Onity Group Inc. (ONIT) Q1 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Hello, and welcome, everyone, joining today's Onity Group's First Quarter Earnings and Business Update Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this call is being recorded, and we are standing by if you should need any assistance. It is now my pleasure to turn the meeting over to Valerie Haertel, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to Onity Group's first quarter 2026 earnings call. Please note that our earnings release and presentation are available on our website at onitygroup.com. Speaking on the call will be Chair, President, and Chief Executive Officer, Glen Messina; and Chief Financial Officer, Sean O'Neil. As a reminder, our comments today may contain forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the federal securities laws. These statements may be identified by reference to a future period or by use of forward-looking terminology and address matters that are uncertain. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made and involve assumptions, risks, and uncertainties, including those described in our SEC filings. In the past, actual results have differed materially from those suggested by forward-looking statements, and this may happen again. In addition, the presentation and our comments contain references to non-GAAP financial measures, such as adjusted pretax income. We believe these non-GAAP measures provide a useful supplement to discussions and analysis of our financial condition because they are measures that management uses to assess the performance of our operations and allocate resources. Non-GAAP measures should be viewed in addition to and not as an alternative for the company's reported GAAP results. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures and management's reasons for including them may be found in the press release and the appendix to the investor presentation. Now I will turn the call over to Glen Messina.

