Ellington Financial - Earnings Call - Q3 2025

Executive Summary

• Q3 2025 delivered strong results driven by securitizations, robust securities performance, and continued solid credit across loan businesses; GAAP EPS was $0.29 and Adjusted Distributable Earnings (ADE) per share were $0.53, again covering dividends of $0.39 for the quarter.
• Street EPS (S&P Global “Primary EPS”) beat by roughly 9 cents as actual $0.53* exceeded $0.44* consensus; revenue came in below consensus ($81.36M* vs $121.32M*), reflecting mark-to-market items and REIT-specific reporting; ADE strength should matter more for mREIT investors. Values retrieved from S&P Global.
• Capital structure inflected: seven Q3 securitizations and pricing of $400M five-year senior unsecured notes (7.375%/7.38% yield), shifting funding toward long-term, non-mark-to-market and unsecured borrowings; ~20% of recourse borrowings unsecured as of Oct 31; management expects ~17 bps near-term cost-of-funds drag as proceeds are deployed.
• Near-term stock reaction catalysts: visible ADE beat/coverage, accelerated securitization pace (20 YTD, >3x last year), and strategic unsecured issuance that fortifies funding, enhances risk management, and supports earnings stability; management reiterated confidence in sustainable dividend coverage.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• “Robust securitization activity, excellent results from our securities businesses, and continued solid credit performance... drove Ellington Financial’s strong results,” with ADE per share $0.53 exceeding dividends; total portfolio holdings grew 12% sequentially.
• Financing evolution: priced $400M 5-year senior unsecured notes at ~7.375–7.38% and completed seven securitizations, reducing reliance on repo and increasing long-term funding; management views this as a “fundamental evolution” of capital structure supporting earnings stability.
• Longbridge momentum: record proprietary reverse originations; segment net income $8.6M and portfolio up 37% q/q to ~$750.0M ex. non-retained tranches, with strong servicing tail executions and HMBS MSR gains.

What Went Wrong

• Mark-to-market volatility: net unrealized losses on non-QM retained tranches, CLOs, forward MSR-related investments, residential REO, and unsecured borrowings impacted reported results despite underlying loan credit remaining strong.
• Slight book value per share decline to $13.40 (from $13.49 in Q2), reflecting market movements and issuance; recourse D/E rose modestly to 1.8x.
• Management flagged modest ADE drag near-term (~17 bps COF increase) from unsecured notes before deployment benefits fully accrue; credit hedges were a drag this quarter but maintained for resilience.

Transcript

Speaker 2

To all sites on hold, we do appreciate your patience and ask that you please continue to stand by. Your program should begin in approximately two minutes. Please stand by. Your program is about to begin. Should you need audio assistance, you may press star then zero on your telephone keypad to speak with an audio coordinator. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Ellington Financial Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, all participants have been placed in listen-only mode. The floor will be open for your questions following the presentation.

If you would like to ask a question during that time, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If at any time your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star two. Lastly, if you should require operator assistance, please press star zero. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Alaadeen Shilleh. You may begin.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that this conference call may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are not historical in nature and involve risks and uncertainties detailed in our annual and quarterly reports filed with the SEC. Actual results may differ materially from these statements, so they should not be considered to be predictions of future events. The company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Joining me today are Larry Penn, Chief Executive Officer of Ellington Financial, Marc Tecotzky, Co-Chief Investment Officer, and J.R. Herlihy, Chief Financial Officer. Our Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call presentation is available on our website, ellingtonfinancial.com. Today's call will track that presentation, and all statements and references to figures are qualified by the important notice and end notes in the presentation.

With that, I'll hand it over to Larry.

Speaker 0

Thanks, Alaadeen. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'll begin on slide three of the presentation. Ellington Financial delivered another quarter of strong performance with strategic execution highlighted by the continued growth of our adjustable distributable earnings, the continued growth of our investment portfolio, and the continued strengthening of our balance sheet. For the third quarter, we reported GAAP net income of $0.29 per share and ADE of $0.53 per share, which set a new quarterly high for this metric since we started reporting it in 2022 and which once again significantly exceeded our $0.39 per share dividends for the quarter.

The increase in ADE over the past several quarters is the direct result of higher net interest income from our loan portfolios, reflecting both the growth of those portfolios and their strong ongoing credit performance, combined with sizable proprietary reverse mortgage securitization gains at Longbridge, where we're now completing roughly one reverse prop securitization per quarter. Our quarterly results also benefited from robust gains from securitizations of non-QM loans and closed-end second lien loans. We priced a total of seven securitizations during the quarter. That's a record for us. Including transactions completed subsequent to quarter end, we have now priced a total of 20 securitizations year to date. That's more than triple last year's pace. The EFMT securitization franchise has become a tremendous asset for Ellington Financial, allowing us to access liquidity from many of the largest fixed income investors in the world.

