Q4 2023 Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corp Earnings Call

Participants

Jalpa Nazareth; Senior Director of IR & Finance Strategy; Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corp

Bradford Nordholm; President, Chief Executive Officer; Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corp

Aparna Ramesh; EVP, CFO & Treasurer; Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corp

Zachary Carpenter; Executive Vice President, Chief Business Officer; Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corp

Bill Ryan; Analyst; Seaport Research Partners

Bose George; Analyst; Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.

Gary Gordon

Brendan McCarthy; Analyst; Sidoti & Company, LLC

DeForest Hinman; Analyst; Bumbershoot Holdings L.P.

Presentation

Operator

Good morning, and welcome back and thanks, but yes, good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Farmer Mac Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Results Conference Call.
At this time, all lines are in listen only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require Amevive assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Friday, February 23rd, 2024.
I would now like to turn the conference over to Jonathan Nazareth. Please go ahead.

Jalpa Nazareth

Good morning, and thank you for joining us for our fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings conference call on Delta Nazareth, 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 on Form 10 K filed with the SEC today 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 the 2023 form 10 K and earnings press release posted on Farmer Mac's website, Farmer Mac.com under the Financial Information portion of the Investors section.
Joining us from management this morning is our President and Chief Executive Officer, Brian Olson, who will discuss 2023 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 join us to provide additional information on business trends and credit conditions. At this time, I'll turn the call over to President and CEO, Brad.com. Brett.

Bradford Nordholm

Thanks, Joe, Bob, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. 2023 was a remarkable year for Farmer Mac. We produce double digit earnings growth and record net effective spread, and we substantially grew business volume, all while maintaining credit quality and holding our efficiency ratio below our target of 30%. Our success continues to be driven by our team's execution of our multiyear strategic plan, disciplined asset liability management decisions and funding execution and successful business development efforts, which have resulted in the diversification of our revenue streams.
Our strong capital base and uninterrupted access to the capital markets support our long-term strategic growth objectives while also providing a buffer against market volatility and changing credit market conditions.
So let me be a bit more specific in comparison to the prior year 2022, we concluded 2023 with a 28% growth in net effective spread to $327 million, a 38% growth in core earnings to $171 million and a 10% growth in outstanding business volume to $28.5 billion.
I believe that it is the combination of our passion for our mission, our expertise and discipline, coupled with our exceptional access to debt securitization markets and consistent asset-liability management that enables us to deliver consistently strong financial results. I fervently believe that passion for mission, the passion from our employees, our Board, our executives, I believe that it really turbocharges our expertise and discipline to deliver these exceptional results.
As you read in this morning's press release, we announced a 27% $0.30 per share increase in our quarterly common stock dividend to $1.40 per share beginning the first quarter of 2024. This reflects the 13th consecutive year that Farmer Mac has increased its quarterly dividend we are resolved to increase our dividend on an annual basis with a policy focused on achieving a targeted payout that balances or reasonable growth of both previous and future earnings along with maintaining an adequate level of capital to exceed our requirements and support our expectations for our future business volume growth, as I've said for a couple of years, diversifying our loan portfolio and serving more of our clearly defined market segments has been a key priority over the last years, and that diversification is benefiting us through changing market cycles in 2023, we have provided a gross $8.3 billion in liquidity and lending capacity to lenders serving rural America, reflecting net year-over-year outstanding business volume growth of over $2.5 billion. The rural infrastructure line of business grew $1.4 billion or 21% year over year to $8 billion as of year end, primarily due to new AgVantage facilities with existing and new counterparties and growth within the renewable energy and telecommunications portfolios.
The agricultural finance line of business increased $1.2 billion or 6% year over year to $20.5 billion, primarily driven by the acquisition of approximately $600 million of mortgage servicing rights for Farm & Ranch loans held by and serviced for a third party new AgVantage securities with our long-standing institutional counterparties and loan purchase growth in farm and ranch corporate agribusiness through a Vantage Securities and the wholesale financing space work on key driver to overall volume growth in both lines of business. The continued demand within this space reflects the comparative competitiveness of Farmer Mac's advantage pricing relative to market alternatives.
Looking ahead to 2024, we believe, especially given the uncertainty and volatility around the interest rate environment that Farmer Mac will continue to be viewed as unique relative value and diversifying funding source for many institutional counterparties, driving exceptional growth in the rural infrastructure line of business where the renewable energy and telecommunications portfolios. As we predicted on a number of prior calls, our total renewable energy segment more than doubled in size during the year. And our telecommunications portfolio grew nearly 60% year over year, given the strong demand for renewable power generation and storage and the growing investment in fiber and broadband in rural America, we continue to focus on strategic talent acquisition and these two areas to build our expertise and capacity as market opportunities arise. Our Farm & Ranch segment modestly increased over 2022, primarily because of the higher interest rate environment.
There was relatively strong activity in the fourth quarter of 2023 and the higher demand for Farm & Ranch loan purchase product has continued into the first quarter of 2024, further reflecting borrowers' adjustments to the new rate environment. We are cautiously optimistic about the increase in farm or ranch loan purchases in 2024. Farmers generally have strong cash positions, but we have seen a slower increase in land values versus the prior years, and we expect a decline in 2020 for farm incomes as input costs remain elevated and commodity prices continue to rise.
Saeed, as we've previously mentioned, we acquired $600 million of mortgage servicing rights on Farm & Ranch loans held by service for a third party in the second quarter of 2023. During 2023. We also purchased servicing rights for approximately $700 million of mortgage servicing rights for Farmer Mac loans owned by Farmer Mac. These transactions have enabled us to expand our servicing portfolio for the first time since we added the servicing function in the third quarter of 2021. This capability gives us more direct oversight and governance of our portfolio enhanced security, more control over timely access to data and better visibility into loan performance from inception to maturity.
Looking ahead, we will seek to continue to capitalize on this initiative to create a more efficient process for our customers and their borrowers and achieve economies of scale with minimal incremental expense.
Another area of significant focus is our farm securitization program. We have closed a $300 million transaction every year for the last three years and expect to be back in the market in the first half of 2024. We're committed to being a regular issuer in the market for the set of securitization products that align with customer power and investor interests. Developing this capital flow to agricultural producers exemplifies Farmer Mac's core mission to lower costs for the Empower and improve improved credit availability in rural America by also creating an underlying agricultural investment opportunity in the capital markets.
Looking ahead to 2024, we will strive to continue to be a source of reliable capital for our stakeholders as we navigate the ongoing uncertainty in the broader markets. We want to step in where we can to be a partner to our customers and more effectively fulfill our role as a secondary market provider of low cost, liquidity and capital efficiency for the ultimate goal of strengthening the rural economy. On prior calls, I've talked about an expansion of our approach to marketing and branding here at Farmer Mac. You will soon begin seeing our efforts to use branding to deepen our connection with our stakeholders in a compelling and uniform way to support the expansion of our mission driven work. It helps build a strong and vital role in 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, 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 of more investment opportunities for the capital markets and strong access to capital. A significant competitive advantage for us is our people and their Interwoven's connection of mission expertise and discipline. I don't believe you can separate separate those attributes and how they're committed to accelerate opportunities for rural America, we recognize their contributions and even more fully align these attributes. We have continued to enhance our benefit offerings to include all employees in an equity for All program to make them eligible to receive annual grants of equity based compensation. I'm extremely proud of our team and all they've accomplished in 2023.
Now I'd like to turn over the call to Aparna Ramesh, our Chief Financial Officer, to discuss our financial results in more detail.

