Redwood Trust, Inc.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Redwood Trust, Inc. Second Quarter 2024 Financial Results Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Caitlin Martz, Redwood's Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. With me on today's call are Chris Labate, Chief Executive Officer, Dash Robinson, President, and Brooke Rillo, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I want to remind you that certain statements made during management's presentation today with respect to future financial and business performance may constitute forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions, and include risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. We encourage you to read the company's annual report in Form 10-K, which provides a description of some of the factors that could have a material impact on a company's performance and cause actual results to differ from those that may be expressed in forward-looking statements. On this call, we may also refer to both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. The non-GAAP financial measures provided should not be utilized in isolation or considered as a substitute for measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures are provided in our second quarter Redwood review, which is available on our website, redwoodtrust.com. Also note that the contents of today's conference call contain time-sensitive information that are only accurate as of today. We do not intend and undertake no obligation to update this information to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. Finally, today's call is being recorded and will be available on our website later today. With that, I'll turn the call over to Chris for opening remarks.

Thanks, Kate, and welcome everyone to Redwood's second quarter of 2024 earnings call. As always, I'll kick off our opening remarks before handing it over to Dash and Brooke to cover our operating and financial results. At our March investor day, We said that investors in RWT hold the keys to tremendous optionality on the future of housing finance. This statement was meant to reflect our unique strategic positioning in response to anticipated regulatory shifts and the rapid emergence of private credit investors in our sector. Today, after a second consecutive quarter of approximately 50% growth in residential consumer lock volumes, combined with 40% quarterly growth in residential investor loan volumes, Validation of that statement is upon us. Year to date, we have distributed close to $3.5 billion of our collateral. As investors continue to exhibit strong demand for the residential assets, we are uniquely positioned to source and manage. And now, as the Fed finally begins to exhibit signs that its historic tightening cycle is ending, a macro environment to facilitate transformative growth can emerge. Putting it all together, we think the case for Redwood has never been clearer. To recap our second quarter results, we improved our operating efficiency on the back of strong volumes while realizing a 20% reduction in fixed costs. Earnings available for distribution was $0.13 per share, 70% higher than the prior quarter. Our June 30th gap book value was $8.73 per share, roughly flat on the quarter, and we estimate book value is up an additional 1% to 2% at July 31st. Progress with our bank partners illustrates the core asset liability challenges these institutions still face when funding fixed-rate mortgages with deposits. This drives shifts in bank product and portfolio strategies, and has further evolved how banks serve their customers. As we continue to focus on forward-flow jumbo production with the banks, we now consider the $1.3 trillion of seasoned jumbo loans on bank balance sheets to be an addressable market for us. In fact, in the second quarter, Approximately 35% of our bank lock volume came from such seasoned portfolios. All told, our lock volume with banks grew 80% quarter over quarter. On the regulatory front, recent commentary from the Fed also suggests that a re-proposal of the Basel III endgame rules is imminent. Though we were the first to acknowledge that anything can happen in Washington these days, we're encouraged by the early feedback on Christy Goldsmith Romero, who has been nominated to be the new chair of the FDIC. Goldsmith Romero has stated publicly that she is, quote, very open to the reproposal of the Basel III endgame capital requirements and that the agency under her leadership will strive to follow congressional intent concerning a law requiring banking agencies to tailor their capital regulations to bank size. We currently expect a vote on this nomination to occur in September after the Senate returns for a three-week session beginning the week of September 9th. Turning to our investor loan business, demand from private credit institutions helped drive the strongest return for our residential investor segment since 2021. As you recall, our recently established partnerships with CPP Investments and Oak Tree are indicative of the ongoing demand we have witnessed for our residential investor loans. These joint ventures, combined with ongoing inroads with whole loan buyers, will help evolve the platform's revenues toward recurring and predictable fee streams facilitating scale with less direct capital usage through time. Looking ahead to the second half of the year, we remain pleased with our market positioning and will continue to execute on our strategic goals. However, we're preparing for unexpected challenges, particularly in light of an already unprecedented presidential election cycle. Though rates remain stubbornly high, a data-driven Fed now has increasing evidence to commence a more accommodative monetary policy, and we're optimistic on what that could mean for our markets across the residential housing landscape. We look forward to further updating you on our progress as regulatory, monetary, and political changes take shape this fall. And now I'll turn the call over to Dash to discuss our operating performance in more detail.

