Earnings Labs

Starwood Property Trust, Inc. (STWD)

Q4 2013 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 26, 2014

$18.09

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Starwood Property Trust's Fourth Quarter 2013 Earnings Conference Call. All lines are now in a listen-only mode. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I’d like to turn the conference over to Mr. Andrew Sossen, Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel. Please go ahead, sir.

Andrew J. Sossen

Management

Thank you, operator and good morning, and welcome everyone to Starwood Property Trust's earnings call. This morning, the company released its financial results for the quarter and year ended December 31, 2013, filed its Form 10-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and posted its earnings supplement to its website. These documents are all available on the Investor Relations section of the company’s website at www.starwoodpropertytrust.com. Before the call begins, I would like to remind everyone that certain statements made in the course of this call are not based on historical information and may constitute forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs and are subject to a number of trends and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. I refer you to the company's filings made with the SEC for a more detailed discussion of the risks and factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements made today. The company undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statements that may be made during the course of this call. Additionally, certain non-GAAP financial measures will be discussed on this conference call. Our presentation of this information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable measures prepared in accordance with GAAP can be accessed through our filings with the SEC at www.sec.gov. Joining me on the call today are Barry Sternlicht, the company's Chief Executive Officer; Stew Ward, the company’s Chief Financial Officer; Boyd Fellows, the company’s President; Cory Olson, the President of LNR and Rina Paniry, the CFO of LNR. With that, now I’m going to turn the call over to Stew.

Stew Ward

Management

Thank you, Andrew, and good morning. This is Stew Ward, the Chief Financial Officer of Starwood Property Trust. This morning, I’ll be reviewing Starwood Property Trust's results for 2013 fourth quarter and full year and our initial guidance for 2014. I will also discuss the performance of each of our three business segments, our traditional lending business, LNR and a Single-Family Residential business. Following my comments, Barry will discuss market conditions, the state of our business and the opportunities we would be looking forward. For the fourth quarter, we reported core earnings of $121.2 million or $0.62 per fully diluted share, an increase of 29% when compared to core earnings of $64.5 million or $0.48 per diluted share in the fourth quarter of 2012. For 2013 core earnings per diluted share increased 12.6%, $2.24 before LNR acquisition cost of $0.13 per diluted share. The primary drivers behind this earnings growth by the acquisition of LNR and a deployment of $3.8 billion in new investments during the year. These figures were also reflected of operating losses for the quarter and full-year of $0.01 and $0.08 respectively per diluted share in our single-family residential business. GAAP net income for the fourth quarter of 2013 totaled $95 million or $0.48 per fully diluted share, which compares to GAAP net income of $56.3 million or $0.42 per diluted share in the fourth quarter of 2012. In addition to our improved operating performance, we also committed over $2 billion in new investments in the fourth quarter. In the last two months, we have also upsized re-priced and extended both of our primary secured financing facility, adding an aggregate $550 million an additional capacity at best in market terms. Another item I wanted to point out with that, in Q4, we completed the successful integration of…

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

Thanks Stew. As you just said to the comments for the long and details, we hope to answer lot of questions that you might have about the company today. I think I’ll start off by saying that it’s a very good year and it’s a really transformative year. We did over $4 billion – $4.7 million of loan origination reported through transaction averaging over a $100 million of loan. There is no question the company has become behind a very dedicated team, a well-known player in the commercial real estate finance market in the United States and more recently in Europe. It also I think obviously was a transformative year because this is a year we converted from just being a mortgage book or a pool of mortgages to really being more of a finance company. And that was led of course with the acquisition and the integration of LNR into STWD. I want to take a moment to thank all the people that work together globally collaboratively with maximum productivity, utilizing all of our global banking relationships, sourcing underwriting and effectively cost innovative ideas taken to task every investment we made both in the LNR platform and in Starwood book because I think it’s really the cross-pollination and best practices with all these people that have led the company to be a market leader and actually position it to sell in the future. I think we have a lot of experienced people here looking in sliding up and down, the depth fact looking at the proper pricing, debating, sizing, choosing between different borrowers, and you will see that in the coupon, but when you’re lending to people like Mike Milk in high networks family, firms like Blackstone or Colony or any of the many people we lend money to…

Cory Olson

President

That’s correct. That’s correct.

