MFA Financial MFA Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Date

Wednesday, February 18, 2026 at 11:00 a.m. ET

Call participants

• Chief Executive Officer — Craig L. Knutson
• President and Chief Investment Officer — Bryan Wulfsohn
• Chief Financial Officer — Michael C. Roper

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Takeaways

• GAAP Book Value -- $13.20 per share at period-end, described as "up modestly from September."
• Economic Book Value -- $13.75 per share at December 31, stated as "up modestly from September" and estimated to have risen an additional 3% after quarter-end.
• GAAP Net Income -- $54.3 million, or $0.42 per basic common share, for the quarter.
• Net Interest Income -- $55.5 million for the quarter, versus $56.8 million prior quarter, attributed primarily to lower yields on legacy RPL/NPL loans and interest reversals from increased nonaccruals in the multifamily transitional portfolio, offset by increased Agency MBS and Non-QM income.
• Distributable Earnings -- $27.8 million, or $0.27 per share for the quarter, an increase from $0.20 per share last quarter due to $0.09 lower credit-related charges and partially offset by $0.03 lower REO gain.
• Common Dividend -- $0.36 per share for the quarter; $1.44 for the full year, with 40% of the 2025 dividend classified as return of capital.
• Total Economic Return -- 3.19% for the quarter; 9% for the full year, with total shareholder return of 6% for the year.
• G&A Expenses -- $27 million for the quarter, down from about $29 million prior quarter; $119.4 million for the year, down from $131.9 million prior year, reflecting a 9.5% decrease.
• Asset Purchases -- $1.9 billion of loans and securities acquired in the quarter, including $1.2 billion in Agencies, $443 million of Non-QM loans, and $226 million of business purpose loans from Lima One.
• Agency MBS Portfolio -- Increased over 50% during the quarter to $3.3 billion, with focus on "low pay-up spec pools" and 5.5s generally purchased at or below par.
• Non-QM Portfolio -- $5.3 billion whole loan portfolio, with $443 million new acquisitions at average 7.3% coupon and LTV just below 69.
• Delinquencies -- Ended year at "just over 7%," down from 7.5% prior year, but up 30 basis points in the quarter due to defaults in the legacy multifamily portfolio; legacy assets held at $42 million discount to par at year-end.
• Lima One Results -- Originated $226 million of new loans, produced $5.7 million mortgage banking income, and recognized $1.4 million gain-on-sale from $45 million term loan sales; added 45 salespeople, launched a wholesale channel, and is relaunching multifamily lending in 2026.
• Preferred Stock Activity -- Sold approximately 163,000 Series C and 53,000 Series B shares, raising $5 million to repurchase about 540,000 common shares at an average 33% discount to economic book value; Board reauthorized the program following prior expiration.
• Callable Securitized Debt -- $2.3 billion currently callable; management indicated material delevering with intentions to "calling and reissuing" as a significant 2026 liquidity source.
• Non-QM Securitization -- Issued $424 million in new bonds at 5.26% average cost during the quarter.
• Run-Rate ROE Outlook -- Management indicated distributable earnings before credit charges were in the "8% to 9%" range, with an expectation for run-rate between "10%, 10.5%, 11%" as credit provisions diminish later in 2026.

Summary

Management described 2025 as a year of notable macro stabilization, highlighted by a steeper yield curve, lower rates, and decreased volatility, which are characterized as supportive for the residential mortgage sector. Sizable new deployment of $100 million in excess cash and nearly $2 billion of acquired assets, including a major expansion of the Agency portfolio, were explicitly cited as drivers of future earnings and ROE growth. Explicit progress on expense control, a renewed buyback program funded via preferred issuance, and a strategic focus on callable securitization liquidity were detailed as ongoing actions poised to enhance shareholder value in 2026.

• Management framed current government support measures, including the GSEs’ $200 billion Agency MBS initiative and expectations for rate cuts, as market tailwinds for the coming year.
• "A number of us visited Greenville in late January to attend Lima’s Annual Meeting, and the energy and enthusiasm at Lima One is palpable," providing qualitative context for anticipated Lima One growth contributions.
• Operational initiatives at Lima One—expanded sales force, wholesale channel, and multifamily relaunch—were rolled out with timing signals highlighting impact ramping later in the year.
• "we expect our DE to reconverge with our common dividend in 2026," confirming a return toward greater dividend coverage via distributable earnings.
• Management cited ongoing strategic focus on redeploying capital from delinquency resolutions and callable structures into mid-teens ROE assets.

