Ellington Credit Co

Management Commentary

"The fourth calendar quarter was challenging for the CLO equity market. For Ellington Credit, our relative up-in-credit bias and active trading strategy helped partially offset the challenges, as CLO mezzanine debt tranches, which have been a focus of our investment activity in recent months, proved more resilient, and with opportunistic trading contributing positively to results," said Laurence Penn, Chief Executive Officer and President.

"Thanks to our portfolio management strategy, Ellington Credit delivered another quarter of outperformance relative to its peer set. Nevertheless—and as previously reported in our monthly NAV updates—the underperformance in the CLO equity market resulted in a significant drop in our NAV, and thereby a net loss for the quarter overall. We believe that a meaningful portion of the drop in NAV reflected credit spread widening rather than fundamental deterioration, so a substantial portion of these losses could reverse should market conditions normalize.

"Moving forward, we believe that the recent headwinds in CLO equity, spanning the fourth quarter and continuing into 2026, are repricing that market and expanding the opportunity set in a very meaningful way. As a result, while early in 2026 we had favored purchases of mezzanine debt, we now expect to selectively increase our CLO equity position as opportunities arise.

"I am confident that the current market environment plays precisely to our strengths in active investing and trading. Coupled with our substantial credit hedging portfolio coming into 2026, I believe that we are well positioned to capitalize on market dislocations and deliver attractive risk-adjusted returns for shareholders."