Lender Processing Services Inc. provides technology services for mortgage lenders through all phases of the loan process, so its business has been greatly affected by the weak housing market.
Unfortunately for Jacksonville-based LPS, the market doesn’t seem to be improving.
“I don’t think anybody is ready to declare the bottom yet,” LPS President and CEO Hugh Harris said Thursday after the company’s annual meeting at its headquarters offices along Riverside Avenue.
“I think everybody sees we’ve still got a struggle,” he said.
LPS last year reported a 12 percent drop in revenue to $2.09 billion, with adjusted earnings falling from $3.50 a share to $2.68.
Business remains down early in 2012. LPS reported first-quarter revenue fell 6 percent to $506 million, and adjusted earnings fell from 81 cents a share in the first quarter of 2011 to 59 cents this year.
LPS attributed the revenue drop mainly to a decline in its default services business, which provides technology for lenders in foreclosure proceedings.
The foreclosure process has slowed nationwide as government regulators look into the practices of mortgage lenders.
LPS has been under investigation by federal and state authorities for more than two years for its role in the default process, after an LPS subsidiary was accused of falsifying documents used in foreclosure proceedings.
At the end of 2011, LPS estimated that its total potential legal costs from those investigations would be $78.5 million.
Harris said he could not put a timetable on when the foreclosure investigations would be completed and he had no new information on the issue.
“We’ve been pretty clear with all the investors and everyone we’ve talked to,” he said.
“It’s a process and we’re going through the process,” he said.
Harris did not have any questions from shareholders at the brief meeting Thursday.
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