Rithm Capital Corp.

Good day and welcome to the Rhythm 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 Vola, Associate General Counsel. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning, everyone. I would like to thank you for joining us today for Rhythm Capital's fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings call. Joining me today are Michael Nirenberg, Chairman, CEO, and President of Rhythm Capital, Nick Santoro, Chief Financial Officer of Rhythm Capital, and Barron Silverstein, President of New Rest. Throughout the call, we are going to reference the earnings supplement that was posted this morning to the Rhythm Capital website, www.rhythmcap.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.

Thanks, Emma. Good morning, everyone. I want to welcome you to our fourth quarter and full year call for Rhythm. 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 Rhythm story for a minute. When you look at Rhythm, 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. 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 22, we changed our name to Rhythm 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. 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. 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 Rhythm, Sculptor, and some of our other investment areas, we have over 400 individuals. Our operating business lines have approximately 7,000 people. Number two, when I look at our equity, when looking at the sum of the parts, were severely undervalued. And I know as we trade as a REIT, like others that trade a REIT, either trade a book, a slightly above book or 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. Barron will hit the mortgage company, and then we'll go to Q&A. So when you look at the company today, between Rhythm and Sculptor, assets really being managed. Rhythm 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. New Res, our mortgage company, obviously sculpted the asset management business in the private markets. Genesis Capital, one of the largest non-bank construction slash 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. We renamed it Rhythm Property Trust with the intent of growing that into, quite frankly, like a rhythm, like what others have done in the public markets around externally managed vehicles. And then we have a small SFR business in a door. Financial highlights, page four. Year-over-year growth in earnings, 27%. Earnings available for distribution, $2.10. As I look at Q4, gap net income, $263 million, or 50 cents per diluted share. Return on equity, 16%. Earnings available for distribution, $316 million, or 60 cents per diluted share. Return on equity, 20%. When you look at our dividend, it's still 9.2%, and we still pay 25 cents per common share. Book value. We ended the year at 1256, which I think is pretty much unchanged versus the prior year. And today, our book value is in and around the same. For fiscal year 24, full year, gap net income $835 million, or $1.67 per diluted share, 14% return on equity. That includes marks and other things. Earnings available for distribution, $1,050,000,000, $1,050,000,000, $2.10, $2.10 per diluted share and a 17% return in 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. 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 multistrat fund, Last year, 18% gross 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 sculpture 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 24, a little under $3 billion. 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 have the operational capacity in the event that there was something that went awry with one of their underlying mortgage bankers. And then Nures, again, very proud of this company, proud of the team. Barron'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. So very, very proud of the team and the results that we had there. And that company is just poised to grow, and I think a lot of it, and Barron 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, Rhythm 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. Just for Rhythm shareholders, that is an external 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 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-seek stuff. But what I would say is world-class team, 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 a billion dollars. We trade at six and change times. We have asset management. We have operating businesses. The company is extremely undervalued. 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 30 times or something that's Steady billion dollars at six times. I know where I would think about it. Capital deployment on page six. This just shows going back to 21, 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 21. And our EAD from a CAGR standpoint is up 16%. So again, very proud of that. Just a couple quick points here on Genesis. I mentioned before, bought the company in 21. Another great team. The team here at Rhythm works very closely with them. I expect this business to, we gotta 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, you know, this $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, you know, 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. 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, world-class real estate business, world-class multi-strat business. Credit, 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 Rhythm and Sculptor, Rhythm is a true partner to Sculptor. 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 Rhythm 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% gross, almost 20% net. Fantastic. You look at the multi-strat, I pointed out earlier, 18 gross, 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 Rhythm Property Trust, and I'll turn it over to Barron. Again, this is the so-called broken REIT we took over in June. Right now, it's got about $250 million of equity in it. It earns a management fee and a promote. So 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 Barron who will talk about New Res.

Thank you, Michael. And good morning to everybody. So I'm turning to slide 20. And New Res delivered another strong quarter with fourth quarter pre-tax income excluding mark-to-market of approximately $280 million, which is an increase of 12 percent quarter-over-quarter and delivering a 20 percent ROE. We also finished the full year of 2024 with approximately $1 billion in pre-tax income, and that's up 26 percent year-over-year with a 19 percent ROE. These results, though, reflect the 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. And we believe this change more accurately reflects the economics of Rhythm's origination and servicing segment, which is new res overall and more closely resembles industry norms across our sector. And 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. We don't chase market share, nor that 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 financial performance since 2021. On margins, and while the market always remains competitive, we are able to improve our average margins to 131 basis points, up eight 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 And this is shown by 270 million of originations PPI 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, and that includes cash-out refis, home equity loans, purchase transactions to our existing customer base. But 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 New Res, $65 billion of owned MSRs serviced by others, and $254 billion of third-party servicing. As I mentioned before, the financials related to Service by Others portfolio is now reported in the NURES or the Originations and Servicing segment. But it's important to note that we, NURES, 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. 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 reflected 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, right, 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. 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 New Res growth story in 25. Back to you, Michael.

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

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 were using a speakerphone, please pick up your hands up 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 KVW. Please go ahead.

Hey everyone, good morning. Could you give us any updated thoughts on the potential listing of New Res 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 Rhythm?

