Earnings Labs

Dynex Capital, Inc. (DX)

Q1 2012 Earnings Call· Thu, May 3, 2012

$13.74

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Dynex Capital Incorporated First Quarter 2012 Earnings Conference call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Alison Griffin, Vice President Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Alison Griffin

Analyst

Thank you. Thanks everyone for joining Dynex Capital’s First Quarter 2012 Earnings Conference call. The press release associated with today’s call was issued yesterday and filed with the SEC today, May 3, 2012. Your may view the press release on the company’s website at www.dynexcapital.com under Investor Relations and on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. Before we begin, we would like to remind you that this conference call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The words believe, expect, forecast, anticipate, estimate, project, plan, and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements that are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties, some of which cannot be predicted or quantified. The company’s actual results and timing of certain events could differ considerably from those projected in or contemplated by the forward-looking statements as a result of unforeseen external factors or risks. For additional information on these factors or risks, we refer you to our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the period ended December 31, 2011, as filed with the SEC. The document may be found on our website at www.dynexcapital.com under Investor Relations and on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. This call is being broadcast live over the internet with a streaming slide presentation and can be found through a webcast link on the Investor Relations page of our website under IR Highlights. The slide presentation may also be referenced by clicking on the First Quarter 2012 Earnings Conference Call link on the IR Highlights page of our website. Now I would like to turn the call over to Chairman and CEO, Thomas Akin.

Thomas Akin

Analyst

Thanks, Alison. With me today is Byron Boston, President and Chief Investment Officer; and Steve Benedetti, our COO and CFO. It’s a busy day. There is a lot going on. I want to thank all of you for attending the conference call this morning. As you’re aware, we’ve released numbers last night. We released diluted earnings of $0.33 per share. Our book value increased from $9.20 to $9.62, and our net interest spread for the quarter was 241 basis points, which is basically similar to our overall net average spread of 245 for all of 2011. Our annualized return on equity for the quarter was 14.7%. We target right in that range, in that 15% range and that’s right within our tolerances. Overall leverage last quarter was about 5.4 which is a little low versus our target leverage of 6. As everyone is well aware in February of this year, we raised approximately $122.5 million in a secondary offering and all of that capital was not fully deployed for the entire quarter. As we stand right now, we are fully invested and we’re back up to our target leverage. Constant prepayment rate was about 15.4%, but Byron is going to go into more detail on that. The bottom line as we continue to execute on our core investment strategy and that is our short duration, high quality investments utilizing modest leverage. We believe that’s going to produce a stable return with lower volatility over the long term. Our current investment opportunity is diversified. There are significant opportunities remaining in the CMBS sector and we continue to focus on that and the Agency sector as well. We believe our track record has been consistent of delivering total rate of return at 12.2% since 2008. On the next slide, we’ve got our summary of results, which is what I’ve just gone over in general. Then I’d like to turn the conference call over to Byron Boston to discuss in detail the investment portfolio. Byron?

Byron Boston

Analyst

Good morning. Thank you for joining us. Let’s first go to Slide 6. And even though some of you may be familiar with Dynex, let me just simply summarize our overall investment approach. We have a diversified portfolio that includes fixed and floating rate assets, Agency and Non-Agency securities backed by residential and commercial loans. Our portfolio is constructed to perform well despite volatile markets given our high quality, short duration assets. Our diversified approach produced solids results in the first quarter, as our CMBS portfolio increased in value even as rates increased during the quarter. Our overall book value per common share increased by almost 5% and we generated a 14.7% return on adjusted equity for the quarter. We have confidence in our risk profile as we have steadily generated double-digit returns without extending far out of the risk spectrum. Selective opportunities continue to exist to reinvest capital, particularly in CMBS. And our RMBS/CMBS capital allocation model has allowed us to find pockets of value. Let’s move to Slide 7. As I go through the slide, I’ll ask myself several questions and I’ll attempt to answer them to give you a clear picture of our performance in the first quarter. As we look at the Dynex portfolio, what has changed since December 2011? Our Agency portfolio has increased, that’s been very typical assets in large capital raises here at Dynex Capital. It allows us to get our capital deployed faster and take a more selective approach towards the Non-Agency and Agency CMBS sector. There was a minor 1% change in our overall CMBS/RMBS mix. We continue to minimize extension risk. So if you look at our charts, and you look at the chart to the right, you will see that and if you add the number, 79% of our…

Thomas Akin

Analyst

Thanks, Byron. And then the final slide is basically the Dynex value proposition, Slide 16. And just the 4 points I’d like to make quickly and that is that we do have high insider ownership which we think aligns the interest of the shareholders with the management of Dynex. Our portfolio strategy has been consistent for the last 4 years. It will continue to be that consistent. As long as we can find securities that offer low volatility and high returns, we feel that it’s a value-added proposition for our shareholders. And finally, we’re committed to the diversified investment strategy. We feel like if we’re going to go into fight, I’d rather fight with 2 arms than just one, so we like the fact that we can use Agencies and Non-Agencies. And then finally, we think the last 3 years that we’ve delivered success has shown our commitment to our strategy and to our shareholders. And with that, I’d like to open up the call to questions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. [Operator Instructions] At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question is from Douglas Harter with Credit Suisse.

Douglas Harter

Analyst

Byron, I was hoping you could talk a little bit about the various IO investments that you guys made during the quarter?

