PennyMac Mortgage Investment Trust (PMT) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Good afternoon, and welcome to PennyMac Mortgage Investment Trust's third quarter 2026 earnings call. Additional earnings materials, including the presentation slides that will be referred to in the call, as well as an Excel file with supplemental information, are available on PennyMac Mortgage Investment Trust's website at pmt.pennymac.com. Before we begin, let me remind you that this call may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks identified on slide two of the earnings presentation that could cause the company's actual results to differ materially, as well as non-GAAP measures that have been reconciled to their GAAP equivalent in the earnings materials. Now, I'd like to introduce David Spector, PennyMac Mortgage Investment Trust's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, and thank you to everyone for participating in our third quarter 2026 earnings call. Before discussing our financial results, I want to take a few moments to address the important leadership transitions we announced earlier today. First, after a storied career in the mortgage banking industry spanning several decades, including more than 15 years of exceptional leadership at PennyMac, Doug Jones, our President and Chief Mortgage Banking Officer, has made the decision to retire on June 30th, 2027. Doug has been an integral partner to me and a cornerstone of PennyMac since its early days. Over the next several months, Doug's roles and responsibilities will transition smoothly to other senior leaders across our organization. Second, effective January 1st, 2027, Kevin Ryan, currently our Chief Strategy Officer, will assume the role of Chief Financial Officer. Dan Perotti, our current CFO, will remain in his current role through the end of this year and will continue supporting the company in an advisory role through the first quarter of 2027. Kevin will continue to lead our strategy and business development teams alongside his financial leadership responsibilities. I want to express my extraordinary gratitude to both Doug and Dan for their long service to PennyMac, their relentless dedication, and their enduring passion for our business. Both served in critical leadership positions, guiding PennyMac through dynamic market cycles, and helping transform our organization to the premier mortgage company it is today. Their countless contributions have shaped our foundation, and they will be greatly missed. Having said that, we have an exceptional leadership team and a deep bench of talent that is fully prepared to lead PMT into its next chapter. I have absolute confidence in this management team's ability to carry our strategy forward seamlessly while driving long-term value for our shareholders. Turning to our third quarter results on slide three, PMT reported a third quarter net loss attributable to common shareholders of $36 million or a loss of $0.41 per common share. These results were primarily impacted by market-driven value declines driven by mortgage spread widening and rate volatility. Excluding market-driven value changes, our investment strategies generated adjusted net income attributable to common shareholders of $30 million, or $0.35 per common share, representing an annualized adjusted return on equity of 9%. PMT paid a quarterly dividend of $0.40 per share, and book value per share at September 30th was $14.03, down 5% from the end of the prior quarter. Finally, PMT's Board of Trustees approved a $130 million increase to our share repurchase authorization, bringing our total available capacity to over $200 million currently. On slide four, we summarize our three key capital allocation priorities. In recent periods, we have sold or committed to sell approximately $35 billion in UPB of agency MSRs, including a meaningful amount of higher no-rate MSRs, and we will continue to evaluate additional sales opportunities to free up capital for redeployment into higher-yielding investments. Next, PMT's upcoming fourth-quarter common dividend is expected to be reduced in order to maximize the potential for book value accretion and support the ongoing rotation of capital into higher returning assets. And finally, PMT's common shares continue to trade at substantial discount to book value per share. In response, we are opportunistically looking to repurchase outstanding common shares where these repurchases meet our return hurdles, driving long-term value for our shareholders. Now turning to slide five, as I mentioned earlier, the third quarter was characterized by sharply higher interest rates and significant mortgage spread widening. Benchmark treasury yields increased 50 to 80 basis points across intermediate and long tenors. At the same time, benchmark MBS spreads to treasuries widened by more than 20 basis points, expanding aggressively in September to end the quarter at 116 basis points. This wider mortgage basis drove asset price declines and sector-wide headwinds related to hedging and pipeline management. Turning to slide six, we highlight why PMT is differentiated from peers and why our diversified model helped insulate us from these sector-wide headwinds. First, prepayment risk on our MSR asset remains very low, with the portfolio carrying a weighted average coupon of 3.9%. Meanwhile, agency, MBS, and credit-sensitive investments provide a natural hedge to our MSR portfolio, with residual exposure actively managed through interest rate derivatives. Second, as discussed last quarter, PMT's correspondent acquisitions are now limited to non-agency loans. And finally, PMT's synergistic relationship with its manager, PennyMac Financial Services, Inc., gives it unique access to PFSI's capacity to organically create investments in the residential mortgage market. Further, PFSI's best-in-class servicing platform ensures proactive delinquency management and loss mitigation, which is expected to enhance the long-term performance of our investments. To discuss our portfolio sensitivity, the execution of our MSR sales and private label securitizations, and our updated run rate return potential, I am pleased to introduce Marshall Sebring, PMT's Chief Investment Officer.

