Mark Tecotzky
Analyst · Credit Suisse
Thank you, Lisa. The third quarter proved to be quite different to what we experienced in the first half of 2016. In the first half of the year, heightened interest rate volatility lowered our returns as delta hedging costs chipped away at our net interest margin. In the third quarter despite continued central bank and political uncertainties, interest rate volatility plummeted. Not only was the actual volatility lower during the quarter, interest rates moved around less than they had in past quarters, but implied forward-looking volatility as reflected in the options market dropped as well. The drop in actual volatility lowered our delta hedging cost this past quarter and the drop in implied volatility helped support the prices of our agency RMBS assets as the market now expects delta hedging costs to be lower in the future quarters as well. There continues to be a shortage of positive yielding high quality liquid assets around G3 bond markets and the agency mortgage base has reaped the benefits of declining hedging costs and continued cross border sponsorship. EARN’s economic returns for the quarter non-annualized was a strong 4.7%. This was a quarter where our specified pool performance hit on all cylinders hedging costs were low, investor sponsorship of RMBS was strong and prepayment protected pools lived up to their name. From peak to trough in the quarter, there was a 32 basis point range in the yield of the 10-year treasury note. That may sound large, but it’s actually less than 40% of the 10-year treasury yield range in the second quarter and around half of the range for the first quarter. Not only was the total range small, but the volatility within the range was small as well. For example as you can see on Slide 7, throughout the entire month of August the 10-year swap rate closed within 5 basis points of 1.44%. EARN has traditionally used more delta hedging as opposed to options buying to manage the mismatch between negative convexity of our mortgage assets and the positive convexity of our swap hedges. The relative lack of rate movement and resulting lack of change in the durations of our already low duration assets kept the swap hedging costs very low both in terms of the rates we are paying on our swaps and our swap delta hedging costs. Meanwhile, the yields on our agency assets were reasonably preserved as the prepayments on our specified pools were very well behaved. So within our asset yields staying strong and our total swap hedging cost dropping, our portfolio captured a healthy net interest margin with low leakage. Finally, the increase in prepayments on generic pools weighed on TBA roll levels for every coupon except 30-year 3%s and 15-year 2.5%s. Since the TBA short positions are a significant portion of our hedging portfolio and since we are effectively short TBA rolls and we are short TBAs, these lower TBA roll levels helped to contain our TBA hedging costs this past quarter. The expectation of continued lower TBA roll levels also supported payouts through our specified pools since the expectation of lower future roll income from holding TBAs make TBAs look less attractive relative to specified pools. Having part of our portfolio of high quality specified pools hedged with TBA mortgages allows us to simultaneously capture the huge carry difference between slower prepaying pools and higher coupon TBA shorts while reducing our mortgage basis risk after the quarter’s strong performance. A steady scene throughout the year has been global demand for agency MBS. The reach [ph] free yield resulting from quantitative easing from various central banks has directly benefited agency MBS. The asset class continues to have great liquidity and attractive yields compared to many sovereign and corporate alternatives that are being purchased by central banks and institutional investors around the globe. Take a look at Slide 8, which has been updated from the previous two calls. It shows the continued sponsorship for agency MBS for Japanese buyers. We closely monitor this activity as any change in this activity has implication for MBS pricing. The third quarter was a very strong one for thoughtfully constructed MBS portfolios, twin pillars of low volatility and positive technicals augmented the generous NIMs. However, the fundamental picture actually weakened in the quarter. Prepayment rates jumped to levels not seen in years. The speed environment changed materially as borrowers reacted to lower mortgage rates from the preceding quarter. Speeds reached their highest level since 2012 as newer borrowers with larger loans from non-bank services having the largest reaction. The increase in speeds are so great that for the first time in a while they greatly exceeded sell side estimates. This is the major departure from trends of previous years when sell side estimates if anything usually proved to over-predict prepayments. The biggest prepayment story over the last 2 years has been the narrative that high compliance costs and a tight credit box that functioned as a wet blanket on prepayments. That finally may be starting to change. The faster speeds in the third quarter have the potential to erode the yields of many agency mortgage portfolios that don’t have prepayment protection. We have been closely observing changes in prepayment patterns for the last several quarters and we have seen some worrying trends. Take a look at Slide 9, it shows just how dramatic the change in prepayments have been since June. In the course of one month, generic Fannie 3.5%s originated in 2014 went from paying around 22% CPR to around 34% CPR. This is an asset that had an average price of almost 105.5% for the quarter, so prepayment speed had a huge effect on the realized yields for these pools. Our portfolio in contrast to generic portfolios consist mainly of borrowers who we believe are far less reactive to changes in mortgage rates. On the same slide, you can see that Fannie 3.5%s in the same vintage, but whose loan balances are less than $85,000 went from paying 7.8% CPR to just over 10.8% CPR over the same timeframe. Prepayment protection is no longer an out of the money portfolio insurance like it was when rates were higher. It’s become critically important for preserving NIM today. Slide 10 shows why we believe elevated prepayment rates may be here to stay rather than the short-term phenomenon. We have highlighted in the past that the opportunity to refinance has been increasing with many banks slowly stripping away credit overlays that were implemented in the crisis era. Data from Ellie Mae shows the up-tick in the percentage of loans approved for both purchases and refinances. In the FHA market in particular in May of 2015 only 57% of FHA loans were approved, but now that number has shot up to around 70%. So this maybe evidence that the credit box was loosening. And Slide 11 is another piece of data that challenges the continuing relevance of the wet blanket theory of prepayments. Mortgage industry employment is at a post-crisis high. While employment in this industry is still well below pre-crisis levels, it is well above 2010 levels. We have previously highlighted how technology is improving the efficiency of many servicers, business models have evolved, call centers from non-bank servicers have slowly been replacing brick-and-mortar establishments. These improvements have been met with additional staff to take advantage of them. So there are more mortgage industry employees chasing the refinancing business and technology has made each employee more efficient. Put that together and competition in the mortgage refinancing industry has gotten fiercer, we believe that this increased competition is part of the reason for the compression spreads between primary mortgage rates, which are the rates that borrowers are seeing and secondary mortgage rates, which are the yields that RMBS investors are getting. And it is this confluence of changes that lead us to believe that the mortgage universe can continue to prepay at elevated levels for some time. In such an environment, the benefits to owning specified pools with favorable prepayment characteristics should continue. We continue to like the Paratrade we have under long specified pools and short TBAs. The TBAs mitigate some of our negative convexity. We don’t even need large rate fluctuations to generate trading gains in an environment like this and our portfolio turnover was 24% for the quarter. Well, we just have done well in 2016 despite fundamental headwinds. Our interest rates are low, prepayment speeds are elevated and the mortgage industry continues to evolve in ways that should keep prepayment speeds this way as long as interest rates stay low. Despite this erosion in fundamentals, mortgages remain at relatively tight valuations. For this reason, we think it’s important to manage the portfolio with a large TBA hedge. By doing so, we better protect ourselves from spread widening, rate volatility and prepayment shocks and we decrease the volatility of our book value. Our asset selection process continues to provide us with predictable cash flows that we believe allow us to generate a strong net interest margin and a variety of rate regimes. Now, back to Larry.