Thanks, Valerie. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call. We're looking forward to sharing our results for the first quarter, as well as reviewing our strategy and financial objectives to deliver long-term value for our shareholders. Let's get started on Slide 3. In the first quarter, we delivered double-digit year-over-year growth in adjusted revenue, origination volume, subservicing additions, and total servicing UPB. Our balanced business performed well in the face of record prepayments with origination profitability partially offsetting higher MSR runoff in servicing. First quarter results were impacted by heightened interest rate and financial market volatility, higher-than-expected refinancing activity, and increased FHA late-stage delinquencies driven by recent changes to the FHA loan modification rules. We are taking decisive actions to address these items while continuing to execute on our growth initiatives and the fundamentals of our balanced business model, which has proven resilient over the long term. As a result of discussions with Ginnie Mae, we've revised our recent proposed strategic partnership with Finance of America Reverse and resubmitted the transaction for approval. Finally, considering ongoing market volatility due to geopolitical events, we are revising our full year 2026 adjusted ROE guidance to 10% to 15%. Let's turn to Slide 4 to review a few key financial highlights. We increased revenue double-digit year-over-year, reflecting strong growth in origination volume, subservicing additions, and total servicing UPB. Elevated refinancing activity, driven by lower interest rates and higher-than-expected consumer refinancing response, helped Consumer Direct increase origination volume by nearly 4x over the first quarter of last year. Net income attributable to common shareholders for the first quarter was $7 million, or $0.74 per share diluted, down from $21 million last year. Similarly, our adjusted pretax loss of $6 million was below prior year and last quarter adjusted pretax income levels as origination income only partially offset higher MSR runoff. While origination adjusted pretax income of $34 million was up 3.5x over prior year, it included the impact of both market volatility effects on origination pipeline hedging and loan sales performance and capacity limits due to the elevated consumer refinancing response. Servicing income was down $54 million versus prior year due to higher-than-expected MSR runoff and higher FHA late-stage delinquencies due to the recent FHA modification rule changes. Let's turn to Slide 5 for a discussion about the first quarter market environment. During the first quarter, we experienced increased volatility in key drivers of mortgage activity resulting from the GSE's announcement of their intent to purchase mortgage-backed securities compounded by the impacts of the war in Iran. This is reflected in the intra-quarter high and low points of the ICE BofA MOVE Index, an indicator of U.S. Treasury bond volatility, as well as 30-year mortgage rates and the MBA Refi Index. This increased volatility contributed to reduced origination pipeline hedge effectiveness and lower loan sales performance. On the right is a comparison of the refinancing response for mortgages originated in 2023 and later in the second half of 2024 compared to the 6 months ending March of this year. In a little more than a year since the last refinancing surge, a less severe rate drop from high to low and marginally lower mortgage interest rates produced almost a 38% higher refinancing response in this most recent refinancing period, exceeding the level we predicted. Let's turn to Slide 6 to review the actions we're taking to address these items. In total, we believe addressing the factors that affected our results in the first quarter can deliver up to $27 million in incremental adjusted pretax income. We believe the origination pipeline hedging and loan sales performance has a quarterly adjusted pretax income improvement opportunity of between $5 million to $7 million. We are naturally exposed to variation in hedge and loan sales performance due to market and spread volatility. Historically, this impact has been both positive and negative, and we expect this can naturally reverse with reduced volatility. Next, the higher-than-expected borrower reaction to the first quarter decline in mortgage rates exceeded our origination staffing capacity based on modeling from past experience. We believe this prevented us from realizing $8 million to $14 million of adjusted pretax income in the first quarter. We've updated our capacity planning models to reflect recent borrower behaviors, have increased our Consumer Direct staffing level since the end of Q4 by 34%, and we are continuing to invest in AI tools and enabling technology to increase origination scalability. Next, we believe there's a $4 million to $6 million quarterly adjusted pretax income improvement opportunity with the normalization of FHA delinquencies. We've improved borrower communication, frequency of early intervention, and introduced digital tools to assist borrowers. We continue to expect FHA delinquencies will normalize by the end of the second quarter. Lastly, we are using machine learning to evaluate loan-level runoff and recapture propensity to inform our investing decisions and recapture strategies. Over time, we expect this can have a favorable impact on MSR runoff in future refinance-driven markets, and the improvement opportunity will vary depending upon interest rates. Let's turn to Slide 7 to review our balanced business model. While there may be variability in any given quarter due to evolving market dynamics, our balanced business continues to demonstrate long-term resiliency to changes in interest rates. As interest rates have declined, and despite the significant impact from market volatility, origination income has increased over 2.5x versus the prior 12-month period. Our strong originations income has helped to offset a reduction in servicing income in the most recent 12 months versus the prior 12-month period, despite a doubling of MSR runoff. We remain committed to executing our growth initiatives and the fundamentals of our balanced business model, which works as intended over the long term. Let's turn to Slide 8 for more about our growth focus and