Finally, in addition to all these drivers, we also had excellent performance in our securities businesses and strong earnings from our affiliate loan originators, such as LendSure. Shifting to our balance sheet, our total portfolio holdings grew by 12% during the quarter as we continued to deploy capital to our highest conviction loan businesses. Portfolio growth was led by non-QM, proprietary reverse mortgage, and commercial mortgage bridge loans, and complemented by opportunistic additions of other residential mortgage loans and CLOs as well. Notably, Longbridge delivered a record quarter for proprietary reverse origination volumes. Demand from borrowers for Longbridge's prop products continues to grow, but just as importantly, demand from investors remains strong for the resulting securitization debt tranches. I believe that Ellington Financial, with our Longbridge subsidiary and our securitization franchise, is uniquely positioned to profitably intermediate between prop reverse mortgage borrowers and investment-grade debt investors.

Moving to the financing side, we further strengthened our balance sheet by increasing our long-term non-mark-to-market financings in two key ways. First, by accelerating our pace of securitizations, and second, by expanding our access to long-term unsecured financing. First, as I mentioned earlier, we priced seven securitizations during the quarter. Importantly, we are close to pricing our inaugural securitization of residential transition loans, which would reduce reliance on short-term financing in that strategy as well, unlock capital for redeployment, and create high-yielding retained tranches for our portfolio. Securitizations are important because they provide stable, non-mark-to-market funding while reducing reliance on repo. This greatly enhances capital efficiency, and I'll elaborate on that later in my concluding remarks. Securitizations also allow us to manufacture high-yielding retained tranches with valuable call options.

These retained tranches are generating some of the most attractive requested returns across our platform, and they contribute strongly to ADE, even without repo financing. Second, on the financing side, on the final day of the third quarter, we successfully priced $400 million of five-year senior unsecured notes rated by Moody's and Fitch, and broadly distributed to institutional investors across more than 80 accounts. We utilized more than half the proceeds to reduce repo borrowings, with the remainder funding new high-yielding investments. The unsecured notes priced at 7.38%, representing a 363 basis point spread over the five-year treasury at the time. We were pleased with the execution and the strong investor demand, and encouraged to see the bonds trading well following issuance.

We expect pricing to improve on future transactions as we become a more established unsecured note issuer, and as we migrate a greater share of our borrowings to long-term financing, creating a virtuous cycle. With that, I'll turn the call over to J.R. to walk through our financial results in more detail. J.R.?

Speaker 6

Thanks, Larry. Good morning, everyone. For the third quarter, we reported GAAP net income of $0.29 per common share on a fully mark-to-market basis and ADE of $0.53 per share. On slide five of the deck, you can see the portfolio income breakdown by strategy: $0.42 per share from credit, $0.04 from agency, and $0.09 from Longbridge. On slide six, you can see the ADE breakdown by segment: $0.59 per share from the investment portfolio segment and $0.16 from the Longbridge segment. In the credit portfolio, net interest income grew sequentially, and we also had net realized and unrealized gains on residential transition loans and other loans in ADS, partially offsetting higher net interest income were net realized and unrealized losses on non-QM retained tranches, CLOs, forward MSR-related investments, and residential REO.

We continue to benefit from solid credit performance in our loan portfolios and from strong earnings at our affiliate loan originators. I'd like to highlight a new slide in the earnings presentation. Please turn to slide 15. This slide illustrates the strong credit performance of our loan portfolios over time, reflected in the exceptionally low realized credit losses across our residential and commercial loan strategies since each business's inception. Note that the realized credit loss rate is shown on a cumulative inception-to-date basis. If presented on an annualized basis, these percentages would be even lower. This metric captures the quality of our loan underwriting, incorporating both loans that performed as expected and paid off at maturity, and loans that required individual workout efforts.

On the top right, you'll see just 13 basis points of cumulative realized credit losses on approximately $14.7 billion of residential mortgage loan fundings spanning non-QM, RTL, home equity, and proprietary reverse mortgages. On the bottom right, cumulative losses total only 47 basis points on more than $2 billion of commercial mortgage bridge loan originations dating back to before COVID. The combination of the strong credit performance and the high yields of these loans has been a key driver of EFMT's sustained growth in ADE over time. Moving to agency, that portfolio also generated strong results in the third quarter with net gains on both our long agency RMBS and associated interest rate hedges. Lower interest rates and reduced volatility, together with tightening agency yield spreads, created a favorable environment that was broadly supportive of portfolio performance.

The Longbridge segment had another excellent quarter with strong contributions from both originations and servicing. Origination profits were driven by higher origination volumes of prop reverse mortgage loans, higher origination margins for HECM reverse mortgage loans, and net gains related to the prop loan securitization completed during the quarter. Meanwhile, base servicing net income, strong tail securitization executions, and a net gain on the HMBS MSR equivalent, primarily due to tighter HMBS yield spreads, drove the contribution from servicing. These gains were partially offset by a net unrealized loss on the retained tranches of prop reverse securitizations due to faster prepayment speed assumptions, lower HPA projections, and higher applied discount rates. Turning now to portfolio changes during the quarter. Slide seven shows an 11% increase in our adjusted long credit portfolio to 3.56% quarter over quarter.