Thanks, Chris. Second quarter operating performance across our platforms reflected important progress on wallet share, improved efficiencies, and continued momentum on distribution. We grew revenues, increased activity with joint ventures, sold term loans to a new strategic investor, and maintained our monthly cadence for jumbo loan securitizations. Residential mortgage banking's lock volume growth was driven by increased penetration across our seller base. including the 80% quarter-over-quarter increase in bank volumes that Chris referenced. As seasonality helped nudge overall industry volumes up from the first quarter, we estimate our overall second quarter market share in Jumbo to be approximately 6%, up from 5% in the first quarter. Activity on the quarter was highlighted by the purchase from a bank of a sizable pool of seasoned hybrid adjustable rate mortgages, or ARMs, that we expect to settle later in August. an important development that underscores our role as a solutions provider to bank balance sheets. The transaction also represents attractive diversification from our traditional 30-year fixed rate offering, which, given banks' traditional footprint in arm lending, may become a growing opportunity for our business. As is often the case, when market conditions become more favorable, new players in our space attempt to enter or reemerge. a phenomenon we saw in the second quarter as a handful of issuers pursued market share from independent mortgage bankers, or IMBs. This dynamic quickly shifted as securitization spreads began to retrace tightening from earlier in the year. IMBs remain a longstanding competitive advantage for our business, and in spite of these entrants, we grew IMB lock volume by 10% quarter over quarter. IMBs represented 50% of quarterly volume, and we expect this group to remain a critical focus in driving our overall wallet share higher. Distribution has kept pace with the growth, and we priced three jumbo securitizations during the quarter while maintaining an active posture on pipeline hedging. This drove gross margins of 72 basis points, just below our historical target range, despite TBA widening and softening in issuance spreads. Already in the third quarter, we priced our seventh jumbo securitization of the year, backed by $638 million of collateral, and sold $150 million of whole loans to an insurance company. Our residential investor segment also posted impressive upticks in volume and profitability during the second quarter, funding $459 million of loans, up 41% from the first quarter. Importantly, origination momentum came from higher margin products where we have prioritized growth. After several quarters of impact from persistently higher rates, term loan volume rose 90% quarter over quarter and was close to half our overall funding mix, key progress given our historical footprint in this product. We also achieved record volume for both single asset bridge and DSCR loans, growing each 50% from the first quarter. July fundings for the full business were in line with average monthly volumes for the second quarter. Market demand for our products, most notably from large pools of institutional capital seeking long-term partnerships, remains a key differentiator for the platform. We sold $415 million of loans in the second quarter, a high watermark for distribution away from securitization. This included sales to our joint ventures, including the initial funding on the CPP Investments JV, and an accretive sale of $240 million in term loans to a large insurance-backed buyer. This was a notable transaction and represented a sizable new investor for our loans. Our results reflect the benefits of the partnerships that we have established, and looking ahead, we believe the depth of our distribution sets us apart in managing the business to durable profitability. Credit performance in our residential investor portfolio has remained stable overall, but continues to command asset management focus, particularly related to workout activity within our legacy multifamily bridge portfolio. a strategy we largely discontinued in the summer of 2022. Through the process of stabilizing this portfolio, we have continued to incur incidental workout costs as we progress toward productive resolutions. Given the pace of paydowns and workout activity, we expect this portfolio to continue factoring down in the next two to three quarters, with moderating interest rates potentially accelerating payoff and refinance activity. The second quarter was a recent high point in deployment within our investment portfolio. with over $130 million of capital put to work. Investments were generally focused on shorter duration, higher coupon securities from third parties, and helped drive the growth in net interest income that Brooke will describe in more detail. Fundamentals within our overall $3.4 billion investment portfolio continue to perform well, particularly in our jumbo and re-performing loan books, where performance has materially exceeded our model expectations. The carrying value of this portfolio has been significantly impacted by the 550 basis point hike in benchmark rates over the past two years. As rates stabilize and potentially begin to come down, the book values of our long-term fixed rate investments stand to directly benefit. With the overall portfolio still carried at an aggregate $2.18 per share net discount, 65% of which is from our jumbo and re-performing loan securities, This represents a key source of earnings upside that in recent quarters has been hard to unlock. I will now turn the call over to Brooke to discuss our financial results in more detail.

