Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Modelling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – Part V

In Parts I to IV of this sequence I explained where the losses already realised at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac came from – and where future losses might come from. I showed that the companies have almost reached reserve adequacy – a conclusion diametrically opposed to the consensus view that these companies are hopelessly insolvent even to the point that they threaten US government solvency. On losses the consensus appears to be simply wrong.

In this post I show how the revenue of the GSEs is up very sharply.

No competition

As far as Fannie and Freddie are concerned, the best thing about the mortgage crisis is that these institutions are now the whole market. The private sector market in US mortgages has almost entirely disappeared. They are even allowed now to do jumbo mortgages.

Lack of competition means fat margins – and just as the revenue at Bank of America rose sharply during the crisis so does the revenue at the GSEs.

Here is the quarterly sequence of net interest income for Freddie Mac. The numbers for Fannie are similar…

Quarter

Net interest margin ($ millions)

2007 Q4

774

2008 Q1

798

2008 Q2

1529

2008 Q3

1844

2008 Q4

2625

2009 Q1

3859

2009 Q2

4255

The growth in these numbers is breathtaking. Operating costs are roughly flat. You would think they are rising because foreclosure and credit management (which costs Freddie money). However I suspect that those costs are offset by lower bonus payments to staff and similar costs.

But with flat costs and revenue rising like this Fannie and Freddie are much more profitable on a pre-tax, pre-provision basis.

Not all of this growth in profit is sustainable. A bit is reversal of previously booked losses on derivative hedging instruments. (I explained this reversal in Part II and the explanation is technical – I do not feel the need to repeat the explanation here.)

Further Freddie Mac in particular has been an astoundingly good judge of when to hedge out duration risk. I wrote a post a while back about just how good Freddie’s trading has been. The seemingly superior interest rate risk management at Freddie has continued – though I would not bank on profits from that being permanent.

That said – the pre-tax, pre-provision profits at Freddie are probably going to run about $15 billion per year for a while. Much of that increase will be long-lasting as private sector competition in the mortgage market is not going to return rapidly – and so margins should remain fat. That $15 billion per year can offset an awful lot of losses.

What it means for the future of Freddie and Fannie is the subject of the next post.

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Modelling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – Part IV

This blog is reprinted on Talking Point Memo. In that format the post is unreadable unless you click the permalink. The tables are too wide – and have prompted a reformat of my home blog.

In the last post I introduced readers to cumulative default curves. In this post I am going to create a naïve (but surprisingly robust) model of end losses using those cumulative default curves. Later posts are going to detail the limitations of this model and what (if anything) allows me to attest to the model’s accuracy...

Also I am going to use only the cumulative default curves up until December 2008. There are a couple of reasons for doing this. Firstly I am lazy and at Bronte Capital we originally did this analysis in March and I can cut and paste the internal note we wrote at our fund. More pertinently though the default curve past December gets distorted by the foreclosure moratorium which meant that some individual cumulative default curves are quite kinked. For instance the sequential default for the last four quarters on the Fannie Mae 2007 vintage is 1.1 billion, 1.5 billion, 1.0 billion and 1.5 billion. If you used the 1.0 billion default recorded in the first quarter of this year you would underestimate the end defaults by presuming the foreclosure moratorium was a continuing part of the sequence and not a distorted data-point. So whilst it appears lazy to use analysis I wrote in March not updated for new results, there is some method in that.

Here is the default curve – as published by Freddie Mac – until the end of 2008. This curve does not include the kinks caused by foreclosure moratoriums.

image

It has the usual “to the sky” character for the 2006 and 2007 books of business, however the kinks a the end of the curve are not present. (Compare to 2003 curve to the most recent 2003 curve which you can find in the last post – and which has a notable kink at the end of it.)

I would have loved the data points on this curve as actual numbers to run through the model. I wrote to Freddie Mac (and to Fannie Mae) and asked for that data and they refused to give it to me. So I did the best I could and printed the curves on graph paper and read the numbers off the graph paper. [If you are a policy analyst at the National Economic Council looking at this issue perhaps the company will give you actual data points!]