Sure. So, you know, we're not there yet on listing the company. We are, you know, we If you talk 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. That's one of the reasons why I opened up a little different than I typically do. There's 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. 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, you know, manufacturing businesses, as I refer to them in our opening remarks. But to tell you today that we're going to lift the company, I can't do that. But we are working on our capital structure, and we hope to have some change in that. You know, we put a lot of thought and talked to, you know, 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.

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

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.

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

If it does happen, it'll be a rhythm 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's certain types of vehicles that we could potentially explore.

Okay, great. Makes sense. Thanks.

Thanks.

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

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

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 Barron 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 know, you have a, just give or take, you know, for purposes of this discussion, 440, a four and a half, 10-year note, you have mortgages trading, you know, 120, 130 in the agency market. 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.

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

You know, 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, you know, it's a world-class mortgage company. So whether they be investor loans, whether, you know, if the agencies went back to the old way where they get privatized, keep in mind, you know, in the old days, G-fees were, were they 25 basis points or something, give or take that, right, Barron? You look at where they are, they're 50 basis points today. So there's probably some given. 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.

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?

It depends. It could be a combination of both. You know, keep in mind, most REITs tend to operate by themselves. There's not a lot of M&A activity in the REIT space. You know, 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. Great. Thank you. Thanks, Doug.

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

Hey, thanks for taking my question. Good morning. Just one on Sculptor. You talked about some initiatives to grow the credit business. I wonder 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.

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 20 or 30x you know, on a multiple basis. So it could be some, you know, 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. You know, if you think about it, you know, the company is a great company, obviously in the press for a bit. But, you know, out on the other side, a year in change removed, performance great everywhere. So I'm excited. We all talk 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.

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

You know, I think it's more BAU, honestly. You know, we always evaluate expenses, whether it be at Sculptor, whether it be at the mortgage company, whether we be at Rhythm. You know, 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.

Got you. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Ken.

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

Good morning. Congrats on the performance. One thing I'd be curious about when you think about the kind of growing the REITs, would there be any value or like ability to push assets into the 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 REIT side of the world?

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 Rhythm and Rhythm Property Trust will likely participate as two separate entities. because obviously the amount of capital and rhythm property trust is is not large enough to and you know when we think about risk and in the sheer size of doing any one thing we want to make sure that we're balanced from a 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 and I pointed out on the energy infrastructure side a couple world-class Folks, you know, 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.

And 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. So I'm curious when you talk about M&As, are there any opportunities – you know, around the mortgage company, you know, originating, sorry, originator servicers and or, you know, bulk pools that you might be looking at, or you focus on them elsewhere on the platform first?

No, I think, you know, 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, Juliana, 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 sexy.

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 pursue that, or could you pursue a C-Corp conversion sooner?

I think we could do both, honestly. But it's got to be something that's highly accretive for both the shareholders and the company. If you think about that as a REIT, we've paid out, I think, since 21, $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.

That's very helpful. I appreciate it, and I'll jump back in the queue. Thanks.

The next question comes from Eric Hagan with VTIG. Please go ahead.

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, you know, do you feel like there's even some room to apply more leverage if, you know, new res were to get spun out at some point?

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 rhythm 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. Okay, that's helpful.

I actually want to ask about Shell Point because subservicing feels like an increasingly relevant driver of the earnings story at New Res. 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 Shell Point? 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?

I mean, look, there continues to be, you know, demand on, you know, different non-agency products, right? Non-QM, you know, is very, very competitive in the marketplace today. We continue to be the number one special servicer for non-QM assets. So, you know, we continue to see growth. There are opportunities with banks and existing relationships that we take market share based on 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 25. 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.

Yep. Thank you guys so much. Appreciate it.

Thanks, Eric.

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

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Two for me. The first one, just kind of a general market question for 25. 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 simply for Rhythm, 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 GSE?

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 you know have to deal with the affordability issue of trying to buy a new home and that's why you know we're very much focused on our existing book you know but we continue to also see consumers looking to move so you see that in in the amount of inventory and housing inventory that's available for sale continues to basically what I'll say is pick up so our expectation is you'll probably see a larger purchase market and 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 25 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 you know, that as a focal point as well. So, you know, it is going to be a little bit of a balance. So I think that mortgage credit availability overall is probably going to stay, you know, in its current state.

Insurance is a problem, obviously. I mean, the cost of homeownership has gone up. Your rates up. Insurance is a problem. You just had the L.A. fire, so.

Yep. And that just drives into affordability consideration as well.

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?

Great question. It's a little bit early. You know, you heard this morning that the administration wants to ban Deep Sea. 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, you know, around this, 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. I mean, I think the world, 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 can go with this.

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

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

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

It's an investment in the team. It's an investment in our technology. It's an investment in our brand. You know, those are the three key initiatives across the board, right? We continue to believe there's significant upside, you know, for us on just focusing on our own homeowners. We haven't even really, if we felt like, you know, we wanted to get into new customer acquisition, you know, and we do new customer acquisition on our distributed retail platforms, but But like 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.

Got it. That's helpful. Thank you.

This concludes our question and answer sessions. I would like to turn the conference back over to Michael Nirenberg for any closing remarks.

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 I look forward to updating you after Q1. More to come. Have a great day and a great