Colony Credit Real Estate, Inc. (CLNC) Q3 2019 Earnings Call Transcript

Colony Credit Real Estate, Inc. (BRSP -1.47%)
Q3 2019 Earnings Call
Nov 07, 2019, 5:00 p.m. ET

Contents:

• Prepared Remarks
• Questions and Answers
• Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Greetings. Welcome to Colony Credit Real Estate's third-quarter 2019 earnings conference call. [Operator instructions] I will now turn the conference over to your host, Lasse Glassen, managing director of investor relations. Thank you.

You may begin.

Lasse Glassen -- Managing Director of Investor Relations

Good afternoon, and welcome to Colony Credit Real Estate, Inc.'s third-quarter 2019 earnings conference call. We will refer to Colony Credit Real Estate, Inc. as CLNC, Colony Credit Real Estate, or the company throughout this call. Speakers on the call today are the company's president and chief executive officer, Kevin Traenkle; and chief financial officer, Neale Redington.

Chief Accounting Officer Frank Saracino and General Counsel David Palame, are also on the line to answer questions. Before I hand the call over to management, please note that on this call, certain information presented contains forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Potential risks and uncertainties could cause the company's business and financial results to differ materially.

For a discussion of some of these risks and uncertainties that could affect results please see the Risk Factors section of our most recent 10-K and other forward-looking statements in the company's current and periodic reports filed with the SEC from time to time. All information discussed on this call is as of today, November 7, 2019, and the company does not intend and undertakes no duty to update for future events or circumstances. In addition, certain financial information presented on this call represents non-GAAP financial measures. The company's earnings release, portfolio bifurcation plan and supplemental presentation, which was released this afternoon and is available on the company's website, presents reconciliations to the appropriate GAAP measure and an explanation of why the company believes such non-GAAP financial measures are useful to investors.

And now I'd like to turn the call over to Kevin Traenkle, president and chief executive officer of Colony Credit Real Estate. Kevin?

Kevin Traenkle -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Lasse, and thank you all for joining today's call covering Colony Credit Real Estate's 2019 third-quarter results as well as other significant events taking place at the company. As an adjunct to our prepared comments, I would also like to draw your attention to our portfolio bifurcation plan and supplemental financial report, which are available on our website. On the call today, we will refer to those materials, which we will provide incremental details beyond today's remarks. Neale Reddington, our CFO, will discuss the details of our third-quarter financial performance including specifics on our earnings growth, deployment activity, investment portfolio, balance sheet and liquidity position.

Our press release issued this afternoon reported third-quarter results and also announced a major milestone in our strategy to rotate out of legacy investments in order to address the dislocation between our current trading price and the net asset value of our portfolio. My comments today will focus on the strategic update, which includes a definitive onetime bifurcation of our balance sheet into: one, a core portfolio comprised of senior loans, mezzanine loans, preferred equity, commercial real estate debt securities and net lease real estate, which together have been our target assets since inception; and two, a legacy nonstrategic portfolio, consisting of operationally intensive owned real estate, all retail and certain other legacy loans originated prior to the formation of CLNC, all of which are inconsistent with our go-forward core business. The segmentation of our balance sheet is the result of an exhaustive strategic reassessment of our business performed in conjunction with our external financial advisor, third-party real estate valuation experts and a property diligence consultant. As part of this process, many of our investment-level business plans have been amended and reflect our conviction in our core business strategy, focusing on our core business and taking impairments as a result of accelerating legacy nonstrategic portfolio dispositions.

Following the third-quarter accounting-related charges that Neale will discuss in more detail, we now believe our reported September 30 undepreciated book value per share of $17.77 more closely represents our current fair market value or net asset value of our company. Also, as a result of this process, we have reduced our monthly dividend to $0.10 per share or $1.20 per share on an annual basis, which is fully supported by the current in-place core earnings of our core portfolio of $1.28 per share. Our legacy nonstrategic portfolio will be liquidated in an orderly fashion, and the resulting available proceeds will be reinvested to grow our core earnings, which will come solely from our core portfolio and further support the dividend. Said differently, we expect to be able to internally generate capital to grow our core earnings within our core portfolio in the near-term without the need to access the external capital market for equity.

