Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the MFA Financial Inc. Fourth Quarter Earnings Call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. [Operator Instructions] And also as a reminder, today's teleconference is being recorded. And at this time, I would like to turn the conference to your host Mr. Hal Schwartz. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. The information discussed on this conference call today may contain or refer to forward-looking statements regarding MFA Financial, Inc., which reflect management's beliefs, expectations and assumptions as to MFA's future performance and operations. When used, statements that are not historical in nature, including those containing words such as will, believe, expect, anticipate, estimate, should, could, would or similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made. These types of statements are subject to various known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors, including those described in MFA's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2017, and other reports that it may file from time to time with the SEC. These risks, uncertainties and other factors could cause MFA's actual results to differ materially from those projected, expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements it makes. For additional information regarding MFA's use of forward-looking statements, please see the relevant disclosure in the press release announcing MFA's fourth quarter 2018 financial results. Thank you for your time. I would now like to turn the call over to MFA's CEO and President, Craig Knutson.

Thank you, Hal. Good morning everyone. I'd like to thank you for your interest in and welcome you to MFA financials fourth quarter 2018 financial results webcast. With me today, are Steve Yarad, our CFO, Gudmundur Kristjansson and Bryan Wulfsohn, our Co-Chief Investment officers and other members of senior management. The fourth quarter of 2018 was a very challenging period for financial assets. Stocks rode a roller coaster particularly in December with daily swings in the Dow of 500 points or more for much of the last two weeks of the year, after dropping almost 2000 points in the four trading days preceding Christmas, down 650 on Christmas Eve alone, the Dow closed up over 1500 points in the final four trading days of the year. Bonds saw wild swings as well between November eight and year-end with 2s 5s and 10s rallying between 50 and 60 basis points. And finally, high yield widened by nearly 180 basis points, also between November 8 and year end. Levered investors in both agency mortgages and mortgage credit experienced significant value declines as these assets widened with corresponding book value reductions commensurate with the amount of leverage deployed. While not immune to these movements, MFA fared better than most of our peers with a modest book value decline of 4.2% due largely to our assets selection and low leverage. And while wider credit spreads negatively impacted pricing on our mortgage credit assets, this spread widening was very much a technical phenomenon and in no way a result of deteriorating credit or diminishing of projected cash flows, because some of our assets affected by this market volatility are accounted for at fair value price declines, and the corresponding unrealized losses on these assets during the quarter flow through income and drove GAAP income lower.…

Thanks, Craig. For the fourth quarter of 2019, MSA’s net income to common shareholders was $57.1 million or $0.13 per share. As Craig noted, while we continue to make solid progress in growing our residential mortgage portfolio, including through purchases of performing loans, which are meaningfully impacting our earnings, our results this quarter were impacted by market volatility, that made for a difficult trading environment and affected risk of sentiment. Despite rates rallying significantly wider credit spreads negatively impacted fair value of our CRT securities and Legacy Non-Agency MBS. And wider mortgage basis negatively impacted the net fair value of our 30-year Agency MBS and related hedges. Due to our election of the fair value option on CRT securities and 30-year Agency MBS and because we are not applying hedge accounting to the swaps of economically hedged agencies the valuation changes on those positions are recorded in earnings each quarter. The unrealized losses arising on these positions in Q4 drove the $0.06 sequential quarter decline in net income. However, it should also be noted that trading conditions have largely stabilized since year end. And while our January 2019 results are still subject to final management reviews, we have seen a partial recovery in the values of these positions particularly on CRT securities. As a result we estimate that January book value increased over December by approximately 1.5% excluding any adjustment to first quarter 2019 dividends. Please turn to Page 8 where we present additional detail on the key drivers of net income for this quarter, which were as follows. Net interest income this quarter was approximately $3.2 million higher than the prior quarter reflecting continued growth in purchased performing loans. This increase is even more significant when considering the prior quarter net interest income includes approximately $3.4 million of accretion…

