PFF BY THE NUMBERS
Daily Bulletin business reporter Matt Wrye has a post about PFF Bancorp on the Bulletin's blog The Bizz.
Wrye says the numbers underlying the collapse of PFF's stock (PFB:NYSE) are, to say the least, sobering:
The Rancho Cucamonga-based financial holding company released some mind-boggling data on Thursday morning in its 186-page annual 10-K financial report, and the numbers aren't surprising.
For starters, customers collectively pulled out almost $520 million in deposits between March 31 and June 13. That's about 16 percent of the bank's total deposits reported for the fiscal year ending March 31.
Over the same fiscal year, PFF's debtors couldn't pay back 468 loans worth $955 million, and about $608 million of this shows "weakness in the underlying collateral or borrower strength."
PFF announced last week that it had worked out an agreement to allow Illinois-based FBOP Corp. to takeover PFF. That sale will have to go to PFF shareholders for approval.
The Press-Enterprise reported that PFF has no alternatives to the takeover because its cash reserves have fallen precariously low. The Press-Enterprise article actually described the withdrawals by PFF customers as a "run on the bank":
Because of bad home loans, the bank lost $225.4 million in its fiscal year that ended March 31, according to filings.
Since that time, a run on the bank by customers pulling out their deposits put PFF in position where it had no cash flow and no means to pay off its debts.
PFF's auditors, KPMG LLP, wrote in the Thursday filing that the company wouldn't be able to pay off its debts without being sold.
SAY NO MORE
The Bulletin's Will Bigham has an article about the budget Claremont's city staff is presenting to the City Council for the next two-year budget cycle.
Bigham reports that city sales tax revenues are off $1.7 million from the $5.8 million staff had previously estimated for the current fiscal year which ends June 30th. Staff is claiming that property tax revenue will be up, however, and the city has also seen an increase in revenue from the transient-occupancy tax money it receives thanks to the new Hotel Casa 425 and the spruced-up Doubletree Hotel.
City staff has trimmed the city's operating budget slightly, according to the article. The current fiscal year's operating budget was $38.4 million. That drops off to $37.5 million for FY2008-09 and $38 million for FY2009-10.
The article did not indicate how the belt-tightening would affect any large-scale projects, such as a new police station or a new affordable housing project.
Claremont staff reports that they did not have to lay off any employees and they achieve the budget cuts by not replacing employees who leave, other than a few key positions, as you will read below.
People visiting Claremont should also take note that the city is counting on another revenue stream for money. Call it a highway end-user tax:
The city is also estimating that money collected from traffic fines and parking citations will balloon in the next two years.
Parking citations are expected to rise from $110,000 in this fiscal year to $200,000 in each of the next two years. Traffic fines are expected to rise from $325,000 annually to $405,000 annually.
Police Capt. Gary Jenkins said the increases are expected mainly because vacancies have been filled at the department for traffic and parking enforcement.
There's no effort at all to go out and do more traffic enforcement with the intent of gaining revenue," Jenkins said. "It's more an issue of proper staffing, and these are the revenues we're projecting because of proper staffing."
Right.
Claremont would never institute speed traps or traffic citation quotas, nudge nudge, wink wink.
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