William Charles Erbey
Analyst · Mr
Thank you, John. Good morning, and thank you for joining today's call. This morning, I would like to first review the key characteristics that make Ocwen a unique company, including our best-in-class operations, strong cash flow and ability to grow without dilution. And second, discuss our current outlook for growth and why we're excited about Ocwen's prospects, especially as the economy improves. Third, I'd like to discuss why we believe that conservative accounting and value not in our balance sheet may obscure Ocwen's relative worth. After my comments, Ron will discuss the regulatory environment, review our recent financial results, and provide an update on our operations, including acquisition integration. And finally, John will provide an additional detail on our second quarter results and liquidity position. Let me begin by reviewing what makes Ocwen uniquely successful in the mortgage servicing space. First, Ocwen enjoys substantive and sustainable competitive advantages within the servicing business, both in terms of cost and performance. As shown on Slide 4, Ocwen's cost to service nonperforming loans is 70% lower than the industry average. Moreover, the design of our systems and platform allow us to manufacture new capacity more efficiently and effectively than other servicers. We can take people with strong empathy, language skills and intelligence and have them producing as world-class home retention counselors within 90 days. Slide 5 shows the results of our ability to scale our platform. Ocwen has a superior track record of successfully boarding large new servicing portfolios and substantially lowering delinquencies and advances. Our ability to lower delinquency further enhances our operating cost advantage in 2 ways. As delinquencies fall, so do advances and interest expense on related financing. Secondly, as delinquent loans are more expensive to service than nondelinquent loans, further reducing delinquencies lowers our operating expense and improves our margins. Another unique feature of Ocwen is that we generate strong operating cash flows that exceed earnings, as shown on Slide 6. This is a function both of our solid operating performance and conservative accounting policies that tend to understate our earnings compared to other servicers. Slide 7 shows some areas where we differ from our peers on accounting policies. I will elaborate on some of these later. Lastly, our balance sheet and access to capital provide ample resources to acquire new assets without earnings dilution. We closed 2 very large transactions and we've announced a third to close within a period of less than 12 months and we have only issued a small amount of new equity as part of the Homeward purchase, because the seller wanted to invest with us, not because we needed additional equity. As our portfolio continues to grow, we expect further growth in excess cash flow. We intend to deploy excess cash in the following order of priority: First, to support the growth of our core servicing business; second, to expand in a similar or complementary businesses, as shown on Slide 11, to meet our return on capital requirements and where we can develop a competitive advantage utilizing our core strengths; and third, repurchase shares. John will provide more information on potential share repurchase later in the presentation. Now, let's turn to our current outlook on growth. We believe that the improving economy and changes in the regulatory environment bode very well for Ocwen's performance and future ability to acquire assets. The stronger economic environment we are entering should lower delinquencies and slow prepayments, as described on Slide 8. Sustained home price appreciation, along with higher mortgage rates, is almost the best case scenario for earnings. To provide a better understanding of what happens to repayments on a non-prime portfolio as delinquencies fall, see Slide 9. We show the historical drivers of prepayments on non-prime mortgages. Note that voluntary payoffs have historically been in the low single digits. Delinquencies have accounted for most of Ocwen's non-prime CPR. This is because despite the lowest mortgage rates in generations, most non-prime borrowers have little ability or incentive to finance -- refinance. More than half of our non-prime borrowers have had their loans modified and their interest rates are typically around 3%. Even borrowers with an incentive to refinance have little ability, as they cannot qualify for a new mortgage. So it is likely, in our estimation, that were delinquencies to go down substantially, then non-prime CPRs could fall to single-digit levels. Before I talk about how we view our prospects for adding new assets, it's worth noting on Slide 10 that Ocwen has a solid history over an extended period of time of adding new business. For over 10 years, every time Ocwen has executed a large transaction, some industry observers have speculated that it will be our last and that we will just be a melting ice cube. This is like being one of the few businesses that has a predictable, recurring revenue stream extending at least a decade. So let's talk about our growth model that we've laid out on Slide 11. At the end of June, our servicing portfolio was $436 billion. In addition, we've announced or expect to close on at least another $90 billion in new MSRs or subservicing rights in the second half of this year. More importantly, we continue to see a sizable pipeline of potential opportunities. We currently have a pipeline of $400 billion, which is up from last quarter, despite eliminating the deals we recently won. Note that the actual volume of deals we are pursuing is much larger. Our pipeline reflects a realistic assessment of what we believe will come to market and what we believe we can potentially win. Moreover, we continue to believe the overall size of the opportunity is at least $1 trillion over the next 2 to 3 years. The opportunity set includes both large and small transactions. The mix is still tilted toward MSR acquisitions, but we will continue