Our portfolios of non-QM loans, commercial mortgage bridge loans, other residential loans, and CLOs all expanded, as did our portfolio of retained non-QM RMBS, in that case from the securitizations we executed during the quarter. These increases were partially offset by the impact of loans sold into securitizations, net sales of non-agency RMBS, and a smaller residential transition loan portfolio, with principal paydowns in that portfolio exceeding new purchases. For our RTL, commercial mortgage bridge, and consumer loan portfolios, we received total principal paydowns of $352 million during the third quarter, which represented 21% of the combined fair value of those portfolios coming into the quarter, as those short-duration portfolios continued to return capital steadily. On slide eight, you can see that our total long agency RMBS portfolio decreased by 18% to $221 million due to net sales.

Slide nine illustrates that our Longbridge portfolio increased by a substantial 37% to $750 million, driven by a record quarter of prop reverse mortgage loan originations, partially offset by the impact of a prop reverse securitization completed during the quarter. Please turn next to slide 10 for a summary of our borrowings. At September 30th, the total weighted average borrowing rate on recourse borrowings decreased by eight basis points to 5.99% overall, with a notable 17 basis point decline on credit borrowings. Quarter over quarter, the net interest margin on our credit portfolio increased by 54 basis points, reflecting both that lower cost of funds as well as higher asset yields, while the NIM on agency decreased slightly by two basis points.

At September 30th, our recourse debt to equity ratio was 1.8 to 1, up slightly from 1.7 to 1 as of June 30th, while our overall debt to equity ratio was down slightly to 8.6 to 1 from 8.7 to 1. During the quarter, we improved financing terms on two Longbridge-related facilities. On September 30th, we priced $400 million of five-year senior unsecured notes at a fixed coupon of 7.38%, which was a 363 basis point spread to the five-year U.S. Treasury at the time. Consistent with our goal of staying neutral to the path of interest rates, upon pricing, we immediately swapped the fixed coupon to a floating rate, thus locking in that 363 basis point spread. The notes issuance closed in early October and will appear on our balance sheet beginning in the fourth quarter. As of October 31st, nearly 20% of our recourse borrowings are unsecured.

Of equal importance, the percentage of those borrowings subject to mark-to-market margining declined to 61% from 74% month over month. We expect our notes offering to increase our overall cost of funds by approximately 17 basis points. Keep in mind that this figure does not capture the expected accretive benefit of adding more assets at yields above the cost of this debt, as well as the release of capital reserves related to the repo paydown, which Larry will elaborate on later. In keeping with our mark-to-market philosophy, we'll elect the fair value option on these new unsecured notes, as we have for our other notes, and mark them to market through the income statement. As a result of this election, we expensed all associated deal costs in October rather than amortizing them over the life of the notes.

At September 30, combined cash and unencumbered assets were about $1.2 billion, or about two-thirds of our total equity. Book value per share was $13.40, and economic return for the third quarter was 9.2% annualized. With that, I'll pass it over to Marc.

Speaker 4

Thanks, J.R. This was an important quarter in EFMT's evolution. As Larry mentioned, we continued to grow ADE, and we made our company more resilient. To be clear, repo financing markets have been functioning extremely well, with both ample liquidity and competitive terms. EFMT's balance sheet is stronger when we diversify our funding sources and rely less on short-term repo. Our debt deal was a significant step in that direction, as were our seven securitizations, where we replaced repo funding with non-mark-to-market debt. Our resiliency is also a function of the downside protections we put in place, including our credit hedges. While these hedges were a drag on returns this quarter, we continue to maintain them as an important safeguard, especially as some signs of potential cracks in the economy have surfaced.

For example, there were two recent well-publicized bankruptcies in the corporate credit markets, and job formation has weakened substantially compared with earlier this year. These are the kinds of market risks that, should they become more widespread, our credit hedges are designed to protect against. In addition, our focus on higher FICO, low-relativity loans, and our purchase activity further enhances the resilience of our portfolio. We continue to invest in proprietary technologies that enable our affiliate loan originators and other partners to originate and deliver loans more efficiently to us. Those technology investments are paying off through higher purchase volumes, as we have greatly expanded the breadth of originators who sell loans to us. We're also optimistic about the potential for technology to both automate and improve many aspects of loan underwriting.

These technology initiatives helped facilitate our 12% quarter-over-quarter portfolio growth, which was driven by the growth in our loan strategies and our ability to efficiently securitize our loans. With rates moving slightly lower, this trend should continue, if not accelerate. In addition to increasing our loan purchasers, we are also expanding our reach. We have recently begun purchasing two particular types of loans that are eligible for purchase by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but which instead have been increasingly purchased by private investors. We expect to launch a securitization of these loans in coming months. This agency-eligible mortgage space is particularly interesting as the current administration appears comfortable with private capital stepping into areas once dominated by the GSEs. This could be a unique moment and a potentially very large opportunity for EFT. Another current focus area for us is buying seasoned mortgage loan portfolios from banks.

