Rithm Capital (RITM) Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Rithm Capital (RITM 2.20%)
Q3 2024 Earnings Call
Oct 29, 2024, 8:00 a.m. ET

Contents:

• Prepared Remarks
• Questions and Answers
• Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Rithm Capital third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. [Operator instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Emma Bolla, associate general counsel. Please go ahead.

Emma Bolla — Associate General Counsel

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. I would like to thank you for joining us today for Rithm Capital’s third quarter 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 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, President, and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Emma. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. So during the quarter, we had a very strong quarter across all of our business lines. Before I get into the — what I would call the meat of our business, I wanted to point out a couple of things before we go into the deck.

First all, you’ll see a value slide depicting the sum of the parts analysis, which we put in last quarter, and again, we put it in this quarter. Quite frankly, I believe our equity is very cheap when you look at peers in the business and our actual results. We have a best-in-class lending business, a large balance sheet and an asset management business with huge upside. Last quarter, I got a couple of questions on our equity raise, and I just wanted to address that as well.

We raised $300 million. I get asked, what are you going to do with the money? So you understand our thought process. Since 2021, we have deployed $5.8 billion. We haven’t raised any equity while growing our earnings by approximately 60%.

I’d say that’s pretty impressive. We have funded our growth with our operating businesses, balance sheet, and a little bit of high-yield debt. As we think about risk, there are multiple wars going on. We’re in the middle of what could be a highly contested election.

And as many of you know, we’re always engaged in activity to grow our platform through M&A. So I would say all of these factors are good reasons why we want to have more capital. Now, back to our operating companies, Newrez and Genesis, our lending business has produced excellent results. Genesis had a record quarter, and we cannot be more thrilled with that platform.

As banks pull back, we win. In Newrez, we have a portfolio of $875 billion-ish of mortgage servicing rights, which include both owned servicing rights and third-party servicing. These assets have been great. Our Origination business had another very good quarter with increased volumes and profitability.

On the asset management side, Sculptor, which was acquired less than a year ago, last November. Performance is extremely good across all of our verticals, including real estate, credit and its multi-strat fund. The teams are out raising money, and we’re starting to see inflows across the entire platform. This past quarter, the real estate group announced their first closing of their multibillion-dollar SRE Fund V.

We’re very pleased with how well the fundraising is going despite such a challenging environment and expect that fund to be oversubscribed, a true testament to the team. We look forward to when you will see meaningful contributions from the Sculptor franchise to the bottom line of Rithm. On Great Ajax, the REIT we took over the management contract on — in Q2, we have repositioned the residential assets in the company and look forward to growing the vehicle with opportunistic investments in the commercial space. We’ve done this before while building new residential at Fortress going back to 2013, and we’ll do it again.

The commercial real estate business today is in one of those periods where we feel current capital deployment will be hugely rewarded down the road and being patient searching for the right investments will reward our shareholders. One last note on Ajax. Last week, we announced we are changing the name from Great Ajax to Rithm Property Trust, which should happen in the fourth quarter. Now, I’ll refer to the deck, which has been posted online.

So on Page 3, the way to think about the company today is effectively across all of our business lines, we manage $80 billion of assets. We have $7.8 billion of permanent capital in the public markets. And again, we have an $875-ish billion servicing portfolio. So real scale across all of our business lines.

We don’t need anything today when you look at the verticals that we’re in and you think about the current market environment. So where are we going and what do we want to do here? One, obviously, we want to grow AUM, but what matters first is performance. And when you look across the platform, all cylinders are firing. We want to expand our direct lending.

So what does that mean? Obviously, we have Newrez and Genesis, which contribute meaningfully to our business. We’re going to continue to look at other areas in financial services where we could expand our direct lending. On new market opportunities, we’re always looking to grow. But again, we want to be prudent and think about different areas where we could grow that we have real expertise around the house and that we’re going to make a meaningful contribution to the bottom line of Rithm for our shareholders.

We’re obviously continuing to try to grow our private capital business. I mentioned during the quarter, we’re starting to see real inflows in the Sculptor business at the Rithm level, we’re out looking at other opportunities to raise capital as well. And then, again, we are — we continue to look to expand into new investment verticals. For the quarter, an excellent quarter.

