Rithm Capital Q4 2024 Earnings Report

Rithm Capital EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.60
• Consensus EPS: $0.44
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.16
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Rithm Capital Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $619.51 million
• Expected Revenue: $1.22 billion
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$600.07 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Rithm Capital Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q4 2024
• Date: 2/6/2025
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, February 6, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 8:00AM ET

Rithm Capital (NYSE:RITM) Corporation is a specialty finance company that originates, acquires and manages structured credit investments collateralized by real estate assets in the United States. The company focuses primarily on senior floating-rate loans secured by multifamily, commercial, industrial and single-family rental properties, aiming to deliver attractive risk-adjusted yields through a diversified portfolio of floating-rate real estate debt.

In addition to senior loans, Rithm Capital invests in residential mortgage-backed securities, including agency and non-agency pools, as well as other real estate-related credit instruments. Through its externally managed structure, the firm seeks to capitalize on market dislocations and interest rate environments by underwriting loans with conservative leverage profiles and contractual protections. Its financing solutions are designed to serve the needs of property owners and operators across a range of asset types and geographies within the U.S.

Established in 2019 and headquartered in New York City, Rithm Capital became a publicly traded company in late 2020. The company is externally managed by Rithm Management LLC, whose leadership team brings experience from leading real estate finance and investment firms. Rithm Capital’s business model emphasizes disciplined underwriting, portfolio diversification and active risk management to generate stable income streams and long-term capital preservation.

Rithm Capital Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Strong financial performance: Rhythm and Sculptor together manage $80 billion in AUM with $7.8 billion of permanent capital, generated over $1 billion in annual earnings, and delivered 76% earnings growth since Q1 2021 alongside a 9.2% dividend yield.
• Mortgage segment momentum: NewRez reported Q4 pretax income excluding MTM of $280 million (up 12% QoQ) with a 20% ROE and full-year pretax income of $1 billion (up 26% YoY), ranking as the #3 servicer with $844 billion in servicing and the #5 originator at $59 billion funded in 2024.
• Private credit success: Genesis Capital origination jumped from $2 billion at acquisition in 2021 to $3.6 billion in 2024, with EBITDA rising from $40 million to $100 million, capitalizing on bank pullbacks in construction and CRE lending.
• Growth initiatives underway: The company is integrating Sculptor’s strong multi-strategy and real estate funds, expanding into asset-based finance and preparing to launch a global energy infrastructure platform, while raising private capital and evaluating a C-corp/REIT restructuring.
• Valuation headwinds: Despite $1 billion in annual earnings, Rhythm trades at about 6× earnings versus peers at ~30×, underscoring an undervaluation risk and emphasizing the need to scale its REIT platform before potential spin-outs.

Presentation

[Operator]

Good day, and welcome to the Rithm Capital fourth quarter and full year 2024 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 your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star, 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 at Rithm Capital]

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. I would like to thank you for joining us today for Rithm Capital's fourth quarter and full year 2024 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.

[Emma Bolla, Associate General Counsel at Rithm Capital]

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 at Rithm Capital]

Thanks, Emma. Good morning, everyone. I want to welcome you to our fourth quarter and full year call for Rithm. The company had a great fourth quarter and a great year. What I thought I would do today, which is a little bit different than our typical earnings call, I figured I would take a step back and talk about the Rithm story for a minute. When you look at Rithm, you may ask, who are we? We began the company in 2013 while at Fortress to acquire MSRs from banks as Basel III capital rules made them too costly for banks to hold. The company, which started with $1 billion of capital, today has grown to $7.8 billion of permanent capital. Along the way, we grew our asset management business. We began building and acquiring operating companies.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

In 2022, the board acquired the management contract of New Residential from Fortress, and then we began the next leg of our journey, which was to continue building a world-class asset management firm. Our thought was to go out and raise third-party capital. So if you think about it, while at Fortress, all the capital and all the growth of the company was done in the public markets, so to not confuse that story, we built it in the public markets. As we looked at the next leg of our lives, we said, let's go raise private capital. So in August of 2022, we changed our name to Rithm Capital. While we still operate as a REIT, we continue to evaluate the benefits of changing our capital structure. There are still some things to do in order for us to get there.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