to grow our subservicing portfolio as well. We're seeing strong indications that large and small banks are accelerating their plans to reposition their mortgage servicing portfolios and shed legacy assets. Banks continue to look to sell off or subservice non-core servicing assets. Later, Ron will provide some additional detail regarding our pipeline. As the largest non-prime servicer, we believe trends that support a greater participation by private capital in the mortgage industry are very good for our business. Several recent developments suggest that the longer-term development of a private mortgage market may emerge even more rapidly than we had assumed. On the GSE front, there now appears to be a greater probability of GSE reform, with an emerging bipartisan consensus to shift more of the prime space to private capital. Bipartisan FHA reform appears likely to shrink the volume of Ginnie Maes and support use of special servicers. The administration is supporting a substantial guarantee -- a substantial guarantee fee increases at Freddie and Fannie. And this, along with our pilot to sell off mortgage credit risk, will provide a greater opportunity over the near-term for private capital to reenter the market. The bipartisan Corker-Warner Bill has developed an apparent opening to move forward long-delayed actions on the GSEs. We believe the likely outcome of any legislative changes is a greater role for private market capital and that presents opportunities for Ocwen to expand further in the prime servicing space. We've also been making progress in our efforts to lay off the risk and reduce the cost associated with funding prime MSRs. We expect that this will lower the risk on our balance sheet and improve our competitiveness in the prime servicing business. We hope to announce more on this very soon. HLSS and our efforts to sell off prime higher risk, represent an important part of Ocwen's strategy. Ocwen's focus is on managing operating risk and selectively, credit risk. Long-term, we prefer to distribute interest rate risk to investors focused on managing such risks. We've also seen increase in interest and expanding the credit parameters of the mortgage market, with new investors looking at various products that are currently not available. As we discussed on prior calls, the demand for non-prime mortgages is at an all-time high. With rates and home prices rising, it's not surprising that a variety of existing lenders and new entrants are exploring ways to prudently meet the demand. So far, the amount entering the market are very small. But as we have said, we expect the non-prime market to emerge slowly over the next 3 to 5 years. As the largest servicer of non-prime assets, we see this market as a sizable long-term opportunity for Ocwen to continue to acquire new mortgage servicing assets. As I have also previously mentioned, we've invested in adjacent spaces, such as reverse mortgage and we're considering other business lines to augment our growth. The competitive advantages we enjoy in non-prime servicing are highly transferable to other adjacent industries, which we believe provide attractive growth opportunities. Finally, let me address our balance sheet, which is substantially under-levered relative to our peers, as shown on Slide 12. Our balance sheet is even stronger than it appears, based on our conservative accounting principles. There are several points I have made on my previous calls. First, with the exception of a small percentage, Ocwen carries its MSRs at lower of cost or market or LOCOM, rather than at fair market value. As a result, Ocwen will never show an earnings write-up on about 95% of the owned MSR portfolio. Instead, we amortize these MSRs. Actually, we've been amortizing our non-prime MSRs at a rate of 18%, which is above actual CPRs of 12% to 15%, creating excess value not shown on our earnings or on our balance sheet. As of June 30, 2013, the fair value of our MSRs exceeds the carrying value by $637 million, as shown on Slide 13. Fair market value is estimated using average industry cost to service that are more than 3x higher than Ocwen's costs on nonperforming loans. If we were to use actual servicing cost, ignoring our resolution performance advantage, our MSR value would be another $832 million higher. Combined, there is almost $1.5 billion of value not reflected in the book value of our MSRs. Second, Ocwen only recognizes servicing fees as collected rather than accruing delinquent servicing fees. At the end of the second quarter of 2013, Ocwen had over $511.8 million in delinquent servicing fees that, unlike many servicers, have not been recognized as revenue and therefore, are not on our balance sheet. And third, with respect to acquired advances, we believe our accounting policies are conservative and that they do not pull earnings forward. For example, when we purchase advances at a discount, say, at 95% of face value, we do not book the discount into earnings as those advances are collected and then put new advances on the books at 100% of face value. So these top performing servicers typically resolve 60% of advances in the first year, this practice accelerates earnings into the first year following an acquisition. If Ocwen had paid exactly the same overall price for Homeward, ResCap and OneWest, but acquired the advances at a discount while paying more for the MSRs, we could accelerate approximately $150 million of additional after-tax earnings in this manner, in the 12 months following the acquisitions. Rather, to the extent we acquired advances at a discount, we amortize the earnings over the life of the MSRs. For all of the above reasons, our cash flow exceeds earnings. And over time, deferred earnings should appear as net income. Moreover, Ocwen's debt-to-equity level is overstated relative to peers that mark MSRs to market before deferred servicing fees and recognize advance recoveries. I'll now turn the call over to Ron to talk more about the regulatory environment and our operational performance, including an update on integration of recent acquisitions. Ron?