Radian Group Inc. (NYSE:RDN) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Richard Thornberry: Maybe, Sumita and I can tag teams. Doug, this is Rick. Again, I will just speak to our track record of being fairly diligent strong fiduciaries around managing capital and taking advantage of opportunities that present themselves either through freeing kind of trapped capital in our operating businesses, looking at ways to restructure to again, liberate capital we have done things around different our ILNs this past year. We bought shares back. We have the highest dividend rate. So I think as we think forward, there is a whole waterfall of options that we think through and try to be really good stewards of capital as we manage through, as Sumita said, thinking through kind of a through-the-cycle view. But I think you are going to continue to see us – I should also mention, as Sumita mentioned in her remarks, we do plan to use some of our holdco liquidity to pay down the 2024s like due October 1st, I think is the date.

So we have got a really thoughtful approach as we go forward. The good challenge that we have is we do have considerable excess capital that is freeing up from Radian Guaranty up to holdco. And I think that is going to continue to provide us opportunities to think about how we further deploy that to the benefit of our shareholders. So I think I would just speak to our track record. We never talk forward about kind of our actions for a whole lot of good reasons. But I think our plan is thoughtful. Our approach has proven to be thoughtful, and we are going to continue to find ways to optimize our returns to shareholders.

Sumita Pandit: Yes. And I think the only other thing I would add, I just want to make sure I answer your question related to insurance – reinsurance, Doug, let us know if this is what you were getting to. So as you can see, our PMI excess available assets was $2.28 billion as of the first quarter. And the increase in that excess really happened in the fourth quarter of last year when we executed a couple of reinsurance transactions. And if you remember, we mentioned that we like the deals we were getting at that point in time, and we went ahead and executed those transactions. Having said that, the PMIERs excess is not our constraint that really guides how much capital we can free up from Radian Guaranty to Radian Group. And just to give you some additional disclosure on that, we did add I would say a footnote on Slide 21 to make sure that we are explaining that a little bit more clearly.

So if you look at, what is our constraint in terms of how much capital we can get out of Radian Guaranty, it is really our unassigned funds. And that is driven by the performance of Radian Guaranty, both on a statutory net income basis, but also the contingency reserve releases that we are now seeing in Radian Guaranty. So if you think about our constraint from a capital perspective, it is really unassigned funds and not the excess PMIERs assets that we have, which is driven much more by how much reinsurance you do. So I just wanted to make sure that I highlight that for you that it is really driven much more by our unassigned funds in rating guarantee.

Douglas Harter: I appreciate that answer. And just a follow-up. Is there a minimum unassigned funds number you need to hold or just how do we think about the ability to kind of back to an earlier question about using most of your net income, just to think about that.

Sumita Pandit: Yes. I mean we could sweep all of it. So it is really zero million. So as long as it is positive, we can sweep all of it from Radian Guaranty to Radian Group. And as you can see, I mean, this is still a pretty new development for us. Like Q1 was really the first time when we are starting to see this trend of contingency reserve releases. You see the $108 million this quarter versus about $5 million for the previous four quarters. So I think as long as it is positive, we are able to sweep that up to Radian Group.

Richard Thornberry: Yes. And I think the important point about that is, is that it rebuilds every quarter, right, through earnings contingency reserve releases. So it is not a fixed number that we are capped at. As you can tell from the chart that Sumita is referring to, that is first quarter’s build, but that quarter builds each quarter, we had earnings and contingency reserve releases. So we are in a really long positive cycle relative to free cash flow, capital flow from Radian Guaranty of the Radian Group.

Operator: Our next question comes from Mihir Bhatia of Bank of America.

Unknown Analyst: This is [Nate] (Ph) Richmond on for Mihir. My first question was on Homegenius. I know it is being the emphasized on the accounting perspective. But just curious, if I think about it like an operational perspective, and I know the current environment isn’t that supportive, but will it still be like a focus of growth? And is it something you think you will reinvest in as the rate environment gets a little better?

Richard Thornberry: Yes. First off, thank you for the question. Let me just kind of walk you through because I think it is just good to add to kind of the understanding of what our plans are for these three businesses. So as I have talked in the past about the group formally referred to as Homegenus segment, was comprised of three businesses. One of which was titled – one was real estate services, which is our SFR due diligence business, REO and valuations business. And the third was our Homegenus technology platform business, and they’re all at different stages of development and maturity. So the segment decision really, as Sumita walked through, was a decision in terms of kind of presentation and kind of assessing those businesses in that context.

But for each of the businesses, the title business has gone through a meaningful expense reductions during the cycle, a very challenging cycle, as you know. But it maintains a really solid market condition — market position and has been adding customers along the way, really expanding the base of the customers significantly and getting great feedback from the customers we do business with. So we think that, that business is positioned for growth as the market improves to your point. Our real estate services business is a business that has remained profitable through the cycle, not as profitable less profitable, but still profitable. It is a business where we have a tremendous market position, a leading market position across those products and we continue to see as the market evolves and improves opportunities for that to grow.