Earnings call transcript: Mr. Cooper Q1 2025 misses EPS forecast

Mr. Cooper Group Inc. (COOP) reported its first-quarter 2025 earnings, revealing a significant miss on both earnings per share (EPS) and revenue forecasts. The company posted an actual EPS of $1.35, falling short of the expected $2.98. Revenue also lagged behind expectations, reaching $560 million against a forecast of $620.43 million. Despite the earnings miss, the company’s stock price rose by 4.4% in premarket trading, closing at $117, up from the previous close of $112.07. According to InvestingPro data, the stock trades at a P/E ratio of 10.8x, suggesting attractive valuation levels relative to its growth potential. Four analysts have recently revised their earnings expectations upward for the upcoming period.

Key Takeaways

• Mr. Cooper’s EPS and revenue both missed analyst forecasts significantly.
• Stock price increased by 4.4% in premarket trading despite the earnings miss.
• The company highlighted successful integration of Flagstar acquisition.
• Focus remains on home equity loans and AI-driven customer service innovations.
• Pending transaction with Rocket Mortgage expected to close by Q4 2025.

Company Performance

Mr. Cooper demonstrated resilience in its operational performance despite missing financial forecasts. The company successfully integrated the Flagstar acquisition, which contributed to a decline in servicing operating expenses by 36 basis points year-over-year. The focus on home equity loans and cash-out refinances remains strong, with 46% of volumes attributed to cash-outs, up from 39% previously. The company’s robust liquidity position improved to $3.9 billion from $3.4 billion. InvestingPro analysis shows a strong current ratio of 4.5x, indicating excellent ability to meet short-term obligations. The company maintains a "Fair" overall financial health score, with particularly strong marks in profit and price momentum metrics.

Financial Highlights

• Net income: $88 million
• Pretax operating earnings: $255 million
• ROTCE: 16.8%, up from 15.8% last quarter
• Capital ratio: 25.5%, up from 24.4%
• Liquidity: $3.9 billion, up from $3.4 billion

Earnings vs. Forecast

Mr. Cooper’s actual EPS of $1.35 was significantly below the forecast of $2.98, marking a substantial earnings miss. Similarly, revenue came in at $560 million, below the expected $620.43 million. This represents a surprise percentage of approximately -54.7% for EPS and -9.7% for revenue, reflecting a notable deviation from analyst expectations.

Market Reaction

Despite the earnings miss, Mr. Cooper’s stock experienced a 4.4% increase in premarket trading, rising to $117. This movement suggests investor optimism possibly driven by strategic initiatives and the pending transaction with Rocket Mortgage. The stock remains within its 52-week range, with a high of $137.6 and a low of $76.85. InvestingPro data reveals impressive momentum, with a 28.3% price return over the past six months. Analyst targets range from $110 to $173, reflecting varied opinions on the stock’s potential. Want deeper insights? InvestingPro offers comprehensive analysis through its Pro Research Report, available for COOP and 1,400+ other US stocks.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking forward, Mr. Cooper anticipates the completion of its transaction with Rocket Mortgage in the fourth quarter of 2025. The company is focusing on creating an integrated homeownership platform, leveraging AI and digital technology. No stock repurchases are planned before the transaction’s closure. Revenue is projected to grow by 16% in FY2025, according to analyst forecasts available on InvestingPro, suggesting continued momentum in the company’s core business operations.

Executive Commentary

CEO Jay Bray emphasized the strategic importance of the Rocket Mortgage transaction, stating, "This transaction is about creating a scaled homeownership experience." President Mike Weinbach added, "We think the combination will create a true end to end homeownership ecosystem."

Risks and Challenges

• Potential integration challenges with Rocket Mortgage.
• Economic conditions affecting home equity loan demand.
• Interest rate fluctuations impacting refinancing opportunities.
• Regulatory changes in the mortgage industry.
• Competitive pressures in the home loan market.

In summary, while Mr. Cooper faced a challenging quarter with earnings and revenue misses, strategic initiatives and a strong liquidity position appear to be driving investor confidence, as evidenced by the stock’s positive premarket response.