Thank you, David. On slide seven, you can see how PMT carries significantly less sensitivity to both interest rate and spread changes compared to other mortgage rates. And during the third quarter, our modeled book value sensitivity to an instantaneous 50 basis point parallel rate shot was just 0.7%, less than one-fourth of the 3.6% average across the peer group of four publicly traded morta treats. Similarly, under a 10 basis point spread widening shot, PMT's modeled book value loss was 1.3%, compared to 4.4% for the peer group. This lower sensitivity is a direct result of our portfolio diversification. Because fair value changes on our MSRs are naturally offset by our investments in agency MBS and credit assets, PMT's duration and spread exposures are partially mitigated before hedging activities. While mortgage spreads widen aggressively across the market, 85%, or $56 million of our $66 million in net market-driven value declines, was attributable to spread widening. At the same time, excluding market-driven value changes, our strategies generated stable cash flows, with our credit-sensitive and interest-rate-sensitive strategies producing $12 million and $37 million of pre-tax income, respectively. Looking ahead, our strategic roadmap is clear. We are actively rotating capital away from certain lower-yielding MSR assets and reinvesting into accretive, organically-created credit investments with expected ROEs in the low-to-mid-team. This deliberate rotation expands our run rate earnings power, reinforces our book value stability, and positions PMT to deliver attractive, sustainable total returns to shareholders. Moving now to slide eight, we continue to actively rotate equity away from lower-yielding MSR investments and redeploy that capital into higher-returning, organically-created credit investments from our private label securitization activity. During the third quarter, we sold $13 billion in UPB of agency MSRs and entered into an agreement to sell an additional $10 billion in UPB. After quarter end, we entered into an agreement to sell another $12 billion in UPB, bringing our total closed and committed MSR sales to approximately $35 billion. Importantly, these transactions were executed at prices at or near fair value, and we will continue to evaluate additional sales opportunities as they arise in order to optimize our return on capital and create a more balanced weighting between credit and interest rates and strategies. Thank you. Up 15% from 33 cents in the prior quarter. This translates to an expected average annualized return on common equity of 10.6%. This expansion in our forward-looking returns is driven by two key dynamics. First, higher interest rates as well as recent sales of MSRs have driven prepayment expectations lower, which substantially reduces our projections for amortization. As a result, Overall, our MSR asset is projected to deliver an annualized return on equity of 12.8% over the next four quarters. And as discussed previously, we are accelerating the deployment of capital release from MSR sales into organically created investments from our private label securitizations. These investments carry targeted ROEs in the low to mid-teens, which compares favorably to run rate returns on certain MSRs. Thank you, Marshall.

I am honored and excited to assume the CFO role at PMT, and I want to thank David and the board for their trust and confidence. I also want to express my sincere gratitude to Dan. Over his years of leadership, Dan has built an exceptional, world-class finance organization and established a remarkably resilient balance sheet. He and I will be working closely together over the coming months to ensure continuity and a seamless operational handoff. As CFO, my commitment is to ensure this unique platform translates into superior risk-adjusted returns and long-term total value for our shareholders. I look forward to engaging directly with our shareholders and the broader investment community in the months ahead. And with that, I will now turn the call over to Dan, who will review the drivers of PMT's third quarter financial performance.