This is the 20th consecutive quarter where our earnings available for distribution was greater than common dividends paid. Book value, up 8% since 2021, very stable quarter over quarter. One note on that, when the Fed announced earlier this year that they wanted to start cutting rates, we got very close to home, which is where we are today. You’re going to see — I believe you’ll see very little book value volatility as we go forward.

Dividend yield, we currently trade at 8.8%, and that’s as of 9/30/24, and we closed the quarter with roughly $2 billion of cash and liquidity. For the quarter, GAAP net income, $97 million, $0.20 per diluted share. Earnings available for distribution, $270 million or $0.54 per diluted share with a return on equity number of 18% Book value closed the quarter at $6.4 billion, $12.31 per common share. Today, it’s roughly $12.5 or something in and around that.

We paid $0.25 in dividends and again, $2 billion of cash and liquidity on our balance sheet. Page 5, sum of the parts. I’m not going to spend a ton of time on it. Have a look at it.

Bottom line as we traded in and around $10.5 to $10.60 or something like that. Book value today is, give or take, $12.5. If you look at the value of our parts and compare us to peers, I personally have a very strong view that our equity is extremely attractive here and think there’s a significant upside. Page 6.

This was some of the earlier comments that I referred to. When you look at our capital deployment since 2021, if you look to the left part of the page, Jan of 2021, earnings available for distribution were $0.34. Today, we’re $0.54. We’ve deployed $5.8 billion of capital since ’21.

That includes acquiring different operating platforms that — included in that is Sculptor. We bought $1.4 billion of consumer loans from Goldman. We acquired Genesis Capital. We bought Caliber.

We bought SLS. When you think about all those transactions and you think about actually the portfolio growth and not going out to raise a ton of equity, it’s a great story. Earnings available, as I look at, again, earnings growth, roughly 60%, and our CAGR is 14%. So I think the team should be really proud of those numbers.

And again, that should dispel any of the questions about why we’re raising $300 million of equity in a quarter. When we look at the next phase of growth, like I said earlier, we don’t really need anything. I mean, we want to raise more money in our private capital business. So our balance sheet grows a little bit less as we go forward.

We want to continue to put up what I would call very good results across all of our platforms. And from a credit perspective, there’s a lot of talk about everybody growing private credit. We’re in that camp as well, and we want to grow our private credit. But just keep in mind, we’ve been in these businesses for 10 years.

When you think about direct lending, you think about the mortgage company we built, you think about Genesis Capital, you think about secured credit, unsecured credit, whether it be at Sculptor, whether it be at Rithm, you think about real estate, we’ve been in these sectors for a long, long time. And now it’s just creating more scale around our private capital business. On Newrez, we built this company, quite frankly, from scratch. While at Fortress, if you go back to the Fortress days, we built Mr.

Cooper. Obviously, those guys have done a great job. But if you look at where we are today, we are — I think we’re a top three mortgage bank, nonbank mortgage originator, and servicer in the U.S. large portfolio service over 4 million customers, huge third-party business as we grew through our SLS acquisition.

The company makes a lot of money in third quarter. If you look where we are from a production standpoint, through Q3, we’re $41 billion in origination, and that’s higher than where we were in all of ’23. Genesis Capital, another great story. We acquired this company from Goldman’s Merchant Bank, I believe, in ’22.

Earnings, just to give you a sense, when we bought the company, I think we were doing something around $50 million in EBITDA. This year, we should do something between, give or take, $90 million of EBITDA. Production numbers are up from $2 billion, and we may close the year at something around $3.5 billion to $4 billion. So real good story.

Most importantly here is when you look at the portfolio, delinquency numbers are extremely low. sponsor growth is high and the return on equity, and that’s how we think about all our businesses, return on equity for our shareholders is extremely high. Sculptor, what I would say in Sculptor is, again, we go back to November of last year, closed on the company, I believe, around November 20. It’s a great, great business, business, has a ton of upside.

Teams are doing really well. Every day, it gets better. When you look at real returns for the LPs that Sculptor and the leadership served, they’re great. I mean, there’s just no reason why this company is not going to grow in a significant scale as we go forward.