Thank you, Steve. Turn to Page 9. The fourth quarter was another successful quarter for our investments team as we acquired approximately $1.6 billion in the quarter and grew our portfolio by $565 million in the quarter. This is the fifth consecutive quarter of portfolio growth. Most of the acquisitions were focused on the whole loans portfolio, which continues to benefit from our multiyear effort to expand our investment universe to include Non-QM fix and flip and SFR loans. We opportunistically sold $77 million of older CRT securities, which had benefited from strong credit performance as well as $47 million of lower-yielding lower coupon 15-year fixed rate Agency MBS as rates declined at the end of the quarter. Turn to Page 10. 2018 was a strong year for portfolio growth, and a year, when we saw the full benefits of our strategic push into newly originated loans that we began back in 2017. We purchased approximately $5.7 billion of assets in 2018 and grew our investments portfolio by approximately 22% in the year. We doubled our holdings of residential whole loans and REO to approximately $5 billion which now accounts for about 41% of our assets up from approximately 24% at the end of 2017. The large growth in whole loans was largely attributable to our strategic push into Non-QM fix and flip and SFR loans began in 2017 and really took off in 2018 when we acquired in excess of $2 billion across these loan products compared to approximately $100 million in 2017. We're glad to see our effort to introduce new loan products bear fruit and expect that they will continue to add meaningfully to our portfolio going forward. Turn to Page 11. Despite over three years of rising rate and nine Fed Fund increases MFA's net interest…

Thank you, Gudmundur. Although we saw market volatility in the fourth quarter, the economy and housing fundamentals continue to benefit mortgage credits. The CoreLogic National Home Price Index is up 4.7% in December from the year ago. Home price growth has been normalizing after an extended period of significantly outpacing CPI. While we benefit from outsized home price growth, our investment strategy does not depend on it. The unemployment rate was 3.9% in December and 4% in January. The increase in recent months was a result of people reentering the labor force. In addition, we continue to see a steady march hire in the number of people employed as a percentage of the working age population. We continue to see slight increases in housing inventory. Overall levels are historically low on a nationwide basis. We believe, these low levels of supply will support further home price growth. According to the latest release from the New York Fed, the reported 90-plus day mortgage delinquencies are down to pre-crisis level of around 1%. Turning to Page 16. We are pleased to report that our investment team has sourced over $1 billion residential whole loans in the fourth quarter and over $3 billion for the year. Majority of the growth in 2018 came from our investment in newly originated loans. This loan supply was robust last year with almost $80 billion in supply and we expect volumes in that space to moderate in 2019. And the performance of our seasoned portfolio continues to outperform our expectations at the time of the purchase. Again, as a reminder, our whole loans appear on our balance sheet on two lines: loans held at carrying value $3 billion; and loans held at fair value $1.7 billion. This election is permanent and is made at the time of…

Thanks Bryan. Turning to Page 20. Our acquisitions of business purpose loans continue to expand in the fourth quarter as we added new relationships and work to expand existing ones. Since we started acquiring business purpose loans at the end of 2017, we have acquired approximately 4400 loans with over $900 million in UPB and undrawn commitments. We are excited about our progress and we'll continue to work towards expanding our acquisitions of business purpose loans in 2019. During the fourth quarter our holdings of fix and flip loans grew by approximately $170 million to $495 million UPB with additional undrawn commitments of $50 million at the end of the quarter. Credit metrics and performance continues to be strong and our target yield for this asset class is around 7%. Our holdings of SFR loans grew by $65 million in the quarter to $145 million at the end of the fourth quarter. Similar to the fix and flip loans credit metrics and loan performance continues to be strong. Our target yield for SFR loans is around 6%. With that, I'll turn the call over to Craig for some final comments.

Thank you, Gudmundur. So in summary, we remain very active in the investment market. We purchased over $5.7 billion of assets in 2018 and grew our portfolio by over $2.2 billion. This growth in our portfolio has resulted in materially higher net interest income in the second half of 2018 and we expect further such increases in 2019. While we've made excellent progress in growing our asset base we still have substantial capacity to continue to increase our investments by adding leverage to our balance sheet. This concludes our prepared remarks. Tony, would you please open up the call for questions?

Certainly. Thank you very much. [Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from Doug Harter with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Thanks. I was hoping you could talk a little bit about the relationships you have on the business purpose loans and the Non-QM side. Any color as to kind of the volume expectations you expect or anything. Are these exclusive relationships just some more color about these relationships you've built?

Sure. Thanks for the question Doug. So as we've said before we have multiple relationships. They're typically not exclusive relationships. And for competitive reasons we've declined to discuss the specific partners that we've that we partnered with. But it's multiple partners across multiple products. It's typically not exclusive. But I think we're in many cases we're a significant if not majority purchaser of the production.

