Sanford A. Ibrahim
Analyst · Dowling and Partners
Thank you, Emily. Thank you all for joining us and for your interest in our company. On today's call, I will provide highlights from the second quarter, including the attainment of several important milestones. And I will also share my thoughts on the topics and trends important for our industry. Following my remarks, Bob will cover the details of our financial position. Earlier today, we reported a net loss for the second quarter 2013 of $33 million or $0.19 per diluted share. This includes net losses on investments of $130 million and the impact of fair value and other financial instrument gains of $88 million. Most importantly, our mortgage insurance business achieved profitability absent the impact of fair value gains and losses for the quarter and 6 months. Needless to say, at Radian, we've been working hard to achieve this significant milestone and we are extremely encouraged by the improved performance of our mortgage insurance business. I'm also pleased to point out several additional milestones achieved by Radian. We continue to write a leading share of the new mortgage insurance business in an extremely attractive market, perhaps the best business we have ever written. We recorded our second highest volume of primary flow business in Radian's history in June and for the second quarter. We have successfully improved our portfolio, and in the second quarter, as expected, the profitable high-quality books of mortgage insurance business written since 2008 represented more than half of our total portfolio. You can see on Slide 17 from our webcast presentation that for the 6 months ended June 30, 2013, the primary earned premiums less incurred losses from our 2009 and later MI vintages far exceeded the comparable negative sum from the 2008 and prior vintages. In the second quarter, the MI incurred loss ratio dropped to less than 70%, which represents another significant improvement. Finally, since 2008, we have been successfully reducing the exposure in our financial guaranty business and have reduced it by 76%, including many of the riskier segments of the portfolio. Radian Asset has only $7.9 million of exposure to general obligation bonds for the highly publicized municipal bankruptcy in the city of Detroit, for which we hold a loss reserve of nearly half that exposure. Radian maintains strong holding company liquidity of approximately $816 million, and Radian Guaranty's risk-to-capital ratio is a competitive 19.7:1 at June 30, 2013. We continue to expect to maintain a risk-to-capital ratio for Radian Guaranty of 20:1 or below for the foreseeable future, while also preserving a strong level of holding company liquidity. Bob will cover the upcoming GSE eligibility requirements, which we expect to be issued by the end of the year. New mortgage insurance written continues to consist of high-quality loans. We wrote a total of $105 billion of new MI business from 2009 through June of this year, which is expected to produce substantial profits and attractive returns. And our primary insurance in force now stands at $151 billion compared with $130 billion a year ago, an increase of 16%. It is the new vintage mix, size and performance of this growing insurance in force that is expected to drive our future earnings. Slide 18 in our webcast presentation breaks out the recent performance by vintage. And I would draw your attention to our profitable post-2008 vintages, as well as our legacy book of business written in 2005 and prior, both of which contributed to our profitability in the quarter. As I mentioned earlier, a high-quality business written after 2008 represents 53% of our primary risk in force and now outweighs our legacy book of business. We believe this achievement is unique to Radian among legacy MI companies and is the direct result of our market share gains over the last 2 years. You can see the details on Slide 19, where the most problematic 2006 and '07 books are now down to less than 17% of the total portfolio. The slide also shows that including HARP refis, which improved the credit profile of our legacy book, new business underwritten since 2009 now represents 64% of Radian's mortgage insurance primary risk in force. As you know, the HARP program was extended through 2015, which should allow additional deserving borrowers to take advantage of the program. It is important to note that we continue to expect a marginal level of mortgage insurance profitability for the full year 2013. As a reminder, this forecast excludes the impact of stock price changes on our long-term compensation expense, as well as net fair value gains and losses. Now, I'd like to highlight the progress made against 3 important priorities for Radian: writing new mortgage insurance business, mitigating losses on our mortgage insurance portfolio and reducing our financial guaranty exposure. First, we wrote $13.4 billion of new mortgage insurance business in the second quarter, an increase of 60% year-over-year. While it's too early to provide volume for July, we are on track to reach net new business comparable to or surpassing our outstanding June NIW. As I've mentioned before, mortgage originations over the past 2 years have been driven by high volumes of refinance activity. We are beginning to see signs of a marked refi slowdown and a shift in the market to more purchase business, which is likely to reduce the overall origination market. Thus far, interest rates do not appear to have meaningfully slowed down purchase activity, and it must be noted that the MI penetration for purchased loans is about 3x to 4x greater than for refi loans. While further increases in interest rates could reduce purchase activity, they are also likely to increase our persistency rates, which will help us grow our insurance in force. On