The last six quarters of the 2006 pool for Freddie had cumulative defaults in the following table. I have also included the cumulative defaults of the 2000 series as a comparison – and the ratio to the 2000 vintage as follows:

Last six data points

cumulative default 2006 originations (bps)

cumulative default 2000 originations (bps)

Ratio of cumulative defaults 2006/2000

Y3, q4

115

41

2.8

Y3, q3

90

35

2.6

Y3, q2

64

29

2.2

Y3, q1

42

22

1.9

Y3, q4

24

15

1.6

Y2, q3

13

8

1.6

If the ratio were constant (it is not) then we would have a really good method of projection. Instead the 2006 pool is getting worse relative to the 2000 pool quarter by quarter. My guess is that the end cumulative defaults will not be 2.8 times the 2000 pool (the current ratio) but 4.5 times (substantially worse than the current ratio). This is an educated guess looking at the charts – nothing else. I have tried testing this guess with (former) senior finance execs at Fannie. They said they would like to measure they rate at which the curves are diverging (preferably by state or market character) against rates at which house prices are falling. They want to test how much of the expansion of defaults is induced by falling house prices. They are after a sounder end-default estimate.

That said – I am stuck with the educated guess made above.

We can make a similar educated guess for other years of origination. Here it is:

Current cumulative default (bps)

Guessed end default ratio

End cumulative default

Base year 2000

104

110

2001

74

0.8

88

2002

62

0.75

83

2003

32

0.7

77

2004

52

1.1

121

2005

81

2.5

275

2006

115

4.5

495

2007

63

6

660

2008

negligible

400

Obviously the big problem years are the 2005, 06, 07 and 08. Previous years have largely played out. That is to be expected because if you had a mortgage you couldn’t afford originated in 2004 then you either refinanced it in the boom into a later year or you have defaulted already. I have only guessed the end default in 2008 – there is simply not enough public data to make anything other than an informed guess – however gossip suggests that 2008 is a bad year but not as bad as 06 or 07 for defaults.

From here – with data about how many mortgages were originated each year – you should be able to work out how many defaults are yet to occur. This is done below. The originations for the years 2000-2003 are made up because I can’t find the data any more – but the action is not there anyway. What matters is the later year.

Year

current cumulative default (bps)

end cumulative default (bps)

Defaults still to come (bps)

Originations in year (billions)

Defaults still to come (billions)

2000

104

110

6

450

0.3

2001

74

88

14

450

0.6

2002

62

83

21

450

0.9

2003

32

77

45

450

2.0

2004

52

121

69

495

3.4

2005

81

275

194

501

9.7

2006

115

495

380

577

21.9

2007

63

660

597

460

27.5

2008

400

400

358

14.3

Total defaults still to come

80.7

This suggests that there are almost 81 billion of mortgages in the book yet to default. This is considerably more than the cumulative defaults to date – and implies a massive increase in defaults. Whitney Tilson is right – prime mortgages owned by the GSEs are going to default in a massive way in the next couple of years.

I have done a similar analysis for Fannie Mae and I predicted that just over $125 billion of defaults were embedded in the default curves at that company.

Remember though that these are defaults, not losses. Severity is the key to the losses.

Neither company publishes severity by year of origination (something I would deeply desire). However Fannie Mae publishes its severity in each period for the whole book.

The severity at Fannie Mae was as low as 9% in 2005. I do not have an accurate table of severity by year of origination – but Fannie gives recovery data as follows (severity percentage = 1 minus recovery percentage):

Real estate owned net sales compared with unpaid principal balances (which is one minus severity numbers)

2005

93%

2006

89%

2007

77%

2008 q1

74%

2008 q2

74%

2008 q3

70%

2008 q4

61%

2009 q1

57%

2009 q2

54%

The severity numbers at Freddie Mac are consistently a little lower than at Fannie Mae. I think the reason is that Fannie Mae did most of Countrywide’s business and there was more valuation fraud at Countrywide. If this is the case it strikes me that Fannie has a good case against Bank of America (who now own Countrywide) but they have not chosen to litigate.

Either way, severity is rising though with the recent stabilisation of REO sales prices (more evident at Freddie than Fannie) I think we can presume some stabilisation at the new (higher) severity levels. Anyway I ran the model assuming end average severities for various books of business. This produces an estimate of losses yet to come.