actions. In the first quarter, our originations team doubled volume year-over-year versus 44% growth for the overall industry. In Business-to-Business, our enterprise sales approach, product breadth, and client service delivery model have been highly effective growth enablers. In Consumer Direct, our continued investment in talent and technology enabled volume growth of 4x versus prior year as declining rates increased consumer refinancing demand. Refinance payoff units in the first quarter were up 3.6x prior year level and up 35% versus the prior quarter. Despite these headwinds, our Consumer Direct team improved the refinance recapture rate 3 percentage points versus the prior quarter. And our last 12 months refinance recapture rate continues to outperform the ICE industry average. We're continuing to invest in technology and process optimization to enhance customer experience, reduce costs, and improve scalability and competitiveness in both Business-to-Business and Consumer Direct. Let's turn to Slide 9 to see what we've accomplished in subservicing. The disruption created by the trend of industry consolidation among subservicers continues to create opportunity for us. The level of interest from prospective clients exploring subservicing options and alternatives remains high. First quarter subservicing additions were up 94% versus prior year, driven by new relationships and existing clients. Also in the first quarter, we signed 2 new clients and have 5 more agreements under negotiations. We believe we're on track to achieve our first half subservicing additions target of $28 billion and achieve over $50 billion for the full year. We continue to invest in technology with the next generation of our LASI client-focused AI assistant technology to drive an exceptional client experience. Our continued AI investment and strong servicing performance have helped us achieve a client Net Promoter Score level rivaling Amazon, Apple, and Google. In specialty subservicing, we continue to expand our business purpose residential and commercial subservicing portfolio, increasing UPB 28% versus last year. While the requirements are more complex than performing residential servicing, the returns are better. We have the expertise, and we're investing to enable continued growth in 2026. Overall, we believe we're well positioned to take advantage of the disruption in subservicing market, and we continue to invest in our sales and operating capabilities to pursue a robust opportunity pipeline. Let's turn to Slide 10 to talk about how we've grown our servicing portfolio. Total servicing UPB ended the quarter up 11% year-over-year versus total industry servicing growth of 3%, with growth in both owned MSR and subservicing. Year-over-year servicing additions net of runoff of $53 billion more than offset planned transfers to Rithm and other client deboardings. With MSR demand keeping prices elevated, several of our clients have taken the opportunity to monetize their MSRs and are replenishing their portfolio as industry origination volume increases. Our ability to grow our servicing portfolio while our clients execute opportunistic MSR sales highlights the power of our origination capability and success of our growth strategy. Now please turn to Slide 11 where our technology is continuing to enhance our business performance. We're integrating AI into every stage of the borrower journey across our business with a keen focus on maximizing our recapture rate. Our investment focus for 2026 is on 3 key areas: lead generation, lead conversion, and platform scalability. In lead generation, we're increasing signal detection for refinance-ready borrowers, leveraging unstructured data to inform our marketing and messaging. In lead conversion, we're maximizing conversion with targeted value propositions and workflow assignments. In platform scalability, we're focused on expanding engagement capacity and taking work out of the process to maximize human capability. These actions are having a tremendous impact. Leads on payoffs that resulted in new loans are up 40% year-over-year, and lead to lock conversion has improved 60% year-over-year. This includes a 34% increase in engagement and an 8% increase in conversion for conventional loans, the toughest to recapture. We've seen a 25% improvement in contact rate on leads coming through our digital channels with our AI-powered voice agent, and over 350 document types are categorized and data extracted with 95% accuracy, driving increased scalability. While lots of companies are talking about AI these days, we are one of the few companies that are delivering tangible results across both servicing and originations. We remain focused on integrating AI and machine learning to improve how we invest, enhance borrower understanding and engagement, maximize opportunity conversion, and improve outcomes across our business. Now please turn to Slide 12 for an update on our transaction with Finance of America Reverse. As disclosed in our public release this morning, our proposed transaction with Finance of America Reverse was not approved as submitted. However, based on discussions with Ginnie Mae, we've revised our transaction and resubmitted it for approval. In the revised transaction, we'll be selling approximately 57% of our owned reverse servicing portfolio to Finance of America, representing approximately 77% of our reverse MSR investment. We expect between $70 million to $80 million in proceeds before holdbacks and pricing adjustments as of March 31. The origination, product marketing, and subservicing elements of the transaction remain consistent with the original transaction terms. We expect about 70% of the remaining reverse servicing portfolio will run off in 4 years. As before, we will continue to engage in reverse mortgage asset management transactions and activities. Overall, benefits of the transaction remain largely the same. We will establish a significant subservicing relationship with the reverse mortgage market leader, reduce our balance sheet exposure to HECM assets and liabilities, improve our liquidity and capital ratio metrics, and we'll enhance our focus on other high-growth business areas. The transaction is still subject to Ginnie Mae approval and is currently under review. Now I'll turn it over to Sean to discuss our results in more detail.