Aparna Ramesh

Thank you, Brad, and good morning, everyone. 2023 was an exceptional year for pharma. Results were strong across the board, highlighting a balanced well measured approach, excellent credit quality and resiliency through market cycles. Our performance in Q4 2023 enabled us to finish the year with very strong momentum. Net volume growth in Q4 2023 was $819 million and this was primarily driven by new AgVantage securities volumes in the rural utilities and farm and ranch segments and strong loan purchase volume across the farm and ranch renewable energy and Rural Utilities segment. As Brad mentioned, the improvement in Farm & Ranch loan purchase volume in the fourth quarter has created positive momentum heading into 2024.
Turning to results for earnings were $44.9 million or $4.10 per share in Q4 2023 and $171.2 million or $15.65 per share in 2023. And this reflects double digit year-over-year growth, which was largely driven by record net effective spread of $84.6 million in Q4 2023 and $327 million for the entire year. The year over year 16 basis point improvement in spread to 118 basis points and yet as of year end was primarily driven by our low cost of capital, our debt funding strategy and previous low rate environment and our ability to redeploy the excess capital and the lower cost of funds into higher earning assets. This advantage was further enhanced by the continued trend towards higher spread volume that is evident in our new segments like renewable energy and corporate S&M, the capital that we raised opportunistically when rates were at historical lows in 2020 and 2021, it reduced the need for us to raise more expensive down and callable debt. In the current rising rate environment, we continue to defensively hold approximately $900 million of cash and other short-term instruments in our liquidity portfolio, not only does it help us weather potential market disruption disruption. Our exit and highly liquid capital generate immediate returns in a high nominal rate environment. While the rise in short-term rates has provided a benefit to earnings. We project limited downside to any rig decline in the future, and this is due to our proactive equity capital allocation strategy where we're laddering and varying durations to minimize balance sheet and earnings volatility. Specifically, we expect to retain some of this benefit over the medium term, even if rates declined. And to that end, we started extending maturities in our investment portfolio. Despite the macro headwinds, we continue to see strong access to debt capital markets and agenda of flight to quality investments, which allows us to be very well positioned to fund new asset opportunities as they arise. Our liquidity and capital position continue to remain well in excess of all regulatory ratios and our projections. So minimal change in our profitability and limited exposure to movement in interest rates. But the market projected rate go up or down from that meeting in monthly average of 307 days of liquidity through 2023 and had 319 days as of December 31st, 2023. And these numbers reflect resiliency against short and medium-term market disruption.
Turning to operating expenses. Our operating expenses increased by 19% year over year due to increased headcount, increased stock compensation and increased spending on software licenses and information technology initiatives, which included consulting to support growth and strategic initiatives. We concluded 2023 with 185 employee expenditures associated with a multiyear technology investment, which we've discussed before in our treasury and cash management systems are being executed against to enhance our trading hedging and reporting platforms. And this initiative has contributed significantly 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 and also allow us to scale our portfolio and diversify our product offering that are in alignment with our business and funding strategy. We also plan to continue to make investments in strategic focus areas such as renewable energy and these strong revenue contributors in 2023 and to continue to modernize our infrastructure, including our servicing and loan platform. We support our growth and strategic objectives despite the substantial increase in our expenses.
Year-over-year operating efficiency held at 27% at year end, and this is below our long-term strategic plan target of 30%. This result is a testament to our accretive revenue strategy as well as a substantial reduction in our cost of funds, driven by our disciplined approach to raising capital and managing balance sheet volatility. We'll continue to monitor our efficiency ratio and manage it such that we expect to remain at or below long-run average of 30%. However, as we make investments in our loan infrastructure and funding platform and continue to innovate our loan processes using technology to accelerate growth, we may see some temporary increases that could result in the efficiency ratio rising above the 30% level.
Our credit profile continues to be very strong in aggregate, despite the economic headwinds, 90 day delinquencies were $35 million of 12 basis points for the entire portfolio, and this reflects a decrease both sequentially and year over year. As of December 31st, 2023, the total allowance for losses was $18.3 million, and this reflects a $1.1 million provision compared to year-end 2022. And this is primarily due to a single telecommunications loan that was downgraded to substandard during the year. Provision was partially offset Finally, related to a single collateral dependent agricultural storage and processing loans that's fully paid off during the year. We ended the year with no charge-offs.
So let's turn now to capital. Farmer Mac's $1.5 billion of core capital as of December 31, 2023, exceeded our statutory requirement by $589 million or 68%. Core capital increased from year end 2022, primarily due to an increase in retained earnings, which reflects a substantial improvement in both the quantity and the quality of our activity. And this is reflected in our Tier one capital ratio, which improved to 15.4%. Our consistent earning strongly support $0.30 per share increase in our quarterly common stock dividend, and we are very pleased that we can offer this return to our shareholders while maintaining strong capital ratio to defend our balance sheet and also fueling our growth objective. We will continue to invest significant resources to enhance our infrastructure and engage with our customers and investor support a robust and liquid market for a fund securitization product securitizations have many beneficial aspect for funding. It allows us to diversify our funding, enhance and optimize the balance sheet through the efficient deployment of capital, and it can enable a growth strategy by targeting new asset opportunities into a conduit. While we are closely monitoring the changing market dynamics, we fully expect to return to the market in the first half of 2024 with another similar fund securitization transaction as the previous three transactions. As we assess our strategic objectives for the program. We plan to transform what has been a financing strategy to start to offer this as a vehicle for capital efficiency and growth for our counterparts.
In summary, our entire team delivered exceptionally good quarterly results while fulfilling several important strategic and revenue objectives. We deliver on our key metrics that we report to you on each call, we had record core earnings and continued strong credit performance. And all of this resulted in a 19% return on equity, while holding the efficiency ratio below a 30% target as the interest rate environment moderates, we remain optimistic that the natural hedges within our business and balance sheet should allow for a more sustainable long-run average in net effective spread.
Looking ahead to 2024. We remain well positioned and more optimistic than ever to deliver on our long-term strategic plan objectives.
And with that, Brad, let me turn it back.