There’s plenty of room for us. There’s plenty of room for our overall franchise. And again, it’s performance first, and that’s the Sculptor mentality. I opened up in one of the quotes performances, that’s our mantra.

We want performance before we grow AUM. And when you look at this platform, there’s nothing that disputes that way of thinking. On the commercial real estate business on Page 11, we do some balance sheet investing at the Rithm level. We’ve been pretty methodical there.

I do think over time that when we look at Rithm, we look at Great Ajax. What you’re going to see is more strategic partnerships, I think, of the Rithm balance sheet. As we look forward, we do think around the real estate business today that we’re in one of those periods of time, as I pointed out my opening remarks, that current capital deployment is going to be hugely rewarded down the road as we look at the real estate business. Page 12, just talking about the macroeconomic themes.

Obviously, we’re in a period where who knows what’s going to happen with this election. When you think about inflation, you think about deficits, you think about yields. I think regardless of what you’re going to see — you could see are higher yields in the long end, we have seen a steepening of yield curve, which — where the front end should be anchored here. But I think you can see higher long-term rates on the back end as deficits continue to balloon.

Another common theme asset-based finance. Everybody is talking about finance. As I pointed out, we’ve been doing this for — I’ve been in the business ever, and we’ve been doing this together as a group for a long, long time. So there’s nothing different here.

When you look at banks, banks continue to look for capital relief around either their balance sheets or some of the things that they’re doing. We’re very active in what I would call credit risk transfer. With credit risk transfer, we’ve done some large transactions with some of our large money center banks, and we’ll continue to do that as we go forward. On the consumer side, consumers continue to remain resilient.

We don’t see any real degradation or deterioration in consumer credit and then I brought up on the real estate side from a cycle standpoint. Baron’s going to take us down and talk about Newrez and the mortgage company, and then I’ll jump back in a little bit later the queue.

Baron Silverstein — President, NewRez

Thank you, Michael. Good morning. I’m going to start on Slide 16. And — we delivered another strong quarter with pre-tax income, excluding mark-to-market on the owned MSR portfolio of approximately $246 million, which is an increase of 8% quarter over quarter and delivering a 24% return on equity.

Key drivers included a strong performance in our originations platform, as we’re able to remain disciplined in growing our production while also increasing margins overall and maintaining our market share. While on the servicing side, we saw continued growth in our third-party franchise, coupled with our best-in-class operational efficiency, which is also highlighted by the completion of SLS integration, which we did three months post-acquisition in the second quarter. And these results overall just continue to present the foundation Michael talked about that we’ve built over the last few years, driven by our industry-leading servicing capabilities, our robust client franchise, best-in-class customer experience, and our proprietary technology. Turning to Slide 17.

And you can see there that we just remain in growth mode, right? In the third quarter, as Michael mentioned, Newrez maintained our position as the second largest nonbank servicer with over $755 billion notional UPB that we directly service and the fifth largest lender in the industry with a 3.4% market share. We remain well-positioned to continue to take market share through our organic and inorganic growth while maximizing performance for our shareholders. Moving to Slide 18. The scale of our MSR portfolio affords us significant opportunities for portfolio recapture and customer growth through future cross-sell strategies, right? And the customer retention overall is driven by market events, but also by our consumer connections, whether they’re real to referrals or local sales relationships or other connectivity.

As part of our strategy, we’re making significant investments in building out our brand, our digital tools to enhance customer experience, and also data science to meet our customers where and how they want to be met. The table on the right side of the page shows our direct lending refinance recapture results, which we believe is the proper way to measure how we’re performing with consumers looking to refinance, right? Year-to-date, we have a 20 — excuse me, sorry, one second. Year-to-date, we have recapture rates of 55% when including second liens as a retention tool and 38% is just our overall aggregate refinance recapture rate through the third quarter, right? We completed the first phase of our CRM rebuild in the second quarter of 2024, and we believe there is significant room to improve our ability to retain and continue to gain traction with our customers overall. Away from recapture and turning to Slide 19.

