Q1 2024 Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corp Earnings Call

Participants

Jalpa Nazareth; IR; Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation

Brad Nordholm; President, CEO; Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation

Aparna Ramesh; EVP, CFO, Treasurer; Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation

Zack Carpenter; EVP, Chief Business Officer; Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation

Bose George; Analyst; KBW

Bill Ryan; Analyst; Seaport Research Partners

Brendan McCarthy; Analyst; Sidoti & Company, LLC

Presentation

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Farmer Mac first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) This call is being recorded on Monday, May 6, 2024.
I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Jalpa Nazareth, Senior Director of Investor Relations and Finance Strategy. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Jalpa Nazareth

Good morning, and thank you for joining us for our first quarter 2024 earnings conference call on Delta Nassib, Senior Director of Investor Relations and Finance Strategy here at Farmer Mac. As we begin, please note that the information provided during this call may contain forward-looking statements about the Company's business strategies and prospects, which are based on management's current expectations and assumptions. These statements are not a guarantee of future performance and are subject to the risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those projected. Please refer to Farmer Mac's 2023 Annual Report and subsequent SEC filings for a full discussion of the Company's risk factors.
On today's call, we will also be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures. Disclosures and reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures can be found in our most recent Form 10-Q and earnings release posted on our website, farmermac.com under the Financial Information portion of the Investors section.
Joining us from management this morning is our President and Chief Executive Officer, Brad Nordholm, who will discuss first quarter business and financial highlights and strategic objectives; and Chief Financial Officer, Aparna Ramesh, who will provide greater detail on our financial performance. Select members of our management team will also be joining us for the question and answer period at this time, I'll turn the call over to President and CEO, Brad Nordholm. Brad?

Brad Nordholm

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Our team has once again delivered excellent results, demonstrating our unwavering commitment to grow Farmer Mac profitably while fulfilling our mission to rural America and generating strong shareholder returns across changing market cycles. The year is off to a strong start as we recorded core earnings of $43.4 million, reflecting a 12% increase over the same period last year. We provided $1.4 billion in liquidity and lending capacity, the lenders serving rural America while maintaining our strong capital base, disciplined asset liability management and uninterrupted access to the capital markets.
The overall earnings story continues to be consistent. The diversification and resiliency of our business model supports our long-term strategic growth objectives while also providing a buffer against market volatility and change in credit markets.
I'd like to highlight two noteworthy transactions that we've recently completed. First, the successful execution of our four farm Cyries securitization transaction, Farmer Mac remains committed to developing a vibrant and liquid ag mortgage-backed securities market that essential to our core mission to improve credit accessibility in rural America.
This initiative is our opportunity to transform the agricultural mortgage market industry with new efficiencies helping to lower the costs for the end borrowers. We are very pleased by the tremendous support we have seen from our customers and investors for this program and remain committed to being a regular issuer in the market with a set of securitization products that align our borrower and investor interest.
Second transfer transaction worth noting is the acquisition of a $57 million pool of Farm & Ranch loans from a single agricultural lender. This acquisition underscores Farmer Mac's track record of providing agricultural lenders solutions for their capital planning, especially there, as there is uncertainty about how capital regulation will evolve over the next few years.
We have consistently presented our product offerings as a capital efficiency and liquidity tool for our customers in both the agricultural finance and rural infrastructure lines of business. We believe that this is because the relative value of Farmer Mac brings to our banking and financial services partners and ultimately the agricultural and rural borrowers is even greater when credit is a bit tighter. Our funding advantage and our disciplined approach to asset liability management allow us to further deliver upon our mission to build a trusted secondary market for credit to rural America.
We believe pool purchases within the agriculture, finance and rural infrastructure lines of business and service important opportunities for volume generation over the next few years as financial institutions continue to manage the capital efficiency loan and deposit growth and liquidity needs. That, coupled with our securitization capability, enhances our ability to offer low cost liquidity at scale to the rural utilities we serve. It's worth noting, I think that the internal operational expertise and ability to execute our securitization overlaps with pool purchases and is really a new competency developed at Farmer Mac within the last few years.
The rural infrastructure finance segments showed strong business volume growth in the first quarter 2024, primarily driven by increased investment activity and additional financing for renewable energy projects in response to continued strong demand for renewable electric power generation and storage, the pipeline remains strong in the near future and we have plans to invest additional resources to explore new opportunities.
Our agricultural finance line of business grew during the first quarter despite the seasonally large number of payments related to loans that are on the annual payment cycle. The rise in market interest rates that has persisted has had a direct impact on the farm and ranch product interest rates there generally exists an inverse correlation between Farm & Ranch loan purchase volumes and changes in the farm and ranch products, interest rates with higher product interest rates, slowing portfolio loan prepayments.
The net effect of these forces are contributed to positive Farm & Ranch loan purchase portfolio growth in the first quarter 2024 as new Farm & Ranch loan purchases, out-paced loan prepayments we believe our pipeline will continue to grow for the remainder of the year as tightening bank liquidity and the forecasted decline in farm income relative to prior years is expected to drive more loan volume, including pool purchases.
While uncertainty persists about future changes in monetary policy, farmers are adjusting to higher interest rates, and we are offering products that are more tailored for the current rate environment. Our wholesale finance product within the agricultural finance line of business presents strong relative value to our counterparties relative to market interest rates. We expect the continued diversification of our products versus the broader market to drive continued growth in this area. As we look forward, we're encouraged by the momentum we've seen since the start of the year.
We believe that we're well positioned to make continuous progress on our long-term strategic growth initiatives. Further, our mission efficiently and innovatively. As we navigate this backdrop of broader market uncertainty, our website and investor and marketing materials are beginning to reflect our efforts to use branding, deepen our connection with stakeholders in a compelling and uniform way for expansion of our mission driven work, it helps build a strong and BiDil.
Rural America initiative is intended to highlight our distinctive position as a secondary market partner that fosters greater connections between Wall Street and Main Street America as well as across the entire value chain to fuel growth, innovation and prosperity in America's rural and agricultural communities. In no small part, the fuel for that growth also comes from our active creation, have more investment opportunities for the capital markets and strong access to capital.
So at this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Aparna Ramesh, our Chief Financial Officer. Aparna, can you discuss our financial results in more detail?

