Smriti Popenoe
Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is open
Good morning, everyone, and thank you, Steve. I'll cover the factors driving third quarter performance, discuss the current environment, how we're positioned specifically with respect to our risk profile, dollar rolls and prepayments, and how we expect to manage the position in the near-term. Regarding third quarter performance, our strong book value gains reflected the tighter spreads on investments that we had made early in the second quarter across the agency market in both CMBS and RMBS. They also reflect the tighter spreads on existing positions in Agency and non-Agency CMBS IOs. Towards the end of the quarter, we further reduced our allocation to Agency CMBS does, the spreads tightened in to all-time lows in that sector. We have not yet redeployed the gain or the original capital, it remains as dry powder. A second factor driving book value was the investment in specified pool payups. These improved for less popular stories. Payups for state-specific in FICO and LTV pools increased in lower coupons as mortgage rates hit new lows. This is shown on Slide 27 in the appendix. Quarter-to-date book value is about 1% lower than our reported number at the end of the third quarter given wider MBS spreads in the last few days. Turning to the environment. Our macroeconomic focus top down process remains an important cornerstone of our investment strategy. We are highly respectful of the environment, which we still assess as an evolving health and economic situation. While central banks have cushioned the near-term impacts, medium- and long-term consequences of the pandemic are yet to be fully discernible, and they may not be readily apparent for several more months. Our view is that the injection of liquidity by central banks may actually be masking the true underlying picture. And we find this a particular issue in lower rated credits. Add to this the current domestic political uncertainty with many of the future economic paths highly dependent on government policy and what you have is a very large number of scenarios to plan for as an investor. We, therefore, see capital preservation and liquidity as key to navigating this environment. We are approaching the situation with lots of scenario planning, which leads us to maintain a high level of liquidity, a high allocations of very liquid positions on both the asset and the hedging side. And this gives us the flexibility to respond to any event as it unfolds. In terms of earnings and economic return, due to our sales of DUS at the end of the quarter, our portfolio balance and leverage are lower versus June 30. Even at this lower leverage level of assets and leverage with the current level of mortgage rates, unexpected prepayment speeds, we expect to be able to comfortably out on the dividend in the fourth quarter. As a result, we also have significant earnings power in the balance sheet. We have the flexibility and liquidity, and we stand ready to redeploy capital rapidly in the Agency RMBS sector which continues to offer attractive returns. We fully expect to take leverage up. We are currently respecting the U.S. election and Brexit as notable events on the horizon. The earnings and economic power from 1 additional turn of leverage is significant versus the current level of the dividend, which stands at $0.39 per quarter. One times leverage at 11% total economic return generates $0.07 a quarter or $0.28 additional value per year. This would be an additional tailwind to book value and total economic return in the coming quarters. Turning now to how we are positioned and how we expect to manage the portfolio. I'd like to emphasize the need for flexibility in this environment as well as active management. In Agency RMBS, we have been and continue to be active in hedge and asset selection, specifically to address prepayments and duration extension, both of which we believe can be actively managed. We're addressing prepayments with a down in coupon position that is hedged with treasury futures and options to protect duration extension. This type of portfolio hedge positioning is respectful of the many possible outcomes and the high dependence on the issuance of U.S. government debt or economic stabilization stimulus and recovery. Our hedge portfolio is currently composed of treasury futures, treasury options and swaptions on longer-dated tenors. As you can see on Slide 12, the portfolio profile shows the impact of rising rate scenarios and steepeners as well as lower rates, the modeled equity at risk is fairly contained. We use treasury futures because of their liquidity, flexibility, and we use treasury options and swaptions to hedge convexity. Treasury futures give us 24/7 trading capability with liquid and transparent markets for options. We currently view that the benefit of options greatly outweighs the cost the total economic return, especially when interest rates rise. Options also have less liquidity draw and impact your book value less compared to swaps or futures hedges when interest rates fall. Turning now to dollar rolls. On dollar rolls versus specified pools, our current assessment is that the incremental return for specialness in the TBA 30-year 2% coupon is far superior to owning high payups specified pools. We see several scenarios where the specialness remains in the 2% coupon, at least into the first few quarters of 2021 and some scenarios were left much further into 2021. It's important to know the specialness in 2%s takes what is currently in 11% return asset to a 16% to 18% return asset, all else being equal, if the specialness fades, you can choose to remain in the TBA at whatever return they offer at that point, or switch to specified pools. Finally, a word on prepayments. Our view is that prepayments are in manageable risk, and we actively manage them using asset selection, premium management, timing of reinvestments and options hedges. I want to make the point that the greatest prepayment risk in the market is in the cheapest to deliver securities, and in the loans backing those securities. These bonds and loans are not on Dynex's balance sheet. As Steve mentioned, our portfolio average speed was 12 CPR for the quarter versus the average in the universe of 33% CPR. The bonds of greatest concern mostly sit on the Fed's balance sheet, as well as on the balance sheets of mortgage servicers in the form of MSRs. At Dynex 90% of our pools have some form of prepayment protection, so we are not exposed to the cheapest to deliver prepayment experience that you read about and hear about in the broad press. So what does this all mean for Dynex shareholders? The environment remains extremely favorable to earn returns from high quality liquid assets. With the portfolio at 6.2 times leverage, we still expect that out on the dividend for the fourth quarter 2020. We believe the target leverage is higher 1.5 to 2 times higher than today's levels. That gives us significant upside potential versus the dividend. Our posture of flexibility and liquidity enables us to rapidly deploy capital to add the earnings and to drive outperformance versus the current level of the dividend. One times leverage at 11% ROE is $0.28 in core EPS annually. The portfolio is currently positioned with hedges to protect book value in a variety of scenarios. The return environment supports accretive investments in TBAs that will likely exceed hurdle rates even as implied financing from dollar rolls was closer to repo rates. We continue to believe that active management of the portfolio is essential in an environment with many known and unknown unknowns. As we are co-investors with you, we remain highly attuned to market developments and attractive opportunities for value creation. I'll now turn it over to Byron.