Thank you, Dash. We reported GAAP earnings of $14 million or $0.10 per share for the second quarter compared to $29 million or $0.21 per share in the first quarter. Earnings available for distribution or EAD was $19 million or $0.13 per share for the second quarter up 70% from $11 million, or $0.08 per share in the first quarter. This resulted in an EAD return on common equity of 6.5%, primarily due to growth in net interest income and higher net income contributions from both our mortgage banking platforms. We saw positive fair value changes on our investment portfolio in the second quarter, but performance lagged the first quarter due to higher reserves on our bridge loans. Our book value per share was $8.73, a slight decrease as compared to $8.78 at March 31st. Including our $0.16 common dividend, we delivered an economic return of 1.3%. This brings the year-to-date total economic return to nearly 5%, which would exceed our dividend yield on book value on an annualized basis, underscoring our ability to deliver a stable to growing book value and consistent dividends despite a volatile market backdrop. Higher volumes and improved operating efficiencies resulted in higher returns across our operating platforms during the quarter. The residential consumer mortgage banking segment delivered a 16% return, and the residential investor segment delivered a 13% return, adjusting for the amortization of acquisition-related intangibles. Net interest income continued to grow in the second quarter, increasing by $1 million to $25 million. The roughly $130 million of accreted capital deployment during Q2 contributed roughly $4 million to net interest income. This was somewhat offset by lower net interest income from the bridge portfolio due to a smaller portfolio size, as we saw nearly $400 million of payoffs and $200 million of transfers into joint ventures in the first half of the year. Additionally, loan modifications led to a 10 basis point reduction in our weighted average coupon on the portfolio compared to Q1. We anticipate that continued accretive capital deployment and the resolution of lower-yielding legacy bridge assets will unlock incremental capital for redeployment, further optimizing our investment portfolio's net interest income. We've benefited from measures taken in recent quarters with general and administrative, or G&A, expenses decreasing by $1.2 million from the first quarter, primarily due to a 20% reduction in fixed employee compensation. Given the progress in scaling our volumes, Efficiency is also improved in our operating businesses. The cost per loan for a residential consumer decreased to 22 basis points from 36 basis points in the first quarter, driven by bulk activity. With two consecutive quarters of 50% growth in loss volume, we anticipate that operating expenses will trend back closer to a 30 to 35 basis point historical target range. We also saw the net cost to originate for residential investor improving to just under 100 basis points in the second quarter, which is also approaching long-term efficiency targets for that business. We maintained a robust cash position of $276 million at quarter end, effectively unchanged from the first quarter, even as we grew the business and deployed a grid of capital. Post-quarter end, we retired our 2024 outstanding convertible debt using existing cash on hand, reducing our total convertible debt outstanding to $364 million. down 43% year-over-year. We closed one SEMT securitization and one REIT securitization, freeing up approximately $70 million of incremental cash. Performa for these activities, our July 31st cash and cash equivalents position stood at approximately $275 million. We were active on the financing front, securing $2.5 billion in new or refreshed capacity, including $1 billion to support our joint ventures. These new facilities executed on favorable terms with existing bank partners, are expected to support growth of our own production. We added a few new facilities to maintain sufficient runway for our residential consumer pipeline with a $300 million facility that supports our capital light, high capital turn strategy. Additionally, during the second quarter, we drew down $125 million of our CPP investments facility and still have another $125 million remaining under that facility. We also completed an $85 million senior unsecured corporate note offering with a 9% coupon inside our inaugural issue in January, providing incrementally a creative capital for deployment. Total recourse leverage was 2.1 times for the second quarter, up from 1.9 times in Q1. The increase was attributable to higher balance of residential loans and inventory, partially offset by the conversion of over $200 million of recourse debt secured by bridge loans to longer-term non-recourse structures. We believe we have sufficient capacity to support the further growth of our operating platforms with $6.1 billion in total financing capacity at quarter end, of which $3.8 billion was undrawn and available. Looking forward, we aim to build on the momentum generated in the first half of 2024. We remain committed to growing market share and deploying capital accretively to grow earnings throughout the remainder of the year. And with that, operator, we will open the line 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 that 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 key. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from Bose George with KBW. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, everyone. Good morning. Can you talk about the bulk pipeline? And also, can you discuss just the economics of the bulk business? Like, was there any financial impact from the acquisitions this quarter? Or is that when you, you know, when it's disposed? Yeah, how that differs in any way from the regular flow volume?

Sure, Bose. It's Dash. I can take that. In terms of the prospects for bulk, I think we remain really optimistic that the transaction we talked about that we expect to settle later this month is the first of several. Obviously, those are a little bit more episodic conversations with banks, you know, versus our sort of point of sale flow business. But if you look at the dynamics, number one, with rates, obviously, with this recent rally, we're getting much closer to a point where Dollar prices may make sense for certain banks looking to dispose of seasoned collateral. Obviously, the dynamics with Basel, banks looking to manage overall balance sheet sizes continues to be a dynamic that we see a lot and we think is a tailwind for availability of bulk. So those are all positive tailwinds. Oftentimes, including this situation that we talked about, it involves being around the hoop with these banks and constant dialogue, whether that's being active on the flow side already or simply being in with the C-suite of these banks with the decision makers and being the first phone call when they decide to sell those portfolios. Yeah. Obviously, a bulk pipeline looks and feels a little bit different than flow, just given how episodic it can be, but we feel like there are a lot of tailwinds, including being able to get one done. There's always a lot of learnings, particularly with seasoned portfolios, that really matter. In terms of the economics, I think we were appropriately conservative in terms of how we thought about the economics in the second quarter of the pool. As I mentioned, it was scheduled to settle later this month. We'll intend to execute that. in the third quarter, so there's hopefully some incremental upside there. And like we talked about on the call, the fact that it's hybrids I think is meaningful. As you know, hybrids are not commonly securitized. You know, they've historically been a bank product. Sometimes they do trade bank to bank or maybe even with insurance companies. But we're really excited to, you know, control that production because we think it's differentiated in terms of what the market is buying and I think also sets us up well to potentially do more hybrids on the run as well.

Okay, so that makes sense. But just in terms of, like, when you think about your target range of 75 to 100, the bulk doesn't necessarily need to kind of fall there. Is that fair?

