MFA Financial, Inc.

We will have a question and answer session, and instructions for queuing up will be provided for you at that time. Should you require operator assistance during the call, press star zero on your phone's keypad. And as a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference call over to your host, Mr. Hal Schwartz. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. The information discussed on this conference call today may contain or refer to forward-looking statements regarding MFA Financial, Inc., which reflect management's beliefs, expectations, and assumptions as to MFA's future performance and operations. When used, statements that are not historical in nature, including those containing words such as will, believe, expect, anticipate, estimate, should, could, would, or similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made. These types of statements are subject to various known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and other factors including those described in MFA's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023, and other reports that it may file from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These risks, uncertainties, and other factors could cause MFA's actual results to differ materially from those projected, expressed, or implied in any forward-looking statements it makes. For additional information regarding MFA's use of forward-looking statements, please see the relevant disclosure

the press release announcing mfa's first quarter 2024 financial results thank you for your time i would now like to turn the call over to mfa's ceo and president craig newton thank you hal good morning everyone and thank you for joining us for mfa financials fourth quarter first quarter 2024 earnings call with me today are mike roper our cfo Gudmundur Christensen and Brian Wilson are co-chief investment officers and other members of our senior management team. I'll begin with a high-level review of the first quarter market environment and MFA's results, and then touch on some of our first quarter results activities and potential opportunities. Then I'll turn the call over to Mike to review our financials in more detail, followed by Brian and Gudmundur, who will review our portfolio, financing, and risk management before we open up the call for questions. The first quarter of 2024 began benignly enough until a blowout January payroll report released in early February, which has been followed by somewhat unexpectedly resilient economic data and persistently stubborn inflation numbers, all of which have sent rates modestly higher. Two-year treasuries ended the quarter up 37 basis points, and 10-year treasuries ended the quarter up 32 basis points. While a far cry from some of the bond market volatility experienced over the last two years, we are nevertheless reminded that the path of interest rates is still very much uncertain and the market has crossed out many of the rate cuts that had been expected at the beginning of the year. Agency mortgage spreads have widened somewhat since the beginning of the year, but they're still considerably tighter, about 25 basis points, than they were last October. Away from agencies, credit is also tighter versus the October wides that we saw, with corporates 20 to 25 basis points tighter and high yield over 100 basis points tighter. Non-QM AAAs are 40 to 45 basis points tighter than the October wides, and the demand for tranches below AAAs is substantially better than it was late last year. We've seen a positive development in the BPL securitization space in the form of a rated RTL securitization in February. This single A DBRS rating has led to materially tighter levels on the senior tranche and is expected to expand the buyer base for the securities sold to finance these assets. Economic data is clearly driving the bond market and continued strong prints pushed rates higher in April. Friday's employment report reversed some of this trend, but twos are still 20 basis points and tens are 30 basis points above the yields that we saw at the end of the first quarter. Future Fed actions continue to be very much data dependent, and so far the data has eliminated any sense of urgency for a Fed rate cut. MFA posted a solid first quarter with distributable earnings of $0.35. We added over $650 million of high-yielding assets, the majority of which came from Lima One, where the average coupon of these originations was 10.4%. Higher interest rates did modestly impact our book value for the first quarter with gap and economic book value down by 1.3 and 1.7% respectively. We continued to execute securizations with a $193 million RTL deal in early February and a $365 million non-QM deal subsequent to quarter end in April. On the capital front, we issued a very successful senior unsecured bond in January, raising $115 million with a coupon of 8 and 7 eighths. We followed this deal with another issuance of $75 million of a similarly structured bond in April with a coupon of 9%, despite the fact that five-year treasuries were 65 basis points higher than when we issued our 8 and 7 eighths bond in January. These two issuances were very timely, enabling us to raise $190 million with a weighted average coupon below 9%, setting us up comfortably to pay off the remaining $169.7 million of our convertible bond that's due in June. Both bonds have five-year maturities, but we retain valuable optionality as they're callable at par after two years, should we find ourselves in a more favorable rate environment in a couple of years. We also have considerable optionality in our liabilities with a total of 30 securitizations outstanding. Page 19 of our earnings deck lists all of our outstanding securitizations together with relevant details of each deal, including the call date in the last column. Although many of these bonds carry low coupons, the weighted average coupons of outstanding bonds will increase over time as senior bonds pay off. In some cases, it can make sense to call a deal and re-lever the underlying loans in a new securitization. Even if the cost of debt is marginally higher than in an existing deal, a call and re-lever could unlock significant additional liquidity, which we can redeploy at attractive ROEs. These call rights provide an often underappreciated option that we have to optimize our liability framework in the years ahead. And I'll now turn the call over to Mike Roper to discuss our financial results.