Aparna Ramesh

Thank you, Brad, and good morning, everyone. Our first quarter 2024 Full results highlight a balanced well measured approach, continued strong credit quality and resiliency across market cycles. We achieved $1.4 billion of gross new business volume this quarter, and this is primarily driven by loan purchases and renewable energy, the previously-discussed farm and ranch to purchase a new AgVantage securities in our Farm & Ranch and corporate and finance segments.
After repayments and maturities, we grew about $400 million during the first quarter in our outstanding business volume. And this speaks to the benefit of the strategic decisions that Rod enumerated that we've undertaken over the last few years to diversify our portfolio and create opportunities in all interest rates.
Core earnings were $43.4 million or $3.96 per share in the first quarter of 2024, and this reflects a $1.5 million decrease sequentially and a $4.5 million year-over-year increase. The sequential change in core earnings was primarily due to lower net effective spread. And this was driven by some seasonality related nonaccrual loans that were recorded in the first quarter. We often see an increase in nonaccrual loans in the first and third quarters of every year. And this is related to the annual and semiannual payments schedule for the majority of our Farm & Ranch loans.
It does tend to reverse with payment flow that occurs in subsequent quarters. We also encountered a modest increase in our floating rate funding costs during the first quarter, and this was driven by certain dynamics in the sulfur credit markets that spilled into the fourth quarter of 2023. So year-over-year increase in core earnings was driven by $4.6 million after-tax increase in net effective spread and a $2.1 million after-tax decrease in our provision for credit losses.
And this was partly offset by higher operating expenses from increased headcount, increased stock compensation expense and investments in technology projects. In percentage terms, our net effective spread in the first quarter of 2024 was 114 basis points compared to 119 basis points in the fourth quarter of 2023 and consistent with 115 basis points in the same period last year. Over the course of 2023 we've achieved record levels of net effective spreads as we benefited from the rapid rise in short-term rates and reinvesting our excess capital, which generated additional returns with the upward repricing of our short-term investment portfolio.
The capital that we raised opportunistically when rates were at historical lows in 2020 and 2021, positioned us extremely well throughout the rising rate environment. And ongoing market uncertainty. As we look ahead, our treasury desk will be opportunistic in taking advantage of favorable market conditions for GSE paper and prefund new issuances, while refunding maturing debt without taking excess risk. We did just that in the first quarter as we saw a reversal of the unfavorable credit widening that occurred in the fourth quarter of 2023 and we took advantage of tightened levels by pre-funding.
We continue to hold approximately $800 million in cash and other short-term instruments in our liquidity portfolio. Not only does this help us weather potential market disruptions. Our access and highly liquid capital generate immediate returns in a high nominal reconvene. We project a limited downside to earnings if rates decline in the future due to our proactive equity capital allocation strategy where we are laddering and levering duration to minimize volatility.
Specifically, we expect to retain some of that benefit over the medium term even if rates decline as we started extending maturities in our investment portfolio, these are all practices that are consistent with our disciplined approach designed to help minimize earnings volatility despite some macro headwinds. We continue to see strong access to debt capital markets and a flight to quality investment, which allows us to be very well positioned to fund new asset opportunities as they arise.
As Brad highlighted in his comments, we are very pleased with the execution of our fourth fund series transaction. In April, we received more than three times the demand for this latest offering. And this is really a testament to Farmer Mac's reputation with institutional investors as well as the overall market appetite for the underlying agricultural asset class, not only was demand strong, but we were successfully able to expand our investor base and also introduce new classes of senior notes to address the cash flow demands of capital markets in this interest rate environment.
