Sanford A. Ibrahim
Analyst · Jordon Hymowitz with Philadelphia Financial
Thank you, Emily. Thank you, all, for joining us and for your interest in Radian. This morning, I will discuss our fourth quarter and full year financial results and review our major accomplishments for 2013. Following my remarks, Bob will cover the details of our financial position. Achieving MI operating profitability in 2013, particularly after the challenging business environment we've navigated through in the recent years, has to be our most important accomplishment last year as Radian moves closer to normalized earnings. This was the result of both the improvement in the quality and size of our MI insurance in force, as well as the significant reductions in our legacy MI exposure. Let me first address the improvement in both of these areas. Radian's large, high-quality MI portfolio is expected to create a strong foundation for future earnings, especially when combined with increasing persistency primarily in business written in 2012 and '13. We expect improved operating profitability in 2014 driven by the MI premium generated from the high-quality and profitable new business we wrote since 2008. Today, this business represents 71% of our total primary mortgage insurance risk in force or 60% excluding HARP volume. The combined impact of an improving economy and our continued focus on loss mitigation in our MI portfolio has resulted in year-over-year decline in Radian's total number of primary delinquent loans of 35%, as seen on Slide 14 of our webcast presentation, with the trend continuing in January 2014. We also saw a decline in our primary default rate in 2013, as you can see on Slide 21, and we ended the year at a rate of 7.3%. The performance of our remaining legacy book has also improved significantly, which will further contribute to our future results. Turning to the quarter's results. Earlier today, we reported net income for the fourth quarter of 2013 of $36 million, or $0.19 per diluted share, including $31 million of combined fair value and other financial instrument gains and net losses on investments. This compares favorably to a net loss for the quarter ended December 31, 2012, of $177 million or $1.34 per diluted share. Book value per share at December 31, 2013, was $5.43. In our press release this morning, we introduced new non-GAAP measures that we believe will help you better evaluate Radian's financial performance. Bob will discuss these measures in more detail and you will find the full description and reconciliations in our press release Exhibit O, as well as on our website. Using these measures, adjusted pretax operating income was $9.1 million for the fourth quarter, including $1.7 million from the MI segment, and adjusted net operating income per diluted share was $0.03. Now let's turn to a few important highlights from the fourth quarter and the full year 2013. First, in 2013, we continued to write a high volume of new mortgage insurance business in this extremely attractive market. While the fourth quarter and the beginning of 2014 have been impacted by the decline in refinance activity, as well as the effect of a return to more normal seasonal patterns, the volume of new business written in the second half of 2013 still was one of the highest in our company's history. And while it remains difficult to project future NIW, we anticipate that Radian will write more than $40 billion of new business in 2014. I'm also pleased to report that we ended 2013 ranking as the largest mortgage insurance company with $161 billion of insurance in force. Second, this high volume of new business written improved the credit profile of our portfolio. As I mentioned, the high-quality books of mortgage insurance business written after 2008, including loans competing a HARP refinance, represented 71% of our primary mortgage insurance portfolio at the end of 2013. And the most problematic 2006 and '07 books are now down to less than 14% of the total portfolio. As you can see on Slide 8, the impact of the legacy MI portfolio is shrinking, and we expect it to be a less important driver of our future financial results. Third, Slide 9 shows that for the year ended December 31, 2013, the earned premiums less incurred losses from our 2009 and later MI vintages of $337 million far exceeded the comparable negative sum from the 2008 and prior vintages. In fact, this amount was nearly equal to the $345 million in 2011 and '12 combined. It is also important to note that the highest premium level for any vintage is typically earned in its second year. Therefore, we expect our large 2013 book to produce substantial premiums in 2014 and beyond. Fourth, the MI incurred loss ratio was 72% in the quarter, representing another positive trend we saw toward 2013. This compares to a loss ratio of 171% in the fourth quarter of 2012. And finally, we successfully reduced the exposure in our Financial Guaranty business by 29% in 2013 alone and by 79% since 2008, including in many of the riskiest segments of our portfolio. Radian maintains strong holding company liquidity of approximately $615 million, and Radian Guaranty's risk-to-capital ratio was 19.4:1 at December 31, 2013. Bob will provide more detail on our capital contribution in the quarter. The details of the new GSE eligibility capital requirements for MI are still unknown, but we do expect them to be released for comment sometime in the first half of 2014. Based on our conversations with the FHFA, we expect the state regulators to receive the proposed requirements first and be given a 6-week comment period. The FHFA will then consider any changes the state regulators suggest before releasing the new proposal for public comment. This comment period will be a minimum of 90 days. Once finalized, we expect there will be an implementation period before the new requirements go into effect. We fully expect to have the ability to comply with the requirements within the implementation time frame. As I mentioned earlier, primary insurance in force now stands at an industry-leading $161 billion, an increase of 15% from a year ago. This insurance in force growth represents the success