Industry glossary

• Non-QM: Non-qualified mortgage; home loans that do not meet Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) qualified mortgage underwriting standards, often targeting self-employed or nontraditional borrowers.
• RPL/NPL: Re-performing loans / Non-performing loans; mortgage loans that have resumed payment status after delinquency (RPL) or are still delinquent (NPL).
• Agency MBS: Mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by government-sponsored enterprises such as Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.
• Business Purpose Loans (BPL): Loans provided for real estate investment purposes (e.g., fix-and-flip, rental property acquisition) rather than for owner-occupied homes.
• Economic Book Value: Management’s estimate of per-share value reflecting fair value adjustments and inclusive of current market pricing for portfolio assets and liabilities.
• Distributable Earnings (DE): A non-GAAP metric used by mortgage REITs to represent cash earnings available for dividends, before certain unrealized gains or losses.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Craig L. Knutson. Thank you, Harold.

Craig L. Knutson: Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for MFA Financial, Inc.’s fourth quarter and year-end 2025 earnings call. With me today are Bryan Wulfsohn, our President and Chief Investment Officer, Michael C. Roper, our CFO, and other members of our senior management team. I will begin with some general remarks on 2025, touch on the macro and political landscapes, and then provide an update on MFA Financial, Inc.’s initiatives to foster earnings growth and increase ROEs. I will then turn the call over to Mike, followed by Bryan, before we open up for questions. After three very difficult years for fixed income investors, 2025 felt like an exit from a dark tunnel. The Bloomberg U.S.

Aggregate Index was up 7.3% in 2025 after being down 7.1% for the prior three years—just under 2.5% annually. Following a 100 basis point cut in the Fed Funds rate via three rate cuts in the last three months of 2024, we had to wait nine months until September 2025 for the next rate cut, which was quickly followed by two more in October and December. Treasury rates also declined during the year, with two-year yields dropping 77 basis points and ten-year yields dropping by 39 basis points. More importantly, the two-ten spread steepened from 32 basis points at the beginning of the year to 70 basis points at the end of the year.

This positively sloped yield curve, while perhaps somewhat modest, is a welcome change from the environment we faced from 2022 to 2024. Additionally, volatility has declined. The MOVE Index began 2025 at just under 100, 98.8, before briefly spiking after Liberation Day in early April to almost 140 and then trended down for the succeeding months, ending the year at just under 64. To put this in context, the MOVE Index was above 100 for almost the entirety of 2022, 2023, and 2024. The combination of lower rates, lower volatility, and a positively sloped yield curve are all favorable for the mortgage market and for our business.

With recent developments in Washington, D.C., and a strong focus on housing affordability, it seems likely that government policy, while certainly never certain, will continue to be supportive for our markets. The recent initiative for the GSEs to buy $200 billion of Agency MBS, the nomination of a new Fed Chair, the expectation of further rate cuts later in 2026, and the repeated mantra of “do no harm” with respect to the mortgage market are all constructive for our market and for our business. We are excited about 2026 as we start the year with these tailwinds at our back. In 2025, MFA Financial, Inc. continued to execute on our strategic initiatives to cap off a solid year of performance.

Our total economic return in the fourth quarter was 3.19%. For the full year of 2025, total shareholder return for the year was 6%. During our last earnings call in November, I provided details on several strategic actions that we were initiating to increase earnings and grow ROEs over the coming year. I am happy to report material progress on these fronts. While the results will take several quarters to be fully reflected in our financials, the building blocks are in place. As discussed on our last call, we have deployed over $100 million of excess cash into our target assets in order to reduce the cash drag on earnings.

We acquired $1.9 billion of loans and securities in the fourth quarter, including $1.2 billion of Agencies purchased early in the quarter, $443 million of Non-QM loans, and Lima One also originated $226 million of new business purpose loans in Q4. We have highlighted the underappreciated optionality in our outstanding securitization ladder for quite some time now. With a constructive rate environment and tight securitization spreads, we believe we will have significant opportunity to call some of these deals and relever the underlying loans, reducing our cost of funds while also generating incremental cash to redeploy. We are also excited about the prospects for 2026 at Lima One. We hired 45 new salespeople in 2025.

