Finance of America's price rises in early trading in its public debut

Finance of America officially became public on Monday morning, as its stock price rose in early trading alongside the broader market.

Because it went public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, FOA started trading when the market opened by taking over the listing of its merger partner, Replay Acquisition Corp. All of the other mortgage companies that went public via an initial public offering since the middle of last year had to reduce the expected size and price.

This avenue of going public via a SPAC has proliferated the mortgage industry, with companies like United Wholesale Mortgage and Doma using this method in recent months.

"We are excited to enter our next chapter of growth as a publicly traded company and look forward to capitalizing on the many opportunities ahead of us," Finance of America CEO Patricia Cook said in a press release issued on April 1. "Our value proposition is truly unique given our proven ability to innovate and deliver complementary financial solutions that consumers want and investors value."

The pre-IPO owners of Finance of America — including company chairman Brian Libman and Blackstone Tactical Opportunities — combined hold approximately 80% of the now-public entity.

In its final day of trading on April 1, Replay closed at $9.55 per share; it spent most of its few weeks as a SPAC seeing its price sink from a close of $10.19 per share on March 18.

But while FOA opened at $9.50 per share, investors pounced on the stock and it reached a high of $9.98 within the first half hour of trading. By 10:45 a.m., FOA traded at $9.85 per share, up 3.99%, and had volume of over 70,000 shares traded.

Replay's final day saw volume of 241,200 shares traded; its most traded day in the past year was March 3, when over 2.4 million shares changed hands.

All of the nonbank mortgage companies that went public in the last few months were also up in early trading on April 5, led by loanDepot’s jump of 4.69%. Guild Holdings was up 1.91%; Home Point Capital was up 1.34%; UWM Holdings was up 0.39%; and Rocket Cos., up 0.05%.

But the other publicly traded nonbank lenders were a mixed bag. While Impac was up 6.03%, among those that were lower were Mr. Cooper, down 0.11%; Ocwen, 0.42%; Redwood Trust, down 0.51%; New Residential, down 0.8%; and PennyMac Financial Services, 3.3%.

Last year, Finance of America originated $32.6 billion (including forward and reverse mortgages), up from $19.2 billion in 2019. In the fourth quarter alone, the company produced $9.77 billion, up from $9.17 billion in the third quarter and $6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2019.

The company posted a net income of $498 million for 2020, compared with $77 million in 2019.