Earnings Call Transcript - CHMI Q4 FY2025

Operator

Thank you for standing by and welcome to Cherry Hill Mortgage Investment Corporation's fourth quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. To remove yourself from the queue, you may press star one one again. I would now like to hand the call over to Emma

Emma Little, Head of Investor Relations

a little investor relations. Please go ahead. We'd like to thank you for joining us today for Cherry Hill Mortgage Investment Corporation's fourth quarter 2025 conference call. In advance of this call, we issued a press release that was distributed earlier this afternoon. That press release and a fourth quarter 2025 investor presentation have been posted to the investor relations section of our website. On today's call, management's prepared remarks and answers to your questions may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those discussed today. Examples of forward-looking statements include those related to interest income, financial guidance, IRRs, future expected cash flows, as well as prepayment and recapture rates, delinquencies, and non-GAAP financial measures such as earnings available for distribution, or EAD, and comprehensive income. Forward-looking statements represent management's current estimates, and Cherry Hill assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements in the future. We encourage listeners to review the more detailed discussions related to these forward-looking statements contained in the company's filings with the SEC and the definitions contained in the financial presentations available on the company's website. Today's conference call is hosted by Jay Lowne, President and CEO Julian Evans, the Chief Investment Officer, and Apeksha Patel, the Chief Financial Officer. Now, I will turn the call over to Jay.

Jay Lown, CEO

Thanks, Emma, and welcome to our fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. Themes that resonated in the third quarter continued into the fourth quarter. A further reduction in tariff rhetoric and above-trend domestic growth allowed realized and implied volatility levels to drop. The limited government shutdown and a slightly weaker employment picture were offset by additional FOMC eases, which lowered the Fed funds rate by a total of 50 basis points during the quarter. All these factors contributed to the improvement of the equity and credit markets. Mortgage spreads embraced the lower volatility, coupled with a steeper yield curve tightening throughout the quarter. specific to Cherry Hill portfolio performance was driven by tighter mortgage spreads and a steeper yield curve all portfolio components aided in the performance mortgages swaps futures and MSRs performed well with lower and middle coupon mortgages outperforming the wings of the coupon stack the RMBS portfolio positioning remained consistent with the third quarter and that positioning benefited performance in addition our MSR portfolio which remains 250 basis points out of the money given current mortgage rates performed well given the steeper yield curve all in we were pleased with our performance for the quarter for the fourth quarter we generated gap net income applicable to common stockholders of 14 cents per diluted share book value for common share finished the quarter at $3.44, compared to $3.36 on September 30th. On an NAV basis, which includes preferred stock, NAV was up approximately $3.1 million or 1.3% relative to September 30th. Financial leverage at the end of the quarter remained relatively consistent at 5.4 times as we continued to stay prudently levered. We ended the quarter with $55 million of unrestricted cash on the balance sheet, maintaining a solid liquidity profile. Along with our solid portfolio performance, our strategic partnership and investment with Real Genius LLC, a Florida-based digital mortgage technology company, continues to grow steadily and in line with our expectations. As a reminder, Real Genius has developed a proprietary direct-to-consumer platform, offering an efficient, fully online mortgage experience, including instant pre-qualification, automated document process, and real-time loan tracking, all of which is supported by their custom-built point-of-sale system. With 30-year mortgage rates still hovering around 6% and the potential for additional Fed rate cuts later this year, we remain optimistic that the reduction in mortgage rates may facilitate an acceleration in Real Genius' growth as more homebuyers and homeowners look to purchase homes or refinance. As we progress through 2026, we will continue to seek out investment opportunities we believe would be accretive to our business. We will also remain focused on thoughtfully growing the company while consistently maintaining our strong liquidity and prudent leverage positioning. With that, I'll turn the call over to Julian, who will cover more details regarding our investment portfolio and its performance over the fourth quarter.

