Yahoo Finance

Participants

Jeffrey Markowitz; SVP, Chief External Affairs Officer; Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp

James Whitlinger; EVP, CFO; Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp

Presentation

Jeffrey Markowitz

Good morning, and thank you for joining us for a presentation of Freddie Mac's first quarter 2025 financial results. I'm Jeff Markowitz, Senior Vice President and Chief External Affairs Officer. We're joined today by Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Jim Wittlinger.
Before we begin today, we'd like to point out that during the call, Mr. Wittlinger, 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 materially vary from its expectations.
A description of these 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 the call not be rebroadcast or transcribed.
With that, I'll turn the call over to our CFO, Jim Whitlinger.

James Whitlinger

Good morning, and thank you for joining our call to review Freddie Mac's first quarter performance. Let's start with the bottom line.
Freddie Mac delivered a solid performance, earning $2.8 billion of net income in the first quarter, driving the company's net worth to $62 billion. We helped 313,000 families across the nation by rent or refinance a home in the quarter with 52% of our single-family loan purchases supporting first-time homebuyers and 92% of the eligible rental units financed affordable to middle income renters who form the backbone of our communities.
Our commitment to our mission is unwavering and will only improve as we work with Director of US Federal Housing, Bill Pulte, to streamline our operations by stripping away unnecessary bureaucracy and eliminating nonessential activities. I'll talk a little more about that and what it means for Freddie Mac before I conclude today's call. So let's get right to the financials.
As I noted this morning, we reported first quarter 2025 net income of $2.8 billion, an increase of $28 million or 1% year-over-year. This increase was primarily driven by higher net interest income from continued mortgage portfolio growth and lower funding costs, partially offset by lower yields on short-term investments.
Our first quarter net interest income was $5.1 billion, up $343 million or 7% year-over-year. The increase was primarily driven by continued mortgage portfolio growth in single-family and an increase in the volume of fully guaranteed securitizations in multifamily. Noninterest income for the first quarter was $750 million, a decline of $248 million or 25% lower from the prior year quarter.
This was primarily due to a decrease in net investment gains in multifamily. Noninterest expense declined $34 million or 2% year-over-year, primarily due to lower credit enhancement expenses driven by lower volume of cumulative credit risk transfer transactions.
Our provision for credit losses was $280 million for this quarter, primarily driven by a credit reserve build in single-family attributable to new acquisitions. Turning to our individual business segments. The single-family segment reported net income of $2.3 billion for the quarter, up $316 million or 16% year-over-year.
Single-family net revenues of $4.9 billion increased 10% from the prior year quarter. This increase was primarily driven by a 6% increase in our net interest income, which benefited from continued mortgage portfolio growth. Our single-family mortgage portfolio at the end of the quarter was $3.1 trillion, up 2% year-over-year.
Our provision for single-family credit losses was an expense of $228 million this quarter, primarily due to credit reserve build for new acquisitions. The provision in the prior year quarter was $120 million, which was primarily attributable to new acquisitions and increasing mortgage interest rates.
Our current house price forecast assumes an increase of 4.2% over the next 12 months and 2.8% over the subsequent 12 months. This is a change from our prior forecast at the end of last quarter, which assumed 2.7% and 3.3% growth over the next 12 and subsequent 12 months, respectively.
The single-family allowance for credit losses coverage ratio at the end of this quarter was 21 basis points unchanged from last quarter and up one basis point year-over-year. New business activity totaled $78 billion this quarter, up from $62 billion in the first quarter of 2024.
Both home purchase and refinance activity increased due to higher market coverage and conforming loan limits as well as house price appreciation in recent quarters. Refinance activity accounted for 21% of our total new business activity this quarter, up from 15% in the same quarter last year as we saw mortgage rates come down throughout the quarter.
The 30 year mortgage rate at the end of the quarter was 6.65%, down from 6.85% at the end of the fourth quarter of 2024, and from 6.79% at the end of the first quarter of 2024. First-time homebuyers represented 52% of our total new business activity or 81,000 households in the first quarter.
The average estimated guarantee fee charged on new business was 54 basis points, while the weighted average original loan-to-value on new purchases was 77%, and the weighted average original credit score was 756. Credit characteristics of our single-family mortgage portfolio remains strong as well, with the weighted average current loan-to-value ratio at 52% and the weighted average current credit score at $754.
At the end of the quarter, 62% of our single-family mortgage portfolio had some form of credit enhancement. The single-family serious delinquency rate remained low at 59 basis points unchanged from the prior quarter and up 7 basis points from the prior year quarter.
The year-over-year increase was primarily due to a higher series delinquency rate for loans originated during and after 2022 and as well as lingering impacts from hurricanes that occurred late in 2024. On a related note, in the first quarter, we helped approximately 25,000 families remain in their homes through loan workouts.
Moving on to multifamily. The segment reported net income of $533 million, which is down $288 million or 35% from the prior year quarter. This decrease was primarily driven by lower noninterest income of $585 million, which decreased $427 million from the prior year quarter.
It also was driven by lower revenues from held-for-sale loan purchases and securitization activities, impacts from interest rate management activities and less favorable fair value changes from prepayment rates. Net interest income of $349 million was up 29% year-over-year, primarily driven by an increase in the volume of fully guaranteed securitizations.
The multifamily provision for credit losses was an expense of $52 million this quarter versus $61 million in the prior year quarter. Our multifamily new business activity was $10 billion for the first quarter, up $1 billion from a year ago. Our multifamily business provided financing for 89,000 multifamily rental units in the quarter with 66% of eligible rental units affordable to low-income families.
Also in the first quarter, we securitized $16 billion of multifamily loans, $5 billion more than in the prior year quarter. Fully guaranteed securitizations represented 56% of total securitizations, up from 36% in the first quarter of 2024.
The average guarantee fee on our total guarantee portfolio increased 5 basis points year-over-year to 52 basis points. Our multifamily mortgage portfolio increased 5% year-over-year to $467 billion. The multifamily delinquency rate at the end of the quarter was 46 basis points.
This was up 12 basis points from 34 basis points at the end of March 2024 and up 6 basis points from the fourth quarter of 2024. The year-over-year increase in the delinquency rate was primarily driven by increased delinquencies in our floating rate loans, including small balance loans that are in their floating rate period.
98% of these delinquent loans had credit enhancement coverage at the end of the quarter. At the multifamily mortgage portfolio level, our credit enhancement coverage was 93%. On the capital front, our net worth increased to $62.4 billion at the end of the quarter, representing a 24% increase year-over-year.
Let me conclude by noting that many of you are closely following the announcements and orders issued by Director Pulte and what those mean for Freddie Mac. Briefly, Director Pulte has helped us streamline our business and harness the productivity of thousands of Freddie Mac employees now in the office full time.
He has eliminated activities not central to Freddie Mac's mission as well as requirements that make it more expensive to finance a loan but which might provide little tangible benefit to the majority of American renters and homebuyers. We support actions he has taken to drive fraud and waste out of the US housing finance system.
We expect the savings associated with FHFA's new direction to reduce Freddie Mac's general and administrative expenses in 2025 and beyond. Furthermore, we believe that regulatory changes making it easier for us to responsibly acquire loans will increase our revenue and enable us to provide even greater liquidity to the single-family and multifamily market.
That should enable Freddie Mac to invest more in critical technology, increase our net worth and lower the cost of originating a mortgage. Taking a step back, the Director has challenged us to create a more affordable US housing system. We are committed to rising to that challenge.
Thank you for joining us today.