Bimini Capital Mgmt Inc A

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Bimini Capital's fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I'd now like to hand the conference over to Melissa Alfonso. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Liz. Good morning and welcome to the fourth quarter 2025 earnings conference call for Bimini Capital Management. This call is being recorded today, March 13, 2026. At this time, the company would like to remind the listeners that statements made during today's conference call relating to matters that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements subject to the state's harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Listeners are cautioned that such forward-looking statements are based on information currently available on the management's good faith, believed with respect to future events, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual performance or results to differ materially from these expressed in such forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause such differences are described in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the company's most recent annual report on Form 10-K. The company assumes no obligation to update such forward-looking statements to reflect actual results, changes in assumptions, or changes in other factors affecting forward-looking statements. Now, I would like to turn the conference over to the company's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Robert Cawley, please go ahead, sir.

Thanks, Melissa, and good morning. The fixed income markets experienced a period of calm as 2025 came to a close and we entered 2026. In fact, the rates market was calm for most of 2025, absent the turbulence surrounding the announcement of tariffs, reciprocal tariffs announced by President Trump in April. Interest rates remained in a very tight range for all of 2025, especially during the fourth quarter. Implied interest rate vol continued its steady decline at the beginning of April of 2025, and the agency RMBS performed well during the fourth quarter of 2025 and for the year, generating returns of 1.7% and 8.58% for the quarter and year respectively. Other sectors of the fixed-end markets performed well during the fourth quarter as well, and spreads on investment-grade corporate bonds, which the level has not seen since 1998. Risk sentiment generally was quite strong during the quarter, and all major sectors of the fixed income market generated positive returns for the quarter and for all of 2025 as well. As 2026 began, economic activity remained resilient, including the labor market. The outlook has since changed after the war broke out in Iran, the world's most critical oil and chemical supplier region, has suffered intense military attacks, leading to supply interruptions. Inflation which was already sticky, may move even higher, and the economic outlook has become very uncertain. Turning to our results, benefiting from the favorable market conditions during the fourth quarter of 2025, Okanagan Capital reported net income of $103.4 million for the quarter, and its stockholders' equity increased from $1.086 billion to $3.72 billion, As a result, BIMI's advisory services revenue also increased to $4.7 million compared to $4.5 million for the third quarter of 2025. For the year, open shareholders' equity increased by approximately 105%, which led to advisory services revenue increasing from $12.8 million in 2024 to $16.6 million in 2025, a 30% year-over-year increase. ORCID has been able to continue to grow its stockholders' equity further so far in 2026 per ORCID's public disclosures. Our investment portfolio segment also vetted from the favorable market conditions for both the 25th quarter and full year. The investment portfolio shrank slightly over the course of the year by approximately 27%, yet net interest and dividend income increased from $1.52 million in 2024 to $2.45 million in 2025. Net realized and unrealized gains and losses on RMBS portfolio, orchid shares, and derivative positions used for hedging were also positive for the fourth quarter of 2025 and the full year. For the quarter, BIMI generated net income of $1.52 million, and with a $1.87 million tax benefit, net income after tax of $3.38 million. For the year, BIMI generated pre-tax income of $4.49 million, a tax benefit of $1.31 million, and after tax net income of $5.8 million, which represents a return on beginning of the year shareholders' equity of 85%. The company also instituted a share buyback plan to enable us to invest in our stock to the extent we believe is undervalued. The plan permits us to purchase up to $2.5 million of our stock. On January 13, 2026, the company announced its that a subsidiary of Royal Palm Capital, Bimini Advisors Holdings LLC, had entered into an agreement to purchase 80% of the fully diluted equity interest of Tom Johnson Investment Management, a privately held registered investment advisor. The transaction is expected to close the beginning of the second quarter of 2026. As of the announcement date, TJIM had approximately $1.6 billion of assets under management across equity and fixed income markets. TGIM's management agreements are diverse, covering individual accounts, sub-advisory agreements, and RAP programs. The existing owners of TGIM will remain an ownership interest in TGIM, and Bimini intends to retain its current staff and investment management team following the closing of the transaction. The purpose of the transaction is to both expand and diversify the advisory services segment of the company. If the transaction closes as anticipated, the company will continue to operate an agency RMBS portfolio, although the portfolio will initially be much smaller as the capital to fund the acquisition of TGIM will come from available cash and the liquidation of the majority of the agency RMBS portfolio in place at year-end 2025. Going forward, to the extent the company is able to generate both positive cash flows from operations, such funds will be deployed in the portfolio, although the leverage employed will be lower than was typically the case prior to the acquisition should it occur. Assuming the transaction closes as anticipated, we will use the first quarter of 2026 earning call to expand on the details of the transaction, how we plan to operate the business going forward, and introduce the management of TGIM. Operator, that concludes my prepared remarks, and we can open and call off the questions.