We are debuting a new wholesale channel, and we are relaunching multifamily lending in 2026. In addition, we have rolled out several best-in-class technology platforms to enhance the borrower experience and drive operational efficiencies at Lima. The results of these initiatives are not immediate, but we again feel that the building blocks are in place. A number of us visited Greenville in late January to attend Lima’s Annual Meeting, and the energy and enthusiasm at Lima One is palpable. Growth at Lima One in 2026, we believe, will contribute materially to MFA Financial, Inc.’s earnings. We continue to work diligently to resolve delinquent loans in the portfolio.

This can be maddeningly time-consuming, but our team has been working out delinquent loans for over a decade, the majority of which, by the way, were purchased as non-performing loans. Our team is the best in the business at this and uniquely suited to the task. We resolved over $150 million of delinquent loans in the fourth quarter, unlocking substantial capital to be redeployed at mid-teen ROEs. We made substantial progress in reducing G&A expenses, both at Lima and at MFA Financial, Inc. 2025 G&A was $119 million, down from $132 million in 2024.

Many of these actions take some time to be realized, depending on when in the year they occur, and whether or not there are severance expenses associated with them. We are confident that we will continue to make progress on expense reductions in 2026. Finally, our listeners will recall that we began a program in 2025 to issue additional shares of our two preferred stock issues via an ATM and use the proceeds to repurchase our common stock at a significant discount to book. The stock buyback authorization expired at the end of last year, but our Board has reauthorized this program.

We expect that we will continue to utilize these two programs when the trading window opens after we file our 10-Ks. While this program is modest in size thus far, this is very accretive and, importantly, because we are issuing equity in the form of preferred stock, we are not shrinking our equity base despite repurchasing common stock. In the aggregate, we believe we are taking meaningful, active measures to materially increase earnings and ROEs. We expect to begin to see these results in 2026. I will now turn the call over to Michael C. Roper to discuss the financial results. Thanks, Craig, and good morning, everyone.

At December 31, GAAP book value was $13.20 per share and economic book value was $13.75 per share.

Michael C. Roper: Each up modestly from September. For the quarter, MFA Financial, Inc. again paid a common dividend of $0.36 and delivered a total economic return of 3.1%.

Craig L. Knutson: For the full year, MFA Financial, Inc. paid common dividends of $1.44 and delivered a total economic return of approximately 9%.

Michael C. Roper: We were happy to report in late January that approximately 40% of our 2025 common dividends were treated as a tax-deferred return of capital to our shareholders. This is the sixth straight year that a substantial portion of our common dividend was treated as a nontaxable distribution. This preferential tax treatment is the result of meticulous tax planning and a significant fully reserved deferred tax asset that gives us additional flexibility to efficiently structure transactions to minimize or defer tax burdens for our shareholders. Though there can be no assurances about the tax treatment of future distributions,

Craig L. Knutson: this favorable tax treatment has substantially increased the after-tax dividend yield realized by holders of our common stock. Switching back to our results, for the fourth quarter, MFA Financial, Inc. generated GAAP earnings of $54.3 million, or $0.42 per basic common share.

Michael C. Roper: Net interest income for the quarter was $55.5 million, a modest decline from $56.8 million in the third quarter, driven primarily by lower yields on our legacy RPL/NPL loan portfolio

Craig L. Knutson: and interest reversals associated with increased nonaccrual loans in our multifamily transitional loan portfolio.

Michael C. Roper: These declines were largely offset by higher interest income on both Agency MBS and Non-QM loans as a result of our significant asset purchases during the quarter. In the fourth quarter, we again improved our operational efficiency with further progress on our expense reduction initiatives.

Craig L. Knutson: Quarterly G&A expenses totaled $27 million, a $2 million decline from approximately $29 million last quarter. For the full year, G&A expenses were $119.4 million versus $131.9 million in 2024,

Michael C. Roper: a decline of approximately 9.5%, at the high end of the 7% to 10% reduction we had previewed earlier this year. We continue to make progress on additional initiatives that we expect will bring further reductions to our run-rate expenses during 2026.

Craig L. Knutson: Distributable earnings for the fourth quarter were approximately $27.8 million, or $0.27 per share, an increase from $0.20 per share in the third quarter.

Michael C. Roper: The increase was primarily attributable to $0.09 of lower credit-related charges, which were partially offset by $0.03 of lower gains from sales of REO during the quarter. We continue to see progress from our efforts to grow our return on equity, and we expect our DE to reconverge with our common dividend in 2026.

Craig L. Knutson: Moving to our capital.

