Velocity Financial Inc (VEL) 2020 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Velocity Financial, Incorporated second quarter 2020 earnings conference call. (OperatorInstructions) Please, also note today's event is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference call over to Chris Oltman, Chief Accounting Officer. Sir, please go ahead.

Thank you, Jamie. Hello, everyone, and thank you for participating in Velocity Financial second quarter 2020 earnings call. Joining me today are Chris Farrar, Velocity's President and Chief Executive Officer, and Mark Szczepaniak, Velocity's Chief Financial Officer.

Earlier this afternoon, we released our second quarter 2020 press release and the accompanying earnings presentation, which are available on our investor relation's website.

I'd like to remind everybody that today's call may include forward-looking statements, which are uncertain and outside of the company's control. And actual results may differ material. For discussion of some of the risks and other factors that could affect results, please see the risk factors and other cautionary statements made in our communications with shareholders, including the risk factors disclosed in our most recent annual and quarterly reports.

Also note that the content of this conference call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of today, and we did not undertake any duty to update forward looking statements. We will also refer to certain non-GAAP measures on this call. For reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures, you should refer to the press release and earnings presentation on our investor relation's website.

Finally, today's call is being recorded and will be available on the company's website later today.

I will now turn the call over to Chris Farrarfor opening remarks.

Thanks, Chris. Appreciate it. Thanks, everyone, for joining us on the call. I hope that everyone is safe and healthy, and all of your families are as well.

On our last earnings call, I outlined three overriding principles that will guide us through this pandemic and just as a refresher: one, protect our employees and our shareholders, two help our small business owners manage through the crisis, and then three carefully manage capital and liquidity to ensure long-term success. I'm proud to say that we've been very successful executing on all three of these goals. We are still working remotely and have done our part to protect our employees and our communities where we work and live.

In terms of our shareholders, we continue to manage the business and our balance sheet to create long-term value. Secondly, we helped many borrowers bridge the worst of the shutdown by offering forbearance plans to help them manage their cash flow. Lastly, we were able to issue long term debt for all loans previously pledged to our warehouse lines at very attractive terms, which eliminated the mark-to-market risk that we faced. We're also very proud that we continue to enjoy strong support from our securitization investors through all market cycles.

Looking forward, our team is eager to resume lending and our customers are indicating strong demand for our programs. Making the final preparations to accept new loan applications and execute our growth plans in the third quarter. I want to thank all our investors, employees and industry partners for your continued support. Together, we will successfully navigate this environment and achieve our vision for the future.

With that, will turn over to the presentation materials.

As Chris mentioned, we've got the earnings deck and I'll start on page 3 and just kind of kick us off with some of the highlights and then turn it over to Mark to walk through some results and then back to me to close.

First topic on page 1, we had net income of $2.1 million for the quarter and Core EPS of $0.17 a share. We think this reflects the results of our resilient business model in obviously extremely challenging times. Later on, mark will walk through the mechanics. But as a result of the PIPE transaction, we declared a deemed dividend to the preferred common stock, which results in a noncash adjustment from common equity to temporary equity. And Mark will walk you through all the details of that transaction in a bit.

In terms of production in the portfolio, continued to see strong resolutions of delinquent loans. We're seeing good recoveries there even in depths of the crisis. So we still see an active market. And we're a little bit surprised by how much activity was going on and was obviously a very strange time for everyone.

Also in terms of our forbearance plan, about $331 million of loans were on some type of a forbearance plan at the end of the second quarter. And importantly to us, we've been monitoring how those folks are going to do post forbearance. And for the month of July, a little over 80% of those folks either made payments or pay their loan in full. So we were very pleased with the performance coming out of the forbearance period. And we think it was really the right thing to do and helped a lot of borrowers get through that tricky time.

In terms of net interest margin, it's actually up quarter over quarter. We did see a reduction in the yields from our total portfolio because of nonaccrual loans. But there was an offset there from the interest savings on our long-term debt that we paid down with IPO proceeds. So those two essentially washed.

