Washington Mutual to cut 2,500 jobs

A day after it announced that its earnings dropped by about 50 percent, Washington Mutual Inc. said it will cut 2,500 jobs and close operations across the country as it tries to improve its struggling mortgage business.

The Seattle-based banking company said Thursday it plans to eliminate about 1,840 jobs as it closes approximately 100 retail lending and loan processing offices. None of those offices is in Washington or Idaho, the company said. The rest of the jobs will be eliminated when the company closes a mortgage loan processing facility in San Antonio.

The company said it expects to close most of the offices by the end of September, and the job cuts should be completed by the end of the year. Office closures are expected in Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennesse, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

The cuts come as WaMu tries to boost its once-thriving mortgage business. The company said Thursday it wanted to “sharpen the focus of its retail mortgage lending channel.”

“We are going to focus even more attention on the high-growth markets where we can gain additional leverage from the company’s overall branding efforts,” said Tony Meola, executive vice president of WaMu’s home loan division.

The announcement came a day after the company said earnings had fallen sharply in the second quarter, due in large part to a drop in home mortgage loan income. The company reported earnings of $489 million, or 55 cents per share, for the three months ended June 30. That compares with earnings of nearly $1.02 billion, or $1.09 per share, in the same period a year earlier.

A trio of other Northwest companies reported earnings Thursday. They include:

• Microsoft Corp., whose earnings rose nearly 82 percent in its fiscal fourth quarter, helped slightly by a tax benefit. The Redmond, Wash.-based software maker also raised revenue expectations slightly for the coming fiscal year. But the latest quarter’s results were short of analysts’ expectations and the stock fell.

Earnings for the three months ended June 30 were $2.69 billion or 25 cents per share, up from $1.48 billion or 14 cents per share in the same period a year earlier. The most recent earnings included a $208 million tax benefit.

Revenue grew 15 percent to $9.29 billion, up from nearly $8.07 billion a year earlier.

Microsoft — which disclosed Thursday that its cash reserves now stand at $60.59 billion — said earlier this week that it plans to pay a one-time dividend of $3 per share, at a cost of $32 billion, as part of plans to return a substantial chunk of that cash hoard back to shareholders. It also doubled its annual dividend and announced plans for a massive stock buyback over the next four years.

Analysts polled by Thomson First Call had been expecting quarterly earnings of 29 cents per share, on revenue of around $9 billion. Including two one-time items, Microsoft came in one penny below expectations.

• Amazon.com Inc. swung to a $76.4 million profit in the second quarter as revenue leaped 26 percent, prodded by the Internet retailer’s offer of free shipping.

Amazon’s earnings in the quarter ended June 30 amounted to 18 cents per share — a penny below analysts’ projection of 19 cents, according to Thomson First Call. In the comparable quarter last year, Amazon lost $43.3 million, 11 cents per share.

Revenue in the quarter was $1.39 billion, up from $1.10 billion a year ago.

“While free shipping is expensive for the company, it saves our customers tens of millions of dollars each quarter, and we plan to keep it in place indefinitely,” Amazon chief Jeff Bezos said in a news release Thursday.

The revenue figures also fell short of Wall Street forecasts, which called for sales of $1.44 billion.

• Alaska Air Group Inc. fell to a loss in its second quarter, hurt by charges and the drying up of government aid.

The Seattle-based parent of Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air Industries Thursday posted a loss of $1.7 million, or 6 cents a share, for the latest period, compared with profit of $45.2 million, or $1.70 cents a share, in the same quarter a year ago.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call were expecting a loss of 7 cents a share.

However, the latest results included impairment charges of $24.7 million, or 92 cents a share, mostly for a decision to accelerate the retirement of the company’s Boeing 737-200C fleet.