Craig Knutson
Analyst · Doug Herter with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead
Thank you, Hal. Good morning, everyone. I’d like to welcome you to MFA’s first quarter 2018 financial results webcast. With me today are Steve Yarad, CFO; Gudmundur Kristjansson, Senior Vice President; Bryan Wulfsohn, Senior Vice President; and other members of senior management. We are pleased with both MFA’s financial results and our investment activity in the first quarter of 2018. Our investment portfolio centered largely around residential mortgage credit assets, continues to produce attractive results while maintaining stable book value. MFA’s muted interest rate sensitivity coupled with our low leverage multiple provide these returns with a much lower risk profile than our peers. We experienced unprecedented run-off of residential mortgage credit assets during 2017, which challenged us to reinvest this capital. Our investment team spent considerable time and effort last year looking new counterparties and establishing relationships in order to source low volume. These efforts are bearing fruit as we have been able to acquire significant size in both Q4 of 2017 and Q1 of 2018. MFA’s reputation as a reliable buyer of credit sensitive loans has enabled us to purchase pools of whole loans, including in some cases, transactions with limited competition, at the same time, we continue to analyze new investment opportunities. As we have demonstrated over many years, MFA has the intellectual capacity to understand, evaluate and price assets that are difficult to value initially with legacy non-agency RMBS in 2008 and 2009 then with non-rated RPL/NPL securities in 2013, followed by CRT and credit sensitive home loans and most recently, with MSR-related assets, we’ve earned a reputation as an early mover with a sizable appetite. Please turn to Page 3. We generated earnings per share of $0.20 in the first quarter, which was down from the fourth quarter of 2017, as prices of CRT securities in the first quarter were flat after rising to all-time tight levels in Q4 last year when they recovered from hurricane-related declines in the third quarter. Our book value declined slightly in the first quarter to $7.62 per share, due primarily to our investment strategy coupled with low levels of leverage, MFA’s book value has been very stable with less than a 2% variance between high and low book value for the last six quarters and a quarter-over-quarter average variance of less than 1%. While 2017 was generally a benign period for book values, the first quarter of 2018 was not. And MFA’s strategy insulated shareholders from the sharp book value deterioration experienced by much of the sector. Our new investments exceeded our run-off in the first quarter of 2018 by approximately $117 million. We paid common shareholders a $0.20 dividend for the first quarter of 2018, the 18th consecutive quarter in which we have paid $0.20. And finally, our estimated undistributed taxable income at March 31, 2018 was $0.10 per share. Please turn to Page 4. MFA’s residential mortgage credit investment strategy continues to provide attractive returns, as strong credit fundamentals drive earnings and book value. Residential mortgage credit assets now comprise over 70% of MFA’s total assets and nearly 90% of our equity allocation. Residential home loans, including REO now represent MFA’s largest asset class at $2.8 billion, with over $1 billion of equity allocated to this asset class. Additionally, and Bryan will elaborate further later on in the presentation, we have committed significant resources to our asset management effort. We recognize that by immersing ourselves in the complicated and sometimes messy details of managing credit sensitive loans that we can achieve better outcomes and improved returns. As good as our third-party services are, there is a tangible benefit to direct oversight and involvement in decision-making. And finally, our legacy non-agency portfolio continues to perform well and contribute materially to our financial results generating a yield in the first quarter of 9.44%. Please turn to Page 5. We continue to focus primarily on credit sensitive residential mortgage assets. The credit assets we have acquired are generating good returns tend to be short-term in nature and therefore, have less interest rate sensitivity. Many of our assets were purchased at a discount, so they actually benefit from increases in prepayment rates. Investor expectations of improved economic growth have positively impacted credit sensitive assets as have continued home price appreciation and repaired borrower credit profiles. While these trends are positive for the assets we own, the resulting higher market pricing makes new investing more challenging by altering risk return profiles. We have maintained pricing discipline, while continuously reevaluating our existing asset classes, as well as exploring new opportunities. We believe that the likelihood of market uncertainty and potential asset price disruptions is materially higher this year than it was in 2017. Our investment strategy of focusing on shorter-term assets with more sensitivity to credit than to interest rates is designed to preserve book value, while still producing attractive returns, because MFA has lower leverage less interest rate sensitivity and reduced prepayment sensitivity than other similar companies, our returns are achieved with materially less risk. We look forward to continue – we look to continue to expand our investment opportunity set within the residential mortgage space, focusing primarily on credit and utilizing the same disciplined approach to risk reward as we have done historically. Furthermore, our substantial liquidity together with our low level of leverage provides us with significant dry powder to take advantage of spread widening and/or other market opportunities that arise, whether in credit or in rates. Please turn to Page 6. We were able to purchase over $700 million of assets in the first quarter, including a little over $500 million of residential whole loans. Our portfolio acquisitions exceeded run-off by almost $120 million and we deployed approximately $160 million of incremental capital during the quarter, as our incremental investment assets utilize less leverage than the assets that ran off. And the efforts of our asset management team has had a meaningful impact on the outcomes in returns of our existing credit sensitive whole loan assets. And now I’ll turn the call over to Stevie Yarad, who will provide further details on the financial results for the first quarter.