Earnings call transcript: Rithm Capital Q3 2025 earnings show EPS beat, revenue miss

Rithm Capital Corp reported its third-quarter 2025 earnings, revealing a slight earnings per share (EPS) beat but a miss on revenue forecasts. The company posted an EPS of $0.54, surpassing the expected $0.53, while revenue came in at $1.11 billion, falling short of the $1.2 billion forecast. Following the announcement, Rithm Capital’s stock showed minor movement in premarket trading, with a decrease of 0.18%.

Key Takeaways

• EPS of $0.54 exceeded forecasts by 1.89%.
• Revenue missed expectations by 7.5%, totaling $1.11 billion.
• Stock price decreased slightly by 0.18% in premarket trading.
• Strong performance in loan originations and mortgage servicing.
• Strategic acquisitions and partnerships highlighted.

Company Performance

Rithm Capital demonstrated robust performance in several areas, despite the revenue miss. The company reported third-quarter earnings of $300 million and a return on equity of 18%. Significant contributions came from Genesis Capital’s $1.2 billion in loan originations, marking a 60% year-over-year increase, and Newrez Mortgage’s pre-tax income of $295 million, up 7% quarter-over-quarter and 20% year-over-year.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $1.11 billion, down from forecasted $1.2 billion.
• Earnings per share: $0.54, compared to forecasted $0.53.
• GAAP Net Income: $193.7 million or $0.35 per diluted share.
• Book Value: $12.83 per share.
• Dividend: $0.25 per share.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Rithm Capital’s EPS of $0.54 exceeded the forecast by 1.89%, while revenue fell short by 7.5%. This marks a mixed performance compared to previous quarters, where the company generally met or exceeded both EPS and revenue expectations. The EPS beat, though modest, reflects operational efficiencies and strategic growth initiatives.

Market Reaction

In premarket trading, Rithm Capital’s stock experienced a slight decline of 0.18%, trading at $10.91. The stock remains within its 52-week range of $9.13 to $12.74. The minor stock movement suggests a tempered investor reaction to the earnings report, likely due to the revenue miss offsetting the positive EPS surprise.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, Rithm Capital is targeting the first close of its Asset-Based Finance (ABF) fund in the fourth quarter, estimated at $500 million. The company continues to explore strategic options for Newrez, including a potential partial listing, while focusing on expanding its asset management business.

Executive Commentary

CEO Michael Nierenberg emphasized the company’s focus on results, stating, "Performance first, lead with results." He also highlighted the importance of growing the asset management business, noting, "We need to grow asset management business. We need to grow FRE."

Risks and Challenges

• Revenue Miss: The significant revenue miss could impact investor confidence.
• Market Volatility: Continued market fluctuations may affect future performance.
• Competitive Pressures: Intense competition in the mortgage and asset management sectors.
• Economic Conditions: Broader economic trends could impact loan origination and servicing.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts questioned the strategic actions for Newrez and the valuation gap. The company addressed underwriting concerns in consumer lending and confirmed strong limited partner interest in the Paramount acquisition.

Full transcript - Rithm Capital Corp (RITM) Q3 2025:

Conference Operator: Good morning and welcome to the Rithm Capital third quarter 2025 earnings call. All participants will be in listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on a touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star and then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Emma Bolla, Associate General Counsel. Please go ahead.

Emma Bolla, Associate General Counsel, Rithm Capital: Thank you and good morning everyone. I would like to thank you for joining us today for Rithm Capital’s third quarter 2025 earnings call. Joining me today are Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO and President of Rithm Capital, Nick Santoro, Chief Financial Officer of Rithm 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 Rithm Capital website www.rithmcap.com. If you’ve not already done so, I’d encourage you to download the presentation now. 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 and with that I will turn the call over to Michael.

Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO and President, Rithm Capital: Thanks Emma. Good morning everyone and thanks for joining the call this morning. Our company had a great quarter with all of our business lines performing extremely well. Our market leading business lines that enabled us to get here, Newrez, our mortgage company which is one of the largest mortgage companies in the U.S., Genesis, our construction lender which is one of the largest non-bank construction lenders in the U.S., and our investment portfolio and team all had a really good quarter. As we look at all the business lines that we built or acquired, this enabled us to generate approximately $300 million in earnings for our shareholders, generating an 18% ROE. We ended the quarter with $2.2 billion of cash and liquidity.