Thanks, Glen. Let's turn to Slide 13 for a recap of key financial measures by quarter. Revenue was up 26%, continuing the strong year-over-year growth trend, which increased from last quarter's impressive 20% year-over-year growth. Sequential quarter revenue growth was flat due to seasonal Q1 decline in float income, which was $8 million lower quarter-over-quarter and is a component of servicing revenue. Originations delivered continued strong revenue growth over 2x year-over-year and 7% sequentially. Operating efficiency continued to improve on both year-over-year and sequential quarters, which reflects our long-term focus on cost-effective growth. Book value per share is up $17 year-over-year and up $1 on a sequential quarter basis. Now let's turn to Slide 14 for a detailed view of adjusted pretax income by segment. On the left side, Originations adjusted pretax income was significantly higher year-over-year by $24 million. This reflects an improvement in our recapture efforts as well as lower mortgage rates in February. A later slide will show the continued trends of record levels of funded origination in both our Consumer Direct and B2B channels. Year-over-year servicing adjusted PTI declined by $54 million, predominantly driven by high MSR runoff in the last 2 quarters and partially offset by growth in float volumes and other positive operational improvements from growth of our servicing portfolio. The illustration to the right is an approximation of where the first quarter 2026 adjusted PTI could potentially have landed had we been able to address 3 key drivers: first, the ongoing elevated FHA delinquencies impacting servicing income due to the loan mod change in the fourth quarter. We saw delinquency cures from FHA mods starting to trend back to a normal level at the tail end of the first quarter. We are taking action to address this area through improved borrower communication, early intervention, and digital tools to assist borrowers. Second, the impact of rate volatility on our origination pipeline marks and associated hedge costs. Third, the need to have a more fully scaled Consumer Direct operations to capture the heightened response by borrowers on interest rate sensitivity. We've updated our capacity planning models to reflect recent borrower behaviors, increased our Consumer Direct staffing levels, and we are continuing to invest in machine learning to maximize portfolio recapture. Had we been able to address all of these drivers, combined with the process improvements we now have in place, we believe we could have significantly mitigated our $6 million adjusted pretax loss up to an approximate $21 million adjusted pretax income. Please turn to Slide 15 for observations on how we allocate additional capital. Our previously stated considerations for capital remain unchanged. On the left, we show an increase in capital is typically immediately deployed to delever and replace mark-to-market MSR debt with longer tenure non-mark-to-market high-yield debt. Then, other deployment avenues are considered. These include M&A opportunities, increasing growth-oriented assets such as MSRs, buying back shares, or other deleveraging options. The right graph provides an illustrative view of incremental MSR purchases and the projected 2-year adjusted pretax income improvement. Please turn to Slide 16 for a deep dive on Originations pretax income trends. Originations pretax income grew by 3.5x on a year-over-year basis, which was driven by more than doubling of volume across the combined channel view of the business. The strongest contributor for either year-over-year or sequential quarter income was the Consumer Direct retail channel, which benefited from the ongoing recapture enhancements as well as higher staffing levels, resulting in a sevenfold increase in adjusted PTI. Both B2B and Consumer Direct channels benefited from a growth focus on new products, including non-QM and closed-end seconds. As a reminder, we don't include closed-end volumes in our recapture calculations. Please turn to Slide 17 for a channel view for originations. The B2B channel, which includes both correspondent and co-issue activities, saw about a 2x increase in volume year-over-year and slightly better margins than the first quarter of 2025. On a sequential basis, it had roughly the same volume but saw margin pressure late in the quarter due to interest rate volatility. Consumer Direct had even better performance, posting strong volume gains year-over-year of 4x and a 50% increase on the sequential quarter. However, we did see lower margins in the first quarter, again, driven by interest rate volatility. We also showed some improved metrics for Consumer Direct with higher revenue per loan and improved cost per loan versus prior year. Please turn to Slide 18 for our Servicing segment performance. Servicing revenues were up 12% year-over-year, but down slightly from last quarter. The quarter's decline was driven primarily by lower float revenue from a typical seasonal dip. This is due to escrow tax disbursements that lowered deposit volumes late into the fourth quarter and early in the first quarter. Servicing-owned UPB is a driver of both revenue and income, and it grew about 18% year-over-year, and total UPB grew about 10% year-over-year. Our Servicing segment experienced the first quarter of adjusted pretax loss in 16 quarters, primarily driven by MSR runoff and seasonal float income declines. As you can see in the lower right, the impact from runoff tripled year-over-year from $33 million to $99 million. This is mainly driven by higher prepayments linked to borrower interest rate sensitivity and the lingering delinquencies from the FHA mod changes in the fourth quarter, which we expect to normalize in the second quarter. Please turn to Slide 19 for details on improved advances in the Servicing segment. Over the last 2 years, we have decreased advances by almost 30% while we have grown our owned UPB simultaneously by a similar rate. As you can see by the dark blue graph, the bulk of our advances are linked to delinquencies in our PLS or nonagency-owned MSR book. We have been deploying various strategies and process improvements to reduce these advances, which then assist the P&L with lower interest expense. These strategies range from increased digital contact with borrowers to AI-enabled agents that assist our contact center in quickly providing the most effective range of solutions for both the borrower and the MSR owner. Regarding digital, we continue to experience approximately 90% of our inbound contacts being handled with digital channels such as chats, the mobile app, or website responses. Please turn to Slide 20 for an assessment of our continued strong hedging performance. Once again, our MSR hedge strategy continued to perform well and as intended in the first quarter. Our strategy is designed to mitigate interest rate risk, and the hedge has been effective in minimizing the impact of interest rate on our MSR valuation net of hedge for the last 9 quarters. We frequently review and assess our hedge strategy to manage risk and optimize liquidity and total returns. Of note, we insourced our MSR valuation process in the first quarter. This was accomplished by adopting an MSR model used by many industry participants, including third-party valuation agents. This gives us more agility to run numerous scenarios to both ensure our valuations are consistent with current data and adjust our hedge accordingly. We continue to use multiple third-party valuation agents to provide guardrails to our valuation. On Slide 21, we provide our updated view on 2026 guidance. As Glen mentioned earlier, we are widening our adjusted ROE range from 13% to 15% to 10% to 15%. This is to accommodate ongoing and potential future interest rate volatility. Our updated guidance on adjusted ROE is not dependent on the Finance of America transaction closing. The other areas we provided guidance on are unchanged. We continue to grow our total servicing book, $338 billion, or up 11% on the year, improve our operating efficiency, and continued strong hedging performance. Back to you, Glen.