Understood. And then you guys talked about the ROE you expect to get on Non-QM. Can you just sort of compare that? You have the target yields look higher on the business purpose loans. Can you just talk about what the leverage opportunity there is and how the ROEs would compare on those?

Yes. I mean the leverage you can obtain through Non-QM loans is probably a bit higher versus business purpose loans. And therefore the ROEs can be comparable. The ROEs are probably are higher on the business purpose side. It's just a question of how much production can you source. We're very happy with what we've gotten and would like to grow that portfolio. And we think we're doing so appropriately.

And I guess just one last. I guess, how would you compare kind of the duration of those assets? How long you expect them to sort of remain on your book if you compare a Non-QM versus the business purpose loans?

Sure. So Non-QM given where speed expectations are today, you're probably around like a 3-year asset and business purpose loans are plus or minus a year asset maybe even shorter. So Non-QM is a bit longer than the business purpose side.

And so on the business purpose, I mean, so the fix and flip, we expect them to have an average life of anywhere probably around nine months from the like so turnover quickly as Bryan said. But the SFR loans are going to be similar to the Non-QM loans in terms of average life of duration.

I appreciate all your interest. Thank you.

Thank you. The next question in queue that will come from Eric Hagen with KBW. Please go ahead.

Thanks, good morning guys. I guess, maybe I was a little surprised to see such a strong quarter for realized gains on the loan sales. Just given the widening credit spreads that we saw weaker asset prices during the quarter, can you just maybe shed some light on what drove the sales and maybe even just the timing of when you completed those?

Sure Eric. Thanks for the question. Suffice to say, we weren't selling those assets in the last few weeks of the year because the market was in somewhat disarray. So had we not made some of those sales the book value number could possibly have been a little bit lower? I wouldn't say it was a targeted or a premeditated strategy. I think our approach in both the legacy book and the CRT book has been consistent for not for quarters but almost for years. I think in the legacy book in particular it's a very mature portfolio right? The -- it’s '05 '06 '07 production. So the youngest bonds there are 12 years old. And so part of it is just it's just sort of a rigorous portfolio trading strategy where we're selling bonds that get up to high dollar prices in the mid high-90s where there's really no further room for credit improvement and price depreciation. So that's one. Two is, we're selling bonds in some cases at a premium. They are callable, which obviously is a smart strategy. And then the third is, while these were mostly round lot positions initially as they pay down and factor down many of them become odd-lot in nature or the bonds are of very low loan count. And a low loan count bond is subject to monthly fluctuation if you get a bad print right. If you one loan that's been in foreclosure for two years and it liquidates at a really high loss severity it could have a profound impact on the price of that bond. So, it's really just a constant strategy of calling the portfolio. If a bond trades in the marketplace in a round lot and we have an odd lot we can may be tack that on and get a round lot execution. So it's a variety of things but it's the numbers that come out the realized gains are really are a function of the fact that we bought them at all low dollar prices. So any time we sell them we typically have a big gain.

That's really helpful color. Maybe I can just press you guys a little bit for your assumptions or just some color around the Non-QM strategy. I mean, what's the cumulative default rate that you expect on some of those the pipeline of originations there?

So again, QM defaults we're looking at somewhere in the order of 100 to 200 basis points and the losses are really low. I mean, if you look at the portfolio the weighted average LTV is 65%. So we're talking about a lot of protection again to any movement in home prices if loans were to go back.

Yes that makes sense. Okay great. Then an accounting question just kind of bigger picture stuff. How was CECL, how should we think about CECL and the impact that that could have on some of the accounting behind the loans that I guess you would hold at carrying value would be maybe the ones that are affected there? Can you just give us some color as to how you're thinking about CECL and the impact there, when it takes effect I guess about a year?

Yes. Sure Doug thanks. This is Steve. We are currently looking at CECL and implementing for that new standard. As you noted, it becomes live in 2020. And you're right. The impact that it will likely have on our portfolio is with some of our loan product because really on those carrying value loans as Bryan mentioned way those loans that we really have acquired them now low LTVs we don't we see some default risk but severity to protect will be low and those loans are very well protected. So right now, we don't really have much in the way of loan loss reserves on those loans. Under CECL you have to look at those on a life of loan basis rather than what's incurred today under the current accounting. So we're looking at that. We're looking at implementing a methodology to cancel loan losses for those loans under CECL, still going through that in the early stages. But we would expect possibly some additional loan loss reserves under CECL than what we would cancel today under the current accounting standards but too little to know until we sort of quantify that because we're just not far enough into it at this stage.