It could. I mean, I think, you know, for bulk where, you know, we're in touch with larger loans and there's less, you know, fallout pipeline risk to manage, you're right. It could make sense to work for a little bit below that. That's not how we feel like we're working on this portfolio. We felt like with this portfolio we're working within our range, but... You're right. With bulk, there are efficiencies, and through time, it could make sense to, you know, to work for a little bit less if the capital efficiency is ultimately there.

Okay, great. And then, actually, just one more on switching to the bridge loan, the delinquency increase. Can you talk about the drivers? Was that on the, you know, multi-family sync trends on, you know, what drove that?

Sure. So, the... In terms of the overall trend of the book, you know, it was a modest uptick. It was largely driven by multifamily. We did resolve, you know, several of our 90-plus bucket during the first quarter. But, you know, in general, that book goes, I would say, just a few things. You know, in the bridge portfolio overall, you know, we've continued to see runoff. We had close to a quarter billion of payoffs in the second quarter. So some of that increases because we actually do have a smaller portfolio here. at this point. You know, in general, we're seeing the lending markets open up. You know, we saw a lot of loans refinance out in the second quarter that we were probably less constructive on refinancing. So you're definitely starting to see, you know, flow of funds, you know, increase in those markets. So it was definitely a modest uptick, but, you know, we resolved a lot in the second quarter. And importantly, that portfolio remains ring-fenced. It's, you know, just over 10% of our overall capital at this point, and we're continuing to see it factor down.

Okay. Thank you.

Our next question is from Douglas Harder with the UBS. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks. Hoping you could talk a little bit about the decline in revenue margin this quarter. You know, how much of that would you attribute to the competition you mentioned versus kind of the volatility in TBA and securitization spreads?

This is Chris. On margins overall, you know, there's a lot of forces at play. There's a lot of issuance activity that's picked up. A lot of it has to do with the mix of the collateral. But what I would say is, you know, we continue to become more efficient, and so we're controlling what we can control. I do think that we're still, you know, projecting historical ranges for margins. That's 75 to 100 in Jumbo, for instance. We still like where that sits, mostly because there's pushes and pulls in the market. And as margins go up, you see more competitors, which we have seen very recently. And when there's a glut of supply, deals widen and competitors leave and margins trend back to the range. So I think it's part of the noise of the business, but I still think the historical ranges that we speak to are the right way to think about the economics.

Great. And I apologize if I missed. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Brooke.

No, I was just going to say as a reminder, we have been the prior two quarters kind of well in excess of our historical gain on sale as primarily securitization spreads were continuing to tighten in on execution. And so for us to be able to generate in and around our historical gain on sale when both AAA spreads to TBAs and TBAs were widening throughout the quarter, we think was pretty well underscored the effectiveness of our hedging regime there.

Great. And I apologize if I missed this, but did you give an outlook for either July locked volumes or your outlook for the full quarter?

No, we didn't. Okay. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Kristen Love with Piper Sandler. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. First, can you just talk about the ATI product a little bit, which saw a big pickup in revenues in the quarter? What drove the pickup? Was it primarily just valuations there? And also, just as ATI in the area, your bullish on near-term, what rates are and how you view the outlook?

Yeah, it's a great question. The main driver of those that were, you're correct, in the portfolio in terms of its overall valuation was up to those that were really fair value changes on the portfolio. A lot of what we have in terms of income on that portfolio, almost think about it as a recurring accretion. Those underlying options are struck at a discount to appraised value, and so almost act like a bond instrument in certain ways that a lot of our return from the underlying option is accreted through time. In excess of that accretable return every quarter, we did see modest pickup and the fair value is also from both an improvement in hpa throughout the quarter as well as a you know a small improvement in the forward forecast for hpa as well great uh appreciate that brooke and then can you just also just speak to your current thoughts on the on the dividend and if you and the board think you are at the right level at 16 cents when you look at

GAAP, EAD, and then also the rate outlook with the Fed likely to begin cutting in the coming months, and then what you might need to see to get back to covering the dividend with EAD. Thanks.

Yeah, I'd say high level, and Brooke can color commentate. We feel very good about the current level of the dividend, and we feel like, you know, starting with our March investor day, we're tracking towards... You know, EAD covering it, you know, the dividend at 16, EAD was 13. I think more importantly, though, in the big picture, you know, there is the prospect of a rate cut. And we talked about, you know, the macroeconomic environment for our sector has been, you know, very, very challenging in the past few years. As that environment shifts, you know, that should definitely be a tailwind behind us. not only in our ability to lower funding costs and generate incremental net interest income, but the book, you know, the portfolio, you know, we have a lot of longer-duration fixed-rate assets that have been impacted by rising rates over the past few years. And to see that start to recover, you know, that's another facet of earnings generation on the gap side that is quite meaningful, you know, in how we think about the dividend going forward.

Chris, thank you, Dad.

