Arbor Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:ABR) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Arbor Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:ABR) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript July 28, 2023

Arbor Realty Trust, Inc. beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.5, expectations were $0.44.

Operator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Second Quarter 2023 Arbor Realty Trust Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to your speaker today, Paul Elenio, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Paul Elenio: Okay. Thank you, Todd and good morning, everyone and welcome to the quarterly earnings call for Arbor Realty Trust. This morning, we will discuss the results for the quarter ended June 30, 2023. With me on the call today is Ivan Kaufman, our President and Chief Executive Officer. Before we begin, I need to inform you that statements made in this earnings call maybe deemed forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, including information about possible or assumed future results of our business, financial conditions, liquidity, results of operations, plans and objectives. These statements are based on our beliefs, assumptions and expectations of our future performance, taking into account the information currently available to us.

Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from Arbor’s expectations in these forward-looking statements are detailed in our SEC reports. Listeners are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of today. Arbor undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after today or the occurrences of unanticipated events. I’ll now turn the call over to Arbor’s President and CEO, Ivan Kaufman.

Ivan Kaufman: Thank you, Paul and thanks to everyone for joining us on today’s call. As you can see from this morning’s press release, we had another outstanding quarter as our diverse business model continues to generate earnings that are well in excess of our dividend. This has allowed us to once again increase our dividend to $0.43, reflecting our 12th increase in the last 14 quarters or 43% growth over that time period all while maintaining the lowest dividend payout ratio in the industry, which was 75% for the second quarter. In fact, we are the only company in our space that has continued to grow our dividend while many are either cutting their dividends or are electing to pay out over 100% of their earnings. Additionally and very significantly, we are also one of the only companies in the space to have experienced significant book value appreciation over the last three years, with roughly 45% growth from approximately $9 a share to nearly $13 a share.

Put simply, we have increased both our dividend and book value by over 40%, all while maintaining the lowest dividend payout ratio in the industry. And despite being a very challenging environment over the last several quarters, we’ve managed to maintain our book value while we recorded reserves for potential future losses, which clearly differentiates us from every one of our peers. As we’ve discussed many times, we’ve been laser focused over the last 2 years and preparing for what we felt would be a very challenging recessionary environment. In fact, unlike others in this space, we’ve been conducting ourselves as if we have been in a recession for over a year now. And as a result, one of our primary focus has been and continues to be preserving and building up a strong liquidity position.

We are very pleased to report that we currently have approximately $1 billion in cash, which gives us a tremendous amount of flexibility to manage through this downturn and provide us with the unique ability to take advantage of the opportunities that will exist in this environment to generate superior returns on our capital. There continues to be a significant amount of volatility in the market, and we are well aware of the challenges that lie ahead. We feel we are right in the thick of this dislocation and are operating our business with the expectation that the next two to three quarters will be the most challenging part of the cycle. As in the case with any real estate cycle, there will be issues and challenges to contend with, some of which will be a high touch and require a tremendous amount of discipline and expertise.

We are extremely well positioned compared to our peers given our multifamily-centric portfolio, our asset management skills and tenured senior management experience with a track record of managing through multiple cycles, and the strength of our balance sheet and versatility of our franchise. Turning now to our second quarter performance, as Paul will discuss in more detail, our quarterly financial results were once again remarkable. We produced distributable earnings of $0.57 per share, which is well in excess of our current dividend, representing a payout ratio of around 75%. The dividend policy that we have implemented with our Board of keeping such a wide disparity between our earnings and dividend provides us with a huge cushion and was a very strategic knowing full well that we’re entering into a market of dislocation.

This has enabled us to raise our dividend, grow our book value and create reserves, and we believe we’re uniquely positioned as one of the only companies in that space with a very sustainable protected dividend even in this challenging environment. In our balance sheet lending business, we remain very selective, focusing mainly on converting on multifamily bridge loans into agency product allow us to recapture a substantial amount of our invested capital and produce significant long-dated income streams. In the second quarter, we continue to have success in this area with another $685 million of balance sheet runoff $435 million of 64%, which was recaptured into new agency loan originations. As a result, we’re able to recoup $125 million of capital and continue to build out broadcast position, which again currently sits at approximately $1 billion.

In our GSE agency business, we had an exceptionally strong second quarter, originating $1.4 billion of loans, and our pipeline remains elevated. Clearly, with the continued inverted yield curve, the agencies are effectively the only game in town, which gives us confidence in our ability to continue to produce strong origination volumes for the balance of the year. We also have a strategic advantage in that we focus on the workforce housing part of the market and of a large multifamily balance sheet book with that national feed to our agency business. And again, this agency business offers a premium value as it requires limited capital and generates significant long-dated, predictable income streams and produces significant annual cash flow.