Thanks, Craig. As Craig highlighted in his opening remarks, during the quarter, MSA again delivered strong financial results, generating distributable earnings that covered the quarterly dividend and achieving book value stability in challenging market conditions. At March 31st, GAAP book value was $13.80 per common share and economic book value was $14.32 per common share, representing decreases from December 31st of 1.3% and 1.7% respectively. Given our net duration of approximately one, our book value was negatively impacted by higher rates across the yield curve, but benefited from credit spreads tightening during the quarter. We declared dividends of 35 cents per common share and delivered a total economic return of 0.7% for the quarter. MFA generated gap earnings of 15 million or 14 cents per common share and distributable earnings of 36.1 million or 35 cents per common share. DE decreased by 14 cents versus last quarter and increased by five cents from the first quarter of 2023. The decrease versus last quarter was primarily driven by non-recurring items totaling 11 cents per share that benefited our fourth quarter results. Additionally, mortgage banking income at Lima 1 declined by 3 cents per share as a result of lower origination volumes in the first quarter. Net interest income for the first quarter was $47.8 million, an increase from $46.5 million in the fourth quarter. As a reminder, our GAAP net interest income does not include the benefit of the positive carry on our interest rate swaps. Net interest income, inclusive of swap carry, was approximately $77 million for the first quarter. unchanged from last quarter and an increase of approximately 15.7 million from the first quarter of 2023. During the quarter, our Board of Directors authorized a $200 million share repurchase program and we filed a $300 million at the market program, enabling us to issue shares from time to time in the open market. We have not utilized either of these programs to date, but believe they offer us the flexibility to act efficiently should market conditions warrant in the future. Finally, subsequent to quarter-end, we estimate that our economic book value has declined by approximately 1 percent as a result of higher market interest rates. I'd now like to turn the call over to Gudmundur, who will speak to our portfolio highlights and the performance of Lima One.