In terms of financing and capital, I mentioned that we paid off our warehouse lines. Two really good securitizations that we've put announcements on earlier. And then, you folks all know about the $45 million of convertible preferred stock that was issued as well to strengthen the balance sheet.

Turning to Page 4, this is essentially just a bridge from core earnings to the GAAP loss per common share. Again, kind of the preferred dividend or deemed dividend, if you will -- it was the most material transaction. And I don't think anyone will be surprised by that. That's essentially just a transfer as a result of that dilution. What we did do just to be real clear is mark the convertible preferred stock to its full redemption value. So that's essentially what's driving this quote-unquote, deemed dividend.

The other item on the slide that we mentioned is the COVID-19 reserve. We run a pretty rigorous model; that model came back. We sat down as a team, and look through the results, and the new updated forecast is for a more severe economic downturn and for a longer period, I think it goes out a little over two years. So we think we've got a very safe look at where we're going to be in terms of CECL, but that did result in some increased reserve for the quarter.

And turning to page 5, just to again, kind of summing up from the business perspective, before I hand it over to Mark. I mentioned the two securitizations we are in negotiations right now with some other counterparties for new warehouse financing. It will all be non-mark-to-market. So on a go-forward basis, we want to take that risk out of the business and we have very good dialogue going right now and expect to have significant facilities closed here in the third quarter.

In terms of production, we spent some of the downtime, reworking our IT and some of our processes. We think we've got a better process coming out of this crisis that will be more efficient, a little more streamlined for not only our customers but our internal operations folks as well. We are training on some of those changes right now and preparing to start accepting applications early September. So very excited to get back into the origination mode again.

And then lastly, on forbearances, and loss met, I did mention, how those loans were performing. We stopped offering new forbearance plans at the end of June, we did issue some new forbearance plans early in the third quarter that kind of spilled over. But by and large we're over that hump on a go forward basis. Anything that we do should be pretty small and relatively minor in comparison to what we've already done.

So very happy to see folks getting back on their feet and resuming their payments. And obviously, we'll see that happen here again in August and September, then we sort of the pig goes through the snake, if you will, and we should be over the hump with that process. And we're looking forward to refocusing on not only managing those folks going forward but making new loans.

So with that, I'll hand it over to Mark to take you through the rest of this -- the deck.

Thanks, Chris, and good afternoon. Good evening, everyone. I'd like to echo Chris Oltman's comments. I hope all of you and your families are staying safe during this COVID pandemic. And like I am looking forward to being able to go outside with our masks for a change.

Before we go on to the Page 6 of the deck, I just want to kind of follow up to what Chris was mentioning on the $2.33, kind of adjustment or loss per common share and give a little more explanation and detail on that. GAAP accounting, US GAAP calls it a loss per common share. We have to keep in mind when you see that word -- loss, it is not an operating loss. The company did not have an operating loss in Q2. Our net income was $2.1 million for Q2. Yet you have to Q1, it's $4.7 million net income year to date.

So there is no P&L hit as a result of this. It's also called a deemed dividend because no cash went out of the company. What happened is in putting together the preferred stock transaction, the preferred stock transaction has it -- embedded redemption feature. When there has been that redemption feature US-GAAP precludes us from classifying that as permanent equity because there's a chance it could get put back at a future date.

So it goes in a category called mezzanine equity or temporary equity, which is on a new balance sheet. It's below liabilities and above common equity. So it goes into what's called mezzanine equity. And when it has a redemption value, you're really required to carry that preferred stock at its full redemption value. So the full redemption value of the stock as of June 30, is $90 million. So the stock was actually out of the books and say like around $41 million, because remember we received $45 million of proceeds, but part of those proceeds is allocated to the warrants because we got stock, preferred stock at a warrants. The warrants are in permanent common equity because those are warrants that can only be exercised by common stock. They're not redeemable.

So the carrying value of preferred stock was up $41 million, $42 million less the warrants, but we had an increase of up to the $90 million, which is the redemption value. So that looks -- that $48 million, $49 million actually, if it's net of deal costs. The $48 million, $49 million is a reclassification out of permanent equity paid-in capital up into temporary equity. [So you need], just a balance sheet reclass because there are permit equity into temporary equity. As I said, didn't go through the P&L, it's not really a loss in the P&L. That's carrying is the preferred stock at $90 million.

