Redwood Trust, Inc. (NYSE:RWT) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Brooke Carillo: Yes, it is a good question. I think, what you’ve seen out of our net interest income line item is stability. In the fourth quarter, we reached what we really view to be a good run rate. We’ve had a lot of more one time, season income that have come in to net interest income over the course of the year. And those represent upside from the levels we saw in the fourth quarter, but items such as yield maintenance have been as high as 5 million to 7 million in different quarters throughout the last year that was essentially flat in the fourth quarter. And so, we think GAAP net interest income in the fourth quarter represents a good run right, as I mentioned, we are continuing to deploy capital into bridge which continues to be a nice tailwind for NIM actually contributed a positive 4 million to an interest in not income on the quarter it generated a 27% return on capital for the quarter.

So in terms of deployment opportunities, especially with the amount of cash that were sitting on today, that continues to be an area of focus. We actually saw that was driven not only by volume, which was actually done on the quarter, but weighted average coupons on bridge brands were about 50 basis points higher than cost of funds increases. I would really point you to economic net interest income as we head forward, that was 6 million higher as I mentioned in my prepared remarks and GAAP net interest income that’s driven by some discount accretion and also effective interest on certain assets that aren’t captured in our GAAP net interest income, but rather through investment for value changes, but those are run rates that is run rate income for us.

So, I think we will do a better job highlighting economic than interest income, but we see tailwinds for economic NII continue to grow both from deployment and certain of those assets whose effective yields will continue to be realized through it. I would also just know our financing costs, they were up about 100 basis points last quarter, but they’ve really stabilized. So with the projected front ends of the curve, and also spreads on renewals, we’ve seen really stabilized we had been seen spreads widen a bit on financing lines throughout kind of the mid second half of the year and those we need to be very stable. So we continue to have more floating rate exposure on the asset side of our portfolio than on the debt side of the portfolio. So any further increases to rate should actually get challenged.

Operator: And our next question comes from Bose George with KBW. Please state your question. Bose George. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Bose George: Sorry. It was on mute. Hey, guys. Just wanted to ask about returns on the investment opportunities or the best investment opportunities that you are seeing and how returns compare to that 15% in force yield on your existing portfolio?

Dash Robinson: Hey, Bose, this is Dash. I can take that. The organic, the organic creation largely through BPL is just articulated in that mid teens context or better for both bridge as well as the residual pieces that we can create through securitizing SFR loans are very much in that context too. Obviously, some of this is aided by the fact that, we are in a higher total rate of return environment with benchmarks and also our lending spreads have certainly widened the sympathy with the market over the past year or so, although they have tightened up, given the market dynamics in the past few weeks. Away from that, as Chris articulated earlier on the call, given market dynamics, we are definitely seeing more interesting opportunities on the third-party side as well.