Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Annaly Capital Management third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again press star one. Thank you. I'd now like to turn the call over to Shawn Kensal, Director of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Good morning and welcome to the third quarter 2026 earnings call for Annaleigh Capital Management. Please note that this call is being recorded. As a reminder, materials for today's call are available on our website at www.annaleigh.com. Today's call may include forward-looking statements which are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially and refer to certain non-cap measures. Please see the notices in our earnings release for important information regarding forward-looking statements and non-GAAP measures. Participants on this morning's call include David Finkelstein, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Chief Investment Officer, Serena Wolfe, Chief Financial Officer, Mike Fania, Co-Chief Investment Officer and Head of Residential Credit, VS Srinivasan, Head of Agency, and Ken Adler, Head of Mortgage Servicing Rights. And with that, I'll turn the call over to David.

Thank you, Sean. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining our Q3 earnings call. I'll begin with an overview of the macro environment and our performance during the quarter, then discuss each of our three investment businesses, finishing with our outlook. Serena will then provide a more detailed review of our financials, after which we'll open the call up to Q&A. Starting with the macro landscape, the U.S. economy remains resilient, supported by heavy AI investment and healthy consumption. The labor market is stable, while inflation remains above the Fed's target, driven in part by higher energy prices. The bond market faced a challenging third quarter, with the 10-year Treasury yield rising 82 basis points to multi-decade highs. The sell-off accelerated following the Fed's first rate hike since 2023, and markets are now pricing nearly three additional 25 basis point hikes through the end of next year. Higher rates also reflected concerns around government debt, heavy corporate issuance, and a repricing of the Fed's neutral rate. Mortgage rates have accordingly reached 7.5%, a level during this cycle seen only briefly in the fall of 2023, and thus housing activity is likely to stay subdued as affordability challenges persist and the existing borrower lock-in effect continues to constrain turnover. Weaker demand could soften home prices, though supply and demand remain broadly balanced, notwithstanding regional disparities, and underlying borrower credit remains fundamentally sound. As upward pressure on rates intensified during the month of September, rate volatility rose significantly, with implied volatility measures reaching their highest levels since the administration's initial tariff announcement a year and a half ago. This drove mortgage spreads wider and led to meaningful underperformance in agency MBS. Against this backdrop, our portfolio delivered a negative 7.6% economic return for the quarter. Earnings remained durable, however, with EAD of 80 cents per share, again exceeding our dividend, while economic leverage ended Q3 modestly at 5.9 terms. In capital markets, we announced the redemption of our 443 million Series I floating rate preferred stock during the third quarter. and the redemption helps us maintain a very conservative capital structure and we view balance sheet leverage as more attractive, particularly as repo financing remains readily available in terms for residential credit and MSR warehouse lines continue to improve. Relatedly, we issued $757 million in common equity on the quarter through our ATM program with proceeds used both to fund the preferred redemption as well as to invest across our portfolios. Now turning to our investment strategies and beginning with agency, the sharp sell-off in rates led to meaningful extension across the MBS universe, particularly in the more negatively convex portions of the market. This created duration mismatches and contributed to selling pressure from some more highly levered investors late in the quarter, which exacerbated the volatility-driven MBS spread widening. While we are certainly not immune to mortgage underperformance, we were positioned for rate and spread volatility with conservative duration exposure and historically low leverage heading into the quarter. Our agency portfolio decreased modestly to $92 billion in market value, representing 55% of the firm's capital, though we added approximately $2 billion notional in MBS on the quarter. Activity focused on deploying a portion of our common equity raised in a higher coupon-specified pools, primarily 5.5s and 6s. This past quarter also demonstrated the value of our allocation of high-quality specified pools. On average, our pools are more than three and a half years seasoned and carry loan balances less than half those of new production, providing both call and extension protections. As mortgage rates increased, payups declined on call-protected pools as expected, but increased on extension-protected pools. Given the distribution and quality of our collateral, the average payup on our portfolio increased modestly over the quarter. Now, early in the fourth quarter, we monetized some of this outperformance, rotating over $2 billion in primarily season pools into higher coupon TBAs, which stand to benefit more from a decline in volatility, something we have begun to see since the end of the third quarter. On the liability side, as rates moved higher, we responded by adding to our hedge position, primarily in Treasury futures, to keep our overall interest rate exposure contained. We entered the fourth quarter with slightly more rate exposure, however, as current higher yields offer attractive value. And we're also comfortable carrying somewhat more duration as the rise in rates materially reduce negative convexity in both our portfolio and the broader MBS universe. And as a result, asset durations should be less sensitive to further rate moves in the current environment, reducing the need for hedge rebalancing. Moving to residential credit, our portfolio ended the third quarter roughly flat quarter over quarter at $10.4 billion in market value, representing 23% of the firm's capital. Residential spreads traded in a tight range for the majority of Q3, with AAA non-QM spreads ending the quarter approximately 10 basis points wider, largely in sympathy with other securitized products. Our Angelo Bay Correspondent Channel delivered another strong quarter with $7 billion of lock volume and $5.8 billion of fundings, our highest quarterly funding volume since the channel's inception more than five years ago. And importantly, growth has not come at the expense of credit discipline, with our current lock pipeline carrying an average FICO of 766 and an average LTV of 67%. With respect to securitization, we settled $7.4 billion of transactions in Q3, while pricing an additional $2.2 billion in October. Analy remains the market's largest expanded credit sponsor, and we have now priced more than $21 billion securitizations in 2026 across 37 deals. And while the new issue market has experienced marginal widening post-quarter end, we're encouraged by the resiliency of the private label market and expect 2026 to be a post-GFC record in transaction volume. Now to discuss MSR, our portfolio increased to 4.3 billion market value with our allocation of the sector representing 22% of the firm's capital. We took a measured approach to purchases during the quarter. Thank you for joining us. and this environment should provide ample opportunity to responsibly grow our portfolio. Here today, we remain the largest purchaser of bulk MSR, reflecting the value we bring to the origination community as a strategic partner with a deep permanent capital base. MSR valuations modestly increased with our multiple ending the quarter at 6.15 times, largely driven by higher interest rates and wider current coupon MBS spreads. Our prepayment speeds remain very low this past quarter, decreasing to 4.8 CPR, reflecting our portfolio's low average note rate, seasonal factors, and higher mortgage rates. Credit performance remains strong, with serious delinquencies below 60 basis points, and along with healthy income from our escrow deposits, these factors support a predictable cash flow profile that continues to be a complement to our other investment strategies and an important contributor to our EAD. Now turning to our outlook, we're mindful of uncertainty in the market. We entered the fourth quarter prudently positioned with substantial liquidity and we remain focused on preserving capital while dynamically allocating across our three businesses as opportunities emerge. Within agency, we continue to manage call and extension risk proactively as the rate outlook evolves while current spread levels offer compelling new money returns in the mid to high teens. And while elevated volatility persists, the outlook for agency MBS is constructive as spreads have retraced the widest levels since before the GSEs began more actively increasing their portfolios in mid 2025. At the same time, the technical picture remains favorable with record bond fund inflows and continued support from the GSEs, overseas investors, and banks, while supply is limited given seasonal and high primary mortgage rates. In residential credit, our scaled Onslow Bay correspondent platform gives us direct access to high-quality whole loans, Thank you for joining us. Operating Efficiency, and Discipline Credit Execution. And lastly, in MSR, our differentiated portfolio of low note rate, high quality assets continues to generate durable cash flows supported by our diversified network of servicing and recapture partnerships. And as demonstrated this year, we have the flexibility and capacity to grow the portfolio creatively, further enhancing our earnings and cash flow profile. Now collectively, our three complementary businesses provide multiple avenues to deploy capital efficiently without the burden of a high fixed cost origination model. We remain patient, but we have ample liquidity and balance sheet capacity to put capital to work. We believe the combination of diversified earnings, proprietary asset creation, conservative leverage, and capital allocation flexibility positions Analy well to continue delivering attractive risk-adjusted returns. Now, with that, I'll turn the call over to Serena to discuss her financials.