Gudmundur Gudmundur Thanks, Mike. We continue to see attractive investment opportunities in the first quarter and added about $650 million of loans with an average coupon of approximately 10 percent in the quarter. Lima One originated BPLs accounted for 70 percent of our acquisitions while non-KM loans accounted for the remaining 30%. Credit characteristics were strong, with an average LTV of 64% and average FICO score of 744 on loans acquired in the quarter. Portfolio runoff was roughly unchanged, quarter over quarter, at $422 million. The average coupon on paid off loans was about 8.7%. As rates declined sharply late in the fourth quarter and early in the first quarter, We took advantage of improved pricing on some of our seasoned lower-coupon non-QM and SFR loans and sold about 150 million of loans at a 2 million gain compared to year-end marks. All of these activities resulted in our portfolio remaining relatively unchanged at $10 billion, while our portfolio asset yield increased by 12 basis points to 6.58% in the quarter. We see expected returns on equity in the mid-teens area for first-quarter additions and continue to see similar returns available in the current environment. The labor market remained strong in the first quarter, with non-farm payroll growth accelerating and the unemployment rate remaining close to historical lows at under 4%. Home prices also remained resilient, and after rising by about 6% last year, continued to trend higher in the first quarter as low supply of homes continues to outweigh low affordability. These macro trends of housing and labor market resilience provide ongoing support to our credit portfolio. An uptick in inflation and surprisingly strong economic data in the first quarter led to a modest increase in interest rates as market participants reduced their expectations for rate cuts in 2024. Rates have risen further in the second quarter, largely reversing the decline in rates we experienced at the end of 2023, and the market now expects about one to two rate cuts this year versus six at the beginning of the year. Our interest rate risk management approach continues to emphasize protecting the portfolio and our cost of funds from interest rate volatility. To that end, we have maintained a relatively short net duration and prioritized stability of funding costs through securitization issuance and swap patches that mostly cover our floating rate liabilities. With over $3 billion of swaps and about $4.8 billion of fixed rate securitized debt outstanding, we entered the quarter with a net duration of about 90 basis points. which contributed to the modest book value decline we experienced in the quarter. Turning to Lima One. Our Lima One strategy continues to deliver organically created, high-quality, and high-yielding credit investments for our portfolio. Since our acquisition in the middle of 2021, Lima One has originated over $6 billion of business purpose loans for our balance sheet and has been a key part in driving up our asset yields over the last couple of years. In the first quarter, LIMA 1 originated about $430 million, in line with our expectations at the end of 2023. Shorter-term transitional loans accounted for 80 percent of origination, and longer-term DSCR rental loans made up the remaining 20 percent. Credit profile remained strong, with an average LTV of 65 percent and average FICO score of 749 on loans originated in the quarter. We expect the origination volume to be roughly unchanged in the second quarter, in the mid-$400 million range. The 60-plus-day delinquency rate on our BPL loans originated by Lima One increased modestly in the quarter to 4.7%, but remains low and in line with our modeling expectations. The increase was primarily concentrated in the shorter-term transitional loans, while the longer-term rental loans decreased modestly. Credit monitoring and asset management remain important parts of our BPL strategy. The servicing done in-house by Lima One and MFA's extensive asset management experience, we believe you're uniquely set up to manage delinquencies effectively and efficiently. Finally, we expanded our RTL financing capacity in the quarter as we priced our fourth unrated revolving RTL Securitization. We now have over 800 million of RTL Securitizations outstanding and have financed over 1.4 billion of loans through these revolving structures. I will now turn the call over to Brian Wilson, who will discuss MFA's credit performance and securitization activities in more detail.

Thanks, Gudmundur. The market appetite for securitized bonds continued to show improvement in the first quarter following the trend leading into year end. Capitalizing on this demand, we issued our fourth unrated revolving securitization in February of transitional loans originated by Lima One. We sold 160 million of bonds collateralized by 193 million of loans. The bonds sold carry a coupon of slightly over 7%, and the loans securitized carry a coupon approaching 11%. In April, we issued another 9QM securitization selling 330 million bonds backed by 365 million of the loans. The bonds sold have a coupon of 6.7%, and the loans underlying the transaction had a weighted average coupon of 8.4%. We have now issued securitizations backed by over $9.5 billion in loans since 2020. and the percentage of our loan portfolio financed by securitizations increased to approximately 70%. On slide 19 of our presentation, you can see that many of our securitizations are currently callable and others will become callable in the coming quarters and years. As Craig previously mentioned, those call features provide the potential to relever our collateral, unlocking substantial non-dilutive capital that can be redeployed at mid-teens ROE. Our strategy is not dependent on lower rates, But should we find ourselves again in a lower interest rate environment, the call features also provide optionality to reduce our borrowing costs. We believe that mortgage securitization will continue to be a significant piece of our loan financing strategy since it is non-recourse, non-mark-to-market funding and further insulates the portfolio from volatile markets. Moving to our credit performance. Coming off the past two years of record low delinquencies, we have seen a normalization in our loan portfolio. 60-plus-day delinquencies in our purchase-performing portfolio increased to 4.3% from 3.8% at the end of the year. The increase came from both our RTL and non-QM portfolios. 60-plus-day delinquencies in our legacy RPL MPL portfolio remain stable at 24% as our in-house asset management team works through delinquent loans, achieving positive outcomes both through modifications and property-related resolutions. The team has extensive experience working through billions of defaulted loans and continues to work closely with our servicers to improve outcomes on defaulted loans, including generating gains on our legacy RPLs and NPLs and mitigating potential losses on our newly originated loans. We're proud of our asset management capabilities since they give us comfort growing our purchase-performing portfolio and provide optionality should distressed loan opportunities arise in the future. Prepayment speeds in our portfolio were relatively stable over the quarter across our loan types. 9QM, SFR, and Legacy RPL MPL maintained CPRs in the mid to high single digits. The transitional loan portfolio had an annualized repayment rate 33%. We had another quarter of paydowns totaling over $400 million in addition to the loan sale previously mentioned, which are reinvested into higher yielding assets. Lastly, we continue to sell REO properties out of our portfolio. Over the quarter, we sold 73 properties for $24.2 million, resulting in $2 million in gains. And with that, I'll turn the call over to the operator for questions.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question, please press 1 then 0 on your phone's keypad. You will hear an indication that you've been placed in the queue and can remove yourself by pressing 1, 0 a second time. Now, once again, for questions, please press 1 then 0 at this time. Our first question comes from Steven Laws with Raymond James. Go ahead, please.

