Earnings call transcript: Loandepot Q3 2025 results meet expectations

loanDepot Inc. reported its Q3 2025 earnings, revealing a net loss of $3 million, a significant improvement from the previous quarter’s $16 million loss. The company’s revenue reached $325 million, surpassing the forecast of $309.2 million. Despite meeting EPS expectations, the stock fell 5.38% to $2.79 in after-hours trading.

Key Takeaways

• Revenue exceeded expectations with $325 million, up from $292 million in Q2.
• The company maintained its EPS forecast, showing no surprise.
• Stock price declined by 5.38% post-earnings announcement.
• New leadership and technology initiatives aim to enhance efficiency.
• The mortgage market remains fragmented, with potential growth in 2026.

Company Performance

loanDepot demonstrated resilience in Q3 2025, narrowing its net loss to $3 million, a notable improvement from the $16 million loss in Q2. Revenue increased to $325 million, reflecting a strategic focus on efficiency and innovation. The company’s performance aligns with industry trends, as the mortgage market remains fragmented but poised for potential growth.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $325 million, up from $292 million in Q2.
• EPS: -$0.02, meeting the forecast.
• Pull-through weighted rate lock volume: $7 billion, a 10% increase from Q2.
• Loan origination volume: $6.5 billion, a 3% decrease from Q2.
• Cash reserves: $459 million, up $51 million from Q2.

Earnings vs. Forecast

The company’s EPS of -$0.02 met the forecast, while revenue outperformed expectations at $325 million compared to the projected $309.2 million. The revenue surprise of 4.46% highlights loanDepot’s ability to exceed market predictions, though the EPS alignment suggests stability rather than growth.

Market Reaction

Despite meeting EPS forecasts, loanDepot’s stock declined by 5.38% to $2.79 in after-hours trading, reflecting investor concerns over the company’s future profitability. The stock remains volatile, trading closer to its 52-week low of $1.01, indicating cautious sentiment in the market.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, loanDepot projects Q4 2025 pull-through weighted lock volume between $6 billion and $8 billion, with origination volume expected to range from $6.5 billion to $8.5 billion. The company anticipates increased expenses due to volume-related costs and remains focused on profitability and cost management.

Executive Commentary

CEO Anthony Hsieh emphasized, "We started this company with $70 million of capital and have grown 38% year over year for the first 11 years of our life." CFO David Hayes added, "The best way to combat that is with profitable market share growth." These statements underscore the company’s commitment to long-term growth and market share expansion.

Risks and Challenges

• Market volatility and interest rate fluctuations could impact performance.
• Increased competition in the fragmented mortgage market.
• Rising operational costs associated with scaling new technologies.
• Dependence on favorable economic conditions for future growth.
• Potential regulatory changes affecting the lending industry.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about capital funding strategies and potential capital raising opportunities. Executives highlighted the strategic advantage of their in-house servicing platform and emphasized their ability to grow market share profitably, addressing concerns about the company’s future direction.

Full transcript - Loandepot Inc (LDI) Q3 2025:

Conference Call Operator: Good afternoon and welcome to loanDepot’s third quarter 2025 earnings call. After the speaker’s remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again, press star and one. I would now like to turn the call over to Gerhard Erdelji, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Gerhard Erdelji, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations, loanDepot: Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining our third quarter 2025 earnings call. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that this conference call may include forward-looking statements regarding the company’s operating and financial performance in future periods. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including but not limited to guidance to our pull-through weighted rate lock volume, origination volume, pull-through weighted gain on sale margin, strategies, capabilities, and financial performance. These statements are based on the company’s current expectations and available information. Actual results for future periods may differ materially from these forward-looking statements due to risks or other factors that are described in the risk factors section of our filings with the SEC.

Our presentation today contains certain non-GAAP financial measures that we believe provide additional insight into analyzing and benchmarking the performance and value of our business. Facilitating company-to-company operating performance comparisons. For more details on these non-GAAP financial measures, including reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, please refer to today’s earnings release, which is available on our website at investors.loandepot.com. A webcast and a transcript of this call will be posted on our website after the conclusion of this call. On today’s call, we have LoanDepot’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Anthony Hsieh, and Chief Financial Officer, David Hayes. They will provide an overview of our quarter as well as our financial and operational results and outlook. We are also joined by Chief Investment Officer, Jeff DerGurahian, and Dominic Marchetti, Chief Digital Officer, to help answer your questions after our prepared remarks.