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

And behind the platform, buying additional servicing strip, buying the pieces, investing in one of the piece of the paper was their insight knowledge of the markets and their activities. We continue to work with them on finding new ways to deploy capital and very advantageous ways. Ways Starwood Capital can ever do, for example we don’t have the trading desk here to trade CMBS. We don’t even know what they look like and we don’t [indiscernible]. Stew also mentioned but the integration of LNR, which was led by a teams from both companies from STWD and SCG help and then Cory and his teams helped seamlessly. and today, I think we’ve got a streamlined asset management function accounting, reporting and that’s going to make my life, Boyd’s life, Stew’s life and Rina’s life much easier, maybe even Andrew’s life too. And then in the transformative way, I think we have like six new businesses. We want to add more businesses, but one business we did separate was our residential business and we completed that spinoff as mentioned at January 31st. It was an excellent transaction for the STWD shareholders where they choose to stay in this way stock we sell it, move on. I believe we have created a state-of-the-art company and went hopefully when the company does proper road show in the future going to raise capital, more shareholders will see the technology backbone that is unique to Starwood way point, the 550 and growing dedicated assets they have to that business. and the opportunity I think which is long-term that create real value for shareholders both in the fee business owning, buying houses, renovating them and renting them and in the NTL business, which is a big portion of what they do also buying loans, adjust loans…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) And we’ll take our first question from Dan Altscher with FBR. Daniel K. Altscher – FBR Capital Markets & Co.: Hey, thanks good morning everyone. And it looks like a very, very strong quarter. I was wondering if you could help maybe bridge the gap here on leverage. I think the philosophy is really then not to be a over leveraged vehicle, equity like returns with equity like financing in some cases or sales [indiscernible]. The same time it looks like you’ve taken up some leverage on the term-loan and some other repurchased facilities. Could you maybe just help us get sense there, is there a change in philosophy or is a kind of just the functional where the business is going.

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst · FBR

I think we just leveraged out. I think we increased the line capacity. Daniel K. Altscher – FBR Capital Markets & Co.: All right.

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst · FBR

If you think about, as I mentioned in my script and Barry mentioned as well, our basic, in the lending segment our basic business plan is to hold a wide spot of the capital structure in a first mortgage transaction. The first mortgage, the leverage can be either on balance sheet or off balance sheet. A-note sales would constitute off balance sheet leverage, they wouldn’t show up on our balance sheet where as if we replicated the exact same risk position and utilize the same leverage but with one of our warehouse facility on balance sheet leverage, so leverage that, it appeared in the financial statements would go up. We optimize the use of on and off balance sheet leverage, but within the context for that same basic message. Now, historically we’ve been reasonably stable but nonetheless for example in 2013 we took advantage of access to the convert market at very attractive pricing to create a leverage bucket, a $1 billion worth of what is on balance sheet leverage if we conceptually attribute to other loans. We in a lot of cases, we could have laid, we could have manufactured comparable leverage with A-note sales, but the execution and the converts were so strong, it gives us an on balance version of the exact same thing. But it is all within the theme of that business, our basic business plan which is to originally call in a first mortgage [indiscernible] and the layoff is 0% to 45% either with directly on balance sheet with a financing facility were with term debt or through the asset sale, an A-note sale. Daniel K. Altscher – FBR Capital Markets & Co.: Okay, thanks for that. And Stew, in your guidance range, can you maybe just help us all out a little bit. What type of capital needs are being considered there if any, and then also is there any impacts on the converts now I guess being in the money?