Hi, good morning. I appreciate the comment so far. I just wanted to follow up, I guess, first on the credit performance. You know, you mentioned normalization here as we've moved, you know, off of the rate lows. But, you know, 4.3%, kind of where do you think that will peak or plateau in the future? Talk about the timeline of resolution process. You know, once something gets to 60-day, kind of how do you, you know, how does the timeline go as you resolve those loans?

So, Steve, it really depends on the loan type, right? Because we have, you know, some of the legacy re-performing, non-performing loans. You know, let's say that's one timeline which has probably been pretty lengthy, you know, in terms of newly originated loans. You know, it really varies by product type. You know, we can maybe split it out into, you know, non-QM and BPL, if that would be helpful for you, and maybe talk a little bit about the two of those.

Yeah, that'd be great. Sure. As it relates to non-QM, and really both, a lot depends on the geography and, you know, the foreclosure timelines, depending on the state. whether it's judicial or non-judicial. But a lot of times we see out of our non-QM portfolio, because of the equity position that the borrower has in the home, right, you know, nine times out of ten, they're just going to sell the property. So those resolutions can happen relatively quickly, you know, inside a year. You know, if you get a prolonged battle, right, that could take, you know, one to three years, depending on, you know, how long the judicial process takes.

Yeah, and just look, I mean, from a macro perspective, as Brian touched on in the opening remarks, all delinquencies were probably abnormally low coming out of COVID with the incredible amount of stimulus that came from the government and monetary policy. So when you look at our delinquencies, they trended down into late 22 and early 23. But for some perspective, I mean, the 60 plus on the transition loan portfolio right now is similar to what it was in the middle of 22. And so it feels to us, and when we look across the broader consumer sectors and you look at delinquency trends across credit products, that there is a normalization process going on. And it makes sense, given the amount of tightening in terms of monetary policy. Rates are up 500 basis points, I think, for the nature. And the same thing, as Brian said, applies to the transitional loan portfolio in terms of It really depends on state, you know, judicial versus non-judicial, and the ability to get to the property. But importantly, on the transitional side, there's multiple ways we approach that. It depends on the state of the project. We try to work closely with the borrower, and if it is a viable project, we can make sure that he is in a position to complete it. To the extent we need to pursue foreclosure, we'll, of course, do that and then rely on our asset management capabilities as well as the underwriting, of course, at origination to make sure we can have acceptable solutions.

Great. And as a follow-up, I just wanted to touch on kind of your thoughts around dividend sustainability, the triple earnings right on top of the dividend level. As you look out, you mentioned your prepared remarks. attractive mid-teen returns on new investments, the ability to kind of call and relever some deals, which frees up additional capital for new investments. On the other side, looks like you've got some swaps that kind of mature late this year, early next year. In this higher for longer rate outlook, how do you view those two things and the benefits versus the higher cost after the swaps mature with the ability to maintain the current dividend level? Thank you.

