Geoffrey Seiler, The Motley Fool

Sat, Jun 7, 2025, 4:45 AM6 min read

• With a high yield and monthly dividend payout, AGNC often draws the attention of income-oriented investors.

• However, AGNC has struggled in recent years due to rising mortgage rates and an inverted yield curve.

• The setup for the stock now looks a lot more favorable.

• 10 stocks we like better than AGNC Investment Corp. ›

AGNC Investment (NASDAQ: AGNC) has one of the highest dividend yields in the market, sitting at about 16%. But with a stock price that's steadily declined the past few years, investors are right to ask: Is the payout sustainable, and more importantly, is the stock a buy today?

For those unfamiliar, AGNC is a mortgage real estate investment trust (mREIT) that owns agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS), primarily guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Because these securities are backed by government agencies, they carry virtually no credit risk. But AGNC's business is far from risk-free, and here's where the story gets complicated.

The biggest issue facing AGNC the past few years has been higher mortgage interest rates. There have been two main issues that have pushed up rates.

One is that the Federal Reserve aggressively raised benchmark interest rates a couple of years ago to combat inflation. This resulted in mortgage rates also climbing. However, that was not the only reason mortgage rates shot up.

Spreads between MBS yields and Treasury yields also began to significantly widen. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Fed was a huge buyer of MBSs, driving down yields and narrowing the yield spread between MBS and Treasuries. However, after the pandemic, it stopped purchasing MBSs and began letting them roll off its balance sheet as they matured. About the same time, banks also began to back off buying MBS as bond prices fell, and the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which was heavily concentrated in long-duration MBSs, only pushed banks further away from the MBS market.

During this period, the value of AGNC's MBS portfolio, as measured by its tangible book value (TBV), plunged. From the end of 2021 through the end of 2023, AGNC's tangible book dropped 45% from $15.75 to $8.70 per share. It has slipped a bit further since, and stood at $8.25 at the end of Q1 2025. Ultimately, where AGNC's TBV goes, its stock is sure to follow.

Despite the rough stretch that AGNC has seen, the setup for the stock now looks a lot more favorable. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has signaled that more rate cuts could be on the table, and the Fed's own projections point to lower rates in the years ahead. That should be a much better environment for AGNC.