Graham A. Fleming
Thank you, Michael. Good afternoon, everyone. And thank you for joining us on our second quarter 2023 earnings call. Finance of America continues to lead the way in helping provide older Americans with more choices and flexibility when it comes to meeting the evolving needs of today's modern retirees. More importantly, Finance of America is now at an exciting inflection point. Over the last several months, we executed a series of strategic actions, including the sale of our title insurance business, the sale of the majority stake of the remaining Lender Services business, and most importantly the initial steps in the integration of the AAG platform. The completion of these transactions marks an important and pivotal step in the execution of our long-term growth strategy designed to help Americans achieve their retirement goals with the use of home equity. Our business has now fully transformed into a leading modern retirement solutions platform, and we believe it is well positioned for long-term success. For today's call, I'm going to begin by briefly reviewing our financial results for the quarter. I'll then spend time discussing business structure updates and the progress we've made against executing against our strategic priorities. Johan will then discuss our financials in more detail. Our results this quarter illustrate our commitment to streamlining the organization and making significant investments in our retirement solutions business, which we believe is poised for long-term growth due to demographic tailwinds. However, today's cyclical mortgage market has been significantly impacted by wider spreads and higher interest rates, which plays downward pressure on our results due to negative fair value adjustments and reduced volumes. On a continuing operations basis, we recorded GAAP net loss of 221 million or $0.91 per basic share in Q2, driven primarily by negative impact of rates and spreads during the quarter. On an adjusted basis, we recognize a loss of 26 million or $0.12 per fully diluted share, as the growth in volume and a reverse business does not yet fully offset the increased costs of the expanded operational infrastructure as we integrate the AAG platform. We continue to manage our business with discipline and focus on our long-term strategic priorities. This includes streamlining our operations to reduce expenses and investing in business lines with the greatest long-term growth potential. Corporate expenses continue to trend downward, and we expect to see additional savings in the second half of the year as we realign our corporate infrastructure in light of recent activity. As of June 30, we are approximately 80% of the way to our savings target of 80 million to 100 million annually, and expect to secure an additional 20 million in annualized savings by the end of the year. The combined Finance of America and AAG brands now have a commanding market share lead in reverse mortgages, with a nearly 40% share of the HECM market year-to-date, measured by HMBS issuance. Our acquisition of the AAG platform and the sophisticated marketing engine that has the ability to further raise product awareness and increase the addressable market. Despite a difficult economic environment and amid complex integration, we are starting to see positive traction in our pipeline and operational processes. During the second quarter, Finance of America assisted over 2300 customers in finding ways to thrive in retirement through the use of a reverse mortgage. Compared to the first quarter this resulted in a 95% increase in the number of funded loans. This quarter, we funded 447 million in UPB, a 25% increase from the prior quarter as we began the integration of the AAG platform into our business. Prior to our acquisition of the AAG platform, AAG was the leading originator of HECM loans in the reverse industry. Our HECM volume in Q2 doubled compared to Q1 and we believe a substantial opportunity exists to sell our proprietary jumbo reverse loans through the AAG platform as well. We've done significant work to successfully integrate the AAG teams and operations into our existing infrastructure and we are already seeing the results. Today the team is unified, morale is high, and we're energized for the opportunity and long-term potential in front of us. Since the start of the AAG integration, we have on boarded over 400 employees to bolster our retail channel and support our corporate segment while continuing to streamline overhead costs. Many of these resources were temporary, as we work through the transitional phase. Additionally, we on boarded nearly 150 vendors into our ecosystem, the majority of which are marketing vendors engaged to expand and strengthen our advertising and educational reach. Finally, we are working tirelessly to identify and consolidate redundant vendor engagements and overlapping loan origination systems in an effort to optimize costs, and alleviate the reporting and leadership challenges that come from working out of multiple systems. The AAG brands direct to consumer retail channel, which is more than 10 million consumers annually via targeted marketing and advertising. Once fully integrated, the AAG brand and reach will enable us to better serve the growing needs of retirees across the nation. We're encouraged by the continued strength and submission volumes in the quarter and are optimistic about the rest of 2023. Finance of America's reverse legacy wholesale channel, which has been a market leader for over 10 years, has seen growth in its pipeline since the end of March, and it currently stands at its highest level since late 2022. This pipeline growth and increase in submission volume is a positive sign that should drive funded volume growth in the coming months. We know we have substantial opportunity to address the retirement gap in America, which we believe we are well positioned to help solve, if we can continue to increase awareness of our products and solutions, grow our customer base, and innovate new financial solutions centered around the home. Our goal is to help our existing customers as they harness the power of their home and the different ways it can be used to help obtain a better outcome later in life. This is consistent with macroeconomic trends we've seen for the last few quarters. The U.S. retirement savings gap is approaching 4 trillion yet senior homeowners have amassed more than 12 trillion in home equity value according to the latest data. This is our market opportunity at its core, helping older homeowners use their homes as a superpower to achieve their financial goals. In summary, I'm proud of how our team navigated challenges this quarter, while making huge strides in a complex integration. We continue to prudently manage our operations and right size our expenses while investing in our core business segments where we're seeing prominent signs of growth. With that I will pass the call to Johan to discuss the financials.