Just to pick up on Chris's comments, one thing to answer the part of your question around just earnings covering the dividend, I think when we put out that Investor Day comments, that was really under the backdrop of a higher for longer or kind of more of the same rate backdrop. So, you know, a lot of what we laid out was really centered around our capital deployment. We have raised... or unlocked a significant amount of capital from the fact that we had carried such low recourse leverage in the portfolio. You saw that tick down again this quarter, so sitting just over a half a turn. When we think about the dry powder that we have to invest to continue to drive NII through accretive capital deployment, we really think about it as about $250 million today. We cited our $275 million of current cash, but pro forma for the other you know, 125 million or so remaining under CPP. And we have a lot of sources of capital, I think, behind that, just in terms of the unencumbered assets that we still carry in our portfolio. As we mentioned in some of our prepared remarks, you know, we are continuing to unlock some of those unencumbered assets through term securitization, term securitizations that are pretty accretive and allow us for incremental capital to be redeployed at higher spreads today. And then, you know, furthermore, I think if you – to Chris's point on a rate cut, if you look at our – the mix, especially with the uptick in residential volume, we have about a billion more floating rate debt than assets today because of that fixed-rate residential pipeline that we financed with warehouse line debt. So, you know, that is – you know, we see immediate pickup to NIM there.

Great, thank you. I appreciate you taking my questions.

All very helpful.

Our next question comes from Jason Weaver with Jones Trading. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Dash, I might have missed your remarks about July, but the jumbo retention rate looked quite a bit higher at 630, but with the effect of the securitization subsequently, that might be more evened out. Is that correct?

Yeah, that's right. We've... You know, we've since done a deal in July. You're seeing this. We have about $963 million of loans on balance sheet. You know, you could continue to see that increase just as we continue to gain share and, you know, further support growing our volumes. But we are at about a deal-a-month cadence in the securitization markets right now. So depending on the timing of those securitizations, you might see that balance fluctuate up and down over quarter ends.

Got it. Thank you. Next, I wanted to ask about HEI as well. Can you talk about the build-out of the sourcing network behind that?

Sure. I can take that one. This is Dash. When we decided to build that business organically a couple of years ago, we felt like we had a couple of main competitive advantages. Number one was just the operational infrastructure we have in place with the existing businesses, which is a stark contrast to a lot of the newer players that have come up over the past few years. But also inherent in that is this sort of quote-unquote wholesale sourcing network, where we can source potential HEI customers from our existing loan sellers or other sort of B2B contexts that a lot of other players aren't doing. The traditional model is more direct-to-consumer, spending a lot of money on marketing to get the word out, assessing your pull-throughs, et cetera. We definitely do a little bit of that. We have a modest spend on direct-to-consumer, but the real moat for that business from our perspective is the moat we have in other businesses with just this unique relationship that we have with 200-plus sellers. We have other relationships with other platforms that are in touch with other groups of consumers that may be interested in HEI. There's a whole emergence of secondary financing with second lien products. You know, as you probably saw, Freddie Mac has sort of provisional approval to start purchasing closed on seconds. I bring that up because it sort of illustrates the overall momentum in the space and that there's just a whole group of consumers we can unlock on a wholesale basis that we can serve through Aspire, which is the HEI platform. So it's still early days. You know, we've been very judicious about the spend and the rollout because of just frankly the rate environment and also the relative newness of the product. But, you know, we're starting to see a lot of momentum in those channels and are excited to see what that brings in the second half of the year.

All right. Thank you very much for that, Kelly.

Our next question comes from Don Sanchez with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question.

Yes. Can you talk about whether or not you think FedCuts could help some of the bridge loans get further refinanced out and when you think that delinquency rate might peak?

Good question, Don. Thank you. I think there's a few things going on. I think there's the math of an explicit cut where certainly floating rate debt burdens will come down if SOFR goes down in the second half of the year. That's a math equation that will help incrementally. But I think maybe the overlay there is just what's happening with the sentiment in the market and the fact that, you know, I think the market, you know, has much more clarity at this point on potential timing of the Fed cutting and when we're going to go into a more accommodative cycle. And I think we're already seeing that make a difference, kind of like I mentioned in response to Bose's question earlier. It's already making a big difference in how capital is flowing in the space. You know, not only are you seeing the lending markets open up, not only like in conduit land, but also, you know, private lenders that were probably more willing to step up and refinance loans today than they were six to nine months ago. You're seeing a lot of equity on the sidelines start to come off the sidelines in housing finance, where, again, there's more clarity to what's going on with interest rates, more conviction around investments, things of that nature. And you're also seeing borrowers, you know, remain in projects. You know, that's what's most important, you know, for us to keep sponsors engaged. You know, our multi-book in particular inherently is pretty seasoned because, you know, like we've talked about a lot, we sort of de-emphasized that strategy coming up on two years ago at this point. And so if you've been in a project for two, two and a half years and you've stuck with it, you have much more conviction now, frankly, than you did six to nine months ago when rates were higher, the markets were harder, and there was just less of a path. you know, to stabilization with rates and lowering. So I think the math will help incrementally, but I think what really matters most is sentiment. And we're starting to see sentiment definitely shift, which we've seen in runoff of our bridge portfolio, in which we're obviously pleased with.

And so you think the delinquency rate could continue to tick up a little bit, but remain relatively contained?

