1/30/2025

speaker
Maddie
Conference Facilitator

Good morning. My name is Maddie and I will be your conference facilitator. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the 2, 4th quarter 2024 earnings call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer period. I will now like to turn the call over to Maggie Carr.

speaker
Maggie Carr
Position Not Specified

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our call to discuss 2's 4th quarter 2024 financial results. With me on the call this morning are Bill Greenberg, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Nick Letika, our Chief Investment Officer, and William Dalal, our Interim Chief Financial Officer. The earnings press release and presentation associated with today's call have been filed with the SEC and are available on the SEC's website as well as the investor relations page of our website at 2ind.com. In our earnings release and presentation, we have provided reconciliations of gap to non-gap financial measures and we urge you to review this information in conjunction with today's call. As a reminder, our comments today will include forward-looking statements which are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause our results to differ materially from expectations. These are described on page 2 of the presentation and in our Form 10-K and subsequent reports filed with the SEC. Acceptance may be required by law to not update forward-looking statements and disclaim any obligation to do so. I will now turn the call over to Bill.

speaker
Bill Greenberg
President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Maggie. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our 4th quarter earnings call. Before turning to our results, I'd like to take a moment to remember our board member, Reed Sanders, who passed away this month. Reed served as a member of our Board of Directors since our company's inception in October of 2009. He was a trusted advisor and partner to two and our management team and to me personally, and we will miss him greatly. Please turn to slide 3. Our book value at December 31st was $14.47 per common share and which, including the 4th quarter common stock dividend of $0.45 per share, represented a .0% quarterly economic return on book value. For the full year of 2024, we generated a .0% total economic return on book value. Please turn to slide 4. Figure 1 shows the evolution of the market's expectations for the Fed's interest rate policy over the past year. While the Fed delivered two 25 basis point cuts over the quarter, robust jobs and inflation data, along with hawkish comments from Chairman Powell at the Fed's December meeting, tempered rate expectations for 2025. Indeed, at the beginning of the 4th quarter, the market was pricing in more than 100 basis points worth of additional Fed cuts, shown by the blue line, but by the end of the quarter, the market had reconsidered, only pricing in roughly 35 basis points, as seen by the purple line. Over the quarter, the 10-year treasury yield went up by 79 basis points to finish at 4.57%, while the two-year increased by 60 basis points to 4.24%, deepening the yield curve by 19 basis points, as seen in Figure 2. While short-term rates may yet decline in 2025, the Fed remains very data-dependent. Further, a decline in short-term rates does not necessarily correlate to a decline in longer-term treasury rates or mortgage rates. Rather, it's our expectation that mortgage rates are likely to remain above 6% in the intermediate term. At that level, the so-called lock-in effect should keep housing activity muted and, incidentally, will also help prepayments flow, which is a benefit to the value of MSR portfolios like ours. Interest-rate volatility is likely to remain high for the foreseeable future, with the biggest risk being that inflation re-emerges and the Fed pauses, or reverses, the rate-cutting cycle. We continue to keep our interest-rate exposure low and believe that our MSR-centric strategy will generate favorable returns independent of any short-term fluctuations in Fed-driven funding rates. Let's turn to Slide 5. At year-end, we service $212 billion UPB of MSR across 861,000 loans, $58,000 or $11.2 billion UPB of which are serviced for third-party clients. Looking back, 2024 concludes our first full year owning an operating mortgage company, and I'm pleased to say that the integration of Roundpoint into 2 has largely gone according to plan that we laid out in August of 2022. In particular, we are already reaping the improved economics that we estimated due to lower costs and increased revenue streams from servicing the loans from our own MSR portfolio. Specifically, we have benefited from increased economies of scale and additional cash flows from the servicing asset, which had previously benefited our subservicers and not us. In 2024, we also launched a -to-consumer origination platform with the intent of maintaining our current servicing portfolio through recapture of the underlying mortgage loans when the borrower refinances or moves into a new loan product. We think of this effort primarily as being a hedge to our MSR portfolio that serves to protect our asset from -than-expected prepayment speeds should interest rates drop precipitously. Taken altogether, the value of 2's MSR portfolio benefits from the success of servicing, which directly affects the success of originations, which circles back to a positive value contribution to the MSR portfolio. With a weighted average note rate of .46% in our MSR portfolio and mortgage rates currently around 7%, roughly only .2% of our customers would benefit from a rate and term refinance. With that as background, we funded $42 million UPB of first mortgages in the quarter, and there's approximately another $21 million UPB currently in the pipeline. We recognize that these are small numbers, but we are very pleased with the proof of concepts and progress thus far. In less than one year, we stood up a brand new platform entirely from scratch with no legacy risks and for a de minimis cost. The challenge and opportunity in 2025 is to bring this platform fully to scale. Despite the small number of refinanceable loans in our servicing portfolio, we are utilizing the platform to bring incremental revenue and returns to our shareholders. With mortgage rates north of 7%, many of our customers are looking for ways to extract equity while not giving up their ultra-low mortgage rates, and so in the latter half of the year, we began to offer second lien loans to our borrowers. In the quarter, we acted as a broker on $33 million UPB in a combination of both open-ended and closed-end loans. We intend to expand this which will likely include originating the loans in our own name. With mortgage rates expected to remain above 6% in 2025, our focus at Roundpoint is on generating additional cost efficiencies in servicing, especially through the use of technology and AI applications. From a customer experience perspective, we are dedicated to creating a strong platform and brand for our customers to turn to for all their mortgage and home equity needs. Our results in 2024 demonstrated the benefits of our portfolio with its core focus on hedged MSR. With roughly two-thirds of our capital allocated to MSR that is almost 400 base points out of the money, that asset should generate relatively stable cash flows going forward, regardless of the path of short-term interest rates. RMBS spreads remain wide on a nominal basis, reflective of our

