Rithm Capital Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
October 29, 2024

There are 11 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Rhythm Capital Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All participants are in listen only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Emma Bolla, Associate General Counsel.

Operator

Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. I would like to thank you for joining us today for Rhythm Capital's Q3 2024 earnings call. Joining me today are Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO and President of Rhythm Capital Nick Santoro, Chief Financial Officer of Rhythm Capital and Baron Silverstein, President of NewRez. Throughout the call, we are going to reference the earnings supplement that was posted this morning to the Rhythm Capital website, www.rhythmcap.com. If you've not already done so, I'd encourage you to download the presentation now.

Speaker 1

I would like to point out that certain statements made today will be forward looking statements. These statements by their nature are uncertain and may differ materially from actual results. I encourage you to review the disclaimers in our press release and earnings supplement regarding forward looking statements and to review the risk factors contained in our annual and quarterly reports filed with the SEC. In addition, we will be discussing some non GAAP financial measures during today's call. Reconciliations of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in our earnings supplement.

Speaker 1

And with that, I will turn the call over to Michael.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Emma. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. So during the quarter, we had a very strong quarter across all of our business lines. Before I get into the what I would call the meat of our business, I wanted to point out a couple of things before we go into the deck. First of all, you'll see a value slide depicting that some of the parts analysis, which we put in last quarter and again we put it in this quarter.

Speaker 2

Quite frankly, I believe our equity is very cheap when you look at peers in the business and our actual results. We have a best in class lending business, a large balance sheet and an asset management business with huge upside. Last quarter, I got a couple of questions on our equity raise and I just wanted to address that as well. We raised $300,000,000 I got asked what are you going to do with the money. So you understand our thought process.

Speaker 2

Since 2021, we have deployed $5,800,000,000 We haven't raised any equity while growing our earnings by approximately 60%. I would say that's pretty impressive. We have funded our growth with our operating businesses, balance sheet and a little bit of high yield debt. As we think about risk, there are multiple wars going on. We're in the middle of what could be a highly contested election.

Speaker 2

As many of you know, we are always engaged in activity to grow our platform through M and A. So I would say all of these factors are good reasons why we want to have more capital. Now back to our operating companies, New Res and Genesis. Our lending businesses produced excellent results. Genesis had a record quarter and we cannot be more thrilled with that platform.

Speaker 2

As banks pull back, we win. In NewRez, we have a portfolio of 875,000,000,000 ish of mortgage servicing rights, which include both own servicing rights and 3rd party servicing. These assets have been great. Origination business had another very good quarter with increased volumes and profitability. On the asset management side, Sculptor, which was acquired less than a year ago, last November.

Speaker 2

Performance is extremely good across all of our verticals, including real estate, credit and its multi strat fund. The teams are out raising money and we're starting to see inflows across the entire platform. This is past quarter, the real estate group announced their first closing of their multi $1,000,000,000 SRE Fund V. We're very pleased with how well the fundraising is going despite such a challenging environment and expect that fund to be oversubscribed, a true testament to the team. We look forward to when you will see meaningful contributions from the Sculptor franchise to the bottom line of Rhythm.

Speaker 2

On Great Ajax, the REIT we took over the management contract on in Q2, we have repositioned the residential assets in the company and look forward to growing the vehicle with opportunistic investments in the commercial space. We've done this before while building new residential at Fortress going back to 2013 and we'll do it again. The commercial real estate business today is in one of those periods where we feel current capital deployment will be hugely rewarded down the road and being patient searching for the right investments will reward our shareholders. One last note on Ajax. Last week, we announced we are changing the name from Great Ajax to Rent and Property Trust, which should happen in the Q4.

Speaker 2

Now I'll refer to the deck, which has been posted online. So on Page 3, the way to think about the company today is effectively across all of our business lines. We manage $80,000,000,000 of assets. We have $7,800,000,000 of permanent capital in the public markets. And again, we have a $875 ish 1,000,000,000 servicing portfolio.

Speaker 2

So real scale across all of our business lines. We don't need anything today when you look at it at the verticals that win and you think about the current market environment. So where are we going and what do we want to do here? 1, obviously, we want to grow AUM, but what matters first is performance. And when you look across the platform, all cylinders are firing.