With rates lower and spreads tighter, many bank portfolios that used to be significantly underwater are now much less so, and this is enticing many banks to shed what they consider to be non-core assets. Since the start of the month, since the start of the fourth quarter, we have seen more loan packages come to market from bank sellers, and so far, we have acquired two such packages. We think this could become a significant area of growth for us going forward. In general, we're following the same EFMT playbook while expanding it. Our approach is to use proprietary switching models to buy a broad range of mortgage products, term out the financing through securitizations, and then retain in our portfolio high-yielding tranche investments along with potentially very valuable call options.

We started doing this in 2017 with non-QM deals, then added second liens and prop reverse, and now we are in the market with an RTL deal and plan to securitize agency-eligible mortgages on the horizon as well. Meanwhile, as we expand the array of products that we're buying and securitizing, we're also providing affiliate loan originators more ways to make money by expanding the product sets that they can offer to their customers. This synergistic relationship helps drive our portfolio growth, while also increasing our affiliate loan originators' profits, which then further enhances our earnings and our book value per share through the equity stakes we hold in these originators. This playbook is the main driver of the strong ADE growth this year, especially with the significant contributions to ADE we've seen from both our retained tranches and our stakes in the originators, including Longbridge, of course.

The process of expanding our footprint in the securitization markets has itself become a virtuous cycle. We have built our EFMT securitization brand over the past eight years, dating back to our first deal in 2017, and each new transaction and loan product further cements our stature in the market and builds our investor base, contributing to better execution levels. Looking ahead, we actually see a richer opportunity set than we did in the first half of the year. Loan volumes have increased with mortgage rates now more than 80 basis points lower than earlier in the year. With an expanding footprint in a larger market, our securitization volumes are up significantly. However, the overall credit backdrop has weakened. HPA is stalled, more consumers are under financial strain, and many corporations aren't just slowing their hiring but are actively reducing headcount.

We will continue to rely on a data-driven, model-based investment approach to pursue high returns while limiting downside risk. Now back to Larry.

Speaker 0

Thanks, Marc. To sum up, this was an excellent quarter for Ellington Financial on a number of fronts. We achieved earnings growth and meaningful portfolio expansion, and we marked a significant inflection point in evolving our financing base, all of which we think positioned us well for continued earnings strength and dividend coverage in the quarters ahead. I'm pleased to report that this momentum has continued into the fourth quarter, with securitization activity remaining robust and origination volume strong at Longbridge and at our non-QM loan originator affiliates, LendSure, and American Heritage Lending. Of course, we've also been hard at work deploying the proceeds from our unsecured note issuance. We've used a chunk of the proceeds to grow the investment portfolio by more than 5% in October alone, and we've used most of the remainder of the proceeds to pay down repo as planned.

Our ADE generation power is very strong, so it's good that we have some ADE to spare going into the fourth quarter, as we expect to experience a modest near-term drag on ADE as we deploy the proceeds from our notes issuance. Even after we deploy those proceeds, we expect to realize additional, more subtle benefits from our notes issuance over time, as I'll now explain. The first additional benefit is through increased capital efficiency, which is a byproduct of replacing mark-to-market financing like short-term repo with long-term non-mark-to-market financing. Specifically, and consistent with our disciplined risk management approach, we maintain extra cash and capital reserves against our repo and other mark-to-market facilities to guard against potential market shocks. We can reduce those reserves when we replace repo with long-term unsecured notes, which frees up capital that can be redeployed into higher-yielding assets, thereby further amplifying long-term earnings potential.

As an aside, similar benefits apply to our securitization financings. The second additional benefit from our notes offering is a much longer-term benefit. We view our shift toward a greater proportion of long-term unsecured and securitization financing and a lesser proportion of shorter-term repo financing as a fundamental evolution of our capital structure. This shift is fortifying our balance sheet, enhancing risk management, and supporting earnings stability. Including our existing $263 million of unsecured notes, nearly 20% of our recourse borrowings are now unsecured as of October 31, and we intend to increase that proportion over time. As this evolution progresses, we expect that we'll see upgrades in our credit ratings, which should enable us to issue more unsecured debt at even more attractive economic terms, setting off a virtuous cycle.

As a result of these multifaceted dynamics, I believe that our unsecured notes program will enable us to both build a more resilient balance sheet and expand our earnings power. As always, our goal is to deliver durable, high-risk-adjusted returns to shareholders across market cycles. Looking ahead, with conservative leverage, ample liquidity from our recent unsecured notes issuance, and a steady pace of securitizations, we believe that Ellington Financial is well-positioned to continue delivering strong and sustainable dividend coverage. Let's open the floor to Q&A. Operator, please go ahead.

