MBIA Inc. (MBI) Q4 2013 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Welcome to the MBIA Incorporated Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2013 Financial Results Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to turn the call over to Greg Diamond, Managing Director of Investor Relations at MBIA. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Laurie. Welcome to MBIA's conference call for our fourth quarter and full 2013 financial results. After the market closed yesterday, we posted several items on our website, including our financial results press release, our 2013 10-K and our latest quarterly operating supplement. We also posted the annual and audited statutory financial statements for MBIA Insurance Corporation and National Public Finance Guarantee Corporation as well as other items. The financial results press release includes the information for accessing the recorded replay of today's call, which would become available approximately one hour after the event. Please note that anything said on today's call is qualified by the information provided in the company's 10-K, 10-Q and other SEC filings, as our company's definitive disclosures are incorporated in those filings. Please read our 2013 10-K as it contains our most current disclosures about the company and its financial and operating results. The 10-K also contains information that may not be addressed on today's call. The definitions and reconciliations of the non-GAAP terms that are included in our remarks today may be found in the financial results press release that we issued yesterday afternoon. And now I'll read our Safe Harbor disclosure statement. Remarks on this conference call today may contain forward-looking statements. Important factors such as general market conditions and the competitive environment could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in our forward-looking statements. Risk factors are detailed in our 10-K, which is available on our website at mbia.com. The company cautions not to place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements. The company also undertakes no obligation to publicly correct or update any forward-looking statement if it later becomes aware that such statement is no longer accurate. For the next portion of today's call, Jay Brown and Chuck Chaplin will provide some brief comments. Then Bill Fallon and Anthony McKiernan, along with Jay and Chuck, will be available for the question-and-answer session. And now, here's Jay.

Thanks, Greg, and good morning, everyone. Before Chuck gets into a review of what's happened since our last call, I'll take a broader look at our progress over the course of the past year. A year ago, our shareholders faced much more significant risk than they do today. MBIA Corp. had a number of highly volatile exposures, which heightened the possibility that its regulators would take action against it. We were also dealing with litigation over our holding company debt amendments that modified certain cross default provisions. A substantial portion of MBIA Corp's claims-paying resources at that time were in the form of illiquid putback recoverables. Our primary source of earnings, cash flow and growth National Public Finance Guarantee was mired in litigation challenging the transformation that created it, and it had its own illiquid assets in the form of a substantial loan to MBIA Corp. The holding company had not received a meaningful dividend from its operating subsidiaries in over six years and there was uncertainty over whether it would be able to service its debt obligations as they came due. Let's fast forward to today, where I'm pleased to say that we've substantially mitigated all of these risks. In MBIA Corp, we have commuted virtually all of the potentially volatile CMBS exposures and the total cost was only modestly above our loss reserve estimates. We've also commuted the majority of the ABS CDOs on which we had reserves at year-end 2012 as well as miscellaneous other groups of exposures. After collecting $3.7 billion of putback recoverables from Bank of America, ResCap and Flagstar Bank during the year, only the amount related to Credit Suisse remains to be received. Based on our track record and the strength of our case, we continue to feel confident of our ultimate collection…

Thanks, Jay. I'll now go through our consolidated financial results and discuss the segments in some detail. And then I'll finish up with some comments on the consolidated and major legal entity balance sheets and liquidity positions. Net income in the fourth quarter of 2013 was $132 million compared to $636 million in the fourth quarter of the prior year. The largest driver of the reduction was higher insured losses on financial guarantee policies in MBIA Corp. In addition, while we had gains on insured credit derivatives in both periods, those gains were much lower in this year's fourth quarter. This year's gain on insured credit derivatives was primarily driven by tighter spreads on the underlying collateral in insured transactions. We also reported non-GAAP measure adjusted pre-tax income that treats all of our insurance policies using insurance type accounting. It avoids the mark-to-market treatment that GAAP requires on insurance credit derivatives and unwinds the consolidation of certain securitizations, which we consolidate as variable interest entities for GAAP. It provides the useful alternative view of our financial results. We had an adjusted pre-tax loss in the fourth quarter of 2013 of $84 million compared to adjusted pre-tax income of $110 million in the fourth quarter of the prior year. The principle drivers of the change were higher insured losses in MBIA Corp. and lower realized investment gains in National. I'll go through the segments now using our non-GAAP adjusted pre-tax income measures. The public finance segment reported pre-tax income of $89 million in the quarter compared to $202 million in the Q4 of the prior year. Net premiums earned declined to $86 million versus $122 million in the fourth quarter of 2012. There are two components to our earned premium, scheduled and refunded, and both declined in this period. Scheduled premium…