With that, I’ll turn things over to Anthony to get us started. Anthony.

Anthony Hsieh, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, loanDepot: Thank you, Gerhard. I appreciate everyone joining us on the call today. During the five months since I returned to LoanDepot as CEO, we made significant changes to our business that align with our objective of growing our market share profitably. Before I speak to these achievements, let me first talk about our strategy and positioning in the marketplace today. We continue to believe strongly in our diversified business model with best-in-class origination capabilities across multiple channels that provide access to purchase, refinance, and home equity lending opportunities across market cycles. These origination capabilities are complemented by our in-house servicing platform and recapture capabilities, all of which are enhanced by our technology assets and our nationally recognized brand. This diversified strategy enables LoanDepot to grow from a de novo startup in 2010 to, at one point, become the second-largest retail lender in the country.

We are confident this strategy will win in today’s highly fragmented market and are committed to profitably regaining share. The key is execution, and our team is laser-focused on our plan. Our actions in the third quarter reflect this focus. In the third quarter, we initiated a business transformation that included naming new leadership across all of our origination channels: Consumer Direct, Retail, and partnership lending, as well as our in-house servicing platform. We also transformed our technology and innovation functions under new leadership. In our Consumer Direct channel, we realigned our sales leadership team to catalyze new sales strategies under our next-generation lending initiatives. We also announced the formation of a revenue operations and strategy function to be led by our returning Chief Strategy Officer, Rick Kelly.

On the marketing side, in October, our brand lit up on the national stage during the MLB postseason, which, through the league championship series, enjoyed the highest viewership since 2017. Including the ALCS and NLCS, postseason viewership averaged 4.5 million views per game. Looking beyond the baseball season, LoanDepot Park will soon host some of the biggest events in professional sports, including the NHL Winter Classic and the World Baseball Classic, providing our brand with continued strong national exposure. In our retail and partnership channels, we announced new channel presidents, Tom Fedler and Dan Pena respectively. Tom is reigniting the energy of our retail channel, emphasizing profitable organic growth and helping ensure our loan officers have access to best-in-class products, tools, and operations in the industry. Dan is doubling down on our commitment to providing value to our homebuilder partners, most recently leading a new relationship with Bettenbaugh Homes.

In September, we announced the addition of Adam Saab to lead our servicing business. Our servicing capabilities and portfolio of customers are key parts of our strategy, particularly the flywheel effect of recapturing our existing customers for refinancing or purchase at no additional acquisition cost. In terms of innovation, our Chief Digital Officer, Dominic Marchetti, and Chief Innovation Officer, Sean DerGurahian, who rejoined the company in August, have already made an impact by introducing AI capabilities to some of our most repeatable and scalable call center functions, both improving performance and driving down cost. Right now, we are pivoting the use of new and emerging technologies across sales, operations, and software engineering with an expectation that these innovations will improve the customer experience while driving improved productivity and lower our cost of production. We are just scratching the surface of what this team can do.

Last, but certainly not least, in terms of leadership talent, just yesterday, we announced Nikhul Patel as our Chief Growth Officer. He will be responsible for growth opportunities, acquisition activities, and customer engagement, helping the company capitalize on AL disruption and accelerate our momentum. Nikhul is a significant hire that brings a proven track record of success, deep fintech expertise, and a strategic mindset, completing the company’s leadership transformation. To recap, the third quarter was a period of significant change for our organization, focused on establishing the leadership team that will execute our plan for profitable market share growth. We believe in our strategy and the positioning of our assets in this highly fragmented market. Our focus is on execution, which we look forward to sharing our progress along the way.

With that, I will now turn the call over to David, who will take us through our financial results in more detail. David.

David Hayes, Chief Financial Officer, loanDepot: Thanks, Anthony. Good afternoon, everyone. The third quarter reflected the benefits of higher revenue and contained expense growth from positive operating leverage. We reported an adjusted net loss of $3 million in the third quarter compared to an adjusted net loss of $16 million in the second quarter of 2025. This was due primarily to higher lock volume, higher pull-through weighted gain on sale margin, and higher servicing revenue, offset somewhat by higher expenses. During the third quarter, pull-through weighted rate lock volume was $7 billion, which represented a 10% increase from the prior quarter’s volume of $6.3 billion. Pull-through weighted rate lock volume came in within the guidance we issued last quarter of $5.25 billion-$7.25 billion and contributed to adjusted total revenue of $325 million, which compared to $292 million in the second quarter of 2025.