Additionally, we will provide in-depth investment by investment disclosure, providing incremental transparency into the intrinsic value of our assets. We believe this level of disclosure will be useful to investors as they form their own view on the net asset value of both the core and legacy nonstrategic portfolios. Management, with the full support of the board of directors, believe this strategy puts CLNC on the best path forward to increase investor support and grow our core business to ultimately enhance shareholder value. To provide a better perspective on the strategic direction we are pursuing, it is important to understand how the company was created.

On January 31, 2018, CLNC was formed through the combination of three portfolios and listed on the New York Stock Exchange on February 1, 2018. The combination created significant scale with approximately $5 billion in total asset value across over 150 discrete investments. However, the combined portfolio also carried over approximately $1 billion of investments that were not core to Colony Credit's investment strategy. Much has been accomplished since our formation just 20 months ago.

A key priority has been the deployment of available capital into our core target investment strategy. We've invested or committed to invest over $3.7 billion, including approximately $1.6 billion year to date. Over the short period, capital deployment efforts have contributed to over a 20% increase in total annualized earnings, excluding gains and losses since our first full quarter of operations. In addition, our balance sheet remains prudently leveraged.

Our debt-to-equity ratio is 1.4 times or 56% debt to assets, which remains below the average of our peer group, providing room to continue to invest and grow our core earnings. From a liquidity standpoint, the total capacity under our master repurchase facility stands at approximately $2.3 billion, up from $1.2 billion at inception and which has drawn $825 million today. Last month, we closed our first CLO securitization totaling $1 billion, which demonstrates the strength of our loan origination business. Institutional investor demand for the CLO is strong and shows the market's receptivity to our company.

While much has been accomplished, we experienced the operating performance deterioration in certain legacy nonstrategic positions, which resulted in a series of impairments over the previous reporting period. This provides even more reason to segment these assets away from our core portfolio. Today, we are announcing a clear transformation story, delineating our investments between core and legacy nonstrategic portfolios creates clarity around the core mission. Furthermore, we believe it will, along with enhanced disclosure, facilitate a greater understanding of our company and the value embedded within its assets.

Our core portfolio totaled $4.5 billion of total at share assets or 82% of our total portfolio today. The core portfolio has an undepreciated and GAAP net book value of $13.96 per share and $13.39 per share, respectively, with year-to-date annualized core earnings of $1.28 per share. The implied net core earnings yield of our core portfolio is 9.5% on GAAP net book value. The legacy nonstrategic portfolio totals $1 billion of additional at-share assets, or 18% of the total portfolio.

Incremental to core portfolio value, the legacy nonstrategic portfolio has undepreciated and GAAP net book value of $3.81 per share and $3.16 per share, respectively. Furthermore, the legacy nonstrategic portfolio is cash-flow positive and is fully self-financed. This means we do not have to inject cash flow from our core portfolio to execute the legacy nonstrategic portfolio of business plans. But it also means that the legacy nonstrategic portfolio generates positive cash flow to be redeployed into our core portfolio on a current basis.

As of the third-quarter 2019, the legacy nonstrategic portfolio had year-to-date annualized earnings of $0.26 per share, which provides further support to the year-to-date annualized core earnings of $1.28 per share, and together, meaningful coverage on our dividend. In conclusion, with this bifurcation of our assets, our key priorities will be focused on growth at the core portfolio and expanding core portfolio earnings with a concurrent disposition of legacy nonstrategic portfolio assets. Our annual dividend is now fully covered by sustainable earnings from our core portfolio. Available proceeds from legacy nonstrategic portfolio asset sales will be redeployed in our core portfolio, providing an engine of growth for our core business.

The bifurcation of our assets and enhanced disclosure provides a foundation for shareholders to better understand our company, showing earnings contribution from each segment supported by detailed investment by investment disclosure, which is now available in our filings. I am confident in our team's ability to execute this transition who have led a successful investment and financing program since inception and opportunistically resolved certain noncore assets to date. We expect the road ahead will reflect results that close the gap between the current trading price and the company's book value. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Neale Redington for a more detailed explanation of our third-quarter operational and financial results.