Thank you, Kevin. On slide 11, net loss to common shareholders was $36 million, or 41 cents per diluted common share in the third quarter. Our credit-sensitive strategies contributed $42 million to pre-tax loss. Organically created CRT contributed $6 million of pre-tax income, primarily consisting of realized gains and carry. Investments in subordinate MBS from our private label securitizations generated losses of $48 million, as $6 million of income, Income excluding market-driven value changes was more than offset by a $54 million decline in market-driven value declines from the impact of increasing interest rates, which are managed as a part of our global hedge program. The interest rate-sensitive strategies contributed pre-tax income of $36 million for an annualized ROE of 12%. Income-excluding market-driven value changes for this segment was $37 million, up from $20 million in the prior quarter, as decreased prepayment speeds during the quarter drove slower runoff of our MSR asset. During the quarter, we purchased $548 million of agency floating rate MBS, and the fair value of our MBS portfolio increased to $4.3 billion at September 30th, up from $4.1 billion at June 30th. Regarding market-driven fair value changes, our hedging activities during the quarter effectively mitigated our interest rate risk exposure as the $226 million MSR fair value increase was offset by $240 million of net declines in fair value of MBS and interest rate hedges, including the related tax benefits. The aggregation and securitization segment reported a pre-tax income of $2 million, Down from $11 million in the prior quarter. Net gains on loans acquired for sale declined from the prior quarter, primarily due to the impact of spread widening on jumbo and non-QM loans during aggregation for securitization and lower volumes. In total, PMT reported $0.35 in adjusted earnings per share, or a 9% adjusted ROE, up from $0.25, or a 6% adjusted ROE in the prior quarter, primarily due to an increased contribution from the interest rate-sensitive strategies, partially offset by a lower contribution from the aggregation and securitization segment. Slide 13 highlights the continued success of our organic investment creation engine. During the quarter, we completed eight private label securitizations, totaling $2.9 billion in UPV. This activity resulted in the retention of $167 million of new senior and subordinate investments. We also generated $17 million of new MSR investments. Our momentum has continued after quarter end. We completed two additional securitizations and priced PMT's inaugural non-QM DSCR securitization for a total of $1.1 billion in UPV with $119 million of expected retained investments. We remain on pace to complete approximately 30 securitizations in 2026. In total, through 2026, we expect we will have added more than $600 million of retained investments, building a substantial foundation of investments with returns on equity in the low-to-mid teens to support future earnings. On slide 14, we have provided a snapshot of the high-quality investments we are creating through our private-label securitization program. At quarter-end, the fair value of retained investments from this program was over $1 billion. 58% of this portfolio is comprised of investments from non-owner-occupied loan securitizations. 20% is comprised of jumbo loan securitizations, with the remainder from owner-occupied loan securitizations. As you can see, these investments feature exceptional credit characteristics, including a weighted average FICO at origination of 775, a weighted average LTV at origination of 73%, and negligible delinquencies. Credit quality of these organically created assets underscores our ability to produce attractive, high-yielding investments in the current market. Turning to slide 16, we highlight the flexible and sophisticated financing structures PMT has in place to support its diversified portfolio of investments, with only $50 million in maturities of unsecured financing prior to 2029. And finally, on slide 17, our core debt-to-equity metric, The increase in our total debt-to-equity ratio reflects growth in non-recourse debt associated with these transactions, where all securitized loans are required to be consolidated on our balance sheet for accounting purposes. As a reminder, the source of repayment for this debt is limited to the cash flows from the associated loans in each private label securitization, mitigating any additional exposure to PMT. We expect the divergence between these two metrics to continue increasing as our securitization program continues to grow. On a more personal note, I want to take a moment to express my sincere gratitude to David, our Board of Directors, and my colleagues for their trust, partnership, and shared dedication throughout my time at PennyMac. I'm extraordinarily proud of what we've accomplished in my 18 years with the company, my six years in the CFO role, and in particular, I'm proud of the world-class finance organization and the resilient balance sheet we've built. Having worked alongside Kevin for the past year, I have the utmost confidence in his leadership and vision to steer our financial and strategic execution going forward as he assumes the CFO role. And finally, to our shareholders and the investment community, thank you for your thoughtful engagement, rigorous questions, and constructive partnership over the years. It has been a privilege working with you. And now we'll open it up for questions. Operator?