Today, when I look at the firm and we look at the firm, we have what I believe is a complete product offering for shareholders and LPs in all asset classes, ranging from real estate to credit, including the new hot word in the private capital sector of ABF, which is asset-based finance, something that we've been doing our whole careers. Another exciting thing is we expect to announce soon, probably in the next 30 days, a global energy infrastructure platform with Scale Capital Partners, which will be supplying power to data centers across the world. When I think about our business, I like to think about why us. One, results. We must have performance to grow our business. Two, we're very different than other asset managers. We have the ability to manufacture assets through our operating businesses. We underwrite, originate, and service the assets from beginning to end.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

Servicing matters. We've been in a very benign credit cycle for many, many years, and at some point, that'll turn, and having the third largest mortgage company or servicer here in the United States is going to make a big difference for our business. Our asset management business. Many of you know we acquired Sculptor in November of 2023. We've been together for one year, and the business is doing great. The results are great, and we look forward to future growth there as well. So our value prop is the following. Results first again. When you look at the family of all of our companies, on the investment side, between Rithm, Sculptor, and some of our other investment areas, we have over 400 individuals. Our operating business lines have approximately 7,000 people.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

Number two, when I look at our equity, when looking at the sum of the parts, we're severely undervalued. And I know as we continue to, as we trade as a REIT, like others that trade a REIT, either trade a book, a slightly above book, or a below book, I think that the sector is extremely undervalued relative to when you see other asset managers trading at 30 times DE. Our manufacturing engine for assets differentiates us from others. We can differentiate our product offerings. We can create whatever product offering one of our LPs would like. So I'll now refer to our supplement, which has been posted online. I'm going to start with page three. I'll go through most of the slides. Baron will hit the mortgage company, and then we'll go to Q&A.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

When you look at the company today, between Rithm and Sculptor, assets really being managed, Rithm has a $45 billion balance sheet. Sculptor has about $35 billion of AUM. The combined entity is about $80 billion of AUM, $7.8 billion of permanent capital, and the company makes a little north of a billion dollars a year. When you look at growth, 76% earnings growth since the first quarter of 2021. To the right side of the page, you can have a look. Newrez is our mortgage company, obviously Sculptor, the asset management business in the private markets, Genesis Capital, one of the largest non-bank construction/RTL lenders in the business. Last year in June, we took over the management contract of something called Great Ajax. It was kind of a broken REIT.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

We renamed it Rithm Property Trust with the intent of growing that into, quite frankly, like a Rithm, like what others have done in the public markets around externally managed vehicles. And then we have a small SFR business in Adoor. Financial highlights, page four. Year-over-year growth in earnings, 27%. Earnings available for distribution, $2.10. As I look at Q4, GAAP net income, $263 million or $0.50 per diluted share. Return on equity, 16%. Earnings available for distribution, $316 million or $0.60 per diluted share. Return on equity, 20%. When you look at our dividend, it's still 9.2%, and we still pay $0.25 per common share. Book value, we ended the year at $12.56, which I think is pretty much unchanged versus the prior year. And today, our book value is in and around the same.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

For fiscal year 2024, full year, GAAP net income $835 million or $1.67 per diluted share, 14% return on equity. That includes marks and other things. Earnings available for distribution $1.050 billion or $2.10 per diluted share and a 17% return on equity. And then again, the dividend yield of 9.2%. We pay $1 a year. Page five, year in review. Genesis Capital. We acquired this company from Goldman's Merchant Bank in, I believe it was December of 2021. At that time, they were doing about $2 billion in origination. This year, we did $3.6 billion. When we acquired the company, the EBITDA number was about $40 million. Today, it's doing about in and around $100 million of EBITDA. So it's been a great success story.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

Obviously, with banks and regional banks pulling back in certain areas, this company is poised for success, and it's also poised for a lot of growth. The asset management side, as I pointed out, we're one year in with Sculptor. That's our asset management arm. The returns have been super. I mean, if you look at the multi-strat fund, last year, 18% growth or 13.5% net. And if you look at some of the other businesses around the real estate side, and I'll get into that when we look at some of the Sculptor slides, just great performance. And it echoes my opening remarks that the only thing we care about is performance first. Performance first is going to lead to more AUM growth. It's not the other way around for us. When I look at the investment portfolio, we did seven securitizations in 2024, a little under $3 billion.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

