Impac Delays Q1 Earnings; Expects Loss

Troubled lender Impac Mortgage Holdings, Inc. (IMH: 0.82 +5.13%) said late Tuesday that it won’t file its first quarter earnings report until June at the earliest, as the struggling company looks to complete its as-of-yet incomplete 2007 earnings report. The Irvine, Calif.-based company cited a reduction in personnel as substantial enough to limit its ability to prepare financial reports — underscoring just how badly the lender has been hit by the mortgage crisis.

“The company anticipates a signficant change in its results of operations and it may experience a loss for the first quarter of 2008,” it said in a filing Tuesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Impac has been the subject of speculation that it may not survive the crunch pushing many independent mortgage lenders out of business, having posted a net loss of $1.3 billion during the third quarter, the last quarter results were available for the ailing company. The loss pushed the company’s net worth into negative territory, it said at the time.

The company also lost Chief Investment Officer Andrew McCormick and Chief Operating Officer Richard Johnson at the end of March. Neither positions were filled upon the executives’ departures, with Impac citing “changes to the company’s business plan.”

For more information, visit http://www.impaccompanies.com.

Disclosure: The author held no positions in IMH when this story was originally published. HW reporters and writers follow a strict disclosure policy, the first in the mortgage trade.