NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Chimera Investment Corporation (NYSE:CIM) today announced its financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2020. The Company’s GAAP net income for the third quarter was $349 million, or $1.32 per common share. Core earnings(1) for the third quarter was $80 million, or $0.33 per common share.
“Over the past six months we have concentrated the company’s efforts on strengthening the balance sheet and protecting our valuable credit assets” said Matthew Lambiase, President and Chief Executive Officer. “These actions contributed to this quarters strong performance and enabled us to complete three securitizations while purchasing $640 million loans for our portfolio.”
(1) Core earnings per adjusted diluted common share is a non-GAAP measure. See additional discussion below.
Other Information
Chimera Investment Corporation is a publicly traded real estate investment trust, or REIT, that is primarily engaged in the business of investing directly or indirectly through our subsidiaries, on a leveraged basis, in a diversified portfolio of mortgage assets, including residential mortgage loans, Non-Agency RMBS, Agency CMBS, Agency RMBS, and other real estate related securities.
Core earnings
Core earnings is a non-GAAP measure and is defined as GAAP net income excluding unrealized gains on the aggregate portfolio, provision for credit losses, interest expense on long term debt, impairment losses, realized gains on sales of investments, realized gains or losses on futures, realized gains or losses on swap terminations, gain on deconsolidation, extinguishment of debt and expenses incurred in relation to securitizations. In addition, stock compensation expense charges incurred on awards to retirement eligible employees is reflected as an expense over a vesting period (36 months) rather than reported as an immediate expense.
As defined, core earnings include interest income and expense, as well as periodic cash settlements on interest rate swaps used to hedge interest rate risk and other expenses. Core earnings is inclusive of preferred dividend charges, compensation and benefits (adjusted for awards to retirement eligible employees), general and administrative expenses, servicing fees, as well as income tax expenses incurred during the period. Management believes that the presentation of core earnings provides investors with a useful measure but has important limitations. We believe core earnings as described above helps us evaluate our financial performance period over period without the impact of certain transactions but is of limited usefulness as an analytical tool. Therefore, core earnings should not be viewed in isolation and is not a substitute for net income or net income per basic share computed in accordance with GAAP. In addition, our methodology for calculating core earnings may differ from the methodologies employed by other REITs to calculate the same or similar supplemental performance measures, and accordingly, our reported core earnings may not be comparable to the core earnings reported by other REITs.
The following table provides GAAP measures of net income and net income per diluted share available to common stockholders for the periods presented and details with respect to reconciling the line items to core earnings and related per average diluted common share amounts. The Core earnings is presented on an adjusted dilutive shares basis. The adjusted dilutive shares used for core earnings is a non-GAAP measure which includes the GAAP dilutive shares of 265 million, adjusted for the dilutive effect of approximately 20 million shares on warrants issued in second quarter of 2020. We exclude the dilutive effect of the warrants as the warrant holders do not participate in dividends. Certain prior period amounts have been reclassified to conform to the current period's presentation.
Economic Net Interest Income
Our “Economic net interest income” is a non-GAAP financial measure, that equals interest income, less interest expense and realized losses on our interest rate swaps. Realized losses on our interest rate swaps are the periodic net settlement payments made or received. For the purpose of computing economic net interest income and ratios relating to cost of funds measures throughout this section, interest expense includes net payments on our interest rate swaps, which is presented as a part of Realized gains (losses) on derivatives in our Consolidated Statements of Operations and Comprehensive Income. Interest rate swaps are used to manage the increase in interest paid on repurchase agreements in a rising rate environment. Presenting the net contractual interest payments on interest rate swaps with the interest paid on interest-bearing liabilities reflects our total contractual interest payments. We believe this presentation is useful to investors because it depicts the economic value of our investment strategy by showing actual interest expense and net interest income. Where indicated, interest expense, including interest payments on interest rate swaps, is referred to as economic interest expense. Where indicated, net interest income reflecting interest payments on interest rate swaps, is referred to as economic net interest income.