Speaker 2

We want to expand our direct lending. So what does that mean? Obviously, we have NewRez and Genesis, which contribute meaningfully to our business. We're going to continue to look at other areas in financial services where we could expand our direct lending. On the mark on new market opportunities, we're always looking to grow.

Speaker 2

But again, we want to be prudent and think about different areas where we could grow that we have real expertise around the house and that we're going to make a meaningful contribution to the bottom line of Rhythm for our shareholders. We're obviously continuing to try to grow our private capital business. I mentioned during the quarter, we're starting to see real inflows in the Sculptor business at the Rhythm level route, looking at other opportunities to raise capital as well. And then again, we are we continue to look to expand into new investment verticals. For the quarter, an excellent quarter.

Speaker 2

This is the 20th consecutive quarter where our earnings available for distribution was greater than common dividends paid. Book value, up 8% since 2021, very stable quarter over quarter. One note on that, when the Fed announced earlier this year that they wanted to start cutting rates, we got very close to home, which is where we are today. You're going to see I believe you'll see very little book value volatility as we go forward. Dividend yield, we currently traded 8.8 percent and that's as of ninethirtytwenty 4 and we closed the quarter with roughly $2,000,000,000 of cash and liquidity.

Speaker 2

For the quarter GAAP net income $97,000,000.20 per diluted share. Earnings available for distribution $270,000,000 or $0.54 per diluted share with a return on equity number of 18%. Book value closed the quarter at $6,400,000,000 $12.31 per common share. Today, it's roughly $12.5 or something in and around that. We paid $0.25 in dividends and again $2,000,000,000 of cash liquidity on our balance sheet.

Speaker 2

Page 5, some of the parts. I'm not going to spend a ton of time on it. Have a look at it. Bottom line is we trade it in and around $10.5 to $10.60 or something like that. Book value today is give or take $12.5 If you look at the value of our parts and compare us to peers, I personally have a very strong view that our equity is extremely attractive here and think there's significant upside.

Speaker 2

Page 6, this was some of the earlier comments that I referred to. When you look at our capital deployment since 2021, if you look to the left part of the page, Jan of 2021 earnings available for distribution were $0.34 today were $0.54 We deployed $5,800,000,000 of capital since 2021 that includes acquiring different operating platforms that include and included in that a Sculptor. We bought $1,400,000,000 of consumer loans from Goldman. We acquired Genesis Capital. We bought Caliber.

Speaker 2

We bought SLS. When you think about all those transactions and you think about actually the portfolio growth and not going out to raise a ton of equity, it's a great story. Earnings available, as I look at again earnings growth roughly 60% and our CAGR is 14%. So I think the team should be really proud of those numbers. And again, that should dispel any of the questions about why we're raising $300,000,000 of equity in a quarter.

Speaker 2

When we look at the next phase of growth, like I said earlier, we don't really need anything. I mean, we want to raise more money in our private capital business. So our balance sheet grows a little bit less as we go forward. We want to continue to put up what I would call very good results across all of our platforms. And from a credit perspective, there's a lot of talk about everybody growing private credit.

Speaker 2

We're in that camp as well and we want to grow our private credit. But just keep in mind, we've been in these businesses for 10 years. When you think about direct lending, you think about the mortgage company we built, you think about Genesis Capital, you think about secured credit, unsecured credit, whether it be at Sculptor, whether it be at Rhythm, you think about real estate. We've been in these sectors for a long, long time. And now it's just creating more scale around our private capital business.

Speaker 2

On NewRez, we built this company quite frankly from scratch, while at Fortress. If you go back to the Fortress days, we built Mr. Cooper. Obviously, those guys have done a great job. But if you look at where we are today, we are I think we're a top 3 mortgage bank, non bank mortgage originator and servicer in the U.

Speaker 2

S. Large portfolio service over 4,000,000 customers, huge third party business as we grew through our SLS acquisition. Company makes a lot of money in 3rd quarter. If you look where we are from a production standpoint, through Q3, we're $41,000,000,000 in origination, and that's higher than where we were in all of 23%. Genesis Capital, another great story.

