Earnings Labs

Altisource Portfolio Solutions S.A. (ASPS)

Q3 2013 Earnings Call· Thu, Oct 24, 2013

$6.66

+6.22%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Altisource Portfolio Solutions Second Quarter Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, today’s program is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's program, Michelle Esterman, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Michelle Esterman

Analyst

Thank you, operator. We first want to remind you that the earnings release, Form 10-Q and quarterly slides are available on our website at www.altisource.com. These provide additional information investors may find useful. Our presentation today contains forward-looking statements made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the federal securities law. Statements in this conference call and in our press release issued earlier today which are other than historical fact are forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause actual results to differ materially are discussed in our earnings release as well as our public filings. The company disclaims any intent or obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, regardless of whether new information becomes available, future developments occur or otherwise. Joining me today for today's call are Bill Erbey, our Chairman; and Bill Shepro, our Chief Executive Officer. I would now like to turn the call over to Bill Erbey.

William Erbey

Analyst

Thank you, Michelle. Good morning and thank you for joining today’s call. This past August marks our fourth anniversary as a standalone public company. During this four year period, we have had strong growth and created tremendous shareholder value. Our cumulous annual service revenue growth has been 34%, earnings per share growth has been 52% and as you can see on Slide 4, our stock price has increased by 11 times since our separation from Ocwen. If you include the current stock prices at Altisource Residential and Altisource Asset Management, the two companies we distributed to our shareholders last December, our combined stock price has grown to $200 or by 16 times since we separated. This morning I’ll discuss our evolving vision for Altisource and how our acquisition of Equator supports this vision. Michelle will discuss our financial results for the quarter and Bill will describe our third quarter operations, growth initiatives and Equator acquisition in greater detail. For the last four years, many of defined Altisource by the default related service as we provide our customers principally Ocwen. Our affinity to the relationship with Ocwen provided a foundation on which we built our business and remains an important priority for us. Altisource’s vision however has evolved to become the premier provider of real estate and mortgage market places offering both distribution and content. The Equator acquisition with this market place and real estate in servicing transaction solutions is in line with this vision and accelerates our evolution and growth. As you can see on Slide 5, we’re acquiring Equator for $70 million of initial consideration and up to $80 in additional consideration contingent upon achieving future earnings target. We’re using cash to pay for the acquisition making it a highly accretive transaction. Even if we use stock to pay…

Michelle Esterman

Analyst

Thank you, Bill. This morning, we reported third quarter 2013 service revenue of $180.4 million, net income attributable to shareholders of $36 million and diluted earnings per share of $1.42. Slides 9 through 11 provide highlights of our results for the current quarter compared to the prior period. We're very pleased with operating results, given the partial benefit the Mortgage and Technology Services segment received from Ocwen's acquisition of the ResCap servicing platform and the excess staff we're carrying in the Mortgage Services segment to support the expected additional loan boarding on REALServicing through the second quarter of 2014. Service revenue increased 12% from the second quarter of 2013, primarily due to Ocwen's Homeward and ResCap acquisitions, along with the expansion of the Financial Services, Customer Relationship Management business due to new customer acquisitions and existing customer growth. As you can see on Slide 16, service revenue per delinquent loan for non-GSE loans, a key driver of our default-related services revenue, increased from $371 in the second quarter of 2013 to $395 in the third quarter of 2013. The increase was driven by the heightened volume of our lower margin property inspection and preservation referrals on the Homeward and ResCap portfolios. Net income attributable to shareholders in the third quarter of 2013 was 16% higher than the second quarter of 2013, primarily from revenue growth, partially offset by higher interest expense from the additional $200 million of debt obtained in May of this year. Our third quarter of 2013 gross profit as a percentage of service revenue of 42% is consistent with the same period in 2012 and declined from 43% in the second quarter of 2013. The lower third quarter gross margin relates to lower margin – I’m sorry lower mortgage services margins primarily from revenue mix. This was…

William Erbey

Analyst

Thanks, Michelle. This morning I’ll discuss our third quarter operations and margin expansion plan, the progress we’re making on our growth initiatives and the Equator acquisition. Operationally, the third quarter was strong, achieving record service revenue and earnings per share while focusing on loan boardings and efficiency initiatives. Throughout the quarter we supported Ocwen as they boarded approximately 400,000 loans to REALServicing. With regard to margins, we remain largely on plan to increase margins in our default-related services business by 7 percentage points over 2012, even after amortizing intangible assets associated with the Homeward and ResCap transactions. Given the modest delay in some of the loan boardings to REALServicing, we now believe that we’ll achieve this margin improvement in the first quarter of 2014. As part of our margin improvement plan, we are focused on revenue growth, employee efficiency, reducing the cost of outside goods and services and bringing certain services provided by vendors in-house at a lower total cost. Turning to our growth initiatives, we have outlined our marketplaces and transaction solution initiatives on Slide 13. We are making good progress on all of these. This morning [indiscernible] three, one, deploying Hubzu to other institutions and the non-distress home sales market; two, providing asset management services to the single family rental market and three, growing our origination related services. Beginning with Hubzu, with over 23,000 homes sold in the last 12 months and over $60 million of service revenue generated from these sales, Hubzu has established a solid footing as an online marketplace to sell real estate. However, with over five million homes sold in the U.S. during the same time period, there are significant room growth. We have two primary areas of focus. First is to generate more revenue per home sale transaction on Hubzu and second is…

Operator

Operator

Certainly. (Operator Instructions) Now our first question comes from the line of Mike Grondahl from Piper Jaffray, your question please. Mike Grondahl – Piper Jaffray: Yeah, thanks guys and congratulations on the progress. First off, could you talk about the short sale initiative you had with Ocwen and how that has progressed?