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question at this time, please press star 11 on your touchtone phone. Again, that is star 11 to ask a question. We have a question from the line of Gary Ripe with the Creative Wealth Partners. The line is open.

Hey, Bob. Hi, Hunter. How are you guys doing?

Hey, Gary.

How are you? Congrats on your deal. I was just – it looks like it's a relatively attractive price. I was just kind of curious if you can help me understand how you guys sourced the deal. Were you part of a competitive bidding process, or was this sort of an off-market deal you guys found?

Yeah, we had been working with a banker at Westmere Capital, Richard Jin, and we worked to do a search. So this was not a competitive bid process. Basically, we were looking for relatively small private asset managers. We had a profile in place, and I'll probably go into more detail on this in this regard in the first quarter once the deal closes, and there's more information I can disclose publicly. But it was a search on our part, and we just had a profile in place, what we're looking for, and came upon them. They appeared to be a very attractive acquisition target for us in many respects. diversification, obviously. They have a nice mix, as we mentioned, of assets under management, including actually fixed income and some REITs from time to time, and a very nice long track record of performance and profitability. So, as I mentioned, I'll go into it in greater detail, but that's kind of how it came about.

Okay, got it. That's helpful. So from your remarks, it seems like the money, the cash that you're going to need to close the deal is going to come from cash on hand and Royal Palm, so you guys won't be borrowing or anything like that from anybody to do the deal?

No, no borrowing to close the deal. As I mentioned, the portfolio will shrink substantially. I don't think it's going to quite go to zero, but there will be no borrowed funds whatsoever to fund the acquisition.

Okay. Well, that's interesting. Good. Interesting. And then I think in the agreement you guys had put out there, it said something about a 30% EBITDA margin target. Is that business operating comfortably above that today?

I can't say yet, but that is for kind of a reference to a bonus poll. But, yeah, we don't envision that being a challenge, but I really can't say much beyond that.

Okay. No, I understand that. These things, it's a very interesting deal. Do you view this as something that you can bolt advisors onto, bolt advisory firms onto, or is this sort of a standalone for you?

Initially, it'll be standalone. May or may not going forward, but initially, it'll be standalone. And there will be, obviously, an RIA, And Bimini Advisors LLC is our RIA, which manages ORCID. So, initially, they will be two RIAs underneath the same roof.

Okay. That's good. And I just sort of had a question on the buyback. It's nice to see that you put one in place. The stock doesn't trade a ton. You know, if somebody had a large B-sized block of shares, is there a banker that we should call? to see if you guys are interested in taking that from us?

We have a 10-5 plan, so it's kind of a hands-off, but the agent that we use is Lad and Burke-Thompson.

Okay. Okay. And then, got it. Okay. Well, that's certainly helpful. And then, as you guys sort of start to generate more and more cash, Is it a fair assumption that that's just going to be redeployed to scale Royal Palm back up?

Yeah, I would think so. That's our initial plan.

Yeah, the portfolio and we could potentially pay down some of the trust deferred debt at some point if we deem it to be attractive to do so.

Yeah, that seems like pretty cheap capital with not a lot of strings attached to it, so I can't imagine you guys are too keen to do that, but okay. Well, very good. Congratulations on everything. Seems like, you know, you kind of have the wind at your back a little bit, which is nice to see.

Indeed. Had a good year. All right. Thank you, guys. All right. Thanks, Gary.

We're showing no further questions in queue at this time. I'd like to turn the call back to Mr. Cawley for closing remarks.

Thank you, operator, and thanks, everybody. To the extent that you weren't able to listen to the call and do have a call, feel free to call the office. The number is 772-231-1400. And if anybody that did listen to the call has a follow-up or has a question that they didn't get a chance to ask, also you can feel free to call us. Otherwise, we will speak with you probably late April or early May. Thank you.

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