Neale Redington -- Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Kevin, and good afternoon, everyone. As usual, I would refer everyone to please look at our supplemental financial report that was filed earlier today. It includes plenty of new details regarding our financial operations and also describe some changes we have made to our core earnings definition. This definition will exclude from core earnings, gains, losses and impairments on real estate, including unconsolidated joint ventures and preferred equity investments, but will include provisions for loan losses.

Further, core earnings will come solely from our core portfolio, while we will report legacy nonstrategic earnings separately. Also, as Kevin highlighted, today's announcement includes the benefit of added transparency and disclosure to investors. In addition to the portfolio bifurcation presentation and supplemental presentation, which are posted on our website, we will be providing asset-by-asset details for all of our holdings in our Form 10-Q, which will be filed shortly. We believe this added transparency will help investors and research analysts to better understand our company and the value of our assets given the additional data it provides on our two business segments.

CLNC's core portfolio reported a third-quarter GAAP net loss of $1.5 million or $0.01 per share and core earnings of $44.7 million or $0.34 per share. In addition, the company's legacy nonstrategic portfolio generated legacy nonstrategic earnings, excluding losses of $6.9 million or $0.05 per share. Our reduced annual dividend per share of $1.20 is more than fully covered at 107% of year-to-date annualized core earnings of $1.28 per share from our core portfolio. Legacy nonstrategic earnings provides additional coverage for the dividend and other liquidity requirements.

Now I'd like to take a moment to discuss the impairments taken during the third quarter of 2019. First, as Kevin mentioned, as part of our overall portfolio bifurcation strategy, we're accelerating the pace at which we divest our legacy nonstrategic assets. That shortened hold period resulted in impairments to a number of operating real estate and preferred equity investments. As a result, we recorded $258 million of impairments on owned real estate and preferred equity investments during the quarter.

Additionally, we have recorded provisions for loan losses of $127 million during the quarter related to deteriorating credit metrics on loans, primarily in the retail sector and one hospitality asset. These writedowns of $385 million resulted in a GAAP book value of $16.55 per share, or $17.77 undepreciated book value per share. Turning to deployment. We had an active third quarter in which we allocated and initially funded $486 million and $362 million of capital, respectively.

The deployment activity for the quarter consisted of seven senior loans and three mezzanine loans, all within the United States. The property type mix is approximately 32% office, 24% industrial, 18% mixed-use, 17% multifamily and 9% hotel. The third-quarter deployment had a weighted average return on equity of 12% and an underwritten IRR of 13%. During the third quarter, we paid a monthly cash dividend of $0.1450 per common share for the months of July, August and September 2019, and we have declared a $0.1450 per share dividend for the month of October.

As Kevin mentioned in his remarks, as part of our portfolio bifurcation strategy, we have reduced our dividend to $0.10 per share per month for November and December, or $1.20 per share annualized, which is fully covered by our core earnings. Looking at our core portfolio, our loan book continues to be the largest segment. With a carrying value of approximately $2.8 billion at quarter end. The unlevered yield on our loan book is 7.8%, with an average loan size of $52 million.

Furthermore, the loan portfolio remains well diversified in terms of size, collateral type and geography. Moving to CRE debt securities. Our portfolio had a carrying value of $367 million at quarter end, and the majority is investment-grade rated. In addition to generating attractive yields, our CRE debt securities portfolio provides CLNC with additional liquidity options within our investment portfolio and access to efficient borrowing.

Net lease real estate comprises 26% of the core portfolio and had a carrying value of $1.1 billion at the end of the third quarter. This portfolio consist primarily of industrial and office properties with a high single-digit weighted average return on equity and a weighted average lease term of 9.6 years. The net lease assets are core business for CLNC, providing long-term stable cash flows with a potential for capital appreciation. Turning to our legacy nonstrategic portfolio.

This segment is predominantly composed of operationally intensive owned real estate, all retail and certain other legacy loans originated prior to the formation of CLNC, with total at-share assets of $1 billion as of quarter end. This value reflects the impacts of impairments taken during the quarter due primarily to accelerated anticipated sales dates. Moving to our total balance sheet. Our total at-share assets stood at approximately $5.6 billion as of September 30, 2019.

