ARMOUR Residential REIT, Inc. Q3 FY2025 earnings call

The third quarter unfolded against shifting macroeconomic currents with the Federal Reserve resuming its easing cycle. ARMOUR's Q3 GAAP net income available to common stockholders was $156.3 million. Net interest income was $38.5 million. Distributable earnings available to common stockholders was $75.3 million. Total economic return for the quarter was 7.75%. Quarter end book value was $17.49 per common share. During Q3, ARMOUR raised approximately $99.5 million of capital by issuing shares and repurchased 700,000 shares. The portfolio is invested in Agency MBS, Agency CMBS and U.S. treasuries with focus on specified pools. Macroeconomic factors like Fed easing, potential GSE reform and repo market conditions impact the portfolio.

ARMOUR's Q3 GAAP net income available to common stockholders was $156.3 million or $1.49 per common share. Net interest income was $38.5 million. Distributable earnings available to common stockholders was $75.3 million or $0.72 per common share. Total economic return for the quarter was 7.75%. Quarter end book value was $17.49 per common share, up 3.5% from June 30 and up 2.8% from August 8. During Q3, ARMOUR raised approximately $99.5 million of capital by issuing approximately 6 million shares of common stock through an after the market offering program. ARMOUR paid monthly common stock dividends per share of $0.24 per common share per month for a total of $0.72 for the quarter.

Management expects structural demand for Agency MBS to continue strengthening. They are constructive medium term given resumed easing cycle and favorable market dynamics. Anticipate continued adjustments in hedges and portfolio positioning based on Fed actions.

Factors beyond ARMOUR's control could materially differ from forward-looking statements. Risks include market volatility, policy changes affecting GSEs, and repo funding market disruptions.

Q: Hoping you could talk a little bit about where you see current returns on incremental investments and kind of the importance of the hedge choice you make in that and how that factors into your view of the attractiveness of the market today?

A: Yes. Doug. So expected ROEs, hedged ROEs are in the 16% to 18% range. Obviously, a touch lower than where they were at the end of June, given the tightness in mortgage spreads. So over a short-term basis here, you can assume 8 tons of leverage and hedge to swaps. So that's also picking up the swap income. Now we are still constructive medium term, given the resumption of the normalization cycle and also because of spreads, while local types are still attractive over a longer time horizon. So if we see another 10 basis points of tightening, that could add about 4% in return on equity to that base case of 16% to 18% range for production coupon.

Q: I guess how do you think about what the outlook is for swap spreads? And then how do you think about the attractiveness if you looked at mortgage spreads on like an OIS basis?

A: Doug, this is Sergey. Yes. So swap spreads have also had a big move since September meeting. We think swap spreads will continue to normalize. If you look at some of the average prior to Liberation Day, we see 10-year swaps somewhere in the mid-30s, currently trading around 44%. So we've gone a long way from minus 60 earlier in Q2, and we feel like this is going to continue to be a tailwind for the portfolio as effect of more effective hedges to hedge MBS. Currently, we have about 87% notional allocated to SOFR and OIS swaps. So that's a good positioning. We will probably tailor it if we do get back to those averages, but a lot of things have been lining up to see balance sheet expansion as well as potentially the Fed looking at changing the target policy rate from the Fed funds to SOFR or another repo measure, and that will provide lower volatility to funding rates and potentially wider SOFR spreads as well. So a lot of tailwinds are lining up there.

Q: Scott, along with your prepared remarks, if the administration is actively looking for ways to reduce borrower rates via GSE deregulation, do you have any thoughts on what the actual implementation looks like, whether that's GP manipulation, changes in LLPAs, underwriting guidelines?

A: There are a lot of levers they could pull. And what knows we get a lot of levers pulled these days that we may or may not expect. So I think -- and I think that probably fits somewhere on their agenda. So the broad answer is yes. I think we could see a lot of things move around here. And particularly, if -- but particularly, I think you have to put it through the lens if they are thinking about a capital raise here for the GSEs. They're going to want to configure the GSEs to be as attractive a proposition as they can. So that may put the brakes on a couple of things as well. So there's a balance there I have no further insight into it other than just note that there are 2 competing things going there. One is undoubtedly, they'd like to see lower mortgage rates, but they also want to see the GSEs as an attractive investment proposition.

Q: Agree. That's helpful. And then noticing the hedge ratio ticked down quite a bit from Q2. Is that more of a timing issue? Or just along with the greater confidence in the pace of easing activity, you can be a bit more directional here?

A: There are a lot of things going on in that. Sergey, Desmond, maybe you want to give a little more color on that, but there's a lot that goes into the way that, that ratio in itself works. Sergey, Desmond, do you want to give a little more color on that?

Q: Yes, Jason. So I mean, the way we kind of look at hedges, it's really to hedge our duration across the entire curve, right? So as we said earlier, our duration of 0.2, we are taking a balanced view with a bias towards more Fed easing. So our goal is to -- most of that 0.2 duration is actually in the front end of the curve, whereas in the back end, we aim to stay flat. And ultimately, we move our hedges around to accomplish our duration targets across the curve.

