Adamas Trust - Q1 2023
May 4, 2023
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the New York Mortgage Trust first quarter 2023 financial results conference call. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, the conference will be open for questions. If you have a question, please press the star followed by one on your touchtone phone. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the pound key. If you are using speaker equipment, we do ask that you please lift the handset before making your selection. This conference is being recorded on Thursday, May 4, 2023. A press release and supplemental financial presentation with New York Mortgage Trust Q1 2023 results was released yesterday. Both the press release and supplemental financial presentation are available on the company's website at www.nymtrust.com.
Additionally, we are hosting a live webcast of today's call, which you can access in the Events and Presentations section of the company's website. At this time, management would like me to inform you that certain statements made during the conference call, which are not historical, may be deemed forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Although New York Mortgage Trust believes the expectations reflected in any forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurance that its expectations will be attained. Factors and risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations are detailed in yesterday's press release and from time to time in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. At this time, I would like to introduce Jason Serrano, Chief Executive Officer. Jason, please take it away.
Jason Serrano (CEO)
Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our Q1 2023 earnings call. On the call with me today is Nick Mah, President, and Kristine Nario, Chief Financial Officer. I'll begin by providing some market information and briefly touch on the Q1 performance before passing the call to Kristine, who will discuss our quarterly results in more detail. Nick will then discuss an update to our portfolio and market opportunity. The Q1 was a challenging environment, and you saw the real beginnings of a risk-off mentality after regional banks entered a type of liquidity vortex related to their deposits. Distortions to zero interest rates are on full display here. Left with a material portion of fixed rate assets or at below Fed funds rate, some regional banks are caught in a liquidity crunch. Liquidity is locked up in these assets and pushed into the distant future. We recently witnessed three of the four largest banks failures in U.S. history. Total assets of the deposits are approximately $550 billion, compared to a total in 2008 of $365 billion. Regional bank deposits issues seem far from over. Provisions taken on CRE loans, particularly office, are still to come. These events have accelerated what we see as an end stage to the growth cycle. There are many market signals that show a recession is near. Last quarter, we showed a graph related to quarter-over-quarter change to lending standards, which are on the rise. This was noted before the regional bank liquidity issues.
On page seven of our presentation, we highlighted the obvious fact that the entire yield curve is inverted. The not so obvious fact is that the months of inversion are now beyond or very close to when recessions were previously triggered. Whether you look at the trends or M2, money supply growth or which is -4.1%, which is the lowest since the Great Depression, or our manufacturing as ISM index, or a variety of other leading indicators, this is likely the most advertised recession in U.S. history. No two recessions are the same, we do not see U.S. housing leading the decline in this downturn. In fact, we believe U.S. housing, including multi-family asset class, will outperform in this market. On the right side of the page, we discussed how the previous 2000 themes of the Great Financial Crisis are simply not relevant today. Mainly, the U.S. mortgage is predominantly fixed rate and underwritten with higher lending standards than 2007. Mortgage payment shocks are not an issue like it was at that time, with after the Fed's aggressive rate hikes. The incentives for homeowners to walk away from their mortgage and rent across the street, which was common theme in 2007 era, is an option that is out of the money for today's homeowner. The vast home equity that has been built up, the cheap cost of housing, given the zero interest rate policy offered a few years back, makes this move uncompelling. The supply side of the housing remains stubbornly low. Less than one million units first are on sale in the U.S. or less than three months of supply.
This is a comfortable area to keep HGPA range-bound. This is primarily due to a locked market, where sellers do not want to lose their low cost of financing, but also may have issues finding replacement housing. New home buyers are delaying purchase plans with borrowing costs above 5.5% and little inventory to choose from. We know that the housing market is not insulated from higher loan default risk. Wage loss due to layoffs, as an example, will push delinquencies higher. For the U.S. housing credit market, the loss given default should prove to be a somewhat stable parameter to underwrite, much different than 2007. We believe these factors will contribute to a favorable secondary market opportunity for distressed investors in U.S. housing. Given the persistent regional bank liquidity problems and recessionary concerns, we believe the opportunity will open up this year and add to attractive risk-adjusted returns in a dislocated market. With two decades of residential housing investments and loan and property level asset management experience in both single-family and multi-family, we are well equipped to unlock value in this market. In fact, on page seven, we show that we have been preparing for the economic downturn for over a year. This is a timeline we presented about a year ago, which has correctly illustrated the market transmission mechanism from a performing market with excess liquidity to what we believe will end in dislocation.