Speaker 2

At this time, if you would like to ask a question, simply press Star then the number one on your telephone keypad. You may remove yourself from the queue by pressing Star Two. We will go first to Crispin Love with Piper Sandler.

Speaker 3

Thank you. Good morning. First, just on the loan originator platforms, we've started to see a more conducive mortgage rate environment. Can you just discuss how this has changed valuations in your stakes and then overall operating performance. Increased flow to Ellington? Are there any other areas where you're looking to add capacity in other platforms or new platforms from an originator level?

Speaker 0

Okay. JR, you want to talk about valuations, sort of generally speaking, how we value and how the recent tailwinds are helping valuations?

Speaker 6

Yeah, sure. Thanks, Crispin. The stakes are third-party valued twice a year, and then the other two times we adjust based on interim P&L. The valuation providers are typically looking at, broadly speaking, three data points: trailing earnings, forward earnings, and then multiples relative to the market. I think there are a few factors at play. There have been some publicized trades in the market at multiples to book, premiums to book. At the same time, book value has built up because earnings have been so powerful. In many of these cases, we're also getting distributions of those earnings, so we get to return cash and then redeploy it. I'd say that the strong earnings performance has reflected through higher book value, but has also led to some more liquidity for these platforms and higher multiples. We have a.

Table in our 10Q where we go through the multiples of earnings that our valuations reflect, and they're not at the same levels as one particularly notable transaction that happened within the last couple of months. At a premium to book, reflecting the earnings power of the platform, but not at the premium reflected in that transaction. If that helps answer the question, I mean, earnings have driven book value, which has driven values, and just interim P&L is reflected in our mark-to-market as we capture the benefit of those earnings.

Speaker 0

Yeah. And then in terms of new products, I think, right, Crispin, was that your question? Are we looking at adding stakes in any new products? Is that right?

Speaker 6

Yes, that's right.

Speaker 0

Yeah. Mark, I'm not aware of any new products. We are looking at potentially adding some additional servicing capacity in a small way, but no, I'm not. Mark, are you aware of anything?

Speaker 4

Yeah. I mean, the one thing I would say, Crispin, is that you are starting to see adjustable rate mortgages taking an increasing share of the new origination market. I think for some originators in the agency space, it's as much as 10%. If I go back to the early days in non-QM, I'm talking 2015, 2016, 2017, that product was 100% adjustable rate. It used to be all seven-year arms, right? We are starting to see some demand for adjustable rate mortgages, and part of that is a consequence of the steeper yield curve, where you can offer a little bit lower rate on a seven-year arm than you can on a fixed rate. That's a new product. That's one thing that we've been working with some of our affiliates and some other originators with.

Speaker 3

Great, Mark. That's helpful. Mark, I found your comments on buying loans from banks interesting. Can you just dig a little bit deeper on that opportunity? Is it primarily commercial real estate loans? Is there any res in there? Just what types of banks are you dealing with? Is it more community banks or are there larger ones as well?

Speaker 4

The two transactions I referenced in the prepared remarks were both residential mortgage loans. One of them, it turns out, was actually adjustable rates. These were smaller banks. They were not the big GSIBs. You have a lot of banks sitting on portfolios that they desperately want to restructure. It is, I think, more of an issue and it is more of a factor in the agency MBS market, where you have a lot of banks still sitting on big portfolios of Fannie Twos, Fannie Two and Apps, which have really been a drag on NIM. I think it is kind of interesting that most of the M&A activity you have seen involving banks in the last couple of years, after each transaction, you have seen fairly large portfolio restructurings. If M&A increases, I think it is going to lead to more.

Activity from banks shedding loans that they've held in portfolio for a while. I just think the natural process of lower yields, a steeper yield curve, tighter credit spreads is lifting up the price of some loans on balance sheet to the point where the trade-off of taking a loss and getting to reorient the portfolio is palatable. I look for more of that to continue should the rate environment stay where we are now.

Speaker 3

Great. Thank you, Marc. I appreciate you all taking my questions.

Speaker 4

Thanks, Crispin.

Speaker 2

We will move next to Bose George with KBW.

Speaker 5

Good morning, guys. This is actually Frankie on for Bose. First question is on credit. You touched on weaker consumer, a little softness in the labor market, and negative HBA. Can you just elaborate on maybe what you're seeing within your portfolio and where you're seeing the best allocation of capital today?

Speaker 4

Sure. Yeah, we have the new slide J.R. talked about, which directly shows the credit performance of what we're doing on the loan side in residential and commercial space. What I would say is, if you look at consumer spending and you really partition it as a function of income levels, the weakness is by and large at the bottom 50% of income levels. You see it impacting subprime auto, you see it impacting lower FICO credit cards, you see it impacting portions of the FHA and VA portfolios, which tend to be lower credit quality than what you see from Fannie and Freddie. If you look at higher-end borrowers, that spending has been continuing, and their credit performance, and that's really where we're focused, has been very strong. I also just put into the prepared remarks the comments that you've seen.