Our debt-to-assets ratio was 56% at the end of the quarter, and our current liquidity stands at approximately $304 million between cash on hand and availability under our revolving credit facility. Subsequent to the end of the quarter, we closed $1 billion managed commercial real estate collateralized loan obligation. The CRE CLO accretively financed interest in 21 floating rate mortgage loans secured by 39 properties, with an 83.5% initial advance rate at a weighted average coupon of issuance of LIBOR plus 1.59% before transaction costs. The loan collateral includes multifamily, office and hospitality properties across 10 states in the District of Columbia and features a two year of reinvestment period.

Overall, we were extremely pleased with the outcome, which demonstrates the strengths of our loan origination business, capital markets capabilities and investor relationships. With a lower cost of funds, higher advance rate and managed reinvestment structure, the CRE CLO fortifies the company's capital structure, improves the return on equity on our retained interest and allows CLNC to continue to expand its core business. As part of our enhanced disclosures, we have also introduced risk ratings on all loans in our core portfolio, importantly on senior loans, mezzanine loans and preferred equity investments to provide more detail regarding the credit and risk profile of our core business. Our overall risk rating at quarter-end is 3.1, in line with our conservative policy and critical process that starts all originations with a three rating.

Therefore, our overall rating is indicative of the performance of our investments and underlying collateral operating in line with our business plans. In closing, with today's announcement, we are focused on executing our deployment strategy and growing our core portfolio while continuing our portfolio rationalization activities within our legacy nonstrategic portfolio. Over time, we expect to see book value of our core portfolio and core earnings increase as a result of the reduced dividend, contributions from operations and accretively deploying sales proceeds from the legacy nonstrategic portfolio. I'd like to thank you for your time today.

I will turn the call back to Kevin for a moment.

Kevin Traenkle -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Neale. There is one more topic of business that I would like to mention. The company's independent directors recently received a nonbinding letter from Colony Capital that seeks to explore the possible internalization of the management of CLNC and the transfer of Colony Capital's global credit management business to CLNC. Key components of subject transaction may include internalizing Colony's commercial real estate credit management business, extinguishing the company's management contract and taking on management of Colony credit funds and related co-investment vehicles, several of which are co-invested with the company and some of its core investments.

The letter has also been filed publicly by Colony Capital on Schedule 13D. Importantly, management's continuing commitment to CLNC's business, stated bifurcation plan and continuing growth are unwavering regardless of the outcome of any internalization discussions. There is no further information we can provide at this time regarding the possible internalization. And as directed by legal counsel, we are not in a position to respond to any questions related to the letter.

I'd like now to ask the operator to open the floor for questions regarding our bifurcation plan and quarterly results.

Questions & Answers:

Operator

[Operator instructions] Our first question comes from Stephen Laws with Raymond James.

Stephen Laws -- Raymond James -- Analyst

Hi. Good afternoon Kevin and Neale.

Kevin Traenkle -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Hey, Stephen.

Neale Redington -- Chief Financial Officer

Hey, Stephen.

Stephen Laws -- Raymond James -- Analyst

A lot to process in an hour. But first off, I just wanted to state it's good to see these little -- a lot more disclosure on these assets and appreciate you providing separate financials for each of the two buckets. I think that will be very helpful analyzing the portfolio. With that said, kind of thinking about the core portfolio first.

If we, for a second, put aside the potential reallocation of capital as you monetize the legacy assets, but think just to the core portfolio, I think leverage was 1.4 times in the deck. What kind of investment capacity does that leave you just as far as where your target leverage is for the core portfolio, considering the assets that now comprise that portfolio?

Kevin Traenkle -- President and Chief Executive Officer

So yes, on the leverage, I think in both portfolios, we're relatively underleveraged relative to our peers. So I think we have room on the leverage side to continue to move that up. We still have liquidity to deploy. Obviously, everything that we have been doing and everything that we will be doing will be within the core portfolio.

In addition to the liquidity at hand at either cash that we have available or availability under our revolver, we have a lot of capacity under our repo facilities that we can add. And in addition to all that, as we monetize the legacy nonstrategic portfolio assets, those net proceeds will be funneled back into our core portfolio and provide even more liquidity to continue on with our core business. So we have a lot of liquidity coming from a lot of different places and a lot of capacity to continue on with the core business.

