Last year, mortgage production moved higher at  Hilltop Holdings Inc. But earnings from the home-lending business turned sharply lower.
During the final-three months of last year, income before income taxes was $53 million. Earnings fell from $86 million in the previous quarter.
Hilltop, the parent of PrimeLending, provided the results and other operational and financial metrics in its fourth-quarter 2016 earnings report.
Earnings improved, however, from $33 million in the year-earlier period.
Income before taxes from the mortgage originations segment during all of 2016 was $9 million, sinking from $31 million in the third quarter.
There were
16,440 loans closed for $3.888 billion from Oct. 1, 2016, through year-end 2016. Business retreated from 19,330 loans for $4.493 billion three months earlier. Production totaled $3.066 billion a year earlier.
Refinance share
was 28.7 percent in the fourth-quarter 2016, hardly different than 29.0 percent in the prior three-month period.
Full-year 2016 mortgage originations amounted to 66,881 loans for $15.460 billion, increasing from 59,621 units for $13.352 billion the previous year.
Residential assets on the balance sheet closed out last year at $0.949 billion.
Commercial real estate assets, including commercial mortgages and construction-and-land-development loans, totaled $2.735 billion as of year-end 2016.
Headcount at PrimeLending finished 2016 at approximately 3,000 people, more than 2,800 at year-end 2015.
Company-wide staffing closed out 2016 at 5,400 employees,
a hundred fewer than at the end of the third quarter but a hundred more at the end of the fourth-quarter 2015.
PrimeLending operated from 310 locations as of the end of last year.
Hilltop operated from 450 locations as of the most-recent date,
the same as of Sept. 30, 2016.
