Company: AGM-PH
Filing Date: 2025-08-07
Form Type: 10-Q
Source: 0000845877-25-000204
Chunk: 125

Company: FEDERAL AGRICULTURAL MORTGAGE CORP
Filing Date: 2025-08-07
Form: 10-Q
Item: Part I, Item 1
Chunk 125
---
 duration and convexity characteristics and help mitigate 

100

impacts from interest rate changes across the yield curve. As part of this strategy, Farmer Mac seeks to issue debt securities across a variety of maturities that together with financial derivatives closely align the forecasted debt and financial derivative cash flows with forecasted asset cash flows.

Farmer Mac issues discount notes and both callable and non-callable medium-term notes across a spectrum of maturities to execute its debt issuance strategy. Portions of Farmer Mac's callable debt is issued to mitigate prepayment risk associated with certain interest-earning assets held on balance sheet. In general, as interest rates decline, asset prepayments typically increase, and Farmer Mac may be able to economically extinguish certain callable debt issuances. In addition, Farmer Mac enters into financial derivatives, primarily interest rate swaps, to better match the durations of Farmer Mac's assets and liabilities, thereby reducing overall sensitivity to changing interest rates.

Taking into consideration the prepayment provisions and the default probabilities associated with its portfolio of interest-earning assets, Farmer Mac incorporates behavioral models when projecting and valuing cash flows associated with these assets. In recognition that borrowers' behaviors in various interest rate environments may change over time, Farmer Mac periodically evaluates the effectiveness of these models compared to actual prepayment experience and adjusts and refines the models as necessary to improve the precision of future prepayment forecasts.

Changes in interest rates may affect the timing of asset prepayments which may, in turn, impact durations and values of the assets. Declining interest rates generally result in increased prepayments, which shortens the duration of these assets, while rising interest rates generally result in lower prepayments, thereby extending the duration of the assets. 

Farmer Mac is subject to interest rate risk on loans and securities it has committed to acquire but not yet purchased (other than delinquent loans purchased through LTSPCs or loans designated for securitization under a forward purchase agreement). When Farmer Mac commits to purchase these assets, it is exposed to interest rate risk between the time it commits to purchase the loans and the time it issues debt to fund the purchase of these loans. Farmer Mac manages the interest rate risk exposure related to these loans by entering into exchange-traded futures contracts involving U.S. Treasury securities and other financial derivatives. Similarly, when Farmer Mac commits to sell certain assets, the associated interest rate exposure is primarily managed with exchange-traded futures contracts involving U.S. Treasury securities and other financial derivatives.

Farmer Mac's $1.0 billion of cash and cash equivalents