MFA Financial, Inc.

Welcome to the MFA Financial, Inc. Announces Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Hal Schwartz, General Counsel at MFA Financial. Thank you. Hal, you may begin.

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 the MFA's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025, 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 in the press release announcing MFA's second quarter 2026 financial results. Thank you for your time. I would now like to turn this call over to MFA CEO Craig Knutson.

Thank you, Hal. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for MFA Financial's second quarter 2026 earnings call. With me today are Bryan Wulfsohn, our president and chief investment officer, Mike Roper, our chief financial officer, and other members of our senior management team. I will offer some general remarks on the macroeconomic and political landscapes and we'll then provide an update on MFA's business initiatives and portfolio activities. I'll then turn the call over to Mike followed by Bryan before we open up the call for questions. Moving to market conditions. We entered April with markets still absorbing the geopolitical shock that ended the first quarter. After ending March at $118 per barrel, oil traded below $100 per barrel for much of April before spiking back to $118 at the end of April and then trading lower over the last two months of the quarter, closing out just below $73 per barrel at the end of June. In the rates market, while volatility dampened considerably, rates themselves rose modestly higher during the quarter. The move index closed out the first quarter around 100, but was in the mid-60s by the middle of April, spiked briefly in mid-May and then closed the quarter in the low 70s. The curve flattened materially during the quarter, Two-year Treasury yields rose 40 basis points and 10 years sold off about 15 basis points, with the 210 spread flattening from 52 to 29 basis points. Kevin Walsh chaired his first set of FOMC meetings in mid-June, and his tone at the press conference was more hawkish than many had expected. Inflation data remains elevated, payroll numbers continue to be strong, and markets are now expecting a Fed funds increase later this year. The mortgage market remained constructive through the second quarter, with spreads tightening modestly and securitization markets were well bid. Obviously, Kevin Walsh's second press conference last week did not go as well as his first, but I personally think the financial press was more upset than the markets. I remember when Alan Greenspan was the Fed chair, and he elevated Fed speak to a unique level of incomprehensibility. Through the second quarter market volatility, MFA delivered a solid quarter and made real progress on the strategic initiatives we laid out for you late last year. Economic book value was essentially unchanged. We again declared a 36-cent dividend, and we generated a total economic return of positive 2.6 for the quarter. First, we continued to prudently deploy capital and grow the balance sheet. Our investment portfolio ended the quarter at approximately $13 billion up from $12.5 at March 31 and roughly 20% larger than a year ago with growth concentrated in agency MBS at what we believe remain attractive spreads. Second, and this was the defining effort of the quarter, we significantly accelerated the resolution of delinquent assets. We resolved approximately $200 million of previously delinquent loans during the quarter and our 60 plus day delinquency rate declined from 7.8% to 7.0%. Mike will walk through how these resolutions flow through our earnings metrics and Bryan will provide more detail on the progress. But the headline is simple. We are converting unproductive assets back into earning capital and we're doing it faster. Thirdly, Lima's momentum continued to build with origination volume up nearly 45% from the first quarter. The efforts expended throughout much of last year to improve technology and add salespeople are beginning to pay off. Fourth, we completed the exit of our former corporate headquarters and continue to bring down our expense base. Mike will quantify the run rate savings for you. And finally, we continue to repurchase common stock at a significant discount to economic book value, buying back over 500,000 shares during the quarter. funded largely by issuance of preferred stock through our ATM program. Taken together, a stable book value, a growing portfolio, a shrinking problem asset book, and a reacceleration of origination franchise, and a leaner expense base. We believe the earnings power of this portfolio is becoming increasingly visible as the legacy credit noise recedes. I'd like to turn the call over to Mike now to discuss our financial results.

