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What: Shares of mortgage servicer Nationstar Mortgage Holdings (NYSE: NSM) fell as much as 10% today after missing estimates on earnings per share for its most recent quarter. This comes on the heels of reports that paint a picture of fierce competition in the mortgage-servicing industry for valuable mortgage-servicing portfolios.
So what: Nationstar's EPS, at $0.61, is significantly better than the $0.04 EPS loss in the year-ago quarter. Without one-time drags on the bottom line, Nationstar had $0.64 in adjusted EPS, still a penny below what analysts had expected. Revenue, at $277.2 million, was better than the consensus estimate of $268.9 million.
Nationstar has been in competition for several large mortgage-servicing portfolios, and it missed out on acquiring MetLife's (MET -1.00%) portfolio, which was sold to JPMorgan Chase (JPM 0.06%) yesterday. That hurt Nationstar, as did an earlier loss of Ally Financial's Residential Capital servicing business, which Ocwen Financial (OCN -1.91%) won after an intense bidding process.
Now what: Nationstar CEO Jay Bray remains confident that the company can achieve significant organic growth, and the tripling in revenue from the year-ago quarter attests to that possibility. However, Nationstar's loss of multiple large acquisition opportunities also points to threats on the horizon, as organic growth may run up against a wall of consolidation. The successful acquisition of a large mortgage-servicing portfolio may be the most important near-term action Nationstar can take to reverse its recent slide.
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