Michael C. Roper: As Craig alluded to, during the quarter, we sold approximately 163,000 shares of our Series C preferred stock and approximately 53,000 shares of our Series B preferred stock for cumulative proceeds of approximately $5 million. We used these proceeds to repurchase approximately 540,000 shares of

Craig L. Knutson: our common stock at a weighted average discount to our economic book value of approximately 33%.

Michael C. Roper: Given current market conditions and the trading level of our common stock, we expect to continue to issue preferred shares and repurchase our common shares as a way to enhance returns to our common shareholders without sacrificing scale.

Craig L. Knutson: Finally, subsequent to quarter-end,

Michael C. Roper: we estimate that our economic book value has increased by approximately 3% since the end of the year. I would now like to turn the call over to Bryan Wulfsohn.

Craig L. Knutson: Bryan will discuss our investment portfolio and Lima One.

Michael C. Roper: Thanks, Mike. We acquired nearly $2 billion of residential mortgage assets in the fourth quarter. As Craig mentioned, this included $1.2 billion of Agency securities, $443 million of Non-QM loans, and $226 million of business purpose loans originated by Lima One. We grew our Agency book by over 50% to $3.3 billion during the quarter. Most of our investments were made in late October before spreads tightened significantly. We continue to focus on low pay-up spec pools that offer some prepaid protection. Our Agency portfolio is comprised mostly of 5.5s purchased at par or at a slight discount to par.

We have slowed purchases since the tightening that occurred in late 2025 and especially into the year after the President’s directive to the GSEs to buy mortgage bonds.

Operator: That said,

Michael C. Roper: it still remains possible to generate a low double-digit ROE on levered Agency investments, and we may buy more depending on capital needs elsewhere in the business. Our Non-QM whole loan portfolio remains our biggest asset class at $5.3 billion, and we had another successful quarter sourcing, buying, managing, and securitizing Non-QM loans. We acquired $443 million of new loans with an average coupon of 7.3% and an LTV just shy of 69. We remain laser-focused on credit quality. We buy loans from only select counterparties and still review every loan prior to acquisition. Turning to Lima One, Lima originated $226 million of new loans in the fourth quarter.

This included $83 million of new construction loans, $48 million of rehab loans, $25 million of bridge loans, and $70 million of rental term loans. We continue to sell Lima’s production of those longer-duration rental loans at a premium to third-party investors. This quarter, we sold $45 million, generating $1.4 million of gain-on-sale income. Lima as a whole produced $5.7 million of mortgage banking income. Although origination volume was lower in the fourth quarter due to seasonality, we continue to make progress positioning Lima for growth. We are relaunching multifamily lending with an entirely new underwriting team, and our wholesale channel is now live.

We also made further investments in Lima’s sales force and technology capabilities and expect all of these efforts to bear fruit in 2026. Moving to our credit performance, we made good progress throughout 2025 resolving non-performing loans on our balance sheet. The delinquency rate across our entire loan portfolio ended the year at just over 7%, down from 7.5% a year ago. We did see a 30 basis point increase during the fourth quarter, which was driven primarily by several defaults in our legacy multifamily portfolio.

As a reminder, we have been actively managing the runoff of that book for the past two years, and as we start to approach the tail of that process, we expect the delinquency rate in the legacy portfolio to remain elevated, particularly as loans pay off and its overall size continues to decline. It is important to note that these assets are accounted for at fair value, and the remaining loans were held at a $42 million discount to par at year-end. We will continue to work hard to wrap up the resolution of that book.

Operator: Finally, moving to our financing.

Michael C. Roper: We issued our twenty-first Non-QM securitization in December, selling $424 million of bonds at an average cost of 5.26%. Securitization spreads have tightened in recent months and remain highly attractive for regular issuers such as ourselves.

Craig L. Knutson: I would once again like to thank many of our investors who have consistently supported

Michael C. Roper: our Non-QM program and look forward to seeing some of you at the conference next week. As Craig highlighted earlier, given the recent movement in credit spreads, we continue to

Craig L. Knutson: look to relever some of our securitizations in the months ahead. We currently have $2.3 billion of currently callable securitized debt

Bryan Wulfsohn: outstanding, which in some instances has materially delevered since issuance. We expect that calling and reissuing deals will be a significant source of liquidity for us in 2026 and will unlock appreciable equity to be deployed in our target assets in the months ahead. And with that, we will turn the call over to the operator for questions.

Operator: Thank you. We will now open for questions. If you would like to ask a question, please press the appropriate key, and ensure that your line is in the question queue. Your first question comes from Bose Thomas George with KBW. Please state your question.