Julian Evans, Other

Thank you, Jay. fourth quarter's performance was driven by a more stabilized interest rate environment and a steeper yield curve which enabled most spread and equity markets to post gains tighter mortgage spreads and a portfolio position for a steeper yield curve aided our performance as Jay mentioned the portfolio start of the quarter slightly long duration positioned for lower rates and a steepening yield curve, which we maintained throughout the quarter. Performance was bolstered by SOFR swap spreads, which widened in the quarter, aiding mortgage spread tightening. The shift from higher to lower coupon mortgages initiated in September proved advantageous as expectations for additional Fed easing increased, supporting tighter spreads and higher prices for lower coupon, longer duration collateral. In the quarter, we proactively adjusted our portfolio positioning as necessary to continue benefiting from the spread and rate environment. As the quarter progressed, the entire coupon stack had a hand in performance as interest and so forth swap rates fluctuated. To start, lower and middle coupon mortgages outperformed in concert with lower rates. However, in December, following the Fed's third rate ease of the year, rates actually moved higher, which favored middle and higher coupon mortgages. Quarter end, our MSR portfolio had a UPB of $15.9 billion at a market value of approximately $215 million. The MSR and related net assets represented approximately 40% of our equity capital and approximately 21% of our investable assets, excluding cash, at quarter end. Meanwhile, our RMBS portfolio accounted for approximately 40% of our equity capital. As a percentage of investable assets, the RMBS portfolio represented approximately 79% excluding cash at quarter end. Our MSR portfolio's net CPR averaged approximately 5.1% for the fourth quarter, down modestly from the previous quarter. The portfolio's recapture rate remained de minimis, as the incentive to refinance continues to be minimal for this portfolio, given the portfolio's loan rate. We continue to expect a low recapture rate and a relatively low net CPR in the near term, given our MSR's portfolio's characteristics. As expected, the RMBS portfolio's prepayment speeds rose to eight point five percent CPR for the three month period ended December compared to six point one percent for the prior quarter given that our portfolio is comprised of a large portion of higher coupon specified pools as previously mentioned the majority of our higher coupon positioning is TVA the larger spec pool positioning starts in the five and a half coupon where the underlying collateral typically has a 650 loan rate, and which was impacted by the recent move to lower mortgage rates. As a reminder, while the mortgage universe is only approximately 19% refinanceable at the current mortgage rate levels, as the Fed continues to ease monetary policy, we are monitoring a mortgage rate of 5.5%. At a 5.5% mortgage rate, the refinanceable universe increases to approximately 30%. As of December 31st, the RMBS portfolio, inclusive of TBAs, stood at approximately $805 million, compared to $782 million at the previous quarter end, a modest shift as we repositioned the mortgage portfolio towards the middle of the coupon stack. For the fourth quarter, our RMBS portfolio's net interest spread was 2.52%, which was lower than the previous quarter due to reduction in dollar roll income as well as a reduction in interest earned on payer swaps we would expect to bounce back in the first quarter as dollar roll income improves overall our head strategy remains intact and we will continue to use a combination of swaps TBA securities and Treasury futures to hedge the portfolio during the quarter the hedge portfolio marginally changed as we initiated a small position in ARIS SOFR futures. We would expect their usage to grow as we transition a portion of the portfolio to ARIS SOFR futures. As we progress through 2026, we will continue to proactively manage our portfolio and adjust our overall capital structure to add value for shareholders through improved performance and earnings. I will now turn the call over to Opeksha for our fourth quarter

Apeksha Patel, CFO

financial discussion. Thank you Julian. Gap net income applicable to common stockholders for the fourth quarter was 5.3 million or 14 cents per weighted average diluted share outstanding during the quarter. While comprehensive income attributable to common stockholders which includes the mark-to-market of our available for sale RMVS was $6.5 million or $0.18 for rated average diluted share. Our earnings available for distribution or EAD attributable to common stockholders were $3.9 million or $0.11 per share. Our book value per common share as of December 31, 1, 2025 was $3.44 compared to book value of $3.36 as of September 30, 2025. We use a variety of derivative instruments to mitigate the effects of increases in interest rates on a portion of our future repurchase borrowings. At the end of the fourth quarter, we held interest rate swaps, DBAs, Treasury futures, and swap futures, all of which had a combined notional amount of approximately $422 million. You can see more details regarding our hedging strategy in our 10K as well as our fourth quarter presentation. For GAAP purposes, we have not elected to apply hedge accounting for our interest rate derivatives, and as a result, we record the change in estimated fair value as a component of the net gain or loss on interest rate derivatives. Operating expenses were $3.3 million for the quarter. On December 12, 2025, our Board of Directors declared a dividend of $0.10 per common share for the fourth quarter of 2025, which was paid in cash on January 30, 2026. We also declared a dividend of $0.51.25 per share on our 8.2% Series A Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Stock and a dividend of $0.62.59 on our 8.25% Series B Fixed to Floating Rate Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Stock, both of which were paid on January 15, 2026. At this time, we will open up the call for questions. Operator?

Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. To remove yourself from the queue, you may press star 11 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Timothy D'Agostino of B-Riley Securities. Please go ahead, Timothy.

Timothy D'Agostino, Analyst — B. Riley Securities

Thanks for taking the question, and thanks for the comments before. You know, my first question is, could you just kind of give us a sense or provide maybe a little bit more color on how the market for you all feels at the start of 26 compared to 25? It would be great to just kind of, through your lens, understand kind of the changes you're seeing and what's different.

Julian Evans, Other

Hey, Tim. This is Julian. um well i mean obviously the first uh thing off the table is you know we obviously got the tweet that talked about the dsds being able to reinvest about 200 billion dollars uh into mortgage-backed securities so i would say net net spreads have in the first you know instance of that went tighter especially in the middle of the coupon stack closest to par and over gradually over the next couple weeks has subsequently given a lot of that back in terms of returns. Yes Fred ended the month of January slightly tighter but I would say as we moved into February the market has changed and I think relative to where we were in the fourth quarter, I think you saw kind of continuously tightening over the entire quarter. I think what we've seen so far is tightening in the month of January, widening in the month of February, plus the flattening of the yield curve. There seems to be more of a flight to quality bid in the market at the moment. some of that obviously having to do with equities in terms of either a rotation or a scare out of particular equity stocks and I think that's filtered over into rates and where we see more of a flight to quality so mortgages I would say the bid ask is widened out a little bit some softer tone this month than what we've had definitely in the fourth quarter of last year

Timothy D'Agostino, Analyst — B. Riley Securities

Okay, great. Thank you so much for that. And if I could just ask a quick follow-up. Regarding the RMBS book, I know you said CPR ticked up quarter for quarter. Is there a normalized level for CPR that you think you'll get to or that over the cycle you kind of look to? Just trying to understand where the CPR is now relative to over a normalized period.

Julian Evans, Other

Well, I think if you look at, like, our specified pools, what I kind of tried to note was that a majority of the specified pools are not in the six and six-and-a-half coupon for specified pools. The majority of it's kind of in the five and five-and-a-half coupon. So we've given ourselves a little bit of wiggle room. We felt we'd gone up high in terms of rates, came back down, but we advised ourselves not to maybe buy that six coupon that would kind of be in the refinanceable bucket right now. Now, given the six-and-a-half kind of loan rate that we see, you know, our sixes, I would say, I mean, our five-and-a-halves are kind of prepaying in that, I would say, nine to 12-ish type area. Over time, obviously, if rates get down to five-and-a-half, that particular coupon becomes refinanceable. And I think you could see those speeds probably get to 20. We do have, obviously, some prepaid protection on a majority of the collateral that we have there. So that will offset that. And so I think TBA will be a lot worse. Deliverable will probably be closer in the 30s, maybe 35, 40 type of CPR. But overall, I think our portfolio, you know, right now, as you mentioned, is, you know, eight and a half. could you see that portfolio depending on how low mortgage rates I would say probably knock on wood maxes itself probably around 15 the good part about that portfolio that we're also not really hasn't been noted is the majority of that was purchased at a discount so you know the increasing towards par would be beneficial to our overall portfolio okay

Timothy D'Agostino, Analyst — B. Riley Securities

great thank you so much for taking the questions today thank you our next

Operator

question. It comes from the line of Mikael Goberman of Citizens JMP. Please go ahead, Mikael.