A pickup in the number of companies that are talking about layoffs. Now those layoffs, which some corporations have been talking about, it seems like that could be something that could impact some borrowers that are at higher wage levels. Right now, in terms of credit performance, everything has been performing well, and we've made a lot of progress this year, I think, in working out some delinquencies we had in the small-balance commercial portfolio. I just wanted to put that comment in there because it is something that is on our radar, and we're thinking about it.

Speaker 0

Yeah. And Mark, just to follow up on that, on slide 15, I just want to reemphasize what JR said during the prepared remarks, which is that these are non-annualized. These are cumulative numbers. So our commercial mortgage loan business, bridge loan business, which goes back, gosh, 10 years at least. When you see 47 basis points of cumulative losses, that's over 10 years. Obviously, it would be anything on an annualized basis would be much smaller. On the resi side, again, 13 basis points goes back many, many, many years. We're really pleased with this performance. As Mark says, we've been laser-focused on FICO, which has really helped us. Of course, in RTL, all our loans have personal guarantees. We feel very good about where we stand. We did have a couple of loans that we talked about on some relatively recent earnings calls.

That on the small-balance commercial space, one of them has been resolved. One of them is actually now going quite well towards resolving, I would say, later next year, but things are looking good. We really feel good about where we stand.

Speaker 5

Great. Thank you. You guys had a strong ADE over the course of the past year. Do you see any maybe uptick in dividend level? Also, could you quantify the drag you mentioned on ADE in the fourth quarter?

Speaker 0

Right. So in terms of the drag. I think JR mentioned that our sort of overall cost of funds, with all other things being equal, from where we stand at. Around now, would be about 17 basis points, right, JR?

Speaker 6

Yep.

Speaker 0

Higher. Yeah. Again, I mean, as I said, we really have some good ADE to spare coming in, if you will. We still, I think, believe that we're going to be able to continue to cover the dividend. I don't want to say I wouldn't say that we have any plans. We certainly don't have any plans to lower the dividend. I think it's just at a level right now, 11-handle yield. I think it's a good dividend. We just want to keep covering it and covering it as we have been.

Speaker 5

Thank you. That's all from me.

Speaker 2

We will move next to Trevor Cranston with Citizens JMP.

Speaker 0

Hey, thanks. A little question on your comments on sort of the general credit backdrop and credit performance. Looking at the credit hedge portfolio, it looks like the size of the hedge positions declined somewhat in 3Q. I was wondering if you could just maybe provide some commentary on how you guys are thinking about the risk of sort of ground-based spread widening and how you guys are approaching the credit hedge part of the portfolio right now. Thanks.

Yeah. The drop in the credit hedge was, I would call it, a little more of a blip, if you will, as we were about to. We literally priced that deal.

On September 30th, yeah.

At quarter end. Basically, being awash in cash, we decided that on a short-term basis, we would lower that credit hedge. Obviously, the credit hedge is there for a rainy day and for resiliency in a market shock, and having basically all that cash coming in obviated the need for as much of a credit hedge. I do expect that to continue to increase as we deploy that cash, as we've talked about, into new high-yielding investments that are more correlated, obviously, to overall market risks. I would view that as a little bit of a blip in terms of that big downward move there.

Got it. Okay. That makes sense. You talked about working towards deploying the capital from the debt issuance at the end of the quarter. Obviously, you guys have been able to do some issuance on the common equity side through the ATM sign as well. Should we think about the debt issuance sort of decreasing your appetite for common equity in the near term, or is the sort of amount of issuance there small enough that it does not really move the needle enough to change things?

Yeah. We can deploy pretty quickly. I would like to note that our ATM issuance has been accretive. I think that's really important. Certainly want to keep that up. Yeah, exactly. I think that we did have a good quarter for ATM issuance. Because of all the flow that we've talked about on the call previously, we are able to deploy capital quite quickly, generally speaking. We have so many different strategies that we can deploy into, and we pick and choose which ones look the best at any moment in time. I would say that we do not really view them as alternatives, I would say. Additional ATM issuance is not only accretive nowadays, but it also helps our G&A ratios and things like that. Just a lot of good reasons to keep that going. Obviously, we.

Don't want to, we like to see our stock trading at a premium, and we don't want to do anything rash to potentially change that situation.

Speaker 6

Yeah. And just to add on that, I mean, we mentioned that October, the portfolio was up more than 5%. We did not quantify it exactly, but that is on a $4 billion base. So 5%, that is $200 million right there. We raised $400 million and mentioned we are using more than half to pay down repo. And we had 12% portfolio growth in Q3. I guess the point is that, underscoring Larry's point, that deployment and portfolio ramp has not been an issue for us in recent months. We did raise accretively in the ATM during the quarter relative to where the book value per share settled at $7.30.

Speaker 0

Yep. Okay. That's helpful. Thank you.

Speaker 6

Thank you.

