Earnings Labs

Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation (AGM)

Q2 2014 Earnings Call· Mon, Aug 11, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation second quarter 2014 investor conference call. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to turn the conference over to Timothy Buzby, President and CEO. Please go ahead.

Timothy Buzby

President and CEO

Thank you, Emily. Good morning. I am Tim Buzby, the President and CEO of Farmer Mac. The Farmer Mac management team and I are pleased to welcome you to our second quarter 2014 investor conference call. Before starting this morning, I will ask Steve Mullery, Farmer Mac's General Counsel to comment on forward-looking statements that management may make today as well as Farmer Mac's use of non-GAAP financial measures. Steve?

Stephen Mullery

Management

Thanks, Tim. Some of the statements made on this conference call may constitute forward-looking statements under the Securities laws. We make these statements based on our current expectations and assumptions about future events and business performance. We do not undertake any obligation to update these statements after the date of this call. We caution you that forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from the results expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. In evaluating Farmer Mac, you should consider these risks and uncertainties, as well as those described in our 2013 Annual Report on Form 10-K, our subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Farmer Mac uses core earnings, a non-GAAP financial measure, to measure corporate performance and develop financial plans. In management's view, core earnings is a useful alternative measure for understanding Farmer Mac's economic performance, transaction economics and business trends. This non-GAAP financial measure may not be comparable to similarly labeled non-GAAP financial measures disclosed by other companies. Farmer Mac's disclosure of core earnings is intended to be supplemental in nature and is not meant to be considered in isolation from as a substitute for or as more important than the related financial information prepared in accordance with GAAP. A recording of this call will be available on our website for two weeks starting later today.

Timothy Buzby

President and CEO

Thank you, Steve. Farmer Mac had a fundamentally strong quarter on a number of fronts in second quarter 2014. Most notably, net effective spread rebounded, reaching 84 basis points for the quarter. That's up from first quarter, which was lower as a result of a few individual transactions that temporarily increased our financing cost. The recovery in spread added $1.7 million after-tax to core earnings compared to first quarter. Credit quality also remains favorable and we had $1.7 million after-tax release from the allowance for losses due to the paydown of $38 million of ethanol loans during the quarter. In addition to those items, Farmer Mac also recognized a substantial tax benefit of $11.6 million in second quarter. That tax benefit resulted from our ability to now apply capital loss carryforwards against capital gains expected to result from a cash management and liquidity initiative we put in place during the second quarter. The combination of all of these factors drove core earnings to a record $23.2 million. I'd like to quickly discuss the changes to our cash management and liquidity strategies, and then defer to Dale Lynch, our CFO, to describe it in greater detail in a few minutes. Historically, we've used a variety of financial instruments, transactions and investments to manage our liquidity. Over time, as we've evaluated numerous vehicles for doing so, we've concluded that one advantageous vehicle is repurchase or repo agreements. Further, we've concluded that the best way to conduct repo transactions would be if we were able to participate in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to reverse repurchase facility, known as the RRP Facility. If accepted into the program that would provide us the opportunity to deal with the most creditworthy counterparty. The repo transactions will result in capital gains, as a result…

Dale Lynch

Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Tim. As Tim mentioned at the outset of the call, Farmer Mac had a strong second quarter with continued strong credit quality, increasing net effective spread, the refinancing of most of our maturing AgVantage securities at goods spreads and net growth in Farm & Ranch loans, being the fundamental drivers of the growth this quarter. In addition to these drivers, Farmer Mac recognized an $11.6 million tax benefits related to the cash management and liquidity initiative that we established this quarter. Before moving on to the discussion of our financial results this quarter, let me give you some more detail on this initiative. As described in more detail in our Form 10-Q filed today, Farmer Mac significantly increased the size of its reinvestments and repurchase agreements or repos in second quarter 2014. As of June 30, 2014, Farmer Mac's repo investment and financing strategies resulted in $1.6 billion of term repo investments presented as securities purchased under agreements to resell in Farmer Mac's financial statements, and $1.7 billion of related liabilities presented as securities sold not yet purchased in Farmer Mac's financial statements. As Tim mentioned, this action was undertaken as part of an initiatives to diversify Farmer Mac's short-term investment alternatives and in a size that we believe could position Farmer Mac to apply for acceptance to participate in the Fed's RRP Facility. We believe that repo investments will be an increasingly important short-term investment for Farmer Mac's cash management in the future, especially in light of recently approved reforms of regulations governing money market funds. These reforms include potential daily fluctuation value among other things that could raise significant operational implications and result in imposition of fees and restrictions which could adversely affect liquidity at the time it is most needed. Although there is no assurance that…

Timothy Buzby

President and CEO

Thank you, Dale. Second quarter 2014 marked significant progress as Farmer Mac's spreads continue to stabilize, our credit performance remained strong and we successfully raised capital that will allow us to redeem other outstanding preferred stock. We continue to manage our business to fulfill our mission of increasing the availability of credit to maintain a strong and vibrant rural America and to focus on the fundamentals that will bring long-term value for our stockholders. We believe that our strategy of pursuing prudent growth coupled with high credit quality standards will provide attractive returns, resulting in growth and earnings and capital. We are excited about our prospects for the rest of the year and well in this 2015. At this time, we'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. Emily?