Thank you, David. Today, I will briefly review the financial highlights for the quarter ended September 30, 2026. As in prior quarters, Our earnings release discloses GAAP and non-GAAP earnings metrics, and my comments will focus on our non-GAAP EAD and related key performance metrics which exclude PAA. As David noted, the challenging fixed income market environment weighed on book value during the third quarter. Our diversified housing finance platform nevertheless continues to generate solid earnings, supported by higher coupon income, continued residential credit securitization activity, and lower operating expenses. As of September 30, 2026, our book value per share decreased 11.4% from the prior quarter to $17.86. Including our quarterly dividend of 75 cents per share, we generated an economic return of negative 7.6% for the quarter. Book value performance primarily reflected wider agency MBS spreads and the impact of elevated rate volatility, including market-driven duration and convexity effects. Gains on our hedging instruments provided meaningful offsets. Earnings available for distribution increased by $0.01 to $0.80 per share and again exceeded our quarterly dividend of $0.75 per share. The increase was driven primarily by higher coupon interest income on larger average investment securities and residential mortgage loan balances, along with lower operating expenses. These benefits more than offset higher interest expense from increased securitization debt and repo balances, as well as modestly higher funding rates. Net interest margin declined by seven basis points to 1.69%, while net interest spread declined by eight basis points to 1.42%. Average asset yields relatively stable at 5.45%. In comparison, our average economic cost of funds increased seven basis points to 4.03%, primarily reflecting a greater proportion of securitized debt in our funding mix and slightly higher repo rates. We continue to actively manage the balance sheet through the market volatility. Economic leverage increased at 5.9 times from 5.6 times, primarily reflecting the decline in equity, while our hedge ratio increased to 100% from 97% as we maintained our defensive positioning. Our weighted average repo rate for the quarter increased three basis points to 3.87%, while weighted average repo days to maturity ended the quarter at 30 days, down three days from the prior quarter. Despite interest rate volatility in the third quarter, the repo funding market continued to function smoothly, ensuring reliable and efficient access to short-term financing for agency MBS. Meanwhile, we continue to maintain ample financing availability for our credit businesses to support their growth, which David highlighted earlier. Total warehouse capacity across our residential credit and MSR businesses remains 8.3 billion, including 2.8 billion of committed capacity. We maintain significant available capacity with utilization rates of approximately 57% for residential credit and 50% for MSR. We ended the third quarter with $6.9 billion in unencumbered assets, including $4.2 billion in cash and unencumbered agency MBS. In addition, we had approximately $1.6 billion of MSR collateral pledged and available to support future advances, subject to market advance rates. In total, we had approximately $8.5 billion of assets available for financing at quarter end, down approximately $1.1 billion from the prior quarter, primarily reflecting lower equity and reduced unencumbered agency MBS. This represented approximately 54% of our total equity and continues to provide meaningful liquidity and financial flexibility. Finally, our OpEx to equity ratio decreased 11 basis points to 1.29% for the quarter, while our year-to-date ratio remained 1.34%. As anticipated, expenses moderated from the elevated second quarter level, reflecting lower compensation and other G&A expenses. That concludes our remarks. We will now take questions. Thank you, operator.