Thanks, Craig, and good morning, everyone. At June 30th, GAAP book value was $12.71 per share and economic book value was $13.20 per share, each effectively unchanged from the end of the first quarter. MFA again paid a common dividend of $0.36 and delivered a quarterly total economic return of 2.6%. Second quarter GAAP net income was approximately $46.8 million, or $0.35 per basic common share. That interest income, including TVA dollar roll income, for the quarter was $59.6 million, a modest increase from $59.2 million in the first quarter. Lima One Mortgage Banking income rose to $8.4 million in connection with the significant growth in origination that Craig referenced earlier. G&A expenses totaled $31.2 million, including approximately $5 million of accelerated non-cash depreciation expense associated with our former corporate headquarters. Those assets are now fully depreciated and we expect run rate G&A to average approximately 26 to 27 million per quarter over the remainder of the year. This run rate reflects the cumulative impact of our expense reduction initiatives and a decline of more than 6 million a quarter from the 2024 quarterly average of 33 million. Moving to our distributable earnings. DE for the quarter was 12.2 million or 12 cents per share. The decline in our DE was driven by $24.5 million of realized credit losses on fair value loans as we resolved approximately $200 million of previously delinquent assets during the quarter. As we've discussed on prior calls, DE recognizes these losses only at resolution, while the economics are already embedded in our GAAP results and our book value from prior periods. Including the reversal of these previously recognized mark-to-market losses, In our GAAP results, these same loans contributed $9.6 million of positive earnings for the quarter. DE prior to realized credit losses, the new metric we introduced last quarter, was $36.7 million, or $0.35 per share, up from $0.34 per share last quarter. As a reminder, our Q1 results included approximately $0.03 of non-recurring benefit related to the early termination of the lease for our former corporate headquarters. Excluding that one-time item in the first quarter, DE prior to realized credit losses improved by 4 cents per share, or approximately 14% sequentially, which we believe highlights the improving earnings power of the portfolio. Though we're disappointed with the credit charges realized this quarter, the benefits of moving non-performing loans off the books are significant. We redeploy capital into new mid-teen ROE assets, we reduce servicing, legal, and other carrying costs, and we reduce the uncertainty of our future earnings. We currently expect realized credit losses to remain elevated in the third quarter, though below the level in Q2, before moderating significantly as we move into the end of the year and into the first half of 2027. We continue to expect that our DE will begin to reconverge with the level of our common dividend as those credit losses subside to more normalized levels. Finally, subsequent to quarter end, we estimate that our economic book value has decreased by approximately 2% since the end of the second quarter, driven by higher market interest rates and modestly wider spreads. I'd now like to turn the call over to Bryan, who will discuss our investment portfolio and Lima One.

Thanks, Mike. We had a productive quarter expanding our investment portfolio, reducing our legacy multifamily exposure, issuing and managing our securitizations, and growing Lima One. I'll touch on each of these, starting with non-QM, which remains our biggest asset class at $5.7 billion. We acquired 462 million of non-QM loans with an average coupon of 6.9% and an LTV of 67%. We continue to source loans from long-standing relationships with a select group of originators. Loans are acquired through flow and mini-bulk transactions and are diligence carefully by our experienced investment team. Credit performance remains strong with a default rate just over 4%. We issued our 24th non-QM securitization during the quarter. selling nearly $300 million of bonds at an average cost of just over 5.5%. The loans in that deal carry a weighted average coupon of 6.75%. Separately, we re-securitized over $500 million of single-family rental loans after calling three prior issuances, unlocking $48 million of cash and financing capacity while reducing mark-to-market recourse leverage. This is the second consecutive quarter that we've re-levered older deals in order to unlock capital. Moving to our agency portfolio. During the quarter, we purchased over $700 million of agency bonds and grew that book to $4.1 billion. We again focused on low payoff spec pools, although we did further increase our TBA position nearly $500 million. Should market conditions remain favorable, we intend to continue to roll this TBA position, generating drop income that is economically equivalent to the net carry from owning pools. Agencies now comprise nearly a third of our investment portfolio, and we believe they are an attractive complement to our credit assets. That said, their liquidity profile affords us the ability to dial that book up or down depending on market prices and opportunities elsewhere in the business. Turning to Lima One. We are pleased to report that origination volume at Lima One rose by 44% during the quarter to $316 million. This included $220 million of new short-term transitional loans and $96 million of 30-year rental loans. As a reminder, originations had dropped over the past two years as we overhauled Lima's underwriting process and made significant personnel changes across the organization. Those changes are beginning to bear fruit across the business. Credit performance on more recent production at Lima One continues to be encouraging, with delinquency on recent vintages tracking meaningfully better than earlier years. We also invested heavily in technology improvements and rebuilt Lima's sales force. As we communicated in May, submissions have grown and Lima's origination pipeline has reached levels not seen since 2024. While origination is inherently lumpy and won't grow in a straight line, the direction is decidedly higher. We are excited about Lima's prospects as the team works hard to continuously improve the business. Finally, we made substantial progress resolving nonperforming assets during Q2. As Craig mentioned, the delinquency rate across our entire loan portfolio declined by 80 basis points to 7%. In particular, we continued to shrink our legacy multifamily book, resolving $65 million of delinquent loans and reducing the portfolio to $360 million, less than half the size of the portfolio from a year ago. Multifamily transitional loans now comprises just 2% of our investment portfolio. Overall, the quarter reflected strong progress on several fronts. We added $1.6 billion of our target assets at expected ROEs in the mid-teens, funded in part by optimizing our securitizations to unlock capital while further reducing our reliance on mark-to-market borrowings against credit assets. Lima 1 grew both in volume and profitability, and we cut delinquencies across the loan portfolio meaningfully. Taken together, these actions leave us with a bigger and higher-yielding portfolio, Better Structured Financing, and a growing origination platform that we believe positions us well to build value from here. And with that, we'll turn the call over to the operator for questions.

