Sachem Capital Corp. Common Shares

conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to hand it over to Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Good morning, and thank you for joining Safe and Capital Corp.' 's first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. On the call from Safe and Capital today is Chief Executive Officer John Villano, CPA, and Interim Chief Financial Officer Jeff Walraven. This morning, the company announced its operating and financial results for the quarter ended March 31st, 2025. The press release is posted on the company's website, www.sagingcapitalcourse.com. In addition, the company filed its Form 10Q today, which can be accessed on the company's website as well as the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. As a reminder, remarks made on today's conference call may include forward-looking statements. forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed today. We do not undertake any obligation to update our forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events. For a more detailed discussion of the factors that may affect the company's results, please refer to our earnings release for this quarter and to our most recent FTC filings. During this call, the company will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures, More information about these non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are contained in our SEC files. With that, I'll turn the call over to John.

Thank you, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. We will begin by reviewing our operating and financial results for the first quarter and discuss the future as we continue working towards growing our lending platform and restoring bottom-line profits to the company. The difficulties of last fall, coupled with our desire to protect our balance sheet from non-accretive finance, set the stage for stability this quarter and further illuminated the path of our recovery into the second quarter of 2025. We continue to search for accretive capital to build our business, and as of today, we have two signed term sheets with well-respected lenders. We will keep you informed of our progress on these financing transactions. In 2025, our portfolio is now performing as expected. As stated during our last earnings call, our post-COVID loan fundings are performing famously. While we still have $153 million of non-performing loans, or $124 million of NPL's net, compared to $103 million of non-performing loans net as of December 31, 2024, it did not incur any material incremental markdowns during the quarter. The net increase in NCLs was due to our Naples Florida mortgage moving from performing to non-performing during the quarter, as well as other loans totaling $25 million. Further, significant progress has been made as we continue to work through all problem assets. We realize a significant part of our dividend growth plan is directly tied to unlocking our non-performing loans. As of March 31st, our book value stood at $2.57 per share, down less than 3% from year-end 2024. Further, we have successfully diversified our business model and cash flow sources through two successful partnerships. These partnerships not only add stability to our income, but create opportunities for further growth. Urbane New Haven brings expertise in real estate development and construction services, and oversees our construction loan servicing and asset management. Additionally, they have added significant expertise to further enhance our underwriting guidelines, as well as our construction service policies and procedures. Together, our target is to build a pipeline of development projects where we can better control risk and returns, and patients can benefit from interest on invested capital and potential asset appreciation over time. As I mentioned on our last call, we currently have four urban real estate development projects underway, one in Westport, Connecticut, and three in Coconut Grove, Florida. We will continue to provide updates as these projects advance toward completion and lease-up. Second, Duncrete Capital, a commercial real estate finance platform that provides debt capital solutions to multifamily, workforce housing, and industrial real estate owners, aligns with our focus on multifamily housing as a strong credit product, especially in the current high-cost environment where producing new residential supply is increasingly challenging and home ownership is less affordable. The SHIM partnership allows us to participate in multifamily finance with strong borrower sponsorship while earning great risk-adjusted returns. Prior to SHIM, This market was not available to us due to our elevated cost of capital. At March 31, 2025, we invested an aggregate of $51.4 million in projects managed by Chemcrete through six investment funds and the funds manager. In the first quarter, these investments generated approximately $2 million in revenue, representing an attractive low-risk double-digit yield. Turning to the macro environment, our industry continues to face a wide range of headwinds. Ongoing tariff uncertainty has contributed to renewed volatility of financial markets, making cost projections and incremental capital sources less predictable. Further, many real estate construction projects will be affected by increased costs from materials and supplies originated from outside of the U.S. we do expect product shortages resulting from supply chain issues. Expectations are for interest rates to decline during 2025. However, rates remain elevated as the markets look for stability moving forward. While the volume of real estate transactions is gradually recovering, it's still well below the levels we saw in the immediate post-pandemic period. Pricing for many property types and across many markets continues to trend downward as buyers struggle with high real estate costs and costly financing. Also, restrictive bank lending policies are still limiting the amount of capital our borrowers can access for takeout financing. While these challenges persist, they also create meaningful opportunities for savings. Considering the constraints in the broader lending markets, our pipeline of new origination opportunities remains robust and well beyond what we have the capacity to take on today. We will continue to stay highly selective in pursuit of new loans, and we will remain focused on single-family and multi-family residential assets in growing markets where market fundamentals remain strong. Our underwriting process continues to pursue highly experienced and creditworthy sponsors. As I stated earlier, our ability to work through the remaining $124 million of our net NPLs on our book can unlock significant capital to drive earnings and cap slow growth. Our success in this area will directly benefit our earnings and increase dividends to our shareholders. We will continue to seek incremental sources of accretive capital to strengthen our balance sheet and support further growth. We are very excited with the opportunity ahead, and I will now turn the call over to Jeff.