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one in your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one again. Your first question comes from a line of Bose George from KBW. Your line is open.

Hey, everyone. Good morning. Can I start with just get an update on the mark to market book value?

Sure, Bose. Good morning. As of Friday, excluding the dividend accrual, we were up about 2% inclusive of the dividend, closer to 3%, and it's sideways since.

Great. Thanks. And then just wanted to ask about dividend coverage, you know, just given the expectation for current economic returns, how does that compare, you know, with the required ROE to cover the dividend?

Sure. Obviously, we out-earned in Q3. We expect to out-earn in Q4, and we'll see how 2027 evolves. But as it stands today, we didn't de-lever in Q3, notwithstanding the volatility, and the current portfolio delivers the dividend. And as we laid out our projected returns, which are up quarter over quarter, new money gets us there as well. So we're comfortable with where the dividend is at today.

Great. Thanks.

Thank you both.

Your next question comes from a line of Crispin Love from Piper Sandler. Your line is open.

Thank you. Good morning. David, on that last point, the market level of returns, as you showed out on slide seven, looks like each strategy a little bit higher than last quarter. Can you discuss some of the dynamics there, driving returns a little bit higher, and then also just where you're most interested in adding incremental capital today in the macro environment? I do appreciate you got three businesses that you want to add, but maybe if you could stack rank. Thank you.

Sure. So I'll start with the end of your question on capital allocation. Then we'll go through each of the three businesses in terms of how the returns evolved heading into Q4. So in terms of capital allocation, it's not much different than last quarter. Returns across the three businesses are incrementally higher. And as we did say last quarter, we still want to grow the residential credit business responsibly, considerate of credit. That's at the margin where we'd like to grow. And agency returns are ample and certainly compelling. And so that'd be second. And then MSR, we still have room to grow. Obviously, those headline returns are a little bit lower than agency and resi. But one point to note is that that position is largely funded with capital of very little leverage. So we do have room to grow and maintain a 20% capital allocation to the sector. So the order is resi first, Close Second Agency, and then not far behind is MSR. So let's just talk about returns in each, and I'll start with Srini on the agency, and then go to Mike and Ken.

Sure, David. So basically, agency spreads for the quarter widened about 20 basis points. Now, when we say spreads widened by 20 basis points, we generally refer to current coupon spreads. and given that only planning six and a half are over par, we really can't invest in current coupons. So we are slightly below current coupon, call it five and a half for fixed versus our preferred coupon. And for those compared to where current coupon was at the last quarter, SPEDS are about 10 basis points wider. So that gets us to 15 to 17 basis points with over 100 basis points increase in prospective returns.

