Yahoo Finance MetLife (MET) Forms $4B Agriculture Mortgage Loans in 2022
MetLife Inc’s MET asset management business, MetLife Investment Management (“MIM”), announced that it originated $4 billion of agricultural mortgage loans last year. It had assets under management of agricultural mortgage loans of $21.6 billion at 2022-end.
As the agricultural producers gained from high commodity prices, MIM’s financial position solidified. MIM is well-positioned to help farmers with competitive farm, ranch, timberland and agribusiness loans. Its regional network keeps them close to markets and facilitates long-term or immediate mortgage financing needs. A rising interest rate environment has benefited MIM’s results.
MIM looks forward to supporting agricultural producers to help them achieve growth and stability in their operations. MIM has established decade-long relationships as lenders and key capital sources for agricultural-based mortgage lending.
MIM provides intermediate and long-term mortgage financing for competitive interest rates, coupled with flexible terms. This has helped MIM increase its origination volume, which boosted its agricultural mortgage loan AUM by 40% over the five years ended December 2022.
However, the agricultural mortgage loan AUM figure at 2022-end marks a decrease from the 2021-end level of $22.9 billion. Nevertheless, MIM has local skilled and experienced farm loan officers, acting as a key differentiator.
Biagi & Associates, LLC was provided with $70 million fixed-rate loan in 2022. It is a related party providing carrier services with a fleet of around 270 trucks.
The company also provided $75 million variable revolving line of credit financing to Farmland Partners Inc. Among other companies that secured financing were Toor Farming LLC, Grupo Heras and Gateway Arch Timber, LLC.
MetLife Investment Management aims to provide capital and financing solutions to producers, supporting the needs of the growing population. It is the biggest source of agricultural mortgage capital in the non-government sponsored space.
Price Performance
Shares of MetLife have lost 20.3% year to date compared with the industry’s decline of 16%.
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Zacks Rank & Key Picks
MetLife currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
Some better-ranked stocks from the Insurance - Multi line space are CNO Financial Group CNO, Goosehead Insurance GSHD and Old Republic International ORI. Each of these companies sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
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The Zacks Consensus Estimate for CNO’s 2023 earnings suggests an improvement of 15.5% from the year-ago reported figure, while the same for revenues indicates growth of 3.5%. The consensus mark for CNO’s 2023 earnings has moved 15.5% north in the past 30 days.
Goosehead Insurance’s bottom line outpaced estimates in two of the trailing four quarters and missed the other two. The average earnings surprise is 79.8%.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for GSHD’s 2023 earnings indicates a 67.3% rise from the prior-year reported figure, while the same for revenues suggests 26.6% growth.
The bottom line of Old Republic International outpaced the Zacks Consensus Estimate in three of the trailing four quarters, while it missed in one, the average surprise being 21.9%.
The consensus mark for ORI’s 2023 earnings has moved 7.3% north in the past 60 days.
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