Welcome to the AG Mortgage Investment Trust Second Quarter 2015 Earnings Call. My name is Eric and I will be your operator for today’s call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Karen Werbel. Karen, you may begin.

Thanks, Eric. Good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us for today’s conference call to review AG Mortgage Investment Trust’s second quarter 2015 results and recent developments. Joining me on today’s call are David Roberts, our Chief Executive Officer; Jonathan Lieberman, our Chief Investment Officer; and Brian Sigman, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to review our Safe Harbor statement. Today’s conference call and corresponding slide presentation contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All such statements are intended to be subject to the protection provided by the Reform Act. Statements regarding the following subjects are forward-looking statements by their nature: our business and investment strategy, market trends and risks, assumptions regarding interest rates and prepayments, changes in the yield curve and changes in government programs or regulations affecting our business. The company’s actual results may differ materially from those projected due to the impact of many factors beyond its control. All forward-looking statements included in this conference call and the slide presentation, are based on our beliefs and expectations as of today, August 6, 2015. Please note that information reported on today’s call speaks only as of today. And therefore, you are advised that time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate as of the time of any replay listening or transcript reading. Additional information concerning the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements are included in the Risk Factors section of the company’s periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Copies of the reports are available on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. Finally, we disclaim any obligation to update our forward-looking statements, unless required by law.

Thank you, Karen. It’s David Roberts. Good morning, everyone. In the second quarter of 2015, interest rates were volatile and higher. This had a negative impact on the value of our agency MBS portfolio. Our credit book, however, was stable and helped to mute the agency performance. Core earnings for the quarter approximated our dividend, which was $0.60 per share for the eighth consecutive quarter. Consistent with our business plan, our allocation to non-agency securities and value-added assets increased and we continue to leverage Angelo, Gordon’s multidiscipline investment platform. We continue to evaluate many opportunities from MITT sourced through the broader Angelo, Gordon network. These opportunities include both single asset investments as well as platforms focused on real estate-related asset classes. We are pleased also to announce that a wholly-owned subsidiary of MITT became a member of the FHLB of Cincinnati. Through the FHLB membership, MITT will benefit from having greater financial flexibility and enhanced liquidity management. With that, I will turn things over to Jonathan Lieberman, President and Chief Investment Officer of AG Mortgage Investment Trust.

Thank you, David. Good morning all of them. For the second quarter of 2015, capital markets proved challenging for investors to successfully navigate and hold on to favorable returns. The combination of global interest rate volatility, geopolitical instability, the renewed sell-off in commodities and the Greek debt crisis once again reemerging caused most capital markets to under-perform relative to their fundamentals. Modestly improved, but somewhat inconsistent U.S. economic data and lower-than-expected worldwide growth coupled with valuation concerns exacerbated investor uneasiness with capital markets. The combination of interest rate volatility that carried into the second quarter played pockets of the agency MBS sector. But unlike Q1 where the underperformance was not driven by concerns over increased prepayments that mostly affected our inverse IO and IO books, rather this was really a pure volatility of rates driven event and also concern over the increased supply due to positive housing seasonals that left underlying agency pass-throughs to bear the brunt of underperformance. On the credit side, credit RMBS, CMBS and ABS spreads were modestly wider. Trading volumes were rather light. CMBS and ABS struggled with heavy new issuance calendars. Volatility was increased just slightly in the mortgage credit markets. However, we do not think this is attributable to any change in the fundamental collateral performance. Delinquencies have declined and other remittance data has largely been range bound for some time. Despite the volatility higher rates resulted in greater confidence in prepayments fees as the MBA refinance index fell 35% during the second quarter. The backdrop of slower and more stable prepayments and a continued lack of supply in this sector should help mortgages ultimately find spread stability and realize their income profile. So moving on, with respect to MITT’s asset and financial performance, we distributed our eighth consecutive quarterly dividend of $0.60. MITT…

Thanks, Jonathan. In the second quarter, we reported core earnings of $18.6 million or $0.65 per fully diluted share versus $17.9 million or $0.63 per share in the prior quarter. At June 30, we had a positive $0.04 retrospective adjustment to our premium amortization on our agency portfolio. Stripping this out, core would have been $0.61. Overall, for the quarter, we reported a net loss available to common stockholders of $1.5 million or $0.05 per fully diluted share. The $0.65 of core earnings was offset by net and unrealized losses $0.71 per share. The $0.71 per share loss was primarily due to $0.61 of net realized and unrealized losses on our agency, secured and derivative portfolio, $0.10 of net realized and unrealized losses on the credit portfolio. At June 30, our book value was $19.21, a decrease of $0.66 or 3.3% from last quarter. This decrease is mostly attributable to the losses I previously mentioned mainly regarding the agency portfolio offset by the $0.05 core earnings that was in excess of our $0.60 common dividend. To give you a better sense of our current $3.2 billion portfolio, I would like to highlight a few more statistics. As described on Page 4 and 5 of our presentation, the portfolio at June 30, 2015 had a net interest margin of 2.68%. This was composed of an asset yield of 4.64% offset by repo and hedge cost of 1.14% and 0.64% respectively for the total cost of funds of 1.78%. Our net interest margin decreased mostly as a result of the removal of treasury long positions and the addition of some treasury short positions, which increased our cost of hedging. We do not have any forward starting swaps and therefore our swap costs do reflect the true cost of our swaps. On the funding side, we continue to be active. We are pleased to announce that a wholly owned sub of MITT has been accepted by the FHLB of Cincinnati. There will be significant potential benefit to this membership. Notably, greater financial flexibility due to access to reliable low-cost, flexible term, same day funding and we will now have diversified our counterparty risk with a AAA rated GSE execution as well as an alternative source of agency MBS financing. We plan on funding with the FHLB within the next couple of weeks. Our liquidity remains strong and at quarter end, we had total liquidity of $193 million composed of $74 million of cash, $53 million of un-levered agency hopeful securities and $66 million of un-levered agency IO securities. That concludes our prepared remarks and we would now like to open the call for questions. Operator?