Our origination business continued to perform well this quarter with $15.9 billion in funded volume, up 9% from last quarter. While the market remains competitive overall, we’re able to improve margins to weighted average 1.23%, which is increased 17% quarter over quarter while maintaining market share, but also get back to a normalized level as seen in most of 2023. All of our channels remain profitable, and the design of our platform allows us to take advantage of market opportunities regardless of the interest rate environment. As mentioned before, our top priority and biggest opportunity is our ability to retain our customers.

And that will continue to drive benefits to all of our businesses. On Slide 20, just connecting on our servicing business, that also continues to perform really well. Our operational efficiency is highlighted through our scale and cost leadership with an industry-leading cost per loan of $113. And as I mentioned, the completion of the SLS integration and our best-in-class digital customer experience.

Our Shellpoint mortgage third-party client franchise remained strong with a 5% gain quarter over quarter through continued momentum, gaining wallet share with existing customers while also adding new customers. And while our owned MSR delinquencies have increased quarter over quarter, they remain at historically low levels and our special servicing division is fully prepared to assist and support homeowners through any challenges whether financial issues or storms to find solutions keep customers in their homes. I believe our business is as best positioned as it ever has been, and I’m looking forward to continuing to tell the Newrez story to the market. Thank you.

And back to you, Michael.

Michael Nierenberg — Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Baron. Just a couple of last slides and then we’ll go to Q&A. On Genesis, I mentioned Q3, effectively a record quarter when we look at P&L and return on equity. The team does a great job there, continuing to grow that business.

I would be very surprised if it doesn’t get significantly scaled up here over the next couple of years. Obviously, a lot of it is demand-based, but overall performance has been great there. We couldn’t be happier with Clint and his team and the overall performance of the business. On the Sculptor side, I mentioned earlier, the real estate team was out.

They’re out with a large multibillion-dollar fund. They closed $1.3 billion, be very surprised if that doesn’t get oversubscribed. The team candidly, is truly best-in-class at what they do, and it’s really one of the crown jewels in our overall franchise. During the quarter, closed a new CLO for $400 million.

The CLO business will continue to grow for Sculptor and us, as we look at this business going forward, not only here in the U.S. but also overseas in the U.K. From an overall performance standpoint, I mentioned before the teams are doing a great job. Performance is the No.

1 thing that matters and obviously, in the asset management business, we lead with performance. AUM is going to follow. We’re starting to see more AUM come back on the platform. So again, really, really excited with the prospects of Sculptor and the overall team.

And then, finally, on Adoor, this is our single-family rental business. We have 4,200 units. What I would say there is cap rates are — when you look at real cap rates, no matter what — how people advertise them, whether it be in the build-to-rent space or in the scattered lot space, typical cap rates are really in the — in what I would say, the low fives. When you think about Rithm or Sculptor or any of our other investment platforms, we look to see what the best opportunity is for our overall capital.

So when you think about growth there, we’re not just going to grow a business if we think we could deploy capital better in another area to increase enterprise value for the overall franchise. So in this period of time where if cap rates don’t get higher or we’re not able to acquire units at much higher cap rates, we have to evaluate what we’re doing there. And I think it’s — that business is better served in a third-party vehicle than it is on our balance sheet. So that’s it.

So overall, things — we had a very, very good quarter across all of our platforms. And now we’ll turn it back to the operator for Q&A.

Questions & Answers:

Operator

[Operator instructions] The first question comes from Bose George with KBW. Please go ahead.

Bose George — Analyst

Hey, everyone. Good morning. So Michael, you noted the sum of the parts valuation potential. What are your latest thoughts on potentially listing part of Newrez as a way to potentially sort of realize some of that difference?

Michael Nierenberg — Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

I think here’s what I would say. When we put in the slide that talks about how much capital we’ve deployed since 2021 without raising equity, one of the things that gives us the ability to do that is being that Rithm has all these wholly owned subs and all the capital stays in one bucket. While saying that, we have — I mean, candidly, we have to figure out a way to get our equity price to trade where it should trade. So it’s — my guess is it will be a ’25 event if and when we take this company public, and we’ll evaluate that.

There’s obviously other things we’re thinking about in the M&A — from an M&A landscape perspective, but I think it’s more likely going to be a ’25 event as we think about the mortgage company.

Bose George — Analyst

OK. Great. And then, actually, could we get an update on book value in October?