We invested $1.8 billion in residential mortgage assets. And one of the interesting deals we did, and this is very popular with a lot of LPs, we invested $200 million of equity in a large SRT transaction with a large bank, where effectively we took a slice of a mortgage warehouse. Why us? Because we had the operational capacity in the event that there was something that went awry with one of their underlying mortgage bankers. And then Newrez, again, very proud of this company, proud of the team. Baron's done a great job, as has his leadership team. Top three U.S. mortgage servicer in total, top five U.S. mortgage originator in total. And keep in mind, when we were at Fortress, we built Mr. Cooper, which was formerly known as Nationstar. We started this company from scratch in 2018.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

So very, very proud of the team and the results that we have there. And that company is just poised to grow, and I think a lot of it, and Baron will talk to that in a little bit. When I look at our foundation for growth, we're going to continue to try to grow our third-party asset management business. We want to shrink our balance sheet. We want to do things more, again, off-balance sheet. If you look to the right side of the page here, Rithm Property Trust, I pointed out, that was an opportunistic situation. Effectively, we just took over the management contract. The team has done a great job on that. We took it over in June. It was losing money. We actually got it to at the end of Q4, where the company is flat to now making money, and that should continue to grow.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

Just for Rithm shareholders, that is an externally managed vehicle. So management fees, as we grow that, will feed to the bottom line. Asset-based finance, the hot topic. Everywhere, every asset manager everywhere is talking about that. It's a so-called $30 trillion opportunity. We've been doing this our whole life. Energy transition, I pointed out, we're going to be partnering and launching a global energy infrastructure fund. What's going to happen there is we're going to partner with a couple of our old Fortress colleagues, bring in third-party capital. There was a huge shortage, obviously, of power. We're not going to get in on the Q&A. We don't need to get into the deep dive stuff, but what I would say is world-class team.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

We won't enter a vertical unless we have the expertise, and we're super pumped for that because the need for power around the globe is massive, and the amount of capital needed to fund all this power, whether you're building power plants or you're funding some of these hyperscalers, is going to be immense, so we're really excited about that, so that's page six. Some of the parts, I'm not going to spend a ton of time here. Bottom line is I think our equity is extremely cheap. I look at asset managers, where they trade. If you think about it, we make $1 billion. We trade at six and change times. We have asset management. We have operating businesses. The company is extremely undervalued.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

I think at some point, and I thought about this coming into the beginning of the year, the market should be looking at some of the REITs and the real earnings potential around not only us, but just others and what people are doing in that sector. If you think about something at 30x or something that's steady $1 billion at 6x, I know where I would think about it. Capital deployment on Page six. This just shows going back to 2021, how we've grown our earnings. We've grown it strategically. We have focused on sectors that we believe are going to generate mid-teens or teens returns. So when you have a look, earnings growth, again, up 76% since 2021. And our EAD from a CAGR standpoint is up 16%. So again, very proud of that. Just a couple of quick points here on Genesis.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

I mentioned before, bought the company in 2021. Another great team. The team here at Rithm works very closely with them. I expect this business to we got to be sensitive to credit, obviously, because as I pointed out in my opening remarks, we've been in a very benign credit environment for many years. While saying that, there's $3.6 billion with $100 million of EBITDA. I expect that to continue to grow. The asset class itself is very much in vogue. It's a mid-teens type return, and we're seeing a lot of demand from LPs for that type of product. A lot of different sponsors. And I think the upside there, when you look at, unfortunately, some of the disasters happening, whether it be on the West Coast and other places, we're poised to make loans in those areas. I'm going to flip to the Sculptor slides. Page 13.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

Obviously, when we bought Sculptor and we closed in November, I think it was the 19th of November in 2023. So truly one full year in. Returns have been great. Fundraising is going extremely well. When I look at, or we all collectively look at the teams, world-class real estate business, world-class multi-strat business. Credit we're looking at, we're going to look to continue to try to grow that business over time. We restarted the CLO platform last year, and we've also accelerated some growth in a Sculptor non-traded REIT. The other thing what I would say around Rithm and Sculptor, Rithm is a true partner to Sculptor.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

So when we look at things that Sculptor can do, whether it be launching a fund or something, it's very likely that the support from Rithm will enable us to participate not only in that fund, but help grow those funds over time. Page 14, just the performance. Again, if you look at the Sculptor Tactical Credit Fund, for example, 25% growth, almost 20% net. Fantastic. You look at the multi-strat, I pointed out earlier, 18% growth, 13.5% net. And then when you look at the real estate business, again, these guys and gals are world-class business, second to none. When they go out with funds, I think we'd expect those to be oversubscribed. Finally, I'll talk to Rithm Property Trust, then I'll turn it over to Baron. Again, this is the so-called broken REIT we took over in June.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

Right now, it's got about $250 million of equity in it. It earns a management fee and a promote. As we continue to grow that and take advantage of dislocations in the commercial real estate market, it's our expectations that this vehicle could grow into a multi-billion dollar vehicle. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Baron, who will talk about Newrez.

