Paul Elenio
Analyst · KBW. Your line is now open
Okay. Thank you, Ivan. First, I'd like echo Ivan's comments that we are very excited about today's announcement and believe this acquisition will be a transformational event and the key to our future growth and success. Before I take you through the accretive effect, we believe this transaction will have on our earnings and dividends going forward, I'd like to highlight a few details about the acquisition and proposed deal structure. As disclosed in our press release, the consideration of the acquisition will be half in the form of OP units and half in cash, including the ability to utilize up to $50 million of seller financing. As Ivan mentioned, we are very pleased with our strong liquidity position and currently have approximately $175 million of cash on hand. As a result, we expect to fund the cash portion of the consideration with our cash and potentially the seller financing option that is available to us. And as I will discuss in a moment, we believe funding a portion of this acquisition with our cash on hand will be immediately accretive to our earnings and dividends. Additionally, as the type of income generated from this business is not good REIT income, it is normally retained in a taxable REIT subsidiary, which is subject to corporate level taxes. However, we are currently working on creating a more efficient tax structure to the bifurcation of certain servicing income streams, which could result in greater accretion to our future earnings and dividends. Now, I would like to spend some time walking you through the accretive effect, we believe this transaction will have to our shareholders. As you are aware, we are currently paying an annual dividend of $0.60 per share. The acquired business is estimated to generate a range of approximately $45 million to $50 million of pretax GAAP income and $30 million to $35 million of pretax cash flow for 2016. Assuming, we are successful in creating the tax efficiencies, I mentioned earlier and we fund the cash towards the portion of the consideration with a combination of cash on hand and seller financing in addition to the OP units, we will issue at a price of $6.50 a share, we believe that based on our pro forma combined 2016 numbers, we could increase our dividend to a range of $0.66 to $0.70 per share, excluding one-time transaction cost. This represents potential significant increase of approximately 10% to 17% from our current dividend which could also increase above that range, if we decide to fund the transaction with more cash. Additionally, based on our preliminary estimates of after tax income and cash flow of the acquired business for 2016, we believe this business generates an estimated ROE of between 13% and 16% on GAAP net income and an after tax cash return of 8% to 12%. This is very significant given the self-funded nature of the business and a long dated servicing asset that is prepayment protected and less sensitive to rate and market cycles. Furthermore, the significant servicing asset we will be acquiring as part of this transaction has estimated average life of approximately seven years and will generate in excess of $50 million of gross revenue annually, significantly diversifying our revenue streams and providing us with a long dated stable, predictable earnings stream. We also will increase our total equity post-transaction from roughly $565 million to approximately $700 million, creating a larger balance sheet and more efficient vehicle to access capital in the future. Lastly, as far as the timing of the closing the acquisition, which the transaction will require a certain government and GSE approval, as well as the shareholder vote and other third party approvals. Therefore, we anticipate the deal closing in the third quarter of 2016. However, we cannot provide you with any assurances that it will post on that timeline or at all. Again, we are very excited about this transaction and believe it will be transformational to our platform and most importantly, we believe it will be very rewarding to our shareholders. I’ll now take you through our fourth quarter 2015 financial results. As noted in the press release, net income for the fourth quarter was $5 million, or $0.10 a share and AFFO was $8.6 million or $0.17 per share excluding depreciation expense, non-cash stock compensation expense as well as $1.5 million in expenses related to the potential acquisition of our managers' agency platform. Net income for 2015 was $45.9 million or $0.90 per share and AFFO was $45.5 million or $0.89 a share, excluding depreciation expense, non-cash stock compensation expense, as well as $12.4 million in non-cash gains from our legacy CD I lines and $3 million in expenses related to the potential transaction with our manager. This resulted in an annualized return on average common equity of approximately 9.9% for 2015. As Ivan mentioned, we also continued to generate significant additional income streams, recording $1.3 million and $11.1 million of net income from our equity investments for the fourth quarter and year ended 2015 respectively and we expect these investments to generate $1 million to $1.5 million of income quarterly going forward as well. Looking at the rest of the results for the quarter, the average balance in our core investments was up slightly to $1.57 billion for the fourth quarter from $1.53 billion for the third quarter, despite low op exceeding originations go into fourth quarter, mainly due to the full effect of the net growth we experienced in our portfolio during the third quarter. The yield in these core investments increased to 6.82% for the fourth quarter from 6.68% for the third quarter, largely due to more accelerated fees from early runoff in the fourth quarter, partially offset by higher yields in our fourth quarter runoff and weighted average yield in our portfolio was relatively flat at around 6.32% at December 31st and September 30th due to high yields and runoff, which was offset by an increase in LIBOR in December. The average balance in our debt facilities was also up to approximately $1.18 billion for the fourth quarter from approximately $1.14 billion for the third quarter. The average cost of funds in our debt facilities increased to approximately 4.16% for the fourth quarter, compared to 4.13% for the third quarter. And our estimated all in debt cost was up to approximately 4.12% at December 31, 2015, compared to around 3.94% at September 30, 2015, due to the increase in the LIBOR at the end of the year. If you were to include the dividend associated with our perpetual preferred offerings as interest expense, our average cost of funds would be approximately 4.45% for the fourth quarter and approximately 4.43% for the third quarter and our estimated all in debt cost would be 4.43% at December 31, 2015 compared to 4.27% at September 30, 2015, again due to an increase in LIBOR. Overall, net interest spreads in our proactive on a GAAP basis increased to 2.66% this quarter compared to 2.55% last quarter, including the preferred stock dividends of debt cost, our average net interest spreads also increased to approximately 2.37% this quarter from approximately 2.25% last quarter, largely due to increased accelerated fees in the fourth quarter from early runoff. And our overall spot net interest spreads, including the preferred stock dividends as a debt cost decreased from 2.04% at September 30th to 1.89% at December 31st, due to higher yields in our fourth quarter runoff. Our average leverage ratios on our core lending assets increased slightly to approximately 64% including the trust preferreds and perpetual preferred stock as equity for the fourth quarter, compared to 63% for the third quarter. And our overall leverage ratio on a spot basis including the trust preferreds and preferred stock as equity was 1.41 at both December 31st and September 30th. NOI related to our OREO assets decreased approximately $1.2 million compared to last quarter due to the seasonal nature of income related to a portfolio of hotels that we own. We produced NOI before depreciation of approximately $4.4 million from OREO assets in 2015, which was higher than the $3.5 million to $4 million, we originally projected for the year due to improved property performance from several of our assets. Additionally, we were able to monetize the value we've created from the successful management of these assets, recording $3.8 million and $7.8 million of gains from dispositions of OREO assets for the fourth quarter and year ended 2015 respectively. Lastly, as Ivan mentioned, we continue to focus heavily on multifamily senior loans and as a result, we have transitioned our portfolio to one that contains 88% bridge loans and 78% multifamily assets at December 31st. This is a significant accomplishment and again with the improvements we have made in our financing facilities, we're able to generate strong returns on our capital and a very secure part of the capital stack. Additionally, our loan to value is around 76% and geographically, we are around 34% of our portfolio concentrated in New York City. That completes our prepared remarks for this morning, and I'll now turn it back to the operator to take any questions you may have this time. Operator?