Bradford Nordholm

Yes, thank you, Aparna. We are extremely proud of our financial results for 2023 as apparent and saying, we believe that we're well positioned heading into 2024 with strong liquidity and capital levels, a diversified business mix, highly effective risk management practices and an expanded team of dedicated professionals. We're very optimistic about the future, and we'll maintain our singular focus on fulfilling our mission efficiently and innovatively as we navigate the BI backdrop of broader market uncertainty attributable to interest rates, regulation and policy change. This is how we believe we can continue to differentiate ourselves and deliver value to our customers and borrowers in rural America.
And now, operator, I'd like to see if we have any questions from anyone on the line with us today.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

Bill Ryan, Seaport Research.

Bill Ryan

Good morning and congratulations on your 2023 results. And question on the margin, specifically, the net effective spread on renewable energy and utilities both improved quarter over quarter renewable energy quite a bit, I believe, Brad, last quarter you talked about maybe some pricing strategies that were being implemented to maybe enhance so the yields. Could you talk about what the drivers of the margin in the quarter was or the NES in those two business lines?

Bradford Nordholm

Hey, Bill, good morning and yes, thanks very much. We also have Zack Carpenter on some ask Zach to provide you with a little additional color. But I believe on prior calls, I talked about how over the last few years we have we really tried to move our pricing from being pricing that really achieved the lowest acceptable threshold from Farmer Mac to pricing that reflect more of the market. And that's resulted in more variation between business segments and also with within deals within the business segments. So that's part of it. We also are becoming better established in the markets and have a growing reputation among market players, which allows them to see us as a premium player. And that puts us in a position of a bit better negotiating position as well. But long term is active really kind of flushes out for you in more detail.

Zachary Carpenter

Yes, happy to Brad. And they still know Brad touched on most of the key attributes. I'd highlight three main things I'm focused on really utilities. Just remember, the telecommunications portfolio is included in that segment. That sector by itself has much higher net effective spread, just given the risk profile of those transactions and again in that space. We're really focused on pricing to market and making sure that the transactions that we're bringing on board on reflect the risk that we have in those I think the second is more of a market construct in terms of the volatility we've seen what that created in 2023 was kind of a widening of credit spreads across and I think most sectors of Farmer Mac. And so as we execute in all three of the spaces portfolios, telco, utilities and renewable energy, we saw a widening of credit spreads in 2023, which also resulted in an increase in net effective spread.
And the last thing I would note is just specifically focused to renewable energy. You know, our primary target and focus is really in that middle market type transactions and not necessarily the largest transactions in the market. And that by itself has focused us more on a more accretive net effective spread than some of the other transactions. So I think the combination of those three things is really what caused an accretive net effective spread in the rural infrastructure space.

Bill Ryan

Okay. And one follow-up also related to the net effective spread. But in terms of portfolio repricing, we've obviously been in a fairly stable interest rate environment. I think last quarter by us expecting a more dramatic reduction in market interest rates. And we talked about the overall margin maybe being a little bit under pressure, but kind of where we're at right now.
You feel it doesn't look like rates are going to go down nearly as much as the portfolio continues to reprice or are we kind of looking more, let's just say everything held constant at a stable type and yes, not adjusted for mix or anything or with ongoing repricing of the existing portfolio. Is there some potential upside to the core margin?

