Essent Group Ltd. (ESNT) Stock Price & How to Invest

Essent Group Ltd (NYSE: ESNT) is a Bermuda-domiciled holding company whose main subsidiary, Essent Guaranty, writes private mortgage insurance in the United States. Private mortgage insurance covers the lender (and ultimately Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac) against loss when a borrower who put down less than 20% stops paying, which is what lets a first-time buyer close with 3% to 5% down. Essent earns a small annual premium on each insured loan and keeps earning it until the borrower refinances, sells, or builds enough equity to cancel coverage. Insurance in force was about $247.9 billion at the end of March 2026, with a weighted average FICO of 747 and persistency of 84.7%, meaning the vast majority of the book renews each year. Two smaller arms sit alongside it: Essent Re, a Bermuda reinsurer that takes GSE credit risk transfer and, more recently, third-party property and casualty business including a Lloyd's program, and Essent Title Insurance (the former Agents National Title, bought from CoreLogic in 2023) with the Boston National Title agency.

The investment picture is unusually simple to state and hard to resolve. Essent produced about $686 million of net income over the trailing twelve months on roughly $1.28 billion of revenue, book value per share reached $61.20 at March 31, 2026, and the shares have traded in the mid-$60s, so the stock changes hands at roughly 1.1 times book and under 10 times trailing earnings. Almost all of that discount is a judgment about the loss line. The default rate was 2.54% and reported losses have stayed low because borrowers sitting on years of home price appreciation tend to sell rather than default, but that cushion is a function of home prices, not of underwriting. What the company controls, it is doing: PMIERs sufficiency of 174% with about $1.6 billion of excess capital, roughly $214 million of stock repurchased in the first four months of 2026, and a $0.35 quarterly dividend.

Essent's core exposure is the housing and employment cycle, and the current low loss ratio assumes home equity keeps converting would-be claims into sales. A sustained rise in unemployment or a decline in home prices would raise both default frequency and claim severity, and the reserve releases that have flattered recent quarters would reverse into strengthening. New insurance written of $11.1 billion in Q1 2026 depends on a purchase-origination market that affordability continues to constrain, and Essent competes for that volume with five other approved insurers plus FHA, which limits pricing power. Concentration is real: the vast majority of earnings still come from one U.S. product sold through a small number of large lenders, and changes to PMIERs capital rules, GSE policy, or the structure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after conservatorship could reset the economics of the whole industry. The reinsurance expansion introduces underwriting risk in lines where Essent has a shorter track record.

7 analysts publish price targets on ESNT, averaging $68.71 against a $66.51 price as of August 2026, or +3.3%. The published targets run from $62.00 to $74.00, a narrow spread, and the ratings split 3 buy, 4 hold, 0 sell. Over the last six months there have been 3 raises and 4 cuts among the published actions. A price target is what an analyst published on a date, not a prediction, and sell-side ratings skew positive across the whole market.

Read the full ESNT forecast and price target for the target table, the recent rating actions by firm, and how the consensus has shifted.

We give no verdict on Essent Group Ltd.. Both cases are real, which is why the question is contested at all, so here is the strongest version of each.

The case for buying. Insurance in force and persistency. Essent's revenue is a premium rate applied to a large, slow-moving balance rather than a sales number. The most optimistic published target, $74.00, assumes this works close to its best case.

The case against. Essent's core exposure is the housing and employment cycle, and the current low loss ratio assumes home equity keeps converting would-be claims into sales. The most pessimistic target, $62.00, is roughly what ESNT is worth if this bites instead.

Read the full bull and bear case on ESNT, including what would have to change to break either one. Walnut is not an investment adviser.

A simple financial snapshot. These are approximations and refresh quarterly; for current figures see Essent Group Ltd.'s investor relations page or your broker.

• Net premiums earned (Q1 2026): ~$260M
• Net income (TTM): ~$686M
• Diluted EPS (TTM): ~$7.03
• Book value per share: ~$61 (Mar 31, 2026)
• Price to book: ~1.1x
• Dividend: ~$0.35/qtr (~2.1% yield)

Essent carried a market capitalization near $6.1 billion on roughly 92 million shares in early August 2026, putting the stock at about 9 to 10 times trailing earnings and a modest premium to its $61.20 book value per share. Q1 2026 net income was $171.8 million, or $1.82 per diluted share, on revenue of $336.1 million, with an annualized return on average equity of 12.0%. Second-quarter results were scheduled for August 7, 2026, so figures here reflect the March quarter. Valuation numbers are approximate and move with the share price.

Other names that sit close to ESNT: same theme, named as a direct competitor, or held beside it in the same funds. Each entry says which. Worth a look if you are thinking about diversification within a thesis rather than concentration on one ticker.

There are three common ways to get ESNT exposure. Buy shares (or fractional shares) directly at any major broker. Hold an ETF that includes it, which spreads the position across many companies. Or build it into a focused thematic portfolio, so ESNT sits alongside other stocks that express the same thesis.

Walnut takes the portfolio route. Describe a thesis where ESNT fits (for example “AI infrastructure” or “dividend-growth large-caps”) and the AI proposes 5 to 6 constituents with target weights. You review the plan and fund it through your own broker when you're ready.

New to this? Start with how to invest in stocks, see how to analyze a stock with AI, or compare the best AI stock analyzers.

Essent is a well-capitalized, high-persistency mortgage insurer earning around 12% on equity at roughly 1.1 times book, where the return depends far more on whether benign credit holds than on new business growth.

Whether ESNT is worth buying today depends more on your time horizon and what you already hold than on any single call. We walk through valuation, what would have to go right, and the risks in is ESNT a buy or a sell?, and where the stock could go from here in the ESNT stock forecast.

For income investors, whether ESNT pays a dividend and how the payout looks is covered in does ESNT pay a dividend? And to weigh ESNT against a peer, read the full side-by-side comparisons: ESNT vs MTG and ESNT vs ACGL.