MBIA Inc.

Welcome to the NBIA Inc. First Quarter 2020 Financial Results Conference Call. I would now like to turn the call over to Greg Diamond, Managing Director of Investor and Media Relations at NBIA. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Maria. Welcome to NBIA's conference call for our First Quarter 2020 Financial Results. After the market closed yesterday, we issued and posted several items on our websites, including our financial results, 10Q, quarterly operating supplements, and statutory financial statements for both MBIA Insurance Corporation and National Public Finance Guarantee Corporation. We also posted updates to the listings of our insurance portfolios. Regarding today's call, please note that anything said on this call is qualified by the information provided in the company's 10-K, 10-Q and other SEC filings as our company's definitive disclosures are incorporated in those documents. We urge investors to read our 10-K and 10-Q The definitions and reconciliations of the non-GAAP terms included in our remarks today are also included in our 10-K and 10-Q, as well as our financial results report and quarterly operating supplements. The recorded replay of today's call will become available approximately two hours after the end of the call and the information for accessing it was included in last week's press announcement and in the financial results that we posted on the MBIA website yesterday. Now for our safe harbor statement. Our remarks on today's conference call may contain forward-looking statements. Important factors such as general market conditions and a competitive environment could cause our actual results to differ materially. from the projected results referenced in our forward-looking statements. Risk factors are detailed in our 10-K and 10-Q, which are available on our website at MVIA.com. The company cautions not to place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements. The company also undertakes no obligation to publicly correct or update any forward-looking statement if it later becomes aware that such statement is no longer accurate. For our call today, Bill Fallon and Anthony McKiernan will provide introductory comments which will be followed by a question and answer session. Now here is Bill Fallon.

Thanks, Greg. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being with us today. We hope you are well in these challenging times. For the first quarter of 2020, most of the company's net loss was caused by loss and loss adjustment expenses with approximately two-thirds of those loss expenses recorded by MBI Insurance Corporation and the other third by National Public Finance Guarantee Corporation. These elevated losses for the first quarter were modestly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic. While the pandemic has affected a wide range of economic activities and influenced a number of financial relief and social programs, given the nature of our insured credits and the terms of our insurance policies, the ultimate financial impact for most of the credits in our insurance portfolios is uncertain at this time. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, We have augmented our monitoring activities on a number of credits in our insurance portfolios. Our loss reserve assessments will continue to be updated as new information becomes available that informs the probability weighted cash flow scenarios used to estimate those losses. Our remaining Puerto Rico exposure is largely comprised of three Puerto Rico credits, the Commonwealth's general obligation bonds, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or PREPA, and the Puerto Rico Highway and Transportation Authority, or HTA. At March 31, 2020, our exposure to the general obligation bonds was about $655 million of gross par, or about $815 million of total debt service. Our PREPA exposure was $968 million of gross par, or $1.3 billion of total debt service, and our HTA exposure was about $600 million of gross par or $1 billion of total debt service. At this time, the 90-19 motion seeking approval of Title III court where the PREPA restructuring support agreement has been adjourned indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Oversight Board is scheduled to deliver a status report on PREPA on May 15th. There's also a plan of adjustment between the Oversight Board and a group of Commonwealth bondholders representing approximately 55% of the par amount. We and several other large bondholders do not support that proposed agreement, and neither does the Commonwealth government. As yet, there are no specific agreements related to the HTA debt. As I mentioned earlier, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have enhanced our review of a number of other credits in the insurance portfolios. Most of the credits in our insurance portfolios continue to perform consistent with our expectations. The outstanding gross par of the insured portfolios continued to reduce. National's insured portfolio has further declined to $47 billion, down approximately $2 billion from year-end 2019. National's leverage ratio of gross part of statutory capital was 23 to 1. During the first quarter, National purchased 8.1 million MBIA's common shares at an average price of $7.99 per share. Year to date through May 4th, 2020, National purchased 12.5 million MBIA shares at an average price of $7.82 per share. As of May 4th, 2020, MBIA had 67.7 million shares outstanding. On May 5th, 2020, Our Board of Directors approved a new share repurchase authorization for $100 million. Now, Anthony will cover the financial results.

