The news only got better for Nationstar Mortgage Holdings in the third quarter, as the mortgage servicer recorded its servicing portfolio is now the largest in its history.
The positive results are a continued boost from its results last quarter when it reported its best quarter since the second quarter of 2015, coming off a shaky start to the year.
Nationstar posted third-quarter earnings of $0.52 per share, which was $0.11 better than the capital IQ consensus of $0.41.
Its revenues also increased 36.5% year/year, reaching $542 million, which was up from $329 last quarter. This was slightly less than the $546.65 million capital IQ consensus.
Nationstar attributed the growth in net income to recapturing customers through its originations platform and its strong servicing performance despite elevated amortization.
"Our third quarter achievements solidify us as the preferred industry partner," said Jay Bray, chairman and CEO. "In the quarter we posted strong operational results, added almost 510 thousand customers to our servicing platform, funded over 25 thousand loans and launched enhanced technologies that improve the home ownership experience for our 2.7 million and growing customer base.”
“We ended the quarter with the largest servicing portfolio in our company's history, are actively engaged in a significant pipeline and remain focused on creating value for our shareholders,” said Bray.
Broken up, its servicing segment “contributed solid earnings during the quarter despite a $14 million increase in amortization which reflects our focus on improving portfolio performance and cost containment initiatives,” the release stated.
The originations platform also performed well. During the quarter, Nationstar stated that its originations segment capitalized on the prepayments in its servicing book and generated $85 million in adjusted pretax income, a quarterly increase of 57%, and the highest pretax income in our history.
In total, Nationstar funded $5.5 billion for its servicing platform, a quarterly increase of 6%.
Meanwhile, Xome, the company’s end-to-end digital real estate platform, delivered $20 million in GAAP pretax income, which was driven by maintaining strong property sales execution and continued improvement in title operations margins.
A recent report from Fitch Ratings stated that Nationstar’s internal improvements focused on customer service place the company on solid ground.
In the report, Fitch affirmed several of Nationstar’s servicer ratings (residential primary servicer rating for Alt-A product, residential primary servicer rating for subprime product, residential special servicer rating, and residential master servicer) and said that the outlook for each of those ratings is “stable,” based on the improvements the company put in place over the last several months.
Nationstar’s ability to capably service its borrowers is important considering the size of the nonbank’s portfolio.
Per Fitch’s report, Nationstar is currently the largest nonbank servicer, and fourth largest servicer overall, of residential mortgage loans.