After the first Fed hike in March 2022, we set plans to sharply reduce our investment pipeline, which was running at $1 billion per quarter. In Q3 2022, asset acquisitions totaled only $118 million and have stayed quite low since. We have remained steadfast in our defensive posture in order to be a meaningful offensive player in a down market. We believe the income potential in this new cycle will exceed earnings or capital over the past year if it was fully redeployed. Simply said, we believe the opportunity cost of holding cash over the past 12 months was extraordinary low. We are confident the investment opportunity will be highly attractive and sizable to create significant long-term value for the company. On page nine, we show one of the outcomes as a result of this portfolio management strategy. On the right side, the graph shows our portfolio size over the past five quarters. In late 2020, we targeted bridge loans because we were attracted to high coupon, low LTV, and short duration. In the Q2 of 2022, we reached a peak of business purpose loans. Despite multiple opportunities to continue growing the portfolio and to increase our income over the past year, we continued to follow the plan to run off the short dated portfolio. The company's interest income declined from peak in the Q2 of 2022 of $69 million-$57 million in the Q1 of this year, a decline of 17%. As illustrated, the lack of BPL reinvestment accounted for nearly all the interest income decline.
Our plan was to create half a billion dollars of dry powder to be able to meaningfully participate in a downturn. The diagram on the bottom left illustrates this point. The $552 million of excess liquidity equates to 42% of our market capitalization as of quarter end. We are also prepared with $1.4 billion of borrowing capacity with warehouse facilities that are currently in place. The company is primed to be a liquidity provider in a downturn to grow earnings over a longer time horizon. On page 10, we summarize our quarterly performance and activity. As discussed earlier, we prioritize book value protection which consequently lowered quarterly interest income due to the lower investment activity. As such, the company generated comprehensive earnings of $0.12 per share in the Q1. Adjusted book value was -3% quarter-over-quarter and after our previously declared $0.40 dividend, the company's quarterly economic return on adjusted book value was -0.5%. Part of our strategy to keep competitive advantages was to hold G&A at a low level. We want the flexibility to transition between primary and secondary markets within the sector seamlessly. The lack of compelling risk-adjusted returns offered in today's market, we did use some of the capital to repurchase securitization debt, common shares, and for the first time, preferred stock in the Q1. As discussed in previous quarters, we are in the process of monetizing our common equity interest in multi-family properties held on balance sheet. As updated and noted here, we have six properties in the some stage of advanced sale process. Total investments amount related to these properties is $62 million. At this time, I'd like to pass the call to Kristine to provide more financial color and then to Nick to discuss our portfolio update and strategy. Kristine?
Kristine Nario (CFO)
Thank you, Jason. Good morning. In my comments today, I will focus my commentary on main drivers of Q1 financial results. Our financial snapshot on slide 12 covers key portfolio metrics for the quarter, and slide 23 summarizes the financial results for the quarter. The company had undepreciated earnings per share of $0.14 in the Q1, as compared to undepreciated loss per share of $0.50 in the Q4. The fair value changes related to our investment portfolio continued to have significant impact on our earnings. During the quarter, we recognized $0.31 per share of unrealized gain, primarily due to improved pricing on our residential loans and bond portfolio. We had net interest income of $17.8 million, a contribution of $0.20 per share, down from $0.24 per share in the Q4. The decrease can be attributed to a combination of a few factors. First, a decrease in average interest earning assets due to portfolio runoff in our short duration BPL bridge loans, as well as our conscious decision to be selective in pursuing investments in our targeted assets, which Jason covered earlier. Second, overall yield on our interest earning assets decreased also due to portfolio runoff of higher yielding BPL bridge loans and an uptick in maturity-related delinquencies, primarily in our BPL bridge portfolio. Additionally, financing costs in our investment portfolio increased, primarily due to pay downs and repurchases of our lower cost securitizations and due to increases in interest rates related to our repurchase agreements.