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Our first question is from John Dunn of Sidoti & Company. John Dunn - Sidoti & Company: You started to talk about back half of the year asset growth, typically in the AgVantage. Can you just remind us some of the seasonality? And then also, what some of the other categories might look at or at least what you might expect?

Timothy Buzby

President and CEO

Well, with the AgVantage securities, there really isn't seasonality. That's really driven by the needs of our counterparties. Often times, those needs are driven by current maturing AgVantage securities. So with current customers that have maturing securities, we obviously are in regular conversations with them about refinancing those directly. And then also their additional needs are driven by their business growth in their own lines of business. Other lines, we've seen, and I think Dale mentioned a little bit of a less purchase volume compared to last year in Farm & Ranch. I think that's driven by lot of the demand last year, as people were positioning for rises in interest rate. I think a lot of that refinance activity that was expected has occurred at this point. We still do see transaction volume, and that's driven from bringing new sellers into the program. And a lot of that business, the seasonality of that is related to the harvest cycles, when farmers are busy in the fields compared to when they're looking at their balance sheets and their financing, et cetera. So that comes and goes throughout the year. USDA Securities, you recall, last year that business volume slowed down towards the end of the year as funding at the government dried up. We don't expect that to occur then this year. So we think that business volume should be healthy through the year. And Rural Utilities loan purchases, as you can see, that was a small number this quarter. That's really not particularly indicative of what it will be next quarter. That's just the current demand that there are with the businesses with CFC, our counterparty in the Rural Utilities industry. So there are a number of moving parts there. We have often stated, and continue to state, we expect that there will be opportunities for growth in all of our lines of business. And we do expect that to occur. John Dunn - Sidoti & Company: So for Farm & Ranch, would you say that, going forward likely most of the new business comes from new customers rather than existing?

Timothy Buzby

President and CEO

I would say, we still get quite a bit of business from our existing bank customers, but also we're signing up new customers on a regular basis and are actively seeking to do that in many of the ag states and our initiatives there remain unchanged. We are looking to grow the volume of customers from which we participate in our programs, as well as increase the business from those who are already in the program.

Dale Lynch

Chief Financial Officer

John, just to add to Tim's point though on the Farm & Ranch loans. For example, Tim mentioned that the volumes are a little bit less than prior year, if you add about six months to date or maybe 7% or 8% below last year's gross purchase volume for Farm & Ranch loans, but if you look at the unscheduled prepayment volumes in our Q, you will also notice that those are down significantly. Those are down some 50% to 60% depending on what time period you look at. So from a net perspective, we're still seeing pretty attractive net growth in Farm & Ranch loans. And that's what helped drive the spread expansion this quarter.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Bose George of KBW.

Bose George - KBW

Analyst · KBW

Question just on the DTA valuation allowance, can you reverse that now since it looks like you'll be able to utilize that with the RRP strategy?

Timothy Buzby

President and CEO

I'm sorry, Bose, I didn't quite catch the question you're asking?

Bose George - KBW

Analyst · KBW

It looks like you have a $26 million valuation allowance on your deferred tax asset. So I was just wondering, if that gets reversed since you'll be able to utilize that with the capital gains that you should be able to generate with the new strategy?

Dale Lynch

Chief Financial Officer

Well, we already reversed $11.6 million of that in second quarter. So we've done what we think will be -- we've made our estimate now. In conclusion of this transaction in late fourth quarter, we may have an adjusting entry to that estimate, but that $11.6 million is the estimate for the full tax benefit that we expect to recognize related to this strategy.

Bose George - KBW

Analyst · KBW

And then, actually just in terms of modeling, and that just to confirm, that the offset to the spreads will be the capital gains, sort of the tax adjusted capital gains that you'll mark at the end. Is that right?

Dale Lynch

Chief Financial Officer

That's exactly, right. That's why it's hard to look at net interest income from the GAAP income statement in this regard, because there is some key differences. In this quarter it's particularly important just given that there is about $8 million of interest expense associated with the financing of this strategy and that's factored into net interest income, while the benefit that's offsetting that is in the tax line. So it's kind of apples and oranges there. So we encourage people to turn the net effective spread, which we think is the most reliable indicator in terms of looking at the business and what it's producing. It includes all the derivative positions and it excludes the interest expense associated with this transaction.