However, under GAAP, when you're calculating earnings per share based on common equity, common shares of stock, any clarification out of permanent equity into temporary is what's called a deemed dividend, meaning cash going out the door. So it's a deemed dividend. And when you calculate the earnings per share, you have to take the actual earnings for the quarter, if you said it was $2.1 million off the entertainment. It was our earnings for the quarter.

And you have to reduce it by that reclassification amount that came out of common into temporary. So if you take the $2 million, let's say, $48 million, $49 million that got reclassified. Then you're saying what kind of negative $47 million divided by 20 million shares outstanding, there's your $2.33 per share loss. So you have to keep loss in perspective, there was no operating loss. The company does not have a loss as a result of its operations. Its resulting operations -- it's more of kind of an accounting thing the way US-GAAP and FASB requires you to classify. So that's the PIPE transaction and the $2.33. (inaudible) that and is clear on that.

So now going back to the deck on page 6 and taking a look at our loan portfolio. It's the combination of the HFS, HFI, obviously, HFI are the $2 billion, portfolio. HSI as of June 30, was about $1.8 billion. HFS is a much smaller portion, couple hundred million.

But take a look at the total portfolio. On the left-hand side, the portfolio composition, you see we ended at just under $2.1 billion compared to the end of Q1, it was a little over $2.1 billion. So you can match the portfolio is fairly flat. We never -- we had no loan originations in Q2. Operations were suspended in Q2. And again because of the COVID crisis now, there's very little paydowns or payments happening as well. So you can see that the portfolio stayed pretty flat, decrease about 3%. And then the right-hand side, just kind of shows the waterfall.

On page 7. We look at our portfolio related net interest income and our net interest margin. Our net interest income for Q2 was $18.6 million as compared to $21.8 million for the first quarter. In our [NIM], our portfolio related margin was 3.54% compared to Q1 of 4.18%.

And again, as Chris mentioned earlier, the margin is down primarily because of the non-performing loans going up. And the right-hand side [solds], we did get a pickup though that decrease in the amount of the yield that you have tough side of the right-hand side, the loan yield, the decrease in yield is due to the non-performers going up, but we also had a decrease in our average debt cost.

As we kind of mentioned, debt cost has been coming down -- a lot of it's due to the pro rata structures. So that we could do more of those in the sequential pay down. We're going to be ticking up on the debt cost and see that is happening. Debt cost has trended down over the last three quarters, but the yield is down as well due to the increase in non-performings. So the margin is down compared to Q1.

On page 8, if you take a look at the biggest portfolio, we have the HFI loan portfolio. In terms of the nonaccrual loans, we ended the quarter with just under 15% of nonperforming and nonaccrual loans compared to about 8% through the end of Q1. So as we said, the non-performing is up. The one thing to keep in mind, we've always said our charge-off rate is very, very low compared to non performings.

Lot of that has to do with the low LTV. 65% LTV, which we've held consistently -- the high borrower FICO score at a average, personal guarantees. There's lot of good reasons that the charge-offs have been low historically and you see those charge-offs continue to stay low. You look at the right-hand side, for the last three quarters on a quarterly basis under 50 basis points in charge-offs in any one of those quarters. So although the nonperforming has ratcheted up, charge-offs remain low and we're kind of expecting our charge-off rate to be hopefully consistent going forward and kind of what we've had in the past, based on the way our loans are structured.

Going on to page 9, in terms of the CECL reserve, Chris mentioned that we did take an increase to our loan loss reserve for Q2. The biggest part of the reserve was due to the economic forecasts. And I think we mentioned at the end of Q1, we use a model, and we used a CECIL stress scenario at the end of Q1 to kind of model the economic forecast and we increased that CECIL piece of it and sort of call that piece of it by about $900,000 in Q1, and we used COVID stress scenario again for Q2. And as you can imagine, the COVID stress scenario was a little bit more at first for Q2 because of the longer recovery period that was experienced during Q2 on COVID, the resurgence of both second wave of the COVID virus, businesses that were reopening, now, how do we close again?