During the quarter we announced two acquisitions: Crestline, which is a credit manager based out of Fort Worth, Texas, and Paramount, which is a large real estate office REIT here based in New York City with properties in two of the gateway cities in the U.S., both New York and San Francisco. To be clear, we will not be raising equity in the capital markets to fund these acquisitions. We will fund these acquisitions with a combination of balance sheet and third party LPs and partners. The capital created by these business lines helps us expand our platform. When we see an opportunity to acquire a company or an asset that helps expand our product offerings to our LPs, we try and take advantage of these types of situations. We are really excited with these acquisitions.

Crestline is an $18-20 billion asset manager with great people, great investment professionals offering direct lending, NAV lending, credit products. They also have an insurance business and a reinsurance business. Now we’re in the insurance business. The suite of products that we have across our firm at Rithm and our subsidiaries enable us to offer a wide spectrum of credit and ABF products to our LP base and, quite frankly, put us on the stage to be able to compete against anyone. Our mantra of performance first will enable us to grow our platforms. We are not, to be clear, in an AUM race. More importantly, what we want to do is lead with results. When we meet with LPs, they want fewer managers with more products and I believe we are in the middle of accomplishing that.

During the quarter, as I mentioned, we also announced the acquisition of Paramount. Paramount is a Class A office REIT with a great portfolio of office buildings in New York and San Francisco. There’s 13 properties there. We are seeing huge demand for office in both New York City and the recovery in San Francisco has already begun. Acquiring assets for a little under $600 per foot versus replacement costs of $2,500 to $3,000 a foot gets us really excited. In New York, this portfolio is north of 90% leased and in San Francisco it’s in the low 70%, creating a huge opportunity for us to grow. NOI. When you look at the Paramount portfolio, not only will we grow occupancy, we also believe in the ability to drive rents higher as the average rent is approximately $85 per foot.

For example, when we think about the need for office space, Rithm and our affiliates have a need for 100,000 of new space. It’s very, very difficult to find space and average rents are well above the $85 per foot that I quoted in most markets for a quality office space during the quarter. Paramount released their earnings last night and I believe there’s a couple other REITs that released earnings. We’re seeing some of the highest leasing activity that we’ve seen and this goes back to the pre-Covid days as it relates to Paramount. They have an excellent team of professionals who have been running the company for many, many years. As well as the operations, I believe there’s approximately 300 people between corporate and ops. We’re very excited to work with the team creating what we believe will be a terrific investment return for our LPs and shareholders.

As we look forward, our mission is still the same. Put up solid results quarter after quarter, be able to offer more products for our LPs and partners, and take advantage of opportunistic situations to generate outsized returns and grow the company. I’ll now refer to our supplement which has been posted online and I’m going to begin on page three. If you look in the upper part of the page, Rithm by the Numbers balance sheet $47 billion. Sculptor has $37 billion of AUM, Crestline has $18 billion of AUM and Paramount has a $7 billion portfolio. When we think about this, we think about it in the context of having a little north of $100 billion in investable assets and between the investment teams and that work on our balance sheet as well as putting up great results for our LPs.

We’re really excited of where we sit today and where we’re going. When you think about Rithm, very few companies have $8.5 billion of. We’re proud of that. We’ve grown this company in the public markets. When we began this company back in 2013 at Fortress, the average investment team or the average age of the investment team, not age but been working in the investment business has been 31 years. When you look at the bottom part of the you can see all the portfolio companies. Newrez again we’re one of the top five mortgage companies in the U.S. Sculptor has been around for 30 plus years. Great track record. The real estate team is just coming off a very successful capital raise raising north of $4 billion for their business. Their brand is second to none in the real estate business. Crestline, super excited to work together.

Baron Silverstein, President, Newrez: And.

Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO and President, Rithm Capital: Help support that organization. Paramount. I mentioned on the real estate side, Genesis Capital just to give you on that one. We bought that company from Goldman Sachs in 2022. At that time it was doing $1.8 billion of production. This year I think we’re going to either approach or do north of $5 billion of production. EBITDA numbers have gone from $40 million to $120 million this year expected. Then we have Rithm Property Trust, which was the broken REIT we took over last year, which was known as Great Ajax. We’re still trying to figure out a way, quite frankly, to grow that and put the right assets there. As we look at financial highlights on page four, a really good quarter and it’s solid. All of our business lines contributing here. Earnings available for distribution, $0.54 per diluted share.

