Orchid Island Capital Inc. Q1 2023 Earnings Call

Speaker 2: quarter 2023 earnings conference call for Orchid Island Capital. This call is being recorded today, April 28, 2023.

Speaker 2: 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 Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

Speaker 2: Listeners are cautioned that such forward-looking statements are based on information currently available on the management's good faith, belief with respect to future events, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual performance or results to differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements.

Speaker 2: 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

Speaker 2: 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.

Speaker 2: Now I would like to turn the conference over to the company's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Robert Cauley. Please go ahead, sir.

Speaker 3: Good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Hopefully everybody's been able to download our slide deck off of the website because as usual that's what we'll be going through. And as usual also, I'll just kind of walk you through the agenda. The first thing we'll do is just briefly go over our highlights of our results for the quarter.

Speaker 3: Then I'll go into a description of the market developments that we face during the quarter, our financial results, and then I'll go into greater detail on our portfolio characteristics, cash position, and so forth.

Speaker 3: Unlike most calls, I want to spend some time at the end to talk about developments so far in Q2, which are, one, they've been very significant, especially for mortgage participants, but also because they're very meaningful to us and our positioning and our outlook going forward.

Speaker 3: So with that, just turning to slide four, Orchid Island reported net income per share of nine cents, net earnings per share of negative 24 cents, excluding realized and unrealized gains and losses in RMVS and the RIV instruments, including net interest income and interest rate swaps. We had a gain of 33 cents per share from net realized and unrealized gains.

Speaker 3: dividends, and since its last initial public offering, the company has declared $65.29 in dividends per share, including the dividend declared in April of 2023. For the quarter, our total economic gain was $0.10 per share, which is 0.84% for the quarter unannualized.

Speaker 3: I'd also like to just point out, just because it's topical, that all the assets and hedges I've worked on are held at fair value. None of our assets or hedges are classified as available for sale or held to maturity, and accordingly, fluctuations in the value of both are reflected in earnings in the period they occur, so we have no issues with held to maturity or even available for sale.

Speaker 3: Now turning to slide six, you can go through the market developments. In this slide, just two points here. One, you can see as we move through time, the peak of this curve just keeps moving further and further to the left.

Speaker 3: And you can see that the red line reflected the curve at the end of the year, and the most recent one was last Friday. And all that reflects is the market's perception that the Fed is nearing the end of the heightening cycle. So in other words, the peak of rates is getting closer. But also if you look out the curve, it's inverted. So the market expects a recession to follow at some point in the future.

Speaker 3: But I also want to point out that if you look at these curves, you can see that the movement for the quarter was very minimal, 30, 40 basis points. And that's very misleading. It does not tell the story of what we faced. In fact, that's very Harvardian.

Speaker 3: It's like the opposite. In fact, if you look at what happened in the first quarter of 2023, it's really just a continuation of what we faced throughout 2022, and that is very high vol markets, lots of interest rate vol, market conditions changing dramatically.

Speaker 3: and that affects everybody in the markets, in particular the mortgage market.

Speaker 3: And that has had a profound impact on how we have reacted to these market conditions in terms of our leverage ratio, our positioning, and our performance. And I'll go into those in greater detail later. For now, we'll continue going through what we face in the quarter. As you can see, kind of get a picture of what happened in the first quarter.

Speaker 3: And you can see that in the case of the 10, you're just using that as a proxy, how much things change. And really, I would describe it as kind of phases, if you will.

Speaker 3: The first phase, which kind of ended in early February , was just a continuation of what we saw late in 2022. And that was this kind of belief that inflation was ebbing and that the Fed was nearing the end of their tightening cycle and would start to ease. And that changed very dramatically in early February . The primary catalyst was the nonfarm payroll report on the third, which was a blowout number north of 500,000.

Speaker 3: rate got north of 550 basis points. So a big sea change from where we were in January . And then there was another catalyst in early March, around the 9th, we had Silicon Valley and Signature Bank fail. And then we had a huge move the other way in the case of the two-year Treasury yield. The yield declined by 130 basis points in a little over two weeks. The December Fed Funds future.

