Orchid Island Capital Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
October 24, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Orchid reported a strong Q3: $0.53 net income per share (vs. a $0.29 loss in Q2), book value rose to $7.33, 3Q total return was 6.7%, and the company maintained the $0.36 quarterly dividend.
  • Positive Sentiment: The company raised $152 million of equity in the quarter and deployed it into roughly $1.5 billion of specified pools purchased at historically wide levels, which management expects to drive increased future earnings power.
  • Positive Sentiment: Portfolio is 100% Agency RMBS with a bias to higher‑coupon, call‑protected specified pools (5.5–6.5s); weighted average coupon and effective yield rose and net interest spread expanded, improving carry and prepayment resilience.
  • Negative Sentiment: Funding markets showed growing friction — SOFR has traded outside the fed funds corridor, repo costs drifted from ~SOFR+16bps to ~+18bps, and potential changes around QT/reinvestment could create funding volatility or higher costs.
  • Positive Sentiment: Hedges and prepayment profile support downside protection: total hedge notional was $5.6 billion (≈73% DV01 in swaps, including $3.9 billion of swaps), duration gap near zero, low modeled rate sensitivity, and specified pools materially outperformed TBAs on CPRs.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Orchid Island Capital Q3 2025
00:00 / 00:00

There are 8 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Orchid Island Capital Third Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

Operator

I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Melissa Alfonso. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Good morning, and welcome to the Third Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Conference Call for Orchid Island Capital. This call is being recorded today, 10/24/2025. At this time, the company would like to remind the listeners that statements made during today's conference call relating to matters that are not historical facts are forward looking statements subject to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Listeners are cautioned that such forward looking statements are based on information currently available on the management's good faith, belief with respect to future events and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual performance or results to differ materially from those expressed in such forward looking statements. Important factors that could cause such differences are described in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the company's most recent annual report on Form 10 ks.

Speaker 1

The company assumes no obligation to update such forward looking statements to reflect actual results, changes in assumptions or changes in other factors affecting forward looking statements. Now I would like to turn the conference over to the company's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Robert Colley. Please go ahead, sir.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Melissa. Good morning. Hope everybody is doing well, and I hope everybody has had a chance to download our deck. As usual, that's what we will be focusing on this morning. And also as usual, I'll throw

Speaker 3

on Page three just to give you an

Speaker 2

outline of what we'll do. The first thing we'll do is have our Controller, Jerry Cintas, go over our summary financial results. I'll then walk through the market developments and try to discuss what happened in the quarter and how that affected us as a levered mortgage investor. Then Hunter I will turn it over to Hunter. He'll go through the portfolio characteristics and our hedge positions and trading activity, and then we'll kind of go over our outlook going forward.

Speaker 2

And then we'll turn it over to the operator and you for questions. So with that, turn to Slide five, Gerry.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Bob. So on Slide five, we'll go over the financial highlights real quickly. For Q3, we reported net income of $0.53 a share compared to $0.29 loss in Q2. Book value at ninethirty was $7.33 compared to $7.21 at June 30. Q3 total return was 6.7% compared to negative 4.7 in Q2 and we had a $0.36 dividend for both quarters.

Speaker 4

On Page six, our average portfolio balance was $7,700,000,000 in Q3 compared to $6,900,000,000 in Q2. Our leverage ratio at ninethirty was 7.4% compared to 7.3% at sixthirty. Prepayment speeds were 10.1% for both Q3 and Q2. And our liquidity was 57.1% at ninethirty, up from 54% at June 30. With that, I'll turn it back over to Bob.

Speaker 4

Thanks, Jared. I'll start

Speaker 2

on Slide nine with market developments. What you see here on the top left and right are basically the cash treasury curve on the left and the silver swap curve on the right. There are three lines in each. That line just represents the curve at June 30. The green line is as of ninethirty and then the blue line is as of last Friday.

Speaker 2

And on the bottom, we just have the three month treasury bill versus the ten year note. So what I want to point out, basically, curve is just slightly steeper for the quarter, just reflecting the fact that with the deterioration labor market, the market's pricing in Fed cuts and so the front end of the curve hasn't moved. If you look at basically the movements on these two lines, I think it's the same for both, from the red to the green line, that just reflects the deterioration of the labor market. Ironically, when the quarter started, the first event of the quarter was really on the July 4 when President Trump signed a new law, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. And initially, the market sold off ten years point slipped, sold off by about 25 basis points.

Speaker 2

And at the July, at the Federal Open Market Committee meeting, the Chairman was actually fairly hawkish. That was on July 30. But then quickly on the August 1, the non farm payroll number came out and

Speaker 3

it was weak,

Speaker 2

but also it was very meaningful downward revisions. And that kind of started a string of events, which started to paint a very clear picture of a deteriorating labor market, the QCEM, which are the revisions to prior payroll numbers through the 2025 were much more negative than expected. And then in fact, ADP, the last two months were negative. So that changed the picture. That changed the way the Fed looked at the world.