I would like to remind everyone, we will only take questions related to PennyMac Mortgage Investment Trust, or PMT. We also ask that you keep your questions limited to one preliminary question and one follow-up question. If you would like to ask a question, please raise your hand or press star 1. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question is from the line of Doug Harder from VTIG. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Thank you. I was hoping, you know, as you talk about, you know, kind of potentially reducing the dividend, you know, kind of what are the key factors you're going to be thinking about as you look to size capital return between dividend and share repurchase?

Well, look, I think that as we've talked about in our opening remarks, the dividend is likely going to be reduced in the fourth quarter, and really my focus is to maximize the potential for book value accretion with consideration given to the taxable income projections. So if you look at the run rate of $0.30, that kind of kicks out a dividend of about $0.30 a share and implies $0.08 per quarter of growth in book value per share. Now, as it pertains to stock buybacks, that we're going to look at vis-a-vis other alternative investments. And I think, you know, that's, we're going to look to deploy capital into, you know, other, you know, other residential mortgage assets, of which then we will look at that versus the stock buyback.

Got it. And how do you weigh in kind of determining stock buyback, wanting to kind of retain as much capital as possible at PMT to be able to help with the scale of growing and scaling the business and helping with efficiencies over time versus kind of the near-term financial benefit of accretion of buying back stock at these levels?

I think where we are today, I think that the scale issue, which is one that's always on my mind, I think that's a secondary issue to the fact that we believe that there's real value within the company that's not being recognized or reflected in the stock price. And we look at the return of buying back stock versus other alternative investments. It's a pretty compelling case to make in terms of buying back stock. And, you know, it was evidenced by the fact that we sold MSRs at the mark and the fact that, you know, we have a very mark-to-market asset composition. I feel very strongly in the value. And so I do think that, you know, at these levels, you know, I think, I think looking at this from a return standpoint, what this means to our shareholders is, is really our primary objective. Obviously, as, as things change, we don't want to, we don't want to buy back to the point that we lose the scale of the equity base so that, you know, we become too small to reap, but it's just too compelling right now to even factor into our thinking.

Great. Thank you.

Thanks, Doug. The next question is from Bose George with KBW. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Good afternoon again. So just to follow up on the dividend, so I guess you said the dividend's probably going to be around 30 cents, and so do we compare that your operating EPS is likely to continue in the high 30s, and so the dividend looks well covered by that? Is that Kind of a fair way to think about it.

Exactly. Exactly. We want, you know, dividend stability is very, very important to us. I think that, you know, we have historically tied it to gap earnings. And I think, as Dan pointed out, we're giving more consideration to taxable income projections. And so I do think that the 30 cent amount, and it has to be approved, you know, at the next board meeting, but I don't foresee it not. And I think that we believe that the $0.30 rate is one that's sustainable, that really factors into the future operating earnings of the REIT. And it's something that, at the same time, will allow us to grow book value per share for the remaining $0.08.

Okay, great. Thanks. And then, actually, as you guys sell the MSR, does that capital get redeployed quickly enough, or is there any drag on the EPS?

Hey, Bose, it's Marshall. No, we look to redeploy that capital quickly rather than allowed to sit on the balance sheet and uninvest it.

So, okay. Great.

Thank you. You know, in addition to, as David mentioned, you know, repurchasing stock.

Okay, great. Thanks.

The next question is from the line of Jason Weaver with Jones Trading. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. First of all, I want to dovetail off of Doug's second question there regarding the buyback. Look, I realize how attractive this is given the discounts in the marketplace right now. versus deploying into other investments. But help us understand how you think about sizing that relative to your overall leverage level, given the amount of capital that you could build up within the course of four quarters or so. Would that be a limitation for you to push leverage higher by virtue of just repurchasing stock?

Look, any activity we do as it pertains Asset investing or stock buyback, we're going to factor in the effect it's going to have on leverage. Okay, so it's not going to be repurchased at any leverage level. I think we are very mindful, we have a history of it, of really focusing on leverage, and in particular, the non-recourse debt to equity leverage. And I think it's just something that as we sell MSRs, we're obviously going to look to continue to invest, but there's a portion of those sales that's going to go into buying back stock. And that's how we've historically done it. It's not an all or none decisioning, and it's not one that we take lightly. But I do think that it's something that running an investment vehicle, if you just look at the return, when you look at the returns of the investments, you can't ignore return opportunity that our investors are looking at in the stock buyback.

