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TRANSACTIONS WITH RELATED PARTIES
3 Months Ended
Mar. 31, 2015
Related Party Transactions [Abstract]  
TRANSACTIONS WITH RELATED PARTIES
TRANSACTIONS WITH RELATED PARTIES
 
Through January 16, 2015, William C. Erbey served as our Chairman as well as the Executive Chairman of Ocwen and Chairman of each of Home Loan Servicing Solutions, Ltd. (“HLSS”), Altisource Residential Corporation (“Residential”) and AAMC. Effective January 16, 2015, Mr. Erbey stepped down as the Executive Chairman of Ocwen and Chairman of each of Altisource, HLSS, Residential and AAMC and is no longer a member of the Board of Directors for any of these companies. As of March 31, 2015, Mr. Erbey owned or controlled approximately 30% of the common stock of Altisource, approximately 14% of the common stock of Ocwen, approximately 1% of the common stock of HLSS, approximately 4% of the common stock of Residential and approximately 28% of the common stock of AAMC. As of March 31, 2015, Mr. Erbey also held 857,543 options to purchase Altisource common stock (all of which were exercisable), 3,572,626 options to purchase Ocwen common stock (3,322,626 of which were exercisable) and 85,755 options to purchase AAMC common stock (all of which were exercisable). Accordingly, as a result of Mr. Erbey’s positions and the continuing common ownership, these companies have been and are related parties of Altisource.

Ocwen
 
Revenue
Ocwen is our largest customer. Ocwen purchases certain mortgage services and technology services from us under the terms of the master services agreements and amendments to the master services agreements (collectively, the “Service Agreements”) with terms extending through August 2025. The Service Agreements, among other things, contain a “most favored nation” provision and the parties to the Service Agreements have the right to renegotiate pricing. The Service Agreements also prohibit Ocwen from establishing fee-based businesses that would directly or indirectly compete with Altisource’s services with respect to the Homeward Residential, Inc. and Residential Capital, LLC portfolios. In addition, Ocwen purchases certain origination services from Altisource under an agreement that extends through January 2017. We settle amounts with Ocwen on a daily, weekly or monthly basis depending upon the nature of the service and when the service is provided.

Related party revenue primarily consists of revenue earned directly from Ocwen and revenue earned from the loans serviced by Ocwen when Ocwen designates us as the service provider. Related party revenue from Ocwen as a percentage of segment and consolidated revenue was as follows for the three months ended March 31:
 
2015
 
2014
 
 
 
 
Mortgage Services
63%
 
69%
Financial Services
25%
 
26%
Technology Services
47%
 
35%
Consolidated revenue
59%
 
61%

 
We record revenue we earn from Ocwen under the Service Agreements at rates we believe to be comparable market rates as we believe they are consistent with the fees we charge to other customers and/or fees charged by our competitors for comparable services.

We earn additional revenue on the portfolios serviced by Ocwen that is not considered related party revenue when a party other than Ocwen selects Altisource as the service provider. For the three months ended March 31, 2015 and 2014, we recognized revenue of $53.5 million and $54.7 million, respectively, on the portfolios serviced by Ocwen that is not considered related party revenue.


Cost of Revenue

At times, we use Ocwen’s contractors and/or employees to support Altisource related services. Ocwen generally bills us for these contractors and/or employees based on their fully-allocated cost. Additionally, through March 31, 2015, we purchased certain data relating to Ocwen’s servicing portfolio in connection with a Data Access and Services Agreement. The Data Access and Services Agreement could be renegotiated and could be canceled by either Altisource or Ocwen with 90 days prior written notice. Based upon our previously provided notice, the Data Access and Services Agreement was terminated effective March 31, 2015. Ocwen billed us a per asset fee for this data. For the three months ended March 31, 2015 and 2014, Ocwen billed us $10.3 million and $7.3 million, respectively. These amounts are reflected as a component of cost of revenue in the condensed consolidated statements of operations.

