Ocwen Financial Corporation [1], an Atlanta-based financial services holding company, today announced a definitive agreement under which Ocwen will acquire all of the outstanding shares of PHH Corporation [2], a mortgage platform with established servicing and origination recapture capabilities, for approximately $360 million in cash. The purchase price represents a 35 percent discount to PHH’s GAAP book equity at December 31, 2017.
On a combined basis, as of December 31, 2017, the company would service 1.9 million loans with an unpaid principal balance of $328 billion and originate over $3 billion of residential mortgage loans, including reverse mortgages, annually. Ocwen projects that the increased size and scale of the combined company should create various strategic and financial benefits, including:
- Accelerating Ocwen’s transition to an industry-leading servicing platform,
- Improving servicing and origination margins through improved economies of scale,
- Reducing fixed costs (on a combined basis) by eliminating redundant corporate overhead and public company-related costs, and
- Providing a superior foundation to eventually enable the combined servicing platform to resume new business and growth activities to offset portfolio runoff.
It is anticipated that at closing, which is expected to occur during the second half of 2018 following various required approvals, there will be sufficient available cash on PHH’s balance sheet to enable $260 million of the $360 million purchase price to be funded out of PHH’s available cash, while providing for sufficient additional liquidity to fund its operations going forward. Ocwen will also assume $119 million of PHH’s outstanding corporate debt.
Ron Faris, President and CEO of Ocwen, said, “We are very pleased to announce the proposed acquisition of PHH, a leading non-bank servicer. PHH is a high-quality servicer with complementary capabilities and business lines to Ocwen, making it a great strategic match for us. In addition to providing significant scale benefits, this transaction gives us the opportunity to migrate to their existing BlackKnight LoanSphere MSP servicing platform more quickly and with less risk than had we just implemented the system ourselves. We are also excited by the opportunity to welcome the PHH employees to the Ocwen family and by the opportunity to bring our industry-leading and innovative loss mitigation capabilities to existing PHH servicing customers currently struggling with their mortgage payments.”
Robert B. Crowl, President and CEO of PHH, said, “We are pleased to have reached an agreement with Ocwen, and we look forward to working with them to bring this transaction to a successful close. We are excited by the opportunity to build a stronger combined company for our servicing and subservicing clients, our borrowers, and our employees.”
The acquisition is subject to various closing conditions, including PHH shareholder approval and regulatory and other approvals, and is targeted to close in the second half of 2018.
Ocwen will host a webcast and conference call on Wednesday, February 28, 2018, at 8:30 a.m. EST to discuss the transaction during the company’s Q4 2017 and year-end 2017 financial results call. The conference call will be webcast live over the internet from the company’s website [1]. To access the call, click on the “Shareholder Relations” section. A replay of the conference call will be available via the website approximately two hours after the conclusion of the call and will remain available for approximately 30 days.