Ellington Financial, Inc. (NYSE:EFC) Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call February 27, 2024 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Alaael-Deen Shilleh - Associate General Counsel and Secretary

Laurence Penn - President and CEO

Mark Tecotzky - Co-Chief Investment Officer

JR Herlihy - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Crispin Love - Piper Sandler

Trevor Cranston - JMP Securities

Bose George - Keefe, Bruyette and Woods

Lee Cooperman - Omega Family Office

Matthew Howlett - B. Riley Securities

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Ellington Financial Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2023 Earnings Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, all participants have been placed in listen-only mode. The floor will be opened for your questions following the presentation. [Operator Instructions]. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Alaael-Deen Shilleh. You may begin.

Alaael-Deen Shilleh

Thank you. Before we start, I would like to remind everyone that certain statements made during this conference call may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are non-historical in nature.

As described under Item 1A of our annual report on Form 10-K and Part 2 Item 1A of our quarterly report on Form 10-Q, forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause the company's actual results to differ from its beliefs, expectations, estimates and projections. Consequently, you should not rely on these forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. Statements made during this conference call are made as of the date of this call. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

I am joined on the call today by Larry Penn, Chief Executive Officer of Ellington Financial; Mark Tecotzky, Co-Chief Investment Officer of EFC; and JR Herlihy, Chief Financial Officer of EFC. As described in our earnings press release, our fourth quarter earnings conference call presentation is available on our website at ellingtonfinancial.com. Management's prepared remarks will track the presentation. Please note that any references to figures in the presentation are qualified in their entirety by the end notes at the back of the presentation.

With that, I will now turn the call over to Larry.

Laurence Penn

Thanks, Alaael-Deen and good morning, everyone. As always, thank you for your time and interest in Ellington Financial. I'll begin on Slide 3 of the presentation. For the fourth quarter, we reported net income of $0.18 per share from a GAAP perspective, while our adjusted distributable earnings were $0.27 per share. From an economic return perspective, strong performance from our residential transition loan portfolio and our agency and non-agency MBS didn't quite offset merger-related dilution and expenses together with net losses from Longbridge and other positions, leading to a small negative economic return overall for the quarter.