Speaker 2

And then the market started to price in Fed easing, that's what you've seen here. What you've seen between the green and the blue line, so to speak, is what's happened since the end of the quarter. Basically, the government shutdown, absent today's data, we basically have had very little data to go on. And basically, you see really what would be described as just a graph for yield. There are a few securities that offer a yield north of 4% and the long end of the treasury curve has seen pretty good performance quarter to date.

Speaker 2

The bid continues. In fact, that's even present in the investment grade corporate market where in spite of the fact that credit spreads are very tight, you're still seeing strong demand. And it's probably just because there's a lack of alternative investments that you can buy with that kind of a yield. But I guess if I had to summarize it, from our perspective, it was actually a net, a very quiet quarter. Rates were essentially unchanged and importantly, vol was down and I'll get to that more in a minute.

Speaker 2

And then of course, the Fed's in place. So a steepening curve, low interest rate volatility, always good for mortgage investors. Turning to Slide 10. On the top, you see the current coupon mortgage spread to the ten year. And then on the bottom, we have two charts that just kind of give you some indication of mortgage performance.

Speaker 2

The ten year treasury is the typical benchmark people look at when they think of the current fund mortgage or kind of appraise mortgage attractiveness. And this makes it look like the Lester is off the road to a large extent because, for instance, if you look at where we were in May 2023, that spread was 200 basis points and it's halved since then, it's 100. But I think you have to keep in mind that the ten year treasury is a great benchmark over very long periods of time. But the current coupon mortgage does not have a duration anywhere close to the ten year. In fact, it's about half.

Speaker 2

Most street shops use a hedge ratio for the Kona coupon, somewhere around an area of five year or five or half of the ten year. So a more appropriate benchmark might actually be a five year treasury and of course swaps. We have some charts in the appendix. For instance, if you look on Page 27 and you look at the spread of the current coupon mortgage to the seven year swap in particular, and I'm just going to go there now if you don't mind. So on Slide 27, I just want to give you a more accurate picture of what we're looking at.

Speaker 2

The blue line there just represents the spread of the seven year swap. That's kind of the center point for our hedges. And this is a three year look at. And I just want to point out that if you look at this chart, you see that we're currently at the low end of the range, but we're still in the range, whereas with respect to the ten year, we've broken through that. And I think that just reflects the fact that the curve is modestly steep, and you're basically benchmarking a five year asset against a ten year benchmark.

Speaker 2

And so it looks like it's tightening when in fact it really, really isn't. And the other thing I would point out to, and we've talked about this in the past as well, if you look at Slide 28, I think this is important because what this shows are the dollar amount of holdings of mortgages. The red line represents the Federal Reserve and of course they're going through QT. So that number just continues to decline. But the blue line is holdings by bank and they are the largest holder of mortgages that there are.

Speaker 2

You can see this line, while it's increasing, is very, very modest. In fact, what we hear most of their purchases are just in structured product floater and the like. And I think until they get meaningfully involved, mortgages are not going to screen tighter. And so there is still some attractiveness, if you will, in the mortgage market. And I suspect that that's going to stay, as I said, until the banks get involved.

Speaker 2

If you look at the bottom left, you kind of see the performance. And as you saw, we did tighten. And if you look at this chart on the left, this one I show every time, it's normalized prices for four select coupons. So all you do is you take the price at the beginning of the period, you set it to 100. And you can see most of the move upward was in early September.

Speaker 2

And the reason I point this out is if you think of it this way, with the banks absent, the marginal buyer mortgages are basically either money managers or REITs. And what we saw around that period were, in addition to the prolific ATM issuance by REITs, We also saw two preferred offerings by some of our peers and a secondary by another of ours. So those were kind of chunky issuances. And I think that's what drove that kind of spike tighter. If you were to look at the spread of our current coupon mortgage to the five year treasury, you see a spike down right around that day.

Speaker 2

It was over about a two week period. But same time, we've kind of plateaued. And so mortgages have still retained some attractive carry. Hunter is going to get into that in more detail. I don't want to ring on his grade, but I just want to point out that mortgages, while we had a good quarter, they're still reasonably attractive.

Speaker 2

On the right, you see the dollar roll market. Generally, dollar rolls are impacted by anticipated speeds with the rally in the market. That's become a big issue. And I would just point out one of these. If you look at that little orange line, again,

Speaker 3

this is

Speaker 2

like a one year look back. That orange line represents the Fannie six roll. And you can see towards the end, as we entered September with the rally, that rule's cut way off. And the market's pricing in extremely high speeds. And as a result, spec polls, are the beneficiary of their call protection and performed well in a rally, have done extremely well.