Got it. But I think it's fair to say that the LTV in your portfolio is still low. That provision that you're talking about taking would really be fairly modest at the end

That's right. That's what we would expect at this stage.

Got it. Thank you. That’s really helpful color.

Thanks, Eric

Thank you.[Operator Instructions] Our next question will come from Steve Delaney with JMP Securities. Please go ahead.

Good morning everyone. Thanks for taking the question. Craig you talked about the relationships that you've developed with strategic partners, primarily on the origination side but I know on the special servicing side a little bit too. I'm just curious if you've made any equity investments small investments but try to help solidify those relationships or support the growth of any of those platforms? And if you haven't is that something that you would consider doing in the future? Thanks.

Sure Steve. Thanks for the question. The short answer is yes, we have made minority equity and/or preferred stock investments. However, I think as you point out investment amounts are not material to our financial statements. So we've not provided specific detail about them. And also for competitive reasons, we prefer to discuss our origination partners in general rather than specifically. Different originators have diverse needs, and objectives, and we think we've been able to consider various arrangements that address these unique desires. Our objective is not really to develop a conduit here but to rather to form meaningful partnerships with a finite group of originators that we can assist in growing their franchise volume and profitability.

That's helpful. And I certainly understand the need for confidentiality there and the fact that you have something to offer them in terms of a much lower cost of capital than they would have standalone. So my second point obviously a quarter that had noise in it for everyone. I guess, what I'm thinking, when I hear your comments about the more straightforward accounting for interest income on the various whole loan portfolios, and thinking about where we might be in a year or so versus where we've come from and there was a lot of more complex accounting with respect to discounts and credit on the legacy RMBS. What I'm really getting at is, as that mix changes, would you consider adding some new disclosure in terms of your earnings, which would lead us to something akin to a core EPS disclosure and so you'd be able to take the fair value noise out of your reported earnings?

Steve, thanks for the question. It's Steve Yarad. I think, you should bring that up because it is something that we do talk about here internally regularly. We're probably one of the few mortgage REITs who don't have a sort of core income concept in their reporting. And it's true that, our GAAP earnings which we've sort of used and exclusivity reported on that for a number of years does suffer a little bit from quarter-to-quarter with some noise on some of the accounting elections we've made in the past. So now that's something that we have thought about, and potentially would think about making some changes depending on how our portfolio continues to evolve in the future.

Steve, it's a timely question. As Steve said, we have started to talk about that. You probably remember, we actually did have a core concept many years ago around linked transactions on Legacy Non-Agencies.

Yes.

But yes, it’s suffices to say, it's under consideration.

Okay great. And then Craig, I can't not ask this, just because of the amount of activity. I think through this week we've had 12 follow-on offerings from mortgage REITs and all but one was from a residential-focused company. Just curious on your view of the capital markets. And what we hear from these companies is almost all this new equity is being targeted to Agency MBS. That clearly isn't your focus. So I guess, I'm thinking, as you look at the market opportunities, is that agency opportunity attractive enough that it would you guys lead you guys to consider another capital markets transaction following up on your offering last summer? That's my last one.

Sure Steve. So obviously we've seen the many follow-on equity issuances since the beginning of the year. I think because MFA is internally managed our rationale for issuing additional equity is perhaps more simple than for externally managed entities. Future capital structure decisions are motivated by what's in the best interest of the company shareholders and all shareholders. I would just say in general, we would consider issuing additional equity if we felt that we could do so at attractive levels, and if we felt that we had compelling investment opportunities in which to deploy the new capital. As we stated a few times during our prepared remarks, we expect we'll be able to fund near-term expected portfolio growth through modestly increased leverage, whether in the form of repo or securitization. But obviously to the extent that circumstances change, we'll reevaluate our options at that time. I think, yes, agencies are wider and you saw that reflected in book value numbers. I'm not sure they're so pound the table cheap that we would sort of alter our strategy and issue equity just to buy agencies at this time.