So this the model that we use reflect advanced. And so it was a little bit more sort of a -- kind of an inverted V, where it hit the peak and then came down quickly as more of the curve is more of a inverted U, would have to kind of extend it a little longer. And so we felt the need to take an additional provision for Q2 based on that model.

So at the end of Q2, we're now at a loan loss reserve of $5.2 million on a full portfolio or 28 basis points where at the end to say, last year we were at 13 basis points. So we feel that we've sufficiently increase that reserve in a good position, kind of based on where COVID is at now and based on the adverse scenario that we've run.

And with that, Chris, I'll turn it over to you to go through a second quarter asset resolution activity.

Great, thanks Mark. Appreciate that.

Back on 10, just a little more detail around resolutions on the road show, we emphasized how resolutions were really critical to us. The main thing that we focus on. As Mark mentioned, was the higher nonaccrual loans. We get lower current yields. But our anticipation is that those recoveries will just be pushed out into future quarters, and we will get all of that contractual interest back as well as some of the penalties. So [recoveries] are really important for us. And I'm pleased to report again in Q2 strong recoveries in kind of laid it out in detail here. So it's good to see that the markets continued to perform for us, even in some very strange times. And those are the gains, one or two recovery for the quarter.

On 11, just kind of wrapping it all up, the real estate values have held up much better than I think a lot of people feared, and that's really helped us in speaking with our special servicing team. They're seeing properties being shown, borrowers paying off, borrowers refinancing healthy markets. Just anecdotally had a foreclosure last week in California that we went to the courthouse steps and was paid off in full by a bidder there. And so starting to see things on par and markets continue to perform. So we think that's good for resolution. We've enhanced our staff and the special servicing department. We are well prepared to handle this increase delinquency, and we're on top of all of those borrowers and speaking with them and working through those assets and expect to continue to resolve assets favorably.

And then lastly, in terms of profitability and growth we think there's some good opportunities here to drive higher income as we start to originate again. Opportunistically, we think we can blend in this environment at lower LTVs and higher coupon. So, I think from an ROE perspective, it's probably very rich. It's very attractive. And so we'll see how that goes as we start to roll things out here. But we're very optimistic that we can put a lot of capital to work at very good return profiles, and we're hearing good demand from our customers.

And then lastly, just key operational standpoint. Again, I already mentioned, but we want that mark-to-market risk removed going forward, so less volatility and less risk in the business. And we're very excited about getting that completed as well.

So that wraps up our presentation of the deck, and I think we can open it up questions now.

(Operator Instructions) Don Fandetti, Wells Fargo.

Yes, Chris, on the nonaccruals certainly being up this quarter, it sounds like you expect there is not really to materialize into a larger charge-off. Can you talk a little bit about how you think those will get worked out versus your historical being clearly, the residential housing market is holding up really well. And so I didn't know if there would be more sales, more refinancing. How do you see that being worked out?

Yes, sure. Hi, Don. Good to hear from you.

Yeah. I think, looking at it, we think it will resolve pretty similarly to how it has in the past, for sure in the investor one to four portfolio, you're right, very robust markets. And I would expect we'll historically see that sort of 50-50 divide between refinances and folks selling their properties. And I think our view is that we've tried to help as many folks as we can get through that and it will take some time to work off. It doesn't come off overnight. So it's going to take three, four quarters to get to work through that. But each month goes by, you tend to work that backlog off, I guess. So, we're thinking we'd be stable but declining.

Yes. So Mark, do you have any thoughts on NIM outlook in the near term?

I'm not sure nonaccruals have peaked at this point.

Yeah, I mean our focus in a way where we'll take a look at our forecasts as well done [by high LTV as to who we are young], is, we're thinking that we're at now, the 15%, 16% level is probably kind of where we're going to peak out and we're going to start to see it actually declined and taking a look like one metric on one side, it's like the 14.6%. Overall, our entire portfolios was like around 15.9% in the queue, if you've taken the HFS and HFI loans, it's like a 15.9% at Q2. When we looked at the end of July, it's more like around 15.1%. So you're already starting to see some decline. We think that's going to gradually start to decline. So that would be our forecast.

