Ellington Credit Company

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Ellington Residential Mortgage Rate 2022 First Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, all participants have been placed on the listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for your questions following the presentation. If you'd like to ask a question at that time, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. At any time, if your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing the pound key. Lastly, if you should require operator assistance, please press star 1. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Jason Frank, Deputy General Counsel and Secretary. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you, and welcome to Ellington Residential's first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that certain statements made during this conference call may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are not historical in nature. As described under Item 1A of our annual report on Form 10-K, forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause the company's actual results to differ from its beliefs, expectations, estimates, and projections. Consequently, you should not rely on these forward-looking statements as projections of future events. Statements made during this conference call are made as of the date of this call, and the company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Joining me on the call today are Larry Penn, Chief Executive Officer of Ellington Residential, Mark Ducati, our Co-Chief Investment Officer, and Chris Mernoff, our Chief Financial Officer. As described in our earnings press release, our first quarter earnings conference call presentation is available on our website, EarnVeet.com. Our comments this morning will track the presentation. Please note that any references to figures in this presentation are qualified in their entirety by the end notes at the back of the presentations. With that, I will now turn the call over to Larry.

Thanks, Jay, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate your time and interest in Ellington Residential. To begin, please turn to slide three. The challenging operating environment of late last year intensified during the first quarter of 2022 as it became increasingly evident that the hiking cycle and quantitative tightening will be faster and more severe than previously expected as the Federal Reserve combats surging inflation. During the first quarter, the Fed made the first of what are expected to be many interest rate hikes, concluded its final month of net purchases of agency MBS, and signaled that balance sheet runoff would likely commence soon. Geopolitical instability and recessionary concerns further contributed to a risk-off sentiment in the market, and yield spreads in virtually every fixed-income sector, including agency RMBS.