Speaker 2

The cash window list that would come out every month in October this month, they did very, very well, and we suspect they will probably continue to do so going forward. The next chart on Page 11, again, is very relevant for us, is the levered mortgage investors since we're short prepayment options. And you can see on the top, this is just normalized vol. This is a proxy for volatility in the interest rate market. Spike there, which was in early April, that was Liberation Day.

Speaker 2

And you can see since then, it's done nothing but come down and continue to come down. In fact, if you look at the bottom chart, this is the same thing, but with a much longer look back period. And you can see the spike there around March 2020, that was the onset of COVID. It's always a very volatile event. But the immediate after that, you had extremely strong QD on the part of the Fed buying treasuries and mortgages.

Speaker 2

So it's kind of like a rate suppression environment where they're buying up their bidding and driving rates down, which is a byproduct of that is that they drive volatility down. And as you can see on the right, we're getting near those levels. Now, I don't think that means that rates are going to zero, but what we are seeing is interest rate volking pushed down. I think part of what's behind us is the fact that we all know that next year the Fed Chairman is going to be replaced when his term ends in May. In all likelihood, that's going to be by someone who's pretty dovish.

Speaker 2

So the market expects kind of a very dovish outlook for Fed funds and rates in general. And of course, to the extent that that happens, and who's to say that it will, but it would also continue to be supportive for us as levered agency MBS market because mortgages you would think would continue to do well in that environment. Turning to Slide 12. This is a relatively important slide because this really is focused on the funding markets. And this is what's really become a hot topic, if you will.

Speaker 2

So what we see on the left are just swap spreads by tenor. And if you'll notice in the case of the purple one, which is the ten year and the green one, which is the seven year, they've all kind of turned up. In other words, they're less negative. So we would say they're widening even though it seems counterintuitive because the spread to the cash treasury is actually getting narrower, but it is what it is. What happened here was that the Chairman recently in a public, his comments, mentioned that the end of QT was in the next few months.

Speaker 2

Most market participants were expecting that in the first, if not the 2026, so that was news. And more importantly, what we've seen since, especially this month, is that SOFR has traded outside of the 25 basis point range for Fed funds, which is between 44.25%. In fact, it's been consistently well outside that range, which points to potential funding issues and the Fed will, in all likelihood, address that and quite possibly at their meeting next week. What that means, if they end QT, is that the runoff in their portfolio, which we saw in that chart in the appendix, is going to stop. It'll just plateau.

Speaker 2

What they'll likely do, and I don't know this, of course, with certainty, but I suspect is the case that treasury paydowns will be reinvested back into treasuries And mortgage pay downs, since they don't want to hold mortgages long term, will also be reinvested in the treasuries, probably more so in bills. And what that means then is going forward, given that the government is showing large deficits, is the Fed will become a buyer of treasuries. As a result, the cash treasuries will not continue to cheapen as they have and swap spreads, which have gotten really negative, have gone the other way. And that just reflects the anticipation by the market that the Fed is a buyer of treasuries is going to keep issuance in check and keep issuance from flooding the market and driving spreads wider and term premium higher. And that is significant for us because if you look at the right hand chart, this is our hedge positions, pie chart obviously by DV01, in other words, the sensitivity of our hedges to movements in rates.

Speaker 2

And as you can see, 73.1% of our hedges are in swaps by DV01. So obviously, this movement has been beneficial to us to the extent it continues. Of course, it will continue to be beneficial. In fact, I just looked at swap spreads before I came in on the call today. And if you look at pretty much every tenor outside of three years, every one of them on a one, three and six month look back is that they're wides, absolutely pegged 100% of the wides.

Speaker 2

So that's a significant movement. That being said, as we did mention, there has been some issues with the funding market with the sulfur being outside of the range and spreads funding spreads to sulfur have been a little bit elevated. We typically used to be in the mid teens. It's there to the high teens now. But the fact that the Fed is very much on top of this is good for us because it means they're going be attentive to it and keep us from repeating what we saw, for instance, in 2019.

Speaker 2

The next slide is 13, refinancing activity. And this kind of paints a very benign picture, frankly. I just want to talk about it. If you look at the top left, you can see the mortgage rates and the red line and the refi index. And while rates have come down some, the refi index has bumped up, it's not much.

Speaker 2

In fact, you look at the left axis, you can see we were at a 5,000 level in December 2020, and we're far below that. The second chart on the right just shows primary secondary spreads, they've just been very choppy. There's really not a story to be told from that. But what I wanna focus on is the bottom chart. And what this shows is the percentage of the mortgage universe that's in the money.

Speaker 2

That's the gray shaded area. And then you have the refinance. And as you can see on the right hand side of this chart that this is there's some gray area there, but it's very modest. So, again, it paints a very benign picture, but it's misleading. And the reason it is so is because this is the entire mortgage universe.