This is the 24th consecutive quarter where EAD was greater than our dividends paid. GAAP net income $193.7 million or $0.35 per diluted share for return on equity of 11%. Keep in mind that includes all the mark to market stuff. Earnings available for distribution again, $297 million, $0.54 per diluted share or 18% return on equity. Book value, we closed the quarter at $12.83, which is $7.1 billion. Dividend, $0.25. As I pointed out before, cash and liquidity on balance sheet, $2.2 billion. As you look at page five, quarter in review, once again, we demonstrated steady growth year over year in all of our segments during the quarter. As I mentioned earlier, we entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Crestline on September 3. We’re hoping that deal closes on December 1. We entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Paramount on September 17.

That’ll go out for shareholder vote and we’re hopeful that closes in mid-December. These acquisitions continue, as I pointed out before, to expand the product offerings that we have. When we sit down with an LP, we have a larger suite of products because LPs want fewer managers. Now with between Sculptor, Rithm, Crestline and some of the real estate stuff we’re doing, we have a large amount of products that we could offer to our different clients. Fundraising across the platform, we continue to work hard to build that. During the quarter in Q4, we expect to close our first Evergreen ABF fund on a leading wealth management platform. When you look at inflows, Sculptor continues to see some good inflows into their business. Bottom part of the page, Genesis Capital during the quarter originated $1.2 billion of loans. That’s a 60% increase year over year.

We saw 71 new sponsors in. I would say on that company, credit first is the mantra. It’s not, again, just to grow, but credit first really matters. The mortgage company, Baron will take us through the mortgage company, but Baron and the team continue to do a great job there. You know, as the world changes and we think about AI and innovation, we’re doing all we can to stay ahead of that. On the investment portfolio during the quarter, we agreed on a forward flow to acquire up to $1 billion in home improvement loans. That’s from Upgrade. We did a securitization for a little under $500 million on non-QM and we invested $2.6 billion in non-QM loans and residential transition loans. That’s through our Genesis brand. When you look at the—hello. When you look—I’m on page six now.

When you look at our M&A update, what we wanted to do is put a page in here so you could have a sense for our liquidity walk. As I mentioned, cash and liquidity as of the end of Q3 is $2.2 billion. Here it shows. What are we showing here? One point.

Nick Santoro, Chief Financial Officer, Rithm Capital: Sorry.

Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO and President, Rithm Capital: Why don’t you take us through?

Nick Santoro, Chief Financial Officer, Rithm Capital: Sure. At the end of the quarter, we ended with cash and cash equivalents on balance sheet of $1.6 billion. Rolling it forward, we have the Crestline acquisition and the Paramount acquisition. The amounts shown here are the expected cash outlays or uses at close, net of excess cash on the respective balance sheets of both Crestline and Paramount. We have our use of cash, which comes from our source of cash, which comes from drawing down on our financing facilities. The expectation is at close we will have approximately $1 billion of financing available to us, bringing us down to $1.3 billion of cash and cash equivalents post the Crestline and Paramount transactions. That $1.2 billion is well north of our regulatory requirements as well as working capital and what we hold for margin requirements.

Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO and President, Rithm Capital: Thanks, Nick. On page seven, as we look at the, you know, again, this is something that we talk about quarter after quarter, the valuation of our company. We try to show the sum of the parts. You know, when you look to the top part of the page, you know, Rithm gets value similar to mortgage REIT peers. We think there’s a huge amount of upside for us to be able to unlock value that is going to be driven by our asset management business as well as by the mortgage company. If you look at most mortgage companies today or if you look at, you know, what I would call our peer group, they trade anywhere from 1.5 to 3 times. Right now, Rithm as a public company is trading, call it something around upper 0.8 to 0.9 times.

If you think about the mortgage company getting valued properly, you think about the asset management business even trading at 10 times. The following slide on page eight will show you a range of outcomes which we believe we will achieve over time of something between $16 and $23. As we compare ourselves either to different asset management firms or when we look at the valuation of our mortgage company and our Genesis business. With that, I’m going to now flip to page ten, which is the so-called power of our platform. As we pointed out before, a little north of $100 billion in assets. You can see all the different product offerings that we have right now to show out to our LPs and clients in corporate credit. There’s really nothing more that we need when we look at corporate credit.

We will be exploring over time the energy space. Obviously, very important space right now. There’s nothing for us to do there at Sculptor. There’s the Multi Strat Fund. Our real estate business continues to grow and ABF is something that is near and dear to our heart and that’s something that we think is going to be extremely scalable for us as an organization across all of our business lines. As I mentioned earlier, we expect to close one of our first ABF funds here in the fourth quarter and that’s on one of the large wealth platforms. We have a couple other things that we’re working on there. Page eleven. Crestline just gives you a quick snapshot of that business again. $18 billion of AUM acquired in September, was founded in 1997. Headquartered in Fort Worth. Offices in New York, Toronto, London, and Tokyo. Really great brand.

