Ocwen provides disappointing company update

Today, Ocwen provided a company update for its shareholders.  While the stock is up ~14% on the news, I am disappointed with how the current CEO is running the company.

1. The update doesn’t seem to mention anything about buying back debt, which currently has fairly high yields (12-13%).  To me, this seems like an obvious move to make.  Where else might Ocwen get such high returns on capital with little risk?
2. The company has halted its share repurchase program.
3. The company intends “hire two financial advisors with significant experience in asset backed financing, capital markets, corporate and mortgage finance”.  I’m not a fan of companies that piss away money on overpriced labour.  Ocwen previously gave its CFO a raise in Dec 2014 but apparently he’s not good enough at his job that Ocwen now needs to hire outside talent.

So far, it seems that the new CEO is bad at capital allocation and bad at maintaining Ocwen’s status as a low-cost operator.

EDIT (2/6/2015): The update also indicated that the company may not be in full compliance with the CFPB metrics:

On the National Mortgage Settlement front, although we do not have the final results of the retesting of certain 2014 metrics by the National Monitor overseeing compliance, we do expect that, similar to many other Servicers in 2014, we will have metrics that will require remediation through corrective action plans as defined by the settlement.