Speaker 2

We acquired this company from Goldman's Merchant Bank, I believe in 2022. Earnings, just to give you a sense, when we bought the company, I think we were doing something around $50,000,000 in EBITDA. This year, we should do something between, give or take, dollars 90,000,000 of EBITDA. Production numbers are up from $2,000,000,000 and we may close the year at something around $3,500,000,000 to $4,000,000,000 So real good story. Most importantly here is when you look at the portfolio, delinquency numbers are extremely low, sponsor growth is high and the return on equity and that's how we think about all our businesses, return on equity for our shareholders is extremely high.

Speaker 2

Sculptor, what I would say in Sculptor is we again, we go back to November of last year, closed on the company, I believe around November 20. It's a great business, great business, has a ton of upside, teams are doing really well. Every day it gets better. When you look at real returns for the LPs that Sculptor and the leadership serve, they're great. I mean, there's just no reason why this company is not going to grow in significant scale as we go forward.

Speaker 2

There's plenty of room for us. There's plenty of room for our overall franchise. And again, it's performance first. And that's the sculptor mentality I opened up in one of the quotes, performances, that's our mantra. We want performance before we grow AUM.

Speaker 2

And when you look at this platform, there's nothing that disputes that way of thinking. On the commercial real estate business on Page 11, we do some balance sheet investing at the Rhythm level. We've been pretty methodical there. I do think over time that when we look at Rhythm, we look at Great Ajax. What you're going to see is more strategic partnerships, I think, off the Rhythm balance sheet.

Speaker 2

As we look forward, we do think around the real estate business today that we're in one of those periods of time as I pointed out in my opening remarks that current capital deployment is going to be hugely rewarded down the road as we look at the real estate business. Page 12, just talking about the macroeconomic themes. Obviously, we're in a period where who knows what's going to happen with this election. When you think about inflation, you think about deficits, you think about yields. I think regardless what you're going to see, you could see our higher yields in the long end.

Speaker 2

We have seen a steepening of the yield curve, where the front end is should be anchored here. But I think you could see higher long term rates on the back end as deficits continue to balloon. Another common theme asset based finance, everybody's talking about asset based finance. As I pointed out, we've been doing this for I've been in the business forever and we've been doing this together as a group for a long, long time. So there's nothing different here.

Speaker 2

When you look at banks, banks continue to look for capital relief around either their balance sheets or some of the things that they're doing. We're very active in what I would call credit risk transfer. With credit risk transfer, we've done some large transactions with some of our large money center banks and we'll continue to do that as we go forward. On the consumer side, consumers continue to remain resilient. We don't see any real degradation or deterioration in consumer credit.

Speaker 2

And then I brought up on the real estate side from a cycle standpoint. Baron is going to take us out and talk about NewRez and the mortgage company. And then I'll jump back in a little bit later in the queue. Barron?

Speaker 3

Thank you, Michael. Good morning. I'm going to start on Slide 16. And we delivered another strong quarter in with pretax income, excluding mark to market on the owned MSR portfolio of approximately $246,000,000 which is an increase of 8% quarter over quarter and delivering a 24% return on equity. Key drivers included a strong performance in our originations platform as we're able to remain disciplined in growing our production, while also increasing margins overall and maintaining our market share.

Speaker 3

While on the servicing side, we saw continued growth in our 3rd party franchise, coupled with our best in class operational efficiency, which is also highlighted by the completion of the SLS integration, which we did 3 months post acquisition in the Q2. And these results overall just continue to present the foundation Michael talked about that we've built over the last few years, driven by our industry leading servicing capabilities, our robust client franchise, best in class customer experience and our proprietary technology. Turning to Slide 17, and you can see there that we just remain in growth mode, right? In the Q3, as Michael mentioned, NewRez our position as the 2nd largest non bank servicer with over $755,000,000,000 notional UPB that we directly service and the 5th largest lender in the industry with a 3.4% market share. We remain well positioned to continue to take market share through our organic and inorganic growth, while maximizing performance for our shareholders.