Our pull-through weighted gain on sale margin for the third quarter came in at 339 basis points within our guidance range of 325-350 basis points and compared to 330 basis points in the prior quarter. Our higher gain on sale margin primarily reflected a channel mix shift with a higher contribution from our direct channel and a lower contribution from our joint venture channel compared to the prior quarter. Our loan origination volume was $6.5 billion for the quarter, a decrease of 3% from the prior quarter’s volume of $6.7 billion. This was also within the guidance we issued last quarter of between $5 billion and $7 billion. Servicing fee income increased from $108 million in the second quarter of 2025 to $112 million in the third quarter of 2025.

This primarily reflects the increase in our unpaid principal balance of our servicing portfolio and interest earned on the seasonal increase in custodial balances. We hedge our servicing portfolio, so we do not record the full impact of the changes in fair value in the results of our operations. We believe this strategy helps protect against volatility in our earnings and liquidity. Our strategy for hedging the servicing portfolio is dynamic, and we adjust our hedge positions in reaction to the changing interest rate environments. Our total expenses for the third quarter of 2025 increased by $19 million, or 6% from the prior quarter. The primary drivers of the increase were due to one-time benefits in salary and general and administrative expenses recognized in the prior quarter. Recall that during the second quarter, salaries benefited from approximately $8 million in lower stock-based compensation from equity surrenders.

G&A benefited from $5 million insurance recovery of legal fees related to the successful outcome of litigation. Excluding these non-recurring items, our total expenses would have increased by approximately 2%. Demonstrating the positive operating leverage we are striving for as volumes and revenues increase. Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, we expect pull-through weighted lock volume of between $6 billion and $8 billion. Origination volume of between $6.5 billion and $8.5 billion. We expect our third quarter pull-through weighted gain on sale margin to be between 300 and 325 basis points. Our guidance reflects market volatility, seasonality and purchase volume, affordability and availability of new and resale homes, and the level of mortgage interest rates.

Our total expenses are expected to increase in the fourth quarter, primarily driven by higher volume-related expenses from the increase in funded volume as we close the pipeline that started growing through the third quarter. We remain laser-focused on our commitment to profitability and continue to work with a discipline to grow revenue and manage costs while maintaining ample cash and a strong balance sheet. We ended the quarter with $459 million in cash, increasing by $51 million from the second quarter. With our reshaped management team focused on leveraging loanDepot’s unique collection of assets, high-quality in-house servicing, scalable origination capabilities, and operating leverage, we are positioned to profitably grow volume and market share in the current environment.

Assuming a sustained decrease in mortgage rates, we believe we will materially improve our bottom line as the benefits of our scaled branded direct origination platform come to bear while our investments in technology-enabled efficiency-generating initiatives will provide the foundation for additional momentum into 2026 and beyond. With that, we’re ready to turn it back over to the operator for Q&A. Operator.

Conference Call Operator: As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again, press star and one. Your first question comes from the line of Doug Harder with UBS. Your line is open.

Doug Harder, Analyst, UBS: Thanks. I was hoping you could talk about your outlook for the ability to fund the growth with capital, given the upcoming debt maturities and kind of the upfront capital that some growth might take and just how you’re thinking about that in the current environment.

David Hayes, Chief Financial Officer, loanDepot: Yeah, hi, Doug. David Hayes. Yeah, we feel really good about the opportunity to fund additional growth opportunities. We largely have already worked our way through sort of our renewal season for warehouse lines. We’ve got a great lender group there that have been very supportive of the business. We also think there’s opportunities to upsize as needed. From the daily funding of the warehouse lines, we’re in great shape from our perspective. From a capital structure perspective, we do have an opportunity or the need to take a look at that capital structure in the coming 12 to 18 months. That’s what we’re focused on, but nothing that’s really going to impact how we operate day to day as we sit now.

Anthony Hsieh, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, loanDepot: Yeah, hey, Doug, it’s Anthony Hsieh. Let me just add to what Dave is saying. That is, once we return to the standard of operations that has led this organization since 2010, we’re very confident that we’ll be able to grow market share profitably. I just want to remind the audience that we started this company with $70 million of capital and have grown 38% year over year for the first 11 years of our life. We understand what it takes to grow market share and grow profitably. This market is still highly fragmented. There is a ton of room chasing the leader in the space. We’re very enthusiastic, and we are laser-focused to stay on plan to get back into a standard of operations that allows us to be an industry-leading mortgage bank.