We have our arms around this portfolio. It's hard to exactly prognosticate the exact direction, but I think what we would expect to see continued pace of resolutions. You know, we are actively engaged with outcomes on the vast majority of our 90-plus bucket at June 30th, so we expect that to continue to run off. You know, being honest, we certainly expect to confront pockets of other issues in the portfolio. We expect that to come up, but we've got the right asset management team in place to deal with it. We've talked a lot in recent quarters about being ahead of the curve with these sponsors, which really matters. And I think you've seen that in the pace of resolutions. So I think we will expect, we will continue to see resolutions in the book. Will other stuff come up? Yes. But we're, you know, we're ahead of the curve on those issues, which I think will help with the expediency of those resolutions.

Our next question comes from Stephen Laws with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, good morning. I wanted to touch base on NII and JV fees. You know, Brooke, I think you mentioned some payoffs and, you know, we're going to, as some investment shift, you know, see an impact there. Can you talk about the outlook for NII as more assets go into the JVs and kind of how we should see JV fees ramp? And I know in the past you guys have talked about 15% sets of annual EAD once that's fully scaled. Can you give us a timeline, you know, given the pace you've seen in the second quarter of how you, when you expect those JVs to reach scale?

Sure. I'm happy to start. I think it's a great point to raise on just the timing disconnect between, you know, we've historically, we have a $100 million of loans paying back to us, we redeploy that $100 million back right into our investment portfolio and into bridge loans. I think the important piece is that while there might be a small revenue recognition delay between the fees being scaled and the JV combined with our 20% of the NII piece, it unlocks a tremendous amount of capital. My earlier comments were centered around $250 million, I think, is a conservative number for our investable capital today, just given our sources of capital. That will more than offset the impact of a smaller bridge portfolio directly on balance sheet, but that would either come from more non-interest earning revenue, so more mortgage banking revenue as the capital is redeployed either into our operating businesses or potentially into more third-party investments like you saw us do in the second quarter. Our capital deployment really generated about $4 million of incremental NII. We did have an uptick in our corporate debt expense to finance it, so we will continue to see that NII piece grow throughout the second quarter. Just in terms of timing, we did disclose that we put about $150 million 20 million of loans into the CPP joint venture. However, that was late in the quarter. We, you know, we also stood up multiple financing lines. You know, these lines we view to be really accretive terms that are really going to help drive volume for us profitably in that business. And so, you know, Q3 is an open road for deployment into those. And just given our overall pickup in the BPL volume,

we saw both on the bridge and term side we should be um you know over the next few quarters ramping quite nicely thanks brooke and i want to follow up on kind of a broader higher level question about the bank relationships and over the last year or so as you guys have really started growing that given the shift in the market um you know it doesn't just turn on overnight i know there's a difference in underwriting loans for bank balance sheet versus you know your your exit of securitization so can you talk about how the maturation of those relationships or seasoning works and, you know, are things still ramping up? And I think it probably goes to your point earlier about just being around the hoop with conversations with management, management's about, you know, now seeing some bulk purchase opportunities of season loans, but can you talk about how long that usually takes from, from forming that initial relationship to when you feel like you're really, you know, moving at a hundred percent as far as capturing the flow and opportunity with those bank sponsors?

I'm sure, Stephen, I'll take that one. The bank relationship building has been ongoing, as you know, and we're really pleased with some of the metrics that we're seeing. Certainly, bank volume is a percentage of total lock volume, number of active sellers. I think we're right about 50-50 between banks and IMBs, and most of that momentum is is with the banks today. So we would expect that to continue to go higher bank side. The relationships, the way we think about it is we continue to be doing infrastructure building with these guys. And ultimately, you know, this is the first time, you know, we've kind of declared that the $1.3 trillion of jumbo sitting on bank balance sheets is officially an addressable market of ours, which is what we're trying to do. We're trying to build and grow the markets that we can address trade. For years, those were loans that we never saw. And I think that what's really interesting is as these relationships are stood up and as monetary policy shifts, we can buy loans from banks and we've been an avid seller of loans to banks. So what's most important is the infrastructure building and having these relationships. through the context of a vendor versus just a capital takeout. You know, they invest a lot in the technology and the training, so we think that these are durable relationships. You know, most of our competition, almost all of our competition for loans these days continues to be on the IMB side. You know, the vast majority of securitization activity that picked up you know, right into July were competitors on the IMB front. On the bank side, we continue to have, you know, great access. And most of my personal time these days is spent working with bank executives and advancing these partnerships. So it's really exciting to start to see the work manifest into volume and earnings. And hopefully all the work that we're doing, you know, today and over the past year, year and a half, is going to contribute more significantly going forward. So for us, it's full speed ahead with banking partners.

Great. Appreciate the comments this morning.

Our next question comes from Eric Hagen with BTIG. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, thanks. Good morning. A lot covered here already. One follow-up on Corvest.

Is Corvest the direct servicer for all of the loans in its portfolio? And maybe you can share how the servicing function specifically has kind of evolved in that business as it's grown and how you're maybe managing the costs just in light of the delinquency pipeline.

