Company: MFAN
Filing Date: 2025-02-20
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001055160-25-000004
Chunk: 283

Company: MFA FINANCIAL, INC.
Filing Date: 2025-02-20
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 283
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 disposition of real property, including mortgages or interests in real property (other than sales or dispositions of real property, including mortgages on real property, or securities that are treated as mortgages on real property, that we hold primarily for sale to customers in the ordinary course of a trade or business (i.e., prohibited transactions)), dividends or other distributions on, and gains from the disposition of shares in other REITs, commitment fees received for agreements to make real estate loans and certain temporary investment income.  In addition, the composition of our assets must meet certain requirements at the close of each quarter.  We are also required to distribute to stockholders at least 90% of our REIT taxable income (determined without regard to the deduction for dividends paid and by excluding net capital gain).  There can be no assurance that we will be able to satisfy these or other requirements or that the Internal Revenue Service (or IRS) or a court would agree with any conclusions or positions we have taken in interpreting the REIT requirements.

Even a technical or inadvertent mistake could jeopardize our REIT qualification unless we meet certain statutory relief provisions.  If we were to fail to qualify as a REIT in any taxable year for any reason, we would be subject to U.S. federal income tax on our taxable income, and dividends paid to our stockholders would not be deductible by us in computing our taxable income. Any resulting corporate tax liability could be substantial and would reduce the amount of cash available for distribution to our stockholders, which in turn could have an adverse impact on the value of our common stock. Unless we were entitled to relief under certain Code provisions, we also would be disqualified from taxation as a REIT for the four taxable years following the year in which we failed to qualify as a REIT.

Our failure to maintain our qualification as a REIT would cause our stock to be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange (or NYSE).

The NYSE requires, as a condition to the listing of our shares, that we maintain our REIT status.  Consequently, if we fail to maintain our REIT status, our shares would promptly be delisted from the NYSE, which would decrease the trading activity of such shares.  This could make it difficult to sell shares and would likely cause the market volume of the shares trading to decline.

If we were delisted as a result of losing our REIT status and desired to relist our shares on the NYSE, we would have to reapply to the NYSE to be listed as