Michael Nierenberg — Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

It’s roughly $12.5, Bose.

Bose George — Analyst

Yep. OK. Great. Thank you.

Michael Nierenberg — Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Stephen Laws with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Stephen Laws — Analyst

Hi. Good morning. Baron, a quick question around the residential volume refinance activity. Can you talk about that? Was that rate driven? Was it a function of the increased recapture opportunity? And kind of how do you see that trending in October or maybe as you look forward with where rates?

Baron Silverstein — President, NewRez

You kind of broke up a little bit. I don’t know you kind of broke up a little bit there. So just I’ll continue, the markets rallied a fair amount in the third quarter and then it’s obviously given back all of those gains. We certainly saw refinance volume basically all in, get closer to, say, 30% of overall production.

I think we’re going to get ourselves more to a — what I’ll say is the market on a normalized basis. That said, we see our direct lending channels as we continue to basically get momentum through our recapture investments to continue to improve and increase.

Stephen Laws — Analyst

Great. And then, switching gears over to Sculptor. Michael, as the third quarter went through, I believe we typically get some annual performance fees that hit in Q4. Can you maybe try to quantify that? And maybe what type of earnings impacts that may have as far as margin on those performance fee in fourth quarter?

Michael Nierenberg — Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

I don’t think I can give you forward-looking performance fees. I would say, as you know, in the asset management business, and particularly in the Sculptor business, you should see some performance fees come in the fourth quarter. I think when you — just going back to when we first acquired the company in November of last year, as you know, in asset management, you assume a certain multiple of where these trade versus earnings or DE. And I would say that if you look at where we are today from an acquisition perspective and you think about the actual multiple, it’s really something in the, I would call it, the high single digits right now based on ’24.

And I think that number obviously gets lower as we go forward. So when you think about true value creation here, I personally believe this will be one of our better partnerships/investments that will be made in many, many years as this platform continues to grow. So you’re going to see more lumpiness, I think, particularly going into the fourth quarter, but that’s when you’re going to see the bulk of the earnings hit as we see monetization. And we see more AUM come on the platform.

Stephen Laws — Analyst

Great. Well, it’s certainly nice to see the AUM growth in the business of $34 billion, look forward to continuing to watch that to grow. Thanks Michael.

Michael Nierenberg — Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Stephen.

Operator

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

Eric Hagen — Analyst

Hey. Thanks. Good morning. Maybe first off, I mean, in a scenario where rates continue rising, if you were to grow book value because of a write-up in the MSRs, do you feel like you have the flexibility to effectively take the capital from Newrez and repurpose it to other segments of the portfolio?

Michael Nierenberg — Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

Yes. I mean, this goes back to Bose’s question. Everything sits in effectively one part. And that’s given us the ability to grow earnings from, call it, low 30s in ’21 to $0.54 where we are today.

So the answer is, again, Eric, going back, I use the example on the single-family rental business. We don’t have to be in a business to be in a business. We want to think about the best ways to deploy capital. If we thought MSRs were rich, we would just — potentially you could just turn around and sell them.

It’s a great cash-flowing asset that’s unlevered and the way that we see it something between 8% and 10%. So I don’t see any change there. Just one other caveat there when we look at book value and where we are today from an overhedge perspective, one of the reasons our balance sheet looks grossed up, it’s because we’re for the most part, fully hedged against our entire business to take out any kind of book value volatility. While saying that, we reported $12.31.

Today, we’re about $12.5. So we feel like we’re in really good shape, both book value, the ability to redeploy capital away from the mortgage company if, in fact, we wanted to do that. But I think it’s more growth across the entire platform.

Eric Hagen — Analyst

Yes. That’s really helpful. OK. So what are your — sorry about that.

What are your perspectives on the mix messaging around consumer credit that we seem to be picking up through earnings here? I mean, some indications that consumers are a little over leveraged and struggling. At the same time, rates are coming down, unemployment is low. What’s the right read-through to the portfolio when we think about the servicing on one side and then the rest of the portfolio, if you will, on the other end?

