Glen Messina
Analyst · KBW. Please go ahead, sir
Thank you, Hugo. Good morning and thank you for joining us. Today, I'll provide an update regarding our progress in executing our key business initiatives and plans to achieve profitability. I will also discuss the actions we are taking to address evolving market conditions and to reposition Ocwen to deliver value creation for our shareholders. Our CFO, June Campbell, will follow with a review of our second quarter 2019 financial results. I will then close the call with some brief remarks before opening it up for questions. Please turn to Slide 4. Since our last earnings call, we have continued to make substantial progress with respect to our key business initiatives to position the company for profitability. Our team is executing well, committed to delivering on the objective of our key initiatives and we’re energized by our accomplishments to-date and the opportunities ahead. We completed the boarding of approximately 1 million legacy Ocwen loans to the Black Knight MSP pipeline as well as the merger of Ocwen Loan Servicing and PHH Mortgage. We are tracking ahead of expectations for our cost re-engineering initiative, and have realized annualized run rate expense savings, excluding net MSR valuation adjustments and notable items, of $246 million in the second quarter of 2019 as compared to the second quarter of 2018 for the combined Ocwen and PHH. We closed on MSR acquisitions with approximately $11 billion in UPB through the second quarter and are rebuilding our MSR acquisition pipeline after a lull of market activity. We commenced origination through our correspondent forward lending channel and launched EquityIQ, our proprietary reverse mortgage product. We closed a committed $300 million MSR financing facility on July and borrowed an initial amount of $144 million. The facility provides us with the initial borrowing capacity to support our near-term MSR acquisition objectives. Since July 1, we have repurchased approximately $29.4 million of our second lien notes which we expect to result in a $3.7 million pre-tax gain in the third quarter and approximately $2.5 million in annualized expense savings. And lastly, we believe we are meeting all requirements of the conditional approval for the PHH acquisition and continue working to improve our regulatory relationships. As detailed on Slide 21, our actions to date have reduced the annualized pre-tax loss, excluding notable and amortization of NRZ lump sum cash payment by approximately $92 million from the combined Ocwen and PHH level of $322 million in the second quarter of 2018. Now please turn to Slide 5. Since the start of the year, we have seen significant changes in market conditions, including the 10-year treasury yield has dropped by approximately 75 basis points driving faster run-off in our interest rate sensitive MSR portfolio and along with other valuation assumptions, an unfavorable net fair value change of approximately $54 million. We experienced subservicing terminations of approximately $23 billion in UPB by legacy PHH clients due to the change in relationship resulting from our merger. Unlevered investment returns for larger MSR bulk acquisitions have drifted below our minimum target of 9%, and we are seeing returns for smaller to midsized portfolios at the low end of our target returns. We chose not to close a sizable bulk MSR acquisition we had been awarded as the reduction in interest rates resulted in investment returns that no longer met our minimum requirements. We are seeing increased forward lending refinancing opportunity, higher forward lending margins, increased reverse lending opportunity, lower funding cost and increased opportunities to exercise call rights. We are taking decisive action to address the evolving market conditions, including continuously aligning our cost structure to enable us to operate profitably at the MSR investment returns available in the market; making changes to people, processes and technology to improve our recapture performance; building a balanced approach to MSR sourcing to limit our dependency on the large bulk market and provide a macro hedge to help offset the effective interest rates on our servicing portfolio. Maintaining strict collateral quality standards on new MSR investments to limit the potential for future loss events; accessing more cost effective capital for MSR investment through structured financing alternatives and evaluating a MSR capital vehicle; and deploying capital opportunistically to enhance returns through early debt retirement and potential service our early call rights transactions. Based on current market conditions, we believe enough opportunities exist to source MSR volume that meets our return requirement through the combination of smaller MSR acquisitions for arrangements, corresponding lending and portfolio retention to replenish our servicing portfolio, excluding the UPB impact of subservicing client terminations. However, given the low volume of large bulk MSR acquisitions with attractive return profile, we now expect more gradual ramp up of MSR acquisition activity to achieve our portfolio replenishment objectives. To allow for the necessary adjustments to offset the impact of the current market environment, we have decided to extend the upper end of our time range for return to profitability on a pre-tax basis, excluding notable items and the impact of the amortization of NRZ lump sum payment by three months. As a result, we believe we can return to profitability in the next 7 to 13 months assuming there are no adverse changes to current market and industry conditions or legal and regulatory matters. I will now address our objectives for the company and provide a detailed update on each of the initiatives to transform and strengthen our business. Please turn to Slide 6. During the first half of 2019, we acquired MSR with the total UPB of approximately $11 billion. Following a lower market activity in the second quarter, we are rebuilding our MSR acquisition pipeline. In the second quarter, we also completed the build out of our forward correspondent lending platform and commenced originations. We have achieved our initial timeline, cost, compliance and risk management goals. We’ve concentrated on building an efficient, scalable platform that would deliver a consistent quality service experience for our clients. We are excited about the potential of this new channel and expect to ramp up volume in a disciplined manner consistent with our return and customer service objective. We expect this platform will provide a significant amount of our portfolio replenishment beginning in 2020. We also launched EquityIQ, our proprietary reverse mortgage product. We believe this product will offer meaningful