Newtek Hosted Uncommon Investor Call Yesterday

Newtek Business Services Corp. (NASDAQ: NEWT) CEO Barry Sloane held a conference call at 8:30 a.m. EST yesterday morning to address investors.

“This is somewhat of an unorthodox call, the day after Christmas,” Sloane said. “But given a lot of the events in the market with tremendous market nervousness, I wanted to speak to as many investors as I could.”

The call largely served to mollify concern about the continued drop in the Newtek stock price over the last month and into the holiday weekend. On November 28, the Newtek stock was $21.72 and on December 24 it was $16.04. This drop was largely in line with the rest of the stock market which experienced historic lows on Christmas Eve.

Sloane explained to deBanked that Newtek had, up until recently, been part of the KBW High Dividend Yield Financial ETF index. But on December 14, the index announced they would rebalance and sell holdings of Newtek. Sloane said that this announcement created selling pressure which drove the price of Newtek down to $15.68 at the close of the day on December 21. But the stock has subsequently rallied to a high of $17.81 today, despite the fact that the rest of the market has not, Sloane noted.

“We had a fantastic year,” Sloane said of Newtek on yesterday’s call, based on the first nine months of 2018. “We primarily invest in small to middle market type companies that are very stable…we feel very good about our business model [and] we’re the same company we were 45 days ago.”

Sloane also said yesterday that he believes Newtek will report stable credit from the third quarter going into the fourth quarter.

Todd Stone was a reporter for deBanked.