Full transcript - Mr. Cooper Group Inc (COOP) Q1 2025:

Ken Poster, SVP of Strategic Planning and Investor Relations, Mr. Cooper Group: Good morning. My name is Ken Poster, and I’m SVP of Strategic Planning and Investor Relations at Mr. Cooper Group. With me today are Jay Bray, Chairman and CEO Mike Weinbach, President and Curt Johnson, Executive Vice President and CFO. This morning, we’ll be reviewing the company’s financial performance for the first quarter twenty twenty five.

You can find the slides accompanying our remarks on our Investor Relations webpage at investors.mrcoopergroup.com. As a reminder, we may refer to non GAAP measures, which are reconciled to GAAP results in the appendix to the slide deck. Also, we may make forward looking statements, which you should understand could be affected by risk factors that we’ve identified in our 10 ks and other SEC filings. We are not undertaking any commitment to update these statements if conditions change. With that, I’ll turn it over to Jay.

Jay Bray, Chairman and CEO, Mr. Cooper Group: Good morning, everyone. We look forward to sharing our thoughts on our first quarter financial results. But first, I want to note that due to the pending combination with Rocket, which was announced on March 31, we will not be taking questions this morning. I’ll start my comments with some personal thoughts on the combination with Rocket. This transaction is about creating a scaled homeownership experience.

By pooling our talent, data, and technology, we are going to totally reimagine the homeownership journey from start to finish and harness the transformative power of AI to bring our customers a truly amazing experience. For our investors, the industrial logic is compelling, and this transaction presents the opportunity for our shareholders to participate in the upside of the combined company. And, mister Cooper, we’ve worked for years to perfect our servicing platform, which is digital, efficient, and highly scalable. Our multi decade track record of customer growth and resilient profitability speaks for itself, as does the accolades for operational excellence we’ve earned from investors and clients. Now by combining our platform with Rocket’s iconic brand and marketing capabilities, we’re creating a fully integrated homeownership platform with unmatched capabilities.

Finally, as I’ve shared before, the two cultures are very complementary, and the integration teams are already synced and planning for how to bring our business together once the transaction closes. I cannot be more thrilled to be part of this joint effort to usher in the industry’s future. And with that, I’m going to start on Slide three with a review of first quarter highlights. Then I’ll turn it over to Mike to take you through a more detailed discussion of operating results, and Kurt will wrap up with financials. In summary, this was another solid quarter, demonstrating the power of our AtScale platform to produce consistent, recurring and predictable results.

ROTCE was 16.8%, up from 15.8% last quarter as we are seeing the benefits from the Flagstar acquisition start to flow through, and I’m really pleased that we’ve moved so quickly into the 16% to 20% guidance range we shared with you just last quarter. The key things behind this performance remain the same, operating leverage, fee income and strong execution in our origination segment, all of this reflecting the investments we’ve made in technology and operations over many years. That and the talent and great work of our people, to whom I will once again say thank you for what you have built. The balance sheet is in great shape with a super strong capital ratio of 25 and a half percent. Liquidity is already backed up to $3,900,000,000 and consistent performance on our MSR hedge and delinquencies declining in the quarter to 1.1%, which speaks to the sterling asset quality of our book.

Balance sheet strength is nonnegotiable for industry leaders, and it’s especially important during periods of elevated uncertainty such as the markets are currently experiencing. Turning to servicing, Blackstar was the biggest acquisition in our history, and I’m pleased to report that since closing the transaction last quarter, we have now onboarded all our new customers and team members, and we’re right on schedule with integration. Thanks to growth, operating leverage, and low speeds, servicing generated 332,000,000 in pretax income at the high end of our guidance range. Originations outperformed our guidance with 53,000,000 in pretax income. I’d call out very strong momentum in home equity loans and cash out refinances, which we view as a massive long term growth opportunity regardless of the interest rate environment.

Last quarter, we earned the prestigious Sharp Gold Award from Freddie Mac, recognizing the operational excellence of our servicing platform. In this quarter, we were thrilled to win Fannie Mae’s STAR Award. In fact, we were the only servicer in the country to earn STAR recognition in all three categories for this award, general servicing, solution delivery, and time line management. This recognition is important because it illustrates the key success factor behind our long term growth, namely the value we deliver as a services to our business partners, including agency, government, and private investors, and our subservicing clients. We deliver this value because we wake up every morning asking the question, how do we earn and sustain our partners’ trust?

