Sachem Capital Corp. (AMEX:SACH) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

John Warch: Just to add to that, I’ll apologize for my voice, I’ve kind of lost it. We work hard on the way in to make sure we have enough collateral and we constantly look at the values if we have to take a property back. We also, during our annual audit, prove that the values we’re carrying are holding and that we don’t have to take any more write-downs. And you see over time, we haven’t really taken anything significantly. So I think we do a really good job with underwriting and making sure that if we have to take it back, and that’s not the initial intent, that we’re very well covered protecting our investment.

Operator: Our next question is from Gaurav Mehta with EF Hutton.

Gaurav Mehta: I was hoping if you could provide some more color on your loan pipeline, how much is the dollar volume and what is it comprised of?

John Villano: Our pipeline is staggering. It’s probably at least $100 million. While most of these deals will not be funded by us, at least in this environment. It gives us the ability to cherry pick what we think are the best deals in the best locations. Right now, we are seeing loans from all over the country. There is a lot of fear in the lending business. People are pulling back. Borrowers with commitments of being hung out to dry by their bankers or other lenders. And those deals are coming here. So our pipeline is unbelievably strong even at higher pricing points, and we are cherry picking what we feel are the best of the bunch.

Gaurav Mehta: Okay. In the press release, you also talked about your focus on enhancing your underwriting standards and limiting the terms on the new loans. Can you provide some more color on that, like what’s the — what’s the expecting new term on the loan? And what kind of enhancements you guys are doing?

John Villano: So what we’ve — for many — from a few years back, our underwriting standards at the moment are truly institutional quality. I’ll put up our underwriting process against anyone. And this is a big change from where this company has started and where it’s come from. And part of it is in direct relation to what the market has been doing. So as the market was scaling higher over the past couple of years, we increased our diligence. And now that we feel that the market may have peaked, we are further increasing our diligence looking for sources of cash and deals, pulling some professionals into the construction finance components, doing significant more in the form of background in credit. We’re basically beefing up our back office, knowing that where we could be heading into a troubled environment, and we also know that our borrowers and developers can also be running into trouble, and we need to see that before they tell us.

Gaurav Mehta: Okay. And actually on the loans in foreclosure, just to clarify, did you say 8.8% of the loans are in foreclosure or active management?

John Villano: That is correct. So part of that is an initiative on our end to clean some of the smaller loans from our portfolio. If you remember, in the past, we were a truly small balanced commercial lender. We had loans as small as $50,000 or $100,000. We are not cutting those borrowers any slack at the moment. We’re trying to enhance and upgrade our minimums with respect to the loans that we do. And again, these are — the Street doesn’t like to see this, but I’ve got to be perfectly honest when I see this every quarter, Sachem makes a whole lot of money in a default process. We’re not proud that they happen, but we are well protected in the form of our loan documentation. We’re well protected in our collateral. And in the end, there are significant pricing advantages and profit advantages for us as a company.