Plaza Home Mortgage Corp. Shares Soar on Speculation

Plaza Home Mortgage Corp., the Santa Ana lender, saw its stock price jump more than 23% on Thursday on market speculation about further consolidation in the mortgage industry.

Plaza’s stock gained $1.56 a share to close at $8.19 in Thursday’s Nasdaq trading. “There is some broad-based speculation on consolidation in the industry in general,” said Andrew Jeffrey, an analyst with the investment bank Mabon Securities in San Francisco. “Plaza just caught fire today. It’s not a surprise.”

The consolidation speculation is being sparked by New York-based Chemical Bank Corp.’s May 12 purchase of Margaretten Financial Corp., a large New Jersey-based mortgage lender, Jeffrey said. Margaretten, with 89 offices in 25 states, is one of several mortgage companies that have been purchased this year by banking companies.

Plaza, with 39 offices in 13 states, recently reported that its April loan originations totaled $397 million, compared to originations of $730 million for the same month last year. For the first four months of 1994, however, the company originated $2 billion in loans, an increase from $1.85 billion for the same period last year.

Plaza officials would not comment Thursday on the movement of the company’s stock prices.