Bradford Nordholm

Well, from an asset liability management on those portfolio. The asset liability side are quite well matched. And so unlike banks, when we have movement in rates, for example, increase in deposit costs it doesn't put a lot of pressure on us. But in terms of the repricing of the existing portfolio, that really goes to a prepayment question stack, why don't you provide some insight into what's happening with our prepayments as well as the new UP original origination opportunity.

Zachary Carpenter

Yes, absolutely. And specifically in the farm and ranch segment, rates still remain high comparatively to the last 10 to 15 years. So our prepayments have remained historically low, and we continue to expect that to take place at least for the foreseeable future and into 2024 fast. Thus, the new volume that we bring on is not making up for lost refinancing volume. But again, that would lead us to think that spreads will be relatively stable in the Farm & Ranch line of business.
The only other thing I would highlight in this directly goes on the asset side of the book as it pertains to net effective spread is we have seen a pretty significant tightening of credit spreads across the spectrum. I'm heading into 2024. And so as we look at kind of our other products and segments. We'll take that into consideration as we look to deploy more capital. But the again, the volatility in the market kind of moves the other way I'm starting in 2024 and so that that could impact certain refinancing activity in some of the other segments. But in our core farm and ranch and corporate ag segment, I think we're pretty confident that it's going to be relatively stable, at least for the foreseeable future.

Operator

Bose George, KBW.

Bose George

Just wanted to follow up on the spread question. If the Fed does cut rates in the back half of the year is the impact mainly on the treasury function just with your cash there? And then in terms of the hedges that you discussed, is it really kind of to offset the impact on that part of the of the liability structure?

Bradford Nordholm

Yes, I think we have commented up both on the in -- Good morning. I think we've commented on the relative stability of spreads are around our loan portfolio. So part of why didn't you? And since we do have a very large investment liquidity portfolios, why don't you provide some insight into how rates would impact that?

Aparna Ramesh

Yes, absolutely. And good morning, everyone. Thank you both for your question. Let me just comment on that briefly. You know, as we've highlighted, we manage our books such that we have at little to minimal volatility whether rates go up or down more specifically, as you think about our investment portfolio, something that we've started to do and we actually put in place in the fourth quarter of last year is what I would call a laddering strategy with respect to our duration.
So what that really means is that as we look at this $1 billion-plus of what I would call relatively short term investments are essentially sitting in overnight money, which has been very, very accretive. We've taken aspects of portions of those and really very systematically extended them over a two, three 5-year horizon. And what that will have the effect of doing is in the short run, if the Fed were to continue to raise rates, we'd be giving up that incremental spread that we would have gotten if we hadn't actually extended out. But what it does do is it positions us extremely well. As you noted in the back half of the year where there is an anticipation that the Fed might start to lower interest rates, it's going to keep us at a point that it will be quite steady. And what that means is that it will not create a dramatic amount of volatility in our net effective spread, and it will actually lock in a lot of the benefits that we have seen over 2023 that has come from having raised extremely accretive capital at a very low interest rate environments that have continued to reprice. We've essentially locked in a vast amount of those benefits by extending our duration in what we call an equity allocation strategy. So I hope that helps, but we don't anticipate to see any volatility on minimal volatility as a result of repricing down of interest rates as it pertains to our liability side of the house.
And then you heard from Pat, just in terms of how we plan to manage our asset side of the house. But these are some of the natural hedges that we have within our business model where we tend to benefit and we tried to manage our volatility whether interest rates go up or down.

Bose George

And then can you just talk about the possibility or the outlook for generating volumes of some of the other farm credit system banks that you don't work with or you're less active with at the moment?

Bradford Nordholm

I'm sure I think we've previously mentioned that and our relationship with Farm Credit System, banks and associations is very important to our farmer. We have remarkably common missions and we are already doing business with them. Couple of the banks and a number of associations. I'll turn to Zack to give you more color on our outreach, but it remains a key area of high focus, and our expectation is that over the next couple of years, we will find new ways of doing more types of business with more Farm Credit associations and banks, but maybe you could offer some specifics on where we are with the stepwise, for example, and some purchased participations.

Zachary Carpenter

Yes, absolutely. The focus on our relationship, the Farm Credit System is very strong right now. We're engaging across many different banks and associations. About 90% of our purchase commitments. Long-term standby purchase commitment product is supporting the system, and we'll continue to invest in that product product as certain institutions find a holder concentration limits.
The one thing I would highlight on a lot of the transaction growth, specifically in corporate and finance telecommunications is in conjunction with farm credit system institutions for either partnering in transactions where Farm Credit entity has included Farmer Mac of secondary market. Our telecommunications portfolio is predominantly in the primary space done with CoBank, one of the largest entities in the system. We continue to invest in outreach across the system, both banks and associations. And so we're very happy with where we've evolved in our relationship with the system and frankly, given the growth and focus we have in some of our new areas of new portfolios, we believe we'll have more opportunities to support the system in 2024 and beyond.

Operator

Gary Gordon.

Gary Gordon

Two questions. One small one, the Utell I just focused on the utilities margin in this release and it's about 40 basis points well below your other business units. Why is it so low or why isn't this business repriced or are there other benefits that I'm missing.

