Ellington Financial
EFC on NYSE. Ellington Financial sells shares in a business that owns mortgages to investors. Market value $1.5bn.
Price checks use the past 12 months to June 2026. Quality checks use five annual reports, the latest for the year to December 2025.
We can't read total debt from the filing, so debt is left out.
The company doesn't report operating profit, so we work it out from pre-tax profit and interest.
Should I look at this?
Not a fit for our list right now
Why it could be worth it
See Real estate stocks that passed both tests
This is not advice. Check the numbers below.
For every $100 of what the whole company costs, it produced $-41.66 of spare cash in the past 12 months. A savings account pays about $4.
The filings do not give us enough to work this out.
The filings do not give us enough to work this out.
Quality score: not known. Price score: 50 of 100. Our list needs 70 on quality and 60 on price.
$11.50 a share, at its 1-year low
Over the past year the price has ranged from $11.28 to $14.12.
Dividend: 12.4% a year
Paid every year for 4 years
Yields this high often come before a cut. Check the company's latest news.
Prices from Monday’s close (5 October).
Five years of cash, in billions
Spare cash swings from quarter to quarter here: a shortfall of $617 million in the past 12 months, a shortfall of $925 million in the year to December 2025.
| Revenue | |||||
| Revenue | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| Operating margin | |||||
| Operating margin | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| Debt to equity | |||||
| Debt to equity | n/a | 0.00 | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| Shares outstanding | |||||
| Shares outstanding | 0.07bn | 0.07bn | 0.09bn | 0.11bn | 0.13bn |
Health checks
- Free cash flow positive1 of 4 years
- Accounting looks honest (Beneish)Not enough data
- Financial strength (Piotroski)Not enough data
- Profit backed by cash (accruals)Yes
- DebtUnknown
- Revenue growth, five yearsUnknown
- Buying back its own sharesNo, 89% more shares since 2022
The quarter to June 2026
How the business did, compared with the same quarter a year earlier.
- Profit: $54 million, up 27% on a year ago.
- Over the past 12 months it spent $617 million more cash than it brought in, compared with $619 million a year earlier.
| Quarter to | Amount |
|---|---|
| September 2024 | $16m |
| December 2024 | $22m |
| March 2025 | $32m |
| June 2025 | $43m |
| September 2025 | $30m |
| December 2025 | $15m |
| March 2026 | $95m |
| June 2026 | $54m |
From the company's quarterly reports to the SEC.
Dates
- Next results (estimated)
- n/a
- Last annual report (10-K)
- 2 March 2026
- Next quarterly (estimated, 10-Q)
- 9 November 2026
Who owns it
None of the long-term investors we follow own it. 248 funds in all.
Largest holders overall
- BlackRock$284mAdded
- Vanguard Capital Management$73mAdded
- State Street$68mAdded
- Geode Capital Management$43mAdded
- Mirae Asset Global Etfs Holdings$31mAdded
- Vanguard Portfolio Management$29mAdded
- Invesco$25mAdded
- JPMorgan Chase$20mAdded
- Northern Trust$20mAdded
- Delphi Financial Group$19m
From 13F filings for the quarter ended 30 June 2026.
Big holders and activists
2 investors own more than 5%.
- BlackRock, Inc.Passive investor16.4%+1.1 ptsSince 30 June 2026
- Vanguard Capital ManagementPassive investor5.0%Since 30 June 2026
- The Vanguard GroupPassive investorSold down below 5%Since 13 March 2026
| Holder | Stake | Since | |
|---|---|---|---|
BlackRock, Inc. Passive investor | 16.4%+1.1 pts | 30 June 2026 | |
Vanguard Capital Management Passive investor | 5.0% | 30 June 2026 | |
The Vanguard Group Passive investor | Sold down below 5% | 13 March 2026 |
From Schedule 13D and 13G filings: anyone owning more than 5% must file one.
What insiders did
No insider bought or sold on the open market in the last 12 months.
From Form 4 filings: insiders must report trades in their own company's shares within two days.
Warning signs in its filings
Problems the company itself reported to the SEC, in its own words.
None of the warning signs we check for were found.
We look for five warning signs: doubt it can keep going, weak checks on its own accounts, a notice that its past accounts can't be relied on, a change of auditor, and one customer bringing in a big share of sales. We don't check lawsuits, investigations or debt yet.
We checked the auditor's report, internal controls, restatement notices, auditor changes and big customers in the 10-K filed 2 Mar 2026, plus the 10-Q filed 10 Aug 2026 and 21 later 8-Ks.
A 10-K is the yearly report every US company files with the SEC. An 8-K is a short notice of a big event.
What could go wrong
Cheap for a reason is the question the numbers cannot answer.
Whether the price already reflects the risks is what the deep dive is for.
The deep dive
Everything above is arithmetic on public filings. The deep dive reads the last ten years of annual reports, the proxy statements, and the earnings calls, then argues the case the way Buffett, Klarman, and Hohn would, and checks every claim against the source.
- What the business is worth, as a range, and the margin of safety at today’s price
- Prices to start buying, buy, and buy hard
- The three things that would make this a mistake
- Every number footnoted to the filing it came from
Your first deep dive is free.
Not advice. Numbers on this page come from SEC filings and are updated each night; prices are updated again after the US market closes. The five-year figures are rounded.