[Baron Silverstein, President at Newrez]

Thank you, Michael, and good morning to everybody. I'm turning to Slide 20. Newrez delivered another strong quarter with fourth quarter pre-tax income, excluding mark to market, of approximately $280 million, which is an increase of 12% quarter over quarter and delivering a 20% ROE. We also finished the full year of 2024 with approximately $1 billion in pre-tax income, and that's up 26% year over year with a 19% ROE.

[Baron Silverstein, President at Newrez]

These results, though, reflect a change in segment reporting by including MSRs that were previously reported as serviced by others and the MSR hedge that were reported in the investment portfolio segment. We believe this change more accurately reflects the economics of Rithm's origination and servicing segment, which is Newrez overall and more closely resembles industry norms across our sector. Overall, we continue to gain momentum, and these results show the power of our platform. We have $844 billion in total servicing, now the number three servicer, and $59 billion in funded volume for 2024 with the number five originator. Turning to Slide 21, you can also see that we remain in growth mode. The last few years really present the effectiveness of our well-balanced platform by taking advantage of origination opportunities and servicing opportunities regardless of market conditions. Our 2025 strategy is no different.

[Baron Silverstein, President at Newrez]

We don't chase market share, nor do we have a hope that rates will come down. We remain focused on growing our brand presence and delivering best-in-class customer experience in order to maximize customer retention and recapture. Growing our B2B platforms is also focused on building new partnerships, increasing wallet share with our existing customer base, and also being opportunistic on MSR and platform acquisitions. These initiatives, coupled with our operational excellence and improved efficiency through our AI initiatives and our technology, continue to support our financial performance. Turning and moving to Slide 22, our origination business also continues to perform well. We funded approximately $17 billion in the fourth quarter, which is up 9% quarter over quarter, and $96 million in originations PTI, up 19% from last quarter. This quarter is our best performance, financial performance since 2021.

[Baron Silverstein, President at Newrez]

On margins, and while the market always remains competitive, we are able to improve our average margins to 131 basis points, up 8 basis points overall quarter over quarter, while maintaining market share. And while all of our channels were profitable in 2024, our multi-channel strategy allows us to optimize on opportunities in all market opportunities. And this is shown by $270 million of originations PTI for the full year, which is up 1,200% year-over-year. And as I mentioned before, one of our top priorities and our biggest opportunity is our ability to retain our customers, which takes us to Slide 23. Our portfolio now sits at 3.7 million customers, and the scale affords significant opportunities for portfolio recapture and customer growth through future cross-sell strategies. Our ability to grow our origination business is focused on being able to deliver recapture even without a rate rally.

[Baron Silverstein, President at Newrez]

That includes cash-out refis, home equity loans, purchase transactions to our existing customer base. Delivering our brand and making investments and building digital tools to enhance our customer experience is key to our success. Moving to Slide 24, our servicing business also continues to perform well. Our total managed servicing portfolio is $844 billion, which is comprised of $525 billion of owned MSRs directly serviced by Newrez, $65 billion of owned MSRs serviced by others, and $254 billion of third-party servicing. As I mentioned before, the financials related to serviced-by-others portfolio is now reported in the Newrez or the originations and servicing segment. It's important to note that we, Newrez, have always been actively managing these SBO MSRs and the performance of these third-party servicers to ensure alignment to our standards. Our third-party servicing franchise also had a great quarter.