Speaker 2

Most of the mortgages in the business today or a large percentage of them were originated in the immediate years after COVID, so they have very low coupons, one and a half, two, two and a half, three, and they're out of the money. But if you were to do the same chart for just twenty four and twenty five originated mortgages, it would be an entirely different picture. It would be a much higher percentage of the mortgage universe in the money, probably be north of 50. And since we, as investors in this space and like our peers, we own a fair number of twenty four and twenty five provision in mortgages. In fact, we own, to some extent, somewhat of a barbell in the sense that most of our discounts are very old.

Speaker 2

And most of our newer mortgages, the higher coupons are lower wall. And so that really means security selection is important. And in a moment here, I will turn the call over to Hunter, he will talk about what we've done in that regard in great depth. But I just want to point out this picture that this chart is somewhat misleading. Before I turn it over to Hunter, as always, I'd like to just say a bit about Slide 14.

Speaker 2

Very simple picture. There are two lines on this chart. The blue line just represents GDP in dollars, and the red line is the money supply. And what it points out is the continuing fact that the government or fiscal policy, if you will, is still very sensitive. The government is running deficits between 1,500,000,000,000.0 and $2,000,000,000,000 That's in excess of 5% of GDP.

Speaker 2

And the takeaway is that in spite of what might be happening with respect to tariffs or the weakness in the labor market or geopolitical events, the government is supplying a lot of stimulus to the economy and you can't forget that looking forward. And that's probably why in spite of the tariffs, among other reasons obviously, but why the economy really has not weakened materially. And with that, I will turn it over to Hunter.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Paul. I'd like to talk

Speaker 2

to you a little bit about

Speaker 3

how our portfolio of assets evolved over the course of the quarter, our experience in the funding markets, our current risk profile, how our portfolio is impacted by uptick in prepayments and give a little bit of my outlook, I suppose, going forward. So coming out of a volatile second quarter, we took advantage of attractive entry point by raising $152,000,000 equity capital and deploying it fully during the quarter. The investing environment allowed us to buy agency MBS at historically widespread levels. During the second half of the quarter, equity raised slowed, but the assets we purchased in the third quarter were tightened sharply during that second half of the third quarter. As discussed on our last earnings call, our focus has been on thirty year 5.5, sixes and to a lesser extent 6.5 coupons.

Speaker 3

And those didn't tighten quite as much as the daily coupons, but we feel like they offer superior carrier potential going forward. The portfolio remains 100% Agency RMBS with a heavy tilt towards call protected specified pools. These pools help insulate the portfolio from adverse prepayment behavior and reinforce the stability of our income stream. Newly acquired pools this quarter all had some form of prepayment protection. 70% were backed by credit impaired borrowers like low FICO scores or loans with high GSE mission density scores.

Speaker 3

22% were from states experiencing home price depreciation or where refi activity is structurally hindered. Those pools were predominantly Florida and New York geographies. 8% were loan balance pools of some flavor. As a result of these investments, weighted average coupon increased from five forty five to five fifty three. The effective yield rose from five thirty eight to five fifty one, and our net interest spread expanded from 2.43 to 2.59.

Speaker 3

Across the border, the broader portfolio, pool characteristics remain very diverse and defensive towards prepays exposure. 20% of the portfolio now is backed by credit impaired borrowers, 23% Florida pools, 16% New York pools, 13% investor property pools, and 31% have some form of, loan and balance story, if you will. We had virtually no exposure to generic or worse to deliver mortgage securities, and we were net short TBAs at nine thirty. Overall, we improved the carry of our the carry and prepayment stability of our portfolio while maintaining conservative leverage posture and staying entirely within the agency MBS universe. Turning to Slide 17, you can see a sort of visual representation of what I just discussed.

Speaker 3

You can clearly see the shift in the graphs, the concentration building in the 5.56 coupon buckets across the three graphs. These production coupons remain the core of our portfolio and continue to offer the best carry profile in the current environment. Now I'd like to discuss a little bit about the funding markets. Repo lending market continues to function very well and Orchid maintains capacity well in excess of our needs. That said, we observed friction building in the funding markets, particularly during the weeks of heavy treasury bill issuance and settlement.

Speaker 3

These dynamics have led to spikes in overnight SOFR and the tri party GC rates relative to the interest paid by the Federal Reserve on reserve balances, particularly around settlement dates. This is largely attributable to declining reserve balances and continued heavy bill issuance. Orchid typically funds through the term markets, which has helped insulate us from some of the overnight volatility, but still term pricing has been impacted. We borrowed roughly SOFR plus 16 basis points for most of the year, but in recent weeks that spread has drifted up a couple of basis points, so for plus 18 more recently. Looking ahead, we expect the Fed to end QT potentially as early as next week's meeting and begin buying treasury bills through renewed temporary market operations.

Speaker 3

If and when this occurs, it should provide positive tailwind for our repo funding costs, especially if it's paired with further rate cuts by the FOMC. This would help with the continued expansion of our net interest margin. Just wanted to make a brief note about this chart on this page. It might seem a little bit counterintuitive. The blue line on the chart represents our economic cost of funds.