The team there led by Doug Braddon and Keith Williams do a fabulous job. You know they have a great NAV lending business, a great direct lending business. They’re really good on the credit side. We think from a firm standpoint on the capability between Crestline, Sculptor, Rithm, you know, the DNA of the firm and what we have to offer should put us really in a very, very good position with our LPs. From an employee standpoint, there’s 175 employees. Average experience of the management team is 20 plus years. There’s 700 plus investors across all the strategies. I’m going to page 12, just gives you a couple snapshot on the different funds that we have to offer or that Crestline has to offer, the investment professionals associated with them. The thing I mentioned in my opening remarks, we are now in the insurance and reinsurance business.

That is a business that we intend to grow over time. Obviously very, very competitive. Now that we have a licensed entity, we’re super excited about where we could go with that. Page 13, Sculptor. This is her snapshot that we put in. Each quarter results have been great. Team is doing great. Real estate guys and gals recently raised north of $4 billion in their latest fund, very well received brand there in the markets with again great results and leading with performance first rather than just AUM growth. Page 15. We talk about the Paramount deal. The rationale for us here is pretty simple. One is I think we’re really good at developing a thesis or a theory around an investment strategy in a dislocated market.

If we start with that, when you have a board that announces a process to sell a company, usually the way that we believe or we think about it, it creates an opportunity for us to have a hard look at that company. When you look at the job that the Paramount team has done and the portfolio of assets that they have assembled, our belief is the so-called return to office. You could actually poke holes at that a little bit because when you look at New York, it’s 90 plus % leased. You could say, okay, that office New York has already returned to office. I mentioned here that between Rithm and our affiliates we need 100,000 ft. It’s really, really hard to find good office at any kind of what I would call reasonable value. We think about that.

San Francisco is in the middle of the so-called AI boom. You’re seeing you have a new mayor there, you have a lot of folks coming back to the office. That portfolio is about low 70s. From a lease up perspective, we think we’re going to be able to put in some amen, put in some TI dollars and we’re going to see some really good lease ups there. We’re seeing that now across all the leasing activity. When you look at San Francisco, the demand for tenants right now is roughly 7.8 million square feet, which is the highest ever that we know of. Really excited about this.

Buying assets that we think attractive or acquiring a company at an attractive value with great assets, then being able to raise third party capital around that and grow our asset management business is really where we want to go with this. Page 16. Just a snapshot of the balance sheet pro forma after we do these transactions. You can have a look at that. I’m not going to spend time on that again. That’s on page 16. Now let’s touch base on Genesis and then I’ll turn it over to Baron who will talk about Newrez. On Genesis, as I mentioned, $1.2 billion. A record third quarter for the business. New originations yielding roughly 10% at funding, 71 new sponsors. When you look at the company year over year, our outstanding commitments have grown by 51% year over year.

In the third quarter, funded volume up 60%, sponsor growth up a little less than 50%, and from a delinquency perspective, as I mentioned earlier, credit first total portfolio has only 4% debt or 60 plus days. Just keep in mind we do service our own assets. I think that is a huge whether it be an ABF or anything else that we do and for the most part there we’re able to control an outcome and work with borrowers where we have some brand recognition. When you look at page 19, we just talk about a differentiated model versus so called other peers in the business. Between construction, bridge and renovation, the business is led by Clint Arrowsmith and Clint is, you know, his background is really bank credit guy and he’s and Clint and Joe and the team have done a great job there.

Real excited about where we sit. I’m going to turn it over to Baron now who’s going to talk about the mortgage company and then we’ll open it up for Q and A.

Baron Silverstein, President, Newrez: Okay, thank you Michael. Good morning to everybody. Just turning to slide 21, another great quarter for our platform as we execute on our 2025 growth strategy. Significant gains in recapture non-agency originations, expansion of our client franchise, and as Michael mentioned, exciting market-leading developments in our RESI AI stack. Our third quarter 2025 pre-tax income excluding mark to market was approximately $295 million, which is up 7% quarter over quarter and 20% year over year, and delivered a 20% ROE for the quarter. Continuing our steady performance, these results continue to show the power of our platform and our ability to drive consistent earnings. With the results-first ethos on slide 22, we can also continue to deliver growth through our differentiated multichannel origination strategy that allows us to use capital efficiently and maximize our returns.