Bradford Nordholm

Yes, hey, Gary, thank you for joining us today. A couple of things. One is that it's true that the way we measure that our margin associated with that portfolio does show a small level, but keep in mind a couple of things. One, but many of the borrowers in that portfolio are investment grade and some of them are even high investment grade. So we are approach pricing appropriately, but we believe we can also keep in mind if you look at kind of where that's been trending over the last couple of years, it's been trending in a positive direction. It started even lower.
And so some of the efforts that we mentioned at the beginning of the call to price more to market as an example, are reflected even in that 40 basis points. And third, those that are the lowest margin are absolutely essential parts of the infrastructure of rural America and at the end of the day, the rural electric cooperatives are owned by farmers and rural rural Americans. The generating transmission electric co-op is owned by Rural Electric associations that it becomes very, very mission centric for us to help them and whether we're helping them through market priced Farm & Ranch loan purchase or helping them through a market price and Rural Utility, rural electric cooperative loan purchase. It's the benefit is ending up in the same place.
The final point I'd make about that is that when you think about that portfolio, we've had no charge-offs we've actually had no delinquencies ever. And that's also reflective of the fact that the capital consumption, the equity capital consumption for that portfolio is actually very low still when we do adjust for a return on on capital. Tom, those numbers look actually pretty good.

Gary Gordon

Good. Second question is on, so the implications of this large dividend increase by the way. So you've talked about a 35% payout over the long run. So a [$5.60] dividend implies $16 in earnings. Now you're not getting to 65 -- $16 in earnings with a traditional target for your spread, which is about 95 basis points. Is it safe to assume that you would consider your normal or let's say, for the foreseeable future, BRAD that reasonable to talk about a materially higher number?

Bradford Nordholm

Yes. I mean, we're not going to provide content on that, but a couple of a couple of comments. One is that that 95 basis point NES is a As Zach highlighted and talking about pricing pressures and asset liability management strategy over the next one to two year horizon. We don't think we're going to see that 95 basis points at all. We may see a single digit softening, but certainly not 95 basis points The second thing that I would mention about that is that during the call, I talked about regulatory uncertainty, talked about legislative uncertainty. We're going into a year 2024, but we are extremely well positioned, but we have a farm bill that should have been done at the end of last year. That was not hopefully it'll get done this year that it brings a bit of uncertainty to some of the underlying fundamentals of American agriculture. We want to see it passed. We also have a new Basel of regulatory environment, which may have some implications for capital. And so while we are very, very I'm excited about the opportunities that we see the business opportunities and extremely pleased with the soundness of Farmer Mac and that uncertain those uncertainties just inject a little bit of a note of caution into our decision-making process as it relates to dividend so on, we landed at a place that we thought really reflected our future growth potential that uncertainty that I just discussed, as well as something that rewards our shareholders for sticking with us in a very, very handsome way and as you know, it's a balancing act.

Aparna Ramesh

Brad, if I might just add an additional point, and that has to do with what we've mentioned around the quality as well as the quantity of capital, Gary, where we want to head is really to have a capital stack skew more heavily towards retained earnings that come from organic growth and maintaining our credit quality. It reduces the need for us to go into the preferred markets as we have done. It's proven very, very beneficial to us, but we do have a scenario where we have some expensive preferreds that could be repricing and by really making sure that we're maintaining our capital base such that we're skewing more towards quality of capital with retained earnings. It gives us more degrees of freedom in terms of letting some of those expensive preferreds go and not have to really worry about going into the market at a time that might not be accretive for us. So it's really just a balancing act for us in terms of managing our capital stack as well as fueling our balance sheet for additional growth.

Operator

Brendan McCarty, Sidoti.

Brendan McCarthy

Hey, good morning, everybody, and thanks for taking my questions. Just wanted to start off, looking at the wholesale financing business. I understand the value proposition has really increased for institutional count counterparties in the elevated interest rate environment. But just wondering if you can expand on where the benefits have flowed through on the segment level?

Bradford Nordholm

And I'll ask Jack Zack to give you some of some specific color on that. But just generally speaking, as you noted and the higher interest rate environment. And frankly, the absence of Federal Reserve Bank support of liquidity facilities for financial institutions has created more of a comparative competitive advantage for us as we noted in our comments, and that's driving new opportunities. Some of that opportunities with customers we had in the past and we let go because we didn't like the pricing, but some of it is is new opportunity as well. But vacuum, I might just add kind of explain where this is all coming from.

Zachary Carpenter

Yes, happy to not reiterate a lot of what Brad said, but I think one of the key drivers is clearing the volatility in the market and a lot of these large corporate institutional counterparties are looking to just diversify in all the different funding sources they have. If you're in the public bond market, you see significant increase in GAAP and other credit spreads, which we did last year. Farmer Mac and are secured against facility is a relatively comparative and better advantage to those counterparties.
On to your question on where you see these benefits in our segment reporting, you're predominately going to CM in advantage within the farm and ranch segment as well as in the Rural Utility segment. So those are two large corporate institutional counterparty line items. You can see the significant growth year over year, especially in rural utilities as well as in farm and ranch. And so that's generally where we saw, at least in 2023, the growth opportunity and the increase in net effective spread that rolls up into those segments. And then heading into 2024, we anticipate a broader discussion with numerous other counterparties in terms of the benefits we could provide given the aforementioned comments.

Bradford Nordholm

Brendon. One other thing I'd just like to add to this is that there's a strategic aspect of this as well because when we have an advantage facility. We are evaluating the underlying collateral that's been pledged and that underlying collateral are typically loans that as an alternative we'd like to own, but we'd like to purchase. And I think over the last six to nine months, we've probably been able to initiate more discussions with some of those advantaged counterparties about their strategic objectives and weather and a sale for them a purchase by us of some of those underlying loans fits their strategic objectives better and too early to say that that's going to yield results. But we're encouraged that we're engaged at such a strategic thought level with so many of these counterparties and are optimistic that at some point in the future, we will show that we can provide another source of liquidity to them through a different type facility alone purchase rather than a ADDvantage facility.