Thanks, Bill, and good morning. I will begin a review with our first quarter 2020 GAAP and non-GAAP results, then cover the holding company balance sheet, and lastly walk through our statutory results for National and MBIA Insurance Corp. The company reported a consolidated gap net loss of $333 million, or a negative $4.62 per share, for the quarter ended March 31, 2020, compared to a consolidated gap net loss of $21 million, or negative $0.24 per share, for the quarter ended March 31, 2019. The results for the quarter were driven by several factors. Increased loss and loss adjustment expense at MBIA Corp. primarily due to a reduction in expected recoveries on claims paid on the ZOHAR CLOs. Increased loss and loss adjustment expense at National related to certain of its remaining Puerto Rico exposures as well as a utility credit that was new to its loss reserve list. Mark-to-market losses related to interest rate swaps associated with the gift book of business due to a decline in interest rates and to a lesser extent related to investments carried at fair value due to widening credit spreads. These items were somewhat offset by an increase in our estimated Credit Suisse recovery and FX gains. On January 1, 2020, we adopted new accounting guidance for establishing credit loss allowances on financial assets, commonly referred to as CECL. Upon adopting CECL, we established $42 million of credit loss allowances by recording a negative adjustment to retained earnings. Book value per share decreased to $6.70 per share as of March 31, 2020, compared to $10.40 as of December 31, 2019, primarily due to the net loss for the first quarter of 2020, partially offset by unrealized gains on investments and 7 million fewer net shares outstanding due to share repurchases during the first quarter. The company's adjusted net loss, a non-GAAP measure, was $47 million or a negative 65 cents per share for the first quarter of 2020 compared with adjusted net income of $39 million or 45 cents per share for the first quarter of 2019. The unfavorable change was primarily due to the loss and loss adjustment expense at National in Q1 2020 compared to a loss and loss adjustment expense benefit in Q1 2019. I will now spend a few minutes on the corporate segment balance sheet and the insurance companies. The corporate segment, which primarily includes the activity of the holding company, MBIA Inc., had total assets of $1 billion as of March 31, 2020. Within this total are the following material items. Unencumbered cash and liquid assets held by MBIA Inc. totaled $314 million as of March 31, 2020, versus $375 million as of December 31, 2019. The decrease was primarily due to increases in collateralization requirements associated with the GIC business as a result of COVID-19-related market impacts on credit spreads and a decline in interest rates. As of March 31, 2020, there were $28 million of tax deposits in the tax escrow account, which represented the remaining portion of National's 2018 tax payments. Due to a full year 2019 tax loss at National, MVIA Inc. returned $7 million of National's 2019 tax deposits and $26 million of National's 2018 tax year deposits. As we stated last quarter, tax escrow releases are not expected to be a meaningful contributor to holding company liquidity in the future. There were approximately $560 million of assets at market value pledged to the GICs and the interest rate swaps supporting the GIC book. Turning to the insurance company's statutory results, National reported a statutory net loss of $80 million for the first quarter of 2020 compared to net income of $48 million for the prior year's comparable quarter. The unfavorable result was primarily due to higher loss in LAE and lower revenues, partially offset by a tax benefit generated in Q1 2020 from National's net operating loss and the impact of longer carryback period for its 2019 and 2020 tax losses under the CARES Act. In January of 2020, National paid $59 million in gross Puerto Rico-related claims. which brings inception to date gross claims paid to $1.2 billion. As of March 31st, 2020, National's total fixed income investment portfolio, including cash and cash equivalents, had a book adjusted carrying value of $2.4 billion. Statutory capital was $2.1 billion, a decrease from year end 2019 due to unrealized losses Sherry Purchases, and the quarterly net loss. Claims paying resources total $3.3 billion. Insured gross par outstanding reduced by $1.6 billion during the quarter and now stands at $47.4 billion. Turning to MBIA Insurance Corp. The statutory net loss was $91 million for the first quarter of 2020, compared to a statutory net loss of $1 million for the first quarter of 2019. The unfavorable result was primarily due to higher loss in LAE related to the ZOHAR credits in the current year quarter, somewhat offset by foreign exchange gains. As of March 31st, 2020, the statutory capital of MBIA Insurance Corp was $382 million versus $476 million as of December 31st, 2019. Claims paying resources totaled $1.1 billion and cash and liquid assets totaled $120 million. MBIA Corp's insured gross par outstanding reduced by just under $1 billion during the quarter and was $9.1 billion as of March 31st, 2020. And now we will turn the call over to the operator to begin the question and answer session.

Thank you. At this time, ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. Again, that is star one. If your question has been answered and you wish to remove yourself from the queue, press the pound key. Our first question comes from one of Bose George of KVW.

Hey, good morning, guys. This is Tommy McJoyne on for Bose. Good morning. Hope everyone's well. So you re-upped the repurchase authorization at National last week. How should we think about National's capacity to purchase MDI shares longer term and kind of how you're balancing that with the need to potentially preserve capital as if The same certain outlook ends up worsening a bit.