So, Steve, without, you know, obviously forecasting our dividend, I think, you know, we've handily covered the dividend for the last, you know, year or more. And I think, you know, given the portfolio and the net interest income that's, you know, that's solid or increasing, I think, you know, we feel pretty good about our earnings capability going forward.

Great. Appreciate the comments this morning. Thanks, Steven.

And next we go to Bose George with KBW. Please go ahead.

Hey, everyone. Good morning. Just one follow-up on Stephen's credit question. What are the typical losses on resolution, and how does that compare with where you're carrying the loans, fair-valuing the loans?

So, Bose, I would say, well, first of all, the fair value, when loans are delinquent, they get marked as delinquent loans. And so... you know, that gets reflected right away in fair value marks. Second, in terms of losses, you know, again, we have a lot of history and we can certainly talk about the legacy re-performing and non-performing loan book. But, you know, as Brian and Goodmunder both said, the timelines are fairly long. So, you know, we may have some data on some loans and some losses, but I don't really know that it's all that instructive because this is a long process and it's the The resolution is that the property gets sold, as Brian said, because the homeowner has significant equity. That's typically a payoff in full. We could give you loss numbers, but they really don't reflect what ultimately ends up happening because we just need more time. I'm not talking about months. I'm talking about years in some cases.

I think the other thing to keep in mind, folks, is that if you think about the products we are acquiring, I mean, for example, on the BPL side, the transitional loans, they have a coupon of anywhere from 10% to 12%. And when we think about risk-adjusted returns or risk-adjusted yields, we're factoring in some assumption about credit costs and credit losses. And so we do assume that yields are lower than the coupon that's coming in. That's how we think about it. But in that context, it's still providing quite attractive risk-adjusted returns. And to Craig's point, I mean, look, over the last two to three years, home prices were obviously significantly high and rising out of COVID, which obviously helped out in terms of loss mitigation. So we've had some really good outcomes. But we understand and we know that we're dealing with credit underwriting and credit investments, so there's going to be some credit costs associated with it.

Okay, that's helpful. Yeah, I was thinking really about the BPL side, but yeah, that's helpful commentary. Thanks. And then just one modeling question. Just on the expense line, you know, the comp and benefits was a little higher. Was that, I guess, year-end bonus stuff, and then was that kind of normalized a little bit into the second quarter?

Thanks for the question, Bose. Yeah, so I guess a few things on G&A. First, you're exactly right that we had a sort of non-recurring adjustment to our expense accrual in the fourth quarter that decreased that line item by about $3 million. So it makes it a little bit less comparable. Then the second big change there, and there's a couple of smaller ones that sort of offset, but the second big change there is the acceleration of amortization of non-cash stock-based comp expense. related to awards made to retirement-eligible employees. So that expense would normally be advertised over the course of three years, but GAAP requires us to effectively recognize it in the first quarter. And you'll see that there's about a million dollars left of that for the second quarter, but go forward. That'll go back to zero for the rest of the year.

Okay, great. That's helpful. Thanks.

Thanks, Klaus. Next, we'll go to Steve Delaney with Citizens JMP. Go ahead, please.

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking the questions. In your deck, you comment on mid-teen returns on securitizations. Looking at Lima 1, obviously, that was a very significant acquisition, and it's proprietary. You have a lot more control there than having to buy slow NQMs from the streets. So I just wondered if you could comment on, specifically on the Lima securitizations as far as between bridge and then some SFR, you know, just the product mix and how those, can you tighten this down a little bit from the mid-teen kind of returns on securitizations generally? Thanks very much.