Speaker 3

This metric, as you can see, has kicked slightly higher in spite of the fact that rates are coming down. And this is really due to the fact that as we've grown, there's a diminishing impact of our legacy hedges on the broader portfolio. So recall that this metric, economic cost of funds, includes the cumulative mark to market effect of legacy hedges. So it's sort of akin to the rate paid on taxable interest expense with the deferred hedge deductions factored in. On the other hand, the red line, which has been moving lower, represents our actual repo borrowing costs with no hedging effects.

Speaker 3

As the Fed cuts raise any unhedged repo balances will benefit directly from this decline. As of June 30, twenty 7% of our repo borrowings were unhedged and that increased to 30% more recently, modestly enhancing the benefit to lower fund our potential benefit to lower funding rates. Turning to Slides nineteen and twenty, speaking of hedges. On September 30, Orchid's total hedge notional stood, as I said, dollars 5,600,000,000.0 covering about 70% of our repo funding liabilities. Interest rate swaps totaled $3,900,000,000 covering roughly half the repo balance with a weighted average pay fixed rate of 33.31% and an average maturity of five point four years.

Speaker 3

Swap exposure is split between intermediate and longer dated maturities, allowing us to maintain protection further out the curve while taking advantage of lower short term funding costs. Short futures positions totaled $1,400,000,000 comprised primarily of SOFR five year, seven year and ten year treasury futures as well I'm sorry, SOFR five year, ten year, seven year treasury futures as well as a very small position in ERS swap futures. On a mark to market basis, our blended swap and futures hedge rate was 3.63 at six thirty and three point five six at nine thirty. Think of this metric as the rate we would pay if all of our hedges had a market value of zero at each respective quarter end,

Speaker 4

a

Speaker 3

par rate, if you will. Our short TBH positions totaled $282,000,000, all of which were, I think, 75.5. A portion of this short is really part of

Speaker 2

a bigger trade where we're

Speaker 3

a long fifteen year five, some short thirty year five and a half. So a fifteen thirty swap structured to provide production against rising rates in a spread widening environment. The remainder of the short position was just executing in conjunction with some pool purchases late in the quarter following a period where spreads have tightened materially. So we didn't want to take the basis exposure quite yet. Orchid held no swaptions during the quarter, which was fortuitous because there's a sharp decline in volatility.

Speaker 3

At June 30, approximately, as I mentioned, approximately 27% of our repo borrowings were unhedged. That figure increased to 30% by September 30. This increase reflects the impact of the market rally and the corresponding shorter asset durations, which allowed Orca to carry a higher unhedged balance while maintaining minimal interest rate exposure. In other words, this shift does not indicate that the portfolio is less hedged. In fact, at June 30, our duration gap was negative zero point two six years and by September 30, it had grown to negative zero point zero seven years.

Speaker 3

So still highlights a very flat interest rate profile. Speaking of which, Slides twenty one and twenty two, get a real pitch sense of our interest rate sensitivity. Orchid's agency RMBS portfolio remains well balanced from a duration standpoint with overall rate exposure very tightly managed. Model rate shock showed that plus 50 basis point increase in rates estimate we estimate would result in a 1.7% decline in equity while a 50 basis point decrease would reduce equity by 1.2%. So again, it's very low interest rate sensitivity, at least on a model basis.

Speaker 3

The combination of higher coupon assets and intermediate to long term longer dated hedges reflect our continued positioning that guards against rising rates and a steepening curve. This positioning is grounded in our view that a weakening economy and lower rates across the curve, while potentially introducing short term volatility, should be positive for Agency MBS and the broader sector in general, as such environments are often accompanied by stress in equity and credit markets and investors often seek safety in fixed income and REIT stocks. Conversely, if the economy remains strong or inflation proves sticky, we would expect a corresponding rise in rates and basis widening in the belly of the coupon stack without performance shifting to shorter duration high coupon assets, which are currently lagging due to prepayment exposure. And that's perfect segue to Slide 23, where we talk about our prepayment experience. This has been something that we've largely glossed over for the past couple of years other than a brief period of time following a ten years brief run at three sixty last September.

Speaker 3

In the third quarter, speeds released in the third quarter, including the September speeds released in early October, Orbit experienced a very favorable prepayment outcome across the portfolio. Lower coupons continue to perform exceptionally well. 3s, 3.5s and 4s paid at 7.2, eight point three and eight point one CPR compared to TBA deliverables significantly slower at 4.5, two point nine and zero point seven. 4.5s and 5s paid eleven and seven point five CPR for the quarter versus two point three and one point nine on comparable deliverables. Among our low premium assets, which are 5.5s largely throughout most of the quarter, these were largely in line with the deliverables, 6.2% was our experience, 6.2 CPR versus 5.9%.