[Baron Silverstein, President at Newrez]

We added $21 billion in net notional UPB, which is up 9% quarter-over-quarter, continuing to gain wallet share with our existing customer base and also adding new customers, but our performance is always driven and continues to be driven by our operational efficiency through our proprietary technology, our scale and cost leadership, and that is seen in our ability to transfer 1.2 million loans in 2024. On Slide 25, you see our owned MSR performance, which, not surprisingly, is reflective of market conditions with higher interest rates and low prepayment speeds, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that. Moving to Slide 26, on our market-leading special servicing franchise is really our presentation on our core capability of our overall platform. It's an important business for us as it is both fee-based, capital-light, and provides significant operating leverage to our platform.

[Baron Silverstein, President at Newrez]

While delinquencies remain low from a historical context, and Michael talked about that, you can see in the chart on the bottom left that delinquencies are slowly on the rise, and we help homeowners find a solution to stay in their home. This is proven not only with our third-party clients continuing to grow with us, but also through our performance shown on the right side of the slide, as well as supporting homeowners in times of need, like the recent hurricanes and Los Angeles fires. I continue to believe our business is as best positioned as it ever has been, and I'm looking forward to continuing telling the NewRes growth story in 2025. Back to you, Michael.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

Thanks. Operator, if we could just open up the lines for a Q&A, that would be great.

[Operator]

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. 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 then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Bose George with KBW. Please go ahead.

[Bose George, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at KBW]

Hey, everyone. Good morning. Could you give us any updated thoughts on the potential listing of Newrez in 2025? And then could you also just tie that into your comments, Michael, and your prepared remarks about potential changes in the capital structure at Rithm?

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

Sure. So we're not there yet on listing the company. If you had talked to Nick and the team, we've taken steps to have separate segment reporting where everything is now listed at the mortgage company so you have a clear view into how that company is doing. I think that the big part for us is how do we think about shareholders, and not just at the mortgage company level, quite frankly, and get the proper multiple for how we see ourselves in the business.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

That's one of the reasons why I opened up a little different than I typically do. There are some pieces that need to come into play. One is we need to, if we were going to do that, we want to grow our REIT. So you'd have a dedicated REIT, you'd have a C Corp up top, no different than some of the best-in-class asset managers, and then we'd have our operating companies below.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

So that's really the path we're on. I will say the M&A pipeline of stuff that we're looking at is extremely robust, whether that be on the asset management side and just some of the other things that manufacturing businesses, as I refer to them in our opening remarks. But to tell you today that we're going to list the company, I can't do that. But we are working on our capital structure, and we hope to have some change in that. We put a lot of thought and talked to have some good, thoughtful board discussions. I'm hopeful at some point down the road that we'll get there, but we need to grow some scale in the REIT right now.

[Bose George, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at KBW]

Okay. That's helpful. Thanks. And in terms of timeline, that suggests that it's probably not a 2025 event while you sort of build out the other pieces. Is that fair?

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

No. I mean, I'd like to do it in 2024, but that's gone. So I think if we can get it done in 2025, we absolutely will because I still believe that our common is fundamentally undervalued.

[Bose George, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at KBW]

Okay. Great. And actually, just another quick one. The SPAC, I know you can't discuss it, but would that be part of Sculptor to the extent that happens?

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

If it does happen, it would be a Rithm company. I can't go into a lot of details, but the way we think about the business, if we could create more fee-earning businesses that flow up to the parent company, we're going to do that. And as we think about diversification, there are certain types of vehicles that we could potentially explore.

[Bose George, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at KBW]

Okay. Great. Makes sense. Thanks.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

Thanks.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Doug Harter with UBS. Please go ahead.

[Douglas Harter, Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at UBS]

Thanks. Michael, you talked about scaling up the REIT in your last answer. Just what assets do you find attractive, and kind of how would you look to scale up the REIT?

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

Doug, I think it's more of the same in what we do. If you look at the business, we've allocated a lot of capital. We allocate more and more capital to the mortgage company has a lot of capital. Obviously, the MSR business has been extremely beneficial to the company and to shareholders. We continue to believe in that asset, as Baron pointed out. I think we have a little under $850 billion and continue to grow the third-party servicing there. When you look at, you have a, just give or take for purposes of this discussion, 440, a four-and-a-half, 10-year note. You have mortgages trading 120, 130 in the agency market.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

You look at some of the non-QM assets that we actually produce, or you look at the Genesis side that what we can produce. I think that's where you're going to see growth on the REIT side.

[Douglas Harter, Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at UBS]

Just along those lines, how do you see kind of the investor property loans today, other private label securitizations, and kind of what impact do the Washington discussions around the GSEs have on those opportunities?

