Although Umpqua (UMPQ) remains one of my favorite mid-cap banks, there's no question that the company's performance since my last write-up has been poor, with the shares down about 11% and trailing its regional peer group by about 15% to 20%. That's definitely not the performance you should expect from a good bank, but I see a disconnect here - even though Umpqua has been hit hard on much weaker than expected spread margins, the pre-provision operating performance hasn't been that bad.
I've reduced my near-term earnings expectations fairly substantially as the year