No Change in the Competitive Dynamic with Black Knight: Ellie Mae

Ellie Mae and Black Knight Financial Services offer mortgage lenders different value propositions so the competitive dynamic between the two companies hasn't changed.

"They have done some acquisitions in the space. Nothing around origination software, per se," said Ellie Mae CEO Jonathan Corr in response to a question during the company's third-quarter conference call.

"They bought a solution that does some analytics that they are really focused quite a bit on layering on top of the servicing side. I assume they'll sell some of that around the origination side as well, but beyond that, the dynamic really has not changed for us," he said.

Ellie Mae had net income of $13.8 million for the third quarter, up 121% from $6.2 million one year prior. Revenue was up 46% to $100.4 million.

The company has more bank customers than nonbank clients, Corr said when asked about the future prospects for origination market share growth at its users. But it makes sense for Ellie Mae "to be penetrating both sides of that" when it comes to seeking new clients, he added.

However, more origination business is going to go to the nonbank lenders "just based on comments from the leaders of these larger national banks, Jamie Dimon, obviously things going on at Wells Fargo and the overall trends. They don't want to do as much business as they historically did. It isn't as attractive," he said.

The Encompass TPO Connect application product interface was created in response to this trend.

"What we have seen over the last couple years is the third-party origination channel, especially the corresponding channel of a lot of our nonbank lenders has expanded. So as some of the larger banks have gotten out of correspondent and on to post-sale, many, many of our lenders have gotten into those channels," Corr said.

The pending retirement of Ellie Mae Chief Financial Officer Ed Luce was announced in the earnings release. Effective April 1, 2017, he will be replaced by Senior Vice President of Finance Matt LaVay.

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