Speaker 3

However, in the most recent month, generic 5.5% jumped up to 9% CPR, while our portfolio held steady at 6.3%, really underscoring the benefit of pool selection and the relatively low wall of the portfolio. In premium space, 6s and 6.5s paid 9.512.2% CPR for the quarter compared to 13.829.5% on TBA deliverables. As refi activity spiked in September, the various forms of call protection embedded in our portfolio produced very sharp divide though. In the most recent month, six has paid R6 has paid 9.7% versus 27.8% for the generics. And our 6.5% has paid 13.9% versus a 42.8% CPR on the generics.

Speaker 3

So you can really see the benefit and potential carry above and beyond TBA for those coupons. Overall, quarter's results highlight our disciplined pool selection where call protection what we call protected specified collateral continues to deliver materially better prepaid behavior than the TBA deliverable, as I mentioned. Just a few concluding remarks from me. In summary, we experienced sharp rebound in the third quarter, more than offsetting the mark to market damage done during the volatile Liberation Day widening in the second quarter. Orchid successfully raised $152,000,000 during the quarter and deployed the proceeds into approximately $1,500,000,000 of high quality specified pools.

Speaker 3

The pools were acquired at historically widespread levels and will serve a meaningful driver of increased earning power for the portfolio in the coming quarters. While our skew towards high coupon specified pools and bear steepening bias resulted in slight underperformance relative to our peers with more exposure to belly coupons, we remain highly constructive on our current asset and hedge blend. We believe our positioning will continue to deliver great carry and be more resilient in a sell off, particularly given our call protection and limited convexity exposure. Looking ahead, we're very positive on the investment strategy. So I have mentioned several factors that could provide significant tailwinds to the Agency RMBS market and our portfolio for the quarters ahead are continued Fed rate cuts, the anticipated end of QT, a renewed treasury open market operations to help stabilize the repo and bill markets, potential expansion of GSE retained portfolios, White House and Treasury Department that are openly supportive of tighter mortgage spreads.

Speaker 3

We also continue to see strong participation from money managers and the REITs as Bob alluded to. There's potential for banks to reenter the markets more meaningfully as funding and regulatory capital conditions improve. Taken together, we believe the current opportunity in Agency RMBS is still among the most attractive in recent memory and we're well positioned to capitalize on that. With that, I'll turn it over to Bob.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Hunter. Great job. Just a couple of concluding remarks and then we'll turn it over to questions. Basically just to reiterate kind of our outlook. I think that it's kind of hard to say where we go from here in terms of the market and the economy.

Speaker 2

I think that we're possibly at a crossroads. On the one hand, we've seen a lot of labor market weakness and it's gotten the Fed's attention and they appear ready to cut rates, which could lead to a prolonged low rate environment. We also see a lot of resiliency in the economy, very strong growth. Consumer seems to be in decent shape. And as I mentioned, the government's running large deficits, plus you have the benefits of AI and the CapEx build out, all that tied into the one big beautiful bill and the very favorable tax components of that.

Speaker 2

So I think the market could in the account could go either way. But the important thing is, as Hunter alluded to, is that the way the portfolio is constructed with the high coupon bias with hedges that are a little further out the curve and the call protected nature of the securities we own, I think that we can do well in either. So for instance, if we do stay in a low rate environment and speed stay high, we have very adequate call protection. And to the extent that the opposite occurs and the economy restrengthens and we start going into a higher rate environment, we have most of our hedges further out the curve and we have higher coupon securities that would do well in the sense they would have enhanced carry in that environment. So I guess one final comment is that we do expect now, especially after the data today, that the Fed will likely cut a few times.

Speaker 2

And over the course of the next few months, we're probably going to potentially adjust our hedges to try to lock in some of that lower funding and maybe add a little upgrade protection because we think if the fact the Fed does ease a few times that in all likelihood, the move after that's a hike. So with all that said, we will now turn the call over to questions.

Operator

Thank you. Our first question is going to come from the line of Jason Weaver with Jones Trading. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Hi, guys. Good morning. Congrats on the results in this quarter and the growth. I guess, first, given the relatively consistent leverage and even greater liquidity now as well as sort of

Speaker 3

the positive results that you mentioned in

Speaker 5

the prepared remarks, especially lower vol. Is there anything particular on the horizon macro wise that you'd be looking for to change overall risk positioning, maybe like notably, like maybe leaning more into leverage?

Speaker 2

Well, as I kind of said at the end, we could with leverage. I mean, like I said, there's two paths I see the market following. One is where we've kind of stayed where we are. The Fed continues to cut, rates stayed low. In that environment, we're going to benefit obviously from the first few rate cuts because the percentage of our funding that is hedged is on the low side.

