Welcome to Radian's Second Quarter 2020 Earnings Call. My name is Sylvia and I'll be your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode, later we will conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to John Damian, Senior Vice President of Investor Relation. Mr. Damian, you may begin.

Thank you and welcome to Radian's second quarter 2020 conference call. Our press release, which contains Radian's financial results for the quarter was issued last Friday evening and is posted to the Investor section of our website at www.radian.com. This press release includes certain non-GAAP measures, which will be discussed during today's call including adjusted pretax operating income, adjusted diluted net operating income per share, adjusted net operating return on equity and real estate adjusted EBITDA. A complete description of these measures and the reconciliation to GAAP may be found in press release exhibits F and G and on the investors section of our website. In addition, we have also included a related non-GAAP measure, real estate adjusted EBITDA margin, which we calculate by dividing real estate adjusted EBITDA by GAAP total revenue for the real estate segment. This morning, you will hear from Rick Thornberry, Radian's Chief Executive Officer; and Frank Hall, Chief Financial Officer. Also on hand for the Q&A portion of the call is Derek Brummer, President of Radian Mortgage. Due to the current environment, all of our speakers this morning are remote. I would ask that you please excuse any sound quality or technical issues that may arise during the call. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that comments made during this call will include forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations, estimates, projections and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties which may cause actual results to differ materially. For a discussion of these risks, please review the cautionary statements regarding forward-looking statements included in our earnings release and the risk factors included in our 2019 Form 10-K as updated in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the second quarter of 2020 and subsequent reports filed with the SEC. These are also available on our website. Now I would like to turn the call over to Rick.

Thank you, John, and good morning. Thank you all for joining us today and for your interest in Radian. These are clearly unprecedented times, before I talk about our second quarter financial results, I'd like to address the business and economic environment that we are operating in today. First, I'd like to discuss the current state of our business operations. In March at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we asked the vast majority of our team to work from home and we committed to a conservative approach focused on employee safety and business continuity. While there's no playbook for this environment, I'm pleased to report that our technology and business continuity plans were in place and our people are ready to provide our customers with the same high quality service they expect from Radian, all while working remotely without missing a beat. I'm very proud of the resilience of our businesses and the strength and commitment of our One Radian unified team. I can say with confidence that our businesses are operating well with strong momentum during this unprecedented time. Next, I'd like to address the economic environment. The negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the overall economy has resulted in a sharp increase in unemployment claims as well as higher mortgage defaults, including as a result, a borrowers participating in mortgage forbearance programs. The government has provided a broad support to help ease the burden of the crisis. We believe that the programs implemented through the Cares Act and other program specifically, the financial assistance through forgivable business loans, taxpayer stimulus, expanded and increased unemployment benefits, mortgage forbearance programs and loss mitigation workout options and the suspension of foreclosures and evictions has and should continue to provide meaningful support to mortgage borrowers through this temporary hardship and…

Thank you, Rick, and good morning everyone. To recap, our financial results issued Friday evening, we reported a GAAP net loss of $30 million or $0.15 per diluted share for the second quarter of 2020 as compared to net income of $0.70 per diluted share in the first quarter of 2020 and net income of $0.78 per diluted share in the second quarter of 2019. Adjusted diluted net operating loss was $0.36 per share in the second quarter of 2020 as compared to adjusted diluted net operating income per share of $0.80 in the first quarter of 2020 and the second quarter of 2019. I'll now turn to the key drivers of our revenue. As Rick mentioned earlier, our new insurance written was $25.5 billion during the quarter compared to $16.7 billion last quarter and $18.5 billion dollars in the second quarter of 2019. Our second quarter 2020 volume is our highest level of quarterly new insurance written on a flow basis. Primary new insurance written for refinances, was 44% of total new insurance written for the second quarter of 2020 compared to 34% in the first quarter of 2020, and 10% for the same quarter in the prior year. Direct monthly and other recurring premium policies were 85% of our new insurance written this quarter, an increase from 81% for the first quarter of 2020% and 83% for the second quarter a year ago. In total borrower paid policies were 98% of our new business for the second quarter. Primary insurance in-force decreased slightly to $241.3 billion at the end of the quarter as compared to $241.6 billion in the first quarter of 2020 with year-over-year insurance in-force growth of approximately 5%. The quarter-over-quarter decrease was due primarily to low persistency driven by high refinance activity. Our 12-month persistency…