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

Capital need, I’m not sure… Daniel K. Altscher – FBR Capital Markets & Co.: I guess what I mean if there a assumption for more permanent capital that’s baked within the guidance i.e. I know there are convert for instance or common equity or the like…

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

That’s going to rebalance that enough for you we are going to balance between equity issuance convert sale of paper. Me mentioned talk to the CMBS you will see itself the CMBS going forward some of these CMBS are yielding now yielding 13 within 6. So, I will sell that rather than come back to the equity market for that. We try to balance all that. I think it’s the long game and as you know we aligned with everybody. We have a big shareholding ourselves in the company here. So, we have recognized that and we offset that against building our equity base, which allows us to do these things and talked about in Europe, which we need to do and the bigger we are they are more likely the company can get better and better credit facilities. To convert obviously they are in the money, I think they are all in the money. So, some half chosen to do so, but not material announced yet, but perhaps they will and the dividend goes up and made decisive pay the dividend from the common and then convert. But usually that’s been involved in some arbitrage trade by some people. I don’t understand what they do. So, I can’t speak to that. I don’t know. But you do have as lovely to convert money I’m happy that we are definitely placed great source of capital for us not to lose the shareholder [indiscernible] at the time cheap financing. Daniel K. Altscher – FBR Capital Markets & Co.: Convert there in the money all right good problem to have per se. And then just one final one also. You have seen some other players maybe on the special servicing side and maybe the distressed assets like CW do large auctions of assets. Do you get the sense of maybe they or others are trying to pull back maybe a little bit in the market there and maybe there is opportunity to pick up share for you guys or there is a kind of quarterly rotation in terms of like market share that’s going on.

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

I think that different firms – there are three firms that basically dominate the space. I think there are using different strategies and why they are chose to do both sale, we can speculate. They might have been losing control of those stress and decided to do it all at once. So I do think that we are running of well we are hopeful it will be a long-term business and I think some of the guys maybe do some trade and it’s been very special trade there. That’s why we are investing more capital in that business lines today than they are and really referring this to TW.

Andrew J. Sossen

Management

Right and Dan I think LNR is the only major special service actively participating in the new issue BP’s market so to Barry’s point and Stew’s points in the script we are playing for the cycle if you will. Daniel K. Altscher – FBR Capital Markets & Co.: Got it. Thanks for the answers everyone.

Operator

Operator

And we will now go to Kenneth Bruce with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Kenneth M. Bruce – Bank of America Merrill Lynch: Thanks. Good morning. Quick question for you. Just a follow-up on Dan’s maybe just ask the question slightly differently. Does your guidance include the converts being converted or does it not include those?

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

No. Kenneth M. Bruce – Bank of America Merrill Lynch: Okay. Barry, you mentioned in your prepared remarks, essentially the dividend yield being around 8%, and that’s on a relative basis is very high. What do you think is required to get the market to rerate Starwood Property Trust? Do you think it’s something that first of all that you all can do? You’ve been around the markets a lot Barry, in particular. what do you think is necessary to get the stock rerated at this point?