Q: All right. There was a pretty significant drop in interest rate volatility in the third quarter, which had a carryover impact to MBS, obviously. Can you guys share your thoughts on kind of how you think volatility evolves going forward? And since it's being priced significantly lower today, how that factors into your -- the potential to maybe add some swaptions or options into the hedge portfolio?

A: Yes. Trevor. So in terms of volatility hedging, you can think of 2 approaches to it. One, obviously, is you can use swaptions. We have used swaptions in the past. We continue to look at hedges even those that are not in our balance sheet. But the other approach is actually through asset selection, right? So you can pick assets that have low optionality. About 40% of our book, as we said in our prepared remarks, is in shorter -- lower coupons and also DUS securities. And these actually have very low optionality and another benefit of these securities is that their convexity in some cases, is even positive. So they act as a good offset to the negative convexity that you see in our production coupons. Now one more point on volatility is that, yes, volatility has come down a lot so far this year. But if you expand the time scale if you go back and look at other periods that are similar to this one, you can pick 2019. That was a period when the Fed had resumed normalization. They had started [indiscernible] back -- not buying mortgage-backed securities. That period of time, volatility was actually lower than where they are right now. If you take, for example, obviously, it's an entire volatility surface, but if you look at the swaptions for 1 year by 10-year, today is about 82 basis points. The average over that period was about 64 basis points. So still we are still about 18 basis points higher. If the Fed continues normalization, we can expect that the tail risks around rates will become compressed. And for that reason, we can see volatility in the medium term continue to decline, right? Now that's not going to prevent short-term bouts of volatility. But over the medium term, we can see volatility decline. And if you are long options, then the valuation of options would decline if volatility declines. So yes, I mean, we always -- it's a very dynamic position. We're always looking at our hedges. But for now, we think just keeping low optionality assets is the better approach.

Q: Just one for me. Regarding economic net interest margin, it seems like it widened about 1 basis point quarter-over-quarter. Looking forward to year-end and maybe to halfway through 2026, what would we need to see for this trend to kind of continue and if not pick up pace?

A: Well, I guess you're going to -- it really depends on our portfolio and where continued cuts in the Fed rate, and that will imply how it impacts on our financing costs. And we think we've constructed a very good portfolio. And I think the returns that we're generating, I think, are reasonable under the circumstances. I don't know, Sergey and Desmond have other things to add to that what they think on the horizon, but we don't normally give too much forward-looking statements on where we think earnings are going to be in the future, but it's really going to be dependent on how fast the rates cut and also how the market reacts to that. But we think we've constructed a very good portfolio for the future.

Q: Maybe following up on some of this conversation here. I mean what do you think is priced into MBS spreads with respect to the Fed cutting rates? Like right now, it looks like there's 125 basis points of cuts priced into the forward curve through the end of next year. Do you feel like spreads would widen if those expectations got walked back for any reason? And do you feel like spreads would actually have room to tighten once they actually deliver those cuts?

A: Eric, this is Sergey. Yes, to both. Definitely, a pause in the easing cycle or something that would cause them to walk back their projections would be a potential source of volatility in the market. But in terms of delivering cuts to the market, I think a lot of the bank demand will get unlocked there. If you look at the current coupon mortgages versus yields on money markets or T-bills, it's compressed again over the course of the year, closer to 100 basis points. So I think as we get closer to 152% on the spread of mortgage yields versus cash you start to see more and more engagement from other players in the market that we've seen -- we haven't seen as much demand as expected earlier this year. So I think that kind of answers yes to both scenarios. And we note in our prepared remarks that spreads have tightened significantly over the course of the quarter. We do see upside, but I think it's overall macro picture, the lack of government economic data coming through that's given us a little bit of pause here. But over a medium-term horizon, that's a clear positive for -- to have lower Fed funds rates.

Q: The move to raise capital and buy back stock in the quarter, can you kind of share the rough level of your stock valuation when you did those transactions? And like what's the best way to compare the value from having done each of those deals, transactions?

A: Yes. So Gordon will maybe give me the -- if you can pull up the level where we bought back. But look, we're committed to being on both sides. And when we get a dislocation, we'll buy back some stock. And when we see good valuations, we'll sell stock. Stock buybacks are always fraught because they happen when a bunch of other things are going on, and it's always expensive to get the stock back out there as well. But we had a pretty good spread between where we executed both of those. Gordon, do you have those numbers to hand?

Q: Yes, I know offhand, we -- when we did the buybacks, it was about a couple of cents accretive on the days, and it was in the 14 -- just get you the right number. Got it. We were buying it back at -- yes, it was in the [ $14.40 ] handle around that on the days that averaged out. So you can see we've bounced back since those days and we bought back the stock.