Brendan McCarthy

Great. Great. That's very helpful. And I know you mentioned a big part of that story has been business development efforts and branding and just kind of your marketing efforts as well. Can you specify your what exactly has kind of driven that diversification of counterparties?

Bradford Nordholm

Well, let me just jump in and add, Zach is modest, but it is all of those things, but it absolutely begins with housing, high quality people with relationships and experience that it motivates those counterparties to engage in these discussions. And we have hired some absolute Zack has really hard some of absolute outstanding people over the last couple of years that are enabling us to do that.

Brendan McCarthy

Got it. Got it. And kind of switching gears here to the outlook on prepayment risk. I understand should we see a potential decline in rates in the back half of the year. Obviously, I assume prepayments will pick up in the core farm and ranch business, but can you touch on the prepayment outlook for the other segments. I know prepayment risk is very low in the Rural Utility segment, but maybe you can expand on the other business lines.

Bradford Nordholm

Yes, Zach, can you just run through the other segments.

Zachary Carpenter

Yeah. Happy to. You're spot on and the rural infrastructure side of the house, we don't anticipate much if any prepayment risk, maybe some modest some risk in the telecommunications portfolio. Generally speaking, those are all floating rate, but those are going to turn on a weighted average life of three to four years anyways. But you know, the rate environment isn't going to really increase that in corporate and finance, but those are just lumpy transactions in general. So the prepayment concept, it really isn't on conducive in that segment.
These are more M&A type transactions where you may get paid off or you could participate in a larger facility. So really, when you think about our overall portfolios or lines of business, really the prepayment component is akin to Farm & Ranch and USDA. And if we see some rate compression in the back half of the year, I think now as Aparna mentioned, we anticipate an increase in loan purchase, and we're kind of setting ourselves up to take advantage of a potential refinance opportunities.
And remember, we've said this on prior quarters, a lot of our customers are community and regional banks are keeping those loans on the balance sheet to manage through a higher deposit payout environment. That being said, liquidity and capital efficiency is now becoming a more focus in the banking sector, which we believe as those loans kind of reprice on their balance sheet creates a enhanced opportunity for us, especially in Farm & Ranch and USDA to take a advantage on a rate decline scenario. So yes, probably more prepayment risk in Farm & Ranch and USDA, but we're more than confident that we'll make it up in new volume.

Aparna Ramesh

If I may just add one point as well, Brendan, you know, we are fairly agnostic in terms of prepayment risk, and this has to do with how we manage our balance sheet from a hedging standpoint. So something that we've noted before, we tend to layer in our callable as such that the fairly duration match as we look ahead and think about prepayment risk. So even if we were to have prepayments, it wouldn't necessarily affect our margins very substantially. So everything that that's a highlighted prepayment risk is low across the segments. But in addition to that, from a funding standpoint, we're extremely well hedged where we could simply call expensive debt and reprice that downwards such that we maintain a margin.

Brendan McCarthy

Understood. That's helpful. And one more question for me. Just on the farm economy as a whole, I know you mentioned your land values have moderately declined and farmer income or appear to be reverting more towards historical averages. But can you just kind of talk on your outlook for the farm economy and how impact Farmer Mac it is.

Bradford Nordholm

That's a big question because the decline in land does it actually is pretty isolated. We've been doing a lot of work on that are recently with permanent crops in California are one place where there have been headlines about modest decreases and those tend to be up almonds and other permanent crops where there are some not multiple sources of water where there may be some some pressure on water availability as well as the combination with low commodity prices.
But we're not seeing it across-the-board. And as you know, our loan to current value on just about everything in our is extremely modest Well, most of that 50% on the portfolio as it stands. But yes, we're expected to see a softening in farm income, of course, as an aggregate number for the entire sector. And we are an organization with 17,000 borrowers each when one of them with their own situation. But input prices are generally us staying sticky and high, while commodity prices for major major crops have been softening.
And so in all, we're looking at projected net farm incomes for the sector again this next year that will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 20% less than that on kind of I was at the peak. The first thing that that will do is put a little it will cause some drawdown of liquidity of farmers have been holding a lot of liquidity, and it will cause some drawdown of that. We think that it may, especially if we have slightly lower interest rates later in the year. It'll start stimulating some additional borrowing activity.
As Jack has mentioned, farm and ranch originations were slow at least through the first three quarters of 2023, a little bit of pickup in Q4, but that will cause some further pickup in the year in terms of other segments of the farm economy probably kicks that it keeps them to a bit more borrowing, which could benefit us. And we'll be continuing to apply the very, very disciplined credit standards that we have for many years here at Farmer Mac, so that we're continuing to make prudent credit decisions. So you put it all together and and that's probably a slight positive for Farmer Mac, even if it is a source of concern for our key constituents in rural America.

Operator

DeForest Hinman, Bumbershoot Holdings.

DeForest Hinman

Thanks for squeezing me in your kind of beating around the bush on the loan growth outlook. There are a lot of moving parts, but I mean, simplistically Farm & Ranch loans, high singles growth in 2021 thought 10% growth in 2022. 8% growth in 2023. Is it still in that ballpark? Or is it kind of the mid-single digit growth outlook for 2024 when we look at all these moving pieces as the first question.

Bradford Nordholm

Yes, I mean, we're not going to provide a precise forecast. But back to what I've tried to give a little bit color on that one.