Thank you, Frank. Before we take your questions, I'd like to remind you that given the significant improvements made since the last financial crisis, we believe that we are well positioned to serve our role as a private mortgage insurer. It is important to note that our industry remains the only committed source of permanent private capital that has continued to consistently underwrite and support mortgage credit risk through the market cycles including this time of economic disruption. We continue to write significant high-quality, new business today supporting our customers and their borrowers, and we expect to write through the cycle, by utilizing our strong risk management discipline to build economic value. We have been preparing over the past few years to weather an economic downturn by improving our debt maturity profile, utilizing economic value to construct our portfolio, proactively managing our customer relationships, implementing greater risk-based granularity into our pricing and increasing our use of risk distribution strategies to lower the risk profile and financial volatility of our mortgage insurance portfolios. These efforts, combined with building our PMIERs cushion and Radian Group liquidity have better positioned us to navigate this unprecedented environment. Operator, we are ready to take questions.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Jack Micenko from SIG.

I guess to kick it off the first question, the obvious one, you guys are looking at about an 8.5% claim rate and I think the other folks that have reported this quarter were in the 7% and I hear you want to be conservative, there is a lot of uncertainty this is going to take years not months to work through. But is there anything in your portfolio, specifically that would have caused that differential or certainly don't know what other people's models are telling them, but what do you think the difference is in your assumption set versus others in the industry, since they all kind of aligned around that 7% figure?

Yes thanks, Jack. This is Rick and I'll take that question and Derek and Frank can jump in and come in as well as they wish, but we obviously can't comment on the specifics related to the peers and how they drew their conclusions. I think there is no playbook on this scenario that we can necessarily draw from, but I think there are significant differences from the previous financial crisis as I mentioned previously. I believe the difference that you're - that we see is it just simply different management teams expressing different judgment related to the economic environment, which is still early, very early in the cycle, we're very early in the stage. And there is uncertainty that remains as how this will play out. We believe we've got through thoughtful process to assess, based on the market factors and really looking at the programs in place along with just simply applying our judgment. And so when you kind of think about it on a comparative basis through the cycle and I think some of the analysts have commented on the differences across the portfolios being - there being no difference on a relative basis across portfolio, but when we look at it, we would expect really no meaningful difference of outcome ultimately from a claims rate perspective as we go through the cycle, but remember we're in the first quarter of this and I think we go through thoughtful approach. We're going to continue to monitor and look for trends. We have looked for the trends to stabilize and gain greater certainty and kind of how the economic environment is going to develop. I think specifically you can - we're going to be watching default trends. We did report our July trends. We're going to watch the economy from an unemployment point of view. We're going to watch the housing market, specifically around home prices. So I think it's just important to remember, at this point, we are using our best judgment as I think everyone is, we don't expect any material differences as we go through the cycle across EMIs because we all underwritten the same loans from the same originators during the same period of time, the legacy book of business is really no longer relevant. So - and the other thing as we watch this, we're putting reserves up based upon what we believe today and ultimately those claims are two years away before we actually start to pay a claim, two years plus or minus. So I think we're comfortable where we are today, can't really comment relative to peers. But I do think you're seeing judgment applied. I think you're - ultimately, we're going to see - we're not going to see meaningful differences between the participants as this plays out.

And then on the pricing side, there's been talk in the industry about some increases that kind of rolled out and there is a little bit of discussion around whether those pricing changes kind of narrowed in or motivated to maybe a higher quality mix or whether it was more broad based across the board. So I'm curious as your perspective on pricing and then how do we think about those pricing changes in the context of sort of the 44 in force yield - are we pricing business there that's generally accretive to that, that can sort of offset the other pressures or how are we - how are you guys positioned on pricing today?

Hi Jack, it's Derek. So in terms of pricing it's tough to compare it's because just an absolute premium rate. It's going to depend very much upon the credit mix. I think what we had indicated is kind of across the industry and the black box engines, there was prices increases we had indicated, we saw that anywhere from 10% to 50%. We took the approach of a pretty broad-based price increase with certain segments, I would say we were more aggressive than increasing price particularly in those areas where we thought there might be more difficult performance relative to kind of historical. So we kind of backed off in those segments. I would say some of our competitors were - I would say more targeted from that perspective and the way we approach pricing is - we look at what our economic scenario is and then set the pricing to get to an appropriate risk adjusted return; and we might find certain segments depending upon where competitors are priced to have higher economic value and what we've always indicated as we'll set the pricing and kind of shift from a portfolio perspective accordingly. So I would say generally the price increases are there and kind of what you're seeing now in the competitive landscape, I would say are different MI is kind of tweaking pricing to get the mix and the return that they looking for across the kind of credit spectrum.