Speaker 3: That was around March 9th. But even after that, as we move through the balance of March and into April , after the Fed also in the Treasury, the FDIC had taken significant steps to kind of buffer the impact, if you will, of the failed banks. They introduced their bank-term funding facility.

Speaker 3: the Treasury and the FDIC moved to guarantee bank deposits, and these macroprudential steps, as they're referred to, seem to work. And as we move through the balance of March and into April , it appeared that these macroprudential steps were going to work, they were going to contain the problem, and the Fed could...

Speaker 3: focus on monetary policy and inflation, which was still running quite strong, especially the Fed's new preferred measure, what we call Supercor, which is services ex-shelter, which has become the kind of the buzzword in the market for inflation. And that's still running quite strong. So assuming these conditions were contained...

Speaker 3: The Fed could continue to hike rates, and that's kind of where we stand today. At least we were until this week, and now we've had another bank show up on the verge of collapse, which is First Republic. And that's obviously a risk going forward, is there going to be another shoe to drop, and the market's very much on edge and very.

Speaker 3: very sensitive to the latest headline. And so it all contributes to this theme of just a very volatile market, realized volatility, implied volatility and options market are high. And just what we've seen in the rates market is just amazing. In fact, there was a brief period in March, I believe it was, when the two-year futures market actually stopped trading for two minutes. And that is...

Speaker 3: extremely rare. I don't know that that's ever happened and it's just a function of the extreme volatility and rates that we've experienced and really you could argue going back over a year. So that's kind of the background and it has meaningful implications for us and how we manage our business. Just going through the rest of the slides on page 8, this is one that we like to talk about again. There are many measures of the...

Speaker 3: highest level we had seen with the financial crisis. We surpassed that last fall when we got to 190 and we're somewhere in the low 170s today. So if you kind of look at this chart on the bottom you can see it's still creeping out. Don't look at the one on the top. That level there reflected on the top is last Friday at 168. We've probably been as much as five higher this week.

Speaker 3: as a result of the news relating to First Republic and the potential for liquidations of their portfolio. And I'll have a lot more to say about that in a few minutes. The rest of these slides, just plan through them quickly. Obviously, the five and tenured points of the curve are no longer as topical, given what the current shape of the curve, but as you can see, the curve is still very flat or nearly work. If you go back to your slide,

Speaker 3: and they have been both coming down. If you note on the very far right side, you can see that the bank line dropped. That just reflects the FDIC taking over Signature Bank and Silicon Valley Bank. And you would expect that those two continue to bleed off over time. Slide 11, the top left, you can just see the performance of a select group of mortgages, and it kind of follows the same pattern I just described.

Speaker 3: The first month or so of the quarter we did very, very well. Then there was the kind of reversal as the market started to price in much more aggressive Fed hikes and so forth and rates sold off. And then in early March we had the bank failures and market rallied and mortgages did well, but less so as you can kind of see there that even though rates fell precipitously mortgage...

Speaker 3: have to face. With respect to the bottom left, you can see the rural markets which have been trending softer over the balance of the quarter, they've gotten very, very weak. And again, this just reflects the anticipation of a lot of supply coming out through FDIC sales. And what that means for the mortgage market, we'll see over the course of the balance of the year.

Speaker 3: With respect to slide 12, one point I want to make out here is just that this shows you the movement involved implied in the three month by ten year swab option and it seems to be on the low end of the range. These levels are all very high relative to where they were pre-pandemic. As you can see earlier this quarter we had a very high spike and pretty much the highest reading.

Speaker 3: you can see they've moved somewhat higher. On slides 14 and really 15, just kind of the performance of this mortgage asset class for Q1, mortgages did quite well. They were very representative of the all fixed income assets, kind of the middle of the range, you can see. But that, again, that's through March. So it's the bottom at the bottom, and then at Q2, the income,agan, debt money andise82. manipulation.

Speaker 3: And the FDIC liquidations were announced in commence last week and pressure mortgages have come under. You kind of see on the bottom or on page 15. I'll point out just a couple of things. The first column is kind of a peak at the top. It says year to date change. And that's through April 21st, so last Friday. You can see that most of these numbers are negative, which implies tightening. These are wider.

