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

Operator: Our next question comes from Rick Shane with JPMorgan. Please state your question.

Rick Shane: Thanks everybody for taking my questions. I want to talk a little bit about how to think of the residential mortgage banking income line and the loss in the fourth quarter. I’m assuming that because of the execution, that some of that was mark-to-market from pipeline from the third quarter, and I’m wondering with the Sequoia sale in the first quarter, if some of that sort of been reversed, I’m just trying to understand the locks and the purchases and the fundings and the timing of everything.

Dash Robinson: Sure, Rick. It’s Dash. I can take that. You are right. It was largely the resi mortgage banking outcomes for Q4 were largely a result of the mark-to-market on the book we held at 9/30. As we noted, we locked a little over $40 million of loans in Q4, so the position did not move meaningfully between 9/30 and the end of the year. So, the revenue outcomes for residential mortgages banking were really a result of just spread widening in the market. You are right. And some of Brooks’ commentary on book value also includes an improvement in the carrying value of the pipeline here in January and in the early part of the year, half of which has been realized through the Sequoia deal that we executed. So the position since 9/30 has been fairly easy to trace just because we added to it barely in Q4. And you are right, much of that has reversed thus far in January with the Sequoia execution and the prospects as Chris said of doing another one.

Rick Shane: Got it. And again, looking at the loan sales in the fourth quarter, it was only $131 million. So there was presumably a realized loss on the $131 million, but the remainder whatever the outcome is on the Sequoia transaction, we will see in a few months.

Christopher Abate: Yes. I mean, whether it was mark-to-market adjustments or realized losses, we reflected the value of that pipe at December 31st. And I think that is the right way to think about it. Since then, things have firmed up quite a bit in resi. We wanted — we anticipated that and we prepared to issue that transaction right out of the gate. So it was a successful deal. And those again are some of the green shoots we did see in that space with investor demand, especially back for AAAs to feel confident to really lean into our rate sheets. Because ultimately, we control the volumes, it’s just a matter of all the pieces coming together around inventories and volatility.

Rick Shane: Got it. Okay. Thank you. Look, there are a lot of moving parts here, but at the end of the day, the economics at Redwood are really determined by credit performance. You have alluded to related to the securities portfolio, no deterioration, no variance versus model. Can you talk a little bit and provide some additional insight in terms of what you are seeing, pockets of strength, pockets of weakness in residential mortgage credit at this point, from a credit perspective?

Christopher Abate: Yes. I mean, I’ll touch on consumer resi quickly and then Dash can touch on BPL because at the end of the day all of our businesses are, as you said, somehow tethered to resi credit. Our consumer resi book, which is our traditional jumbo, our expanded line and our RPLs, our performing loan book, just continues to perform remarkably well. Delinquencies have been essentially flat and in many cases declining. These are largely season loans, most of which have participated in significant HPA over the past few years. Looking at some numbers, our select book our estimate for average HPA adjusted LTV is under 40. Choice is around 40, just over 40 and the RPL book is in the mid-40s. So when you think about our embedded discounts there, which again for select is 28 million choices 34 and RPLs 278.