Ellington Credit Outperforms Peers in Q1 2026

"The first calendar quarter of 2026 was marked by continued headwinds and volatility in the CLO market," said Laurence Penn, Chief Executive Officer and President. "For Ellington Credit, while as previously communicated our NAV declined during the quarter, our up-in-credit bias and active trading again drove outperformance versus peers. We believe that a significant portion of the market weakness was technical-driven by overall sentiment and elevated yield spreads in the corporate credit markets, rather than by fundamental credit deterioration. We selectively leaned into the resulting opportunities, prioritizing CLO mezzanine debt over equity while staying disciplined by adding incremental hedges along the way. We also enhanced our capital structure, taking advantage of a narrow market window at the end of March to issue unsecured debt. Following quarter end, we used most of the debt offering proceeds to make new CLO investments, with deployment substantially complete by the end of April, thus positioning us for future earnings growth. The offering has also meaningfully strengthened our balance sheet, as we used a portion of the proceeds to refinance repo financings, replacing short-term secured debt with long-term unsecured debt."