While its formal earnings report won’t be available until next week, mortgage insurer the PMI Group, Inc. said earlier this week that its U.S. mortgage insurance operations lost $236 million during the fourth quarter of 2007, compared to earning of $77.2 million in the year-ago period. The fourth quarter loss pushed PMI into the red for the full year, with the company recording a net loss of $190.8 million for all of 2007. PMI said that losses and loss adjustments likely totalled $1.1 billion, although formal consolidated earnings are pending, based on the company’s interest in troubled bond guarantor FGIC Corp. PMI had postponed its earnings report while waiting on the fourth quarter financials from FGIC, which PMI partly owns. PMI has said it expects to report a “signficant net loss” from FGIC, and that it will no longer provide additional capital to the company. “Our preliminary fourth quarter results for our U.S. Mortgage Insurance and International Operations demonstrate that we are facing challenging market conditions, particularly in the U.S. housing market,” PMI chairman and CEO Steve Smith. “We have implemented a plan to address these challenges, which we will discuss in detail on our conference call next week.” For more information, visit http://www.pmigroup.com.

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