To this point, our $29.4 billion fee-based servicing portfolio, which grew another 2% in the second quarter, generates approximately $118 million a year in reoccurring cash flow. We also generate significant earnings on our escrows and cash balances, which acts as a natural hedge against interest rates. In fact, we are now earning approximately 4.5% on around $2.8 billion of balances or roughly $125 million annually, which combined with our service income annuity, totals over $240 million of annual gross earnings or $1.20 a share. This is in addition to the strong gain on sale margins we generate from our originations platform. And again, it’s something that is completely unique to our platform, providing us a significant strategic advantage over our peers.

We continue to expand our single-family rental business as we are one of the only remaining lenders in this space, allowing us to aggressively grow this platform. We remain committed to this business as it offers us three turns on our capital through construction bridge and permanent lending opportunities and generate strong level of returns in the short term while providing significant long-term benefits by further diversifying our income streams and allowing us to continue to build our franchise. In summary, we had a very strong first half of the year with exceptional results that once again clearly demonstrates our ability to generate strong earnings and dividends in all cycles. We understand very well the challenges that lie ahead and feel we are well positioned to manage through this cycle.

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Our earnings significantly exceed our dividend run rate. We are invested in the right asset class with very stable liability structures, highlighted by a significant amount of non-recourse non-mark-to-market CLO debt with pricing that is well below the current market. We are also well capitalized with significant liquidity which has put us in a unique position to be able to manage through this downturn and take advantage of the accretive opportunities that will exist in this environment. And again, with our best-in-class asset management capability and a seasoned executive team, we are confident that we will continue to be the top performer company in our space. I will now turn the call over to Paul to take you through the financial results.

Paul Elenio: Okay. Thank you, Ivan. As Ivan mentioned, we had another exceptional quarter, producing distributable earnings of $114 million or $0.57 a share. These results translated into industry high ROEs again of approximately 18% for the second quarter, allowing us to increase our dividend to an annual run rate of $1.72 a share, reflecting a dividend to earnings payout ratio of around 75% for the second quarter. Our quarterly results significantly beat our internal projections once again, largely due to substantially more gain on sale income from increased agency sold loan volumes, mainly due to stronger origination volumes in the second quarter than we anticipated. We also continue to see increased earnings on our floating rate loan book and on our cash and escrow balances in the second quarter from higher interest rates.

And we generated approximately $6 million of income from our equity investments in the second quarter which included $3.5 million of income from our residential banking joint venture from gains on servicing sales and a $2.5 million distribution from our LexFord investment. As a result of the servicing sales in our residential joint venture this quarter, our current income tax provision was higher than usual due to book-to-tax differences associated with these sales. As Ivan mentioned, we do expect some challenges ahead. And as a result, we recorded an additional $16 million in CECL reserves on our balance sheet loan book during the quarter. These reserves do not affect distributable earnings as we have not experienced any realized losses on these loans to date.

Our loan book did see an increase in delinquencies in the second quarter as a result of where we are in the cycle. Again, this is to be expected, and we’re confident in our ability to manage through this downturn as we believe we are well positioned given our multifamily focus strong liquidity position and our best-in-class dedicated asset management team with extensive experience in loan workouts and debt restructurings. And it’s very important to note that despite booking approximately $48 million in CECL reserves across our platform over the last 2 quarters, we still managed to grow our book value per share by 1% to $12.67 at 6/30/2023 from $12.53 a share at 12/31/2022 and we’re one of the only companies in our space that have seen significant book value appreciation over the last three years.

In our GSE agency business, we had a very strong second quarter with $1.4 billion in originations and $1.3 billion in loan sales. The margins on the loan sales came in at 1.67% this quarter compared to 1.72% last quarter. We produced very strong margins over the first 6 months of the year ahead of our projections, mainly due to an increase in our FHA loan production in the first two quarters that generate much higher margins. We also recorded $16.2 million of mortgage servicing right income related to $1.1 billion of committed loans in the second quarter, representing an average MSR rate of around 1.43% compared to 1.23% last quarter. Our fee-based servicing portfolio grew another 2% in the first quarter to approximately $29.4 billion at June 30, with a weighted average servicing fee of around 40 basis points and an estimated remaining life of 8.5 years.

This portfolio will continue to generate a predictable annuity of income going forward of around $118 million growth annually. In the second quarter, we also received $3 million in prepayment fees as compared to $2 million last quarter. And given the current rate environment, we’re estimating that prepayment fees will likely run around $2 million a quarter going forward. In our balance sheet lending operation, our $13.5 billion investment portfolio had an all-in yield of 9.07% at June 30 compared to 8.83% at March 31, mainly due to increases in LIBOR and sulfur rates, partially offset by an increase in nonperforming loans in the second quarter. The average balance in our core investments was $13.6 billion this quarter as compared to $14.1 million last quarter due to law of exceeding originations in the first and second quarters.