We've experienced an increase in these maturity-related delinquencies, we believe that through active management and our ability to work with borrower to find a reasonable exit plan, we would be able to recoup our delinquent interest on these loans at payoff, which has been our experience historically. In the Q1, we had non-interest related income of $66.8 million or $0.73 per share. As previously discussed, prices in a majority of the assets in our investment portfolio increased during the quarter and contributed $0.31 per share in income. Our consolidated multi-family JV properties contributed $0.46 per share in income, an increase from $0.44 per share in the Q4 as properties continue to implement business plans to drive rents and occupancy higher. We are required from an accounting perspective to carry our multi-family real estate assets that are held for sale at lower cost or market value. We perform our valuations for the quarter and determine that two out of the 19 multi-family properties held for sale had lower property valuations as compared to our carrying costs, resulting in an impairment loss of $10.3 million during the quarter. Total General, Administrative and operating expenses amounted to $70.4 million for the quarter, up slightly from $68.2 million in the previous quarter, primarily due to an increase in interest expense and mortgages payable on consolidated real estate due to change in base rates, partially offset by reduced portfolio operating expenses due to residential loan portfolio runoff and minimal purchase activity.
As Jason mentioned earlier, adjusted book value per share ended at 15.41, down 3.02% from December and translated to a -0.50% economic return on adjusted book value during the quarter. As of quarter end, the company's recourse leverage ratio and portfolio recourse leverage ratio increased slightly to 0.40x and 0.32x respectively, from 0.33x and 0.25x respectively as of December 31st 2023. While our average financing leverage still remains low, the slight increase in the quarter is primarily due to the financing of newly acquired agency RMBS. We continue with our effort to enhance our debt structure by placing greater emphasis on longer-term and non-mark-to-market financing arrangements. Currently, only 20% of our debt is subject to mark-to-market margin calls and remaining 80% have no exposure to collateral repricing of our counterparties. As you can see on Slide 13, we have $100 million of unsecured fixed debt due in 2026 and $45 million of subordinated bonds due in 2035. The maturity profile of our corporate debt allows us to have more flexibility by avoiding cash holdbacks related to near-term bond maturities.
While longer-term and non-mark-to-market financings may incur a greater expense relative to repurchase agreement financing that expose us to mark-to-market risk, we believe that over time, this weighting towards these type of financings better allow us to manage our liquidity and reduce exposure in dislocated markets. We paid a $0.40 per common share dividend, which was unchanged from the prior quarter. We evaluate our dividend policy each quarter and look at the 12 month-18 month projection of not only our net interest income, but also realize our capital gains that can be generated from our investment portfolio. With that, I will now turn it over to Nick to go over the market and strategy update. Nick?
Nick Mah (President)
Thank you, Kristine, and good morning, everyone. As Jason expounded on, we are still navigating a challenging investing environment. We are reminded that regional bank failures are still a concern which has shifted the technical dynamics of banks being buyers to likely net sellers of mortgage risk. All this happening prior to a potentially more distressed environment in the, in the horizon. The portfolio activity over the last few quarters has been reflective of our views on the market, which is that on balance, we prefer the preservation of our liquidity and leverage today for the deployment into more compelling investment opportunities in the future. We believe our portfolio and available capital is well positioned for what is to come. Relating to our purchases, our Q1 2023 acquisitions of $219 million are still meaningfully lower than our fastest pace of acquisitions that we experienced at the peak in the Q2 of 2022. This quarter's activity is, however, almost double last quarter's lower base of investment volume of $106 million. The slight pickup in aggregate investments was partially driven by our opportunistically investing in $107 million of agency MBS given the spread widening we witnessed in February and March. We mentioned in the prior earnings call that investing in agencies is something that we would consider given the non-credit nature of the asset class. This is further bolstered by its relative liquidity and historical outperformance during recessions.