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Geoffrey Dunn of Dowling & Partners. Geoffrey Dunn - Dowling & Partners: Jay, can you talk a little bit about post getting the ratings upgraded of National, what do you think the prospects are for improving that company's ROE? I think Chuck mentioned that the expenses are coming down to a level you think are sustainable. Obviously, business might pick up a bit. But what do you need to do there? What are your options there to improve the ROE once you become an active writer again?

With regard to the prospects at National, there're really two parts to it. There is the existing portfolio, which you're well aware of, but I think more importantly is the business opportunity when we get the rating. And as we look at the market, we're starting to see a little bit of a pickup. As we've said before, if interest rates go up, which many people think they will over the course of the next year or two, we think that improves the opportunity. But we're seeing good opportunities to write business in double-digit return in the public finance sector and we will only focus on opportunities that provide attractive returns. So we're quite optimistic about the prospects in that business. Geoffrey Dunn - Dowling & Partners: And in terms of capital management, obviously you got a dividend out of National. I think the sense is you need to maintain AAA cap to will offset the largest of [obligatory] [ph] test. Is there an ongoing capital management opportunity here as you kind of right size the book as run-off occurs?

Yeah. I think if we look at the opportunities at the marketplace that are out there, we think even using what we would call a semi-optimistic view of the world over the next three or four years that the size of National's current portfolio will continue to shrink over that time period. So its capital needs going forward will probably drop for another three or four years. And that's assuming running at a pretty good rate of new businesses, et cetera, that should allow us to continue to both dividend cash out of National and that's currently in our plan, we would expect substantial dividends over the next three years, and also continue because of our positioning of the portfolio, which is essentially 90%-plus and taxable at this point, will continue to generate tax payment that will go up to the holding company held in escrow and eventually be freed up for uses. So I think if you take a look at those two topics, the capital management solely that comes from National, as Chuck described I think two quarters ago, over a three year or maybe four-year runway, we will essentially without raising any capital get down to the leverage that we would like at the holding company for the long term. And that's pretty much how I would see at this time. If there is anything else we could add to that let me know. Geoffrey Dunn - Dowling & Partners: I think, Chuck, you mentioned that you think there's opportunities also in structured finance, what are the top areas that you think are opportunities within the next one to three years? And I assume, correct me if I'm wrong, that'll be something you'd only address through Corp.?

You're correct it would not be addressed through National. Whether it's through Corp. or a new vehicle would have to do with what kind of ratings Corp. eventually rises to. As you noted, recently in the past few weeks, Moody's has put out an indication that they're looking at Corp. for a possible upgrade. In terms of looking at the structured finance area, this is the big if. If you eliminate real estate, meaning the mortgages and the related CDOs, real estate related assets, the other 100-plus assets classes that we've done in structured over the last 25 years that performed incredibly well and made extremely good returns. We would say that it’s worth looking for, the area we're looking at most closely now over probably the next 12 or 18 months and again, this is not something we will turn our eyes to until National is up and running, is obviously the 1 trillion plus mortgage market . We think if that market restructures with the combination of what's going on with the banks and what they're going to be able to keep on balance sheet with what we perceive the government will eventually have to do with Fannie and Freddie, we think there is going to be a [roll] [ph] out there for three or four monoline guarantors. We believe we have a fair amount of expertise in that area, some of which we've learned through the losses we've had, some which we've earned from things we've done right. And so we feel very good that that's going to be a huge area of possible potential future earnings. And it's certainly something that I am anxious for the rating agencies to make up their minds on National and for building the team to get going on that side, because we have several different avenues that we believe we can start to reenter that market that could be profitable in a very short timeframe.