Hey, Eric and Stash. Thanks for the question. So we, for our bridge portfolio... We are essentially the special servicers, so we can interact directly with borrowers and sponsors. For both the term and the bridge books, we're not the primary servicers, so we don't do the basic payment collection. We farm that work out to third parties. In our securitized term portfolio, which, as you know, is the majority of that book, those are rated transactions, so there are rated primary and special servicers. There's very specific protocols within REMEX for special servicing. We're obviously involved as the owner of the subordinate bonds, but there is a third party named special servicer. Like I said, on the bridge portfolio, payment collections are done by a third party, but our asset management team is directly engaged with those sponsors as needed.

Got you. Okay, that's helpful.

Hey, so how are you guys thinking about the cash position at this point? How much organic cash do you feel like you're generating kind of like on a quarterly basis? and how are you thinking about the pipeline of unsecured debt coming due, just in light of other mortgage finance companies that have taken the opportunity to refinance their debt as well?

Yeah, I think we feel really good about our cash and liquidity position today. Proforma, for paying off our converts, we're sitting at the same cash position that we've had for the last couple of quarters, and we've put a lot of money to work accretively. The only two kind of main recourse financing obligations that we had through the next 12 months we addressed in July. That's the quinch quarter end. We have had elevated bridge maturities. We are probably expecting in and around 350 million or so, stepping down to high 200s of maturities of our bridge portfolio over the next number of quarters. That provides a very nice source of capital for us as well as some of the resolution activity that Dash mentioned unlocks a creative capital that we can redeploy at more optimal levels than where it sits today. We also have dry powder from the CPP facility that I mentioned and a pretty good playback for the unencumbered assets where we sit today. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, our convertible debt is down 43% year over year. We've done a lot of work on the capital structure and raising term non-recourse financing, as you probably saw. We moved about $200 million of bridge loans into non-recourse, non-marginable structures. Most of that bridge book is financed today in non-marginable, non-recourse structures. So we just feel really good overall about both our liquidity position, being able to go on offense, and also our liability structure in general.

Got it. Thank you so much.

Our next question comes from Rick Shane with JP Morgan. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning, everybody. And I apologize if some of this has been covered. I'm bouncing between calls this morning to Look, one of the interesting developments we're going to start to face is a pickup in speeds as rates fall. When we think about many of the mortgage rates we follow where they own instruments at premiums, we're starting to factor that into our models. Historically, Redwood has owned instruments at pretty significant discounts and benefited from a pickup in speeds. Can you talk a little bit about that dynamic where the accretable discount is in the portfolio and what you would need to see in terms of movements of rates to really see that manifest?

Sure. We can tag team this one, but I think the headline response is, you know, the vast majority of Well, most REITs, I would say, these days own assets at premiums, as you articulated, and, you know, speeds are probably the biggest threat to, you know, those values and eroding the premium. I think for us, you know, we've continued to talk about the fact that our books set a significant net discount. I think it's $2.18 a share of realizable discount. Speeds, obviously, is an accelerant to that. So we are definitely, from a portfolio perspective, in a position where speeds will help significantly. On the on-the-run businesses, generally speaking, lower interest rates will help our business. I think we've been positioned for higher for longer, as Brooke articulated earlier, and certainly past the the forecast of when rates might come down has moved pretty immensely. I think last quarter, you know, few were predicting a rate cut even this year, and now we're building a consensus towards possibly September. So the macro environment, you know, that that could create for us is definitely a tailwind. And the combination of starting to realize that accretable discount on the book Again, you know, our portfolio, we've talked about, you know, multi-bridge, which is actually a relatively small piece of overall book. And as a portfolio, the credit performance of the book has been extremely strong. So when you think about what's going to move it, it's not credit, it's rates. And come down, we'll hopefully start to, you know, that will be a contributor at least to gap earnings. So that's a big piece. And obviously, if speeds pick up for the on-the-run business, that means that there's more loan activity. And if there's more loan transactions, there's more regular way business for us as well. So that's definitely something we can manage. I think we continue to kind of fine-tune our hedging regimen for our resi business, which is obviously the rate-sensitive business. And There we feel really good that we can continue to lock loans and distribute into securitizations as speeds go up. So those are a few things, but I think overall the headline, again, Rick, is we're positioned, I think, meaningfully differently than many others in the sector.

Got it. Chris, and if I could ask one follow-up. Is the takeout for most of your multifamily bridge, the Fannie Freddie multifamily window, and Are you starting to see a pickup in activity there, even though short rates remain elevated as the tenure comes down?