At which point the mortgage IQ here and the origination IQ here, and then having a fully diversified origination muscle. In bulk builder, joint venture, in-market retail, and direct lending, direct-to-consumer model really gives us an edge to scale up, particularly as we all hope that there’ll be some growth in volume due to a more favorable interest rate cycle next year.

Doug Harder, Analyst, UBS: Thanks for that. I guess, how do you think about the size of the MSR servicing book in that context? Is that something that you would look to grow over time, regrow over time?

Anthony Hsieh, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, loanDepot: Yeah, this is one of our strategic advantages, Doug. The fact that we made an investment to bring servicing in-house. In my mind, that was five years ago. We made that investment to bring it in-house because having a direct-to-the-consumer model, our retention recapture is at an industry-leading number. Anytime we put a loan in our servicing portfolio, there’s an opportunity for us to double dip or have a second bite of the apple without any marketing cost or acquisition cost. Our desire is to continue to mount and increase our MSRs. At the same time, that puts pressure on cash. In order for us to do so, we’re going to have to be able to drive down the cost of our production while waiting for the volume of this market to return.

Doug Harder, Analyst, UBS: Great. Thank you.

Anthony Hsieh, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, loanDepot: You’re welcome.

Conference Call Operator: Again, if you would like to ask a question, press star and the number one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Eric Hagen with BTIG. Your line is open.

Eric Hagen, Analyst, BTIG: Hey, thanks. Hope you guys are well. Maybe following up on that last point because there’s all these moving pieces. Have you guys sensitized the portfolio to what the minimum level of originations might be in order to return to profitability?

Anthony Hsieh, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, loanDepot: Let me just make sure I have your question right. Can you rephrase your question again, please?

Eric Hagen, Analyst, BTIG: Yeah. Have you guys sensitized the portfolio or your business to what the minimum level of originations would be in order to return to profitability?

Anthony Hsieh, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, loanDepot: A lot of that has to do with margins, right? Margins are highly dynamic. In our industry, as soon as that volume returns, then your margins will widen out. If you look at our Q3 performance, it does not take much. Not only does when margins return, when volumes return, we are going to get both the benefit of increased volume and increased margin. It does not take much at all. We are well positioned for any sort of return.

Eric Hagen, Analyst, BTIG: Yep. Okay. That’s helpful. Hey, when the stock got up to $4.50 back in September, did you guys consider any sort of capital raising to help maybe stabilize the capital structure a little bit more? If the stock got back up to that level in the future, I mean, are you prepared to put an ATM in place or how would you think about potentially raising capital in order to, again, stabilize the capital structure a little bit more? Thank you, guys.

David Hayes, Chief Financial Officer, loanDepot: Hey, Eric. It’s David Hayes. Yeah, of course. When the stock traded up and the valuations were at those levels, it was obviously an attractive place to look at raising capital. We’re actively looking at all sorts of ways to shore up the capital structure from potential debt refinances down the road to opportunities for an ATM or follow-on. Those discussions are in flight, so nothing we can share at this point.

Anthony Hsieh, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, loanDepot: Yeah. As Anthony Hsieh said, I mean, the best way to combat that is with profitable market share growth. We’re just going to get back to our level of comfort and what we’ve done in this company since 2010. The market is well positioned for loanDepot to continue to capture market share. We are obviously always looking at opportunities for capital. As we continue to reposition our organization for increased originations, I think that will solve a lot of our issues going forward.

Eric Hagen, Analyst, BTIG: Yep. That’s really helpful, guys. Thank you so much.

Anthony Hsieh, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, loanDepot: Welcome.

Conference Call Operator: If you would like to ask a question, press star and the number one on your telephone keypad. There are no further questions at this time. I will turn the call back over to Anthony Hsieh for closing remarks.

Anthony Hsieh, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, loanDepot: Thank you. On behalf of Dave, Jeff, Dom, and the rest of our team, I want to thank you for joining us today. The pieces are in place. We’re executing a bold strategy to compete at the highest levels by returning to our core strength. Our approach is centered on retaining top talent with exceptional attitudes, deploying leading-edge technology, and driving operational efficiency and innovation, delivering superior product and service levels to our customers, and leveraging these assets to drive profitable market share growth. This is how we win. The discipline focus positions us to create sustainable value for our shareholders while accelerating growth in a competitive landscape. Thanks again, everybody, and I appreciate your support.

Conference Call Operator: This does conclude today’s conference call.

Eric Hagen, Analyst, BTIG: Operator.

Conference Call Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.

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