Speaker 3: And they stand out really in contrast to pretty much every class, asset class there. And then if you look on the far right, the last two columns, the one that says 22 highs, that's basically we've seen extreme spread widening last year. Those are the high level marks. And if you look at current levels versus those peaks, most of them are negative and meaningfully high numbers.

Speaker 3: Mortgages, not so much. So it just kind of reflects the fact that what's going on in the market today, especially in Q2, late Q1, is very much market-centric, at least for now.

Speaker 3: Now turning on to slide 16, this is kind of our expectations for speeds. I just want to point out a couple of things. If you look at the top right, this is the primary secondary spread, so the spread between prevailing mortgage rates and underlying treasury rates. There are a couple of things that stand out.

Speaker 3: If you look at the period that ends at the end of 2021, you can see a gradual tightening trend and relatively low volatility in that spread. In other words, the day-to-day movements were very minor. But then if you look at starting last year, the trend is kind of an increasing trend, but also much more volatile. So we see much greater volatility.

Speaker 3: until we really see clear evidence that the Fed is going to pivot and we start to see longer rates immediately move lower. And then we'll see what happens in the primary secondary spread, but for now it just seems to be that the take away here is that we're going to have sticky high mortgage rates for a while.

Speaker 3: Now we can talk about our financial results, slide 18. This is a slide that we've presented every quarter. And I know that there's going to be questions, so I'll just try to head those off. If you look at the left-hand side, you can see that when we bifurcate our results between...

Speaker 3: kind of like the net interest income and expenses versus the realized and unrealized gains.

Speaker 3: it flips to minus 24 cents and we pay a dividend of 48 cents. And like I did the last few quarters, I just want to point out a couple things. One, because of our accounting, we do not use what's called the level yield method, which means that discount accretion or premium amortization are not captured in our interest income number. And because we don't use hedge accounting, the effect of hedges on our interest expense number are not reflected here.

Speaker 3: discount accretion number was about $4.8 million. That's about 12.5 cents. And the hedge, the effect of our hedges in the current period, and I talked about this at length at year end, and just how much we have available to offset our interest expense for tax purposes from both our current and legacy hedges is very, very large.

Speaker 3: the impact of the existing hedges for the quarter added almost 50 cents. So that negative 24 cents actually goes to about 38 and a half cents.

Speaker 3: in our hedges.

Speaker 3: And again, we paid $0.48. So there's a shortfall there, but it points to our positioning, which again I'm going to speak to at length in a few moments. But we do have a low coupon bias. We have not opted to try to change the coupon composition of the portfolio in an effort to chase higher funding costs because we think that in the long term that strategy is not going to work.

Speaker 3: perspective going forward, we remain very comfortable with the portfolio position. That could change if conditions warrant, but for now that is our intention. So again, a slight shortfall this quarter, same as the last two, but all in all not all that significant, especially given the fact that our hedges are so much in the money. Through the remaining slides, slide 19.

Speaker 3: Really just history here. The green line is kind of our economic net interest income and as you can see it kind of appears to be bottoming. That's probably just consistent with the fact that we're nearing the end of a tightening cycle in all likelihood. That should stabilize and eventually hopefully move forward. The remaining slides, 20 is just pure history. I'm not going to say anything about that.

Speaker 3: Slide 21 is our leverage ratio. This is, of course, important. On the left-hand side, we report our leverage ratio kind of like on a GAAP basis. So this is total liabilities divided by equity. But unlike most of our peers, who use TBAs extensively, we're short TBAs. We're not long.

Speaker 3: So in essence, our economic leverage ratio, which would be our liabilities adjusted for the shorts in the TBA, is much lower than reported here. That's actually about 6.5 at the end of the first quarter versus the 8.4 reported here. So immediately lower, and that's about where it was at the end of the year. So it really did not change.

Speaker 3: Since the end of the first quarter, it has drifted slightly higher just because we've had some modest book value erosion without making any meaningful changes to the portfolio, but it's still in the high sixes. So it's still quite low, and we still have capacity to expand that fairly meaningfully so when and if conditions warrant, and we think that time is coming soon.

Speaker 3: That's why we want to maintain that type of positioning. Going on slide 22, just basically the allocation of capital is very much unchanged. We still have no desire to own IOs in this environment. They have basically been as fully extended as they can and we think there's just much more downside to owning those than upside.