Michael Nierenberg — Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

We have — if you look at the servicing portfolio, $878 billion, I think $235 billion of that is third-party servicing. The rest is own servicing. Thinking back in time, we have a bunch of legacy anybody that refied in ’20 or ’21 that has two and change coupon mortgages, I think those folks are in very good shape. You might see a tad higher in delinquencies, but overall, it still seems to us that the consumer is in reasonable shape.

I think a good telling — if you look at some of the bank earnings, I mean, I think that would probably be a good place to look. We’re not in subprime auto, subprime autos have rolled over a little bit here when you look at overall delinquencies. But overall, our portfolios look like they’re in pretty good shape.

Eric Hagen — Analyst

Gotcha. I think we’re looking at Slide 6, it looks like maybe you bought some excess MSRs in the quarter. Can you talk through that purchase? Is that an investment in the Newrez segment? Or is that the investment portfolio?

Michael Nierenberg — Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

It’s in the investment portfolio. It’s something that we owned already, and there was a liquidation of an MSR fund that actually we used to manage and we bought some of those MSRs or the excess MSRs.

Eric Hagen — Analyst

Gotcha. Thank you, guys, very much.

Michael Nierenberg — Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Eric.

Operator

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

Kenneth Lee — Analyst

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just one on Sculptor. I wonder if you could just give us a rough sense of what the recent net flow picture has been there? And then, as you look across the various strategies within credit, real estate and multi-strategy, which areas could be the most attractive areas for potential organic growth opportunities as you look forward over the next few years?

Michael Nierenberg — Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

So the growth in the platform, I think the last time we reported, I think we showed a number of roughly $32 billion of AUM. So you could assume it’s up a few billion between what we’re doing and — or what’s happening in the CLO business, the real estate fund just closed at $1.3 billion, I think they’re expecting another close here shortly. Start — the performance overall in the platform when you look at actual real numbers, it’s been excellent. So you’re going to see some natural AUM growth as a result of the overall performance.

But I think it’s across all of the platforms. Obviously, every asset manager keeps talking about private credit, private credit, we’d like to scale up our private credit business. The real estate team, like I said, is out with a multibillion fund that is likely gets oversubscribed, and I think there’ll be more funds beyond that. And then, on the multi-strat side, as long as performance is good, I see no reason why they’re not going to see more flows coming back.

So I think it’s across the entire platform. One area that — and I’ll speak from the Rithm perspective for a second, when you look at the large asset managers, there’s been a huge asset growth in the insurance space. Obviously, we’re not there right now and would love to get there. It’s a valuation thing and finding the right asset to help you grow.

But when you look at where we sit as an organization in our direct lending, we manufacture — when you look at our funds and the things that we do at the Rithm level in all of our business lines, we manufacture assets. It’s like we are in so-called direct lending, and we want to continue to grow that in the event that we’re able to acquire some kind of insurance liability structure or something that could help us grow. I think that’s really where you’re going to see real growth at the overall platform. But on the Sculptor side, it’s more of the same.

We’ve distinct — or not we have, but we’re almost a year into the close, it gets better every day, performance is great. I see no reason why all the verticals at the Sculptor level won’t continue to grow.

Kenneth Lee — Analyst

Gotcha. Very helpful there. And just one follow-up, if I may, just in terms of the direct lending expansion, and you talked a little bit more about that. What kind of form could this expansion look like? It sounds like you already got some capabilities around it? And are you talking about, for example, like middle market direct lending, things of that nature?

Michael Nierenberg — Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

Yes. The direct lending, like obviously, we have a large mortgage company that makes a ton of money. We have the Genesis business that makes a lot of money. We are under-scaled, I would say, in credit at the Rithm level.

So when we look at direct lending and think about ways to partner with Sculptor and things that we could do on the direct lending side, we are looking hard at that space. We don’t want to pay dumb multiples. I mean, if you think about real asset growth over the course of the past 20 years, you’ve been in a cyclical — more than cyclical, you’ve been in a bull market where equities have gone up. Credit’s done extremely well.

But with the banks, when you think about the banks and you’ve heard it from all the other asset managers with the banks pulling back in certain areas, we think there is room for us to find or grow the right platform around direct lending. So it’s definitely a space where we’re very keenly focused on.

Kenneth Lee — Analyst

Gotcha. Very helpful there. Thanks again.