We will continue to selectively deploy in this asset class over the coming quarters as we await more attractive opportunities in residential and multi-family investments. Across all of our core credit strategies, you will also note that our pipeline of activity has marginally increased quarter-over-quarter. We continue to engage our sourcing channels, both new and old, to prepare for normalization to an increased investment pace in the future. The portfolio's prepayments and redemptions have continued to be higher than our pace of acquisitions. This has the net effect of the reduction of our overall portfolio size. That gap is shrinking with only $70 million delta and portfolio declines should taper off in the coming quarters. We believe the overall portfolio is well situated today despite the market turmoil that we saw in the Q1 driven by the regional bank crisis. Our credit portfolio valuations improved.
The LTV profiles of our book in the 1960s provide a strong buffer amidst potential home price declines in the future as our borrowers have a sizable amount of built-up equity. On a corporate level, we continue to maintain low portfolio recourse leverage ratios across our entire credit portfolio. The recent new additions to our investments would be our agency positions. We have recently been more focused on higher than current coupon specified pools, where we are targeting low payoff stories for prepayment protection. We have the benefit of being able to construct a portfolio from scratch, which has allowed us to avoid lower coupon bonds, which now face additional technical selling pressures from FDIC bank selling. Higher coupon agency bonds also help balance the convexity profile of the overall residential portfolio, where more of our seasoned assets have a potential for price appreciation, but may not generate as much NIM.
Our largest exposure in residential credit is our BPL bridge loans, which we continue to cautiously deploy capital through a more conservative credit buy box. We see value in the short duration and the high coupon nature of the product. We have noted in the past that we continue to be active in the asset management of the BPL bridge portfolio, especially guiding the assets to resolution in a timely manner. The portfolio has declined from its peak of $1.7 billion in the Q2 of 2022 to $1.1 billion today, mostly through organic resolutions. With the curtailment in purchasing activity, our existing portfolio is seasoned at about 14 months on average, so we have experience and will continue to face increasing maturity-related delinquencies. Our asset management team, alongside our third-party servicers and asset managers, continue to work with borrowers to a responsible exit plan. To the extent that an extension is required to charge the borrowers the fees necessary to align them with our cost of continuing to hold on to the asset on our balance sheet. From a market standpoint, the time to resolution for bridge loans has increased for a couple of factors. First, the market for refinancing of these borrowers into other loan products is smaller than in the past, with tighter underwriting standards constraining the market. Borrowers are also having to align their original profitability assumptions in their projects amidst a less ebullient home price backdrop.
All in all, we do feel comfortable with the credit profile of our BPL portfolio, given that the LTV ratios and the progress of the projects in our book. Losses in our BPL bridge portfolio to date continue to be less than 1 basis point across the $2.9 billion of bridge loan purchases we have made to date. Delinquencies across other parts of our residential book has declined quarter-over-quarter and still remain low. On the multi-family side, we are focused on selectively expanding our pipeline on the multi-family mezzanine loan program and on liquidating our joint venture equity portfolio. We remain focused on finding avenues for the disposition of those assets. On the multi-family mezzanine portfolio, we are constructive on the credit of our existing portfolio and for further investment in this space. The demographic trends have been positive in the areas that we primarily invest in, namely the South and Southeast. This can be seen through an 11% rental growth rate in 2022, with an additional 3% growth rate in the Q1 of 2023. This creates a positive valuation trend on the collateral underlying our mezzanine loans and helps offset operating cost increases that may have arisen through inflation.
