REITRider

Newcastle, RAIT Financial: The Long Case for REITs

Devil, you should listen to the conference call - they explain the negative book value. The GAAP book value only reflets market value changes for securities and derivative and does not mark their loan investments or debt. Because of dramatic spread widening in the quartrer, the GAAP book value was negative. However, the number in no way represents the the company's true economic book value. A beter metric to use is the adjusted book value, which for Newcastle comes out to $16.23 and is equivilent to FAS 159.

I hope this answers your question...