Nader Tavakoli
Analyst · Odeon Capital. Your line is open
Good morning. Thank you, Abby, and thank you all for joining us for today's call. As we announced last evening, we had another successful quarter of executing against our strategic priorities in risk reduction and loss management while achieving strong earnings and significantly increasing investments in our insured securities. In addition, we turn the corner in our ongoing expense management efforts and saw the benefits of savings from recent headcount reductions and other expense management initiatives begin to positively affect our bottom line. We generated net income per diluted share of $2.22 and operating earnings per diluted share of $3.23 during the quarter. Our book value and adjusted book value now stand at $42.32 per share and $32.12 per share, respectively. David will take you through the specifics of the quarter's financial achievements in a moment, but let me briefly provide some color on key accomplishments. Risk reduction, we reduced our insured portfolio during the quarter by an additional $8 billion net par $86.4 billion. While the majority of this reduction resulted from calls and refundings in our public finance book, we’re increasingly engaged in proactive measures to calls policy cancellations or other risk reduction in both our high-grade as well as our adversely classified credits. Our adversely classified book is high-touch requiring our active workout and structuring expertise and in some cases, economic contribution to eliminate or commute the risk. Given the current rate environment, we were also being proactive in managing down our investment grade public finance book where we’ve been actively engaged in educating and encouraging borrowers to refinance and thereby relieve us of our policy obligations. It's worth noting that a substantial portion of our public finance book paid premiums at issuance and therefore we lose no revenue by de-risking these deals. All in, since emerging from bankruptcy, we’ve now paired our portfolio by a total of $110 billion or 56% including a 46% reduction in our adversely classified credits. We also had a very successful quarter in our investment book where we generated income of $91 million and produced an annualized total return of 7.4%. Additionally, we made investments totaling $287 million in our own short securities during the quarter. Our investments and our own obligations continue to be executed of deals considerably in excess of the accrual rates on our liabilities. Overall, our investment portfolio, including investments in our own obligations continues to perform very well. Moving forward, we will continue to strategically and selectively deploy capital in our own short securities working within the prescriptive limitations on such investments. All in, our asset liability management program has thus far produced well over $3 billion of discount capture for the benefit of our shareholders while our loss mitigation efforts have resulted in an even larger amount of avoided losses. Expense management, as I mentioned a moment ago, we began to see the benefits of our efforts to reduce expenses across the organization impact the bottom line as we have cycled past many of the costs related to those initiatives. While there's obviously not a linear relationship between expenses and the size of our insurance book going forward, expense management and the optimization of our operating platform will continue to be an area of substantial focus in order to ensure that we're controlling everything we can to maximize value for our shareholders as we continue to reduce AAC's book. I know you are all keen to hear an update on our litigation matters and I’d like to reemphasize that maximizing value for our shareholders through the enforcement of our legal rights continues to be an important value driver for Ambac. This is true both in our RMBS rep and warranty claims and in other areas where we believe there may be the potential for recoveries or loss avoidance. With respect to our RMBS cases against Bank of America and as we’ve talked about before, Judge Bransten issued favorable summary judgment decisions on primary and secondary liability in the fall of 2015 and those decisions are now on appeal. Hearings on those appeals are expected later this year or in the first quarter of 2017 thus while predicting the timing of litigation is always difficult, we are hopeful that the case will move to trial in the second half of 2017. As most of you are aware, this summer, the Special Deputy Commissioner, or SDC, held a listening session with policyholders during which he stated among other things that his objective is to seek and exit of the segregated accounts from rehabilitation. He also said that although his preferred goal would be to achieve an exit from rehabilitation through a consensual plan, he would advise the rehabilitator to use all tools available to accomplish a successful and durable exit that enhances Ambac Assurance’s long-term claims paying ability. We understand that the SDC has invited additional feedback from policyholders as he evaluates possible options relative to the segregated account. We're doing all we can to support the SDC in his determinations regarding a possible conclusion to the segregated account proceedings. It is important to bear in mind however that the terms, conditions and timing of a potential conclusion of the segregated account rehabilitation proceedings will ultimately be determined solely by the rehabilitator subject to the approval of the Rehabilitation Court. Turning now to Puerto Rico, we remain cautiously optimistic about recent developments. We believe PROMESA holds the tools for the Commonwealth to be returned to financial health and prosperity. Moreover, we believe the members of the oversight board will utilize those tools to bring sorely needed fiscal discipline and structural reform to the island. The board’s early actions demonstrate their commitment in this direction. As we have said previously, the separation of policy decisions from electoral politics and economically troubled governmental jurisdictions has a near-perfect record of success in the United States. I'm proud of Ambac's leadership on the issue of Puerto Rico’s future. Not just because it's important to Ambac and our stakeholders, but because I believe strongly that our interests are completely aligned with the long-term interest of the people of Puerto Rico. The 3.5 million American citizens that live on Puerto Rico deserve to have properly functioning government services, they need adequate and affordable healthcare, better roads and infrastructure and private sector jobs. All of this relies on transparency and consensual agreements with the island's existing and future creditors and investors; something we believe is top of mind for the oversight board. On October 13, Ambac and the Association of Financial Guaranty Insurers lead the Puerto Rico Revitalization Conference here in New York, which featured thought leaders from across the public and private sectors. Attendees saw detailed data demonstrating that Puerto Rico suffers liquidity and spending problem not a leverage or solvency problem. On the spending front, for example, Puerto Rico began its profitable [ph] deficit spending starting in the 1990, but it was still enjoying Section 936 related revenues. In the last 10 years for which figures are available, Puerto Rico continued this runaway spending increasing expenditures by 47% from 2004 till 2014. And in the latest five years, Puerto Rico has increased spending by another 