Speaker 2

I think in the event that we do see that, as I mentioned, I think we'll probably look to lock that in. And if we do so, we probably would be comfortable taking the leverage up some. To the extent the market and the economies rebound and we see a strengthening, which I think is very possible, Frankly, I would say I would take the under on the number of rate cuts between now and the end of next year. Then I would say we would not be taking leverage up. We would be looking to kind of protect ourselves, one, in funding and then look to protect ourselves on the asset side from extension and rate sell off impact on mortgage prices.

Speaker 5

Got it. Thanks. That's helpful. And then second, referencing the remarks on the high coupon spec pools you purchased just as of late, do you have any view on pay ups upside potential here, especially if we see more refi momentum growing?

Speaker 3

We've really seen pay ups ratchet higher the beginning part of this quarter. This this most recent cycle, the GSEs, you know, we saw pay ups increase sharply. A lot of that's attributable to the fact that there were people who were long TBAs as kind of strategy when the role markets were more healthy. And that carry from those roles has just completely evaporated. And so you've seen people who might have had heavier concentrations in TBAs really be forced to dive in and just, you know, start buying everything they could find to to to supplement that income.

Speaker 3

We fortunately didn't have that problem, and most of the spec schools we bought was really kind of the first half of the quarter. So,

Speaker 2

yeah, that's just to reiterate that point. I mentioned we had the spike tighter in mortgages like in early September. I forgive you if you mentioned this, I'd miss it. But of the capital we raised in the quarter, 70% of that was deployed before then. So we benefited from that.

Speaker 2

And then also, just we talked about this at the end of the second quarter. At that time, the weighted average price of the portfolio was basically par. It was like 99.98%. And most of what we added all of what we added were to higher coupons. But that being said, the average price of this portfolio now is a little over 101%, 101.7%.

Speaker 2

And our average pay up is 33 ticks. So while we've been adding call protection, we're not paying up for the highest quality. Frankly, we don't think that it's been warranted. I'll get too into the weeds of what we've done, but we've gotten, as you saw in our realized prepayment speeds, very good performance out of those securities without having to pay extremely exorbitant pay ups. I don't know that we're ever going to get back

Speaker 3

to where we were off in 2020 or 2021

Speaker 2

just by comparison. Back then, our higher coupon, New York, whatever, you know, coupon they were, the pay ups were multiple, four and five points. I don't know that we're gonna see that anytime soon, but, it's you know, we've done quite well without having to go anywhere near those kind of levels.

Speaker 5

Thanks for that. I appreciate the time guys.

Speaker 2

Thank

Operator

you. And one moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of Eric Hagen with BTIG. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Hey, thanks. Good morning, guys.

Speaker 2

Hey, Eric.

Speaker 6

Hey, good morning. I think you guys have kind of talked a little bit around it, but are there scenarios where dollar roll specialists would return to the market in a more meaningful way? How do you feel like specialists would affect like trading volume and kind of market dynamics overall going forward?

Speaker 4

Excuse me.

Speaker 2

Sorry about that. I don't know that I mean, we saw that in really in spades back in the early days of QE when the Fed was buying everything. I don't think we're gonna see QE. In fact, it's been made pretty clear by the Fed that when they reinvest pay downs with respect to mortgages, they're only gonna be buying treasuries and probably bills. So I don't know.

Speaker 3

I don't really see the specialists of the

Speaker 2

rural market coming back in a big way. You know, we've historically not been big players in that regard, as you probably know. I don't see it as a core one, I don't think it's likely to happen. And two, I don't it's never been a core element of our strategy.

Speaker 3

No. It's I if I think as

Speaker 2

long as they're, you know

Speaker 3

especially in the upper coupons, that's really being driven by fear of of of prepayments and and their speeds that are being delivered into these that are the worst to deliver rules that are being delivered in the PPAs are are pretty bad here. So and then I don't expect them to continue to be so for the next couple of months. So I think it's gonna stay depressed at least in that space until we pop out of this. You'll be the pop out of this rate environment that we're in now, so turn back towards the top top or middle of the recent rate range or, you know, until rates are meaningful meaningfully lower. But I think we're kind of at a spot here where it's we're not going to see too much in the role space.

Speaker 6

Okay. Yes, that's interesting. Can you talk through some of the what the supply and availability for longer dated repo looks like right now? I mean, you see that as like an effective hedge for the Fed not cutting as much as what's currently anticipated?

Speaker 2

We like to be doing so. We've looked into it a lot. Unfortunately, the spreads are just too wide. We've done some and we will continue to do so. But as Hunter mentioned, we were historically in the mid teens, we're approaching the higher teens.

Speaker 2

But you're getting above that when you start going out in terms. So we have done some just to try to lock in as much as we can. And we do it opportunistically. So for instance, if we were to see, let's say, the government reopens and you get some heinous non farm payroll number and the market prices in seven or eight cuts, that's when we try to do those things opportunistically.