Speaker 3

Moving to Slide 18. The scale of our MSR portfolio affords us significant opportunities for portfolio recapture and customer growth through future cross sell strategies, right? And the customer retention overall is driven by market events, but also by our consumer connections, whether they are realtor referrals or local sales relationships or

Speaker 4

other connectivity. As part of our strategy, we're

Speaker 3

making significant investments in The table The table on the right side of the page shows our direct lending refinance recapture results, which we believe is the proper way to measure how we're performing with consumers looking to refinance, right? Year to date, we have a 20 excuse me, sorry, one second. Year to date, we have recapture rates of 55% when including second liens as a retention tool and 38% is just our overall aggregate refinance recapture rate through the Q3, right? We completed the first phase of our CRM rebuild in the Q2 of 2024, and we believe there is significant room to improve our ability to retain and continue to gain traction with our customers overall. Away from recapture and turning to Slide 19.

Speaker 3

Our origination business continued to perform well this quarter with $15,900,000,000 in funded volume, up 9% from last quarter. While the market remains competitive overall, we're able to improve margins to weighted average 1.23%, which is an increased 17% quarter over quarter, while maintaining market share, but also get back to a normalized level as seen in most of 2023. All of our channels remain profitable and the design of our platform allows us to take advantage of market opportunities regardless of the interest rate environment. As mentioned before, our top priority and biggest opportunity is our ability to retain our customers, and that will continue to drive benefits to all of our businesses. On Slide 20, just connecting on our servicing business that also continues to perform really well.

Speaker 3

Our operational efficiency is highlighted through our scale and cost leadership with an industry leading cost per loan of $113 and as I mentioned, the completion of the SLS integration and our best in class digital customer experience. Our Shell Point Mortgage third party client franchise remains strong with a 5% gain quarter over quarter through continued momentum gaining wallet share with existing customers while also adding new customers.

Speaker 4

And while our owned

Speaker 3

MSR delinquencies have increased quarter over whether financial issues or storms to find solutions to keep customers in their homes. I believe our business is as best positioned as it ever has been, and I'm looking forward to continuing to tell the NewRez story to the market. Thank you. Back to you, Michael.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Baron. Just a couple of last slides and then we'll go to Q and A. On Genesis, I mentioned Q3, effectively a record quarter. And when we look at P and L and return on equity, The team does a great job there continuing to grow that business. I would be very surprised if it doesn't get significantly scaled up here over the next couple of years.

Speaker 2

Obviously, it's a lot of it's demand based, but overall performance has been great there. We couldn't be happier with Clint and his team and the overall performance of the business. On the Sculptor side, I mentioned earlier, the real estate team is out. They're out with a large multibillion dollar fund. They closed $1,300,000,000 be very surprised if that doesn't get oversubscribed.

Speaker 2

The team candidly is truly best in class at what they do. And it's really one of the crown jewels in our overall franchise. During the quarter, closed a new CLO for $400,000,000 The CLO business will continue to grow for Sculptor and for us as we look at this business going forward, not only here in the U. S, but also overseas in the UK. From an overall performance standpoint, I mentioned before the teams are doing a great job.

Speaker 2

Performance is the number one thing that matters. And obviously in the asset management business, we lead with performance. AUM is going to follow. We're starting to see more AUM come back on the platform. So again, really, really excited with the prospects of Sculptor in the overall team.

Speaker 2

And then finally on Adore, this is our single family rental business. We have 4,200 units. What I would say there is cap rates are when you look at real cap rates, no matter what, where how people advertise it, whether it be in the built to rent space or in the scattered lot space, typical cap rates are really in the in what I would say the low fives. When you think about Rhythm or Sculptor or any of our other investment platforms, we look to seek what the best opportunity is for our overall capital. So when you think about growth there, we're not just going to grow a business if we think we could deploy capital better in another area to increase enterprise value for the overall franchise.

Speaker 2

So in this period of time where if cap rates don't get higher or we're not able to acquire units at much higher cap rates, we have to evaluate what we're doing there. And I think it's that business is better served in a third party vehicle than it is on our balance sheet. So that's it. So overall, things we had a very, very good quarter across all of our platforms. And now we'll turn it back to the operator for Q and A.

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. The first question comes from Bose George with KBW. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Hey, everyone. Good morning. So Michael, you've noted that some of the parts valuation potential, what are your latest thoughts on potentially listing part of U. S. As a way to potentially sort of realize some of that difference?