And you see the result of our focus in these operational scorecards. And with that, I’ll turn it over to Mike.

Mike Weinbach, President, Mr. Cooper Group: Thanks, Jay, and good morning, everyone. If you’ll turn to slide four, I’ll start with the servicing segment where we reported pretax income of 332,000,000 in the first quarter, which was up 22% year over year. This was at the high end of our guidance range in part due to slower than expected CPR speeds and lower amortization. Earnings also benefited from operating leverage. If you look year over year, servicing operating expenses declined as a percentage of the portfolio by a 36 basis points, and that’s even before we fully integrated the Flagstar operation onto our platform.

Jay mentioned that Flagstar was the company’s largest acquisition, and the onboarding went exceptionally well as measured by customer delight metrics such as speed to answer, abandonment rate, and first call resolution, which have remained consistently at top the industry levels. Obviously, we have a tremendous amount of experience with large portfolio transfers, and I’d add that we’re constantly improving our processes, which has helped make this a very smooth and welcoming experience for our new customers. Also contributing to our strong performance is agent IQ, which we highlighted for you last quarter following the rollout to the 1,400 agents in our call centers. As a reminder, this AI powered tool synthesizes the insights gleaned from millions of customer interactions and puts relevant prompts on the screen, allowing agents to empathetically focus on the customer while providing answers quickly and efficiently. With respect to AI and the call center, we’re only scratching the surface of what’s possible in terms of customer experience and efficiency.

The total portfolio was down slightly in the quarter, ending at $1,500,000,000,000 which is equivalent to just over 6,400,000 customers. As we pointed out last quarter, we shifted about $60,000,000,000 in subservice loans to other servicers as was contemplated in the Flagstar transaction. Outside of these deboardings, our subservicing portfolio grew organically by 2% quarter over quarter as we’re growing with our clients, which include some of the strongest originators and investors in the industry. I’d add that we’re also in advanced discussions with potential new clients and optimistic about winning new books of business. Our own portfolio was roughly flat quarter over quarter at just over 730,000,000,000.

We benefited from strong volumes in the correspondent channel and closed roughly 7,000,000,000 in bulk acquisitions. We’re continuing to analyze and bid selectively on pools that meet our yield targets. So now let’s move on to slide five and talk about originations, where we generated 53,000,000 in EBT, which was slightly above our guidance range. Volumes were strong in the correspondent channel where we’ve made a number of investments and operational enhancements over the last eighteen months. During March, we were the number four originator in this channel.

In the DTC channel, we’re enjoying very strong momentum with cash outs and second liens. Cash outs made up 46% of volume, up from 39% last quarter, while second liens grew from 12% to 21%. Putting this in context of customer benefits, during the quarter, we helped over 9,000 customers access equity in their homes and helped nearly 2,000 customers reduce their monthly payments or purchase a new home. Cash apps and second liens are turning out to be a very popular method for customers to tap the equity in their homes. And as you know, they typically use this liquidity for debt consolidation, home improvements, and other major expenses.

Regardless of the use, these products cost much less than most credit cards, and that’s even before considering the tax deductibility of mortgage interest. So you can make a strong argument that this is one of the most sensible ways for homeowners to access liquidity. We believe there’s a long run way to fully meet this demand with 94% of our customers having at least 20% equity in their homes and our customers’ total equity in the neighborhood of 700,000,000,000. Just to update you, our refinance recapture rate was a little over 50% in the quarter. And bear in mind, we don’t count second liens in this ratio as some of our peers do.

Clearly, the current environment offers limited opportunity for rate and term refis, but our DTC team is very nimble. And with even brief rallies in rates, we can move quickly to help customers save money as you saw in the third quarter last year. As of quarter end, ’20 ’1 percent of our portfolio had note rates of 6% or higher, which is indicative of a sizable opportunity when rates next rally. I’ll wrap up here by adding to Jay’s comments about the excitement we feel about joining forces with Rocket. With Rocket’s iconic brand and marketing skills, its leading JD Power service levels, its highly scalable origination platform, and our shared commitment to investing in AI, digital, and other technologies, there’s so much more we’ll be able to do for our customers over time, whether it’s through refi, second liens, purchase mortgages, title insurance, or closing services.