Our following question comes from Bose George from KBW.

Rick you noted that comp prices clearly are a big driver and you're going to keep a close eye on that. Just how should we think about how that sort of feeds through to your near to your expectations if home prices remain very strong? Should we see maybe a change in the default to claim assumption for you or just trying to think about how that benefits flows through?

Yes, Bose. Hi, thank you for the question. I think I think as you look at - if you look at home prices, if you compare it to the great financial crisis, right. Home prices in that scenario really led the crisis, here, we have a strong housing market, it's well balance, it's healthy and I think that's really ultimately a material difference. Obviously, we're watching unemployment, we're watching borrower behavior from a default point of view and servicer performance. But when you think about one of the great differences today is we have a very strong housing market. It rebounded very quickly kind of coming into the COVID and recovered. So we're going to watch it. It is an important factor. I don't think I'm prepared to say whether it's going to change how it will affect our view of the future, but today one of the things that we are - we feel good about that and we are watching carefully as kind of how home prices are - I guess developing across the market. I mean, when you look at what's occurring is that, there was a - we knew coming into this market, there was a great supply shortage in demand excess, and that's really served to be very balanced through this environment as we have the combination of low rates, low supply and high demand. And so we're seeing very qualified borrowers come through to buy homes. I think in our July numbers, we had over 70% repurchases versus through the second quarter, I think it was 54% or 56% kind of in the mid 50s. So we're seeing the purchase market kind of develop even as refinances may slowdown. We feel that purchase market and that's going to provide strong support to houses - home prices. So I don't have specifics to tell you, but I think it's an important factor and we feel good about how it's developing and evolving today.

Now that makes sense. Thanks. And the cure rate that you had in July, would you characterize that as being better than expected or in line with expectations or how would you characterize that?

I would characterize the trends we're seeing are coming in better than expected. So I think what we saw in July, a little faster than expected is that cured and default ratio, I think it was 126% in July. So I think that's stronger than what I would have been expecting at this point.

Okay, great. So let me just sneak in one more. The mark-to-market LTV on the loans that are in forbearance, do you happen to have that number?

I don't have it specifically broken out by those that are in forbearance, but I would say kind of broadly and we talked about this certainly from our home equity perspective, certainly that's going to be an important component in terms of the default inventory. So when you kind of look at the portfolio overall and I don't think it's going to be necessarily dramatically different, we're seeing a significant portion plus 80% that have 10% or more equity, but I don't have it at hand in terms of broken out from those loans that are actually in forbearance.

Next question comes from Douglas Harter from Credit Suisse. Douglas, if your line is muted, please unmute yourself. And our next question comes from Mihir Bhatia from Bank of America.

I just wanted to go back to - Jack's question on the call for the claim rate assumptions for a second. I can appreciate the color on your process, but I was wondering if you could maybe just tell us a little bit more about just in terms of how much of a benefit did the government support programs provide to that assumption? Like, I guess we are in a pretty unusual environment, you have unemployment up a lot, but the housing market has held up pretty nicely. So just trying to understand what would it have looked like if just that if you just have the economy as is without that government support?

I think Mihir, thank you for the question. I think, Derek and I can tag team, this is what I think. It's - when you think about the scenario we're in - it's - if you think about with and without forbearance programs, you probably have different answers, right, in two ways. One with all forbearance programs, we probably wouldn't have the number of defaults that we have today, right, because there are a number of people that are in forbearance programs, kind of probably are more on the margin or did it more from a hedge. If we - if so, when you think about that factor, it would, it just plays out differently. So I think from a - from a scenario perspective, I would just - I would think of it as in the context that we are today, we do factor in the existence of forbearance program, we're monitoring the trends very carefully to watch as Derek just mentioned thinking through how cures play, how new defaults center, we were pleased in July, not only to see the cure rate, but also to see the number of new defaults, right, because ultimately new defaults would drive future claims. So we are monitoring very carefully, But in our analysis, we do take into account forbearance programs and other support we see in the market from an economic point of view, the Cares Act, other opportunities for supported in home borrowers through this temporary moment of hardship to keep them in their homes. And so - but we think we're early in the cycle, we need to continue to evaluate it and watch the trends and watch kind of how unemployment develops, watch how home prices develop as I mentioned earlier. But we do believe factoring in forbearances gives you a different answer from a default-to-claim rate, but also if you didn't have forbearance programs, we probably have lesser defaults. So I hope that's helpful? Derek, maybe you'd like to add anything?