Speaker 2

I think, here's what I would say. When we put in the slide that talks about how much capital we've deployed since 2021 without raising equity. One of the things that gives us the ability to do that is being that Rhythm has all these wholly owned subs and all the capital stays in one bucket. While saying that, we have to I mean, candidly, we have to figure out a way to get our equity price to trade where it should trade. So it's probably my guess is it will be a 2025 event if and when we take this company public.

Speaker 2

And we'll evaluate that. There's obviously other things we're thinking about in the M and A or on from an M and A landscape perspective. But I think it's more likely going to be a 25 event as we think about the mortgage company.

Speaker 5

Okay, great. Thanks. And then actually could we get an update on book value in October?

Speaker 2

It's roughly 12.5 Bose.

Speaker 5

Okay, great. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Stephen Laws with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Hi, good morning. Baron, quick question around the residential volume, refinance activity take off, when you talk about that, Was that rate driven? Was it a function of the increased recapture opportunity? And kind of how do you see that trending October or maybe if you look forward with where rate

Speaker 3

Kind of

Speaker 6

broke up a little bit.

Speaker 3

I don't know. You kind of broke up a little bit there. So just I continue to the markets rallied a fair amount in the Q3 and then it's obviously given back all of those gains. We certainly saw refinance volume basically all in get closer to say 30% of overall production. I think we're going to get ourselves more to a, what I'll say, is the market on a normalized basis.

Speaker 3

That said, we see our direct lending channels as we continue to basically give momentum through our recapture investments to continue to improve and increase.

Speaker 6

Great. And then switching gears over to Sculptor. Michael,

Speaker 4

as the Q1 we're going

Speaker 6

to, I believe we typically get some annual performance fees that hit in Q4.

Speaker 3

Can you maybe try

Speaker 6

to quantify that and maybe what type of earnings that may have as far as margin on those performance fees in

Speaker 4

the Q4?

Speaker 2

I don't think I can give you forward looking performance fees. I would say, as you know, in the asset management business and particularly in the Sculptor business, you should see some performance fees come in the Q4. I think when you just going back to when we first acquired the company in November of last year, as you know, in Asset Management, you assume a certain multiple of where these trade versus earnings or DE. And I would say that if you look at where we are today from an acquisition perspective and you think about the actual multiple, it's really something in the I would call it the high single digits right now based on 24. And I think that number obviously gets lower as we go forward.

Speaker 2

So when you think about true value creation here, I personally believe this will be one of our better partnershipsinvestments that we've made in many, many years as this platform continues to grow. So you're going to see more lumpiness, I think, particularly going into the Q4, but that's when you're going to see the bulk of the earnings hit as we see monetization and we see more AUM come on the platform.

Speaker 6

Great. Well, it's certainly nice to see the AUM growth in the business of $34,000,000,000 look forward to continue to watch that to grow. Thanks, Michael.

Speaker 5

Thanks, Stephen.

Operator

The next question comes from Eric Hagen with BTIG. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Hey, thanks. Good morning. Maybe first off, I mean, in this scenario where rates continue rising, if you were to grow book value because of a write up in the MSRs, do you feel like you have the flexibility to effectively take the capital from NewRez and repurpose it to other segments of the portfolio?

Speaker 2

Yes. I mean, it's this goes back to Bo's question. Everything sits in effectively one pot, and that's given us the ability to grow earnings from, call it, low 30s in $0.21 to $0.54 where we are today. So the answer is, again, Eric, going back, I use the example on the single family rental business. We don't have to be in a business to be in a business.

Speaker 2

We want to think about the best ways to deploy capital. If go to MSRs, we're rich, we would just potentially you could just turn around and sell them. It's a great cash flowing asset that's unlevered and the way that we see it's something between 8% 10%. So I don't see any change there. Just one other caveat there, when we look at book value and where we are today from an over a hedge perspective, one of the reasons our balance sheet looks grossed up is because we're, for the most part, fully hedged against our entire business to take out any kind of book value volatility.