And then just lastly, as you start to originate again, how are you going to pay for those? I mean, obviously you'll get a good advance rates on the bank loans, but do you have enough cash? I mean, do you expect paydowns? How material could the new originations be?

Yeah. Good question. We're going to start slow coming out of the gate, we're not going to race back to where we were. So yes, we have enough capital and cash to do that. We kind of want to test the waters and sea, where demand levels are. And as we resume, we'll figure that out. But we expect to have positive cash flow from our retained interests coming in as well. So as we go forward, we should have capital to grow the originations. And then we're also in talks, as I mentioned, with some of our investment banks and warehouse providers to provide financing there as well. So the combination of those should give us plenty of room for growth capital.

Thank you.

Stephen Laws, Raymond James.

Good afternoon. Chris, Mark, hope you are both well, good to hear for you.

Yes, I guess first, I noticed in the deck on Page 5, it talks about reevaluating product guidelines and offerings. If Chris, can you maybe talk about that a little bit? Is that and due to performance, you're seeing in certain geographies or product types in your portfolio? Is it something specific with an outlook of COVID impact. Can you give us a little color around the changes being made there, maybe what you like that more post COVID and what products you may be no longer going to offer?

Sure. Yes, we're going to -- we've been evaluating with the team looking at just our performance and then where we see opportunities. We definitely see more delinquency at lower cycle scores. So initially going out, we're probably going to raise our minimum FICO score, that will be a key area. And then we've looked across the portfolio that property types don't seem much there.

But on a go-forward basis, we're certainly going to be careful lending to a property to make sure that the tenants are paying or what's going on with those businesses there. So there will be -- that we'll have a little bit of, I would say, COVID feel to it where we're just want to make sure we understand what's really happening at the asset and walking into a mess.

And then I think that sort of overlays with the geography question as well, same type of thing, just if there's any specific thing going on in a municipality or something like that, that we need to be aware of and adjust for. So I think, broadly speaking, we're going to go initially out of the gate with our traditional 30-year product sort of our core bread and butter. We won't offer that short term bridge loan right out of the gate, but probably had that as time progresses. So fortunately, we have the earnings coming off the portfolio, which sustains us. So we're going to just kind of dip our toe back into the water, if you will, and just and see how they go.

Great, Chris, higher level when we think about the business here, moved to non-mark-to-market financing for the new originations and certainly expect that to be a higher cost to get that characteristic of those facilities. Securitization markets and what it cost to finance there, and it just heightened risk today.

So how do you take all those things and think about pricing on new loans in order to meet your ROE targets And maybe out of those, how does that compare to maybe where you were with rates six or 12 months ago?

Yeah. Good question. So the way that we look at it is the lower non-mark-to-market aggregation facilities really don't have that big of an impact on ROE. Yes, we have more of a haircut, but we also have lower interest expense during the aggregation period. So it's not a huge factor. And we think that just the peace of mind and the structural benefits of those facilities far outweigh any marginal cost.

The more important driver for true ROE or IRR on any loan that we make is really where we execute in the securitization market. We think we can aggregate fairly quickly and securitize, and those economics are much more favorable. So we think we can price product and securitize it with ROEs north of 20% at the margin on new stuff. So we work backwards from there, from the securitization exit, I guess, to determine pricing and ROE.

And the execution that we saw just in Q2 was very strong and the markets bounced back very quickly. So I think we're being conservative about what those returns will look like, but I think if securitization markets are where they are today, we'll have very healthy ROEs.

Great. That's helpful. Thanks very much for that. Have a good afternoon.

Thanks.

You too. Good talking to you.

Steve Delaney, JMP Securities.