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Trevor Cranston from JMP Securities. Trevor, please go ahead.

Hey, thanks. First question, I want to follow-up on your comments that the agency portfolio has kind of constrained your performance the last couple of quarters and that you plan to continue reducing exposure to the basis. Can you comment on how much room you have to take down the agency portfolio from here outright or is that something that’s going to really depend on being able to add other hopeful type assets to the balance sheet?

So, it’s Brian. We don’t give out specific amounts of cushion, but we do have some excess cushion on the 40 Act as it currently stands. And as Jonathan mentioned, we are actively looking at ways and different types of assets that satisfy the 40 Act, which would replace the current agency. So, we can do really both. We can bring down the agency and eat into some of our cushion as well as replace it with other 40 Act assets.

Okay, got it. And with respect to the FHLB membership, I think you said you are planning to access the funding within next couple of weeks, can you comment on kind of which part of the portfolio, you would be using that financing for currently. And also maybe comment on whether or not that financing kind of opens up any new asset classes that you might find attractive now that you hadn’t previously with street financing only available? Thanks.

Yes. I think at first you will see us probably in stores moving some of our agency securities over, the cost of financing is cheaper, so we are going to see probably a small pick up to core just from lower financing costs. And I think going forward we will see the ability to enter into some new spaces or finance some of our credit portfolio. We think that as Jonathan mentioned it just opens up a whole host of opportunities. Unfortunately we all know that there is I think say ruling that’s still out there. So I think we will have to proceed with some caution before getting into it too heavily and hopefully that will be the result during the next couple of months.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks.

And our next question comes from Mike Widner from KBW. Mike, please go ahead.

Hi, thanks. Good morning guys. So, let me follow-up on the new securitization I will say non-agency thing. Just wondering if you can talk a little bit more about that and in particular, I mean what’s different about this one that qualifies for more favorable 40 Act treatment. And is there – could you give us I guess shelf and a ticker sort of just to identify which one just seems like something new and different?

So, with respect to the actual securitization, the technology has been in existence for many, many years. We were able to negotiate the appropriate control rights as part of the documentation with respect to the loans that satisfy council and our accountants that we are actively involved in any sort of loss mitigation effort and that allowed us to treat the asset favorably as a whole pool of 40 Act for the securities that we have retained, purchased and the associated financing with respect to those assets. With respect to the shelf, it was off of a city shelf. And I don’t have the moniker, but we could follow up with you on the actual ticker.

Okay, got it. I appreciate that. And so just to be clear then, so it’s – due this you have to have sort of controlling interest and then if that’s the – if I understand that right and then I guess my question would be then do you have to consolidate for GAAP purposes the whole thing on your balance sheet or just report it just kind of – just the equity piece?

Yes. In this case and every case really it is if you look at it on its own, but in this case we do not have to consolidate on the GAAP balance sheet.

Okay. So there is no relationship between whether it’s considered a qualifying asset…?

No.

Okay.

I mean, some of the features overlap, so you have to look at all of them. But in this case it wasn’t the control that we have received that we needed for 40 Act purposes, do not force us to consolidate for GAAP which is also nice.

Yes, that’s handy. And then I guess not to belabor the topic or the question because it’s relatively small asset, but I mean this is something you needed to do, like this isn’t something you could go out and do aftermarket and just go out and buy it, it sounds like it’s something you had to do sort of upfront to make sure that provisions were made in the securitization so that you had controller or could you do this on an ongoing basis by just being selective about sort of which parts of it you purchase if that question makes sense?

It has to be done at an inception of a securitization and it has to be documented in the original PPM or prospectus.

Got it.

As well as be incorporated into the indenture for the legal governance.

Got it. So, it’s a non-trivial exercise. So, I mean would you envision being able to do a lot more of this or is it sort of kind of something that will happen periodically on kind of an ad-hoc basis?

Our expectation is that we will – we will hopefully do more of it, it is ad-hoc and we see the right collateral packages. We do control some assets currently in MITT that will ultimately be restructured potentially in a manner that gives us good 40 Act as we collapse potentially as some securitizations or some assets that we may be able to procure.

Excellent. Well, thank you guys. I appreciate the comments as always.

[Operator Instructions]

Okay. Well, thank you very much for joining us and we look forward to speaking to you next quarter. I am sorry there is another question.

Our next question comes from Douglas Harter from Credit Suisse. Douglas please go ahead.

Thanks for taking the question. In the past you guys have invested in ABS, given what’s going on in the student loan ABS market is that an opportunity for you guys?

Yes. We have invested ABS and I believe in the first quarter we did out a little bit of ABS in the consumer space. We are typically investing in the more subordinated securities. The yielder parts of the capital structure. In the case of student loans, a lot of the dislocations occurring in the senior bonds in the AAA or the AA securities and they are moving from let’s say LIBOR 40 to LIBOR plus 125 and unfortunately just not yielding enough and not enough to stress at least at this point in time for that asset class and for those specific positions to be attractive and to be beneficial for MITT.

Great. Thank you.

And we have no further questions at this time.

Alright. At the risk of interrupting anyone, I again will say thank you very much for joining us. We look forward to seeing you next quarter and wish everyone a good rest of the summer. Thank you.