Sure, Kristen, this is Mike. On the on the Reggie side, you know, what those returns reflect to 13 to 16 percent. First, it'll reflect the equity that we're retaining through our securitization. So call that, you know, six to seven cents of capital on the retained OBX securities using, you know, maybe call it a turn of leverage. So we'll retain call it, you know, 10 to 12 percent. One turn of leverage gets you that six to seven cents of deployment. You know, given spreads have widened, we've seen our equity basis has been able to widen as well. And given the volatility, we're pricing in incremental premium. We can also earn mid-teens returns on just residential loans, putting on non-market to market facilities. Our non-market to market facilities are very accretive in the current environment and call it maybe four to five turns of leverage. And this is, you know, non-market to market. You're calling it, you know, 15, 16%. and lastly there's there is an opportunity to buy double B non-QM bonds so these are new issue third-party shelves right now they trade call it 425 to swaps you can you know use 20 to 25 percent you know haircuts on on those and the financing there isn't a low 100 so that would actually get you you know closer to that 16 17 percent so there's a number of options at which we'd be able to get you know mid-teens or potentially a little bit above mid-teens.

Yeah, hi, and thanks. This is Ken. On the MSR front, the change in return from the prior quarter is largely driven by all rates, you know, rising. And, you know, as capital is deployed, that capital earns a higher rate of return additionally with the MSR. A bulk of the negative duration, certainly on the lower note rate collateral, is driven by the float income as we manage the borrower's escrow account. So as rates rise, we as the servicer earn a higher rate of return on those escrow balances, and that applies to prospective investments. So those two items are really driving the change in prospective return quarter on.

Yeah, Chris, but just to add to that point, we entered Q3 with about one and a quarter hikes priced in to the market, and we ended the quarter and sit today with about four, including the hike that occurred in September. So just that float income increase in income alone gets you a lot more yield.

Great. Thank you. That makes sense. And then just one last question for me. on just the recent rate ball in the third quarter and then just a little bit of a change in the fourth quarter. Any distinct changes to your hedging strategy in kind of recent months, recent weeks, especially as rates were rising, you have a little bit of a different environment in October. So just curious on a little bit of the change on the second half of 3Q in October.

Yeah, look, as the market was selling off, we did dynamically hedge and we predominantly use the futures market to achieve that. And we entered Q4 with a relatively higher percentage of futures than we normally operate with. So heading into This quarter, our anticipation will be to find opportunities to convert some of those futures into swaps, which gives us a little bit more yield and keeps a good balance on our hedge profile. But generally speaking, over the last couple of weeks, we've been somewhat encouraged by vols subsiding to some extent. You see it both in realized and implied vols somewhat. We like to think we're out of the woods. We're still very, very vigilant when it comes to our hedge profile and making sure that we're managing the portfolio responsibly. When we look at the environment today and the level of rates, we understand why rates are higher. Obviously, inflation is a big driver, and we are in a hiking cycle, as shallow as that may end up being. heavy debt issuance and also the economy has proven to be able to grow at higher rates and so the neutral rate is higher and so we feel like the new normal is higher rates and so the floor on rates is higher but we do generally like the rates market. We're carrying a little bit of duration here and we think that's appropriate given the attractiveness of rates and we're comfortable with the positioning.

Thanks for all the color, David.

Thank you, Crispin.

Your next question comes from a line of Doug Harder from BTIG. Your line is open.

Thanks, and good morning. You guys put up a smaller decline in economic return than your peers. Clearly, diversification helped that, but I was wondering if you could help us think how the agency portfolio Thank you, Doug.

It's not that easy to differentiate an agency portfolio, which may not sound too attractive to agency monoline peers. But at the end of the day, there's a lot of correlation amongst agency assets. You can be up in coupon, down in coupon, specs, TBAs. But when the agency market cheapens, it tends to affect the entire sector and performance increases. I think this quarter we were probably somewhat contextual with our agency portfolio with how others perform because I think everybody was pretty responsible about navigating the rates market and hedging.

I appreciate that, David. And then on the residential credit, you talked a little bit about some of the spread widening you've seen on new issue deals. Can you talk about whether there have been any kind of other structural changes or what the depth of the investor base looks like, you know, kind of as we've gone through this market?