Thanks, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for the detailed deck and your clarifications on a couple of complicated things this quarter. As far as the increase in nonaccruals, certainly in 98 basis points. So, we were certainly over the high above -- well above the consensus because of not factoring in that applying enough windage to that, I guess I would say. But would you say that I mean, it is the increase in the nonaccrual loans to 15, should we assume like there is really no material impact for floating rate loans in your held for investment portfolio, is that a good assumption, Chris?

Yeah. That is. Just to remember, I would say a very, very large majority of the loans are fixed and so is the underlying debt. So there should be no interest rate factor at all. It's all related to nonaccrual.

Great. Okay. And that was a meaningful chunk, of course in the quarter.

Yeah.

There's a -- accounting has its rules and then economics at the end of the day economics rules. The nonaccrual interest okay, that we -- that you were not able to recognize in the second quarter as you go through your resolution workout process, and we look at you had 102% recovery in the second quarter. I believe I'm right in assuming that you're not just talking about principle, but you're talking about all interest that you would be due including possibly some penalty interest is that correct?

That's correct.

102% is actually saying we got all of our back contractual principal and interest. And on top of that, principal and interest made a 2% gain (technical difficulty) across that either prepayment or default interest or whatever.

Great. Yeah. So not just one or two of principle, but you're entitled everything you're entitled to under the deed of trust.

Okay. That's very helpful because when you look at the quarter and you look at the trend and NIM and then spread, it's meaningful. But it's also important to know that this is due to just a levered carry trade or something. This is something that's temporarily credit related that you have a track record of eventually recognizing that income down the road. Or at least we'll look at it as you certainly have the potential to recognize that assuming COVID doesn't get worse than we think. But thanks for that clarification.

And that's why this one that one slide to your point, the left-hand side, the non-accrual and the right-hand side, the charge offs and to your point that's the left-hand side, GAAP accounting and the right hand side economics. And the non-performing is high because at 90 days past due, we put it on nonaccrual, that the gap kind of industry standard. But if you look at the actual losses that were taken economically, that's the right-hand side charge-off. And you can see it's been historically very low, and it was low for Q2 as well.

Yeah. Okay, great. Thanks. And then on the $214 million loans held for sale at June 30, I know you did a securitization in July and that had kind of mixed collateral in there, I think, are those -- are the HFS. loans still around or did any of those get pushed into the securitization? Where do we stand on those at this point?

Yeah. So everything got securitized, Steve. And so all of the HFS loans will move into HFI for Q3, sort of all just be held as HFI.

Great. Okay. Very good. So that's we won't have that category going forward. Okay, great. And then my last --.

Right. And (multiple speakers) just give you a little color there. I'd say I don't have the exact number, but a very large portion, probably 75% or so were kind of the short-term loans.

That's what I'm --.

So they're in that securitization, but I think, in our expectation is they'll pay off much faster than in our other core long term product.

Got it. Okay.

Yes. The Securitization was about what $276 million and about $215 million to that was the short term.

Yeah, I noticed the ticker had MC and I assume that stand for mixed collateral or something?

That's exactly

You're exactly right.

That was my guess. Alrighty. And then lastly and Mark, this may be best handled offline but with respect to the accounting or the book value impact of the preferred and your book value being at $10.26, we had actually taken into account the dilution on the preferred if converted and had taken $12.47 and March 31, down to $9.30. So the $10.26 is not a shock, but is there -- I don't think there's a simple answer to this.

But if, let's say the holders of that Series A, Pref decided next week that they were just going to convert to common, then my question is how much -- in my analysis had assumed $45 million was going to go in and then 11.7 million shares would be issued. Of your $90 million that you're now showing in temp as equity and I know that's got that implied dividend build in. Is there a number you have in mind that like if we forgot about the dividend because they elect to convert. Is there a number within that, that would go into common equity on an if-converted basis that you can share?

Yes, let me we'll -- well right now way the financial show, you'll see in the Q tomorrow, you've got $90 million of temporary equity and $49 million roughly -- like $48.9 million, $49 million was a deemed dividend that came out of common equity up into temporary. But to your point, if tomorrow, all those preferred shareholders converted to common that entire $90 million will go back down into the common stock.

So we just took a $2-plus hit to book value to account for the future dividends, theoretically account for the dividend stream going forward for some period of time.