I'd just like to add one comment to that with respect to MBIA Insurance Corp. as a vehicle. One of the things that we would need to consider in this regard would be the current status that Corp. has with respect to earned surplus. It has an earned surplus deficit of about $1.6 billion at this point. And before Corp. could be in a position to make distribution to the holding company, it would need to in effect earn that out, bring that to zero and to positive in order to pay dividends. And so it's just from a timing perspective to the extent that there were business opportunities that we want to pursue in structured, it might make sense to pursue them in a vehicle other than Corp.

I mean it's pretty clear. I think what Chuck is saying is the expertise, the experience base and the data all resides in Corp., but because of structural issues, if we want to reenter that marketplace, and it might be a $500 million to $750 million capital kind of issue in terms of getting enough of a size company to get started, it probably would make more sense to start that in a new vehicle than put it into an existing vehicle.

Your next question comes from the line of Arun Kumar of JPMorgan.

This is Brett Gibson in for Arun. You covered the remaining potentially volatile CMBS in your prepared remarks, but I was hoping you could go into a little more detail. And I was specifically interested in hearing about the CMBS pools 26 and 46 that you lay out in below-investment grade exposures. And one thing I wasn't clear on that I hoped you could square was that in the table you showed that CMBS pool 26 has an internal rating of D, which I believe means that you expect to be at losses. But, Chuck, in your remarks, you said you only expect losses on the $390 million exposure.

One general comment is we typically don't make specific remarks about internal ratings and the like with respect to the portfolio. However, when you look at any of the exposure data that's in our supplement this quarter, they'll include the transactions that were commuted in the first quarter, because all the exposure data there is as of December 31, 2013. So you'll see those changes take place in the first quarter. So again, the comments that I made about the remaining original BBB CMBS do hold at about $760 million remaining outstanding, $390 million of which we're making payments on, the balance of which we expect will not pose significant risk to the company, either because of the vintage of the collateral or the amount of the subordination or both. And then beyond that, the CMBS portfolio consists of essentially only AAA original collateral transaction. So we don't expect any losses on them.

I was under the impression that the $3 billion of A exposure that you commuted would have been factored into maybe CMBS pools 22 and 34. Any comment that you can give that might square that, because it seems like you have $4 billion of exposures that are rated D.

Again, you'll see the commuted exposures come off in our first quarter reporting.

Any color that you can provide on the Zohar CLO, can you talk about what is the current spending of that, what is off to and if it was eroded by any recent activity?

We don't have any updated information at this time. We are monitoring our exposures, as Chuck said earlier, in the high grade sector very closely.

My last one was related to the liquidity position of the Corp. entity. Can you talk about what go-forward liquidity is following the commutation of the A CMBS? And looking forward, can you talk about if there's any way to monetize the equity stake in the MBIA UK entity?

We think that post the commutation, the liquidity position of Corp. is adequate against its expected liabilities. And again, as I said earlier, we think we're in a much more stable position as there is no single exposure that we could point to that might cause significant risk to Corp.'s liquidity position. The two things that we do focus on are the payments that we are making on the one BBB CMBS that is in payment mode and on the excess spread on the second lien RMBS, where we're expecting that to become a net provider of liquidity in 2014 to the extent that defaults and losses are higher than our expectations in our loss models. Obviously, that might delay that turnaround. So those are kind of the liquidity risks. We think in general the position is adequate. With respect to monetizing illiquid assets, we have done some work in that regard in the past. The UK entity is one that has significant value. We don't really see at the moment an opportunity to monetize that doesn't impair that value to us. And so maybe there is an opportunity, but we don't see one at this point.

I think there's a couple of things associated with monetizing the value. We've looked, as others have looked, at several of the monoline financial guarantors that are in run-off to try and evaluate what would be an appropriate transaction price. And virtually cases, when we've looked at the buyer, we ended up at numbers that are unfortunately small fractions of the current carrying value of the current owners. And so it's very difficult to come up with a transaction that would be mutually beneficial. The same is true when we look at the UK company. If people look at a potential buyer, the value they assign to it in terms of its discount and cash flow, it's substantially below what we currently carry in terms of value. So it's difficult for us to see a sale transaction that could create additional value there. Going back to the first question, I want to just clarify what Chuck said about having adequate liquidity. We clearly believe that MBIA Corp. has adequate liquidity over the foreseeable future, the next three of four years in terms of being able to cover all potential known policyholder claims. What we're not saying, there is no way that you could say there is sufficient liquidity to make any substantial payment on the surplus notes or to pay off to surplus notes. So when we're talking about liquidity, I want to be clear, we're always talking about liquidity as respect to policyholder claims and policyholder liabilities. We're not speaking at this point to when and how we eventually could trigger our way to deal with the surplus notes, which we do believe we would like to deal with eventually. We would like to figure out some kind of an exchange. But as I have said in past conference…

Your next question comes from the line Jeff Rosenkranz of Cedar Ridge.

