is regarded as the largest player in terms of mortgage business.

Starting off the discussion, Stumpf said 2Q was good and they are proud of their performance track record of 17 uninterrupted quarters of rising earnings.

“We had a terrific quarter and sometimes, the numbers are what they are and we thought they were pretty spectacular,” he remarked.

He went on to say that the economy is witnessing impressive improvement that makes Wells Fargo -which is one of the biggest banks in the World– optimistic about the future. Stumpf restated the loan growth figures realized in 2Q of which he said growth in loans of 8 or 9 percent, growth in deposit of 9 and increase in fee income succeeded in revealing how the economy is strengthening.

Concerning housing, Stumpf expressed his optimism in the segment but didn’t fail to register his displeasure with mortgage performance in Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC)’s 2Q.

“I think mortgage is a little bit disappointing in this regard. We didn’t have as much volume as we had hoped going into the second quarter. Still a quarter that was good, $10 billion more than the first quarter, but there is lots of different things going on in housing that I think are holding us back a bit.” Stumpf added.

According to Stumpf, some of the reasons Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC) didn’t register strong performance in the mortgage segment was that some people felt credit was not available, inventory was lacking in other cases and in other instances, borrower’s inability to qualify because of such matters as student debt impact mortgage.

However, despite the challenges, he said they at Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC) are bullish on housing.

Disclosure: none