Byron Boston

Analyst

Sure. One of the -- we have found a lot of value in the CMBS IO over the last, let’s call it, say year and half or so. At the beginning of the quarter, let’s call the last 6 months of last year was somewhat of a dream in the sense that spread widened considerably in CMBS and we were able to put a lot of money to work. As we entered January of 2012, spreads continued to remain wide and we continued to take advantage and emphasize this sector. For those of you who are not familiar with CMBS IO, I want to emphasize that CMBS IO is different than residential IO. These are credit IO securities. We are not exposed to voluntary prepayments that you see on the residential side of the business. We are exposed to involuntary prepayments, meaning that we are exposed to default risk. Why have these securities remained cheap? When the CMBS sector -- when a dealer brings a deal or Freddie Mac K deal which is where we’ve accumulated most of our IO exposed which are to the multifamily sector, most accounts that are demanding the most senior bond in those structures are demanding par bonds. And as a result, there is a cheap to deliver par bonds, dealers have to structure what I would reconsider to be and many in the industry a cheap IO, all right. We have taken advantage of this. We have been heavily involved for sometime on both the Agency and Non-Agency IO sector. So we’ve continued to -- it’s a very strong part of our business, Doug. Both, Ginnie Mae, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Non-Agency IO with the majority of that being backed by multifamily loans.

Douglas Harter

Analyst

So just to clarify, is this a new investments that you’ve made this quarter, did you sort of break out the IO separately this quarter?

Byron Boston

Analyst

No, we’ve continued throughout this quarter to invest in the CMBS IO sector.

Thomas Akin

Analyst

Doug, in prior quarters, it just would have been sort of buried into the CMBS line.

Douglas Harter

Analyst

Perfect.

Thomas Akin

Analyst

So it has just been broken out this quarter.

Byron Boston

Analyst

Yes, and so I’ll just add. It’s been, again, we started building to CMBS portfolio in December of 2009. And I would probably argue that we’re one of the longest, most consistent, purchasers of the CMBS IO over the last 2 years. And the reason I say that is just the amount of competition that we found in some of the new deals at certain times. Needless to say spreads have tightened since January and we do find ourselves competing with others for these assets, but they continue to offer attractive returns.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And our next question comes from David Walrod with Ladenburg.

David Walrod

Analyst · Ladenburg.

You mentioned that the allocation of the Agency space was a little higher this quarter relative to the fourth quarter, then you also talked about some of the difficulties you had placing in the Non-Agency space. Can we expect that to trend back to more historic levels of where was it in the fourth quarter as you are able to find those opportunities?

Byron Boston

Analyst · Ladenburg.

David, I’m going to recap again, since June 30 of last year. In June 30 of last year, Non-Agency CD spreads, CMBS spreads widened materially. So from June 30 to December 31, probably 99% of our -- 99.5% of the marginal dollar from Dynex went to the CMBS sector. Starting in January, there has been a large response rate throughout the world with all the risk assets. The CMBS sector however actually lagged a little slower than some of our asset classes in January. And we continued to invest in CMBS. What happens when we do a capital raise is, one, we try to pre-invest capital prior to a raise, but it is far more efficient to focus on putting agencies on your balance sheet and taking our time to subsequently bring the CMBS sector onto the balance sheet. It has worked excellent over the last 2 years. We continue to follow that path. If you look back, you will see that in December 2010 to March 2011, you will see that it’s all the time we actually put 100% of our new capital from the capital raise into Agencies. And then we get an opportunity later to diversify into the CMBS sector. In this situation, we still have opportunities throughout the quarter to add money to the CMBS sector. We continue to have that opportunity today. So we love the diversity it brings between the resi product and the CMBS product and we continue to emphasize that. But I wouldn’t describe it as having difficulty finding the assets. It’s just that there are more people today in April of 2012 than what we found competition in October of 2011. But we still find the opportunity to put money to work.

Thomas Akin

Analyst · Ladenburg.

And David, the other thing is remember that a lot of this asset we’re purchasing is very niche and you don’t see large amounts of it come out all at once. So it just takes time and the Agency securities or a placeholder until that paper is out.

David Walrod

Analyst · Ladenburg.

Understood. And then a housekeeping question probably for Steve. Your comp line has run historically for the last 2 years, and the first 3 quarters are kind of consistent and then the fourth quarter, it pops up kind of a catch up for the year. This quarter, the first quarter was pretty close to where the fourth quarter was. Should we assume that’s new run rate for comp going forward or is there something unique in this quarter?

Stephen Benedetti

Analyst · Ladenburg.

David, this quarter had your typical sort of first quarter Social Security, 401(k) kind of type contribution stuff that bumped up that line by about a $160,000 this quarter. So you won’t see that on a repetitive basis going forward.

David Walrod

Analyst · Ladenburg.

Okay.

Stephen Benedetti

Analyst · Ladenburg.

But otherwise our run rate would be -- which you should expect for our run rate.

Operator

Operator

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Thomas Akin for any closing remarks.

Thomas Akin

Analyst

Well, I want to thank everyone for joining the call. Obviously today I think everybody in the mortgage REIT space had earnings last night. And I appreciate the calls, and callers and questions that we got. We look forward to speaking with everyone next quarter. Thank you much.

Operator

Operator

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.