The table on the left shows our direct origination production up 32% year over year, and with the focus on supporting our homeowners and recapture, is outperforming the industry. In our correspondent channel, we’re able to increase production and materially improve margins quarter over quarter from 43 basis points to 53 basis points through our co-issue MSR acquisition strategy, and our product expansion fueled growth in non-agency assets, which are forecasted to be up approximately 120% year over year. Moving to slide 24, and with the recent drop in rates, our origination business finished the quarter with our biggest month in lock volume since early 2022 and has already surpassed this month in October. Even with increased production, our technology is driving increased underwriting capacity and improved turn times on margins.

Our weighted average margins dropped to 114 basis points, which is due to channel mix and a significant increase in government streamline refinances that have a lower margin. While our market competition continues to drive margin pressures, our disciplined focus remains on profitable growth with an eye for market opportunities. As Michael said, performance first, lead with results. Turning to slide 24, we continue to deepen our connection to our four plus million customers with digital and brand investments driving our momentum and recapture. We have seen wins in increased digital application leads, better conversions through our Resi Chat, and our newest tool, Resi Assist, powering loan officer call automation and coaching. Customer retention remains a top growth strategy for Newrez and we’re committed to delivering exceptional customer experience and a broad suite of products that differentiate our platform versus our competition.

On slide 25, our servicing business continues to perform well with $260 million of pre-tax income, which is up 11% year over year. Our special servicing platform is the best in the business, and we continue to gain market share as shown by increases in our third-party UPB, which is up 4%. We’re also excited about a new partnership with Wells Fargo, which validates our non-agency servicing leadership in the industry. Performance across the servicing platform is also driven by our operational efficiency, and our expansion of our Resi AI platform continues to deliver cost leadership at a fully loaded $140 cost per loan. I continue to believe our business is as best positioned as it has ever been, and I look forward to sharing the next chapter of the Newrez growth story with all of you. Thank you. Back to you, Michael.

Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO and President, Rithm Capital: Thanks, Baron. Just real quick on page 27, then we’ll open up for Q and A. When you look at the investment business and the investment portfolio, obviously we always have a lot of things going on here at Rithm during the quarter. As I mentioned earlier, we put out we did about $2.6 billion in investing in non QM loans and RTO loans. These two segments, when you think about the so-called ABF world and whether it be us marketing ABF funds and other folks marketing ABF funds, these are two of the hottest products where what LPs want to get access to. The fact that we could actually manufacture these products, we service these products, and when you look at the overall yields and returns on these assets is an area for us that we believe we’re going to continue to grow.

I point that out from the Genesis side, I pointed out from the Newrez side, but overall investment portfolio very good quarter. The firm overall had a really good quarter. With that, I’ll turn it back to the operator. For Q and A, we will begin.

Conference Operator: The question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press Star, then one on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press Star, and then two. Our first question comes from Crispin Love with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning everyone. First, there’s been a pretty wide divergence in share price between you and some of the originator servicer peers out there. Doesn’t make a whole ton of sense when you look at the sum of the parts that you lay out. Wondering if you could provide an update on the broader strategic vision and what timelines that could be, whether it’s a Newrez spin, D REIT, anything with the asset manager. Just curious, what’s your focus? What are the key hurdles you need to get past to drive some of those changes?

Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO and President, Rithm Capital: Thanks, Crispin. I mean, what I would say in our share price, and we say this quarter over quarter, I believe that fundamentally when you look at the so-called sum of the parts that we are extremely attractive from a value standpoint. I think when we announced the Paramount deal and we did our Paramount call, I believe the stock traded towards $12.50. After that, I think the market thought we were going to come back and we rebooted our ATM, we did a pref offering, and I think the market thought we were going to raise equity. When I look at the stock price today in and around $11, I think it’s extremely attractive. That’s just my thoughts, being that we’re really clear, we’re not raising equity around this transaction for these assets.

Nick went through the balance sheet, we’ll end up with about $1.3 billion of cash and liquidity. To the extent that we funded both of these on balance sheet, it’s likely we will. We’re in a ton of conversations, what I would say, with LPs, and our asset management business continues to grow. We need to drive more, quite frankly, more FRE through our pipes to get revalued. That’s something that we’re very focused on. We think that the Paramount deal will help towards that a little bit. I mentioned that we have an ABF fund that will close, most likely have a first close in the fourth quarter here on one of the wealth management platforms, Crestline, the Crestline addition that will drive more FRE to the platform. Sculptor is doing well. I think all these things are going to help contribute.