Zachary Carpenter

Yes. I mean, I think the confluence of factors in the market is leading to us being more optimistic in loan purchase activity in farm and ranch than we were in 2023. I mean, I noted earlier a comment on the Regional Community Banking dynamic managing capital liquidity deposits. That's having a real impact on those institutions, which, as their loan portfolio reprices, we think creates a great opportunity for Farmer Mac, low prepayment speeds, again, solidifies the portfolio. And so we're able to take advantage of some of these dynamics. We're not making up any refinancings, lost some loss on our portfolio, limited supply of new land and farm incomes, as Brad has mentioned in the prior to prior question, it's going to come down. There's going to be stress in working capital, and I think there's going to be interest in tapping into that equity. So comparing year over year and stepping into 2024 as we made in our prepared comments, yes, I think we're more optimistic that there is a greater chance of enhanced growth in 2024 versus 2023. That being said, lots of things can change to be at the farm bill, be it a political year, be it interest rates. So it's hard to really pinpoint that. But I think we're stepping into more optimism than we were stepping into 2023.

DeForest Hinman

Okay. That's helpful. Renewable loan growth, very positive. You had 153% growth in 2022, 100% growth in 2023. We talked about the outreach on the syndication side, adding some and head count. I mean, I don't think all those initiatives are in place and we grew that loan book to 100%, and it's over $400 million. I think in the past we've talked about the idea of that being a $1 billion portfolio at some point. Can you just help us understand how that that loan book looks going into 2024 and Jorg, where could that end up? And then maybe even where could that be in 2025, some of these initiatives gain traction and such.

Bradford Nordholm

But Zach has done a lot of infrastructure building here with policies, more creative with our credit policies, Zach, with key hires. So we saw that pickup in 23, it really accelerated on the back half of 23 going into 24 on the pieces are all in place to continue that very strong momentum. So that $1 billion number. It's very realistic that that could happen some time. And in 25 on, I think that gives you kind of a a slot that you can work on.

DeForest Hinman

Okay. And then I haven't heard this from Aparna, but just comment on as so the higher cost preferreds you guys are in the market for a number of years, but I do see that I think the Series C actually redeemable in 2024, I mean, is that a preferred we'd be looking to remove? And then I think on a bigger picture question is there any benefit to leaving the preferreds in place as it relates to how the regulators calculate your capital ratios or we pretty clearly saying we'd like to remove those preferreds over time. And then as a result of that, it actually improves the dividend capacity to the common holders. So maybe just some more color there. And should we be expecting those preferreds to be and removed over time with those call provisions?

Aparna Ramesh

Yes. Yes. So I think that's and that's an excellent question. It's something that we really think about in entirety. We don't we don't really distinguish between our sources of capital, but we do make a slight distinction in our own minds as we think about the quality of capital and the quality of capital being organic and retained earnings because that then allows us to have a base of capital that we can very efficiently deploy for growth, but also in terms of really rewarding our shareholders and the here and now.
So that's that's really the big picture in terms of how we think about our capital in terms of preferreds or preferreds are an excellent source of capital for us. We have access to the retail preferred market. The way we think about our preferred issuances to Forest is we tried to do that opportunistically. So in 2020 and 2021. And we were able to tap the retail preferred market and issue a preferred that was sub-5% and sub-6%. And so we did that. And if we were ever able to do that again, that's exactly what we would do. These are fixed rate preferreds where we really hold call options, the Series C that you note, you're absolutely right. That has an option where we can redeem it.
And if we did not, then it would convert to floating. And as you know, in the current rate environment that would result in additional costs approximately to the tune of about $2 million per year. We haven't really made a complete decision as yet, but what I would say is just given our various degrees of freedom plus our excellent credit quality, the fact that we've got a really a very big and growing share of our capital stack coming from retained earnings, highly probable that it is something that we will look at. But preferreds are very much an option for us and it will continue to be an option for us, but we look at it in terms of an expensive option versus something that's really opportunistic. So in this particular case, you're right, it is redeemable and it does convert to floating. So it's probably something that we'll take a very close look at as we approach the redemption date to consider whether we want to let that go. And if we want to issue something possibly when the markets are favorable to us in the fixed rate environment.

DeForest Hinman

Yeah --?

Bradford Nordholm

Yes, I just like I just like to add. I mean, we have harnessed talked fairness talked about the optionality that we have and and whether we choose to redeem that in July or not will depend on factors that we're not looking at today. They will depend on the factors that we're looking at in the second quarter. It will be revisiting growth. We'll be revisiting on Basel will be with this thing farm bill and taking into consideration all the things that you would expect management to be looking at before coming up with a position on that. But I would add is the other part of your question was how do we stand with the regulators?
Simply put, our levels of capitalization by every measure have never been stronger and we far exceed all regulatory requirements. We do regular stress testing with regulators. We do well under that stress testing with our capital. Our Farmer Mac has never been stronger. And when you consider on the financial results, return on equity of 19%, almost 19%. You consider the growth in earnings. If you consider dividends, you consider the growth in the in the overall volume of Farmer Mac that we have done that while also increasing capital makes it even more remarkable because oftentimes there's a trade-off for us. There's not been a trade-off So work that gives us a lot of flexibility, a lot of options to run this business to even greater success in the future. We're not constrained by capital.

Aparna Ramesh

And I'll just add that securitization is another lever, which is another capital-efficient tool that we will throw into the mix as we think about retained earnings preferred and now securitization. In terms of thinking about it, our leverage ratios and our Tier one ratio so that's just another thing that we throw into them.