value to borrowers through higher overall LPDs compared to existing proprietary offerings, eliminating FHA mortgage insurance to drive lower cost so borrowers can realize more proceeds for their use and loan amounts up to $4 million which allows borrowers with higher home values an opportunity to access equity above FHA limits. Considering the expectation for consistently low interest rates over the foreseeable future, we are taking several actions to improve customer experience and recapture rate in our portfolio retention platform. We have completed the integration of the legacy Ocwen and PHH operations, hired an entirely new leadership team, implemented new operating sales and pricing systems, changed our telephony platform and implemented new portfolio segmentation and targeting strategies. We’re evaluating sales underwriting and operating processes and the performance management framework for our frontline and management talent. We are committed to making portfolio recapture a core competency. We have seen and bid on several modest size RFPs for subservicing, mainly from banks and others who have been self servicing and concluded that servicing aging portfolios is more complicated and expensive than anticipated. Lead time for these opportunities tend to be longer. We continue to target unlevered returns on MSR acquisitions of at least 9% and we intend to remain disciplined in our capital allocation decisions to ensure we achieve an appropriate level of risk adjusted returns. Based on our recent experience in the bulk MSR market, we believe certain market participants are going to accept lower returns, assume substantially higher than market average recapture rates and assume collateral and legacy operating risks. We also believe that the market for GNMA MSRs continues to misprice the potential credit risk associated with this asset class. We expect to have greater bidding success and the potential to achieve our target returns with MSR portfolios into $1 billion to $3 billion UPB range, which likely means a more gradual ramp up of MSR acquisitions. We expect that the returns for smaller to midsized servicing portfolios will persist at the lower end of our investment requirements. We are anticipating a higher rate of ordinary portfolio run-off due to the reduction in market interest rates particularly relating to the 45% of our portfolio that is interest rate sensitive. The remainder of our portfolio is more credit sensitive in nature and less sensitive to changes in interest rates. We continue to experience legacy PHH subservicing client terminations resulting from clients taking the view that our merger resulted in a significant change in the historical subservicing relationship. Although these subservicing client terminations have a substantial impact on servicing UPB, they only have a modest impact on future servicing margins. While there are material differences in the capital requirements and economics for owned servicing versus subservicing, we estimate that the contribution margin for owned servicing is at least 4x that of subservicing assuming a stable delinquency environment and owned MSR returns of at least 9%. Therefore, we believe the loss margin from our subservicing client terminations and the run-off of our NRZ portfolios can be largely offset to investing roughly one quarter of the loss of servicing UPB in relatively more profitable owned MSRs, line driven expense reductions and/or other investment actions. We also believe there are sufficient opportunities for us to replenish the portfolio excluding the UPB impact of subservicing client terminations through our flow MSR channels complemented by both MSR acquisitions. In the long term, we are targeting approximately 50% of our total servicing portfolio in owned servicing, excluding any potential impact on mix from the implementation of MSR capital vehicle. This shift in servicing composition is expected to have a positive impact on our future profitability while providing the additional benefits of revenue diversification. We are taking a balanced approach to MSR sourcing, including correspondent lending, flow MSR purchase agreements and portfolio recapture to complement bulk acquisitions. We believe these actions are necessary to enable a more sustainable source of MSRs to meet our return and replenishment requirements and to have a natural offset to the run-off and earnings impact of interest rate changes on our servicing portfolio. In addition, we intend to evaluate M&A opportunities for origination channel growth if they become available as a potential way to enhance and complement our organic growth initiatives in the lending channel. Lastly, due to the decline in interest rates, we are seeing attractive alternative investment opportunities such as exercising call rights on loans and our private loan servicing portfolio which we intend to pursue. As of June 30, we controlled call rights to approximately $21 billion of mortgage collateral of which approximately $8 billion is currently callable. Based on various factors, especially interest rates and delinquency rates in the underlying yields, we believe that less than 20% of the callable population currently has sufficient economic value to execute. Please turn to Slide 7. On July 1, we closed a $300 million committed MSR funding facility that provides borrowing capacity against agency MSRs at a 60% advance rate. At closing, we borrowed an initial amount of $144 million under the facility collateralized by existing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac MSRs. We expect to have the ability to borrow up to an additional $80 million under the facility against Ginnie Mae MSRs at the same 60% advance rate subject to the receipt of an acknowledgment agreement. As a result of closing this facility our liquidity position has been strengthened and we’ve enhanced our near-term financial flexibility. We believe our stronger liquidity position should be a positive factor in our eventual efforts to refinance our senior secured term loan due December 2020. As previously indicated, we view the closing of the MSR facility as an initial step in a more diversified funding strategy for owned MSRs. The facility is expected to provide the primary funding vehicle until we can achieve a sufficiently large owned MSR portfolio to transition to term ABS issuance complemented by a bank funded variable funding note. We believe this approach should provide us with certain benefits including longer tenor, higher advance rates, lower funding costs and diversification of funding source. The timing of this next phase of our owned MSR financing strategy will be dependent on the growth in our owned MSR portfolio. As part of our disciplined approach to capital allocation, we