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment please while we poll for questions. Our first question is from Buzz George with KBW. Please proceed with your question.

Hey guys, good morning. Just on the remaining multifamily, what's the timeframe on resolving the remaining multifamily loans? I didn't know if you said that. And also the current, the equity you have remaining, that 84 million, what's the EAD on just that piece?

So I'll answer the first and then pass it over to Mike to answer the second. You know, we believe that really we're probably, you know, A few quarters away from resolving the portfolio. There are loans that are still paying that are extended, and we're giving time for the owners of those properties to resolve their loans through either refinance or sale of the property. And then the loans that are delinquent, we can work through rather quickly to acquire the property and sell that subsequently. So really, in terms of resolving the entire thing, I think we're probably a few quarters away. But the material losses, credit losses, are really here in the next quarter.

And then, Boaz, to understand your question directly, are you asking what the impact would be if we were to redeploy that full $84 million? Or are you asking what the lossless portion of the book generated for the quarter?

Yeah, just trying to understand the impact of the redeployment. Like, is that a negative EAD at the moment, or is that zero? But trying to calculate the benefit of the redeployment.

Sure. So if you account for all the sort of non-performing assets in that book, and then obviously the credit losses, that obviously would go away if we were to liquidate the rest of the book. Thinking about the $84 million deployed at, you know, like a mid-teens ROE, you're talking about a marginal, call it $14, $15 million a year of additional earnings. And clearly there's going to be normalized losses on that, not the heightened credit losses we see today.

Okay. Okay, great. And then on the agency, just given what's happened with agency spreads, how do you see the risk-reward ratio? in that market, and then just where do you see the best risk reward for deploying incremental capital?

Yeah, I mean, we still see agencies are attractive given spreads of wide and say, you know, 8 to 10 pips since the quarter. Still think it's sort of mid-teens ROEs are achievable. You know, really our highest ROE business is still, you know, growth at Lima 1 in terms of origination. You know, the double-digit, you know, type coupons financed at, say, 6% to 7% offers a very good spread and very high ROEs. So that's still the most attractive. But non-QM continues to be attractive as well, which ROEs are really in the mid-teens there, too. So we're really pressing on all fronts, deploying the additional capital. And obviously, things can change quarter to quarter, and we'll reallocate depending on where spreads and ROEs move.

OK, makes sense. Thanks.

Our next question is from Mikael Goverment with Citizens JMP. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, good afternoon, everyone, or good morning. Just wanted to get your thoughts. Good morning. Wanted to get your thoughts on potential further improvements in operating leverage, expense reduction going forward. I know you guys are doing good work with the changeover in the corporate headquarters and all that. Just your general thoughts on expenses going forward. And also the second part of the question, with regards to Lima One, I know you've touched on Lima One already. Just what kind of, in terms of the products that Lima One is offering, just thoughts on that and how you see the third quarter shaping up for Lima One in terms of maybe continuing the really good momentum you saw in the second quarter. Thanks.

I'll take the first part of your question and maybe Bryan can take the second part there. On the G&A expenses, we provided the guidance and the prepared remarks really because there's been a lot of noise as we sort of worked through those initiatives that we've talked about for some time now. I think a lot of those sort of one-time blips, if you will, in the expenses are sort of reaching a point of normalization. With that said, we continuously evaluate the business for opportunities to be more efficient, and clearly we're committed to expense discipline across the business, including the Lima One. There's a couple of smaller items that will continue to flush through over the remainder of the year, including some expected savings from AI initiatives across the firm. But I think most of the big ticket items are sort of accounted for at this point in terms of the run rate G&A.

As it relates to Lima One, given the nature of the housing stock being fairly high-priced, we've been focusing more on the ground-up construction space because that's where the opportunity is for investors. That's where we've seen the materiality of the production out of Lima. That, in addition to some bridge loans, But really, in terms of volumes for the third quarter, we see a strong pipeline today. We saw good submissions. in July, but there's still sort of a couple months left of the quarter. It's unclear. We do expect there to be growth, but as I sort of mentioned in the earlier remarks, I'm not sure it's going to be the same jump that we saw from Q1 to Q2 because there's also some seasonality impacts when you go from the earlier in the year, the winter months, into the spring and summer. Great. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you.

Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We have reached the end of the question and answer session. If you would like to, I would like to turn the floor back over to Craig Knutson for closing comments.

Thank you. Well, thanks everyone for your interest in MFA Financial. and we look forward to speaking with you again in November when we announce third quarter results.

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.