Year

Defaults to come by year (billions)

Severity by year (percentage)

End losses

(billions)

2000

0.3

10%

0.0

2001

0.6

12%

0.1

2002

0.9

14%

0.1

2003

2.0

15%

0.3

2004

3.4

18%

0.6

2005

9.7

40%

3.9

2006

21.9

60%

13.2

2007

27.5

55%

15.1

2008

14.3

30%

4.3

Losses still to come

37.6

When I originally wrote this model Freddie Mac had already provided for 15.6 billion losses yet to come. That is the provisions number at the end of 2008 in the following graph.

image

Given that I thought that there was $37.6 billion of losses embedded in the book I thought that Freddie was under-reserved by $22 billion. This is a big number to be sure – but in the scheme of things that are said about the losses at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac most people (certainly most taxpayers) would be happy that the hole in Freddie Mac’s book is “only” $22 billion. [The level of under-provisioning at Fannie Mae was similar… our estimate was that neither institution posed much threat to the US Treasury.]

Since I did this estimate Freddie Mac has actually realised $2.9 billion of losses and the reserves have risen to 25.2 billion. This means that Freddie has now provided for an additional 12.5 billion dollars. The remaining hole in Freddie’s accounts is now “small” – say 7.5 billion dollars.

Plausibility check

When you estimate something in such a convoluted way it is incumbent to run a plausibility check. Look again at the losses and reserve picture for Freddie Mac.

Note that Freddie is writing off roughly 900 million per until the last quarter. The spike in the last quarter to 1.9 billion was due to the expiry of the foreclosure moratorium as well as due to the generally bad housing market. I estimated that at the end of 2008 there were 37 billion in losses left to come. Since then they have realised $2.9 billion in losses including the spike in realised losses at the end of the foreclosure moratorium. I think there are now about 34 billion in losses left to come. If the next six months is twice as bad as the last six months then we will be running off at roughly $6 billion per half or $12 billion per annum. We can cope with three years that bad without threatening my estimate. Given that the early stage delinquency of the GSEs is currently falling (see this OTC report) I think this is a reasonable (if harsh) assumption.

Plausibility summary: my loss estimates pass this plausibility check. I have run half a dozen other plausibility checks (some quite convoluted and detailed). The estimates are robust to all of them.

Summary of Part IV

In this post I show how using naïve (but surprisingly robust) models using data in the cumulative default curves you can get estimates of the end losses of both Fannie and Freddie.

Using these models I show that the end losses in the traditional guarantee book of business are very close to the reserves currently embedded in Freddie Mac’s accounts. [The same applies at Fannie Mae too.]

This argues strongly against the notion that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be substantial ongoing drains on the Federal budget. It also argues fairly strongly against the notion that the quasi-government GSEs cost taxpayers more than the private sector companies that they competed with. AIG – who led the FM Watch – an anti-Fannie-and-Freddie lobby group will wind up costing taxpayers considerably more than the GSEs.

Moreover the losses on the GSE’s core business (the losses modelled in this post) look like they are about the same as the original GSE capital base. If the GSEs had not (foolishly) purchased private label mortgage securities (the losses detailed in Part II) then the cost to the taxpayer would have been negligible.

This has big implications for the reform of GSEs – something supposedly under discussion at the NEC – and also of concern to many. The traditional guarantee business of the GSEs simply did not perform that badly during the worst mortgage crisis in modern finance. That should be borne in mind by the GSE critics.

As to what the end cost to the government will be – and whether there is any residual value in the remaining Fannie and Freddie securities – that is the subject of a future post in this sequence.

General disclaimer

The content contained in this blog represents the opinions of Mr. Hempton. You should assume Mr. Hempton and his affiliates have positions in the securities discussed in this blog, and such beneficial ownership can create a conflict of interest regarding the objectivity of this blog. Statements in the blog are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and other factors. Certain information in this blog concerning economic trends and performance is based on or derived from information provided by third-party sources. Mr. Hempton does not guarantee the accuracy of such information and has not independently verified the accuracy or completeness of such information or the assumptions on which such information is based. Such information may change after it is posted and Mr. Hempton is not obligated to, and may not, update it. The commentary in this blog in no way constitutes a solicitation of business, an offer of a security or a solicitation to purchase a security, or investment advice. In fact, it should not be relied upon in making investment decisions, ever. It is intended solely for the entertainment of the reader, and the author. In particular this blog is not directed for investment purposes at US Persons.