Speaker 2

While saying that, we reported twelvethirty one. Today, we're about 12.5. So, we feel like we're in really good shape, both book value, the ability to redeploy capital away from the mortgage company, if in fact we wanted to do that. But I think it's more growth across the entire platform.

Speaker 7

Yes, that's really helpful. Okay. So what are your sorry about that. What are your perspectives on the mix messaging around consumer credit that we seem to be picking up through earnings here? I mean, some indications that consumers are a little over leveraged and struggling.

Speaker 7

At the same time, rates are coming down, unemployment is low. What's the right read through to the portfolio when we think about the servicing on one side and then the rest of the portfolio, if you will, on the other end?

Speaker 2

We have, if you look at the servicing portfolio, dollars 8.78 I think $235,000,000,000 of that is 3rd party servicing. The rest is own servicing. Thinking back in time, we have a bunch of legacy, anybody that refi in 2020 or 2021 that has 2 and change coupon mortgages, I think those folks are in very good shape. You might see a tad higher in delinquencies, but overall it still seems to us that the consumer is in reasonable shape. I think a good telling if you look at some of the bank earnings, I mean, I think that would probably be a good place to look.

Speaker 2

We're not in subprime autos, subprime autos have rolled over a little bit here when you look at overall delinquencies. But overall, our portfolios look like they're in pretty good shape.

Speaker 7

Got you. I think we're looking at Slide 6. It looks like maybe you bought some excess MSRs in the quarter. Can you talk through that purchase? Is that an investment in the NewRez segment?

Speaker 7

Or is that the investment portfolio?

Speaker 2

It's in the investment portfolio. It's something that we owned already. And there was a liquidation of an MSR fund that actually we used to manage. And we bought some of those MSRs or the excess MSRs.

Speaker 7

Got you. Thank you guys very much.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Eric.

Operator

The next question comes from Kenneth Lee with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Speaker 8

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just one on Sculptor. Wondering if you could just give us a rough sense of what the recent net flow picture has been there. And then as you look across the various strategies within credit, real estate and multi strategy, which areas could be the most attractive areas for potential organic growth opportunities as you look forward over the next few years?

Speaker 8

Thanks.

Speaker 2

So the growth in the platform, I think the last time we reported, I think we showed a number roughly $32,000,000,000 of AUM. So you could assume it's up a few $1,000,000,000 between what we're doing or what's happening in the CLO business. The real estate fund just closed at $1,300,000,000 I think they're expecting another close here shortly. The performance overall on the platform when you look at actual real numbers has been excellent. So you're going to see some natural AUM growth as a result of the overall performance.

Speaker 2

But I think it's across all of the platforms. Obviously, every asset manager keeps talking about private credit, private credit. We'd like to scale up our private credit business. The real estate team, like I said, is out with a multi $1,000,000,000 fund that it's likely gets oversubscribed, and I think there'll be more funds beyond that. And then on the multi strat side, as long as performance is good, I see no reason why they're not going to see more flows coming back.

Speaker 2

So I think it's across the entire platform. One area that and I'll speak from the Rhythm perspective for a second, when you look at the large asset managers, there's been huge asset growth in the insurance space. Obviously, we're not there right now and we'd love to get there. It's a valuation thing and finding the right asset to help grow. But when you look at where we sit as an organization in our direct lending, we manufacture when you look at our funds and the things that we do at the rhythm level in all of our business lines, we manufacture assets.

Speaker 2

It's like we are in so called direct lending and we want to continue to grow that in the event that we're able to acquire some kind of insurance liability structure or something that could help us grow. I think that's really where you're going to see real growth at the overall platform. But on the Sculptor side, it's more of the same. We've distanced or not we have, but you're almost a year into the close, it gets better every day, performance is great. I see no reason why all the verticals at the sculptor level won't continue to grow.

Speaker 8

Got you. Very helpful there. And just one follow-up, if I may, just in terms of the direct lending expansion, and you talked a little bit more about that. What kind of form could this expansion look like? It sounds like you already got some capabilities around it.

Speaker 8

And are you talking about, for example, like middle markets direct lending, things of that nature? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Yes. The direct lending, like obviously, we have a large mortgage company that makes a ton of money. We have the Genesis business that makes a lot of money. We are under scaled, I would say, in credit at the Rhythm level. So when we look at direct lending and think about ways to partner with Sculptor and things that we could do on the direct lending side, we are looking hard at that space.