Speaker 0

Thanks.

Speaker 2

We will move next to Timothy DeAgostino with B. Riley Securities.

Speaker 0

Yeah. Hi. Thank you. Good morning. On Longbridge and the proprietary reverse mortgage product, you had mentioned that it was record volume origination. I was wondering, within that market, what does competition look like for you all?

Yeah. There's not much. In the prop space in particular, there are HECM issuers that originators. That are. There are more of those, I guess you could say. Longbridge overall is number two in the space. In terms of volumes, by some metrics, sometimes number one. In prop, it's really there are two other competitors. One of them is a public company. One of them isn't. I think the reason that it's, I think, harder for others to originate that product is that they don't have the kind of capital base and the outlet for the product the way that we do in a kind of vertically integrated way where we have Ellington Financial to read that needs to put money to work. We have the originator, obviously, that can originate the product for us. It's definitely less competition in that space.

Than in other spaces. I think we are in a great competitive position. The fact that our securitization is going so well has meant that we have been able to actually offer better terms to borrowers because the securitization outlet has provided us better execution over the past several quarters. That has translated into better rates for borrowers, which has translated into also higher volumes for us, right? We can offer better terms, and we can get higher volumes. That is kind of what has been going on there, and hopefully, that will continue.

Okay. Great. Yeah. And then just quickly flipping to the credit portfolio. Quarter to quarter, it seems like Non-QM was the biggest, had the most investment quarter to quarter. I was just wondering what you're seeing in that market and why do you like it so much. Yeah. Thank you.

Mark?

Non-QM, it's not a monolith, right? There's loans to investors. There's owner-occupied loans. There's a range of documentation types from Full Doc to bank statements and a few others. I guess we've been at the Non-QM market since 2014. That's when we made our initial stake in our first portfolio company, LendSure. Over the past 11 years, we have spent a lot of time and effort building out our credit modeling, our prepayment modeling, deepening the relationship between our originator affiliates where we own a portion of the company, as well as others I'd call just origination partners where we might not own a stake in them, but we have active dialogue on the underwriting guidelines.

We have a team of people that are on the road basically every day, visiting originators, talking to underwriters, talking to appraisers, thinking of what are really best practices in terms of the process for originating loans. We have really deep sort of native understanding of that market. It has grown. You have seen Fannie and Freddie not expand their guidelines, in some ways, constrict their guidelines. You have, I'd say, it's 10-15% of the home buying universe that are not served well by the GSEs. That is really the core of Non-QM. I think a couple of things have happened for Non-QM in the past year or so. One is that you've seen a broad-based migration up in FICO, which we like. There has still been a lot of discipline on LTV.

Most of what we do on a portfolio basis is below 70 LTV in aggregate. You have seen significant securitization volumes have spread this year. The non-QM securitization market has grown a lot, and it has gotten more liquid and more commoditized, and it has attracted a bigger universe of investor-grade bond buyers. All those things together have worked in concert to tighten spreads. The ability to buy loans that are well underwritten to higher FICO borrowers and then securitize them with tighter spreads, materially tighter spreads on the IG bonds than what you were looking at in a lot of 2024, and to have more certainty of execution because there is more liquidity in the market, has made it an asset class that we have scale to it. It is leaving our portfolio with very attractive retained investments. It is really those two things.

It's the volume, the scale, the underwriting discipline we've brought to it. Levered with these tighter investment-grade spreads, that has made that sector very attractive to us.

Speaker 6

Great. Thank you so much.

Speaker 0

Thank you.

Speaker 2

We will move next to Eric Hagen with BTIG.

Speaker 5

Hey, thanks. Good morning. We actually have a follow-up on the Longbridge portfolio. I mean, when we think about the total upside potential in Longbridge, does it require more leverage to get to its target returns? How do you think about the amount of leverage in that portfolio? What's both objective and sustainable for leverage in that portfolio?

Speaker 0

Thanks. I do not think it requires more leverage. First of all, part of most of Longbridge's—and I am not talking about the segment now. I am just talking about the originator, right? Most of Longbridge's equity is in its servicing, right, especially its HECM servicing portfolio. That is just a very high-yielding return on that servicing without any leverage. Much higher yielding than forward servicing. That is number one. In terms of the prop reverse loans, which is what ends up on our balance sheet, on EFC's balance sheet, both pre-securitization and post-securitization, sure, while we are accumulating for securitization, there is going to be leverage there, right? Again, post-securitization, where we retain just the residual, if you will, it does not really require that now. We do consolidate those, so from a consolidation perspective, right, you might see more leverage that way.

Again, this is long-term non-mark-to-market locked-in financing. The way we look at it is we've just got a retained interest that's relatively small that doesn't require any additional leverage. I don't think we're going to need more leverage there. Obviously, as the origination volumes increase, you need more warehouse financing. Again, that's sort of more transient, if you will, transitory.

