John A. Taylor
Thank you, Chris, and good morning, everyone. We would like to welcome you and thank you for joining us for Granite Point's Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. First, before turning to our results, we would like to express our condolences to the families and friends of those who lost their lives at 345 Park Avenue last week. Our thoughts are with all who were impacted, including our friends and colleagues at Blackstone, Rudin Management, KPMG as well as the NFL and the heroes of the New York Police Department. We share a particular grief and heartbreak over the passing of Wesley LePatner. Many of us at Granite Point have known her and her family for decades. Having worked extensively over that time with Wesley's father, Larry Mittman, as well as her brother Jordan and came to include the family as friends. The passing of such an exceptional and giving person is a tremendous loss to all who knew her. Now turning to our earnings. During the first half of 2025, we saw continued improvement in sentiment and liquidity in the commercial real estate market as refinancing activity notably increased and sales transaction volume picked up with more and more participants willing to transact in the market. Although the commercial real estate lending market recovery had initially stalled post deliberation day with credit market spreads widening due to the uncertain impact of looming tariffs. Since then, there has been a resumption of the recovery with the stabilization of spreads and associated improving liquidity. CMBS issuers have been originating at a strong pace. Commercial banks are actively pursuing warehouse lending opportunities, and the transitional floating rate lending market has continued to strengthen across most property types with the ability to lend at a reset basis. So far in 2025, we have continued to meaningfully reduce our risk rated 5 loans. After quarter end, the Louisville student housing loan was resolved at over $3 million above the carrying value. A majority of the total proceeds from this resolution have been applied to reduce higher cost debt. With this and earlier resolutions, we have decreased our risk rated 5 loan count from 7 at year-end to 2 remaining today. Significantly reducing the impact of nonaccrual assets on our earnings and derisking our portfolio. Also, we sold an office REO asset, leaving just 2 REO properties remaining. We are pleased with these ongoing asset resolutions and the successful reduction of higher cost debt, both of which are key elements of our business strategy, creating a positive path forward for the company. As previously noted in our press releases, we extended our 3 repurchase facilities during the second quarter for approximately 1 year. And during July, we extended the maturity of our secured credit facility from December 2025 to December 2026. As part of the secured credit facility extension, we reduced the financing spread by 75 basis points in the outstanding borrowers by $7.5 million. We also continue to work with our powers and have seen ongoing loan repayments, including the full repayment of 2 office loans during the second quarter. Year-to-date, we have realized about $109 million of loan repayments, paydowns and amortization. As we proactively manage the balance sheet, we are maintaining higher liquidity, extending our financings and engaging in other value- enhancing activities. To that point, we have again opportunistically deployed capital into our own securities. During the second quarter, we repurchased 1.25 million shares of our common stock. It is our view that our current market price relative to book value does not reflect the value of the business or the progress we have made to date, including the pace of asset resolutions over the past 12 months and our ongoing pace of repayments. We have about 2.6 million shares remaining under our existing authorization for buyback, and we intend to remain opportunistic with respect to any future buyback activity. We expect the investment opportunities to expand over time. And with our continued repayments, resolutions and REO sales and further pay down of our remaining higher-cost debt, we will be positioned to start new originations again for the first phase of the regrowth of the portfolio, all of which will improve our run rate profitability. I would now like to turn the call over to Steve Alpart to discuss our portfolio activities in more detail.