10% despite the governor's claim of austerity. Even Detroit, not exactly a model of fiscal discipline, cut expenses by 20% in the five years prior to seeking to reduce its obligations via Chapter 9 in 2013. And what's worse is that very little of the spending in Puerto Rico has gone into infrastructure or in the real economy. Regarding Puerto Rico's leverage insolvency, attendees at our conference heard that Puerto Rico is far from overleveraged. While Mr. Padilla the outgoing governor and his advisors have claimed that Puerto Rico's debt service to revenue is 36%, the ratio is actually 15.6% when you include the revenue that should accompany included debt obligation and correct other fundamental flaws in the Commonwealth's calculations. Moreover, according to the fiscal year 2016 approved budget, the General Fund had a debt service to revenue ratio of 12.3%, well under the 20% that Moody’s considers as sustainable debt nor our Puerto Rico's residents overtaxed as tax collections as a percentage of GDP are 11% compared to 22% for the average U.S. state. Attendees at our conference also heard about numerous readily available measures [indiscernible] pursue including what we believe to be in excess of $3 billion that’s available annually from relatively low hanging fiscal improvements including better collections of existing taxes and expense reduction measures such as agency consolidations and centralized procurement. We believe the $3 billion opportunity is achievable without any substantial austerity measures and this sum would be more than sufficient to cover any reasonable budgetary gap including ongoing pension obligations. During the conference, Ricardo Rossello, the leading gubernatorial candidate in Puerto Rico joined us via video conference and spoke about his thoughts on the importance of working constructively with creditors to achieve long-term success. In his view that some of the debt related actions of the current administration are unlawful. We were very pleased that Mr. Rossello took the time to share his forward-looking vision with us. Finally, attendees heard that the federal government can do much more to help the people of Puerto Rico. For example, after enacting an oversight board in the District of Columbia in the mid-1990’s, Congress subsequently enacted a package of tax incentives to support sustainable growth using enterprise zones that included wage credits to employers, new homebuyer incentives and an increase in private activity bonds. Temporary employee tax reprieve would generate $620 per Puerto Rican employee annually and provide a meaningful tailwind for the island's economy. Finally, eliminating the disparity in Medicaid funding is essential given the challenges Puerto Rico's healthcare system is facing. The Medicaid matching rate for Puerto Rico is 55% while the maximum rate is 83% for many states, 70% for the District of Columbia. We highlighted these and other possible initiatives in Ambac's September 2 submission to the Congressional Task Force on Economic Growth in Puerto Rico in Washington DC led by Senator Hatch. The day after our revitalization conference Governor Padilla presented yet another version of his fiscal economic growth plans to the PROMESA oversight board. The outgoing governor's latest plan is yet another attempt by him and his advisors to distort Puerto Rico's true fiscal condition. The plans incredible assumption of revenue losses and continued increase expenses among many other flaws unfortunately continues the credibility gap that has prevented good faith conversations with the current governor and his advisors and has materially harmed Puerto Rico. We remain optimistic on Puerto Rico. We believe that with the new administration and the help of the oversight board, the Commonwealth will be able to surmount its current challenges, repay its obligations over time and return to growth. We look forward to working constructively with the oversight board and the new governor in resolving Puerto Rico’s liquidity issues and putting the island on a path to return to the capital market, growth and jobs in private sector, and long-term prosperity. As we approach the year end, I believe we’ve made great strides thus far this year in our strategic priority, including in liability management, loss mitigation, investment success, including in our own obligations the prosecution of our legal rights, the successful rehabilitation of the segregated account and expense management. To summarize a few of the highlights for the year-to-date, our overall risk exposure is down by $22 billion or 20% bringing our claims paying ratio to 15 to 1. We recovered nearly $1 billion in our RMBS litigation against JPMorgan and another $60 million in another RMBS related settlement and of course we continue the pursuit of our significant litigation against Bank of America as well as other possible claims. We continue to actively mitigate losses throughout the portfolio and take great pride in the leading position we’ve taken in the positive developments related to Puerto Rico’s financial condition. With regard to the ongoing rehabilitation of the segregated account, RMBS net par exposure is down thus far this year by 13% and student loan exposure has been reduced by another 38%. At the same time, our estimated gross expected future claims payments for RMBS have declined by 22% and for student loans by 46%. In addition, we purchased on the year thus far nearly $850 million at cost of AAC and segregated account in shorter issued securities. All at significant discounts and had yields well in excess of the average accretion of our liabilities. And of course we continue to support the rehabilitator in his ongoing determinations regarding the segregated account. Finally, we’ve made solid progress in our expense management efforts reducing ongoing operating expenses very significantly. All of this has contributed significantly in our ultimate goal of improving our claims paying ability for our policyholders and building book value for our shareholders. Through the first three quarters, book value is up $225 million or 13% and adjusted book value has increased by $330 million or 30% despite putting up a significant increase in our public finance reserves related predominately to our Puerto Rico related exposures. As important as these specific accomplishments what gives me confidence for the future is the heighted urgency and productivity with which our professionals are now approaching our asset liability management and risk reduction challenges. As we’ve elevated our activity and reduced headcount, our dedicated employees are being asked to work even harder and make even greater sacrifices than they have in the past. I am extremely grateful for their commitment and dedication. Our board also has been hard at work supporting me and the management team in all that we’ve achieved through the year and I thank each of them for their insight and dedication. And Of course, we very much appreciate the considerable support that we’ve continued to enjoy from our shareholders. While we recognize Ambac remains a somewhat complicated story, at our core we are an asset-liability management company whose principal mandate currently is managing down the large policy book at AAC accretively and efficiently and prudently deploying our assets in that process. Our large NOLs and tax receivable earnings from taxation and together with our expertise and other assets, provide for significant potential value creation in the future. I will now turn the call over to David Trick for a more detailed review of the financials.