Speaker 2

We don't want to pay down multiples. If you think about real asset growth over the course of the past 20 years, you've been in a cyclical and it's more than a cyclical. You've been in a bull market where equities have gone up, credits done extremely well. But with the banks, when you think about the banks and you've heard it from all the other asset managers with the banks pulling back in certain areas, we think there is room for us to find or grow the right platform around direct lending. So it's definitely a space we're very keenly focused on.

Speaker 8

Got you. Very helpful there. Thanks again.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Chris Benlove with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Speaker 9

Thanks and good morning everyone. Just on operating ROEs across the business, you had 18% operating ROEs in the quarter that improved. But just curious on your expectations for sustainable operating ROEs over the intermediate to long term as we hopefully come out of a trough mortgage environment here? Is it high teens? Is it low 20s?

Speaker 9

Just curious on if you have any thoughts there?

Speaker 2

Yes. I think on everything we do, we measure risk returns. We're not going to shoot for the stores unless we think we have an edge. Obviously, the you look at our mortgage business and you can compare it to other our friends and peers out there. I think we perform as good as anybody, quite frankly.

Speaker 2

When you look at the ROEs, the Genesis business continues to do well. We just spoke about direct lending. You look at the portfolio of assets we have. We're going to try to put up mid teens type returns. I don't think that's anything different than you've heard from us over the years.

Speaker 2

And when you actually look at the real performance going back since the company was started, it's probably something in and around a mid teens type of return in all environments. And this goes back to 2013. So and I think those are realistic numbers. Obviously, it's overweight mortgage and the mortgage company has done its job. But I think as we grow the asset management business in our platforms, you're going to you'll continue to see those type of numbers.

Speaker 9

Great. Thanks, Michael. Appreciate that. And then, Michael, also in your prepared remarks, you mentioned the election. I was just wondering if you could share kind of your thoughts on election implications for Rhythm.

Speaker 9

We could see rate moves, potential volatility, housing implications. Just curious on how you're thinking about it near and intermediate term on potential impacts of Rhythm? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yes. I think when we look at some of this, the messaging that's coming out of both parties, I mean, Kamala Harris is talking about giving people money, first time homeowners to buy things, to buy homes. You're looking at Kamala Harris going after what I would call the SFR space around corporates going out and buying housing. I think what's going to end up happening and I think it would be the best outcome probably for the country, I don't care what party you're thinking about is if you have a divided government. So I think a lot of the so called rhetoric that you have coming out of both candidates is going to it's going to be hard for them to pass a lot of the things that are going on.

Speaker 2

Irregardless of that, whether Trump comes up with tariffs, if he gets in or Harris comes up with her stuff, I think a lot of this stuff is going to be harder to pass. The biggest of the biggest challenges and you hear it from some of the very smart people in our business is the deficit. The deficit is going to grow no matter what. The government needs to continue issue tons and tons of debt. So how do we think about that from an overall rate perspective?

Speaker 2

While saying that, you have to think about the uncertainties that could be created if Trump got in and, for example, you had tariffs, what does that really do to the economy? How do we think about that? How do you think about the immigration policies? And do you start seeing wage inflation? So I think the way that we're positioned now is to have an abundance of cash and liquidity.

Speaker 2

We are extremely close to home from an overall rate perspective. And that's the way we're going to run until we get some other kind of tea leaves that may rear their heads. But we're close to home. We feel good about our risk profile. I mentioned before book value is up again quarter over quarter, obviously, obviously because of the rate sell off.

Speaker 2

But we are going to be extremely close to home from a duration standpoint. Our financing is extremely buttoned up. So we feel good about where we are.

Speaker 9

Great. Thank you, Michael, and appreciate you taking my questions.

Speaker 4

Thanks.

Operator

The next question comes from Jason Weaver with Jones Trading. Please go ahead.

Speaker 10

Thanks. Good morning. Hey, Michael, I think you mentioned during your prepared remarks, it had been something like 20 quarters that you've overrun your dividend on EAD. Considering that ROE that you're throwing off right now and maybe contextualize with what's likely to happen in the next couple of months and beyond that, what do you think about the level of the dividend payout here and if that could possibly be moderated upwards?