Speaker 5

Yeah. Okay. That's really interesting. Going back to Non-QM for a second here, I mean, what's your perspective on convexity risk in the space right now? I mean, to your very point, it feels like so much progress has been made among brokers and loan officers. The asset class is higher quality, more transparent, more liquid. At the same time, I mean, we wonder how it would respond to lower rates, even meaningfully lower rates. And your ability to kind of backfill that portfolio if rates were to fall. Thank you guys so much.

Speaker 0

Mark?

Yeah. Hey, Eric. I would say it was interesting. In the last remittance cycle, jumbo speeds increased a lot. You did not see a similar increase in Non-QM. If you go back to 2020, 2021, we know Non-QM loans are capable of very fast prepayment speeds, prepayment speeds in excess of 40 CPR, right? This rate move has certainly put prepayments and understanding prepayments and valuing that front and center because when you do a securitization, what you are retaining, a large portion of the investment is essentially sort of a crypto IO. We hedge that risk. I also think this drop in rates is adding a lot of value to the call options too, right? You retain the ability to get loans at par that were 103 at origination and in a rate move could be worth 105. We keep the call options.

Those thrive in a rates-down market. We have the XSI, the excess spread piece, which has exposure to faster prepayment speeds. But understanding those prepayments, thoughtfully mitigating some of that prepayment risk through prepayment penalties, which probably 30% of the market has, that's really one of our core competencies, right? Whether it's understanding the servicing portfolio we took over from Arlington, whether it's understanding IOs or inverse IOs, understanding how borrowers, different types of borrowers, respond to prepayment options, I think it's something that we're really good at. We spend a huge amount of time on it. I think we have a lot of institutional knowledge. You're exactly right. Prepayment speeds are on the radar. Now, I would say, what does it do about portfolio size? I mean, typically, when you go through a refi wave, it's not as though the market shrinks. The market just.

Borrowers are just exchanging an existing loan for a new loan. I don't think it presents any challenges from staying invested. A lot of times, when you go through a refi wave, the size of the market actually grows because you have borrowers that, if they refi, sometimes they're cashing out and they're replacing an older loan with a slightly bigger new loan. I think we've been very focused on the prepayment risks of different loans and making sure that's properly hedged out and hedged out along the yield curve. In terms of volumes, I think it'd be a big uptick in volumes. I think it creates a lot of opportunities. Yeah. If I could just add one thing. First of all, I want to point out that, as Marc said, I mean, we model this fanatically, right?

One of the things we do while we're warehousing those loans awaiting securitization, Non-QM loans, right? They have negative convexity. We are short. To some degree, we're short TBAs against those loans as well as other interest rate hedging products, right? We're short a negatively convex instrument against a negatively convex instrument that we're long. That helps. I think that also is something that I think we do rather uniquely in the space. The second thing I would say is that if you turn to page 14, you can see that on an overall portfolio basis. Page 14 of the presentation is our interest rate sensitivity analysis. I think in the Q, we go out to 100 basis points as well.

I mean, you can see that when you look at the whole portfolio, even taking into account the fact that you've got prepayment risk. As Marc said, what are a chunk of IOs that we're long in our Non-QM retained tranches, right? Even when you take all that into account, it's really very contained, the negative convexity in the overall company. Again, on page 14, you can see, do we have some negative convexity? Yes. You can see modest declines in equity for a 50 basis point drop or a 50 basis point increase, but they're really quite modest. This is something that we really model very, very closely based upon 30-plus years of experience.

Yep. Thank you guys so much. I appreciate you.

Thanks.

Speaker 2

We will move next to Doug Harter with UBS.

Hi, thanks. It's actually Marissa on for Doug today. Just one from me more broadly on the reverse mortgage space. How are current market conditions, notably the outlook for moderating HPA and the evolving regulatory environment, how are they impacting your outlook for the ongoing opportunity in the space?

Speaker 0

Sure. Okay. On the regulatory front, there really is not much going on there. In terms of, there was some talk of actually some improvements, so-called HMBS 2.0, but that seems to be stalled. There is really not much going on on the regulatory front. Now, HPA definitely matters. When we do prop reverse securitization, we are retaining the residual, if you will, and we do have exposure to long-term HPA. I think we mentioned in the prepared remarks that based upon some HPA stalling, we did adjust downward the mark on those retained pieces in the prop reverse mortgage securitizations. Again, it was quite contained to that effect and offset by, obviously, a lot of other things going in the portfolio. It is something that we keep a very close eye on, and it will affect the value of that portfolio.

You also have to remember there's a lot of cushion there, right? The prop reverse mortgages are originated, in fact, all reverse mortgages, right, originated at initial extremely low LTVs. So you're really not so much exposed to shorter-term HPA as you are to ultra-long-term HPA. I mean, in the short term, you're talking about LTVs that are well below 50%, well below.

Speaker 2

Got it. That's helpful. Thank you.

That was our final question for today. We thank you for participating in the Ellington Financial Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. You may disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day.