repurchased $29.4 million of our 8.375% second lien notes due in 2022 during the early part of July. We believe this was a prudent use of capital due to the level and certainty of available returns as well as the positive impact on our leverage and debt service costs. We are continuously evaluating opportunities to lower our cost of capital and optimize our capital structure. We are currently evaluating alternatives for MSR capital vehicle that could provide us with the ability to grow our servicing UPB with significantly lower capital requirements compared to MSR acquisitions. We’re excited about the prospect of having a new source to fund our growth and support our financial objectives. The next phase of our agency MSR financing strategy and the MSR capital vehicle will be an area of focus over the next 6 to 12 months. Please turn to Slide 8. We completed the system conversion from the old servicing to MSP in early June. In total, approximately 1 million loans were transferred to MSP as part of our multi-phased process. We are now in a strong position to realize significant cost and operational benefits during the second half of 2019 and into 2020. We also completed the merger of our two primary licensed legal entities on June 1. We now have a more simplified legal entity structure that should facilitate the elimination of duplicative licensing and regulatory activities and other legal entity related support cost. Throughout the integration we have remained focused on operating excellence and compliance as key components of our strategy as well as the foundation for minimizing the liquidity needs of the business and preserving long-run assets and franchise value. We have and continue to monitor multiple dimensions of our operating performance to ensure our integration activities and general operations are performing as expected. Please turn to Slide 9. We are highly focused on executing actions to achieve a competitive cost structure that allows us to operate profitably at market MSR return levels and our portfolio composition profile. Our cost reduction initiatives consist of three categories of actions; integration-related cost re-engineering including merger synergies with annual expense saving targets of at least $340 million relative to our second quarter 2018 baseline that we’ve previously outlined based on certain lending volume and assuming MSR UPB of at least $260 billion. Ongoing expense reductions based on expectations for lending volume and the size of our MSR portfolio; continuous cost re-engineering based on innovation, digitization and other technology-enabled productivity enhancements. Our team is demonstrating strong execution and we’re now running ahead of our expectations for cost reductions at this stage of our efforts. At this time, we continue to target at least $300 million as annualized run rate cost re-engineering savings by the fourth quarter and at least an additional $40 million by the second quarter of 2020. These cost savings exclude net MSR valuation adjustments and notable items and are measured against our baseline second quarter 2018 annualized total adjusted expenses for the combined Ocwen and PHH. We are in the process of carefully evaluating our progress to make any upward adjustments to our cost reduction target. Our targeted cost re-engineering spent savings are based on certain assumptions of lending volume and MSR portfolio size. Therefore, we would expect our cost re-engineering efforts to be complemented by volume-driven cost adjustments if actual volumes differ materially from our original expectations. We estimate incurring approximately $65 million of upfront cost to execute our re-engineering actions in 2019. Through the end of the second quarter, we have incurred $32 million of this amount with $24 million resulting from employee-related expense. Based on what we are learning as we execute our cost re-engineering actions, we believe we have meaningful opportunities for additional benefits from re-engineering and process innovation. We’re commencing our second phase of business re-engineering focused on continuous improvement in speed, cost, compliance and customer experience. Every function is engaged in its initiative with committed resources who are supported by centers of excellence in lien process design, strategic sourcing, global operations optimization and automation. Our global team is experienced, engaged, energized and committed to our long-term success. We believe our global operations are a distinct competitive advantage in achieving our cost, operating and technology objectives. We believe further automation opportunities exist by optimizing the capabilities of our new core operating system and through the application of robotics, optical character recognition, machine learning and digital workforce. Now that we have completed loan boarding and are fully operating in the MSP environment, we can apply lien processing [ph] to simplify business processes and strategically refine our vendor usage. Please turn to Slide 10. Our fifth initiative is to fulfill regulatory commitments and resolve remaining legacy matters. We continue to proactively engage our reg leaders on a consistent and frequent basis and track our progress as it relates to regulatory commitments. The completion of the servicing system conversion to MSP was another positive step in meeting our regulatory commitments. This was one of the requirements under most of our settlements of the April 2017 regulatory matters and a requirement from the states of New York and Massachusetts for the removal of the remaining restrictions on servicing portfolio growth for loans in their respective states. The next step and final step with respect to New York is to demonstrate to the satisfaction of the New York Department of Financial Services that all loan serviced on the REALServicing system have been successfully migrated to the MSP system and that we have developed a satisfactory compliance, risk management and internal control infrastructure to onboard sizable portfolios of MSRs. With respect to Massachusetts, the MSR growth restrictions will be lifted when we complete the second phase of a three-phased data integrity audit which will be conducted by an independent third party. Although the restrictions in New York and Massachusetts have not been a constrained to date on our ability to acquire MSRs at our minimum investment return target, we are working with the respective state regulators to satisfy their requirements. We continue to believe we have meritorious defenses in the CFFB and Florida matters and we are vigorously defending ourselves. We have no updates currently with respect to these matters. I will now turn it over to June who will discuss the results for the quarter.