Speaker 3: And then the right side just kind of rolls you through the portfolio changes for the quarter. As you can see, we added about $470 million of pass-throughs. We did use the ATM, raised some capital early in the quarter. We sold about 2.7 million shares, raised a little under $32 million, and bought about $470 million of mortgages.

Speaker 3: and I'll talk about where we allocated that. So we did grow the portfolio slightly during the quarter, and we would like to continue to raise capital going forward just because of the investment opportunities being the way they are.

Speaker 3: And that's kind of it. Now, as I said, we can talk a little more detail about the portfolio. That's on slide 24. As I mentioned, we did add about $470 million. And the additions were primarily in Fannie 4s. And we did also about $320 million. These are kind of low.

Speaker 3: But we did move up in coupon somewhat. That being said, the weighted average coupon of the portfolio at the end of the first quarter was 3.56. That's only up about nine basis points from the end of last year, which was 3.47. So really, not much has changed since the year end. We continue to maintain the same lower coupon bias.

Speaker 3: because we think that those are offered by far the best total rate of return prospects going forward. And we don't want to try to chase the up in coupon trade because we think that those mortgages are very much exposed to either a rally or a sell-off. Prepayment speeds on slide 25, obviously these are extremely muted.

Speaker 3: As I said, we expect that to probably be the case until we see a meaningful move with respect to a Fed pivot. I'm going to skip slide 26. Twenty-seven is our funding. I want to make a few points here. On the left side, we list all of our counterparties. And I want to say basically three things. One that this list is very stable, hasn't changed.

Speaker 3: We continue to have very ample access to funding. We have no funding issues whatsoever. And not only that, but execution levels remain very stable. Haircuts are stable. Spreads, stable. They're obviously slightly higher than they were a year and a half ago when we were close to the zero bound.

Speaker 3: In funding, we're 10 and 12 basis points, 15 basis points, and now we're at much higher levels. So the spreads are slightly higher but have been very stable. And then on the right side, again, talking about our hedges, as you can see, the red line is our cost of funds, and it very much tracks one month SOFR. You know, there is generally in some cases, one factor that we're Floodby which is make

Speaker 3: But if you look at our economic cost of funds, you can see that it's pretty much leveled off, and that reflects the effect of the hedges. And it's pretty much stabilized. And to the extent that we are close to the end of the heightening cycle and the red line is going to flatten, you would expect the blue line also to continue to do that. And so our funding costs have really pretty much been.

Speaker 3: locked in at a fairly desirable level. Turning to slide 28, our hedges. I do want to say a fair amount about this slide. First, just to kind of give you the changes, on the top left, you can see our treasury futures. They did change. As I mentioned, we did raise some capital earlier, and we pretty much added to our.

Speaker 3: five-year note future shorts, but we also made some changes to the ultras. We reduced the out ultras.

Speaker 3: Short position went from 174.5 million to 54 and change. That was moved into a swap position. It's actually a forward starting swap. So if you look on the right side, you can see the longer maturity swaps increase. That's what happened there. And much more important, I would say, with respect to the bottom left, we added to our TBA shorts and the 3% coupon.

Speaker 3: As we just saw on the prior slide, we have a very large allocation to that coupon. And especially given the choppiness in the mortgage market, those have been very effective hedges. And the other side, on the bottom right, these positions, while they've only increased slightly during the quarter.

Speaker 3: All of these instruments have a very high exposure to vol, and they do well in this type of high vol environment, among other market conditions, but we've been able to reap some very nice gains from those. They've performed very well for us, even though the total size of the positions hasn't changed much. We've actually been fairly active trading there. Hunter's been very active and done very well.

Speaker 3: effective for us maintaining kind of a low coupon strategy, especially coupons exposed to these bank liquidations and they really enabled us to maintain pretty good book value performance in that environment and very minimal book value erosion during the quarter even with a very modest over distribution. So that has been a very key part of the strategy if you will.

Speaker 3: And so that's kind of it. I mean just to summarize the first quarter results, we've been able to maintain a low coupon bias. It's our preferred position. This is how we want a position going forward. We think that we are near the end of a Fed hiking cycle. We think the recession is likely to follow. It's more a question of when not if.