Yes, but I think you have to separate. So government support I think about that a little more in the short-term, and that's probably a driver, the rate of new defaults that are coming in the portfolio. When you think of the default-to-claim rate and the propensity of those in default ultimately roll to claim, just keep in mind that it takes years usually at least one to two years before it results in a claim. So ultimately the propensity roll, the claim is probably going to be driven less by kind of short-term government support and more so the fundamentals of the economy and in particular the fundamentals of the housing market. So as you kind of see to the extent that you continue, which has been an important factor in the housing market, continued home price appreciation continued positive supply demand kind of mechanics in the market that will help lower that default-to-claim ratio because it allows borrowers to get out from under, we have acquisition option in terms of the property. So I would look at it more from that perspective, kind of short-term, long-term.

And then if I could switch to the services segment just for a minute here. I wanted to ask about the services segment, just in terms of the performance in the second quarter as it relates to your expectations and then I guess just more generally, can you remind us of some of the drivers for that business because you had a pretty strong housing market right in 2Q? And yes, I think, the segment was - it was not profitable. And I'm just wondering what kind of housing backdrop or what needs to happen for that segment to start contributing from a profitable standpoint?

Yes, thank you for that question. I think, you know, look we are, as I've mentioned before, these are businesses that are in kind of early stage of growth, especially as we kind of exited the Clayton business early in this year and we've repositioned really across this real estate segment. So where we've seen significant growth and kind of momentum from a revenue perspective, but also from a clear pipeline relates to our title business and that how - that's being really fueled by truly our MI relationships and our relevance in service delivery from a title perspective. The other businesses - there's three other pieces of the puzzle, which is the asset management business, which is our single-family residential due diligence business, which kind of hit the pause button, a little bit because of the COVID environment. So we'll see that come back and we have a strong market position, our valuation business, the appraisal businesses also kind of hit a little bit of a slowdown, just simply because of more automated appraisals being offered by the GSEs, are data driven side of that, I think is well positioned. And then I would say kind of our true real estate technologies kind of an investment. So when you look at our real estate business, we see a trajectory of growth in terms of growing revenues and contributing profitability. But I do think, as you kind of step back and look at the business and the assets we've got, the title probably has the nearest term contribution from a profitability point of view, given the pipeline of clients. The other businesses have been impacted a little bit by COVID, but we feel like we're well positioned to grow the revenues across our valuation and in our asset management businesses,…

Our next question comes from Douglas Harter from Credit Suisse.

Could you talk about the decision to raise debt during the quarter, given the figures you referenced in terms of your ability to withstand significantly higher default rates than you're actually experiencing?

Sure, Douglas, this is Frank and thanks for the question. The decision to raise debt was really predicated upon just the uncertainty in the landscape, and when you look at when we raised it in particular there were certainly a significant amount of uncertainty and lack of clarity on what government programs would be in place, et cetera. So we just wanted to make sure, as we've done historically that we just maintained strength and flexibility in our capital structure. We've done that historically and we thought it was prudent to have the additional resources just in case. And so it was primarily from a defensive standpoint that we - that we raised new debt. And then I would say also from an offensive standpoint, we also wanted to make sure that we were well positioned to take advantage of any potential disruption from any of our competitors and any decisions that they may make to pull back for any type of capital preservation reason. So it was good for us, both defensively and also potentially offensively as well.

And we have no further questions.

Okay. Well, I want to thank everyone. I appreciate the questions. I thank you everybody for joining the call today and for your participation and confidence of Radian. I want to thank the Radian team for really the tremendous effort that has been displayed during this COVID-19 environment as we all work remotely and continue to serve our customers at a very high level. So - but again, thank you. Look forward to talking to all of you soon and have a good day. Stay safe and stay well. Take care.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.