We took a hit, we took hit to common -- mutual hit plus a total equity book -- there is a common book value because (multiple speaker).

That's why, hit the common exactly.

Yes. So with the net that $12.46 or $10.26, as I common equity. So we took a hit to common equity because you're basically reserving up in temporary equity on the chance that it is some times put back to the company at the full redemption value. It's just like a reserve. Once they'll convert to common stock, there is no put right. They can put the common stock back.

That's right.

[Even if the] that deemed dividend, and all goes back into common stock.

Okay. Very good. So that $2 loss in book value, if you will, at some point it's theoretically recoverable into common equity.

Yeah.

Okay. That's great. So the same question I had about the nonaccrual interest. We get that back on resolution and this deemed dividend, we potentially get that back in different [huraties]. So I'm good with both of those things.

Yeah, that's what I'm trying to be very clear on this call. This is why I've had to be clear on the call as well for you to say, the [gap] term is loss per common share of stock, and I have to put it that way because the gap.

I understand.

But it's just a loss. There was no operating loss in the company, nothing went through P&L. No cash went out the door, it's a reserve. It's a reserve in case something should happen redemption in the future. But to your point, if the conversion happens that all goes away, everything comes back into permanent equity.

Great. Thank you both for your comments.

Sure.

Very helpful.

Thank you.

Arren Cyganovich, Citi.

Thanks. In terms of the nonaccruals that you're seeing and maybe you've already mentioned this, but are you seeing any kind of difference in terms of your investor one to four versus the other kind of small-ticket theory?

Hi, Arren. It's Chris. Yes, we saw a slight outperformance on the one to four versus the small commercial, but not massive and not something that I would call materially different. It's pretty consistent to the weightings in the portfolio.

Okay. And I don't know if you have much feel for this, but in terms of the customer base on the on this small-ticket theory, do you have a feel for how many of those customers were able to access PPP loans, whether or not folks are planning to shut doors or keep going? There's been a lot of discussion about the impact of small businesses from the pandemic.

Yeah. Unfortunately, I don't -- we don't have any data that we can share with you. We do everything kind of at the loan asset level and don't aggregate that up all the way to see trends in speaking with our asset managers and the head of our special servicing team. We're seeing at everything across the board. We're seeing folks that say, my tenants are put out are literally shut, and we're seeing people say, while everybody's paying and I'm fine. So it's kind of too widespread to report any common theme that I could give you there any real data.

Are you seeing any change in credit trends in through July and into August?

Yeah. So through July, as Mark mentioned, we saw delinquency basically stabilize where it was [got to] ticked down slightly. The probably -- well, interesting thing to note obviously will be how the rest of these forbearance plans performed so that the 19% who didn't pay are going to roll through those delinquency buckets now. And we'll see how they do, if they miss that first payment and make it up on the second month or if they just go straight into foreclosure, we'll have to see how that shakes out.

But so far, we've seen it stabilize and we're planning for it to be that way for the next few quarters and with a slight down trend as we work through these assets, just based on past experience. It takes time to work them off.

Okay. And then just lastly on -- you had mentioned dipping your toe in the water in terms of originations, so should we expect the portfolio to continue to decline as you're originating new loans? Or do you think you'll actually be able to grow the portfolio modestly?

Yes, we think we'll be able to grow -- time will tell, obviously, as we get back out there and to see where we are. But I think our expectation is by Q4, we'll be back to a point where we'll see the portfolio start to expand and then going forward into '21 definitely see real acceleration there.

Okay, great. Thanks so much.

Thank you.

And ladies and gentlemen, at this time, I'm showing no additional questions. I'd like to turn the floor back over to management for any closing remarks.

Nothing else for me. Thank you all for joining the call, and we appreciate you taking the time anything, Mark, you wanted to cover?

No, again just thank you. Very good questions. And hope the PIPE transaction, it's a little bit out there. It will be out there for us too, but hopefully we explained it properly for everybody. So thank you for your time.

Ladies and gentlemen, with that, we'll conclude today's conference call. We thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.