Thanks, Steve. That's a great question, and I think your observation is a good one. You know, when we were saying mid-teens, we're kind of characterizing, I guess, quote, return on average, and we'll understand we'll do sometimes do better and sometimes do worse. But to your point, the securitization that we did in the first quarter on the transitional loan securitization, the average coupon on the loans going into the deal was about 10.9%. And, you know, the average coupon on the bond we sold was about 7.10%. So, you know, you can see that there's a significant amount of spread that to the tune of over 350 base points. And, you know, so we sold 80% of that deal and, you know, we kept the rest of it. But you can quickly get up to kind of 20% plus returns based upon, you know, how much leverage we're doing in a deal and how much we're selling. And, you know, as it relates to kind of securitization execution, You know, spreads have continued to come in this year. You know, spreads on the kind of A1 on the RTL side were probably as wide as 350 over the curve in October of 23, and now they're probably hovering over 250 over on the unrated side. And then on the rated type of execution, there's a potential to do better. So we think, yeah, I mean, those returns are quite attractive. As it relates to the longer-term DSCR loans, you know, we are creating assets that yield roughly, call it around high sevens, 8% yields. And the securitization cost of funds probably right now is anywhere in the kind of mid sixes. And, you know, so we're doing probably mid to high scheme returns there as well.

Right, that's great color. And I think it was worth pointing out that, you know, since you own Lima One now, you really can control your risk return, you know, profile there working with the street. And to that point, you know, obviously we're getting no rate relief. But can you comment, Goodmunder, just generally on what the pipeline looks like looking out over the next six months or so for Lima 1? What are they hearing from borrowers? And, you know, are they still busy as ever in terms of looking at new opportunities? Just some color on the pipeline. Thanks.

Yeah, I think, so with Lima One, one of the strengths of the brand and the company is the breadth of product that they originate. So on the transitional loans or shorter-term products, Lima originates single-family BRITs and transitional loans, which involve some amount of rehab, single-family new construction, and small-balance multi-family transitional loans. So, you know, there's various, quote, pockets of marketplaces that we originate in. And so, you know, those can have different dynamics in terms of supply and demand. So from our perspective, what we've seen is we've been able to often maintain steady levels of origination when, you know, various parts of that are changing. And then the fourth sleeve is, of course, the longer-term DSCR rental loans. And so what we saw, for example, in 22 and 23, when rates rose, more of the origination shifted into the short-term transitional loans as opposed to the longer-term rental loans. And so, you know, fast forward to today, I think that, you know, the initial rate shock, of course, over the last two years has kind of subsided in a way that, you know, the market participants have obviously now started to build high rates into their expectations about executions and things of that nature. As it relates specifically to the operators on the ground, so supply of homes is less than it has been historically and it's one of the factors we've highlighted as being very supportive of home prices and that's why home prices have risen even though affordability for new home buyers is low. Now, what that means is that, you know, from the fix and flip operators, sometimes they'll have fewer properties to pick from. And so we've seen some of that. So in the traditional, call it quick flips or easy flips, where people are trying to do light rehabs and turn them around fast, that activity has slowed down a bit. But, you know, the new construction or the heavy rehab component on it feels like it's relatively, you know, unchanged and there's a decent amount of demand there because, you The housing supply is still very old in the United States, and there's a lot of deficit of housing units relative to household formation, which we'll think will continue to support the market going forward. And I guess the last piece from a color perspective as well, it feels like there is a little bit more competition in our space because race is stabilized and the attractive nature of these returns So you do see more capital coming into this space, which is both, quote, positive and negative. It's positive on the securitization side because it allows us to execute efficiently, but it also means we have to compete a little bit more for the borrowers on the origination side.

That was great, Collar Goodbunder. Thank you so much, and congrats to the team on hitting the $10 billion portfolio benchmark. Stay well.

Thank you. Next we'll go to Doug Harder with UBS. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Hoping we could talk a little bit more about the potential to call your prior securitizations. One, I guess, how are you seeing the – are you seeing enough investment opportunities that you would need the capital? And when you factor in the higher cost of funds, I guess, how are you thinking about the level of accretion today from freeing up that capital?