As you think about spins, sells, what have you, the mortgage company alone, when you think about it, if there’s, what, $5.5 billion of capital and that trades at 1.5 to 2 times, you have 550 million shares. That gets you to kind of a mid to upper teens stock price alone. Part of our thesis also is as we drive more, as we make more money as an organization, we’re in the build mode, and unfortunately you don’t get, you don’t get credit for the build mode than you do for just saying, okay, the mortgage company, we’re going to take it public, it’s going to trade at 1.5 to 2 times book, and that’s a $17 or $18 stock price. I think we need to grow asset management business. We need to grow FRE.

Once we do that, we could think about spins or taking the mortgage company public. It’s something that we think about all the time from a REIT perspective. You know, I’ve used this example before. When you look at, for example, Blackstone, right, they have their C Corp, they’ve dropped their REIT down below, they have funds, et cetera. We’d like to do something like that. I think we need to grow a little bit more on the asset management side first. Thus the two acquisitions in the quarter.

Great, thanks Michael. On the Paramount transaction, can you share how much third party capital you’ve been able to raise there? Just how conversations have been going, I believe you said originally you’d fund it with $300 to $500 million in cash at the Rithm level and then the rest from co-investors. Curious on progress there. Are you not able to bring in capital until after the closing for the deal? I thought I saw something like that in the presentation. Just curious on an update.

On that deal we went out to say that we’ll put in $300 million to $500 million of our own equity. I think the way that we expect that to be, it’ll be roughly, I think it’s going to be roughly $300 million from Rithm, possibly $50 million from RPT, which is our other externally managed REIT. The other, call it $950 million or $1 billion, were raised from third parties. We can raise all that money prior to close depending upon how much economics we want to give away beforehand. It’s just that simple. The money’s there. We’ve had a number of conversations with folks that want to give us the money. Now what we’re trying to do is really build our asset management business.

We did set up from a liquidity standpoint prior to this acquisition and prior to Crestline to make sure that there is enough cash and liquidity on balance sheet. Just to be clear, if we want to fund this thing all with third parties now, we can do that. It’s just a question of what do the economics look like for Rithm and our shareholders.

Nick Santoro, Chief Financial Officer, Rithm Capital: Great.

Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO and President, Rithm Capital: Thanks Michael.

Appreciate taking my questions.

Crispin.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from Bose George with KBW. Please go ahead.

Nick Santoro, Chief Financial Officer, Rithm Capital: Hey guys, good morning. Actually, a question on the Ginnie Mae streamlined refis where you noted that took the gain on sale margin down. Are those loans just cheaper to produce as well? Just so the economics are similar, it’s just that the top line gain on sale margin is different.

Baron Silverstein, President, Newrez: Yeah.

Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO and President, Rithm Capital: Yes.

Baron Silverstein, President, Newrez: The answer to that is yes, they’re definitely cheaper to produce and that’s the best way. They’re also highly competitive as well.

They’re cheaper to produce.

Nick Santoro, Chief Financial Officer, Rithm Capital: Okay, great. Actually, switching to Rithm Capital, given where that’s trading, can you just discuss some of the options there for potentially growing that business? Could we see sort of an acquisition or a merger? Just curious what kinds of things you’re thinking about there.

Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO and President, Rithm Capital: In Rithm Capital, we have earnings tomorrow. Here’s the way we think about it. It’s a capital vehicle. The stock, again, it trades extremely. Trades poorly. While saying that, we got to give investors a reason to want to own the equity is what I would say. When we look at this company, we are going to try to grow it. We’re looking at direct lending options and things like that. To the extent that we don’t, at some point we’ll likely tender for the shares and just clean up the vehicle. I think for now we want to give it a good go. This is how BXMT was grown. This is how we’ve grown things during our Fortress days. To the extent that we can’t grow it, because for whatever reasons, we’re likely tender for the shares.

Nick Santoro, Chief Financial Officer, Rithm Capital: Okay, great. Just going back to the earlier question on strategic actions, a partial listing of Newrez as opposed to a spin, but just a small, whatever, 15% listing for a mark to market, just given that you could do that sooner versus the other strategic actions, which probably take time to build out the AUM more. I mean, is that something worth reconsidering or revisiting?

Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO and President, Rithm Capital: Yes, we explore that every day. That is something that we are exploring.

Nick Santoro, Chief Financial Officer, Rithm Capital: Okay, great. Thanks.

Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO and President, Rithm Capital: Thanks, Bose.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from Eric Hagan with BTIG. Please go ahead.