speaker
William Dalal
Interim Chief Financial Officer

Thank you both.

speaker
William Dalal
Interim Chief Financial Officer

Please turn to slide 6. Our book value was $14.47 per share at December 31, compared to $14.93 on September 30. Including the 45-cent common stock dividend, this resulted in a flat quarterly economic return, as Bill has already mentioned. For the year, we generated an economic return of 7.0%. Please turn to slide 7. The company incurred a comprehensive loss of $1.6 million, or $0.03 per weighted average common share, in the fourth quarter. Net interest expense of $35 million was lower in the fourth quarter by $7.4 million, due to lower RMBS borrowing balances as a result of sales of RMBS. Additionally, we shifted a portion of our MSR financing from credit facilities to VFN repurchase agreements, which, on average, carry lower floating rate spreads. This was slightly offset by higher overall average MSR borrowing balances. Net servicing income was $168 million, minus $5 million of non-operating MSR-related servicing costs. This is now slightly from the third quarter due to lower float income resulting from lower average outstanding balances and lower rates of borrowing balances given the decline in short-term rates. The lower float was offset partially by higher servicing fee collections and higher subservicing-related income earn. As expected, due to higher yields, investment securities gains and changes in OCI swung from a gain of $270 million in the third quarter to a loss of $267 million in the fourth quarter. Additionally, net swap and other derivative gains in our RMBS hedge portfolio were $145 million in the fourth quarter compared to losses of $205 million in the third quarter resulting from market movements and swaps in futures offset by market movement and TVAs and slightly lower swap interest spread income. The servicing assets showed a gain of $82.5 million in the fourth quarter after a loss of $133.4 million in the third quarter. Higher rates and lower projected prepayments resulted in a positive $139.4 million change in the valuation of MSR as opposed to a negative $93.8 million change in the third quarter. Runoff declined in the fourth quarter to $57 million from $62 million in the third quarter. The decline in runoff was a result of lower UPB due to the sale of MSR in the third quarter as well as the decline in realized prepayment rates. It is important to look at changes in values for the assets and the hedges together rather than in isolation. The net change in the sum of investment securities gain and changes in OCI, net swap and other derivative gains and the servicing asset gain shows a loss of $47.5 million in the fourth quarter compared to a loss of $67.3 million in the third quarter. Please turn to slide 8. RMBS funding markets remain stable and available throughout the quarter with spreads for repurchase agreements at SOFR plus 35 basis forms. Concerns about anticipated year-end funding pressures and uncertainty around Fed actions have dissipated and rates have reverted back to more normal ranges around SOFR plus 15 to 20 basis forms. In retrospect, year-end was uneventful in the funding markets and early indications in 2025 are that spreads are normalizing into a tighter historical context. At quarter end, our weighted average days to maturity for our agency RMBS repo was 49 days compared to 78 days at the end of Q3. Our days to maturity are typically lower at December 31st as we intentionally roll repos in the third quarter past year-end to avoid any disruption in funding that can sometimes occur. We finance our MSR activities across five lenders with $1.8 billion of outstanding borrowings under bilateral facilities. We end the quarter with a total of $865 million in unused MSR asset financing capacity and $60 million in unused capacity for servicing and facets. I will now turn the call over to Nick.