Michael Nierenberg — Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Crispin Love with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Crispin Love — Piper Sandler — Analyst

Thanks, and good morning, everyone. Just on operating ROEs across the business, you had 18% operating ROEs in the quarter that improved. But just Curious on your expectations for sustainable operating ROEs over the intermediate to long term as we hopefully come out of a trough mortgage environment here. Is it high teens? Is it low 20s? Just curious on if you have any thoughts there.

Michael Nierenberg — Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

Yes. I think on everything we do, we measure risk returns. We’re not going to shoot for the stores unless we think we have an itch. Obviously, the — you look at our mortgage business and you can compare it to other friends and peers out there, I think we perform as good as anybody, quite frankly.

When you look at the ROEs, the Genesis business continues to do well. We just spoke about direct lending, you look at the portfolio of assets we have. We’re going to try to put a mid-teens type returns. I don’t think that’s anything different than you’ve heard from us over the years.

And when you actually look at the real performance going back since the company was started, it’s probably something in and around a mid-teens type of return in all environments. And this goes back to 13%. So — and I think those are realistic numbers. Obviously, it’s overweight mortgage and the mortgage company has done its job.

But I think as we grow the asset management business and our platforms, you’ll continue to see those types of numbers.

Crispin Love — Piper Sandler — Analyst

Great. Appreciate that. And then, Michael, also in your prepared remarks, you mentioned the election. I was just wondering if you could share kind of your thoughts on election implications for Rithm.

We could see rate moves, potential volatility, housing implications. Just curious on how you’re thinking about it near and intermediate-term on potential impacts to Rithm.

Michael Nierenberg — Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

Yes. I think when we look at some of the messaging that’s coming out of both parties, I mean, Kamala Harris is talking about giving people money, first-time homeowners to buy things, to buy homes. You’re looking at Kamala Harris going after what I would call the SFR space around corporates going out and buying housing. I think what’s going to end up happening and I think it would be the best outcome probably for the country.

I don’t care what party you are thinking about is if you have a divided government. So I think a lot of the so-called rhetoric that you have coming out of both candidates is going to be hard for them to pass a lot of the things that are going on. Irregardless of that, whether Trump comes up with tariffs, if he gets in or Harris comes up with her stuff, I think a lot of this stuff is going to be harder to pass. The biggest — one of the biggest challenges, and you hear it from some of the very smart people in our business is the deficit.

The deficit’s going to grow no matter what. The government needs to continue to issue tons and tons of debt. So how do we think about that from an overall rate perspective? While saying that, you have to think about the uncertainties that could be created if Trump got in, and for example, you had tariffs, what does it really do to the economy? How do we think about that? How do you think about the immigration policies and do you start seeing wage inflation? So I think the way that we’re positioned now is to have an abundance of cash and liquidity. We are extremely close to home from an overall REIT perspective.

And that’s the way we’re going to run until we get some other kind of tea leaves that may rear their heads. But we’re close to home. We feel good about our risk profile. I mentioned before, book value is up again quarter over quarter, obviously, because of the rate sell-off.

But we’re going to be extremely close to home from a duration standpoint. Our financing is extremely buttoned up. So we feel good about where we are.

Crispin Love — Piper Sandler — Analyst

Great. Thank you, Michael, and I appreciate you taking my questions.

Michael Nierenberg — Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks.

Operator

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

Jason Weaver — Analyst

Thanks. Good morning. Michael, I think you mentioned during your prepared remarks, it had been something like 20 quarters that you’ve overrented your dividend on EAD. Considering that ROE that you’re throwing off right now and maybe contextualize with what’s likely to happen in the next couple of months and beyond that.

What do you think about the level of the dividend payout here and if that could possibly be moderated upwards?

Michael Nierenberg — Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

The dividend policy is driven by, obviously, our board. I’ve been pretty clear about the dividend based on our board discussions that we weren’t raising our dividend because you’re just giving back the capital to redeploy it. While saying that, with hedge funds having shorts out there, would I love to raise the dividend significantly and drive it? The answer is yes. But I don’t — again, it’s a board decision.

