I agree. But both of them having their common position either moderately (Ackman 38%) or heavily (GFA 70%) hedged with prefs tells me that neither thinks the commons are going to some unrealistically high number like $20 per share.
Prior to Q4 2019, GFA owned 91M shares of FMCC, representing around 14% of the total. Their Fannie stake, on the other hand, increased from 106M shares (9.2% of the total) to 127M shares (11%). While it is just a guess on my part, I think they wanted to balance out those percentages.
Fewer outstanding shares, yes (650M versus Fannie's 1.15B), but the warrants give Treasury 79.9% of the commons of both companies.
Freddie should require less capital because its balance sheet is smaller. However, its earnings are also smaller so the effect mostly washes out.
Still, Freddie went further past the 10% moment (the point where the seniors would have been paid off if FnF has been able to do so and had put all available money towards that if the NWS had never happened) than Fannie, so if a settlement involves a cancellation of the seniors and a return (via tax credits) of money past that 10% moment, I expect Freddie to benefit more than Fannie. It is mainly for this reason I own more Freddie prefs than Fannie prefs.
Calabria did say that the companies might not be released at the same time. If this "10% moment" thing matters then I expect Freddie to be released first. If not, I don't have a read on which would come first.