The performance of the portfolio is fantastic, with only one delinquency that is expected to pay off in the near future. Unlike the BPL bridge refinancing market, the multi-family mezzanine financing market is relatively robust. For our stabilized properties, senior agency loans are still available with competitive rates in the mid 5%. Agencies also offer supplemental loans that can, in certain circumstances where our LTV positioning has improved, refinance our mezzanine loans out. For our non-stabilized assets, such as our properties under construction, there is a natural outlet to refinance to a more efficient capital structure after stabilization. Overall, our mezzanine portfolio prepaid at a 32% rate last year. We expect the heightened prepayment activity to continue into 2023, despite a slower Q1. I will now turn it back to Jason for any closing remarks.
Jason Serrano (CEO)
Thank you, Nick. Success in this new environment may be achieved through organic creation of liquidity, tactical asset management, and prudent liability management for our book value protection. As a REIT, we are particularly excited about our excess liquidity advantages permanent capital can have in a dislocated market. With that, I'll pass it back to the operator for questions.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. At this time, we will conduct the Q&A session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, press star one one again. Please stand by while we compose our Q&A roster. Our first question will come from Doug Harter of Credit Suisse. Doug, please go ahead.
Doug Harter (Director)
Thanks. Can you talk about the two properties where you took the impairment on the multi-family and kind of what might differentiate those versus the other 17 in the portfolio?
Jason Serrano (CEO)
Yeah. The two properties are properties where we are in advanced stages of the sale. These two properties are in the middle of a transition plan. These are value-added Class B properties that we conducted the CapEx program. We're deciding here that it may make sense to sell the property before the CapEx plan is fully completed. As we find that the capital that we receive back will add more value to the company than keeping that asset in those markets with the CapEx plan in place. We're expecting in a, you know, a transition plan that would take probably another, you know, 15 months, 18 months.I think what's exceptional about these properties is that, you know, the decision to sell before the CapEx plan is completed is, something we've realized and hence the reason why we're taking the adjustment on our value.
Doug Harter (Director)
If that's two of the six that I guess you have agreements on, can you just talk about the other four, you know, sort of what the gains, losses relative to kind of where they're carried are?
Jason Serrano (CEO)
Yeah, I mean, as Christine mentioned, we, you know, we take the lower of, the value of the property or our cost. Given that we did not reduce the value of those properties, obviously we feel like the properties are worth either our cost or more. We will disclose the sale proceeds and pricing related to those assets, in the next quarter.
Doug Harter (Director)
Okay. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you very much. Please stand by, please stand by while we compile our Q&A roster. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. Our next question comes from Matthew Howlett, B. Riley. Matthew, please go ahead.
Matthew Howlett (Analyst)
Oh, hey, Jason. Thanks for taking my question. Just like you guys have been very prudent with the capital management, I know you don't have a crystal ball here, but I mean, what could you tell us in looking at the next 12 months and will all that excess liquidity be deployed? I mean, I think the issue with the financial crisis was things went down, and then people put stuff through, and then it went down further. I mean, what do you need to see for things to bottom, and are things trading right now? Are there clearing levels established?
Jason Serrano (CEO)
Thus far, we've seen a couple regional bank sales. These are not of entities that have been seized by the FDIC. Those sales from the FDIC are mostly, you know, from a low coupon MBS, which is not a particular attracting strategy for us. I mean, we think there's, I mean, lots of supply of that that will be coming out, and obviously it's very tough to make, you know, a NIM off of a, you know, a 3.5% coupon MBS bond. It's more capital appreciation, and that's more of a long-longer dated view on rates. At the end of the day, you know, what we are looking at is, you know, single-family loan. We're looking at a market where you have about $120 billion of senior loans from multi-family properties that will be coming due. There may be a lot of gap financing possibilities there on the multi-family side. On the single family side, you know, obviously there's a major reduction of credit availability that's occurred, and we highlighted that last quarter. Powell mentioned that on his call yesterday that, you know, there's been a big pullback in lending. That's an area that we can exploit more so on the secondary market side than the primary market side. That there'd be a lack of financing on some loans that have been hung and we can look to restructure those loans with our servicing capabilities. We're excited about the opportunity. You know, I mean, obviously the market is experiencing some significant headwinds. You know, we have been preparing for this for over a year with our excess liquidity and low margin debt, as well as keeping our balance sheet clear of any near-term maturities so we can use our cash to the fullest extent and not hold back for a maturity schedule. I also believe that, you know, as I said in my final comment, that our permanent capital provides distinctive advantages in this new market.