DeForest Hinman

Yes, Brad, I agree. You've done a phenomenal job. I like the slide to dividend kegger. I mean, I think we've talked about this in the past. I don't know if there's any company that's additive have a faster dividend growth than years in the financial statements sounding in the spreads continue to hold up and you continue to see most financial companies be dealing with spread compression. And you haven't really it had very much you had like you said 19%. Are we at incredibly attractive, especially from a consistency perspective. And we've talked about this before, the stock's still probably undervalued, but continuing to increase the dividend, hopefully now get more people to look at the stock.
Final question is I have and I've asked this many times before, just hiring. We added quite a few people in 2023. So can you update us on who do we need to hire in 2024? Where does that stand in terms of getting those people in place? Then can you give us an update on any of the the IT initiatives we've been putting in place? Are the partially done? Are they completed or is there more work to be done?

Bradford Nordholm

Sure. Of course, yes, we we have expanded our employee base. I think we ended up 2023 with 184, 186 employees, something like that. And we have over the last couple of years that it's been a balance of of funding and ALM related business development related core control and risk management related across the organization, compliance you think about an organization with our aggregate volume approaching $30 billion, that has all the 184 employees. We have to have a full suite of very very talented people doing a lot of functions that banks our size do with literally thousands of employees.
So we feel very good about the additional depth we've built in our organization as we go into 2024 and kind of through our budgeting process. And it's pretty simple. It's a little bit of emphasis on our branding and communications in terms of headcount just a bit on IT and the rest really is business development. We feel that we have built very, very strong origination credit approval, credit administration, credit policy funding on the platforms here at Farmer Mac, and now let's work to put more volume through them. That's so that's kind of that reflected in our choice of of how we're allocating increases in headcount. The increases in headcount in 24 will be slower than they have been in the last couple of years. We believe as it relates to IT initiatives, there's a tremendous amount going on, Sean, that you joined us as CEO in the second quarter of 23. He feels like he's been here for over a year. He has gotten a tremendous amount done. He has brought a lot of organization to that team and they're currently focused on on many tactical projects, but two huge strategic projects. And I'll let Aparna Zach comment on them. The first is what we call stars, which we expect to finish this year, maybe even half the halfway through the year. And the other is an update to it hugely important and huge legacy platform here at Farmer Mac called A. power. But apparently you want to probably provide an update on that, why it's so important. And then, Zach, you too?

Aparna Ramesh

Yes, sure. Let me let me give you a bit of a sense about this treasury platform that we're embarking on a you know, it is the most significant overhaul. I would say of platform, the Farmer Mac, it impacts about two thirds of the balance sheet, both on the asset side as well as the liability side, something that most people don't know is that we have a significant amount of payments that really caused through a loan payments as well as debt holders. So we actually transact anywhere between $0.5 trillion to three-quarters of a $1 trillion in terms of just payments. In addition to different securities, we have hedging and reporting, et cetera, as well as what we do with our wholesale financing all of that really goes through these platforms. These have been platforms that have been in existence, and I really commend the team at Farmer Mac are the founding team that has really layered on dupi functions.
But today we have options and we have commercial products that are out there. So we've been working with the consultant who's helped us through this journey of the last two years. And we've really selected to our key vendors who are going to really provision platforms for both our front end, our middle office as well as a cash management system. And this is going to create a lot of dependencies internally in terms of overhauling our data flows through as well as how our different capabilities with respect to hedging and reporting really connect. And so it's a massive effort with lots of people touches a lot. And you know, this is an initiative that, you know, LGC is anywhere between you know, we foresee somewhere between $16 million to $20 million in our cash expenses obviously gets capitalized and there's the P&L impact that we continually recalibrate words.
But as Brad mentioned, you know it's going very well as any large-scale initiative might. And we expect to see this come to fruition optimistically in the middle of this year, but certainly no later through. I would say the third quarter or so, but a tremendous partnership across the organization. And I echo Brad and Sean has been a tremendous addition to the executive team and a tremendous partner as well on this initiative. And then the second initiative is really the loan origination platform. So I'll just turn to Zack. He can give you a little bit more color on how we're really innovating around some of those -- some of those technologies that drive our business.

Zachary Carpenter

DeForest, I'll be I'll be quick, but you and Brad mentioned ag power. That's our infrastructure that our community banks and our sellers used to interact and transact with Farmer Mac. Our goal is to dramatically changed that infrastructure to be cheaper, more customer friendly, more effective and drive down the time some of us purchasing a loan from our sellers as quickly as possible. So that's better technology, that's more efficiencies that's leveraging collateral enhancements and really providing a state-of-the-art infrastructure platform that all of our sellers can use that can transact as easily as possible with Farmer Mac.
And on the positive side, I think Sean. And I feel by into 2024, we'll be rolling something out. And I think we're very excited. We're receiving a lot of positive reinforcement from our customers. So again, this just to be a state-of-the-art infrastructure loan origination platform for our sellers.

DeForest Hinman

Okay, great. And then just a final comment at the idea of adding equity compensation across the entire employee base. I think you said that that's a very good idea and should probably help with that retention. You're your mission-based focus. And I that's very helpful. So thanks for taking all the questions.

Bradford Nordholm

Yes, we appreciate that that said, but very much we do think it's important. It resulted in about a doubling when we went to equity for all lose about a doubling in the number of employees who are eligible for awards. And and it allows us to have conversations about stock stock performance, the relation of that to overall financial performance and the relation of that to overall service division. So we think that it's just one more thing that contributes to a really healthy and very passionate mission focused culture at Farmer Mac.

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call over to Brad Nordholm. Please go ahead.

Bradford Nordholm

Great. Well, thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We really appreciate your participation, your interest and many great questions, which we hope with addressed to your satisfaction. If you have follow-ups, of course, get in touch with Joppa But otherwise, we will be having our next regularly scheduled call in May three for our first quarter 2024 results. And we look forward to that very much and hope you have a great day and please stay in touch. Thank you.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for Barclays. Having enough that you please disconnect your lines.