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

When and if that happens, I think that we are going to be so well positioned between our capital base, the LPs that we have in our system, and our mortgage company, which I think is in a class, is a world-class mortgage company.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

So whether they be investor loans, whether if the agencies went back to the old way where they get privatized, keep in mind, in the old days, G-fees were, what were they, 25 basis points or something, give or take that, right, Baron? You look at where they are, they're 50 basis points today. So there's probably some give, and part of that could be as you think about the reinsurance market around how that could possibly work, and I think that could work. But I think we will be extremely well positioned for that, and I'd like to see it, quite frankly.

[Douglas Harter, Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at UBS]

And Michael, just one more, if I could. Just on your comments about growing and scaling the REIT, can you do that with your existing capital base, or would you need to raise additional capital to do that?

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

It depends. It could be a combination of both. Keep in mind, most REITs tend to operate by themselves. There's not a lot of M&A activity in the REIT space. When I look at our business and think about permanent capital and having a little under $8 billion, that's a good place to be away from our so-called asset management arm. So if we could grow that and then at some point create management fees, I think we're off to the races.

[Douglas Harter, Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at UBS]

Great. Thank you.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

Thanks, Doug.

[Operator]

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

[Kenneth Lee, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Hey, thanks for taking my question. Good morning. Just one on Sculptor. You talked about some initiatives to grow the credit business. Wondering if I can get a little bit more detail in terms of what particular initiatives and what are your expectations in terms of fundraising for this year. Thanks.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

So on the initiatives, it's more of the same. It's lead with performance. Performance is going to bring in more AUM. The team, there's a large capital formation team. Everybody's out on the road and seeing LPs. When I think about the initiatives to actually grow, whether it be credit and some of the other businesses, there's two ways really to do it, right? You could do some in M&A, but we can't be the folks that are going to pay 20x or 30x on a multiple basis. So it could be some there's a couple of different platforms out there that we're actually looking at. But I think real performance is going to bring in a lot more capital.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

If you think about it, the company is a great company, obviously in the press for a bit, but out on the other side, a year and change removed, performance great everywhere. So I'm excited. We all talked to a lot of LPs, and I think we're going to see a fair amount of capital come in. As you think about how much capital to be raised this year, right now, the real estate guys are. I can't give you specific numbers, but those guys are doing well. The credit side is doing well. So we expect a pretty good year. We're not Blackstone or Apollo, unfortunately, but there's a lot of room for us out there.

[Kenneth Lee, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Gotcha. Very helpful there. And one follow-up, if I may, just on Sculptor as well. Any updated outlook around the expense base for Sculptor? Is it sort of still in an investment phase there? Just any kind of color around where expenses could trend there? Thanks.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

I think it's more BAU, honestly. We always evaluate expenses, whether it be at Sculptor, whether it be at the mortgage company, whether we be at Rithm. Creating synergies, obviously, across all of our operating platforms will help, and we continue to work on those. So we could have some saves at some point. I think, yeah. I mean, it's just part of our discipline about risk management, putting up higher earnings for shareholders.

[Kenneth Lee, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Gotcha. Thank you very much.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

Thanks. You, Ken.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Giuliano Bologna with Compass Point. Please go ahead.

[Giuliano Bologna, Managing Director at Compass Point]

Good morning. Congrats on the continued performance. One thing I'd be curious about when you think about kind of growing the REITs, would there be any value or ability to push assets into the Rithm Property Trust structure and use that as a public vehicle, or would you want to create more separate vehicles over time that have slightly different strategies on the kind of REIT side of the world?

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

I think it's both. We prefer not to transfer assets from one REIT to another, just to be clear on that. We are looking at a transaction, for example, now in the commercial real estate sector, where both Rithm and Rithm Property Trust will likely participate as two separate entities because, obviously, the amount of capital in Rithm Property Trust is not large enough.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

When we think about risk and the sheer size of doing any one thing, we want to make sure that we're balanced from a risk perspective. It's going to be more where we'd like to continue to create more vehicles. We want to think about other verticals that we may or may not have been in. I pointed out on the energy infrastructure side, a couple of world-class folks building a business, have third-party capital commitments, trillions needed for that. That's another example of something that will grow, but that'll be more on the private fund side.