I mean, today, Brian, if you think about the, you know, immediate potential, right, we have, you know, some unrated deals that were issued a few years ago that have paid down significantly. So say if we called one of those deals that might unlock, you know, 70 to 80 million in liquidity. where the cost might be, say, 200 to 250 basis points more for that financing, but the ROEs generated are that mid to high teen. So it definitely makes sense for us to execute that type of transaction. For some of the other deals, it's not an immediate thing. It's more the next two to three years where we're going to have opportunities to call those.

And Doug, just to add a little more color to Brian's example, so if you think about a non-performing loan re-securization done a few years ago, calling that deal as Brian said, will unlock additional liquidity, but a substantial number of the loans in that deal are likely now performing, and those could be re-securitized as rated, re-performing loan deals, which trade at obviously lower yields than an unrated, non-performing loan deal. So there's a lot of nuance in this, and it's just something that we want to point out. It's something that we're keenly aware of, and there are opportunities that will continue to be opportunities to optimize that liability structure.

Yeah, Doug, just to put a pin in that, we think of this also as just a significant optionality from the liability structure. So to the extent that the world can change and things can evolve in many different ways, so to the extent that rates are lower, for example, if the Fed is cutting rates and the curve is steeper, most of these deals are priced on the front end of the curve. So to the extent that the curve is steeper in the future, it just gives us an optionality to, you know, recycle capital, perhaps at the same cost or better, over the next couple of years. And so for equity investors, I think it's just important to understand that optionality. And that's really kind of what we're trying to point out for the next couple of years.

Got it. And, you know, I just, I guess, understanding if you don't call the deals, then I guess, are they... cash flowing, or are they still kind of, are the subordinates cash flowing? Are they still sort of paying down the seniors? Yeah, it's just how to think about the alternative if you decide not to call the deals.

So again, it depends on the deal, Doug. So, you know, in some rare cases, there might be, you know, a step up after so many years where the coupon will step up. But in most cases, we're not obliged to call the deal. I think on the RTL side, after the revolving period ends, there's more incentive to call the deal because you can't add new loans to the deal. But it's really deal and type of deal specific.

All right. I appreciate the answers. Thank you.

Sure. Thanks, Doug. Our next question comes from Brian Villino with Wedbush Securities. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks. Good morning. Just curious if there is any notable extension or modification activity this quarter for the transitional book like we've seen with some other BPL lenders over the last couple quarters and if so, under what terms are those made?

Great question. Thank you. So For our portfolio, the percentage that was extended relative to UPP at the end of the first quarter is about 12%. And, you know, that's ticked up a little bit from about 8% to 9% at the end of last quarter, but really remains relatively modest in the historical context. I think, you know, in the normal course of business, extensions happen, and that's nothing that is unusual about that. It's usually... You know, borrower needs additional time to kind of market and sell a completed project. You know, there could be delays in completing rehab or construction, but the project importantly remains feasible and attractive. And then on the small-balance multifamily, you may need additional time to, you know, lease up the property and get it into a stabilized state for longer-term financing. Now, the important part about all this stuff is, like, you know, we don't extend delinquent loans. So, again, you have to be current to qualify for an extension. And then in the normal course of business, we see extended loans pay off. I think last quarter, probably 35 to 40 million of extended loans pay off that were previously extended. So, you know, from our perspective, it's, you know, normal course of business, and it comes to the territory.

Great. Thanks. And just one more on the Unounce the New Stock Repurchase and ATM program. Earlier in the quarter, it doesn't sound like either of those were used recently, but just curious on thoughts in terms of under what sort of conditions you would look to lean into either one of those programs.

Sure. So look, our ATM program, I think, expired almost a year and a half ago. So our recent refresh of the ATM program was simply that. We don't really feel that we're capital constrained, and we've recently demonstrated the ability to raise money through an unsecured bond at much more favorable terms for shareholders than issuing common stock at a substantial discount to book. I'll also point out that we simultaneously refreshed our share repurchase authorization, and I would characterize both actions, Brian, as administrative in nature.

Got it. Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

At this time, we have no additional questions in queue.

All right. Well, thank you, everyone, for your interest in MFA Financial, and we look forward to speaking with you again in August when we announce second quarter results.

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