The consistent time series issuances every of the last four years have not only built a strong foundation for future market liquidity, but also lead to improved execution economics and greater efficiencies and servicing for the agricultural mortgage backed securities market securitization of many beneficial aspects for Farmer Mac. It allows us to diversify our funding, enhance and optimize the balance sheet by efficient deployment of capital and also enable our growth strategy by targeting new asset opportunities into our conduit.
Turning to liquidity and capital, both remain extremely well in excess of all regulatory requirements and our projections show minimal change in our profitability, coupled with limited exposure to movements in interest rates with the Marketleap go upwards.
As of March 31, 2024. Farmer Mac had 295 days of liquidity, and this is another important data point that validates our resiliency, again short and medium-term market disruption. Operating expenses increased by 8% sequentially and 15% year over year. And this is primarily due to the expenditures that are associated with headcount and increased stock compensation expenses as well as investments in technology projects, expenditures associated with the multiyear technology investment in our treasury and cash management system to enhance our trading hedging and reporting pod platform partly contributed to the year-over-year increase in expenses.
This modernization effort is expected to position us to more effectively defend against cyber and fraud threats, but also allow us to scale our portfolio and continually diversify our product offering such that they're in alignment with the growth strategy and our business and funding opportunity. We also plan to continue to make investments in strategic focus areas such as renewable energy and continue to modernize our infrastructure, including our servicing and loan platform to support our growth and strategic objective.
All of this has resulted in an operating efficiency ratio that is at 30% for the first quarter of 2024. And I will note that it's well in line with our long-term strategic plan targets. We'll continue to closely monitor our efficiency ratio and manage it as we've done such that we expect to remain at or below a long-run average of 30%. As noted, some of the increase in efficiency ratio this quarter was related to stock incentive compensation, which is seasonal, but most awards granted during the first quarter of each year as we make investments in our loan infrastructure and funding platform and innovate our loan processes to accelerate growth.
We may see some temporary increases that would result and the efficiency ratio rising about the 30% level. Our credit profile and our performance, there remained stable, highlighted by continued strength across our agricultural and rural infrastructure portfolios. We posted another quarter without any charge-offs and benefited from a $1.9 million release from a total allowance, and this was largely a result of one rural infrastructure loan that improved its outlook during the first quarter 90 day delinquencies as of March 31, 2024 reflect 27 basis points across our entire portfolio, and this is in line with the same period last year.
We generally observe higher delinquency levels at the end of the first quarter and third quarter due to the annual and semiannual payment terms for most of our Farm & Ranch loans and the impact that I noted previously from the nonaccrual loans are associated with an annual payment cycle.
Let me now turn to capital Farmer Mac's $1.5 billion of core capital as of March 31, 2024 exceeded our statutory requirement by $612 million was 17% for capital increase sequentially, and this was primarily due to an increase in retained earnings. Our Tier 1 capital ratio as of March 31, 2024 improved to 15.5% from 15.4% at year end, largely due to higher retained earnings.
As I mentioned previous maintaining credit standards that reflect our risk profile, coupled with these strong levels of capital is a fundamental part of our long-term strategy for growth. We expect our long-term capital position and a strong capital position to allow us to be resilient and continue to be a source of low-cost liquidity for our customers and borrowers, even as evidenced difficult.
In conclusion, our entire team delivered strong quarterly results, maintaining the key metrics that we highlight on each call while staying within our credit framework. Notably, we delivered 17% return on equity. This quarter and stayed well in line with our efficiency target of 30%. We believe that our balance sheet is well positioned for uncertainty, and we're more optimistic than ever to deliver on our long-term strategic plan objectives.
And with that, Brad, let me turn it back to you.