To your point, in 2007, you had a downturn over the market and things looked cheap, and then obviously it turned lower in 2008 and 2009, and then it finally recovered with the green shoots in 2010. You know, I think that was a market also where pricing discovery and understanding, you know, the fact that, you know, there's such a thing as home price declines could exist in the U.S., it was also a factor in a lot of the early exuberance of potential pricing. You know, we've looked at this market. We've been in the market for two decades. We've, you know, analyzed 2007, have been involved in buying assets in that market through different cycles and on the multi-family side. You know, we feel pretty confident about our ability to understand the values in this market. It's impossible to time the bottom. You know, our view is that that's where the permanent capital advantages come into place, where we feel we can earn, you know, a equity type of returns on a senior loan is an exciting opportunity for us. You know, given the confidence we have in our capability, we're not gonna be shy to put capital to work. You know, and looking forward to generating, you know, what we believe is gonna be exceptionally risk-adjusted returns over, you know, the subsequent years. We think we're positioned well, excited for the opportunity.
Matthew Howlett (Analyst)
Yeah. Well said. Look, New York Mortgage Trust has always had a history of being, you know, visionary. You sort of, you were leaders who are out of the financial crisis, you're doing interesting, you know, trades and investing in interesting assets. What can you tell us, you know. Again, I know you don't have a crystal ball, but a year from now, I mean, with all, you're scooping up all these cheap assets. You have the asset manager, you know, which is great. When you look longer term, would New York Mortgage Trust, would they look to acquire an operating business? Do you see a secular change happening with the banks maybe coming out that you could take NYMT in a, in a new direction? Anything, you know, that could be, you know, you've got all this capital, excess capital is terrific going into this market. Long term, do you look at buying an originator or still staying away from that or doing something else?
Jason Serrano (CEO)
Yeah. You're keying on a particular point, which is our G&A level that we kept low, the reason why it's low is because we haven't vertically integrated into a significant originator servicing platform. You know, in just the single family loan markets. You know, we have looked at and kind of originators and investor loan markets. Your point is well taken in that we do believe there's opportunity for us on the operational side. You know, we have looked at various platforms to date, last year that there was many platforms available for sale. We didn't feel like the timing was right there. In a you know, in a dislocated market, we think we can pick up operating businesses for little cash or, you know, potentially get paid to take them in some cases. Those are the opportunities we're looking for. We think it also helps generate sourcing in a distressed environment, so we're excited about opportunities that may come from that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We're, we're focused on that. We will, I think, likely use some of our excess liquidity to find some of those opportunities. You know, we still believe the timing is not quite there. You know, we think it's, you know, given the lack of origination, the liquidity concerns that exist, entities like us become pretty attractive partners given our lack of debt and also, high cash. Yeah, that's something we're definitely looking forward to.
Matthew Howlett (Analyst)
Yeah. Look, you certainly have the lowest leverage in the space. I certainly acknowledge the low operating costs. We'll look forward to that. Thank you.
Jason Serrano (CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Please stand by while we bring up our next question. Our next question will come from Eric Hagen with BTIG. Go ahead, Eric.
Eric Hagen (Managing Director and BTIG Mortgage and Specialty Finance Analyst)
Hey, thanks. Good morning. Maybe starting off here. You know, just how should investors think about a duration of the portfolio? Like, how much cash flow do you expect maybe on a, you know, to take in on maybe like a quarterly basis? If you wanted to de-lever the portfolio just from pay downs, how capable do you feel like you are of doing that? A sort of related question on top of that is, like, is there a way to think about the earnings which are cash versus non-cash or discount accretion in the portfolio right now? Thanks.