The average yield on these assets increased to 9.91% from 8.94% last quarter, mainly due to increases in sulfur and LIBOR rates, partially offset by an increase in nonperforming loans in the second quarter and from less acceleration of fees from early runoff. Total debt on our core assets was approximately $12.1 billion at June 30 with an all-in debt cost of approximately 7.25%, which was up from a debt cost of around 6.97% on March 31, mainly due to increases in the benchmark index rates. The average balance in our debt facilities was approximately $12.5 billion for the second quarter compared to $13 billion last quarter. The average cost of funds in our debt facilities was 7.11% for the second quarter compared to 6.69% for the first quarter, again, primarily due to increases in the benchmark index rates, combined with the full effect of the unsecured notes we issued in March.

Overall net interest spreads in our core assets decreased to 2.08% this quarter compared to 2.25% last quarter, and our overall spot net interest spreads were 1.82% at June 30 and 1.86% at March 31. Lastly, we believe it’s important to continue to emphasize some of the significant advantage of our business model, which gives us comfort in our ability to continue to generate high-quality, long-dated recurring earnings. We have several diverse and countercyclical income streams that allow us to produce strong earnings in all cycles. The most significant of which is our agency platform, which is capital-light and generates very high ROEs through strong gain on sale margins, long-dated service and annuity income and increased escrow balances that are significantly more income in today’s higher interest rate environment.

Additionally, we are multifamily-centric and have a substantial amount of our non-mark-to-market, non-recourse CLO debt outstanding with pricing that is well below the current market. We’re also well capitalized with significant liquidity and have a best-in-class asset management and senior management team that have tremendous experience and expertise in operating through multiple cycles. And we believe these features are unique to our platform, giving us confidence in the ability to continue to outperform our peers. That completes our prepared remarks for this morning. I’ll now turn it back to the operator to take any questions you may have at this time. Todd?

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Q&A Session

Operator: Thank you, sir. [Operator Instructions] We will take our first question from Steve Delaney with JMP Securities. Please go ahead.

Steve Delaney: Sure. Hi, good morning, Ivan and Paul, congrats on another strong quarter. Maybe I’ll start off with something that was not the highlight of the quarter, but I think important to discuss, you had the three new NPLs, all multifamily. I’m curious whether those were – were they three loans to three distinct borrowers. And is there on any common theme leading to the downgrades? Thank you.

Ivan Kaufman: Why don’t you take those?

Paul Elenio: Yes. So Steve, it’s Paul. Thanks for the question.

Steve Delaney: Hi, Paul, sure.

Paul Elenio: So we did have three new non-performing loans during the quarter on our balance sheet totaling about over $116 million. They were all to different borrowers, two of the properties were in the Houston, Texas area and the other was in the Atlanta, Georgia area. I’ve gone – the deals have gone 60 days delinquent this quarter, but that’s kind of the geographics and the borrowers were all different borrowers.

Steve Delaney: Yes. I mean the geo sounds good. Is it a interest rate problem? I mean is people just behind there? Is it cash flow? Or just leasing problem?

Ivan Kaufman: Let me give a little bit of a view on it.

Steve Delaney: Thank you, Ivan.

Ivan Kaufman: I think generally, in particular with the assets we’re talking about is you often have underperforming sponsors. The underperforming sponsors, it catches up to them a little bit. So when you see stress in the portfolio like we’re seeing it’s a fact that the sponsors are not executing along their plan. And that’s one part. The second part is that we are in the cycle a long period of time and has elevated interest rates do put stress on these assets. [indiscernible] rates are up anywhere between 10% to 100%, so they run into payment issues and often they are late in the payment, trying to raise additional capital and try and get them in a proper position. But what we’re seeing most of all with a stress on some of these loans.

A lot of it is execution. I mean, there are other factors as well, elevated interest rates, increased insurance costs and increased taxes and increased labor costs. So it’s a combination of all, but generally, if you have good operators, they are able to manage effectively. The poor operator catches up with them a little bit.

Steve Delaney: Okay. Great. And Paul, did I understand that on – when you put these in as non-performing that you added $5 million into your reserve for these three loans, is that correct?

Paul Elenio: That’s correct, Steve. We did record a specific CECL reserve of $5 million related to one of the loans but non-performing. The other two, we believe the values are fine, the borrowers are just seeing a little strength as Ivan mentioned, and we’re working hard with those borrowers to get those deals to perform. But we don’t see right now any need for reserves on the other two. So we did take a $5 million reserve related to one of the assets.

Ivan Kaufman: Yes. And I will take a note as of yesterday, the borrower made – has made one of this payment. So his bind is making efforts to make it. He still remains a little bit behind, but he’s made progress. And he’s getting there. He’s just – a very slow process.

Steve Delaney: Great. Well, I appreciate the color on that. I’ll leave it there. I’m sure the other guys have questions for you too. Have a good weekend. Thanks.

Paul Elenio: Thanks, Steve.

Operator: Thank you. We will take our next question from Stephen Laws with Raymond James.