average, every 1% increase in persistency means that approximately $1.5 billion of insurance in force remains on our books each year. Also worth noting is that purchase patterns tend to be seasonally skewed, slow in the first quarter, strongest in the middle quarters and then slowing again in the fourth quarter. We also continue to grow and diversify our customer base, which has helped us grow and maintain our share of new business. This year, we signed up 117 new lender customers, and our pipeline of prospective new customers remains strong. And the new customers bring more volume, as more than 25% of our new insurance written in the first 6 months came from customers new to Radian within the last 2 years. We also continue to gain more business from existing customers, which is a good indicator of how positive they feel about us. NIW coming from lenders we've worked with for more than 2 years grew 46% from the second quarter of last year. We're supporting our customers with a continually enhanced industry-leading sales and training team made up of a combination of seasoned as well as new talent. In the first half of 2013, our trainers reached 50% more customers than we did in all of 2012. The Radian Foundation series, our newest suite of courses, focused on basic underwriting and processing, is gaining popularity. After only 6 months, more than 250 participants have completed the course to earn their certificate. Next, focusing on our continued efforts to mitigate losses in our mortgage insurance portfolio, the total number of primary delinquent loans declined by 8% from the first quarter of this year and 21% year-over-year, as you can see on Slide 22. And the default rate on our primary book fell further in the first quarter to 9.7%. We maintain $2.7 billion in loss reserves, and our primary reserve for default increased slightly from the first quarter to $30,932, up from $28,410 a year ago. HAMP and other modification programs continue to produce steady results and borrowers show signs of commitment to their homes and mortgage even in the latest stages of default. As you can see on Slide 12, 31% of borrowers whose loans were in default made at least 1 monthly payment in the second quarter. And repeat defaults represent 78% of new defaults in this quarter. Historically, redefaulted loans have been less likely to result in a claim than first time defaults. Finally, our financial guaranty business continues to serve as an important and unique source of capital for Radian Guaranty. We have successfully reduced our exposure in that business from a peak of $115 billion in June 2008, when Radian Asset stopped writing new business, to $27 billion in the second quarter of this year. Radian Asset paid a dividend to Radian Guaranty in July of $36 million for a total of $420 million paid since 2008. We expect Radian Asset to continue to pay dividends in the future years. As of June 30, 2013, Radian Asset maintains statutory surplus of $1.2 billion and additional claims-paying resources of $396 million, including $248 million of contingency reserves. The private mortgage insurance industry continues to slowly but steadily regain share from the FHA. We estimate that penetration for our industry was 8.7% in the second quarter, up 12% from the first quarter of this year and up an impressive 30% since the second quarter of last year. The FHA's latest price increase in April, coupled with the elimination in June of FHA mortgage insurance premium cancellation, should help continue the shift of business from FHA to private mortgage insurance. In terms of housing market trends, CoreLogic recently reported May statistics citing rising home prices for 15 consecutive months and the largest year-over-year increase in the last 7 years. While rising interest rates have recently made headlines, they remain at historically low levels. According to the National Association of Realtors, existing home sales were at their highest level in May since November 2009, when buyers took advantage of the cash stimulus. Turning to the regulation and legislation affecting our industry. We continue to actively engage with legislators and other decision-makers in Washington. The qualified mortgage rule or QM, which will go into effect early next year, closely mirrors the mortgage lending environment we've successfully been operating in today. And the final Basel III rule preserves the important role for private mortgage insurance. The bipartisan Corker-Warner bill recently introduced on GSE reform also explicitly supports the increased use of private mortgage insurance for low down payment loans in the housing market. Overall, we continue to hear a resounding support on Capitol Hill for a healthier balance between public and private sectors in today's mortgage market, which is extremely positive for our industry. In closing, our improved financial performance in the first half of this year, particularly in our MI business, continues to energize our team at Radian. This continued improvement remains our top priority and will be driven by 3 important factors: First, the size and potential earnings power of the high-quality new MI business we have already written since 2008 and our growing insurance in force book. Second, the continued management of our legacy mortgage insurance book, which is now a smaller piece of our total MI portfolio than the high-quality book written after 2008. We expect the legacy book will continue to improve through HARP, modifications and home price appreciation. Third, our success in building a strong sales and operations platform to continue writing more high-quality future business, driven by our strong customer relationships that has earned us the #1 market share position. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Bob for details of our financial position.