Hey, Rick. It's Ash. That's definitely a piece of it. So, like I said, we had about a quarter billion of runoff in bridge in the second quarter. A good chunk of that was multifamily. Many of those sponsors do go Fannie, Freddie. And as you know, a 10-year at 4% versus 4.5%, that's a big 50-bip difference in terms of the viability of those loans being taken out in terms of where debt yields are. So obviously this rally, particularly with comments yesterday, I think is continuing to support refinances where a lot of loans that maybe didn't work with 10s at 4.5% work now. So we're definitely seeing that, and the loans we want to recapture into our term book, we're doing that. Like I mentioned a few minutes ago, there are a lot of loans we're happy to see go away, and we're also seeing those go away. So I think it's the GSEs, but as I also mentioned, there's a lot of private lenders that I think are more comfortable coming into the space to take loans out that may not have as clear a path to a GSE takeout, but there's just more, there's liquidity flowing a little bit more freely in the system, even the way from sort of the uber-institutional you know, takeouts like the GSEs. All of this is a tailwind to paydowns and things of that nature. But you're right. We're in a pocket of rates where, you know, incremental rallies make a lot of difference between loans that work and loans that don't into GSE takeouts.

Got it. And thank you. And sorry, I sort of had you guys repeat that. Appreciate it.

No, all good, man.

Our next question comes from Steve Delaney with Citizens JPS. JMP Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks. Good morning, everybody. Nice to see you guys are staying busy out there. I wanted to pick up on the rate thing, too, before Riff brought it up. We've had this big rally in the 10 years since late April and about 70 basis points. I'm just curious if that 70 basis points or so move and probably get a little more. Are you already seeing any impact on your locks number one. And this whole rate phenomenon, you know, this could go on, you know, we could be looking what, you know, 10 year, you know, three and a half, maybe by mid 2025. Is there, you know, is there any difference between sort of the bank channel and the IMB in terms of rate sensitivity is really one question and the other is, you know, what is that level, that magic number, Dash, in terms of a 30-year fixed rate that you think just really swings it to where you're getting the vast majority, 70% of your business in refi versus purchase? Thanks.

Hey, Steve. I'll start this one, and Dash can add. I think what we're trying to do with our You know, business is really be less rate sensitive than we've been in the past and have volumes that we feel like are durable in basically any rate environment. I think what that means practically is, you know, our bank channel, you know, we'd love to be an ongoing 30-year takeout for banks. You know, I think the hybrid product is a better portfolio product for banks for obvious reasons. just how they're funded and the deposit base. And so we can be competitive there, but if they lean in on hybrids, it gives us an opportunity to be a 30-year takeout for those guys. And then on the IMB front, it's more competitive. You know, we see people, you know, sellers kind of come in and go out. And so there, I think, whereas, you know, despite the fact that we saw some new entrants, you know, buying loans from sellers in Q2 and into Q3, you know, our IMB volume continued to grow. And so I think we're very well situated there. One thing, you know, and Dash can speak to, you know, the 10-year, but one really interesting thing for us is as, you know, the 10-year comes down, you know, the unrealized losses on these bank back books continue. will potentially reach a point where banks will be comfortable selling or risk transferring or whatever it is. And that starts to get really interesting for us. You know, I mentioned that $1.3 trillion sitting on bank balance sheets. I feel like we're better positioned to take that call than most at this point. And that gets really exciting. So, there's a lot, you know, to like about this business as rates start to come down. I do think I'll turn it over to Dash.

Yeah, you're saying you could see some bulk flow, not just some bulk opportunities off the bank balance sheets when their discount rate is reduced. Is that what I'm hearing?

Yes, that's what you're hearing. So we're having the conversations all the time, and each bank has unique circumstances. But when you look at the makeup of some of these portfolios, the unrealized losses – you know, just have not been too significant to want to realize candidly. As rates come down, you know, and those unrealized losses come down, you know, I think there's a lot of bank executives that would love to clean up some of these portfolios. So that's all the infrastructure work we talked about in building those relationships to get those phone calls.

Steve, in terms of just the 10-year directly impacting volumes, I I think a further rally in the long end, to Chris's point, probably has the most direct impact on unlocking some of these back books at the banks. Candidly, whether jumbo rates are in the high sixes or the low sevens probably doesn't make a huge difference on refinance activity. As you know, most folks have mortgages a couple hundred bips below that, but Similar to the commentary on the resi-investor side, I think a lot of it is a sentiment thing. Single-family housing has been extremely buoyant, and the locks we've seen, even with jumbo rates in the low-mid sevens, I think reflect consumers that want to enter the housing market and have conviction that now's a good time to invest because they didn't do it a year ago, and that was five to seven points ago on HPA, so they're figuring there's conviction to get in and and buy a home, you know, if rates were to rally further into the sixes, I think from a sentiment perspective, that probably does a lot, you know, for, you know, transaction activity. You know, a lot of it is psychological. I think once you get into the sixes, a lot of consumers sort of think about that rate as at least in the context of long-term, you know, historical rates, and you probably start to see more come off the sidelines. Obviously, the overlay is supply, and the fact that, you know, there's still not a lot of housing supply coming out because a lot of people are you know, still sitting on, you know, very low coupon mortgages and are less willing, you know, to sell and move. That's why the HEI business is so interesting to us. But I think as rates get into the sixes from a sentiment perspective on purchase money, we think that will be a tailwind.

Thank you for the comment.

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