Operator

Operator

Our next is from Jordan Hymowitz of Philadelphia Financial.

Jordan Hymowitz - Philadelphia Financial

Analyst · Philadelphia Financial

Just first, I want to follow-up on Bose's question. So going forward, the $8 million in extra interest expense, will that be the run rate going forward and/or will that be reduced back and the tax rate be higher?

Dale Lynch

Chief Financial Officer

It will be approximately similar to that, what we expect over the balance of the year. So the next two quarters will be that. We'll have an interest expense similar to what we have had in the second quarter. And then we'll have unrealized gains from the sold Treasuries, if you will, that will be similar to that. On a pre-tax basis, however, we expect that the interest expense associated with this in Q3 and Q4 in aggregate would be about $2 million after-tax greater than the gains that we post. So when you take that net $2 million after-tax incremental financing cost, if you will, and compare it to the $11.6 million tax benefit we posted this quarter, that's how you get to the net benefit where you estimate $8 million to $9 million of net benefit this year.

Jordan Hymowitz - Philadelphia Financial

Analyst · Philadelphia Financial

And that's why they had back the income tax benefit in core earnings, so to speak?

Dale Lynch

Chief Financial Officer

Well, that's right, exactly.

Jordan Hymowitz - Philadelphia Financial

Analyst · Philadelphia Financial

Second question is why you're adding back the release of provision?

Timothy Buzby

President and CEO

Well, Jordan, as we add to the release, we add items to the allowance for losses. That goes through earnings as a cost. In this case, we had ethanol loans that we were carrying on allowance against, that actually paid off. So we reversed out that allowance and brought down the reserve for losses against the ethanol portfolio. So that benefit comes through core earnings as well.

Jordan Hymowitz - Philadelphia Financial

Analyst · Philadelphia Financial

I am just not sure, because it's kind of one-time, if that should be core earnings.

Timothy Buzby

President and CEO

Well, it's one-time, if you look at the specific effects related to those individual loans. But as if we were to have, same way when we put an allowance against those loans, that would have those cost, charge against core earnings. When it then comes back, we add that back to core earnings. So it's a one-time event specifically. But every quarter we have additions and releases from the allowance for losses related to various transactions. So it's ongoing for various reasons. This one specific reason was somewhat of a one-time event.

Jordan Hymowitz - Philadelphia Financial

Analyst · Philadelphia Financial

But is the run rate on core earnings is it really $23.2 million or is it that less at $2.05, should I say?

Timothy Buzby

President and CEO

Well, we always expect to have some activity in the allowances for losses in our portfolio, sometimes its $1 million or $2 million increase to the allowance, sometimes its $1 million or $2 million release to the allowance. So from our perspective, if you're modeling the business, I would model it not looking at what those credit charges are, because they do fluctuate, sometimes they're positive, sometimes they are negative. I wouldn't use the $23 million as a run way in your analytical models, because that is increased by the $11 million-plus related to the deferred tax valuation allowance. So I wouldn't encourage to remove that deferred tax asset valuation allowance. Considering, however, as Dale mentioned, there is going to be $2 million in the next couple of quarters, which will be impacting and look at that sort of in the foremost of time for the full year to come out to that $8 million or $9 million, which will be positive. So that was very positive this quarter and will be somewhat negative in each of the next two quarters.

Dale Lynch

Chief Financial Officer

Jordan, from a net effective spread perspective that's where we really encourage you to look at that, because the net effective spread will exclude the interest expense associated with this repo transaction.

Jordan Hymowitz - Philadelphia Financial

Analyst · Philadelphia Financial

And last question, is your capital is incredibly large at this point. I mean you didn't buyback any common stock in the quarter and you're well in excess of capital needed. Could you buyback common to offset part of the preferred that was, in other words are they fungible?

Dale Lynch

Chief Financial Officer

Well, they're fungible from the standpoint of compliance with our statutory and regulatory capital requirements. However, they're different in that. We believe that buying back common stock would be counterintuitive to the idea of wanting to ultimately increase the flow of stock for our investors. And also as we've mentioned, we do fully plan to repurchase $244 million of preferred stock that becomes callable in March of next year. So when you look at our capital position today, our plan is to reduce that by $244 million three quarters from now. At the same time, we'll have three quarters of incremental additional core earnings during those three periods. So the excess that you see today or the amount that looks like a very large capital number, we are planning to manage that downward over the course of the next three quarters, and that will significantly reduce our amount of preferred stock dividend expense.

Jordan Hymowitz - Philadelphia Financial

Analyst · Philadelphia Financial

And that was my final questions. So on the $244 million, what's the interest expense?

