Last month, Texas-based Finance of America (FOA) announced that it would be offering a dual listing of its common stock on the newly created NYSE Texas, which is headquartered in Dallas.

As a result, FOA — a leading reverse mortgage lender — is among the handful of founding members that also include Intercontinental Exchange and D.R. Horton.

Following the news of the dual listing, Michael Fant, FOA’s senior vice president of finance, sat down with HousingWire to discuss growth expectations from the dual listing, as well as FOA’s mission to educate Americans on home equity-based retirement solutions.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Sarah Wolak: Can you share why FOA decided to move forward with pursuing a dual listing on NYSE Texas?

Michael Fant: We’ve been in the public arena and part of the New York Stock Exchange for just over four years now. But recently, we were approached by NYSE as they were launching the NYSE Texas platform.

With us being headquartered in the state of Texas, we saw an opportunity to further align ourselves with the New York Stock Exchange and broaden our investor access. There’s a different potential investor base that is on the NYSE Texas platform … so we saw it as a good partnership and a way for us to be on the leading edge with the NYSE Texas platform.

Wolak: How will trading on NYSE Texas differ from your existing listing in terms of the visibility, liquidity and investor access?

Fant: Where we see the opportunity with NYSE Texas is that, in a lot of ways, the investors that exchange and work through and operate on the NYSE Texas platform are a slightly different investor group than what you see on the primary NYSE platform and NYSE exchange.

So, because of that, we saw it as an opportunity to broaden the access and the awareness of Finance of America. This gives us the chance to reintroduce ourselves in a lot of ways to potentially new investors and to hopefully new people that want to know more about Finance of America and what we’re doing in the reverse mortgage industry … We see it as kind of opening up a kind of second door for a lot of people to say, ‘Hey, this is Finance of America. Let me learn more.’

Wolak: What does founding member status entail? Are there any obligations or benefits?

Fant: No obligations, but we did get to take part in the NYSE Texas launch out at AT&T Stadium two weeks ago. … As a Dallas Cowboys fan, that was pretty cool.

But otherwise, it’s a chance for us to strengthen the relationship we have with the NYSE and also acknowledge our relationship here at being headquartered in the state of Texas. And so we see it as perhaps there’s additional opportunities or benefits down the road that we’ll get to see as a founding member.

But firstly and foremost right now, we just think it’s a really cool opportunity to be listed as a founding member, along with a lot of other great companies that are joining the NYSE Texas platform.

Wolak: FOA’s stock had been underperforming in recent years and the company had to perform a reverse stock split to meet the compliance obligations. Can you dive into the process of bouncing back from these warnings that you faced from the NYSE?

Fant: It’s been quite a journey for us over the last several years. But even looking back to the past 12 to 18 months, we’ve gone through a tremendous amount of transformation as an organization, and we’ve really seen success operationally. As we’ve started to come out through the final pieces of that transformation, we’re now focused and dedicated to helping seniors enjoy their retirement through accessing home equity. And so we believe that a great opportunity through that is the reverse mortgage.

So what we’ve been able to accomplish over the last 12 or 18 months, as you look back at our performances now, we’ve seen five consecutive quarters of volume growth. We’ve recorded adjusted net income profits each quarter for these last four or five quarters, and so what that’s done is set the stage for an operational improvement that’s lent itself toward an improvement in the stock price as well.

Along with that, we’ve done a number of things to strengthen our balance sheet and improve our capital stack. So, be that the exchange of our corporate bonds that we announced back in October of last year, or even the announcement that we had here at the beginning of August with the paydown of the working capital facility with Blackstone and the announcement of the Blackstone repurchase, all of these we see as credit-positive enhancements to our balance sheet and to the company at large.

I think you’re starting to see that also really take effect with the capital market. Our investors are taking notice, they’re seeing our improved performance, and they’re seeing that this is a company that’s done exactly what they said they were going to do.

Wolak: That focus on presenting reverse mortgages as an option dovetails with what FOA CEO Graham Fleming said a few weeks ago, that the dual listing will broaden investor access and awareness of FOA’s mission to educate more Americans on the value of home equity-based retirement solutions. How does FOA plan on accomplishing that?

Fant: It’s an opportunity for Finance of America to stay in the markets and in general awareness, right? NYSE Texas is a new platform with a new potential investor base, which gives us a chance to eventually reach more seniors and help them access home equity.

Additionally, the NYSE Texas launch was news broadly and it was also news locally. And so with us being headquartered here in the state and so many seniors living here in the state of Texas as well, we see it as just another avenue for us to be able to visible to them and accessible.

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