we have had at Radian in writing new, high-quality mortgage insurance business over the past few years. This success was the result of our focused effort on attracting new customers across a wider cross-section of the mortgage industry, including community banks, credit unions, regional banks and independent mortgage lenders, while also retaining a meaningful share of business from the nation's largest lenders. According to Inside Mortgage Finance, smaller mortgage players held a 60% market share of the U.S. origination market in 2013, up from 39% in 2009. This shift in mortgage originations coupled with our targeted new business strategy is what has helped Radian to write a large volume of high-quality new business that is expected to generate attractive returns. In fact, nearly half of our NIW in 2013 came from customers new to Radian beginning in 2009. We signed on 214 new customers in 2013 including 2 large national lenders in the second half, which represents future NIW growth. We continue to broaden our franchise by adding new lending partners and the pipeline of prospective customers remains strong. We believe we have the opportunity to further expand our customer base and continue to strengthen our franchise as we estimate that nearly 1/3 of the MI market rests with lenders we don't currently do business with, including a few mortgage originators ranked in the top 20. We have clearly demonstrated our success in bringing on new customers in each of the last few years and are focused on doing it again. One of the ways we support our customers, both new and existing, is through our value-added training programs led by Radian mortgage banking experts. We trained more than 24,000 mortgage professionals last year both in person and online, requiring the addition of more resources to support the growing demand for our courses, which increased 60% from 2012 to '13. Leading up to the January 2014 implementation, our QM education courses increased so much in popularity that we added new dates and offered on-demand training options. We worked closely with our lending partners to have their teams develop the necessary skills for today's changing market demands. Turning to the mortgage market and trends affecting our business, it's encouraging that household formations are on the rise again from the lows of 2008 and '09. Many of these households include those who will not make a 20% down payment on their home and therefore will likely need mortgage insurance. According to housing experts, much of this growth will be driven by minority groups seeking to fulfill their dream of becoming homeowners. The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies reports that minorities will constitute 70% of the 17 million new households projected to be formed from 2010 to 2025. Hispanics alone are expected to represent 40% of this number. Recently, Radian entered into a 2-year exclusive partnership with the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals, allowing Radian to work directly with the association membership to provide information, tools and resources to make the right choices for sustainable homeownership. Turning to more general housing trends, while interest rates have risen, they still remain at historically low levels and national home prices are halfway back to their peak from 2007. Home price appreciation is important both for our legacy book of business and the negative equity that has plagued many homeowners during the downturn. It's also an important consideration for future homebuyers who represent our future growth. As expected, the recent rise in interest rates has led to a significant decline in refinance volume, which is a trend we believe will continue this year. While the waning refi volume has impacted our new business volume, particularly in the second half of 2013 into January '14, it is important to note that it has also helped increase our persistency rates, particularly on our large 2012 and '13 books of business, which will help us continue to grow insurance in force. Every 1% increase in persistency translates into approximately $1.6 billion of insurance in force remaining on our books each year, and our persistency was 81.1% at December 31, 2013. While industry experts continue to forecast a smaller overall origination market this year, the effect of this reduction on our volumes is projected to be offset by a growing purchase market where MI penetration is about 3 to 4x greater than for refi loans. This purchase market shift combined with the continued benefit of more lenders choosing private MI over FHA is illustrated by the estimated 12% penetration of the insured market by our industry in the third quarter of 2013, representing a gradual yet steady increase since 2009, and translating into an impressive jump of more than 70% from the third quarter of 2012. We continue to benefit from FHA actions, such as the elimination last year of FHA premium cancellation on most loans and the new FHA loan limits for 2014. And we believe that 1/3 to 1/2 of the business the FHA is writing today meets our credit standards, representing additional new business opportunity in the future. Turning to the regulation and legislation affecting our industry, we continue to actively engage with key policymakers in Washington. From a regulatory perspective, we welcome the appointment of Director Mel Watt to his new position at the FHFA. We look forward to engaging the FHFA on a number of policy fronts and have already seen some early signs of the new director's focus on affordable homeownership, which is positive for our industry. On the legislative front, the debate on GSE reform continues, with new builds being discussed by the house along with senate proposals. A revised senate proposal bearing the input of the administration is expected to be released in the coming weeks. While we anticipate that there may be delays in action on these builds, given the upcoming midterm election season, we remain confident that our industry is demonstrating its important role in the future of housing finance. Now I would like to turn the call over to Bob for details of the financial position.