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

A couple of things and we’re going to build up our IR – I can say IR effort, which probably haven’t done as much, we’ve been so busy, we’re hiring dedicated athletes to do that and talk. We need more retail participation in the stock. I think surprisingly, we’re still pretty institutionally held stock. I thought over time that would risk retail, mostly because when we have done secondary to our add-on offering, they’ve gone institution, we’re stepped up above in the scale, so that the banks are not pushing down the retail channel and to understand they’ve done well, surprises the academy. More as you look at HPT for example, has held almost small retail, and it’s not very main institutions in the trade, only well inside of our dividend and the average REIT is what 3% dividend yield. So, it’s funny when you get – we look at this all the time if you’re obviously, buying equities and their institutions are looking for eight IRRs owning assets with more current or something like that, we’re all going through better than that, not the equity risk right there at 65%. Why we’re interested? Why the debt? But it’s a funny thing, because if you have view of inflation saying low, it’s probably it’s the case at the moment, then the debt book is really compelling and frankly, real estate correlations inflation is probably overexaggerated, certainly asset class will be okay, but others won’t. I don’t know the answer to that, floating rate base we kind of like interest rate to go up. But mostly on that any time it’s being looked like. I think and Ladder went public during the quarter. We look a lot like Ladder through assets like, we just look like Ladder. The trading has a pretty good number, pretty good multiple of the business. You can share – you share we’re going to keep looking at ways and enhance shareholder value. Kenneth M. Bruce – Bank of America Merrill Lynch: Yes, I mean you’ve done a good job of creating shareholder value. You can look at the stock where it’s trading today and it’s almost trading essentially at the fair market value for the – for your portfolio based on kind of yields and where other things at similar risk or higher risk of trading in the market. So the LNR business seems to be almost coming along for free, because do you think it’s just a matter of being able to demonstrate over time, the performance of the different LNR businesses and partially grow them you talked about that without much detail, but I mean it’s just a matter of showing some persistency in the market?

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

Kenneth M. Bruce – Bank of America Merrill Lynch: All right. Okay and just lastly. There has been a lot of debate in the market as to how competitive the commercial lending markets are becoming and whether they being gateway or non-gateway cities. Is there anything from your advantage point that suggest that things are grinding meaningfully tighter, I mean you can see that there is opportunities in Europe and you have begun to explore those more aggressively, you’ve kind of gotten into transactions that others cannot, I mean it’s just a matter of finding these pockets of value where others are chasing down yield or any color on that side would be helpful.

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

Okay. The current markets are wide open, they are there in the city. I mean there is lot of competition for credit today and there is –we can count on any kind of lenders there are a lot of them. You went into the market share of trillions of dollars and you won’t win every deal. And we actually talk about it as Boyd said we got 25 basis points to get this deal, let's pass on this when we got this other one. We are large but we are not that large and then things were nothing. So we pick and choose, what we choose to chase and sometimes we’ll partner with other people that were bidding the same loan when you do that and the deal is closed, now that we hope to get closed, one of our, you call him a competitor. But I think, it’s always been the case since we started that as we told you four years ago that we can’t win a 50% LTV loan that a wise company bids through today’s deal, but this is probably our third or fourth ebb and flow of the capital market since the IPOs, that those markets got really tied and they gaped out and they got tied. At one point, if you remember the conduit operation that was over a year and a half ago, the credit markets blew up. Right now you're in a pretty aggressive period. I am worried about underwriting standards that is for sure we see it in our equity deals. We see the closer we get and we see the spreads were offered. And you just worry of [indiscernible], so its just part of my DNA. But I do think capitals come back to Europe at a ferocious pace. And…

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

I think funny thing you have people like Wells they compete head-to-head with us and finance us and Blackstone probably Colony. So, it’s kind of a funny thing. When we win a deal against the Wells because we are sooner and better looking and we will take whatever and do whatever it take legally. They call us in the finance. They already underwrote the notes and that happens all the time. So, it’s a funny situation actually. We won’t bid a deal, we know that Wells is going to win it, they have want to buy it. They are going to be really tight. We don't bother quoting it. So, it’s kind of fascinating. Kenneth M. Bruce – Bank of America Merrill Lynch: Well, you have had for your history your picking your spots very well. So, congratulations on the good quarter. Thank you for all your comments.

Operator

Operator

And we will now go to Joel Houck with Wells Fargo. Joel J. Houck – Wells Fargo Securities LLC: Thanks. Just wanted to echo my congratulations on a really good year, obviously it was a tough year for mortgage REIT, but you guys really stood out. I guess first the question is, if you look back in 2013 you see kind of a full-year at least in your disclosures on page 21, it looks like the real estate investment lending was about two-thirds of net income and LNR is about a third. In the guidance of 200 to 220, can you give us a sense for what you guys are thinking in terms of the relative contribution of the lending segment versus LNR because I think obviously we still I think we have more certainty and more confidence forecast in lending segment in LNR is a little trickier forecast?

