Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FMCC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and thanks for joining us for a presentation of Freddie Mac's Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results. I'm Fred Solomon, Director of Financial Communications. We are joined today by Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Jim Whitlinger. Before we begin, we'd like to point out that during the call, Mr. Whitlinger may make forward-looking statements based on assumptions about the company's key business drivers and other factors. Changes in these factors could cause the company's actual results to vary materially from its expectations. A description of those factors can be found in the company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q filed today. You will find the 10-Q, earnings press release and related materials posted on the Investor Relations section of freddiemac.com. This call is recorded, and a replay will soon be available on freddiemac.com. We ask that this call not be rebroadcast or transcribed. With that, I'll turn the call over to Freddie Mac's CFO, Jim Whitlinger.

Good morning, and thank you for joining our call to review Freddie Mac's second quarter financial results. To help you follow along throughout today's remarks, I'll reference our published second quarter financial supplement and earnings presentation. As you can see on Slide 2 of today's presentation, Freddie Mac delivered solid second quarter results. We earned $3.8 billion of net income, taking our net worth to nearly $78 billion. The total mortgage portfolio increased to $3.7 trillion as we provided about $128 billion of liquidity to the U.S. housing market. Freddie Mac's support during the second quarter helped nearly 439,000 families buy, refinance or rent a home. The majority of the houses and apartments we financed in the quarter were affordable to working families earning 120% or less of area median income. These included 91% of eligible rental units and 54% of single-family homes. Of the homebuyers purchasing a primary residence, 52% were first-time homeowners. Against a still resilient economic backdrop, we remain focused on disciplined risk management as well as our mission to promote liquidity, stability and affordability in the U.S. housing finance system. Now let's look at the quarterly financial results that support this important work. I'll begin with our second quarter 2026 results, followed by our Single-Family and Multifamily segment's performance. I'll finish with an update on our net worth and regulatory capital. We'll start on Slide 3 with our second quarter 2026 financial performance. Our net income of $3.8 billion increased 61% year-over-year, reflecting higher net revenues from our net interest income, lower noninterest expense and a credit reserve release in the current period. These results reflect solid execution during the quarter. We grew net revenues 1% year-over-year to $6 billion, primarily driven by a $711 million or 13% increase in net interest income from the prior year quarter. This increase was driven by higher income from continued growth in our mortgage portfolio, which increased 2% year-over-year, coupled with an increase in fully guaranteed multifamily securitizations following our business strategy change. Our net interest yield increased 7 basis points year-over-year to 69 basis points, reflecting the positive impact of our scale. Noninterest income shifted from income of $617 million in second quarter 2025 to a loss of $19 million in second quarter 2026. This was primarily due to net investment losses in second quarter 2026 compared to net investment gains in the prior year quarter as well as lower guarantee income. We recorded an $880 million benefit for credit losses in the quarter compared with a $783 million provision in the prior year quarter. The benefit resulted primarily from a single-family reserve release driven by updates to the company's process for generating future house price scenarios. By comparison, the second quarter 2025 provision primarily reflected a reserve build in single-family, attributable to lower estimated property market values based on the company's internal house price index and lower forecasted house price growth rates. Our second quarter noninterest expense was $2.1 billion, down 3% year-over-year, reflecting continued focus on operational efficiency. We grew our total mortgage portfolio to $3.7 trillion as of June 30, driven by 1% and 8% increases, respectively, in our Single-Family and Multifamily portfolios year-over-year. Turning to single-family results on Slide 4. The segment reported strong second quarter net income of $3.3 billion, an increase of 57% year-over-year. This increase reflects a credit loss benefit this quarter compared with a provision in the prior year quarter. Segment net interest income for the quarter of $5.4 billion was up 11% or $551 million year-over-year, driven by a 1% increase in our single-family mortgage portfolio and lower expense related to debt in hedge accounting relationships. The increase in the net interest income was offset by investment losses in the quarter, primarily driven by impacts from interest rate management activities. We recorded an $846 million benefit for credit losses in the quarter compared with a $622 million provision in the second quarter of 2025. Once again, this benefit is related to updates to the company's process for generating future house price scenarios. House prices rose by 0.7% during the second quarter 2026 compared with a 0.2% decrease in second quarter 2025. Our current forecast assumes house prices will grow by 1.7% over the next 12 months and 2.1% over the subsequent 12 months. This was more than our December 2025 forecast, which projected increases of 0.5% and 1.4%, respectively. In contrast, the second quarter 2025 provision was mainly due to a reserve build attributable to lower estimated property market values based on the company's internal house price index and lower forecasted house price growth rates. The single-family allowance for credit losses coverage ratio was 19 basis points at the end of second quarter 2026. That was down 4 basis points year-over-year and down 3 basis points quarter-over-quarter. Net charge-offs for the quarter totaled $116 million compared with $73 million in the prior year quarter. Our single-family portfolio credit characteristics remain strong, supported by meaningful credit enhancement coverage and our ongoing focus on sustainable risk management across market cycles. In the second quarter, our single-family