speaker
Nick Letika
Chief Investment Officer

Thank you, William. Before I launch into the slides and provide more detail, let's talk a little bit about the fourth quarter performance at a high level. This was an interesting quarter, particularly for mortgage performance, as mortgage spreads didn't exactly follow the usual playbook. In total, we started the quarter with less mortgage spread risk than any recent quarter with most of our exposure in five and a halfs and up. As rates rose and spreads widened, we let our spread exposure increase, which contributed positively to our performance. Our MSR was aided by slower than expected prepayment speeds, though the quick rise in rates in October, which triggered a fair amount of re-hedging, impacted our MSR performance. As we discussed in last quarter's earnings call, the risk of our MSR varies as rates move, both in terms of duration and coupon exposure. As rates increase, the duration exposure declines and shifts into higher coupons. In practice, that means having to sell some of our RMBS at lower prices due to higher rates and in a month like October at wider spreads. Higher rates have typically spelled trouble for mortgage performance, and it did again in October as interest rates increased and volatility spiked ahead of the presidential election, which negatively affected many mortgage REIT book values. However, in November, following the decisive election results, investors aggressively returned to the market, leading to a recovery in spreads that would not have been predicted based on the moving rates. Over that two-month time period, the 10-year treasury yield increased by 39 basis points, and the slope with a two-year 10-year treasury curve flattened by 12 basis points, yet the index turned in a net positive excess return of plus five basis points. Though hawkish comments from the Fed in December drove rates higher yet again and pushed the quarterly index excess return to minus 11 basis points, the muted reaction to mortgage spreads compared to prior periods was notable. Of course, the index is heavily weighted to lower coupon, and performance across the stack varied widely. Higher coupons, especially in pool form, outperformed, turning in a positive hedged return performance. Jumping into the deck, please turn to slide nine. Our portfolio at December 31st was $14.8 billion, including $10.4 billion in settled positions and $4.4 billion in TBAs. Our economic debt to equity decreased slightly to six and a half times, though as you can see in figure three, our mortgage spread exposure increased into a more normal range as spreads became more attractive in the quarter. As we have said in the past, leverage exposure is but one of many risks we manage, and it can't be taken by itself to assess our overall risk. We continue to manage our exposure to rates across the curve closely. You can see more detail on our risk exposures on appendix slide 17. Please turn to slide 10. As you can see in figure one, our preferred implied volatility gauge, two-year options on 10-year rates, increased from 94 to 101 basis points on an annualized basis, right in the middle of its range for 2024. Implied volatility and nominal spreads remained higher than longer-term averages, while option adjusted spreads are close to longer-term averages. The level of mortgage spread volatility has materially declined from earlier parts of this interest rate cycle, improving the risk-adjusted return profile. The nominal spread on TBA current coupon finished 11 basis points wider at 117 basis points to the Treasury curve, while the option adjusted spread finished 6 basis points wider at plus 23. Note that some of this spread widening reflects the shift from about a 5 percent current coupon at the start of the quarter to something in between 5 and a halfs and sixes by quarter ends. As you can see in figure two, the nominal spread curve steepened, with peak spreads around the 6 percent coupon at quarter ends. The OAS curve flattened, with higher coupons picking up spread as prepayment risk diminished. Please turn to slide 11 to review our agency RMBS portfolio. Figure one shows the performance of TBAs compared to the specified pools we own throughout this quarter. As I mentioned earlier, given that the interest rate curve bare steepened and implied volatility ticked up, lower coupons underperformed higher coupons. Higher coupon specified pools were the best performer, as you can see in figure one. Outperforming TBAs by at least a