Stephen Laws -- Raymond James -- Analyst

So maybe in an effort to quantify that, the 1.4 and go to maybe, say, somewhere around two. And then over a period of time, you'll pick up, I believe I saw roughly $400 million, give or take, that'll be reinvested into core assets?

Kevin Traenkle -- President and Chief Executive Officer

So that's right. It's going to depend on the mix between the senior assets that -- or the senior loans that we do in mezzanine and preferred equity or the triple net lease assets. But yes, we're -- we've been more focused on the senior mortgages. And if -- what we've been doing in the recent past continues into the future, those numbers are generally correct.

Stephen Laws -- Raymond James -- Analyst

Great. And then so with the legacy monetization, I know you're trying to accelerate this. What kind of time line should we think about? Is this something to be accomplished over the next five quarters by year-end next year? Or are you comfortable giving maybe a rough guess at how much can be maybe resolved by year-end next year? How should we think about the time line of asset monetizations from the legacy portfolio?

Kevin Traenkle -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. I mean we want to be cautiously optimistic in terms of projections about -- on the timing. But through this like portfolio reassessment and going through every single business plan, we basically have accelerated the disposition dates to occur as soon as practically possible. So in some cases, we're actually in discussions with broker terms right now to get a lot of these assets listed ASAP.

Actually, some are on the market right now to be sold. Some of the assets, there's still some value-add work that needs to be done, some lease-ups, some TIs, leasing commissions that need to be put -- paid and invested in those assets. But the models show a significant majority of those assets to be liquidated over the next 12 to 24 months. There are some assets that are going to take a little bit longer, but the significant majority within 24 months.

Stephen Laws -- Raymond James -- Analyst

Great. Looking at the core portfolio, again, I'd appreciate all the additional disclosure. Noticed one, loan 25 looks like a four-rated hotel has an extended maturity about two months from now, January of '20. So can you maybe give us an update on any of discussions you've had with that borrower? Do you expect it to pay off? I wanted to ask you about that one, is it a near-term maturity on a four-rated loan?

Neale Redington -- Chief Financial Officer

Yes, I can address that one, Stephen. So it is a small performing senior loan on a hotel in Bloomington in Minnesota. We moved this to a full rating because the hotel management company just issued our quality assurance default to the owner because they have recently listed for sale. So there is an expected closing probably in Q1 of 2020 that would, obviously, intend to pay off a loan.

But because of this additional pay up that the hotel company had issued, that's why we've moved it to a four. And we continue to monitor that situation.

Stephen Laws -- Raymond James -- Analyst

I appreciate the color there. Subsequent event, the hotel sale, that -- I believe that had a GAAP carrying value of $72 million. Is that also the sale price? Have you disclosed the sale price? Or can you provide any color on that hotel sale?

Neale Redington -- Chief Financial Officer

We are very close to selling that, and we do expect to recover the carrying value from that sale.

Stephen Laws -- Raymond James -- Analyst

OK. That's good. I think I've asked about this every call, but I want to touch on the stock buyback. I think the authorization is still in place.

Given the new undepreciated book value stock closed today at a 20% discount, we'll see how it reacts tomorrow. But can you talk about the appetite or willingness to consider a stock repurchase, given the valuation and given a significant amount of liquidity, and you've got plenty of room there from a leverage and available capital standpoint.

Kevin Traenkle -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, sure. So it's something that we track and we analyze on a real-time basis. However, we would strongly consider repurchasing stock, now given through -- given the reset that we're going through and the revaluation and the reassessment of the portfolio. It's something that we will strongly consider.

Stephen Laws -- Raymond James -- Analyst

Good. It seems like a positive step there in the thought process around the buyback. And lastly, Kevin, I know you specifically kind of said not to ask about this. But on the internalization, timing, how should we think about that? Is that a next year event? Kind of how long is the review process going to play out? And I'll hold off on asking any specifics around numbers.

But I'm curious about kind of how we should think about the timing of that review process.