Dale Lynch

Chief Financial Officer

On an after-tax basis, the coupon on that preferred stock is 8.875%, but because of the tax treatment of that stock, the overall net cost of that is about 5.75%. So whatever 5.75% of $244 million is roughly.

Timothy Buzby

President and CEO

Jordan, so the way to think about it is, once we do call these FALConS in March of next year, will increase core earnings, all else being equal, by roughly $4.7 million compared to the run rate of core earnings entering 2014, if that make sense to you. And that will offload obviously each of the benefit of common shareholders.

Jordan Hymowitz - Philadelphia Financial

Analyst · Philadelphia Financial

That's $14 million at 5.37% high after-tax, 11.3 million divide, that's a $1.20?

Dale Lynch

Chief Financial Officer

It's 5.7% on an after-tax basis on $244 million is roughly $13.9 million of after-tax dividend expense associated with those FALConS.

Jordan Hymowitz - Philadelphia Financial

Analyst · Philadelphia Financial

Right, divided by 11.3 million shares is $1.20.

Dale Lynch

Chief Financial Officer

Right.

Jordan Hymowitz - Philadelphia Financial

Analyst · Philadelphia Financial

So the run rate in the '16 rather would be $1.20 higher from just this thing.

Dale Lynch

Chief Financial Officer

Compared to where we are today, that's right.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Matthew Dodson with JWest.

Matthew Dodson - JWest

Analyst · JWest

Can you just talk a little bit about, I guess, on the ethanol side. You had a lot of payoffs. Do you continue to expect that book to payoff just because ethanol margins are so high right now and the producers are making a lot of money?

Timothy Buzby

President and CEO

In general the answer to that question is, yes. Often times what we find is that the ethanol producers who are in the best position and doing very well, finalized either paydown their existing loans or they have refinancing opportunities, which happen to be away from Farmer Mac. We're currently not increasing or adding to our ethanol portfolio. So we do expect that it will payoff over time. If you recall, we had a 1 point outstanding ethanol loans of almost $350 million, and I believe that's now below $40 million. I would anticipate that over the course of the next year or two that number will likely come down, if not close to zero, it will be gone.

Matthew Dodson - JWest

Analyst · JWest

And then the last follow-up question. I mean obviously, we've seen commodity or corn specifically and soybean, but corn come down pretty significantly. Do you expect your credit quality to start to deteriorate next year, as the farmers start to harvest this? I know you have pristine credit quality now, but is that something you guys were concerned about or can you just help us understand kind of what your customers are saying or what you're thinking?

Timothy Buzby

President and CEO

Well, much variance is to be seen as to how things unfold with respect to the price of corn in particular. I do think that you have to remember that farmers have done very well over the past several years, maybe up as much as a decade. So they're often times in a very good position to withstand a lower corn price than what we saw over the last year or the last two years. Also with our portfolio will be made up entirely of real estate loans. It's unlike operating lenders, which many of our customers quite frankly are, who have loans that are coming due every year and are based on the farmers production for that year in particular, as far as our long-term loans with relatively low LTVs. So well, we may have some customers, certainly they're going to be farmers who may experience stress. The likelihood that we'll see that comes within our portfolio remains to be seen, but we feels that we're in a pretty good position, having reduced our loan-to-value requirements in many areas of the countries, as we saw land values going up and the expectation of prices might come down. It will all depend on the price of corn, ultimately when farmers sell. They often times don't sell directly into the markets that you've seen today. Many of them wait and see where prices go. So they are a lot of moving parts. We don't and haven't disclosed any particular concerns at this point. I think as you see in the media and other outlets, you'll see people talking about the impact that lower corn prices will have. But we being a national lender that are in many different commodities, those low corn prices benefit our dairy portfolio, and our ranches, et cetera. Low corn prices work well for those commodities. Ethanol is another good example. The reason ethanol facilities are doing so well is because the price of corn is low currently. So we have a natural hedge across our portfolio that a lot of other local or regional lenders don't have. And ultimately some of that stress on some of our customers or perhaps potential customers could cause them to look and say, you know, now, with corn prices down much at half of what they were over the course of last couple of years, maybe it's time to look at Farmer Mac's way of managing risks in our own business. So while there maybe some stress that's come through in the portfolio, there may also be business opportunities that result from it.

Timothy Buzby

President and CEO

So I'd add one clarification as a follow-up to the previous question by Jordan regarding preferred dividends. Just to clarify, once the redemption in March of 2015 is complete, our annual rate of preferred dividends will be about $13.2 million. So I just wanted to make sure that that number was clear.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions. This concludes our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Buzby for any closing remarks.

Timothy Buzby

President and CEO

Thank you, Emily. With no further questions, I'd like to thank you for listening and participating this morning. I look forward to our next call to report third quarter 2014 results in November. Thank you. Good bye.

Operator

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.