Speaker 3: It's pretty clear evidence that we're heading to a slowdown in the economy, in which case you would expect longer duration mortgages to perform well, very easy to hedge, very great convexity in those assets. And our hedges have worked very well. The combination of a low leverage ratio, the TBA shorts, and these vol-related instruments have been very effective in allowing our strategy to do very well in this environment, even with a modest over distribution. So, thanks.

Speaker 3: So that's kind of a wraps it for Q1. Now just to kind of, as I mentioned, I wanted to spend some time talking about developments in the second quarter.

Speaker 3: and what that means for us going forward. So as I mentioned, when we entered April , it looked like all the macroprudential steps that the.

Speaker 3: the Fed and the FDIC had taken were working, they were containing the issue, and the Fed could refocus on trying to fight inflation. That appears to be what's going to happen. But that being said, once the FDIC took over those two banks and they may have to take over a third, those assets have to be liquidated. And we started last week with these liquidations from agencies.

Speaker 3: You know, that obviously is a meaningful development for a mortgage investor. And the other thing is, you know, we're very mindful of the risk that, you know, given the length of time that this could occur, even if the market turns in our favor, the size of these sales over time could degrade the performance of mortgages, especially the lower coupons that we own.

Speaker 3: given our position, that's meaningful that we address these and have a strategy in place to deal with them. And I think that, as I said, I think our strategy is sound and our intention is to continue to follow it, based on pretty much the premise that we do expect that the economy is eventually going to roll over, that the Fed will pivot.

Speaker 3: And we think when we do so, we're going to be very well positioned. One thing I want to say about the liquidations of the mortgages that are being sold from the Silicon Valley and the Signature Bank portfolio is that they're skewed towards lower coupons.

Speaker 3: which are longer duration assets. And keep in mind that if the economy is rolling over and credit starts to perform poorly, mortgages are kind of a counter cyclical asset. They don't have any credit element and they tend to do well in those types of environments.

Speaker 3: So that would bode well if that were to occur and these assets that are being sold have been longer duration assets. A lot of asset managers are meaningfully underweight the sector. This would offer them an opportunity to get to a more neutral position, especially given that the coupons that are being sold are extremely high quality.

Speaker 3: large components of the index. So it's more likely that those would be the ones that would be desired. And we think that that's going to help these liquidation lists do well when and if we do see this outcome.–

Speaker 3: And it also of course lines up with what we own. We also think, as I said, up in coupon, if you look at mortgage originations going back through 22 and into 23, all these higher coupons are extremely exposed to a rally or a sell-off, frankly. And that's certainly a rally because they are going to be the most likely to be refinanced.

Speaker 3: Given the balance of risk that we face, we're very comfortable with our current positioning. In fact, we would look to the extent we can to add capital to be able to increase our allocation and continue to position ourselves even better to take advantage of the situation when it does in fact eventually occur.

Speaker 3: That's kind of it. That's kind of how we've gone through the first quarter, how we're positioning ourselves going forward. And without operator, I think we can turn the call over to questions.

Speaker 2: Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, please press star one again. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q and A roster.

Speaker 2: Our first question comes from Jason Stewart from Jones Crating. Please go

Speaker 3: Hey Bob, thanks for again all the great comments. So it sounds like you're going to say up in the coupon stack. No, no, down. We're lower coupon bias.

Speaker 3: Definitely. We have a high concentration in threes. We've added some fours and fives, but we're trying to avoid the top of the stack. We think, as I said, that...

Speaker 3: that the markets in the economy are going to roll over, and we expect duration to perform well in that environment. And the higher coupons we make are very exposed to that. They are the low-hanging fruit, if you will, when and if that occurs, and the mortgage bankers out there are looking to refi. So we expect those to experience very high speeds.

Speaker 3: These lower coupons, which are quite easy to hedge and have duration in them, would do very well in that environment.

Speaker 4: Right, agreed. What's your view on natural turnover in housing right now?

Speaker 3: It's very low. It's gone into the mid single digits and it's trending

Speaker 3: It can only go so low, but four, three, three to five CPR. You have a lot of issues now. One is—

Speaker 3: I'm sure you're aware that affordability is extremely low. The combination of high prices and high rates make affordability very high. So it's tough for new homeowners.