[Giuliano Bologna, Managing Director at Compass Point]

This might be taking a little bit of a different angle, but you've obviously done a great job historically of making acquisitions on the mortgage company or MSR side. I'm curious, when you're talking about M&As, are there any opportunities around the mortgage company with originating servicers and/or bulk pools that you might be looking at, or are you focused on M&A elsewhere on the platform first?

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

No. Listen, we look at everything. If there's something that's accretive for the capital and for shareholders, we'll have a hard run at it. There's not that many mortgage companies, quite frankly, that are, in our opinion, from where we sit, that are—I shouldn't say worth it, but we don't need anything else. If there's something that's accretive, obviously, we love the MSR asset. That's been very good to us and our shareholders. We'll continue to look at that. We're starting to see some real demand for MSR funds as well. So you may see some of that start going off balance sheet, and that frees up some capital too. But what I would say, Giuliano, if there's something out there and we have an M&A team, we look at anything and everything. Just need to have the expertise around the house to execute.

[Giuliano Bologna, Managing Director at Compass Point]

That's helpful. Maybe one last one. You talked about the potential for a C-corp conversion. Is that something that you could pursue in the near term, or is there any kind of preference to try and do something with the mortgage company, partial IPO-wise, before you go through that, or could you pursue a C-corp conversion sooner?

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

I think we could do both, honestly, but it's got to be something that's highly accretive for both shareholders and the company. If you think about it as a REIT, we've paid out, I think, since 2021, $5.8 billion in dividends. If you had that capital and you compounded that capital, it's my belief, I think, the stock would be in the 20s, or it should be anyway. So when we look at all that stuff, all this stuff goes into our calculation, but I think anything's on the table. Knowing, as we all know each other, if we could do something yesterday, I'd prefer to do it yesterday.

[Giuliano Bologna, Managing Director at Compass Point]

That's very helpful. I appreciate it, and I'll jump back into Q.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

Thanks.

[Operator]

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

[Eric Hagen, Managing Director at BTIG]

Hi, thanks. Good morning, guys. When we look to the investment portfolio and we strip out the leverage that's associated with the hedging of the MSRs, what is the leverage in that portfolio? How stable do you feel like it is there? And do you feel like there's even some room to apply more leverage if NewRez were to get spun out at some point?

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

Most of the balance sheet, what I would say today, is really around two asset classes: MSRs and our hedges in the mortgage company. So if you think about it, whether we have swaps on, whether we have treasuries on, whether we have agency mortgages, that's a big chunk of the overall balance sheet. At the Rithm level, the other large part, what I would say in the non-agency space, is the Genesis loans because we finance those with some of our either banks or insurance companies or do securitizations. So the short answer is we could increase leverage. I think we'll only do that if we think it's prudent, but I don't think we need to right now based on the earnings power of where we sit.

[Eric Hagen, Managing Director at BTIG]

Okay. That's helpful. I actually want to ask about Shellpoint because subservicing feels like an increasingly relevant driver of the earnings story at Newrez. I mean, I think you mentioned how much you're subservicing now. Maybe you can repeat that. And what was the contribution to earnings from Shellpoint? And do you feel like there's any growth opportunities there, even if mortgage rates stay around these levels and new supply is kind of limited?

[Baron Silverstein, President at Newrez]

I mean, look, there continues to be demand on different non-agency products, right? Non-QM is very, very competitive in the marketplace today. We continue to be the number one special servicer for non-QM assets. So we continue to see growth. There are opportunities with banks and existing relationships that we take market share based upon how they're positioning. So we do look at it as continued growth, and you see that by us adding more loans in the fourth quarter, and our pipeline continues to look strong in 2025. So I think you're going to continue to see us taking market share, especially given a lot of the dislocation you saw last year in, what I'll say, third-party servicing.

[Eric Hagen, Managing Director at BTIG]

Yep. Thank you guys so much. Appreciate you.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

Thanks, Eric.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Jay McCanless with Wedbush. Please go ahead.

[Jay McCanless, Equity Research Analyst at Wedbush]

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Two for me. The first one, just kind of a general market question for 2025. If you look at the MBA data, mortgage credit availability is still sitting at levels around 2012, 2013. Do you guys think, just in general, maybe not specifically for Rithm, but just in general, do we think mortgage credit availability is going to increase going into this year, or is some of that going to be dependent on what happens with the GSEs?