Kevin Traenkle -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. So the board of directors, they have set up an independent committee, that special committee is also -- has its own independent financial advisors and legal advisors who are going to be working through that. And there's really nothing more to say at this time with regards to timing or anything else.

Stephen Laws -- Raymond James -- Analyst

Fair enough but thought we'd ask. Well, that's all I have for enough. I'm sure I'll be back later with more. But I appreciate you taking my questions.

Neale Redington -- Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Stephen.

Kevin Traenkle -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Stephen.

Operator

Our next question is from Randy Binner with B. Riley.

Randy Binner -- B. Riley FBR -- Analyst

Hi. Just a few follow-ups to that line of questioning. What yield expectations do you expect for money put to work in the core business?

Kevin Traenkle -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. So in the core business, I mean, we've been running north of $12 million on the $3.7 billion that we've invested since going public. We have been north of a $12 million. There has been some slight spread compression recently that we've seen throughout the marketplace.

With the execution of the CLO that we just consummated, which we got very attractive financing rates, a very attractive advance rates even with the compression in the marketplace. We actually think that we're going to be able to continue to reach those targeted returns, call it, an 11%-kind of plus range on ROEs. So we're kind of -- we're happy with the business. We're happy with how we're financing our assets.

And there's no reason to believe that we don't think that we can get those 11% plus ROEs on our core business.

Randy Binner -- B. Riley FBR -- Analyst

OK. And those are levered returns, correct?

Kevin Traenkle -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Those are levered returns.

Randy Binner -- B. Riley FBR -- Analyst

And then just on the CLOs, is there -- is that a continued strategy we should expect on the core book? Or is the -- because the first one was large. So is that it for a while? Or could there be more?

Kevin Traenkle -- President and Chief Executive Officer

There certainly will be more. We will incorporate CLO executions as part of our base business and our base strategy going forward. This CLO, in particular, it is a managed CLO. So we do have the ability to replace any collateral that pays off within the first two years.

But CLO executions will be something that we will do from time to time as part of our financing repertoire.

Randy Binner -- B. Riley FBR -- Analyst

The last one I have is just on the non-core earnings in the kind of the 12- to 24-month plan. I mean how should we potentially plan for that to be part of the dividend coverage going forward? I know that we have to have our own models and you have a process going on. But would it be most conservative to assume that there's no ongoing contribution from the noncore?

Neale Redington -- Chief Financial Officer

We -- that is, frankly, why we are differentiating between core earnings from the core portfolio versus the legacy nonstrategic earnings from that part of the portfolio, Randy. So I -- as I think Kevin and I both mentioned the dividend coverage is really focused on the core earnings that we're generating. So $1.20 is covered by the year-to-date annualized number of $1.28. So that's, frankly, what we're more focused on.

We do expect over time that that will grow from a number of factors, including the legacy nonstrategic. And as Kevin said, over the next 12 to 24 months, we should expect that a majority of those assets will be moved over to core. But frankly, we would prefer to be more focused on the core earning side of things.

Randy Binner -- B. Riley FBR -- Analyst

Understood.

Kevin Traenkle -- President and Chief Executive Officer

I'd like to add one other thing that's on that portfolio. And just so everyone knows, it is self-sufficient, it's cash flow positive. It doesn't require capital coming from the core portfolio to execute its business plan. And even though we don't want people to kind -- to focus on the legacy nonstrategic earnings, it is additive.

Randy Binner -- B. Riley FBR -- Analyst

OK. Understood. That's all I have. Thank you.

Neale Redington -- Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Randy.

Kevin Traenkle -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Randy.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the call back to management for closing remarks.

Kevin Traenkle -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, great. Well, I want to thank everyone for your continuing support and for joining us on today's call. On behalf of the entire team at Colony Credit Real Estate, we thank you for dialing in today. And we look forward to updating you on our progress when we report 2019 results early next year.

Thank you.

Operator

[Operator signoff]

Duration: 40 minutes

Call participants:

Lasse Glassen -- Managing Director of Investor Relations

Kevin Traenkle -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Neale Redington -- Chief Financial Officer

Stephen Laws -- Raymond James -- Analyst

Randy Binner -- B. Riley FBR -- Analyst

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