Yeah, Tommy, with regard to that, there's several aspects, as you know, and we've been quite clear that we look at many factors as we think about the share repurchases that National has done. As of March 31st, from a regulatory perspective, there is $349 million of capacity remaining. So that's the first sort of constraint from a regulatory perspective. Then to your point, we look at many other factors in terms of the resources that national needs, what the stock price is, and many other things that you would think about. So the one known requirement is that 349. The board has authorized another 100 million. We had essentially just almost a completely exhausted 250 million, which we had spent roughly over about a two and a half year period. So we'll continue to look at all these things and decide what we think the appropriate approach is and that obviously is subject to change at any point in time. But we have, I think, always been very clear that we think buying shares at attractive prices is beneficial for long-term shareholder value.

Right, that all makes sense. And just kind of broadly speaking, obviously there's a ton of uncertainty, but How are you thinking about kind of municipal financial positions right now, just given the challenging environment? You know, how do you compare this to what we saw back in 2008? And then how dependent is your view on getting support from the federal government in the next spending bill?

So, as you know, there are several or many uncertainties at this point, and you touched on the financial situation back in 2008. which is 12 years ago. From that, the municipal portfolio that we insure really did not see any defaults. Things like Detroit and Puerto Rico we would argue had to do with other factors, not the financial crisis back in 2008. And even if you go back to other unfortunate catastrophes such as Katrina, even before that, Municipals have held up pretty well, but this is clearly something very different in terms of the pandemic that we're facing right now. We do not know at this point what the breadth and depth of the impact will be, and to your point, the mitigating factors such as federal aid or federal programs that either have been approved already or might be approved in the near future. So we'll continue to look at it closely. There's no doubt that there are certain revenue streams to states and in cities that have been adversely affected, for example, sales tax revenues. We've seen a significant drop in those, but we continue to monitor it. There have not been any claims made against any of our policies at this point, but as we've mentioned, we will look at it closely.

Thanks. And this last one, in the release and in your prepared remarks, you called out and many more. Thank you for joining us.

Delays might be, but you hit the right one.

Okay. In the May 15 update with PREPA, is that going to be made public, Dino?

We would expect that some portion or all of it will be made public shortly after that.

Okay, great. Thank you, guys.

Our next question comes from one of Juliana Bologna of BTIG.

Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. Starting on the loss reserve side, obviously there were a few adjustments, but I'd be curious to get a sense of how much the impact was from credit-driven assumptions versus interest rate assumptions.

So, Juliana, good morning. Assumptions govern the increase in lost reserves, the changes in profiles to both the amount of payments that we would be making and the decrease in salvage drove the lost reserves. Obviously, it's a credit by credit issue, so for those credits that we made those adjustments, The assumptions drove it because you have lower discount rates on the payments themselves, which drove it. For other credits where we did not make those kind of adjustments or as many adjustments, the lower discount rate obviously reflects itself in increasing salvage. So I would say assumptions all in governed the loss reserve for the quarter, but certainly discount rates are a factor, especially for Puerto Rico, just given that there's a significant salvage piece.

That makes sense. And then thinking about the holding company liquidity, are there any opportunities to buy any of the securities back, whether it be any of the bonds or any of the other debt securities at the holding company at a discount to accelerate deleveraging and potentially take out interest expense faster?

So there, as you know, during the last year, we took out a part of the 2022 6.4% debt. We've still essentially concentrated on getting through the liquidity window of 2022 at this point. We're now starting to be able to look beyond that, but that's really been our focus, but to the degree, again, that there's opportunities, we're always looking to see if something's optimal for us to do.

That makes sense. I appreciate that, and thanks for taking my questions. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.

Our next question comes from one of Jeffrey Dunn of Dowling Partners.

Thanks. Good morning. I just want to follow up on that. Can you actually disclose the impact that this count rate change has had on the national's 48 million this quarter for incurred losses?

No, we're not. We can't break it out exactly, only just to say, again, the assumptions Thank you very much. Given their change in facts and circumstances on it, we wound up taking a reserve this quarter that was in part contributing to the loss in LE for national this quarter.

And what are the issues that had it on your caution list and incrementally drove the reserve?

Essentially, we had a bankruptcy of the utility.

Okay, and then I just want to revisit this discount rate question again. Excluding the impact of discount rates, was there favorable development in the quarter or was there an actual incurred loss provision?

There was an incurred loss provision.

Okay, thank you.

Again, ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from one of Paul Saunders of Hutch Capital.

My questions have actually been asked and answered already. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Okay, thank you.

And at this time, I am showing no further questions. I'd like to turn the floor back over to management for any additional or closing remarks.

Thanks again, Maria. And thanks to all of you who were listening to the call today. Please contact us directly if you have any additional questions. We also recommend that you visit our website at MVIA.com for additional information on the company. Thank you for your interest in MVIA. Good day and goodbye.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This does conclude today's first quarter 2020 earnings conference call. You may now disconnect.