Bryan Wulfsohn: Hey guys, good morning. You—can you just talk about where you see the run-rate ROE on your EAD once these loss provisions are through? And then

Doug Harter: you remind us also, like, there is capital that is tied up with the delinquent loans—how much that is going to sort of contribute to that number as well?

Michael C. Roper: Hey, Bose. Thanks for the question.

Craig L. Knutson: So I guess a few things. One, it is kind of hard to predict, obviously, when exactly these credit losses will be realized. Bryan alluded to in his remarks that we hold a multifamily transitional loan

Michael C. Roper: portfolio at a $42 million discount to par. And

Craig L. Knutson: given the short duration of those assets, we expect that most of that is attributable to what is eventually going to flush as credit losses through IDE. I think if you think about DE on a lossless basis or DE before credit charges, I think this year, it was in the 8% to 9% range. And I think as we get to the back half of next year,

Michael C. Roper: certainly closer to that 10%, 10.5%, 11% range is sort of the run-rate.

Craig L. Knutson: Obviously, we have done a lot of work. And as Craig alluded to, both last time and this time, a number of initiatives take some time to flush through. But if you think about the dividend on our book value, it is about 10.5%. And as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we expect the DE to reconverge with the level of the dividend in 2026.

Doug Harter: Okay. Great. That is helpful. Thanks. And then can you just discuss the reentry into the multifamily market? Are you focusing on different loan types or is the underwriting process different? Just—yeah, can you just talk about the 2.0 version versus the older version?

Bryan Wulfsohn: Sure. So we are sort of targeting up in quality a little bit and up in unit size and value size. So when you think about the prior instance, average loan amounts might have been between $3 million and $10 million. Now we are sort of targeting between $5 million and $25 million. So moving up a tier or two in quality. And sort of the idea behind the program is it is similar to the rental loans. It is an originate-to-sell model, so to sort of capture the origination fees and then capture some servicing fee on the back end. Not necessarily to put on MFA Financial, Inc.’s balance sheet.

Doug Harter: Okay. Great. Thank you.

Michael C. Roper: Thanks, Bose.

Operator: Thank you. And your next question comes from Doug Harter with UBS. Please state your question.

Doug Harter: Thanks, and good morning. As you think about the deals that are

Bryan Wulfsohn: potential—could potentially be called, how do you think about the returns you are generating on that capital today and where that could be redeployed into? So in terms of—it is really depending on the deal, right? We still could be generating a mid-teen type return on that deal. But in addition, we can unlock, you know, say incremental whatever, $10 million to $20 million to $30 million of liquidity sort of per deal that can then be reinvested at our target ROEs of sort of the mid-teens. So it really is—you think about it as the existing deal is $15 million, then add another $30 million or $40 million of additional equity that can be redeployed to earn another 15%.

So it is all sort of additive.

Doug Harter: Got it. And how should we think about the sizing? I mean, you mentioned the large potential

Steven Cole Delaney: that could be called. How should we think about timing and, you know, the magnitude that you guys could get done this year?

Bryan Wulfsohn: So, I mean, realistically, we could get done several deals within the coming quarters, which could unlock sort of, say, $50 million to $100 million of capital that can then be redeployed. So this year,

Jason Michael Stewart: activity.

Steven Cole Delaney: Great.

Jason Michael Stewart: Appreciate it. Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from Steven Cole Delaney with JonesTrading. Please state your question.

Bryan Wulfsohn: Hey, good morning, thanks for taking the question.

Jason Michael Stewart: As you guys went into Agency during this quarter, how should we think about capital allocation going forward, you know, as you guys do start to call some of these securities, you know, resolve some of the loans and just get capital back? So the expectation is

Bryan Wulfsohn: given the tightening that we have seen in Agencies, we will probably tend to target over time into the Non-QM and BPL asset classes. You cannot just necessarily go out and buy, you know, a billion dollars in loans in a day. So, initially, you may see some investments, you know, increase in the Agency portfolio, which would then sort of wind down over time and transfer into the Non-QM and BPL

Jason Michael Stewart: space. Got it. That is helpful. And then, you know, kind of switching gears to the rental product now. With what has come out of the administration—the potential institutional ban—what kind of clients are you guys dealing with, and would that have kind of any impact on your day-to-day

Bryan Wulfsohn: you know, it is pretty unclear whether anything is going to happen. But we do not lend to the largest buyers of single-family homes to rent. So, you know, we do believe sort of whatever comes of this, theoretically, could be an opportunity for the more mom-and-pop to absorb some more market share, which could be beneficial to Lima One from a lending perspective. But it is still—you know, it is very unclear what will come of this.