quarter point and rate hedges by about a half point. In terms of activity, we shifted TBA exposure up in coupon and replaced some specified pools with TBAs. We also bought some higher coupon pools to improve carry as dollar rolls weaken. Incorporating the effect that our MSR has on our net notional mortgage exposure, our position increased by about one and a half billion over the quarter. Though primary mortgage rates increased by about 75 basis points in the quarter, overall prepayment rates for 30-year agency RMBS rose by .4 percentage points to .9% CPR, as higher coupon speeds reflected the lagged effect of the mini-REFI wave triggered by the fallen rates in Q3. Borrowers with a refinance incentive responded to the lower rates in September, with a propensity similar to borrow behavior in 2019. Figure two on the bottom right shows our specified pool prepayment speeds by coupon. On aggregate, speeds increased to .1% from .6% in the third quarter, led by an increase in speeds from five and a half, sixes, and six and a halfs. Please turn to slide 12 as we discuss the market for investing in MSR. The MSR market remains stable and well supported, with bulk deals consistently receiving double digit competitive bids. Some large-scale bids and acquisitions in Q4 lifted 2024 transfers to 662 billion UPB, approximately the same amount in 2023, though the number of bulk bid opportunities dropped by about 25% year over year, as you can see in figure one. While demand for MSR continues to be strong from both bank and non-bank portfolios, we expect there to be ample opportunities in 2025 to add MSR at attractive spread. Please turn to slide 13, where we will discuss our MSR portfolio. Figure one is an overview of our portfolio quarter end, the details of which can be found on appendix slide 23. The portfolio was 202 billion UPB at December 31, reflecting the settlement of 2.5 billion UPB through bulk and flow channels and portfolio recapture. With mortgage rates increasing in the quarter, the price multiple of our MSR increased slightly to 5.9 times from 5.6 times, and 60 plus day delinquencies remained low at under 1%. Our MSR portfolio, with a low gross mortgage rate of 3.46%, experienced a .9% CPR in Q4, down 0.4 percentage points compared to Q3, as slower seasonal factors kicked in. In order to facilitate comparison of our MSR prepayment rates with the larger universe, we map our portfolio into cohorts by mortgage rate so that they resemble RMBFs. Figure two compares CPRs across those implied security coupons in our portfolio of MSR versus TBAs. You can see that prepays remain low in study for the majority of our portfolio, with 5.5 and above slightly increasing. Finally, please turn to slide 14, our return potential and outlook slide. The top half of this table is meant to show what returns we believe are available on the assets in our portfolio. We estimate that about 61% of our capital is allocated to servicing, with a static return projection of 11 to 14%. The remaining capital is allocated to securities, with a static return estimate of 14 to 15%. With our portfolio allocation shown in the top half of the table, and after expenses, the static return estimate for our portfolio is between 9.8 to .1% before applying any capital structure leverage to the portfolio. After giving effect to our outstanding convertible notes and preferred stock, we believe that the potential static return on common equity falls in the range of 10.8 to .4% or a prospective quarterly static return per share of 39 to 52 cents. We like that our current capital allocation is focused on MSR, and believe it will result in strong returns for our stockholders. Low prepayments are a positive tailwind for our servicing portfolio, but even if significant progress we have made at Roundpoint at our direct to consumer originations platform will serve as a hedge to our MSR portfolio. Additionally, our focus on generating additional cost efficiencies and servicing, especially through technology and process improvements at Roundpoint, will contribute positively to the value of MSR. We continue to actively manage our RMBS positioning to complement our MSR portfolio, and aim to extract additional returns from historically wide nominal current coupon spreads. We believe that our unique hedged MSR centric strategy will continue to generate attractive leverage returns in 2025 and beyond. Thank you very much for joining us today, and now we will be happy to take any questions you might have.