Selling, General and Administrative Expenses

We provide certain other services to Ocwen and Ocwen provides certain other services to us in connection with Support Services Agreements. Prior to January 1, 2015, these services included such areas as human resources, vendor management, vendor oversight, corporate services, operational effectiveness, quality assurance, quantitative analytics, tax and treasury. For the three months ended March 31, 2015, these services included vendor management, corporate services and facility charges. The Support Services Agreement with Ocwen Mortgage Servicing, Inc. extends through September 2018 with automatic one-year renewals thereafter. The Support Services Agreement with Ocwen Financial Corporation extends through October 2017 with automatic one-year renewals thereafter. Billings for these services were generally based on the fully-allocated cost of providing the service based on an estimate of the time and expense of providing the service or estimates thereof. For the three months ended March 31, 2015 and 2014, we billed Ocwen $0.6 million and $1.0 million, respectively, and Ocwen billed us $1.6 million and $1.2 million, respectively. These amounts are reflected as a component of selling, general and administrative expenses in the condensed consolidated statements of operations.

HLSS
 
HLSS is a publicly traded company whose primary objective is the acquisition of mortgage servicing rights and related servicing advances, loans held for investment and other residential mortgage related assets. As of March 31, 2015 and December 31, 2014, HLSS owned, for a significant portion of Ocwen-serviced non-government-sponsored enterprise loans, (1) the rights to receive the servicing fees that Ocwen is entitled to receive and (2) associated servicing advances.

Under a support services agreement, we provide HLSS certain finance, human resources, tax and facilities services and we sell information technology services to HLSS. We billed HLSS $0.6 million and $0.2 million for the three months ended March 31, 2015 and 2014, respectively. Of these amounts, $0.5 million for the three months ended March 31, 2015 (no comparative amount in 2014) is reflected in revenue in the condensed consolidated statements of operations and, for the three months ended March 31, 2015 and 2014, $0.1 million and $0.2 million, respectively, is reflected as a component of selling, general and administrative expenses in the condensed consolidated statements of operations.

On February 22, 2015, HLSS and New Residential Investment Corp. (“NRZ”) announced they entered into a definitive agreement whereby NRZ would acquire all of the outstanding shares of HLSS, subject to shareholder approval and other customary closing conditions.

From March 10, 2015 to March 17, 2015, we purchased 1.6 million shares of HLSS common stock for $30.0 million in the open market. See Note 5.

On April 6, 2015, HLSS and NRZ announced they terminated the merger agreement announced on February 22, 2015 and entered into a purchase agreement under which NRZ acquired substantially all of the assets and assumed substantially all of the liabilities of HLSS. The asset purchase was consummated concurrently with signing of the purchase agreement. Furthermore, NRZ separately agreed to a multi-year extension of the servicing contracts with Ocwen. HLSS also announced that it adopted a plan of complete liquidation and dissolution. Additional information is contained in HLSS’ public filings.

Residential and AAMC
 
Residential and AAMC were separated from Altisource on December 21, 2012 and their equity was distributed to our shareholders on December 24, 2012 and they are each separate publicly traded companies. Residential is focused on acquiring and managing single family rental properties by acquiring sub-performing and non-performing residential mortgage loans as well as single family homes at or following the foreclosure sale throughout the United States. AAMC’s primary business is to provide asset management and certain corporate governance services to institutional investors. Its primary client currently is Residential.
For purposes of governing certain ongoing relationships between Altisource, Residential and AAMC, we entered into certain agreements with Residential and AAMC. We have agreements to provide Residential with renovation management, lease management, property management and REO asset management services. In addition, we have agreements with Residential and AAMC to provide services such as finance, human resources, facilities, technology and insurance risk management. Further, we have separate agreements for certain services related to income tax matters, trademark licenses and technology products and services.

For the three months ended March 31, 2015 and 2014, we billed Residential $6.8 million and $0.8 million, respectively, under these services agreements. These amounts are reflected in revenue in the condensed consolidated statements of operations. This excludes revenue from services we provide to Residential’s loans serviced by Ocwen where we are retained by Ocwen. That revenue is included in Ocwen related party revenue. For the three months ended March 31, 2015 and 2014, we billed AAMC $0.2 million and $0.3 million, respectively, under the services agreements. Of these amounts, less than $0.1 million in each period is reflected in revenue in the condensed consolidated statements of operations and, for the three months ended March 31, 2015 and 2014, $0.2 million and $0.3 million, respectively, is reflected as a component of selling, general and administrative expenses in the condensed consolidated statements of operations.