Jason Michael Stewart: Right. Right. That is helpful. Appreciate the comments, guys.

Craig L. Knutson: Thanks, Matthew.

Operator: Your next question comes from Eric J. Hagen with BTIG. Please state your question.

Doug Harter: Hey, thanks. Good morning.

Bryan Wulfsohn: The move to issue preferred and buy back the common—can you say which series of the preferred that you are issuing?

Jason Michael Stewart: Then more holistically, like, how do you think about the shape of the capital structure and the right mix of preferred versus common right now? Yes. Eric, thanks for the question. So during the quarter, we did about 160,000 of the C, about 50,000 of the B. And if you think about the issuance, we are selling more of the C pretty regularly. As far as the capital structure, certainly there is room in the structure to add more preferred.

Craig L. Knutson: But, you know, that market has been somewhat closed for a while now,

Jason Michael Stewart: but, you know, given this is an ATM program, it is easy to issue at the margin. But, definitely, if the market becomes more attractive, we would be capable of adding additional preferred to the capital stack.

Jason Price Weaver: Got it.

Steven Cole Delaney: Okay. That is helpful.

Doug Harter: Following up on the resecuritization opportunity, I mean, how tight do Non-QM spreads

Jason Michael Stewart: really need to be in order for you to see a benefit? Is there a way to sensitize the opportunity relative to where Non-QM spreads are currently? Does that opportunity necessarily go away if spreads are wider, or is there still

Steven Cole Delaney: some capital that you can draw out of that portfolio even if spreads are a little wider than they are today?

Bryan Wulfsohn: So there are sort of two reasons the opportunity exists. One is that spreads are attractive in a lot of cases to reissue. However, just the natural delevering that occurs in the structure also creates opportunity. So it is just sort of an equation and, you know, spreads—it probably still works if spreads are even 25, 30, 40, 50 wider, depending on the amount of delevering that has occurred in a deal. There might be, you know, one or two deals at the margin that are more attractive to do given that spreads are tighter. But realistically, it does not change materially if there was a widening in spreads from here.

Jason Price Weaver: Right.

Steven Cole Delaney: Gotcha.

Jason Price Weaver: Thank you guys very much. Thanks, Eric. Thanks, Eric.

Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from Mikhail Goberman with Citizens JMP. Please state your question.

Jason Michael Stewart: Hey, good morning, guys. Hope everyone is doing well. Just

Steven Cole Delaney: swinging it back to Lima One real quick.

Jason Michael Stewart: What are you guys’ expectations for margins holding up throughout the year,

Doug Harter: total volumes throughout the year, and how that sort of product mix is going to develop as you add in the wholesale and multifamily

Bryan Wulfsohn: lending? Thank you. Yes. I mean, in terms of margins, we are seeing healthy spreads when you think about the potential issuance of RTL securitization versus where coupons are today on a short-term loan. So it might be sort of a low-5 handle cost of funds, and rates on new loans are somewhere between 8% to 11%. So there is a very healthy spread there when you think about ROEs. When we look towards the loan sale pipeline of term loans, given the demand, given where spreads have gone, we have seen significant premiums.

If you sort of look at where it was in the last quarter—sort of north of 101 to 103—we are sort of still seeing that type today in the market based upon mid- to high-6s coupons that are originated. So that continues to be attractive. When we think about sort of the volumes of this year, we would project sort of—

Jason Michael Stewart: you know—

Bryan Wulfsohn: we think there is a lot of potential for growth, given that we did sort of zero in the way of multifamily and did not really have a wholesale channel in the prior year. So we think there is sort of opportunity for incremental growth, and it could be material growth throughout the year. But these things are sort of just coming online in the first quarter, and it takes some time for them to get up to speed. So we do think it is more of a back half of the year where we see that incremental growth.

So it is unclear what actually we will see for the full year 2026, but I think the run-rate will be materially higher in the back half.

Michael C. Roper: Thank you very much. That is very helpful.

Jason Price Weaver: Thank—

Operator: you. And there are no further questions at this time. I will now hand the floor back to Craig L. Knutson for closing remarks.

Craig L. Knutson: All right. Thank you, everyone, for your interest in MFA Financial, Inc. We look forward to speaking with you again in May when we announce our first quarter results.

Operator: Thank you. This concludes today’s call. All parties may disconnect.

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