Sure, Doug. This is Mike. I would say at the top of the capital stack, you know, we ended Q2, call it 130 over the curve. That's the treasuries. At the end of Q3, we're probably 10 basis points wider, call it 140. We just priced our latest deal, our latest transaction post quarter end, non-QM16. That was done at 150. We have seen other AAA sponsors and other shelves probably price call it five to 15 basis points wider. I do think reflecting the strength of the OBX name, the programmatic nature of the platform, and then also the performance as well. So I do think we're still firmly in that kind of tier one category and we're benefiting from that. In terms of structural changes, What we have seen, it's been fairly modest. So the deals that have been coming, they're called maybe low 7% gross whack, low to mid 7% gross whack. The current coupon within NonQM right now, the 102.5 rate is probably closer to 8%. So these deals are modestly out of the money. What the market has really demanded as a concession to be able to move the risk is that the AAA bond, which traditionally is pro rata with the AA and the single A, has turned into a full sequential. So it's a fairly modest change. The BBB and down, the M1 and down has always been a sequential pay. So you're really changing the structure, the waterfall of two bonds. And then what you're seeing is those AA and those single A bonds because instead of being pro rata and factoring down, they become sequential pay in the initial period before the call. Very modest changes, but I would say that the market is still healthy. The market is very resilient. We've seen $95 billion of non-QM issuance this year. Last year, the entire year was $80 billion. 45% of all issuance we've seen in non-agency has been within the non-QM market. Haven't really seen any change in terms of investor depth. It's a slight structural change to be able to absorb modestly out-of-the-money transactions.

Great, appreciate that, Mike.

Thank you, Doug.

Your next question comes from a line of Jason Stewart from Compass Point. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning. Thanks. We know it's a decent uptick in home equity securitization volume. Just maybe if you could talk, Mike, about the two sides there, how you're approaching sizing that as an asset and then how the market is pricing those liabilities today. Okay.

Sure. Thanks, Jason. So, I mean, you know, home equity, we'll classify that as both, you know, HELOCs and closed-end seconds. We've seen in terms of total issuance, right, in, you know, the size of the entire market, you know, we've seen about $220 billion of issuance within the non-agency market. About 15% of that has been closed-end seconds and HELOCs. It's around $33 billion. In terms of our production and what we really focus on, You know, it's probably caught 5 to 6% of our production that we see through the correspondent. You know, we are active predominantly in, you know, full documentation, HELOCs and closed-end seconds. We've talked about that before. There's a small kind of niche market within the alternative doc. But really the focus continues to be on non-QM and DSCR. A lot of it is a scalability. A lot of it is our competitive advantages are within non-QM and DSCR. Closed End Seconds and Helox, they trade at very large premiums. Even to be able to aggregate them through a correspondent, you need to be willing to pay 106, 107 type dollar prices. So that is something where we've been, I think, a little bit more conservative than the rest of the market. But in terms of the distribution, the securitization market, you know, similar to 9QM, it's very healthy. It's not the same size. But I will say that it's, you know, we continue to see transactions. We continue to see deals. If you call AAA non-QM right now for Tier 1 issuers, if we call that 150 to 155, I would say for Tier 1 close-end second issuers, it's probably 5 to 10 basis points inside of non-QM. And part of that is that the market does believe it's a better convexity profile. But in terms of our strategy, we'll continue to buy those assets, but I think we're probably a little bit more conservative in terms of our Thank you. Your next question comes from a line of Marissa Lobo from UBS. Your line is open. Thanks and good morning. Just on MSRs, historically,

MSRs have provided you a natural offset to the negative convexity in agency MBS. But as we're seeing that mortgage universe become more fully extended and the convexity profile improving, how are you thinking about the role of MSRs in the portfolio today? And should we think about them more as a standalone return opportunity, or do they continue to provide more diversification across rate scenarios?

Hey, this is Ken. Thanks for the question. I would answer as both. The standalone return is certainly ample, and we talked about that earlier. In terms of the hedging properties, beyond the gamma, the convexity sort of hedging, there's another form of hedging that's going on, and that's model hedging. We use prepayment models to measure our duration convexities and other risk measures. To the extent prepayment speeds for some other reason Thank you. Thank you. Hedge through owning the MSR.

Yeah, one more point, Maurice, I'll say is in following up on Ken's point is that to the extent that the mortgage market's at a reasonable discount like it is and turnover is actually lower than natural turnover or what should be the case, then the MSR portfolio is going to hedge that as well. And as I talked about a moment ago in terms of float income, it's a hedge for short rates. Higher short rates increases the float income. and MSR benefits from that as well. So there's still a very productive balancing component to the MSR portfolio in the current environment.