Speaker 3: A lot of existing homes are owned by people who have very low rates, so they really have no reason, no economic reason to be moving because they are just replacing their expensive home with another expensive home, only their mortgage would be much higher. So I would expect.

Speaker 3: existing home sales to remain very benign. And I think that new home sales are going to be challenged by low affordability, high mortgage rates. So I would say it's going to be low, and it really probably isn't likely to change meaningfully to kind of see the market go the other way in a meaningful way.

Speaker 3: Yeah, that said, the first quarter was very slow, so we would expect a modest acceleration in speeds, just the seasonal effect of coming into the summer months into the second and third quarter to be a little bit better for us, which would mean slightly faster.

Speaker 4: Gotcha. Okay. That's helpful. And then do you have an opinion on the MSR market right now?

Speaker 3: We don't follow it that closely, but I know that a number of our peers are involved. I think it's more downside than upside. You've seen a lot of the large banks that move away from the market. I'm sure more than I do that Wells has been selling some of theirs.

Speaker 3: You know, that asset in the current market is very great carry, but I don't see a lot of upside for it in the future.

Speaker 3: It's very, very tricky to hedge right now. So, and I think that the new production is, it would be particularly challenging to the extent that they, you know, MSRs that are created off of these.

Speaker 3: new higher mortgage rates are going to be, you know, if our view of the MSR market parallels what we've done in IOM space, which I think it does, you know, we're not...

Speaker 3: mortgage rates are going to be, you know, if our view of the MSR market parallels what we've done in IOM space, which I think it does, you know, we're not seeing that as a great asset class.

Speaker 4: All right gentlemen, I appreciate the time.

Speaker 2: As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star followed by the number 1.

Speaker 2: Our next question comes from Mikal Goberman from JMP Securities. Please

Speaker 3: Hey guys good morning thanks for taking the call. Hi just a couple real quick ones could you guys give an update on book value for the quarter and thus far and the six and a half time economic leverage figure you guys gave is that a March 31st figure is that a is that a current number

Speaker 3: Both. It's maybe a little bit higher because books down a little bit so to answer the first question we were down about 2% as of last Friday maybe another percent and a half or so this week because of what happened with respect to First Republic.

Speaker 3: Mortgages are obviously wide, and I think I mentioned on the call, we're probably five wider than what we were just last Friday. And it's really somewhat perplexing because, unlike…

Speaker 3: Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, at least based on what information is out there in the market, the balance sheet, the assets of First Republic don't contain much in the way of agency mortgages, a few billion, two or three. It's much more unsecuritized whole loans, from what I understand, uni debt. That's going to be an issue to liquidate. That market is not that big, but there's not a lot of agency mortgages.

Speaker 3: it looks like because they've modified the process, now you can upsize some of these option lists. So for instance, they might put 150 million of a certain coupon out there, but you can add an extra 100 million. And so far, a lot of these have been traded at good levels, but a lot of buyers have been up sizing. So maybe it goes faster.

Speaker 3: But it's still a long time. I mean, it's definitely, this is going to be here for a while. It's going to get very technical within even the agency mortgage class as well. So for example, there's a 15-year list that came out yesterday, and it's like $660-some million. And So I think these may be reasonable numbers, but it really is what haps and

Speaker 3: I don't know, everyone sort of had their own opinion about how it did, but it definitely put pressure on the 15-year sector initially, and that sector is going to have a hard time digesting all this volume because it's just not as liquid as the 30-year sector. So you may see little nuances. We've experienced it in our portfolio as well because we have the down and coupon focus. So you know.

Speaker 3: New stories like this break, the first couple of days after it broke, we saw significant pressure. The volatility day-to-day in our book values, we could be 1 or 1.5% moves on a day. And then the last couple of days we've seen things refirm. And yesterday was a reversal of that. And today, at least before the call started, it looked like it was going to be a continuation of more of the same. So we may end up by the time the day is over kind of...