speaker
Maddie
Conference Facilitator

If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, that is star one to ask a question. We will pause for just a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions.

speaker
spk03

We will

speaker
Maddie
Conference Facilitator

take our first question from Doug Harder with UBS.

speaker
Marissa Loboan
Representative for Doug Harder, UBS

Thanks and good morning. It's Marissa Loboan for Doug. I was hoping you could give us an update on how Book has performed so far in the quarter.

speaker
Bill Greenberg
President and Chief Executive Officer

Good morning, Marissa. Thanks for the question. It's been a reasonably quiet quarter, although I'll stress that it's early in the quarter. It's only been one month, of course, but our total return is estimated to be up between about one and a half and two percent as of last night.

speaker
Marissa Loboan
Representative for Doug Harder, UBS

Thank you. Second, how does the lower leverage level impact your view on earnings power and what would the normalized range for earnings be?

speaker
Nick Letika
Chief Investment Officer

Thank you for the question. This is Nick. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, our overall debt to economic ratio is really but one measure that we look at in terms of our return potential and our earnings power. As you can see from our return potential slide that overall, our central tendency of our returns and the range of our returns is still supportive of our dividend and very much in the range of what it was in prior quarters. The leverage itself is, it determines some of the components of the debt to equity, but if you look at other components of our risk such as the amount of mortgage spread risk we have, again, as I said in my prepared remarks, quarter over quarter that increased into a more normal range. That's really reflective of how we look at our assets. Beyond that, the overall mix of our assets of having over 60 percent of our capital in MSR is very supportive of stable and in our opinion predictable returns for future periods.

speaker
William Dalal
Interim Chief Financial Officer

One thing I might add

speaker
Bill Greenberg
President and Chief Executive Officer

Marissa also is that the way that we hedge our MSR and we're hedging the current coupon risk, but as rates rise we need less MBS to hedge the current coupon risk of the portfolio and as rates go down we need more. That has a direct impact in when we're keeping everything unchanged, our risk unchanged as rates move, that has an impact on the overall leverage which is why Nick stresses that the leverage is just one component of

speaker
William Dalal
Interim Chief Financial Officer

the risk that we manage and measure.

speaker
Marissa Loboan
Representative for Doug Harder, UBS

Thanks for that. And finally, does your earning power outlook, does that reflect the cost of volatility?

speaker
William Dalal
Interim Chief Financial Officer

So as it says, those are static spreads.

speaker
spk03

Thank you, that's it from me.

speaker
William Dalal
Interim Chief Financial Officer

Thank you.

speaker
Maddie
Conference Facilitator

We will take our next question from Mikhail Goberman with CitizensJMP.

speaker
Mikhail Goberman
Analyst at CitizensJMP

Hey, good morning guys. Could you maybe expand a bit on your outlook for agency MBS spreads for this year and also how do you guys see the allocation to MSRs versus MBS evolving throughout the year? Thank you.

speaker
Nick Letika
Chief Investment Officer

Hey Mikhail, thank you for the question. You know, what I would say is we have seen and we've made note of it and about that there has been a much more controlled response of mortgage spreads. I would say really notably since November when we got through the presidential election and slightly before that when the Fed first cut and I think that's really a reflection of the fact that there is a more predictable Fed path than there was in the earlier parts of the cycle. I still think this is still a very data dependent Fed, it's still quarter to quarter. There's a lot of other things that are being factored into the risk equation out there in the world but the overall amount of spread risk has declined and there are good reasons to be positive about mortgage spread this year. I mean net supply and supply demand seems to be pretty much imbalanced. We have something like a net amount of supply in the low 200 billions which has been reasonably absorbed by the market. There's been better uptake by banks and I think the consensus is the uptake by banks has been more than what the market was generally assuming, kind of a consistent amount of demand from money managers and flows into funds that buy mortgages. The RV of mortgages looks quite good relative to other spread assets in the world. Funding rates, they spiked a little bit towards the end of last year but now they've come right into the zone they've been in which is good. Of course if the Fed does cut more this year, the steeper yield curve is usually constructed for mortgage spreads because it encourages institutions, mostly banks to go further out on the curve and buy mortgages. All of those things are good points. Our overall feeling is and we're kind of keeping it down the way it is constructed for us from a return perspective and where spreads are right now, we don't really need spreads and we say this in our recorder but it's true. We really do not need spreads to tighten to get performance. I think what the part of it that can be, that is difficult is when you have a tremendous amount of volatility and that really has kind of come down. So overall I'd say we are positive on mortgage spreads but as we know from the volatility that this market has given us that there is always something that can change that. However, one of the key parts of our strategy which we can't really overemphasize is the core of our MSR. That really does provide a lot of stability to our return profile and if you look at our returns over the last many quarters you can see we've had a lot of stability of book value and good economic returns and we think that will bode us well for the foreseeable future.