A question about taxes, you have substantial NOLs, which will be a good benefit to National as they reenter the market and ramp that up. And I understand how those funds flow up to Inc. than are escrowed and then that escrow rolls off over time. What was the origin of those tax losses? Was it at Corp.? And if so, how has Corp. been compensated or how might Corp. be compensated in the future for the use of those substantial NOLs and that value?

First of all, the beneficiary of the NOL that the company has will be MBIA Inc., because it's the tax payer. So all of the accumulated net operating loss carryforwards belong to MBIA Inc. So it's part of its tax addition. Under our tax hearing arrangement, we do maintain independent standalone tax positions of the relevant entities. As you know, National has been a tax payer since it was created. MBIA Corp. has had losses. And of course, as the holding company, we have also had losses relating to simply paying interest on outstanding corporate debt, but also because we conducted our asset liability management business there. So those are the two largest contributors to the consolidated net operating loss carryforwards. Any place in the enterprise where we make profits in the future will benefit from the fact that the company has a large net operating loss carryforward. In addition, we have stated that it's our current intention that to the extent that any of the insurance members has standalone NOLs that aren't used by the consolidated firm, not used by the relevant insurance member that they would be compensated for those as they expire or before they expire. So when you think about the expirations of the NOLs generated by MBIA Insurance Corp., they would be, I think, the years are 2030, '31, '32 is when it might expect to receive payments because of our stated current intention to provide that compensation.

It's also just to your comment that National benefits from NOLs is actually an erroneous statement. MBIA Inc. benefits from the NOLs, because National pays its taxes as if it were a tax payer up to Inc. We actually choose to sub-optimize the National portfolio by investing in taxables to take advantage of that situation. But if National were a standalone company without a parent that add NOLs, we would actually invest the proceeds or the investment portfolio quite differently. And National probably would have a higher after-tax income in that situation if it were within that. So sometimes it's confusing to realize that. But right now most important thing to remember is we have one and only one tax payer and that tax payer is the beneficiary of the NOLs at this point in time. And we'll have to see how things develop over the years to see how those NOLs get utilized across corporation.

(Operator Instructions) Your next question comes from the line of Chris (inaudible).

Just quick point of clarification looking at your Note 10 in your 10-K. Looked like you own $13 million as a surplus notes at year-end, but also made the statement that to date you've repurchased a total of $47 million par value at an average price of $77.08. Is that suggesting that some additional bonds were repurchased in first quarter '14 or is there a different interpretation?

We repurchased some bonds probably in 2009 or early 2010. $13 million was purchased by the holding company and it still holds them. The balance was repurchased by MBIA Insurance Corp. with regulatory approval. So those are many quarters old, so disclosures and those repurchases.

Your next question comes from the line Kathleen Brady of Morgan Stanley.

Have you provided information on the maturity of the roll off of your Puerto Rico exposure?

Yes, all that information has been provided previously and is available on the National website.

Can you comment on current market reports of potential new deal with Puerto Rico and the implication that that could have for you?

We continue to watch it very carefully. As I think people are aware, Puerto Rico has all the approvals they need from the government to do up to $3.5 billion. The reports are that they will raise about $2.8 billion or $2.9 billion and that you could expect to see that as early as this week, but perhaps it could be next week. So we continue to monitor that quite closely.

At this time, there are no further questions. I'll now return the call to Greg Diamond for any additional or closing remark.

Thank you, Laurie. And thanks all of you who have joined us for today's call. Please contact me directly if you have additional questions. I can be reached at 914-765-3190. We also recommend that you visit our website for additional information. The address is mbia.com. Thank you for your interest in MBIA today. Good bye.

Thank you for participating in the MBIA Incorporated fourth quarter and full year 2013 financial results conference call. You may now disconnect.