We think the combination will create a true end to end homeownership ecosystem and an incredibly valuable platform with customers for life. With that, I’ll turn the call over

Curt Johnson, Executive Vice President and CFO, Mr. Cooper Group: to Kurt. Thanks, Mike, and good morning, everyone. I’ll start on slide six and go through our financials. To summarize, net income was $88,000,000 which included $255,000,000 in pretax operating earnings, offset by an $82,000,000 negative MSR mark net of hedges and adjustments of 68,000,000 Mike commented on origination and servicing segment earnings and I’ll add that corporate overhead segment expenses of $51,000,000 were in line with our guidance from last quarter. Let me start by unpacking the adjustments.

First, there were 26,000,000 in transaction and transition charges primarily related to the Flagstar integration. Second, as you recall last quarter, we incurred a charge for a legal ruling. This quarter, we took an additional $33,000,000 charge associated with the legal fees, which closes out all liabilities stemming from this ruling. Finally, there are some miscellaneous adjustments associated with losses on equity investments, a slight operating loss from the Flagstar TPO platform, which we sold at the end of the quarter and a positive reserve release related to HomePoint acquisition. Full details are, as always, listed in the appendix to today’s slide deck.

Turning to the mark to market line, we marked down the MSR to reflect falling interest rates and expectations for higher CPRs, leading to a quarter end valuation of 155 basis points of UPB or 5.4 multiple of the base servicing strip. Offsetting this loss were $2.00 $9,000,000 in hedge gains, which equates to 72% coverage ratio, slightly below our 75% target. We’re extremely pleased with the hedge’s consistent performance, which over the last eight quarters has contributed to stable and predictable results. Our target hedge remains 75%. Now if you’ll turn to Slide seven, I’ll briefly touch on asset quality.

Our high quality mortgage portfolio continues to perform extremely well with MSR delinquencies down by nine basis points to 1.1%. Low delinquencies reflect our thoughtful portfolio construction, which you can see in the high FICO scores and low LTV ratios for our customers as well as our strong loss mitigation capacity, which is one of the key factors that Fannie and Freddie measure in their operational scorecards and which was recognized in our winning the Sharpe and Star Awards. I’d like to call out our exceptional performance with Ginnie Mae loans where delinquencies fell by 50 basis points for both FHA and VA loans, significantly outperforming the industry. And I’d love to give kudos to our leaders in servicing and loss mitigation for helping our customers stay in their homes as well as providing great results for our subservicing clients. While we don’t try to forecast overall consumer credit cycles, we have deep experience managing delinquent portfolios.

Additionally, we have extremely valuable capabilities in Xome and Rushmore special servicing. If the environment turned more adverse, we believe Mr. Cooper and our investors would be extremely well protected. Turning to Slide eight, I’ll end my remarks with an update on our key balance sheet metrics. Liquidity ended the quarter at $3,900,000,000 up from $3,400,000,000 in the fourth quarter as we used operating cash flow to pay down $350,000,000 in MSR lines.

It was nice to see liquidity rebound so quickly following the Flagstar acquisition, which speaks to our extremely robust cash flow running at annual rate of nearly $1,000,000,000 in terms of steady state discretionary cash flow. At the same time, we upsized our borrowing capacity by $200,000,000 and have begun renegotiating our existing MSR facilities to extend maturities through 2027. Our capital ratio, as measured by tangible net worth to assets, ended the quarter at 25.5, up from 24.4% last quarter. The increase was partially the result of the 21% decline in advances, which reflects typical seasonal trends. Tangible equity also benefited from strong earnings and the absence of stock repurchases during the quarter, which we suspended in advance of the ROCCAT transaction.

Looking ahead, we do not expect to repurchase stock prior to the close of the transaction, which we expect to occur in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty five, subject to approval of Mr. Cooper shareholders and the satisfaction of other closing conditions, including customary regulatory approvals. Finally, I want to comment on our $500,000,000 in senior notes maturing in February 2026, which are now callable at par. Thanks to our strong capital and cash flow generation, we have the option to retire the notes early, which is an option that we are actively evaluating and which should not have a material impact on our liquidity profile given the cessation of our stock repurchases. With that, I’ll close out our remarks.

Thank you for your interest in mister Cooper.

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