Speaker 3

Eric, it's been more effective to do in future space for us, and we do so from time to time. I think I alluded to fact that we have a pretty good chunk of the portfolio that is unhedged right now. So we can certainly have room to move in and do some shorter dated shorts and futures, you know, in the first year or two of the first couple of years of the curve or some kind of a swap or something like that with a relatively low duration. But we joke around that the repo lenders are always very quick to price in hikes and very reluctant to price in cuts. So that's been kind of the experience that's kept us from and just think about it, the dynamics of what usually happens when Fed gets involved and has to cut five or six times, which usually coincides with a credit market rolling over or a weakening economy and those are not particularly comfortable environments for repo lenders.

Speaker 6

Got you guys. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2

Thank

Operator

you. And one moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of Mikhail Goberman with Citizens JMP. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Hey, good morning guys. Hope everybody is doing well.

Speaker 2

Hey, Mikhail.

Speaker 7

Hey. You guys talk about call protection. About what percentage would you say your portfolio is covered with call protection in if rates were to go down, say, 50 basis points in a sharp manner?

Speaker 3

Almost a 100% of the portfolio has some form of call protection. We have little pockets of low what we call our kind of lower pay up stories, like LTV, that sort of thing. We're still constructive on those in spite of the fact that they're relatively low pay low low in terms of pay up. But, you know, we have a housing market that's under pressure and, you know, borrowers going out. It's difficult for borrowers with high LTVs to turn around a refi at every opportunity.

Speaker 3

They will ultimately be able to do so, but it's not very cost effective for them. So a little, you know, it's not the lowest hanging fruit, guess, the more generic stuff is. So, yeah, almost all of it is. We have some stuff that we keep around just in case we have a dramatic spread wiping, some really low pay ups pools that we use if we ever have to get a situation where we need to quickly reduce leverage by just delivering something in the TBA. The rest of the portfolio has got some form.

Speaker 3

And most of it's been working out really well for us. And as far as

Speaker 2

the rally, as I mentioned, our weighted average price at the end of the quarter was a little over 101. I think the average coupon is still high five. So we're it's premium. It's in the money, but it's not it's not so extreme. So another 50 basis point rally gets you, you know, obviously, like a north of the six, which is like a $1.00 2 or three price.

Speaker 2

They're gonna be faster, but with the call protection we have, I don't think the premium amortization is gonna be so detrimental. In fact, I think our premium amortization for this quarter was very, very modest. So it was an uptick obviously from there, but it's it's nothing like, for instance, what we saw in the immediate aftermath of COVID when, you know, those numbers were very, very large.

Speaker 3

Yep. As as we bounced around kind of this rate range, where we have, you know, bought the more expensive, I guess, or the the higher quality stories has been kind of in that first discount space. And the rationale there is just they're relatively cheap at that point in time. So, like, when rates were a little bit higher, fives were 98, 99 handle. We bought a lot of New York fives the very beginning of the quarter where rates were a little bit higher.

Speaker 3

And so those will do very well as if we continue to rally.

Speaker 7

That's helpful. Thank you very much. And if I can ask one about the flesh out your comments a bit about the hedge portfolio. If swap spreads were to widen back out, how much benefit do you guys see to the portfolio?

Speaker 2

You said why not? Like, they've been widening. Right? I know it's unusual. And if they continue.

Speaker 7

Well They continue to widen. Yeah.

Speaker 2

Yes. Continue to benefit from that. Yeah. I mean, it's I don't know if we have a a dollar amount on it, but it was you know, if you look at

Speaker 3

surround 2,000,000 d v o one, so if you can think of it in those terms. Yeah.

Speaker 2

So, like, first, it's like the long end is, like, at negative 50. So let's say you went up 40, obviously, know, something like that. Or I don't know how much further you can go, though, because you could argue that the market's really priced in the end of QT and the Fed stepping in to reinvest pay downs in the treasuries. I think in order for that to happen, you'd almost have to see QE, meaningful QE, not just not just the investment pay downs. But I would know what Hunter said.

Speaker 2

So $2,000,000 BBL wants, if you get, another 10 bps, you know, what is that? And it's, you know, something like $0.15 or something like that or $0.12 a book.

Speaker 7

Fair enough. And if I could just squeeze in any update on current book value month to date?

Speaker 2

It is up a hair, basically. We don't audit that number every day because we get $1 an amount every day. It's up very, very modestly from quarter end.

Speaker 7

Got you. Thanks so much, guys, as always. Take care.

Speaker 3

Yes. Thank you.

Operator

You. And I would now like to hand the conference back over to Robert Cauley for any further remarks.

Speaker 2

Thank you, operator. Thank you everybody for taking the time. As always, to the extent anybody has any questions that come up after the call or you don't get a chance to listen to the call live and you wish to reach out to us, we are always available. The number here is (772) 231-1400. Otherwise, we look forward to speaking to you at the end of the fourth quarter, and have a great weekend.

Speaker 2

Thank you. Bye.

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.

Powered by Quartr