Brad Nordholm

So thank you very much, Arno. But before we turn to questions and answers, I want to let everyone know that we will be hosting our first ever Investor Day event on Thursday, May 16, beginning at 10 A.M. Eastern time. Our results and consistent performance through our market cycles have resulted in a very strong momentum in the markets, and we want to use this event as an opportunity to further educate the broader investment community on our organization.
Our core mission to increase the accessibility of financing for American agriculture and rural infrastructure. We will provide a link to access the live webcast and will be available at our website. But if you're interested in participating in person, it will be in New York pretty basic event. And please reach out to our Investor Relations team because we still have some space available.
And now, operator, I'd like to see if we have any questions from anyone on the line today.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Bose George, KBW.

Bose George

Good morning. Actually, I wanted to start just on the spread per night. You noted the seasonality of the nonaccrual loans impacting the yield side.
And then that So through issue on the funding side, you guys both of these normalize in the second quarter, should we see spreads go back to the 4Q 23 levels as long as interest rates remain fairly stable.

Brad Nordholm

Yes, hey, Bose, nice to hear from you. There are those factors at work? We talked about the impact of the reversal of the interest accrual. And another point I'd like to make we related to NES, which is at the heart of your calculation, is that a good part of our volume growth came on late in the quarter. So we had a numerator or denominator rather that grew at the end of the quarter as that numerator had been accruing through the quarters. So those are all factors.
Now as it relates to reverting or snapping back to [119], I think we would caution that it would snap back to exactly that level I think on prior calls, we have explained that over time, we expect that [118] to [120] to slip. I was asked on the last call we'll go back to on the one hundreds and I indicated probably to the hundred and teens and hundred and teens. So we do expect some erosion over time. But based on the first quarter results, some reversion towards that higher level should be expected.

Aparna Ramesh

And those I'll just add one thing with respect to the widening that we saw in credit markets. This was a dynamic that persisted in Q4. You probably heard of the FOMC transcript last year with the Fed easing up on some of the different activities that they're planning to undertake that should us will favorably into the market. And in fact, we're starting to see quite a few signs of that in Q1 of this year.
And we food very opportunistically prefunded. So just to give you a sense, there was a widening to the tune of about 15 basis points relative to surface spreads in the fourth quarter of last year. We've seen that actually come in was to be less than 5 basis points. So we pre-funded at those levels. We got a little bit of negative carry in Q1 that also resulted in some erosion in our net effective spread.
Couple that with the nonaccruals and the volume dynamic that Brad just mentioned, I'm sorry, optimistically, we should trend higher, but all things notwithstanding, I think the high watermark of 180 basis points or 119 basis points is a little unrealistic.

Bose George

Okay, great. Thanks. That's very helpful. And then actually switching to the securitization that you guys did. Can you just talk about the spread impact of securitizations versus on-balance sheet? And then when you look at the spread and includes sort of the risk-based capital benefit, what's sort of the overall ROE impact of using securitization?

Aparna Ramesh

And to those of you who know we, as I mentioned, we saw some really of favorable market dynamics in Q1, and we timed our securitization transaction extremely well. And so when you look at just the long-term impact of the coupon that we received relative to the yield that was received in the market. We we're extremely favorable when you compare that to the transaction that we did just about a year ago.
In terms of just the capital benefit, we can come back to you on a lot of the specifics with respect to just how accretive this transaction was. But and I'll just say that, you know, just one data point from me look out over a 18 years horizon, we actually took a chunk of our cash flows and we've locked in a fairly attractive spread over a very long duration.
And so all in, we expect to see, you know, our hurdle rate for on any transaction that we do is about 30% securitization transactions come in. I want to say, at least double that, if not better than some. And then we also get this boost capital release that really starts to enable our continued growth strategy into these higher NES products like telecom and renewable energy.

Bose George

Okay, great. Thanks very much.

