← All companies ← CIM Manual CINF → ← CIM REITs — Specialty & Diversified CLDT →
CIMN, Chimera Investment Corporation
Through our mortgage lending, investment management, and advisory services platforms, we operate as a fully integrated mortgage business that originates, manages, and invests in a diversified range of mortgage assets.
As a result of the HomeXpress Acquisition, the Company began originating consumer Non-QM, investor business purpose, and other mortgage loan products through its subsidiary, HomeXpress during the fourth quarter.
Currently, the primary sources of such income are the fees we receive from institutions for our non-discretionary investment management and advisory services less the cost of providing such services.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
The business in brief
read the 10-K →What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.
- What moves the needle
- Net interest margin, loan losses, and book value. A lender is read on the quality of its balance sheet, not an earnings multiple, and the worst year of credit losses matters more than the best. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on pricing power & competition, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.
The record
Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
Is it a good business?
- Below the cost of equityNet income $230M ÷ equity $2.6BIndustry peers: median 7%
What this means
The bank's north star, what it earns on shareholders' capital. Cost of equity is roughly 10%, so a return durably above that builds value and below it destroys it. One year is noisy; the durability across a full credit cycle is what counts.
- ModestNet income ÷ (equity − goodwill $0 − intangibles $0)Industry peers: median 7%
What this means
The cleaner return, stripping out the goodwill paid for past acquisitions. This is the number a buyer of the whole bank actually earns on the hard capital.
- Not enough data
What this means
Noninterest expense or revenue missing.
Is it sound?
- Capital (equity / assets) 16.3%Well capitalizedEquity $2.6B ÷ assets $15.8B
What this means
A plain-English leverage read: how much of the balance sheet is the owners' own money. This is a rough proxy; the regulatory figure is the CET1 ratio, which is risk-weighted and reported in the filing. The point is the same, how much loss the bank can absorb before depositors are at risk.
- Borrowed against bookAssets $15.8B ÷ equity $2.6B
What this means
A mortgage REIT finances a pool of mortgages with borrowed money — mostly short-term repo, which sits in liabilities rather than as tagged debt — so its true leverage is the whole balance sheet against the owners' equity, not just labeled debt. That leverage magnifies both the spread it earns and the loss when rates or credit move against it; read it beside the book value, the question being whether the spread compensated for the leverage through a cycle.
- Credit cost —Not enough data
What this means
Provision or net interest income missing.
Does AI threaten the moat?
Low contestabilityThe moat is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded, the kind AI cuts costs within but does not contest.
Its FY2025 10-K names artificial intelligence as a competitive threat, in language that was not in the prior year's filing.
“Adverse consequences of these risks related to artificial intelligence could undermine the decisions, predictions or analyses such technologies produce and subject us to competitive harm, legal liability, heightened regulatory scrutiny and brand or reputational harm.”
AI is unlikely to contest a moat that is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded; here it reads more as a cost tool than a threat.
Read from the filing's own risk factors, paired with the industry's structure under its SIC code; the durability is read above, the price below.
All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.
Management, ownership & pay
read the proxy →From the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid, beside what the business earned for its owners in the same years.
| Fiscal year | Chief executive | Pay, as filed | “Actually paid” | Net income |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Mr. Marria | $12.0M | $16.0M | — |
| 2022 | Mr. Kardis | $5.9M | $3.7M | — |
| 2022 | Mr. Marria | $7.5M | $4.9M | — |
| 2023 | Mr. Kardis | $6.1M | $6.1M | — |
| 2024 | Mr. Kardis | $6.8M | $6.9M | — |
| 2025 | Mr. Kardis | $6.2M | $6.2M | — |
Both pay figures are the company’s own, from the pay-versus-performance table its proxy statement files. “As filed” is the Summary Compensation Table total: salary, bonus, and equity awards at their value on the day of grant. “Actually paid” is the SEC’s prescribed recalculation, which re-marks those equity awards to what they became as they vested; it can swing far above or below the filed figure in either direction, and negative years occur. Net income is the whole business's, as filed, for the same fiscal years.
- Insider ownership1.8%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
What an owner would ask, FY2025
read the 10-K →- Which reported numbers are a judgment call?Management names Credit & receivables as critical estimates
each rests partly on management's judgment; the filing's note sets out the assumptionsverify →
The questions the record and the charts do not answer on their own; each carries the figure and the place to look.
Peers, REITs — Specialty & Diversified
The same industry, side by side on the bank lens. Each figure is a through-cycle median, so a peak or trough year can’t distort it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each against.
| Company | Revenue | ROE | ROTCE | Efficiency | NII / assets |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BRSPBrightSpire Capital Inc. | $331M | -5% | -5% | — | 1.5% |
| ARIApollo Commercial Real Estate Finance, Inc. | $272M | 7% | 7% | — | 2.7% |
| FBRTFranklin BSP Realty Trust Inc. | $270M | 6% | 7% | — | 3.2% |
| LADRLadder Capital Corp | $293M | 7% | 7% | — | 1.9% |
| CIMNChimera Investment Corporation | $266M | 9% | 9% | — | 1.7% |
| ARRARMOUR Residential REIT Inc. | $158M | 14% | 14% | — | 0.8% |
| RWTRedwood Trust Inc. | $155M | -7% | -7% | — | 0.3% |
| ADAMAdamas Trust Inc. | $149M | 10% | 11% | — | 1.2% |
| Group median | — | 7% | 7% | — | 1.6% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
reverse-DCFA reit / real estate isn't read on an owner-earnings DCF; its economics live on the balance sheet (book value, the return earned on it, and the cash the assets throw off).
Manual order: ← CIM its page in the Manual CINF →
Industry order: ← CIM the REITs — Specialty & Diversified chapter CLDT →