That’s great. Great color. I appreciate all the comments. Thank you.

Thanks, Steve.

Thank you. Our next question will come from Stephen Laws with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Like to follow up on Doug and Steve's questions on the Non-QM and business purpose. And I understand the competitive reasons for not disclosing your partners. But, can you provide a little color on the competition? There is a lot of your peers that are targeting these assets as well. How do you see the competition framing up for this? Is it pricing driven? Is it really more you guys are willing to provide underwriting standards and take down significant volume? But can you maybe talk about how you're protecting your pipeline versus others that are looking to become more active in this asset class?

Yes Steve. While we do see there are more market participants evaluating the asset class and would like to get involved. What we are also seeing is, significant growth to the amount of loan origination volume relating to Non-QM. So there's really a lot of room for people to get involved where it won't be so competitive at least we believe to push pricing to uneconomic levels. So that's sort of how we feel about that. I mean, in terms of our existing relationships, they -- we had them for a period of time now. And the way that we're able to source loans, either through flow, or sometimes limited very limited comp, we think that we'll have the ability to continue that, and we're really we're happy to see more people interested in the asset class.

And Stephen, I think one other point is, whole loan trades are different than securities trades right. Securities trades it's a CUSIP. It's pretty easy to figure out what the highest number is and you sell it to that guy with the highest bid. When you trade whole loans, it's really a different thing, because there's underwriting and there's sometimes kick outs or repricings. And so, I think with a lot of our origination partners what they've discovered is that we're good counterparty. We work really well together with them. There have been cases where we haven't been the high bid and we win the trade anyway, because they know they have that certainty of closing with us. So there's a lot that goes into it. And it's not all about money. A lot of it's about relationship and just this sort of true partnership of working together with them. But it's a lot of work. It's a lot more work to do that than to buy CUSIPs for sure.

Right. And on the financing side, again. This is a follow-up question. Can you talk about, I think, one of at least one of your competitors is in Non-QM securitization in Q4. Can you talk about what the opportunities are in the securitization market now kind of given the dislocation? Have things normalized? Or that's something you think you could look at as the market is not stabilized enough yet? And then on the -- similarly on the fix and flip, given the short duration, do you think there's securitization options of CLO or some type of option where there is a manageable period or a replenishment period where do you can do the short duration assets into a longer duration financing? Can you maybe talk about the options and opportunities you see there?

Sure. As it relates to Non-QM, the market for the sale of senior bonds did widen out going into the end of the year, and sort of had stabilized and we're seeing some momentum. Part of that is just adoption of the asset class knowing that there's going to be enough supply to get the attention of the larger money managers to participate. When there's only a few billion of bonds for sale, and people get called upon to take a look at new investment, they may get the reaction is it worth my time? Now that we're seeing the increase in issuance right the money managers are finding okay it is going to be worth my time. And we do see the potential for at least we see stability in spreads and the potential for the spreads to narrow over time.

And so as it relates to the fix and flip loans, there has been a few public and private securitization or securitization-like structures that have been put together. But there's also a viable weaker financing market. And so from our point of view our intention is to utilize leverage on that asset class over time. And we would simply look at the best option or the best execution from our point of view. Some of the issue with the business purpose loan securitization is the fact that you have to assemble enough size and there's fixed cost involved. And the structure can become somewhat complicated because you have a lot of new ones in the underlying collateral. So in some sense it can be more efficient to simply work with a bank or a repo provider and do that without the noise of having to basically show the market what's going on and convince people of the quality of the underlying collateral even though it's quite solid. So we evaluate both options and our intention is to use leverage over time.

And Stephen I'd just add one thing on the fix and flip side. There have been a few deals not many just a handful of deals. And most recently, there were one or two deals that had this collateral concept where you could top up the collateral. But they're pretty new and the spreads are pretty wide. And I think, probably the best indication of what we felt about that is leverage is, we were actually a buyer of the senior bond in size of one of those deals. So I think, we view that at least the current pricing we'd probably rather buy that assets and use that as a liability. But as Gudmundur said obviously the expectation is over time that will probably change.

Great. That commentary is great. I appreciate it. Thanks for taking my questions.

Thanks, Stephen.

Thank you. At this time there is no additional questions in the queue. Please continue.

All right. Thanks everyone. We’ll look forward to speaking with you next quarter.

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