Operator

Bill Ryan, Seaport Research Partners.

Bill Ryan

Our Good morning and thanks for taking my questions. One, a bit on the micro side and then one macro, but on the micro, following up on the NES, I'm thinking about the treasury segment you talked about there was some pre-funding. I assume that's obviously where that took place. You had a little bit of compression, but you've also historically talked about increasing the duration of the portfolio, to what extent did that have an impact on the treasury and yes, the duration now extension, I would say maybe ticked our NES down by half a basis point or one basis point.

Aparna Ramesh

And we do expect to see some erosion and it's very hard to predict bill what the Fed is going to do. But if you look at just where things are trending today relative to where the market predicted six months ago and you take a look at the forward curve, you know, I think markets were predicting seven rate cuts this year. And based on what we've heard more recently from the Fed, they're going to stay higher for longer. So what does that mean?
Possibly two rate cuts in the back half of this year. And something that we've continued to emphasize is that when we actually manage our ALM, our asset liability management, we tried to mitigate volatility first and so we did that and we extended duration, but we had a benefit of almost $1 billion of cash that we raised back in 2020. We've been layering in maybe a third overtime and extending our duration on our investment portfolio, will we see a little bit of negative carry as the Fed stays higher for longer. It's the opportunity cost of not reinvesting back relative to a year ago?
Yes, we will. But as I mentioned, that's probably likely to be anywhere in the tune of about one basis point or under on an NES percentage basis, we'll really start to see a pickup in that strategy over a year. And as we start to see the yield curve steepen and we start to see more rate cuts come into play. But again, this is something that we do not to maximize short-term profits, but we do it to minimize our volatility, which has played out very well Okay.

Bill Ryan

Thanks for the detailed response on that. And second question, again, kind of a little bit more bigger picture, but could you provide an update on the farm bill? You know, what is being proposed in there that could benefit Farmer Mac, I believe couple of things mentioned in the past have been like increasing the acreage that you can finance being able to work around co-ops on utilities business, but maybe you can give us a little bit of color on that.

Brad Nordholm

And I'd be very pleased to you're going to start seeing more headlines. I think about the Farm Bill, of course, it was scheduled to be revisited and we passed every five years and that exploration, that maturity was in 2023. So it's already operating under an extension just in the last week and a half G T THOMPSON, congressman from Pennsylvania who chairs the house Agricultural Committee. He's announced his intention to release the house, a Committee's draft of farm bill before Memorial Day weekend.
And with that, we're seeing a lot of conversations. We're in active discussions, conversations with the staff and really appreciate the fact that the farm bill is by all indications beginning to move forward. Now this is important for farmers and ranchers and agribusinesses across the United States as well as those who benefit from other programs that are delivered under the Farm Bill.
And we weren't sure what would happen on the Senate side. And certainly there's been a huge amount of work done, but Senator Stabenow has announced that she too is going to move forward the Senate on a Committee's version, and we've been closely monitoring the details of both. It's premature for us to project exactly what this means for Farmer Mac, obviously, from when bills are negotiated, where they're reconciliation taking place, a lot can happen.
And so we just can't project exactly what happened. But the things that we're interested in, you mentioned enhanced ability to originate renewable energy, project finance loans, not changing the eligibility of the borrower, but just to originate some broadening that and to be able to do more types of USDA loans that are consistent with the mission of possibly getting some relief from the 20 acre limitation, which actually by our regulator was recommended to be dropped and with some substitute for a capital requirement, which we believe would be favorable to Farmer Mac.
These are things that we have consistently talked about now for a number of years and where our key stakeholders and even our detractors are well aware of what we want and more importantly, exactly why we think it would be beneficial to rural America to agriculture to real infrastructure and what's actually consistent with our overall mission. So stay tuned, and we hope a lot happens in the next couple of months on the farm bill.

Bill Ryan

Okay.
Thanks, Brad.

Operator

Brendan McCarthy, Sidoti.

Brendan McCarthy

Hey, good morning, everybody. Thanks for taking my questions. I just wanted to start off taking a look at volume, I think you mentioned a potential softening in farm net income. You may be driving increased borrowing in the farm and ranch side on the farm and ranch side. Can you talk about how you look at that from an underwriting perspective and any changes in underwriting there?

Brad Nordholm

I'm going to turn over to Zack Carpenter who's with us today to talk about both underwriting and the impact that changes in that farm in may have and volume and maybe how that breaks down by sector.

