Standard Pacific Homes will report its fourth quarter and full-year 2009 earnings after market close today, and analysts are expecting the company to post a slight profit for the quarter of $0.02 per share.
Standard Pacific has flirted with profitability in the last year. It posted a lossof only $0.10 per share for 2Q2009 and would have booked $0.01 per share profit had it not been for impairments. It also logged a $0.10 per share loss in 3Q2009.
So a push from red to black would be a happy event for the company, which was on the brink of bankruptcy in 2008 before MatlinPatterson Global Investors bought into the company in June of that year, infusing it with cash.
Investors seemed bullish in the stock this week, with prices rising Feb. 2 from $3.89 per share to $4.19 per share during the day. The stock has rebounded in the last year from a low of $0.65 per share in March 2009.
In addition to the cash pumped into the company by MatlinPatterson, Standard Pacific has managed to restructure its debt in the past six months, pushing it back further and giving it runway for the housing market to recover.
The company’s overhead was cut drastically after Ken Campbell, a MatlinPatterson investor, became its CEO a year ago, immediately making additional personnel cuts and shaking up the company’s executive ranks.
While other companies have shifted their product mixes toward first-time buyers, Standard Pacific has stuck to its knitting, continuing to focus on move-up purchasers in Sun Belt markets.
