Advanced Flower Capital Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the AFC Gamma first quarter 2023 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in the listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Gabriel Katz, Chief Legal Officer. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you all for joining AFC Gamma's earnings call for the quarter ended March 31st, 2023. I'm joined this morning by Leonard Tannenbaum, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Brandon Hetzel, our Chief Financial Officer, and Robin Tannenbaum, our President. Before we begin, I would like to note that this call is being recorded. Replay information is included in our April 25, 2023 press release and is posted on the investor relations section of AFC Gamma's website at afcgamma.com, along with our first quarter earnings release and investor presentation. Today's conference call includes forward-looking statements and projections that reflect the company's current views with respect to, among other things, future market developments, anticipated portfolio yield, and financial performance and projections in 2023 and beyond. These statements are subject to the inherent uncertainties in predicting future results and conditions. Please refer to AFC Gamma's most recent periodic filings with the SEC for certain significant factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements and projections. During this call, we will refer to distributable earnings, which is a non-GAAP financial measure. Reconciliations of net income, the most comparable gap measure to distributable earnings, can be found in AFC Gamma's earnings release and investor presentation available on AFC Gamma's website. The format for today's call is as follows. Len will provide introductory remarks, an overview of our first quarter 2023 performance and strategic commentary. Brandon will summarize our financial results, and we will then open the line for Q&A. With that, I will now turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Leonard Tannenbaum.

Thank you, Gabe, and good morning, and welcome to AFC Gamma's earnings call for the quarter ended March 31, 2023. I would like to thank our analysts and investors for joining us today to discuss our results. Before turning to the quarterly results, I want to take a moment to congratulate Brandon Hetzel on his promotion to Chief Financial Officer. We are excited to have Brandon as our CFO as he's been integral to the company's success since he joined in September 2020, most recently serving as Executive Vice President and Controller. Brandon brings with him a detailed knowledge of our business and over a decade of real estate experience, which will be valuable as we expand our investment strategy to include traditional commercial real estate investments. Turning to the quarterly results, for the first quarter of 2023, AFC Gamma generated distributable earnings, of 57 cents per weighted average share of common stock. As a reminder, distributable earnings is the primary metric that the Board considers when declaring AFC Gamma's quarterly dividend. The Board of Directors declared a 56-cent dividend per share for the March quarter, which was in line with the previous three quarters. Since going public, we have generated distributable earnings in excess of our dividend in each quarter and paid out $4.10 in dividends per share. We are pleased that we have continually out-earned our dividend, yet we are cognizant that payment in kind interest currently makes up a meaningful portion of our earnings. The majority of the payment in kind interest earned in the March quarter is due to one loan, which we expect to revert to cash pay beginning in June. Should this borrower, which is rated a category four under our CECL reserve, pay its June interest in cash, we would anticipate the level of PIC interest as a percentage of investment income to decrease over the next few quarters. Since mid 2022, given the market and interest rate volatility, AFC Gamma has taken a conservative view to deploying and managing our capital. We've raised the bar on originations, sought additional equity from borrowers to support their businesses, and maintained ample cash on our balance sheet to capitalize on the opportunities as they may arise. Until recently, Cannabis market fundamentals that were challenged due to the oversupply from the illicit market produced product crossing state lines and Delta 8 and hemp product conversions have been improving. Recent state authorities have been cracking down on illegal activities and confiscating illicit products. One immediate result of this crackdown on the illicit market has been an increase in distillate prices in many states, such as Michigan, in which we've seen an increase in one liter of distillate pricing from approximately $2,000 to $8,000, with pricing even higher in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The rise in distillate prices has also driven the rise in trim prices and flower prices as a consequence of that. We believe this uptick in pricing should last for at least the next few months and drive higher revenues for cannabis operators. Despite this positive momentum, we are cognizant that large inflows do come online with the October harvests, which may drive prices downward due to increased supply. But we do remain optimistic longer term that prices may have bottomed. Additionally, there have been positive trends in several states in recent months following the legalization of adult use. In particular, Missouri and New Jersey have surpassed our additional expectations for adult use sales. As of May 1st, approximately 20% of our portfolio based on commitments has significant Missouri exposure, and those borrowers have benefited from a cannabis market that has outperformed expectations. This was a market with thoroughly diligence, made several sizable investments in, and given product shortage in the market, we believe will continue to perform well for the foreseeable future. Lastly, we are starting to see an uptick in acquisition activity, both from existing operators buying distressed assets, as well as new investors coming into the market to purchase assets at significant discounts. The capital formation around these assets is promising, and we continue to believe that that there are several investable states in cannabis, including Missouri, Georgia, Maryland, Arizona, and Ohio, to name a few. We believe that our focus on targeting operators in limited license states has set us up to mitigate certain risks. Additionally, our focus on enterprise value lending and having cash equity below our debt provides a credit enhancement that ensures value declines are first absorbed by the equity before we would be impaired. We have taken credit reserves with our CECL Reserve currently at 5.4% on March 31, 2023, up from 5% as of December 31, 2022. We continue to closely monitor the large loan we downgraded as a Category 4 last quarter. The borrower is projecting and experiencing increased revenue based on the launch of adult use in the core state, but still has cash flow challenges. The borrower's sponsor has contributed significant additional equity and as discussed earlier, AFC Gamma allowed a portion of the interest to be paid in kind to assist with some of the cash needs. The borrower is having difficulty raising additional equity in the capital in this market in the cannabis industry and has agreed to sell certain non-core assets to generate additional capital for its operations. In conjunction, the borrower also agreed to add additional real property to our collateral pool and sell that non-core property to pay down the accrued PIC interest that we incurred. As stated earlier, the borrower is scheduled to move back to paying full cash interest beginning in June. With our strong liquidity position, we continue to focus on originating and evaluating compelling first and second lien commercial real estate financing opportunities, as well as additional deals in the cannabis market. The recent real estate deal volume has been slower than in preceding years, and there's been a discrepancy between bids and offers. We are beginning to see the repricing in certain real estate markets, and we are evaluating non-cannabis commercial real estate that's attractive from both the risk and return perspective. The overall macroeconomic environment has made it somewhat difficult to raise the equity that lenders are demanding to complete deals. While we may be the lender on many deals, these same deals also need other components such as mezzanine and preferred equity to complete the transaction. We are focused on originating loans in the southeastern United States based upon the favorable demographic trends, growing markets, as well as our local presence and network. Given the various regional bank failures and the rising interest rate environment, banks have reduced their traditional real estate lending activity, which has now created a void in the market for alternative lenders such as us to invest in deals with enhanced yields and strong risk-adjusted returns. Looking ahead, I am excited about the trends in cannabis becoming more positive, as well as the non-cannabis real estate opportunities that are beginning to form as regional banks have pulled back from lending. We believe that AFC Gamma is well positioned to navigate the current market environment and opportunistically invest our capital in deals with strong risk adjusted returns. I will now turn the call over to Brandon to review our financial results.