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

Our forecast is pretty consistent. I would expect maybe slightly more lending side really depends on the page origination in the back half of the year, it is hard to tell, but it’s not easy to know. The loans that we are making today some of them large, really large and that number could to be 80/20. We don’t really know. Especially if we talk doing like selling the CMBS position and redeploying the capital and other businesses we did a lot of I don’t know Cory how many you passed on, how many bid, how many did you win on the three pieces?

Cory Olson

President

We bid something like 25 transactions last year, which would be underwriting several thousand loans and we participated in eight deals in one fashion either is the sole [indiscernible] or partnering with someone else.

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

How many you have been choosing partners showing up there?

Cory Olson

President

It would probably another 15 or 20 that we didn’t even bid on.

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

For various collateral concern reason. So again we are picking shoes and we are not actually in charge of the pace of those deals. That’s where the credit market. So, it’s a best guess. Joel J. Houck – Wells Fargo Securities LLC: Okay, but certainly the fulcrum of leverage would seem to be on the real estate lending side based on market conditions and how aggressive or lack of aggressive you are going to see I guess is that fair way to look at it or think about it.

Stew Ward

Management

Kind of safety.

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

We’ll tell you, we don't at the moment, expect 15 from LNR, that’s much different than 2014. Joel J. Houck – Wells Fargo Securities LLC: Okay. That’s helpful.

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

And we will tell you this 2014, we are projecting down 2013, but you only saw 2013 for about nine months. Joel J. Houck – Wells Fargo Securities LLC: Yes.

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

So now, we could be wrong, it could be up. We beat our budgets fairly handily last year with LNR. so we don’t really know, but so far positive surprises are good. Joel J. Houck – Wells Fargo Securities LLC: In fact I’d have another one. Do you disclose or talk about gain on sales margins you saw it’s in the kind of lending business and what maybe – what’s reasonable run rate going forward?

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

He said 2% to 3% is more reasonable as a run rate. Joel J. Houck – Wells Fargo Securities LLC: Okay, all right. And then, okay – could you maybe just…

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

What’s been amending on that. Cory, how many securitizations did our team participate in, how many, where they do 10 deals?

Cory Olson

President

We’ve got 10 done last year and should do a dozen this year.

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

So, we’re not going on wild by the way, I mean we are at a level we’re comfortable at, more accurately the guy running this group which is Cory and me is comfortable doing. We said hey, this is a problem, we do more. I think like no, can’t do more, got to do this in style. So, you can add a little bit of scale, but he is not doubling and tripling his size, probably going to go up 30% or so. Because margins go down and we’re probably – well, we expect churn there I guess. Joel J. Houck – Wells Fargo Securities LLC: Okay, all right. Thank you very much guys.

Operator

Operator

And we will now go to Jade Rahmani with KBW. Jade J. Rahmani – Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Great, thank you for taking the question. On the [indiscernible] lending segment, both of the growth in the core portfolio was in the first mortgage segment. With that quarter end, I think was one times leverage. Is that a function of the whole loan originations on development deals are doing? And also can you talk to whether this category, if you expect to retain all of it or there’s potential for the sale of A notes within that category and also the first mortgage category includes B notes?

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

Yes, yes and yes. So yes, when we’re originating a loan and it let’s say our senior loans, we anticipate as we fund and we would like our coupon on our first mortgage. There is no leverage against it, as it’s funded, we will go out and selling A note down the road dramatically enhance the yield on the first, dramatically. So that is the strategy behind many of those loans and it may possible through these of leverage, maybe it’s corporate leverage and also, because the way we structured the deals, I know we’re able to get three live coupons on the first that’s been a pretty good in of it themselves. And that’s why you see that leverage of one to one, supposed to two to one or…

Stew Ward

Management

Absolutely been there.