speaker
William Dalal
Interim Chief Financial Officer

Great. So given that

speaker
Mikhail Goberman
Analyst at CitizensJMP

I'm guessing that the MSR allocation versus MBS is kind of going to be steady as she goes similar to what it's been in the recent quarter or two?

speaker
Nick Letika
Chief Investment Officer

Correct. Sorry, I didn't mean to not answer that question. Yes, we don't expect to see a material change in our MSR allocation. We're always looking at the asset allocation that we can to move asset allocation as we get cash flows to invest or new capital but we don't see a material change in the allocation to our MSR.

speaker
Mikhail Goberman
Analyst at CitizensJMP

Great, thank you. And if I could squeeze in one more, any thoughts on potential GSE reform and the nomination of this new FHFA person to lead it?

speaker
William Dalal
Interim Chief Financial Officer

Thanks. Hi, this is William. I don't think we have more information than what the market has regarding GSE reform but I think we can break the GSE reform question into two questions actually. What is the status of privatization and what is the status of the guarantee? And the guarantee itself breaks into two sub-questions. What is going to happen to existing securities that have the guarantee and what is going to happen to prospective securities that will, whether they will carry the guarantee or not. Once we have more detail about the, about potential plans, we can look at the implications through the answer to those two questions but we really don't have any more information at the current events and we don't want to speculate about what's

speaker
William Dalal
Interim Chief Financial Officer

going on. Gotcha, well thank you very much and best of luck going forth. Thanks very much, Mikal.

speaker
Maddie
Conference Facilitator

Thank you. We will take our next question from George with KBW.

speaker
Frankie Labette
Position Not Specified

Hi, good morning. This is actually Frankie Labette on propose. Just to start, can you discuss the main differences between the EAD and the static return range you

speaker
William Dalal
Interim Chief Financial Officer

provide on slide 14? Sure, thank

speaker
Nick Letika
Chief Investment Officer

you Frank for the question. I'll get started. The return potential that we show on slide 14 is our actual portfolio quarter end. It is projected out, it uses, it is a mark to market. It's a mark to market basis where everything in the portfolio is marked contemporaneously at that date and valued at that date. So in our opinion, I mean it's a good assessment of where the return potential of the static yields are to the forward curve when you take our entire portfolio marked on the same day and generate a yield or a return potential. EAD is, you know, the word that we use, you know, about it is that asynchronous. So the EAD is something where if you have assets that are, like many of our mortgage pools we bought long ago and the EAD reflects the purchase price or the return at that time, whereas other components of our overall business structure such as our funding, our repo are more contemporaneous. So you can have a real difference in timing between those things and it can create distortions to what, you know, to how we see the portfolio on a -to-day basis and manage it on a -to-day basis if that makes sense to you.

speaker
Bill Greenberg
President and Chief Executive Officer

The way I like to think about it, Boz, is that if you were to buy and sell the portfolio every day, you would,

speaker
William Dalal
Interim Chief Financial Officer

the EAD would look something more like what we have on slide 14. Great, that's very helpful. Thank you. And then just stay

speaker
Frankie Labette
Position Not Specified

on that slide, the return of your MSR fell to like 11 to 14 percent from 12 to 16 percent last quarter. Given the higher rate environment, is the driver of the lower returns the increase in the -to-market on the MSR this quarter?