I don’t see us raising the dividend today because with the thought process, if you trade at an 8% to 9% dividend yield and let’s assume that our equity does right itself. Effectively, we could deploy the capital. If we can deploy the capital in the mid-teens, it’s only going to create more earnings for shareholders. And effectively, it should drive the valuation of our overall enterprise significantly higher.

A little frustrated, obviously, with where our equity trades. But I do think over time, it will ride itself. Bose asked about the mortgage company. We’re looking at a lot of other things.

And while we want to manage quarter-to-quarter, and I think we do a very good job and try to put up consistent earnings, we’re in it for the long game, and I see no reason why our equity shouldn’t be significantly higher down the road. You look at a lot of the large asset managers, I look where they were a few years back and you look where they are. Now, if we stay true to our knitting and where we think we’re going to go here, I think that our company has tremendous upside. So for now to get back to capital, I don’t think makes — makes sense.

Again, a little frustrating, but I think it’s more — based on board decisions, it probably stayed the course.

Jason Weaver — Analyst

Got it. And then, maybe one for Baron. Curious about how you think about the operational footprint, given what could be widely different sort of origination volume scenarios going forward and how you can maintain that flexibility.

Baron Silverstein — President, NewRez

When you ask about footprint, you’re talking about like our — how we manage our ops on origination and servicing. I’m not really sure what you’re asking.

Jason Weaver — Analyst

Your originator capacity is there to be able to handle additional volume or even lighter volume.

Baron Silverstein — President, NewRez

Yes. So look, it’s been an absolute focus, I think, for the industry overall. We feel and we continue to believe that we have significant headroom from an operational perspective. We’ve actually moved a fair amount of our operations from an offshore perspective as well to give us that added flexibility.

But from where we stand today, we believe we do have significant headroom from any kind of rate environment that we will see coming in the future.

Jason Weaver — Analyst

Got it. OK. Thank you very much.

Baron Silverstein — President, NewRez

Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Trevor Cranston with Citizens — JMP. Please go ahead.

Trevor Cranston — Analyst

All right. Thanks. Good morning. Most of my questions have been addressed.

I guess one more on Newrez. Can you maybe spend a minute talking about the wholesale channel obviously, kind of dominated by the top two players there, but you guys have had some growth over the course of 2024. I was curious if you could just talk about how you see your positioning within wholesale and the growth opportunity there.

Baron Silverstein — President, NewRez

So like you mentioned, it’s dominated by really the one company and then there’s a second larger one. I think there’s room for a lot of players in there where we can continue to position. We’ve certainly positioned from a non-agency perspective, which is part of our original DNA. We also did a pretty significant technology upgrade and we’re continuing to work on our technology to basically deliver downstream to our wholesale broker partners.

The industry has changed pretty significantly overall, as brokers have grown multifold. And they’ve added a lot of, what I’ll say is, loan officers throughout their entire ecosystem. So we’re really basically just coming up to looking at our technology is really going to continue to drive our growth. I would also just say, Michael has been really clear about how we’re putting out our capital. So we remain very disciplined in wholesale to the extent that the market allows us to take advantage of putting capital in wholesale, we’ll do that, right? And the last couple of quarters, there’s been some room for us to take market share, but we’re going to remain disciplined in the sector, and technology for us is really going to be the way that we’re going to drive further earnings growth.

And as I mentioned, we focus on wholesale, a lot on our non-agency products. And to the extent that we can pick up added volume where we think it’s attractive, we’ll do that.

Trevor Cranston — Analyst

Got it. OK. 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. Please go ahead.

Michael Nierenberg — Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you. Appreciate everybody. Appreciate all the questions, everybody dialing in this morning. Obviously, you know where to find us if you have any follow-up.

Have a great week. Stay safe. Speak to you next quarter. Thanks, everyone.

Operator

[Operator signoff]

Duration: 0 minutes

Call participants:

Emma Bolla — Associate General Counsel

Michael Nierenberg — Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

Baron Silverstein — President, NewRez

Bose George — Analyst

Stephen Laws — Analyst

Eric Hagen — Analyst

Kenneth Lee — Analyst

Crispin Love — Piper Sandler — Analyst

Jason Weaver — Analyst

Trevor Cranston — Analyst

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