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

The business mix, and it’s a little tricky again, because we do think about attributing converts as we leverage against certain investment that we have in the balance sheet. We’re going to have to rethink that. Jade J. Rahmani – Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: That’s the first mortgage category…

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

First. Jade J. Rahmani – Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Sorry that’s the first mortgage category includes B notes or those in subordinate mortgages?

Stew Ward

Management

Those are in subordinate mortgage? Jade J. Rahmani – Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Okay. The press release noted your thoughts on further diversifying the business, and I want to see, if you can provide any additional color on that, I mean you have mentioned triple net lease in the past, which you’ve looked and I wonder what you’re thinking on that side?

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

We won’t see balance on that. I mean tripling, it was a business we looked at and I’ll reiterate the reason we haven't done it is that our conservative nature. So, triple net lease is a bond, if we do think interest rates are going up, we are going to be in trouble. If you – most of those, I’ll say the 10-year lease, you may have a 10-year loan again, that’s fully amortizing. So even though you have a decent cash and cash yields on the equity, you have no cash, because all of your cash is going to pay down the senior, the building will be empty in 10 years, right. And so we have no cash to pay the divined. We’ll be borrowing into the theoretical residual to pay you a dividend. That’s what – and for us about the single-family triple net lease business. Isn’t that you could have a corporate facility IO, no problem, but most of these portfolios like the LSG, which we look I know you talk about cap lease, great credits off, but the outstanding debt, I just don't want to do that, I don’t want to pay a dividend out of – because all the cash is going to pay off to pay down the senior to amortize the debt, which usually matches lease term. So we’ve not done it and we’ve looked and we know we presented with a zillion of different deals, some of which have gone public on their own, but we’ve chosen to be conservative on that matter at least. Jade J. Rahmani – Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Any other businesses sort of business types that you’d look at, I mean I assume your properties.

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

There are types of financing that we’d like to be involved with. But Board and the team, we have to figure out that’s how we're going to execute in these lines of businesses, but we don’t want to talk about it. Jade J. Rahmani – Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Okay. And lastly, the comment in the press release that leveraging LNR’s infrastructure to run Starwood’s day-to-day operations that that was interesting. I mean that is periodically asked me about whether you might think about potential internalization of management, and I’m curious if you could offer any comments on that?

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

Something that we’re thinking about at the moment, I think what you’re seeing is, you do as more back of the house than front of the house, obviously. And we have a team, 40 people by triple lower head in Europe and there is no single employee of REIT Europe at the moment other than there are other [indiscernible] people. So, other stuff we are originating Europe is done to our management essentially over head, we hired the head of that from BNP Paribas, I think it is, Peter Denton who is just depending on the [indiscernible] or hirers when they can do that group in Europe. So we are expanding the overhead certain places like Europe. We are focused by the way is mostly England UK. You can see us broaden that out and probably there are some countries and the continent we won’t lend in. So we are not much friendly to lenders. So we won’t do that. You won’t see us there. But it has a Prime Minister has [indiscernible] country that is, just like I have recently that. This is what happens when the call goes over a lot of time. Jade J. Rahmani – Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Actually I have two quick just technical ones. One is on the 701 Seventh Avenue, you said 20% of the equity, is that relative to the refi recap you did or the original size of the loan or the parameters that could provide?