I would also add that away from models and all of that, agency MBS has been trading directionally with rates. So when rates sell off, MBS spreads have been under pressure. And what we have observed over the last three years is when rates sell off, MSR actually trades very, very well. So from a pure Mark-to-market trading perspective, it does provide pushing on book value notes.

Okay, great. Thank you. And then just shifting to residential credit and thinking about home price appreciation, can you talk to your home price outlook and is flat HPA manageable and what are the assumptions that are underlying that 13% to 16% residential credit return?

Sure. So, thanks, Marisa. I'll address the second part of it, the 13 to 16%. Again, that's mostly the OBX platform. It's non-QM and DSCR. I will say that, you know, that's modeled to call it maybe a 20% lifetime speed, which is generally where non-QM has come in. In terms of QM losses, that probably represents close to 75 basis points of QM loss. in terms of what our projections are. So there's significant room for upside. If you look at the totality of our securitization program, we've issued I think close to 67 billion life to date. The actual amount of realized losses we have taken inside the trust is around 6 million. So it's been less than one basis point. So one of the areas where we've outperformed our initial expectations has been within credit modeling. We do expect to take, you know, More losses and lifetime losses on a lot of non-QM DSCR, maybe closer to 10 to 15 basis points as they season. But it just shows you that there is a level of conservatism in terms of those projections. In terms of the housing market, a lot of it will depend upon what mortgage rates do and where mortgage rates ultimately settle. If we stay at seven and three-eighths to seven and a half percent for an extended period of time, we do believe housing can go negative. It can go negative by a couple points nationally. So a lot of it is dependent upon mortgage rates. In terms of where we sit today, what we would say the modestly bullish case for housing, still positive. September was up eight basis points month over month. It's up 1% year over year. If you look at zip code levels, 77% have positive year-over-year increases. There's a significant amount of homeowner equity, call it 35 to 40 trillion, depending upon what you think that the size of the market is. The average borrower is locked into a 465 rate. Inventory is still 15% below 2019. And new listings, which is reflecting that mortgage rate, they haven't really increased. It's only up 1% to 2%. The caution, and this is what a lot of people are seeing now, and we do have a level of conservative in terms of just not only our purchase assumptions, but also the quality of the portfolio, as Dave mentioned. The Southeast is very weak. Texas, Florida, you see the public builders talking about competing with resale. Month's supply is at a 10-year high. And a 7-3-8 mortgage payment, that mortgage payment is up 6-7%. just over the last quarter relative to Q3. And everyone knows the, you know, the affordability issues that we have, right? So if we stay at these rates, yeah, we do think it could go down, you know, two to three, you know, three to 4%.

But manageable within the, yes, I guess within the equity cushion that you've... Yeah, it's very manageable.

As Dave mentioned in the script, you know, our average borrower has close to 400K of equity. It's a 64 mark-to-market LTD in our portfolio. The D60 plus of our portfolio right now is 160 basis points. And we are predominantly targeting upper middle class borrowers. Right. So it is not necessarily, you know, this first time home buyer. It is not necessarily the borrower who has been challenged with their discretionary income in this inflationary environment. So I think from that perspective, we feel pretty good about the about the strategy.

Yeah, Marisa, there's also very little layered risk in the portfolio. So we can manage and wouldn't even mind seeing HPA home prices come down a little bit to increase the affordability equation and get turnover up.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, Marisa.

Your next question comes from a line of Rick Shane from JPM. Your line is open.

Good morning, everybody, and thanks for taking my questions.

There have been a lot of great questions this morning, so.

Just wanted to talk a little bit, I mean, empirically, it's one thing to understand what's going on in MSR, but there are, I would describe, a lot of exogenous factors that are impacting, potentially impacting valuation, you know, mortgage volumes, industry capacity, and potentially the impact of AI affecting speeds. I am curious when we think about, again, sort of your empirical models and then overlay all of these different structural things that are happening in mortgage right now, how is that impacting value, pricing, demand and, you know, where you see attractive opportunity within MSR?