Thanks, Sean. Let's turn to Slide 22 for a few comments before we open the call for questions. We delivered solid performance in several key areas of our business, including double-digit year-over-year growth in adjusted revenue, origination volume, subservicing additions, and total servicing UPB. We've built a technology-enabled, award-winning servicing platform that is efficient, delivers differentiated performance, and excellent service. We've been recognized for the fifth year in a row by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for delivering top-tier servicing for our owned portfolio or for our subservicing clients. We are taking decisive actions to address the items that impacted our first quarter performance while continuing to execute on our growth initiatives and the fundamentals of our balanced business model, which has proven resilient over the long term. We remain focused on accelerating profitable growth in 2026 and creating value for all stakeholders, supported by expanded use of AI-powered technologies to drive service excellence, reduce costs, and grow revenue. Finally, subject to Ginnie Mae approval, we look forward to completing our transaction with Finance of America Reverse, which will establish a subservicing relationship with the market leader, permit capital reallocation, and enable greater focus on other high-value growth opportunities. Overall, we remain optimistic about the potential for our business. And with that, operator, let's open the call for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And we'll take our first question from Bose George with KBW.

Actually, first, on the MSR runoff. I think last quarter you noted that the higher FHA delinquency issue was $14 million impact. What was that number this quarter? And just trying to figure out how big a piece of that $17 million increase in MSR realizations came from the FHA.

Bose, we sized that at approximately $4 million to $6 million in the first quarter. And as we noted last quarter, we did expect that there would be some carryover effect into the first quarter, again, $4 million to $6 million. But again, we're expecting delinquencies to normalize by the end of the second quarter based on some of the things that Sean talked about in terms of seeing modifications begin and resolutions begin to flow again.

Okay. And so the rest of the increase in the realized cash flows was from actual increase in prepayments that you saw quarter-over-quarter?

That's correct, Bose.

And then in terms of -- is there a P&L impact as well from the higher FHA delinquencies? So next quarter, if delinquencies stabilize at these levels, I assume that the marks decline or go away, but is there a P&L impact we should think about if delinquencies remain somewhat elevated because of this issue?

Yes. If delinquencies, let's say, don't change, so if they just stay flat, Sean, correct me, but I think that would produce 0 impact from a runoff perspective. If delinquencies actually improve, that would be a favorable impact to runoff or a reduction of runoff. So as delinquencies move around, again, if they go up vis-a-vis end of the first quarter, it could be increased runoff. If they get better, it could be less runoff.

And then just one on the pipeline hedging. You noted the volatility there. Does that just flow through the gain on sale so that, that shows up as a slightly lower margin?

That's correct, Bose. That would show up through gain on sale. And again, I think as you know, when you have a lot of market volatility, unfortunately, it does increase hedge costs and reduce hedge effectiveness as a result of pull-through in your pipeline, your actual pull-through deviating from your estimates. And that all boils down into a gain on sale impact.

[Operator Instructions] We'll move next to Doug Harter with BTIG.

As you think about the updated guidance, how much of that is just reflecting the fact that the first quarter came in below that range versus what -- as we think about what the expected range for quarters 2 through 4 would be?

Doug, it's Sean. The range of expected guidance incorporates both the reduced adjusted ROE we're seeing this quarter as well as anticipating high rate volatility and essentially elevated rates for a longer period of time. And so it's a combination of both.

And then as you look at Slide 6 with the opportunities that you lay out, what would be the time frame that you would expect really for the first 3, obviously, the fourth one is more challenging. But how do you think about the opportunity or the time line to achieving those first 3 items on Slide 6?

Doug, on the first one for the origination pipeline and loan sales effectiveness, again, that could vary from quarter-to-quarter. So that is relative volatility. We have seen that move in both directions over time. Case in point would be the second quarter of last year when Liberation Day and the tariffs were announced, there was an adverse impact on the quarter, and it reversed out the next quarter. So timing is going to be market volatility dependent. On the Originations scalability, that takes -- obviously, that is going to be dependent upon the level of refinancing activity and a refinancing surge. So that is somewhat market dependent. But the incremental staffing and the incremental investments, we'll start to see improvements of that in Q2, Q3, Q4, right? So that will take into effect through the balance of the year. And the magnitude is going to be a function of what is the surge in refinancing volume since that's basically what we're quantifying here was the lost refinancing opportunity. On the FHA modification changes, we expect delinquencies to normalize by the end of the second quarter. So assuming that they do normalize, we'll see most of this bleed through in the second and third quarter.

[Operator Instructions] And it does appear that there are no further questions at this time. I would now like to hand back to Glen Messina for any additional or closing remarks.

Great. Thank you, Chloe. Look, we'd like to thank our shareholders and key business partners for their ongoing support of Onity. And I also want to thank and recognize our Board of Directors and global business team for their hard work and commitment to our success. And we look forward to updating everyone on our progress on our next earnings call. Thank you very much.

Thank you. This brings us to the end of today's meeting. We appreciate your time and participation. You may now disconnect.