Speaker 2

The dividend policy is driven by obviously our Board. I've been pretty clear about the dividend based on our Board discussions that we weren't raising our dividend because you're just giving back the capital to redeploy it. While saying that, with hedge funds having shorts out there, would I love to raise the dividend significantly and drive it? The answer is yes. But I don't again, it's a Board decision.

Speaker 2

I don't see us raising the dividend today because with the thought process, if you trade at 8 to 9 dividend yield and let's assume that our equity does right itself, effectively we could deploy the capital. If we could deploy the capital in the mid teens, it's only going to create more earnings for shareholders and effectively it should drive the valuation of our overall enterprise significantly higher. Little frustrated obviously with where our equity trades, but I do think over time it will write itself both as about the mortgage company. We're looking at a lot of other things. And while we want to manage quarter to quarter and I think we do a very good job and try to put up consistent earnings, we're in it for the long game.

Speaker 2

And I see no reason why our equity shouldn't be significantly higher down the road. You look at a lot of the large asset managers, they look where they were a few years back and you look where they are. Now if we stay true to our knitting and where we think we're going to go here, I think that our company has tremendous upside. So for now to get back to capital, I don't think makes sense. Again, a little frustrating, but I think it's more based on Board decisions that probably stay the course.

Speaker 10

Got it. Thank you for that color. And then maybe one for Barron. Curious about how you think about the operational footprint given what could be wildly different sort of origination volume scenarios going forward, and how you can maintain that flexibility?

Speaker 3

When you ask about footprint, you're talking about like our how we manage our ops on origination and servicing. I'm not really sure what you're asking.

Speaker 10

Your originator capacity there to be able to handle additional volume or even lighter volume?

Speaker 3

Yes. So look, it's been an absolute focus, I think, for the industry overall. We feel and we continue to believe that we have significant headroom from an operational perspective. We've actually moved a fair amount of our operations from an offshore perspective as well to give us that added flexibility. But from where we stand today, we believe we do have significant headroom from any kind of rate environment that we will see coming in the future.

Speaker 10

Got it. Okay. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Trevor Cranston with Simmons JMP. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Hey, thanks. Good morning. Good morning.

Speaker 6

Most of my questions

Speaker 4

have been addressed. I guess one more on NewRez. Can you maybe spend a minute talking about the wholesale channel? Obviously, you kind of dominated by the top 2 players there, but you guys have had some growth over the course of 2024. I was curious if you could just talk about how you see your positioning within wholesale and the growth opportunity there?

Speaker 4

Thanks.

Speaker 3

So like you mentioned, it's dominated by really the one company and then there's a second larger one. I think there's room for a lot of players in there where we can continue to position. We've certainly positioned from a non agency perspective, which is part of our original DNA. We've also did a pretty significant technology upgrade and we're continuing to work on our technology to basically deliver downstream to our wholesale broker partners. The industry has changed pretty significantly overall, whereas brokers have grown multifold and they've added a lot of what I'll say is loan officers throughout their entire ecosystem.

Speaker 3

So we're really basically just coming up to looking at our technology is really going to continue to drive our growth. I would also just say Michael has been really clear about how we're putting out our capital. So we remain very disciplined in wholesale to the extent that the market allows us to take advantage of putting capital in wholesale, we'll do that, right? And the last couple of quarters, there has been some room for us to take market share, but we're going to remain disciplined in the sector and technology for us is really going to be the way that we're going to drive further earnings growth. And as I mentioned, we focus on wholesale a lot on our non agency products.

Speaker 3

And to the extent that we can pick up added volume, where we think it's attractive, we'll do that.

Speaker 4

Got it. Okay. That's helpful. Thank you.

Operator

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Michael Nierenberg for any closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Thank you. Appreciate everybody. Appreciate all the questions, everybody dialing in this morning. Obviously, nowhere to find us if you have any follow-up. Have a great week.

Speaker 2

Stay safe. Speak to you next quarter. Thanks, everyone.

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

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Earnings Conference Call
Rithm Capital Q3 2024
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