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

Taking place, so it was part of the original loan most refi is taking place. And the deal – the reason the deal was refi-ed was built the additional hotels, which they Marian provided; I don’t know what he said about that. But that – there is a guaranty in place that facilitates that construction of that hotel and it really interesting case in point; I built the W across the street. I know exactly even today I know what it makes. and so I know what I mean when we built it and I know exactly what the totals make. More or less, I’m borrowing a worldwide something that’s happening. But I know what it cost to build, I know it’s literally not a 1000 piece from here. And frankly, this is going to be a damn good hotel point of view [ph]. But it’s really going to be much better [indiscernible] any common area, kind of common area. If you look at the building today, the top of the building will be the lobby of addition hotel, which will rise from the existing building, something like 40 floors or something. It’s going to be fantastic and that is the best hotel submarket in the past. Times Square because full on weekend you get the foreign travelers and everybody wants to stay in Times Square. Jade J. Rahmani – Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Great. I appreciate the color. Thank you very much.

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

Yes.

Operator

Operator

And we’ll take our last question from Don Fandetti with Citi. Donald Fandetti – Citigroup Global Markets Inc.: Just curious this pause, if you look at the special servicing business, would you ever make another acquisition there. It’s kind of a scale business are we seeing kind of what you need in that business. And then secondarily if you could just talk a little bit more about the competitive landscape in your lending business?

Andrew J. Sossen

Management

In the lending business? Donald Fandetti – Citigroup Global Markets Inc.: Yes, just with spread lending business, so two separate question.

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

I’ll take the first one. I mean obviously everybody looks at everybody in our business, taxable business and our servicing business is taxable to everyone, we own them. LNR it is funny mentioned the $250 million or $230 million something is the value with the service there. As I mentioned it’s hard to value. So, I’m not sure everybody agrees on the valuations of these thing. As far as the competitive landscape, just name anyone and they probably are competing against the, anyone we can think whether it’s the money center bank, the big bank, so Deutsche Bank, or your bank or Wells, who is on the call or if you view a balance sheet of Goldman Sachs, what it is, it is get a re-partner and we compete, and all the above. And then you have the public companies. We don’t see much of too smaller guys in the lending business in case. The case where we see Colony, don’t really see much of Apollo. I shouldn’t say that they are quite active in Europe, but through their insurance company. I think it is… Donald Fandetti – Citigroup Global Markets Inc.: And then as you look at guidance into 2014 on the lending business, do you assume any spread compression and if you do, do you just sort of offset that with lower financing cost and more leverage to where sort of the levered returns or ROEs are pretty static today into 2014.

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

Pretty comfortable or…

Cory Olson

President

Yes. The levels where we’re doing, what we think we can do.

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

We can’t quote the number, because we’ve wobble based on the quality of what we’re doing, right. I mean we’re not cow boys we’re not doing 92% of LTVs and but the guys take out take out. I’m not doing dividend recap and the guys take out 100 million upfront, but it will change. I mean in the office building, Manhattan towards the office building, can it get a different quote from us and that office building in Bismarck, North Dakota, which quite booming in this month.

Cory Olson

President

And to that point in my remarks, I think I gave you a range. I said that given that with our basic again that kind of that business model of 45% to 65% retention, we’re sort of targeting the various points wide range, but in the low 9% to 12% after manufacturing and leverage and all of that other stuff on what we target as the retention as the portion that we’re using the equity capital, your shareholders’ money to invest in and it’s absolutely a functional of the attributes of the transaction; the market sponsors all I can.

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst · Citi

I’d like to mention that LIBOR plus – it’s still LIBOR-based 9 to 12 with the floating rate.

Stew Ward

Management

That’s the reason that.

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

Very dependent. Donald Fandetti – Citigroup Global Markets Inc.: Excellent, okay, thank you.

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

That’s why we want to keep it. [Multiple Speakers]

Stew Ward

Management

I don’t think you did the jobs where you will follow, be it MTA and then you’ve seen the book five in a quarter, 475 LIBOR or 50, you can see the same kind of like more competitive with those guys they’re compared with us. And they were all and sometimes we choose like something about the deal they may like it and vice versa.

Barry S. Sternlicht

Management

All right. Thank you very much for being here today and we [indiscernible] call. Thank you for being with us today.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s conference. we thank you for your participation.