Redwood Trust, Inc. (NYSE:RWT) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

In terms of our REO position, our REO is at 9.30 over 90% of those are either sold or in contract. So I think we’ve been pleased with the speed of resolution. In terms of your question, floating effects, yes, that’s obviously a priority for most borrowers in the market to see if they can get to the right level of stabilization to take out a traditional fixed rate term loan. The recutting of deals we did in the quarter were largely floating to fixed where we still were able to maintain approval rates 9% or so. So definitely still healthy average accrual rates there. So in general, like the support levels and the tailwind for rents are still there, and we’ve been pleased with our ability to, in general, move on from situations where we didn’t have the right sponsors in the projects and or bringing fresh equity from sponsors that we felt were still viable to continue.

So asset management remains a big focus for us, notwithstanding the fact that we’re still very constructive on rents. We do expect this work to continue in the coming quarters, just given the overall environment. I think it helps us that. We are generally focused in markets where we have a pretty deep [indiscernible], and if a sponsor doesn’t work out, we can bring in someone else, we’ve had very good success with that over the last quarter or two. And I would expect some of that to continue going forward.

Don Fandetti: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Stephen Laws with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Stephen Laws: Hi, good afternoon. First of all, I start with the jumbo side, clearly a big opportunity. And Chris, appreciate your comments to beginning about being able to gain market share. When you think internally and when you guys model out internally, looking 3 to 4 years out, how much market share do you think you can have? What type of volume is that? You mentioned some things in the comments maybe third-party capital helping funding a lot of the securities retained similar to what the JV is on the BPL side. So can you talk about maybe what’s your 3 to 5-year vision as of how the jumbo business plays out?

Chris Abate: Sure. Well, this will be somewhat riddled with assumptions. But we are — we do think that some form of these capital rules will go into effect, I think most of our bank partners think that as well. Our strategy, which is a little nuanced is basically helping banks preserve and or grow market share. So we don’t necessarily think that bank share needs to be seated to the independence per se, although we have great business relationships there as well. But to the extent we can work as a capital partner with large banks, we think there’s a lot of wallet share there as Dash mentioned. It’s basically been locked up since the great financial crisis. These loans have gone into portfolio, they have not come out to markets, and we talked about market share, it really hasn’t been an opportunity for a while.

And so that piece of the business is what excites us the most currently, and to the extent that we can unlock some of that, and a good percentage moves from originate to distribute. We look at years like 2021, for instance. And we sort of peg those as launch points to what the platform is capable of doing. We’re still in single digits range as far as market share goes. We’ve got a lot of upward mobility. We will need capital partners, we’re focused on JVs, we’re focused in — thankfully, we’ve got a lot of interest. So we want to scale the right way. That’s why we made the comment that we’re not going to chase volume in this environment, especially as rates are continued to be very, very stubborn. But we do think there’s a marking this volume is a key aspect of our strategy.

And that’s why we keep talking about it. That’s why we’re so focused on facet of the jumbo market that there really hasn’t been accessible in a number of years.