Baron Silverstein, President, Newrez: Hey, thanks. Good morning.

Fleshing out some of this other conversation here, we’re looking at Slide 6 again. Is the expectation to raise the third party capital for Paramount and pay down that $1.1 billion that you drew on the financing line, or does this pro forma cash position assume that you’ve raised the third party capital to fund that?

Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO and President, Rithm Capital: Yeah, we will not. I mean, if once we raise the third party, we haven’t drawn on the money because the deal hasn’t closed yet, you still gotta get shareholder approval. Once we do that, once we do close to the extent that we do draw down, we’ll, you know, we’ll pay that off once we raise the money. There’s a ton of money for people that want to be part of this, whether that be LPs or, as I pointed out to Crispin, LPs or, you know, what I would call peers and partners in the business. It’s just, you know, the question for us is, you know, maximizing economics.

From a brand standpoint, I would tell you that we’re having anywhere from five to ten conversations minimum a day with LPs, so not only doing the deal, and not everybody wants to be in office, quite frankly, because a lot of folks have gotten smoked, you know, going in and, you know, right after COVID or just before COVID. The gist of it is the amount of conversations we’re having as an organization with LPs and the amount of capital that’s out there. Real discussions we’ve had. We feel really good about where we are on this one.

Conference Operator: Got you.

Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO and President, Rithm Capital: That’s helpful.

There’s a lot of attention right now on underwriting, even some fraud with these consumer lenders, regional banks and such. Do you see that driving changes in the market? Your entire business effectively is underwriting focused at this point. We wouldn’t expect any bad underwriting in your portfolio. Do you see that having a spillover effect in any way to the rest of the market?

Yeah, I think it’s something that when we talk about our ABF funds, it is a question we get asked all the time. When you look at First Brands or you look at Tricolor, what really happened there? You know, one thing that’s different about Rithm versus other folks, you know, we have, what, 10,000 employees across the firm. You know, the mortgage company has, between employees and consultants, probably 10,000 people alone. Quite frankly, you look at Genesis, there’s a couple hundred people there. You know, we’re underwriting first and we don’t just go out and buy pools of assets unless, like I pointed out many times, where we have the ability to hopefully control an outcome, and that outcome is driven through our underwriting and servicing business. That makes a big, big difference.

While saying that, you know, ABF kind of LPs are, you know, they want to know what happened with First Brands. They want to know what happened with Tricolor. Tricolor was classic fraud, right? They, you know, they pledged assets twice. You know, you look at First Brands, it’s a liquidity issue. I’m sure there’s some other stuff that’s going on there, you know. For us, underwriting first, we’ve seen these kind of events happen. I don’t think they’re systemic, quite frankly, for the broader world or market. We have to keep our eyes and ears open here and lead with underwriting first.

Conference Operator: Good stuff.

One more, if I may. The falloff in interest income from the investment portfolio, quarter over quarter, looks like it went from $82 million to $52 million. What was the driver of that?

Nick Santoro, Chief Financial Officer, Rithm Capital: Sure. Eric, we held lower agency balances. In addition, we had a retrospective adjustment in interest income that was offset in unrealized gains and losses. When you look at that line, you will see the pickup. Yup.

Got you guys.

Thank you.

Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO and President, Rithm Capital: Thanks, Eric.

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

Baron Silverstein, President, Newrez: Hey, good morning.

Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO and President, Rithm Capital: Thanks for taking my question.

Baron Silverstein, President, Newrez: For the initial ABF fund you’re targeting with the wealth management platform, can you talk about the initial size you’re targeting for that as well as the expected life of that vehicle?

Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO and President, Rithm Capital: I don’t think, I mean, here’s what I would say from an asset I don’t think we can talk about. We can’t talk about the marketing of the so-called fund. What I would tell you is we do have a couple things that we’re working on. There’s, you know, we mentioned that so-called fund. Are we allowed to talk about this? Looking at counsel. Okay, so the size is likely going to be upwards of $500 million and then the average duration of something like that. Think about the typical products that we produce. I mentioned earlier, non-QM and RTL are kind of in flavor as people like the diversified risk there, those average cash flows. Think of something in the kind of the three-year area. I mentioned earlier, and it’s not just us, but there’s a lot of managers like us that are out there with different ABF funds.

When you think about the product suite there, it could be ABS, it could be mortgage, it could be CLO type, it could be, you’ll have aviation finance, all kinds of different things that can go into these different buckets. All right, thank you. That’s helpful.

