Curt S. Culver
Analyst · Dowling & Partners
Thanks, Mike, and good morning. As reported in the press release we issued this morning, the net loss for the fourth quarter was $386.7 million or $1.91 a share, and the net loss for the full year was $4.59 per share. Included in the quarterly results is a onetime charge of $267.5 million that relates to the previously disclosed Freddie Mac settlement. Additionally, we established a $100 million reserve to reflect probable settlements of 2 rescission disputes, one with Countrywide and the other was another lender. While we do not have agreements with Countrywide or this lender, we believe these settlements are probable. So while these charges adversely affected our reported results for the quarter, I'm pleased that we have settled our Freddie Mac dispute and that we have made substantial progress towards resolving the Countrywide dispute. In tandem with these efforts, we are continuing to execute our strategy of writing new business through a combination of MGIC and, as needed, MIC. We continue to be an eligible insurer of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and are pleased to be in a position to be able to continue to provide borrowers with a more affordable insurance option for higher-quality loans than they could find with the FHA. In the fourth quarter, which is typically a slower period for new writings, new insurance written was $7 billion, up 67% from the same period last year and flat to last quarter. More recently, in January we wrote $2.4 billion of new insurance and February, after considering the number of working days, appears to be tracking close to January's level. The new business written since mid-2008 now accounts for approximately 33% of our risk in force. And as I have discussed on past calls, this new business augments our existing claims paying ability as each $20 billion of insurance we write is expected to add approximately $400 million of premiums in excess of losses over the estimated life of the book. An additional $3.5 billion of HARP-refinanced transactions were completed during the quarter, bringing the total to $11.2 billion for the year and $18 billion since the inception of the program. All in, approximately 11% of our primary insurance in force has benefited from HARP or similar refinance programs, and more than 98% of them are current. Additionally, approximately 11% of the insurance in force has been modified through HAMP or other loan modification programs. Our industry continues to regain market share from the FHA. We estimate the private mortgage insurance industry's market share at approximately 10% in the fourth quarter, up from approximately 6% a year ago. Within our industry, MGIC's reported market share was approximately 18% for the full year and 17% for the fourth quarter. We estimate that approximately 75% of the private mortgage insurance market is comprised of the more profitable monthly premium plans and, within that segment, we estimate our market share to be 21% in the fourth quarter. Losses incurred in the fourth quarter were $688.6 million, including the $367.5 million of charges I've previously mentioned relating to Freddie Mac and the rescission settlements. Adjusting for these changes -- or these charges, the level of incurred losses resulted primarily from the number of new delinquent notices received, which were lower than the third quarter. The delinquent inventory continued to decline during the quarter and into January of this year, ending at 137,847. We expect to issue our February statistics on March 8, that will reflect a further decline in the delinquent inventory. Paid claims in the fourth quarter were $628 million and includes a $100 million initial payment called for in our Freddie Mac settlement. Excluding that payment, claims paid were $528 million, down 10% from last quarter and down 25% from 1 year ago. Claims received continued to decline throughout 2012. We expect that the current claim-filing patterns we are experiencing will continue and will result in both claims received and claim payments being lower in 2013. We realized gains of $87.4 million during the quarter that were embedded in the investment portfolio and have realized the total of $198 million in 2012. Cash and investments totaled $5.3 billion as of the end of the quarter, including cash on investments at the holding company of $315 million. Our next debt maturity is approximately $100 million, due in 2015. So we believe we have no medium-term liquidity issues at the holding company. Reflecting the Freddie Mac settlement in the chart for probable Countrywide and other settlement, as of December 31, MGIC's risk-to-capital ratio rose to just under 45:1, and MIC's was just over 1:1. MGIC's increased risk-to-capital level was expected by us and by the OCI, our primary regulator, and is exactly why we established our plan to utilize MIC. MIC has $448 million of capital and we believe we could write 100% of our new business out of MIC for at least 5 years at the current mix and volume levels of new insurance written if we obtained GSE approval. MIC wrote $2.4 billion of new insurance in 2012 and we are currently writing new mortgage insurance to MIC in 8 jurisdictions. Those jurisdictions accounted for 19% of all our business written -- new business written in 2012. We are often asked how high can MGIC's risk-to-capital ratio go before our insurance regulator, the OCI, would take action. Our response is that once the risk-to-capital ratio exceeds regulatory thresholds, the ratio becomes a relatively blunt metric that does not take into account the most critical consideration, that being future cash flows of an in force book of business. We believe that the OCI considers this the most relevant factor, is whether an insurance assets and future cash flows are sufficient to pay claims in full. That is, do the resources to pay claims, namely cash and investments plus future premiums from the existing in force portfolio exceed the level of expected claim obligations? We call this claims paying ability and it is a measure that is also an important consideration by the OCI when evaluating our firm. We believe that in a base-case scenario, we have excess claims paying ability that -- at MGIC of $1.4 billion as shown in the portfolio supplement posted on our website. Although we expect that there will be more than sufficient resources at MGIC even under a stress loss scenario, our forecast calls for the risk-to-capital ratio at MGIC to rise. As a result, we are evaluating a number of options to address the elevated risk-to-capital ratio with the objective of material reducing it -- or materially reducing it. These options include utilizing existing insurance subsidiaries for internal reinsurance, external reinsurance, contributing additional capital from the holding company and raising external capital. We are in discussions with the OCI and the GSE on these matters. Regarding Washington, the CFPB issued its long-awaited rule for QM, or qualified mortgage, and we expect the Qualified Residential Mortgage, or QRM, definition will be out soon, perhaps in the next few months. Our initial read on the QM rule is that appears to line up fairly well with the type of lending that is taking place today in the marketplace and the type of business we want to insure. We believe that most lenders will be reluctant to make loans that do not meet these parameters. Given the credit characteristics presented to us and considering the temporary category allowed for loans that meet GSE underwriting requirements, we estimate that 99% of our new risk written in 2012 would have met the QM definition. Finally, there continues to be many people voicing ideas regarding the role of the GSEs, although I'm not sure there will be much interest in pursuing them at this time, given everything else Congress has on its plate. Also, the FHA recently announced another price hike that will be effective April 1, and it seems to be considering making additional changes regarding pricing, loan size and underwriting guidelines for loans with high credit scores to reduce its market presence and help restore its capital base. This should be very positive for our industry. So to summarize, we are pleased to have the Freddie Mac dispute resolved and made significant progress on the Countywide resolution. Regarding the business, we are encouraged that new delinquent notices we received during 2012 were 21% lower than 2011 and new business writings were 70% higher. And we are encouraged by the continued outstanding quality of the new insurance written, the declining trend of new notices, claims received and paid and the growing share of business we are retaking from the FHA. With that, operator, let's take questions.