Bill Shepro

Analyst

Yeah, sure Mike, this is Bill. Yeah, we’re making good progress there. I think we have over about 250 homes. We’re in the process of coordinating the short sale. We have a long way to go to get where we want to be, but it’s a good start to a couple of months into it. Mike Grondahl – Piper Jaffray: Okay. And I did read in the 10-Q this morning, you make this statement that you’re fully staffed for the volume of loans that are going to be boarded, I mean does that essentially mean you don’t need a single person as -- I mean the boarding’s are significant, I mean it’s $1 million to a $1.5 loans.

Bill Shepro

Analyst

Yeah, Mike, I mean, we have some open positions at our mortgage services segment related to origination and there are some positions, but not many related to the default related services. In fact we’re very focused efficiency initiatives to continue to be able to further scale the business. Mike Grondahl – Piper Jaffray: Okay. And then just lastly, the unit sales at Hubzu was down a little bit, any reason for that or what would you attribute it to?

Bill Shepro

Analyst

Yeah, Mike. Historically we’ve primarily been selling Ocwen’s REO assets, so it's just the function of the inventory we’re receiving from Ocwen and our performance has been the same or improving in terms of our turn times and timelines on those assets. As we focus now a lot more on getting the other client’s business and the direct to broker operation off the ground, we hope to see that growth or we would expect to see that growth. In addition with Ocwen’s acquisition of the new portfolios, overtime we’ll be getting all those REO referrals as well. Mike Grondahl – Piper Jaffray: Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of [indiscernible] from Compass Point, your question please.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Hey, guys. On mortgage services segment margin, I just wanted to make sure I understand. So mortgage services overall came in at 33% something like that in the third quarter and sort of at the end of 2012 or October 2012 was about 40%. So you still think that’s by the first quarter of 2014, getting back to sort of a 45% plus run rate?

Michelle Esterman

Analyst

That’s right, that’s right. I think what we’ve talked about is a 7% margin improvement over 2012.

Bill Shepro

Analyst

And it’s where the default related business is, but the majority of that segment is --

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

That's default. Right. Okay, great. Thanks.

Michelle D. Esterman

Analyst

And what you’ve seen in that business is, I mentioned is a much higher volume of lower margin property inspection and preservation orders from -- you initially get those with boarding of portfolio.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Great, thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) And we have a follow up question from the line of Mike Grondahl from Piper Jaffray, your question please. Mike Grondahl – Piper Jaffray: Yeah. Just a follow up on Hubzu, the two customers you’ve signed in the five [ph] you’re in discussion with, when would you think some of their volume flows over Bill?

Bill Shepro

Analyst

Yeah. So Mike, we’ve already started getting volume from those two customers. I don’t think we’ve sold any of the assets yet. We’re still working through the initial premarketing work with them and we feel pretty good that we’re sign up additional customers. We’re in active contract negotiations in some cases and in other cases we’re going through the vendor management process before we negotiate the contract, but we feel good about it. Mike Grondahl – Piper Jaffray: Okay. And then in terms of the non-distressed opportunity for Hubzu, I mean it looks like you’re clearly getting the listings there. Any comment on how actual sales are going or do we kind of got to wait another quarter there?

Bill Shepro

Analyst

Yeah, right now what we’re doing is, working very closely with some brokerage firms that are willing to partner up with us to make sure the experience is really good, Mike. And then we’re also very focused on improving the conversation rate, basically those that are listed on the site actually getting them under contracting closed. Today that’s a pretty low number, but we’re actively working on improving it with the brokerage firms that are partnering with us. It’s a start-up business and it’s going to take some time and there’s some, just groin pains we’re going through, but we still feel really good about it. Mike Grondahl – Piper Jaffray: Okay. Lastly just the financial services business had a nice sequential improvement and kind of a huge year-over-year improvement, is that still the second lean charge-off businesses, is that primarily responsible there and how do we think about that going forward?

Bill Shepro

Analyst

Yeah. So I think you saw a growth both in the charge off business and in the inside of accounts receivable management as well as the customer relationship management business where we signed two new customers this year and going forward we still expect -- the fourth quarter seasonally is a slower quarter for the charge off business, but going into next year we still see growth in those businesses, in the financial services businesses over this year. Mike Grondahl – Piper Jaffray: Okay. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This does conclude the question-and-answer session of today’s program. I'd like to hand the program back to Michelle Esterman.

Michelle Esterman

Analyst

Thank you for joining today’s call. Have a great day.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen for your participation in today’s conference. This does conclude the program. You man now disconnect. Good day.