Thanks for the question. And those are certainly things we're thinking about all day and actually all night. Look, I mean, the mortgage industry is in a place because of consolidation, because of technology, you know, where people are operating a much more efficiently and are operating at much lower profit margins. So because the efficiency that's priced in, because there's overcapacity, because there's technology, because there's consolidation, it's tough to decouple all the reasons. The profitability of the origination part of the business is very low. And the value of a newly created MSR today is somewhere depending on the loan type between a point and a point and a half. And the profitability of the mortgage industry is substantially lower than that. And on average, when you look at the MBA numbers is in the 20 basis point range now. And since they've been measuring it on average is in the 40 basis point range. So originators are just forced to sell MSR going forward in our view. So if loan production picks up, they have to sell MSR because they're not making as much money. Historically, when volumes picked up, margins picked up, and they picked up because of the shortage of capacity that occurred, we think because of technology that won't occur anymore. So as a result, there'll be lots of MSR selling if volumes pick up because the profitability will not increase. on a per unit basis, allowing more MSR retention. And then we think if origination volume don't pick up, what we're seeing is capitulation, consolidation, needs for liquidity to keep the platforms going until profitability might increase, and that's creating MSR selling as well. We just see a continual restructuring of how the industry works, where folks without a cost of capital like ours or better are not really going to be able to hold MSR. And they're still holding a lot of legacy MSR. And then go forward, the new MSR, we have a tough time seeing how they'll be able to retain that. I think when you look at the MSR transfer data that's public, you'll see who the sellers are, the bulk sellers are, and you'll see this thesis kind of playing out already.

Rick, I'll jump in here and just talk about the demand side and valuation. You know, the market, the bid for MSR is somewhat bifurcated. You have folks like us, capital participants in the market that have obviously accumulated a lot of MSR. And you also have banks, which, you know, particularly given the likelihood of MSR Not being a constraint when it comes to the Basel re-proposal, which we expect to get out the final, which in the next couple of months, banks have been a strong source of demand, particularly in lower loan balance type MSR that carry a lot of escrow balances relative to the capital committed. So they've been a significant bid. As we talked about last quarter, we sold into the bank bid at levels that we thought were quite attractive. and then folks like us, we benefited from all the liquidity that's been generated with the activity in the MSR market and have traded quite a bit of MSR and we still have a fair amount of appetite to add MSR. and as do others like us that are portfolio companies. So we understand the market pricing. We still think it's fair. When there's a rich bid out there, we'll sell MSR as we've evidenced very recently. And I think we're, from a portfolio standpoint, we're positioned conservatively and our pricing on our portfolio is probably the most conservative in the industry.

Look, I appreciate the answer, and it's an interesting thing. I think 25 years ago we wrote something that said the procyclicality of margins would start to erode because of technology, and it feels like we're finally on the cusp of that, and I do think that there's probably no financial services industry that's going to be more transformed by AI than mortgage. So it's a really interesting time, and I do appreciate your insights.

Well, thank you, Rick.

Your next question comes from a line of Jason Weaver from Jones Trading. Your line is open.

Good morning.

Thanks for taking my question.

So first, hey, Dave, since the beginning of the year, we've thought of the GSDs as showing a stabilizing bid behind the BS spreads. And I don't think we've seen any data since August. But do you have any sense as to the extent they've been involved or stepped away from purchases over the past several weeks?

Yeah, look, everything's anecdotal subsequent to August because we don't have that data either. It did appear as though the activity was a little bit slow in the summer. But anecdotally, you know, we have heard that they have been involved in the market. And I think, you know, you even got a tweet out of the FHFA director in September talking about the GSE's buying and some adjective to describe a considerable quantity of MSR. Our understanding is that they probably are. They still do have a fair amount of dry powder. I think at last look at the end of August, total capacity under the PSPA caps for loans and MBS was like $140 billion. They do still have to keep a lot of dry powder for loan buyouts and things like that. But our understanding is that they still have some ammunition left.

Got it. Thanks for that. And second, I think you mentioned layering into some higher coupon TBAs in your prepared remarks. And I wonder if you could talk just a bit about how you see the risk-reward in current coupon production, where a sharp uptick in prepayments could occur under a flight to quality?

Sure. Before we go there, I just want to define where higher coupon is. We refer to Fannie Five and a Half and Sixers as higher coupon now. Six and a Half float is quite small. They're going to start getting more issuance in Six and a Half in the coming months. But Five and a Half and Sixers are preferred coupon right now. And at this point, they're both sitcom coupons. The only coupon that's trading at a billion dollar price is Six and a Half. So most of the PDAs we bought were in Five and a Half and Sixers. In terms of prepayments, we think... TBA, particularly in production coupon, continues to deteriorate at an accelerating pace because more and more collateral is being carved out into specified pools. And so what is left for TBA is significantly more negatively convex. So up the coupon stack, we generally don't like being in TBA for very long. We obviously, when we want to add mortgage exposure, we typically do it in TBA and then over time swap it into pools. So right now we're not worried about our DBAs and power-ups and sixes, mainly because they're discounts, but at some point, particularly for sixes, we will swap them into specified pools.