portfolio had a weighted average current loan-to-value ratio of 53% and a weighted average credit score of 755. The serious delinquency rate was 60 basis points as of June 30, 2026. That was a 5 basis point increase over the prior year and flat quarter-over-quarter. The year-over-year increase is primarily due to a higher serious delinquency rate for loans originated during 2022 and later. During the second quarter 2026, we originated $110 billion of new business, driven by strength in refinance activity. Refinance loans accounted for 33% of total volume. Mortgage rates ended the quarter at 6.49% after reaching a high of 6.53% during the quarter, the highest since the beginning of the year and up from a low of 5.98% we observed during first quarter of 2026. While elevated mortgage rates continued to affect market activity, we remain focused on supporting market liquidity and access to affordable, sustainable housing finance. As you can see on Slide 5, the credit profile of our single-family new business remains strong with an average estimated loan-to-value ratio of 76%, down 1 percentage point year-over-year. The weighted average credit score was 761 as of June 30, up 2 points from a year ago. The weighted average DTI ratio trend also improved year-over-year. These indicators reinforce the quality of our new originations. During the second quarter of 2026, we helped approximately 22,000 families remain in their homes through loan workouts. At the end of the second quarter, 61% of our single-family portfolio had some form of credit enhancement. Moving to multifamily results on Slide 6. The segment delivered second quarter 2026 net income of $561 million, up 90% year-over-year. The increase was supported by higher net revenues and a slight benefit for credit losses in the quarter versus a provision in the prior year quarter. Second quarter net revenues increased 14% year-over-year to $891 million, benefiting from higher net interest income. Net interest income increased 40%, driven by higher guarantee interest income as our business strategy shifted toward fully guaranteed securitizations, which is expected to enhance the stability of multifamily earnings over time. This increase in net interest income was offset by a 13% decline in noninterest income as the revenue mix shifted due to the business strategy change. On the credit side, we recorded a $34 million benefit for credit losses. In the prior year quarter, we had an expense of $161 million, which was attributable to new loan purchase commitment and acquisition activity, coupled with deterioration in the credit performance of certain delinquent loans. The multifamily allowance for credit losses coverage ratio was 36 basis points at the end of the second quarter 2026 compared with 42 basis points for the first quarter 2026 and 52 basis points for second quarter 2025. Total multifamily new business activity reached $18 billion in the second quarter 2026. That was an increase of 58% from the prior year's quarter, primarily driven by a larger new business pipeline entering 2026, coupled with the execution of multifamily's competitive strategies. Year-to-date, 66% of this activity based on unpaid principal balance has been mission-driven affordable housing. During second quarter 2026, we securitized $23 billion of loans. Nearly all of those were fully guaranteed securitizations in line with our business strategy change, marking a 59% increase year-over-year. The average guarantee fee rate on our total guarantee exposures increased to 59 basis points for the quarter, up 6 basis points from the prior year. This increase was primarily due to continued growth in our fully guaranteed securitization issuances for which we charge higher guarantee fee rates. Our multifamily mortgage portfolio at the end of the second quarter 2026 was $505 billion, an increase of 8% year-over-year. The multifamily delinquency rate at the end of the second quarter was 51 basis points. This was up compared with 47 basis points at the end of second quarter 2025 and 43 basis points last quarter. This increase is primarily due to stress associated with elevated interest rates and small balance loans. 91% of the delinquent loans in the multifamily mortgage portfolio had credit enhancement coverage, reducing our credit exposure. At the end of the second quarter, 92% of the multifamily mortgage portfolio was covered by credit enhancements. Finally, as shown on Slide 7 of our earnings presentation, we delivered strong net worth growth, ending the quarter at $78 billion, up 20% year-over-year and further strengthening our capital position. This continued capital build enhances our resilience and long-term capacity to serve the market through changing conditions and advance our mission with discipline. Under our regulatory capital rule, total capital required at quarter end was $161 billion, including $60 billion of stress and stability buffers. We are making progress reducing our capital deficit, which has come down $41 billion since the end of 2022. Excluding buffers, our capital shortfall was $101 billion at the end of the second quarter, largely because the $73 billion of Senior Preferred Stock does not qualify as regulatory capital. I'll conclude my remarks with one final thought. It was a very successful quarter for many of the nation's largest financial institutions. If you listen to their versions of this call, you would have heard them talk about the macroeconomic or cyclical factors affecting their strong results. That's also true of Freddie Mac. But what you additionally heard was that none of those institutions were satisfied to let those economic factors equal destiny for their firms. And again, that also applies to Freddie Mac. We are continuously improving our systems and policies to bring loans in the door in all economic environments while maintaining a bedrock commitment to risk management. This applies to big, highly visible changes like the introduction of new credit scoring models. And it also applies to smaller incremental changes to reduce our risks such as moving servicers to near real-time default reporting. These changes are being driven by motivated Freddie Mac employees committed to deploying the latest technology, including thoughtful use of artificial intelligence in their day-to-day work. We are streamlining loan processing, accelerating software development, strengthening fraud detection and helping employees make faster, more informed decisions. Smart use of AI is the key to allowing our employees to further our mission and shape what comes next. Thank you for joining us today.