Speaker 3: flat to slightly down on the week, but You know things are changing very rapidly. I guess is what I'm doing right Sounds like buckle up is and enjoy the ride is the motto for maybe the rest It's been this way for a while. Yeah, well with that in mind best of luck going forward. Thank you Frank Thank you for the detailed comments as usual. It's as I say, I think the finest slide deck in the agency MBS space

Speaker 5: Thanks, Mikel. I'll go leak in in two. Our next question comes from Christopher Nolan from Ladenburg-Thulman. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Hey, guys. How should we look at the common dividend going forward? The comments that you provided in terms of the discount accretion income and the hedges was very interesting.

Speaker 5: And that seems to be a big guiding guidepost for you guys in terms of...

Speaker 5: your dividend payout, but is that sustainable income? Well, here's the deal Chris. I mean we really want to maintain this positioning. We have a view. You know we think that the economy is starting to roll over and that eventually the you know the hiking cycle is going to end and they're going to have to pivot and these are the assets we want to own when that happens.

Speaker 3: So even if there's a slight over distribution, if you think of total rate of return, it's a combination of coupon and price. And we think that the potential price appreciation far outweighs the shortcoming, if you will, in income and just from a book value perspective, we think that the potential price appreciation is a combination of the shortcoming, if you will, in income and just from a book value

Speaker 3: bleed off a little bit of book because we're over distributing. We think when the market rallies that the price appreciation of these things is going to overwhelm that effect and net net we're going to be better off. I mean the return opportunities are very high in that scenario and so we want to try to do that. That being said, if we end up …

Speaker 3: It looks like inflation is just not going to decline or even accelerate and that the Fed is going to, and the economy is not rolling over, that we're going to have to stay here then, we're going to have to reconsider. But we're close, we think, to the end of the cycle and we think the data is starting to roll over. So we have to just be very diligent and mindful of what's going on. We're going to try to hold onto the strategy.

Speaker 3: keep the dividend where it is. And we'll see, but if it becomes apparent that that's not the case, then we will have to reconsider and potentially make some changes to the portfolio, which would probably involve going up in coupons to generate more income.

Speaker 3: I just would add a few, we talk about this all the time. And what we've been doing, especially in ball space, our efforts have been focused on putting positions in place that will do very well, highly geared trades that will do very well.

Speaker 3: to the extent that the curve continues to sort of flatten from a standpoint of not realizing the inversion. So I think there are a couple nuances that are important when we have this conversation about what our earnings stream is. We've kind of outlined as many of the

Speaker 3: You know, the easier to grasp things, I think, in terms of discount accretion and the value of our hedges that have subsequently then become realized gains that contribute to this dividend stream. But there are also some more subtle things.

Speaker 3: The portfolio is sort of in the position where we're in the opposite boat than we were when we had an extreme premium world. So back then we would buy specified pools and as they aged we would recognize decay and pool pay-ups. That's just sort of the nature of these brand new pools.

Speaker 3: are more highly desired and have better carry than older ones. We are in the position now where a lot of the high discounts, or the big discount pools that we own are aging such that they are appreciating in value by a tick or two per month.

Speaker 3: We have, like we said, I said, we had some more subtle things in the portfolio. With respect, going back to the vol positions, we will see if the Fed is a higher for longer, takes a higher for a longer tone, those positions will do very well. That will offset some of the damage done by the fact that we're not realizing forwards.

Speaker 3: And then the other side of that is if we start realizing forwards, then we're going to quickly start stacking up more income on a month over month basis for the sort of under hedged, if you will, part of the portfolio. So I think that's the way we try to think about it. And I think we also feel comfortable in the current level for those reasons. Thanks, guys.

Speaker 3: that is if we start realizing forwards, then we're going to quickly start stacking up more income on a month over month basis for the sort of under-edged, if you will, part of the portfolio. So I think that's the way we try to think about it. And I think we also feel comfortable in the current level for those reasons. Thanks, guys. Yep, thank you, Chris.

Speaker 5: As a reminder to ask a question please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. We have no further questions in queue. I'd like to turn the call back over to Mr. Cauley for closing remarks. Thank you operator, thank you everyone. As usual to the extent you have follow on questions and you wish to call us please do so at the office the number is 772-231-1400 or if you're just listening to the replay and you have some questions.

Speaker 5: Very willing and look forward to taking any and all questions. Otherwise, we look forward to speaking with you at the end of the second quarter. Thank you. Bye. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.