Zack Carpenter

So that yes, good morning, Brendan. As you know, first off with well, net farm income expected to decline from 2023 and the highs of 2022. It's still above the historical average here. So in context, right, we've seen a decline but still doing well at the farm gate. Now we are seeing some pressure on liquidity and across certain sectors of the farm gate. So that is driving the need to potentially lever a little bit more on the farmland, where there's plenty of equity as we continue to see farmland appreciate, albeit at a slower rate. So overall, we still feel very comfortable with the borrower and the types of transactions we're seeing.
So when we look from an underwriting perspective, clearly there's component of leverage and cash flow. So we are seeing some tightness in cash flow, but as long as we feel comfortable that there's good liquidity at the borrower level and allowing them to tap some equity in the farmland also supports our liquidity. We are comfortable so we haven't seen a significant deterioration.
That being said, we have seen some stress in certain sectors across the farmland space. But overall, our underwriting standards remain very strong. Credit quality remains very strong, and we do see additional opportunities to support the farmer to kind of weather some of the declines in commodity prices are maybe a little bit more sticky on the input side.

Brendan McCarthy

Yes.
Thank you.
That's helpful on that. I believe you mentioned there was a $57 million pool of Farm & Ranch loans that you purchased that added to the business volume in the first quarter. Can you talk about that transaction? I guess was that any kind of stress scenario from the on the lender side?

Zack Carpenter

Yes, happy to, you know, it's a great opportunity for us to support one of our key originators that did close in the back half of the quarter. So we'll see some benefits of that heading into the second quarter.
This is really kind of a theme that we've been talking about, right? When rates were low. We saw a lot of our originators lenders kind of whole loans on balance sheet to take advantage of some growth in deposits and capital. Now as things revert with higher interest rates and potential issues with capital and then changes in capital from a regulatory perspective there kind of re looking at their balance sheet to say what makes sense for us to keep on balance sheet as well as potentially offload for liquidity purposes.
So this wasn't a stress scenario. This is pure capital and liquidity management for this organization and a lot of these institutions are trying to grapple with servicing and overhead and capital requirements, especially for you know, as a smaller farmland loans read a lot of these loans still take the same or require the same servicing and management as larger loans.
So that's a lot of overhead that's a lot of structure to put in place to manage that. And so when you get a portfolio of size and that nature, you kind of stresses that dynamic internally from a expense and capital perspective. So that's purely why Farmer Mac was created to help support these lenders in this specific area. And frankly, I think could provide more opportunities for us in the dynamic to support more financial institutions as they continue to look at liquidity and capital.

Brendan McCarthy

Got it. That makes sense. And one last question from me. From a very broad perspective, what could really drive outperformance or underperformance relative to your expectations for the rest of the rest of the year, obviously assume the industry environment plays a big part of that.

Brad Nordholm

But I just kind of curious as to your thoughts with the increasing diversification in our business and a relatively conservative approach to budgeting and forecasting at Farmer Mac, it's hard to forecast what that event might be. It would really be some kind of black swan event. And so could it happen on the credit side?
I would never say never, but our credit metrics have been very consistent and I think speak for themselves. It could be on the volume side. When I kind of quarter in quarter out, we show single digit growth for the quarter, aside from an occasional opportunity to do a large portfolio purchase such as and 2019 when we purchased a portfolio of well infrastructure loans or some of the opportunities that maybe Zach is looking at in the back half of this year.
Aside from that, it's pretty predictable. So but I don't really foresee anything that would be a major change on the upside or downside and the kind of growth and performance that you've seen from us fairly consistently now for a number of years.

Brendan McCarthy

Great. Thanks, everybody.

Operator

Thank you. There seems to be no further questions at this time. I'd now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Northam for final closing comments.

Brad Nordholm

With that. Well, thank you all very much. We truly appreciate it when you participate in these calls on it gives us an opportunity to think in a disciplined way about how we are assessing our recent past performance and our prospects. And also to hear from you what's on your mind and maybe gaps in what we've explained to you and how we can better better respond. So thank you very much. We truly appreciate your participation.
As I mentioned, if you're interested I check in on the Investor Day presentations of both webcast as well as live that will be coming up a week from this next Thursday. And if there are other questions follow up. Please follow up with you all. But with that, we wish everyone a very good day. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines and have a lovely.