Got it. That's great color, Srini. I appreciate it. Thanks, guys. You bet. Thank you, Jason.

Your next question comes from a line of Kenneth Lee from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning, and thanks for taking my question. Just at a higher level, curious as to how you'd characterize your overall risk appetite, just given the current rate outlook and the potential tradeoff between market vol and return opportunity, as you see across the various asset categories. Thanks.

Yeah, thanks, Ken. Good question. So look, we're reasonably optimistic on the outlook here. Rates are higher. We do think there's somewhat of a ceiling to rates. I think when you look at the level of interest rates, it's obviously being driven by strong growth and inflation. And there's some real costs associated with these high rate levels. Obviously, the AI sector is continuing to borrow and continuing to invest. But The rest of the economy, to some extent, is being crowded out. That's households, corporates, and it's becoming more expensive for government to issue debt. So we feel like there's limits to how high rates can go. But there's also a new floor on the level of rates, given we are, as I spoke about, in this new normal environment. So what that says to us or suggests to us is that ball should come down. And it has to some extent. As we started the fourth quarter, we've reset. and our view is that things are going to stabilize or continue to stabilize and you will see implied balls coming down because realized balls are a little bit lower. So that gives us a little more optimism in terms of our appetite for risk and I think the position is to a large extent reflecting that. We let our leverage organically increase this past quarter. We didn't delever. We did delever the capital structure a little bit on the PREP side. And I'll just tell you a little bit about that because that was really about capital structure and leverage optimization. You know, when we issued PREP a year ago, we issued it at 8 and 7 ace and agency spreads were 18 to 19 percent or thereabouts. So the spread on that was about a thousand basis points. and then you fast forward to when we made the decision to reduce our structural leverage, which was right after earnings, I believe. And at that time we had floating rate prep outstanding and we'd gone from two cuts priced into the market over the prior year to four hikes. And so the cost of that increased to around 10%. Meanwhile, agency spreads were relatively tight Thank you for joining us. Here we are again and things look pretty appealing from that standpoint and we're comfortable with our leverage. We have a little capacity to increase it tactically, but we're generating the returns we need with current leverage and should spreads tighten, I think we show in our spread shocks for 25 basis point tightening, it's just over 10% return from that. So we're in a position where we like to be. and we're comfortable with the risk in the market. We think ball will continue to come down and we'll be back in business like we were prior to the episode of ball in the late summer. Great.

Very helpful color there. That's all I had. Thanks again.

Thank you, Kit.

Your final question comes from a line of Trevor Cranston from Citizens JMP. Your line is open.

Thanks. Question on the non-QM market. Obviously, it's less rate sensitive in general than the conventional space, but I'm curious your outlook on how the increase in rates, particularly if mortgage rates hold up here, how that impacts the non-QM space and what your outlook is for origination volumes there going forward compared to where they've been the last couple of quarters. Thanks.

Sure, thanks for the question, Travis, Mike.

In terms of non-QM origination this year, we still think it probably is going to be and call it the 150 to 175 in terms of $175 billion. I would say it's probably leaning towards the higher number and the higher amount of that range. In terms of total mortgage origination, maybe we'll call it $1.9 trillion to $2 trillion. So we do think it'll continue to be around, call it 8% to 9% of the entire market. The reason that non-QM is still an elevated percentage of originations, a lot of it is just because mortgage rates are elevated. It is a purchase market, right? and NonQM is targeting a lot of investor, right? So over 50% of this market is investor. Investors right now are about 20% of all real estate purchases, which is a higher share. So we are getting a higher percentage of the end borrower at this point. And also, to your point, self-employed borrowers are a little bit more inelastic in terms of at these level of rates. So I don't know if the share itself will grow. I think a lot of what you've seen over the last number of years has been maturation. But originators at this point, pretty much to a T, have rolled out the product. It's still higher gross margins than the conforming market, than the government market. And it's a product that originators need to have to be able to serve their brokers or serve their LOs on the retail side. So I would expect it to continue to be 8% to 9%. of originations at this point. In terms of if the market rallies, if the market rallies and the mortgage rate is at six, six and a quarter, that percentage is going to shrink exponentially because you're going to see a lot of rate and term refinance of government and conventional. So the share is outsized a lot just because it is a purchase market. This market does target the purchase borrower, high investor share, and there's not a lot of rate and term and cash out at this point.

Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. Thank you, Trevor.

And that concludes our question and answer session. I will now turn the call back over to CEO David Finkelstein for closing remarks.

Thank you, and thank you everybody for joining us. We'll talk to you soon.

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