Got it. Thank you for that. And then to follow up, the sales during the 13 billion in sales during the quarter, as well as the ones you've executed in October, can you talk about what sort of valuation levels you were able to move those at and how that compared with your carrying value?

Yeah, without getting into the actual levels at which they traded, I can tell you that, you know, we sold them at our carrying values. And so, and this was a mix of both high note rate and low note rate MSR holdings. So, hopefully that answers your question.

Yeah, yeah. Thank you very much. Take care, guys.

Thanks, Jason.

The next question is from the line of Crispin Love with Piper Sandler. Your line is open, and please go ahead.

Thank you. I appreciate taking the question. Adjusted EPS improved in the quarter, and your run rate potential on slide 9 did as well. I think you're looking at ROEs of nearly 11% now. Can you just discuss some of the puts and takes there, the major drivers for the improved outlook, even with a more challenging rate environment, rate backdrop? Is it really the diversification, the strategic shift here? But I'm just curious on some of the puts and takes. Thank you.

Yeah, it's a combination of the diversification and the rotation of the capital out of MSR into some of the higher returning investments, as Marshall talked about, as well as the higher interest rate environment for PMT is not actually necessarily a more challenging environment. Some of the challenges for PMT over the past few quarters have been the speeds on the MSR portfolio that obviously is mitigated with interest rates at higher levels. And so the combination of those two factors are really the primary drivers between driving the run rate higher through the next four quarters compared to the last four.

Great. Thank you. And then just one follow-up on securitization demand today. I think on slide 13, you're still saying expect approximately 30 securitizations in 2026. Just curious if you, just how demand is today, if you've seen any differences kind of recently, or just how's that trending?

Yeah, Ms. Marshall, I would say that demand continues to be strong. Certainly, if there was, I think, some amount of modest repricing wider within the non-agency space, I would say modest compared to the amount of spread lending that we saw in agency MBS, we were able to already price two deals so far this quarter. And, yeah, so I think that demand can do to remain strong. I think the frequency by which we are in the market and a consistent issuer also allows us to price favorably compared to competitors, and I think that helps us in terms of overall subscription as well.

Great.

Thank you. Appreciate you taking the questions. The next question is from the line of Trevor Cranston from Citizens JPM. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Trevor Cranston, your line is open. Please go ahead. You may be muted on your end, Trevor. There we go.

Okay. Sorry about that. Thanks. Can you guys talk about how you're thinking about the impact of higher rates on, you know, your pace of loan acquisition and securitization activity? I guess, in particular, I'm thinking about some of the more rate-sensitive products like the Prime Jumbo loans. Thanks.

Sure. I think, you know, based off of PMTs, not only taking in the correspondent non-agency origination, but also the ability and its practice of acquiring loans from PFSI, despite the fact that we've seen, you know, obviously a drop off in origination volumes, you know, Relative to the size of the monthly deals that we're doing, kind of bi-flateral type, you know, we still see sufficient origination to support those efforts.

Got it. Okay. Then on the all-QMSR market, I mean, you guys have obviously announced some transactions. You know, we've heard from some peers the intent to sell some MSRs in 4Q. Can you maybe provide some color on kind of how much supply you guys are seeing come to market on the bulk MSR side and if you think there's enough depth in the buyer base to kind of support continued opportunistic sales there in the near term? Thanks.

Yeah, I think the short answer is that we do think that there's enough depth to support, you know, at least what has kind of been indicated in terms of prospective sales. I think there was one servicer that was out talking about selling upwards of $80 billion. We understand that a large amount of that is already transacted. So our thinking is that certainly it depends on the type of MSR asset. PMT has a large amount of low note rate MSR. That part of the market is particularly well bid. So I think that overall, you know, we don't really see depth currently, especially given the higher for longer, I think, outlook for rates. We think that the depth of the market certainly is supportive of continued MSR sales.

That's helpful. Thank you.

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to David Spector for closing remarks.

Thank you, Operator. Thank you all for joining us at this late hour. We really appreciate it. If you have any additional questions, please reach out to our investor relations team. And again, have a good evening and thank you.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.