speaker
William Dalal
Interim Chief Financial Officer

It's a very good

speaker
Nick Letika
Chief Investment Officer

question and it's a combination of things. The biggest thing that it is is that, you know, and this is again, this is a slice in time. It is one day and, you know, we manage our portfolio through time. But a component of the return of our MSR portfolio is its hedge and that hedge is our RMS security, is our, you know, current coupon securities typically, which also add to the return of the strategy, right? It's a paired strategy of MSR plus MBS and the MBS add return. When rates go up, as I mentioned in my comments, the amount of MBS that we need to hedge that MSR declines. So overall, if you think about it that way, the, you know, the leverage of that part of the portfolio goes down, right? There's less, there are less securities that are attached to the MSR. Consequently, the return potential all else being equal will tend to go down, you know, as that hedge, you know, as that hedge becomes, you know, a smaller part of the overall

speaker
William Dalal
Interim Chief Financial Officer

pair. Great. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you.

speaker
Maddie
Conference Facilitator

We will take our next question from Eric Hagen with BTIG.

speaker
Jake Katsikis
Representative for Eric Hagen, BTIG

Good morning. This is Jake Katsikis on for Eric. Thanks for taking my questions. Are you guys seeing any new financing counterparties or sources of leverage to support the MSR portfolio?

speaker
William Dalal
Interim Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. Go ahead, William.

speaker
William Dalal
Interim Chief Financial Officer

We've been working with our traditional lenders. We, there are some new entrants that are trying to gain traction in the market. We've seen a few requests, uh, inbound calls for people who want to expand into MSR financing.

speaker
Bill Greenberg
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. In general, I would just add to what William just said there. I think that, that the depth of the market for MSR financing continues to grow and expand. As William said, there's more counterparties entering the market all the time. And so

speaker
William Dalal
Interim Chief Financial Officer

it's a very healthy, healthy market for that product right now.

speaker
Jake Katsikis
Representative for Eric Hagen, BTIG

Great. Thank you. And then can you also just share how much the costs have changed in response to the first hundred bips of rate cuts that we've seen?

speaker
William Dalal
Interim Chief Financial Officer

Which costs are you thinking of specifically? The, in the MSR portfolio. Um, I'm not sure I understand your question. Are you talking about our financing costs?

speaker
Jake Katsikis
Representative for Eric Hagen, BTIG

And yeah, I can just back it up to maybe just kind of costs in general, how they've shaped in response to the hundred bips of cuts that we saw.

speaker
William Dalal
Interim Chief Financial Officer

Right. So, so our things

speaker
Jake Katsikis
Representative for Eric Hagen, BTIG

like that.

speaker
Bill Greenberg
President and Chief Executive Officer

Uh-huh. So, so our financing costs on the MSR asset are floating rates and are, and are indexed to short-term funding rates to SOFR. Right. So as the Fed has cut rates, our funding costs have gone down. Right. Um, just like they have on the RMBS side of the portfolio. Right. Lower SOFR rates also impact the float income that we have in our portfolio, that we have generated by the MSR asset as well, which offsets some of that. Um, you know, in general, I would say that we, uh, hedge the entire yield curve. Right. And so, um, you know, changes in, in rates in one part of the curve or another generally have a very small effect on our portfolio. I'm not, I'm not fully understanding what you're getting at. So maybe we can follow up, um, more fully later. But I hope that, uh, I hope that answers some of your questions.

speaker
Jake Katsikis
Representative for Eric Hagen, BTIG

Yeah, it does. Definitely. Thank you guys very much.

speaker
William Dalal
Interim Chief Financial Officer

Okay. Yeah.

speaker
Maddie
Conference Facilitator

We do not have any further questions. I would like to turn the call back to Bill Greenberg for closing remarks.

speaker
William Dalal
Interim Chief Financial Officer

I'd just like to thank everyone for joining us today and thank you all for your interest in two hours.

speaker
Maddie
Conference Facilitator

This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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