Baron Silverstein, President, Newrez: As it pertains to the dividend you’ve been covering for, I don’t know how long, five years, as far back as I can remember. How do you think about the payout policy right now? Whether you can see it expanding, given some possible capital needs for integrating these acquisitions or building more of a buffer against market headwinds?

Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO and President, Rithm Capital: What I would say, from, obviously it’s a board decision, I would say pretty definitively from the team here inside the walls of Rithm, that we’re not going to raise our dividend. Quite frankly, if we had our druthers, if you think about it, we’re paying out something between, call it $600 million a year. If you reinvested that capital at 20%, we mentioned the company generated an 18% ROE. If we redeployed the capital there, it’s going to be highly accretive from an earnings standpoint and that would enable the stock to grow. I would say definitively there is no desire to increase a dividend at this point. If we could go the other way, we would.

Conference Operator: All right.

Baron Silverstein, President, Newrez: Appreciate the color. Thank you.

Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO and President, Rithm Capital: Thank you.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from Trevor Cranston with Citizens JMP. Please go ahead.

Great, thanks. Another question on the, you know, kind of valuation of the company and closing the gap to the, you know, the sum of the parts level. Can you talk about how you guys think about share buybacks as a tool to sort of help bridge that gap, or if the focus is really just more so on kind of continuing to grow and increase the revenue streams to get there? Thanks.

Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO and President, Rithm Capital: Share buybacks, you know, people talk about share buybacks. I think our path is going to be continued growth as long as we think we could deploy capital at, you know, call it 15% to 20% returns. I would say while we have all kinds of policies in place, whether they be share buybacks, ATMs, et cetera, based on the two acquisitions, I would assume that we’re not going to be doing any share buybacks here. I think the question around a potential IPO of the mortgage company is always something that we wrestle with. At some point, if that’s something we do, that would potentially raise a little bit of capital for us. There is no, I would say right now, and this is again my view, we’re not going to be doing share buybacks. We’re funding a billion-something acquisition on Paramount Group and Crestline Investors.

As we continue to grow earnings and grow fee-related earnings, I think you’re going to see a huge reval of the company. That’s what we’re all playing for.

Got it. Okay, that’s helpful. On the Sculptor business, you guys had pretty good year of fundraising. I think the number you gave is $4.6 billion so far this year. Can you give us an outlook on how you’re thinking about fundraising heading into 2026, if you think that kind of pace is sustainable, and just generally how you think about the organic growth potential of the asset management side over the next year or so?

Nick Santoro, Chief Financial Officer, Rithm Capital: Thanks. Sure.

Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO and President, Rithm Capital: When we look at the asset management business, we are going to be making capital investments in people as we continue to grow our, what I would call our capital formation strategy group. There will be some significant investments there. I’m hopeful over the next kind of 60 days we have some big announcements there around some personnel. When you look at the growth, the $4.5 billion or so that Sculptor raised, a large amount of that was in the real estate business. The underlying performance in the credit business, the multi-strat business, continues to be very, very good. You look at Crestline, their performance continues to be very, very good.

When you look across our firm and you think about Rithm Capital, Sculptor, Crestline, you could assume at some point that the capital formation groups come together and things really start to synergize and we’re able to raise a lot more capital. When I look at a $4.5 billion or $5 billion capital raise for 2025, do I think that’s repeatable in 2026? Absolutely. You look at the bigger players and they’ve done a fabulous job raising tons and tons of capital. There’s no reason why we can’t surpass the numbers that have been done in 2025.

Nick Santoro, Chief Financial Officer, Rithm Capital: Got it.

Conference Operator: Okay.

Appreciate the comments.

Baron Silverstein, President, Newrez: Thank you.

Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO and President, Rithm Capital: Thank you.

Conference Operator: This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Michael Nierenberg for any closing remarks.

Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO and President, Rithm Capital: Thanks for the thoughtful questions. Thanks for listening to us this morning. As I wrap up again, very excited where we sit. From a company perspective, things are going what I would say, extremely well right now. Earnings, the strength of our earnings continues to be robust, driven by the businesses that we bought or built to get us here. Those very same businesses are going to enable us to continue to grow. Our platform, obviously very focused on the asset management business, very focused on getting the proper reval of the company. The mortgage company is something that we always, we look at and say, do we take it public or not? Quite frankly, sometimes it’s easier not to be in the public markets. As you think about it, every asset manager talking about going public to private when you look at assets going even into the wealth channels.

Overall, things are clicking on all cylinders here for us and we look forward to updating it throughout the quarter and into next quarter. Thanks again. Have a great weekend.

Conference Operator: The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.

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