[Baron Silverstein, President at Newrez]

I mean, look, Michael has talked about this on prior quarters. We have an expectation that rates are going to stay elevated. So what you're going to continue to see is that consumers, obviously, are going to have to deal with the affordability issue of trying to buy a new home. And that's why we're very much focused on our existing book. But we continue to also see consumers looking to move. So you see that in the amount of inventory and housing inventory that's available for sale continues to basically, what I'll say, is tick up.

[Baron Silverstein, President at Newrez]

So our expectation is you'll probably see a larger purchase market. And we think that home equity loans are going to continue to grow, and cash outs are going to continue to grow. Whether or not any of the government programs make an adjustment, I don't really think that's going to be necessarily a 2025 impact. But at the same time, our belief is they're very much focused on affordability, and I think that whatever programs that they adjust are going to basically have that as a focal point as well. So it is going to be a little bit of a balance. So I think that mortgage credit availability overall is probably going to stay in its current state in 2025. Insurance is a problem, obviously. Right? I mean, the cost of homeownership has gone up. You have rates up. Insurance is a problem.

[Baron Silverstein, President at Newrez]

You just had the Los Angeles fire, so. Yep. And that just drives into affordability consideration as well.

[Jay McCanless, Equity Research Analyst at Wedbush]

Okay. Great. Thank you. And then my second question. You guys talked at the beginning of the call about infrastructure finance and doing some investments there. I guess with some of the changes that we're seeing in the new administration, how does that affect your desire and potential customer desire to do more investments in that space? And are there any headlines, insights, roadmap, whatever, however you want to phrase it, anything that we should be watching for to tell us whether or not you guys are going to get more invested in that space?

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

Great question. It's a little bit early. You heard this morning that the administration wants to ban DeepSeek. I'm going to tell you that I am not the expert on this stuff. I have two partners, and we have two partners who are likely going to join us, world-class around this. Everybody's talking about the multi-trillion-dollar investment opportunity and the huge needs for capital. And that's how we're going to think about it.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

I mean, I think this stuff is going to continue to change. But when I look, and I recently sat in some meetings with some of the extremely large so-called hyperscalers, it's a really, really interesting space. You got to have the expertise to do it, and you got to have a lot of capital because the world is short power. Whether it's AI or something else, the world is short power. And with our team and our partners, I'm extremely excited about where we could go with this.

[Jay McCanless, Equity Research Analyst at Wedbush]

Okay. That sounds great. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Matthew Erdner with JonesTrading. Please go ahead.

[Matthew Erdner, Director and Equity Research Analyst at Jones Trading]

Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the question. So turning back to Newrez, the funded volume has continued to increase quarter over quarter. You guys have had great growth there. Kind of within the non-QM and home equity space, we've seen a lot of competition there, and then there's a lot of other players stepping into the place or into the space. How do you continue to drive market share growth there? Is it investment in your team? Are you guys growing that out? Could you just speak to that a little bit? Thanks.

[Baron Silverstein, President at Newrez]

It's an investment in the team. It's an investment in our technology. It's an investment in our brand. Those are the three key initiatives across the board, right? We continue to believe there's significant upside for us on just focusing on our own homeowners. We haven't even really, if we felt like we wanted to get into new customer acquisition, and we do new customer acquisition on our distributed retail platforms, but on our call centers, it's really just focused internally on our own portfolio and making sure that we're maximizing there. So I would tell you unequivocally, we are making significant platform investments on all of those initiatives.

[Matthew Erdner, Director and Equity Research Analyst at Jones Trading]

Got it. 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.

[Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President at Rithm Capital]

Well, thanks for everybody's questions. Really thoughtful this morning. Obviously, very excited about where we sit as a business and all of our different business lines, and look forward to updating you after Q1. More to come. Have a great day and a great rest of the week. Thanks, everyone.

[Operator]

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Emma Bolla, Associate General Counsel
• Michael Nierenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President

Analysts

• Bose George, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at KBW
• Giuliano Bologna, Managing Director at Compass Point
• Kenneth Lee, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at RBC Capital Markets
• Jay McCanless, Equity Research Analyst at Wedbush
• Matthew Erdner, Director and Equity Research Analyst at Jones Trading
• Baron Silverstein, President at Newrez
• Douglas Harter, Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at UBS
• Eric Hagen, Managing Director at BTIG