Jason Serrano (CEO)
Thank you. As it relates to duration, I mean, we starting basically at the end of 2020, we focused on BPLs. We grew that portfolio to about $1.7 billion, which was the peak in Q2 of 2022. We've mentioned this multiple times in calls, which is this was a trade for us, not necessarily a business, in that we felt that our using our cash in this manner where you could basically organically raise capital by just letting the portfolio wind down, was probably the most prudent thing we could have done, you know, a couple years ago. You know, we had, you know, timing of when dislocation would come was very tough. You know, what you wanna do was be early on the call on slowing down, you know, your pipelines, so you can get that cash back in time for opportunities. We're, you know, as you indicated on page nine of our presentation, we're, you know, we're letting that plan play out. You know, that plan has, you know, taken our portfolio from $1.7 billion-$1.1 billion. As Nick mentioned, we're in, you know, a very seasoned stage of our portfolio related to, you know, an 18-month kind of maturity type of loan. We do expect that portfolio to pay down pretty quickly and also to, you know, pay down our debt as a result.
We, you know, we, with also our pref, mezzanine pref book, we, you know, we're experiencing roughly around 15%, you know, of the loans that are paying off on a quarterly basis. You know, that's a also a very seasoned portfolio, also a portfolio that we stopped really allocating meaningful capital back in Q2 of 2022. That is allowing us to run off as well. On top of that, we have our JV equity portfolio, which I mentioned there are six assets that are in a late-stage process for a sale. We're looking to monetize the entire portfolio. You know, we're focused on reducing our exposure there and using that capital for lending opportunities. There's a lot of things that, you know, we're doing organically, just letting portfolio run off. There's the JV equity, which is a capital market sale. On the, on the, you know, the remainder of the portfolio, we don't have a lot of capital allocated to margin debt. Kristine mentioned that point, and that we've been, you know, systematically reducing margin debt from our portfolio. We have various points in our presentation that show that effort. Not a lot of exposure there. You know, the transition from kind of repo debt from March 2020 to securitizations and non-marginal longer-term financing facilities is something we set to complete, which we've been working on, you know, over for now two years. We feel like we're in a good position there.
Eric Hagen (Managing Director and BTIG Mortgage and Specialty Finance Analyst)
That was really good detail. I appreciate that. One more on the BPL. How would you characterize maybe the conditions for the borrower? Like, is there a way to compare the returns that they're getting or expecting now versus, call it, 12 months or 18 months ago when the cost of debt was lower, but home prices may have been higher and conditions were, you know, obviously a little different?
Nick Mah (President)
Yeah. I think the borrower expectation on a. I mean, it's hard to estimate exactly what they're gonna be thinking because that's gonna be highly dependent on home price appreciation. Oftentimes when the projects come to us, the business plan really is putting in some degree of rehab and then capturing value through that rehab and not really relying on home price appreciation. However, there has been a very strong HPA environment over the last few years. There was just a much larger margin of error to the extent that you don't execute as well or your projections were off, home price appreciation did help you. Now it's a slightly different environment. I would say that for what we're seeing is that we're having more experienced borrowers come through the pipeline in terms of new purchases today than newer borrowers. I think it's because the more seasoned professionals have a better way to execute, and they feel more confident in the way that they can execute. Because of that, they don't have to rely as much on home price appreciation. I think the dynamics have definitely changed, and it's really coming from both sides. On the lending side, lenders are less inclined to lend to people without the experience.In terms of people looking, seeking out this more expensive debt, it tends to be more of the seasoned professionals that have, you know, their, you know, have confidence in their ability to execute are the ones who are actually taking on this debt and taking on this market for future opportunities.
Eric Hagen (Managing Director and BTIG Mortgage and Specialty Finance Analyst)
Yep. It's definitely a market that's growing quickly. Thank you guys so much. Appreciate it.
Operator (participant)
Thank you for your questions. I would now like to turn it over to Jason Serrano, CEO, for our closing remarks. Go ahead, Jason.
Jason Serrano (CEO)
Yeah. Thank you for your time today. We look forward to speaking with you on our Q2 earnings call. Have a great day.
Operator (participant)
Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes the program. You may now disconnect.