Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation (NYSE:AGM) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

So we expect to see this 13 or so open positions start to get chipped away at, between now and year-end. But as we get to that full complement number, I think you’ll see 2024 have some spillover as well. And that’s also another reason why we think our efficiency ratio is a little depressed right now. And as we start to get to that full complement, you’ll start to see it going back up to that 30%. So that’s really just to give you a handle on how we think about managing the business and in line with some of our revenue projections

Brad Nordholm: I’ll just add to that, first, that 180-plus number is that’s full employment. You’ve always got some vacancies associated with turnover. Our turnover rates are well under 10%. In fact, they’re down this year compared to last year. I think last time I looked at the first half of the year on an annualized basis, it’s like 6%, 7%, which is extremely healthy, I think But even when you apply that to the 180, you end up with something less. And we don’t discount our employment – budget employment number by the natural number of vacancies that we might have happened. So I don’t view the current head count as a weakness is not executing on plan. It’s – a couple of the positions are ones who have just decided to go slow on. A couple of them are because of turnover. So I think we’re in a very comfortable range here, certainly within 10% of our target employment.

Q – Unidentified Analyst: Okay. And then on the Farm & Ranch book, we’ve had a number of transactions announced within California banks doing transactions. I think on a previous conference call there was a discussion about potentially seeing some loan books, shake loose. Is that still a possibility? Are there any ongoing discussions? And then would those loans potentially be able to be acquired at some type of a discount to outstanding balance?

Brad Nordholm: It’s a great question. We’re keeping an eye on what’s happened with the failed California banks, namely Silicon Valley Bank. I think we have mentioned on our prior call that as an example, they have $750 million, something like that of vineyard loans. But those right now are held by the successor organization. So we’re keeping an eye on it. There are other banks that last quarter had significant capital pressures attributable to their mark-to-market investment portfolios. And I think I speculated on the last call that maybe some of them would be in a position of having to do a bit more selling. There are a couple of financial institutions where we’re having discussions about maybe purchasing a larger portion of their agriculture mortgage loans than we have in the past.

They maybe hold fewer on balance sheet and sell more to us, but nothing definitive on that. Where we are seeing something that could result in some higher numbers during the remainder of the year is around AgVantage. From some of the institutional investors in agricultural mortgage loans, think insurance companies that do direct origination. They are showing some increased appetite for our AgVantage product. And so stay tuned on that because that’s something that could end up – could show up in our numbers towards the end of the year. Some of those facilities take a long time to put together. So we might put the facility together and it spills over into 2024. But that is an area where we’re seeing some unexpected additional demand.

Q – Unidentified Analyst: Okay. That’s helpful. And then I think it’s worth spending some time talking more about the renewable energy book amounts Page 114 of the 10-Q. You got your June 30, 2022, outstanding balance, $148 million; June 30, 2023, $327 million. That’s 122% year-over- year growth in that loan book. And you didn’t say that, but that’s a really big number. The wheel is starting to spin. I think there was a comment in the past, that’s going to be $1 billion book at some point. Where does that book head at the end of this year? I mean that’s really impressive growth?