Great Elm Group, Inc.

A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Adam Yates, Managing Director. Thank you, sir. You may begin.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for Great Home Group's Fiscal 2026 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call.

As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. groups filings with the SEC for important factors that could cause actual results to differ.

Refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the most comparable financial measures are included in our earnings release. will only be made pursuant to the applicable offering documents for such investment vehicle. On the call today, we have Jason Reese, CEO, Adam Kleinman, President and General Counsel, Nicole Mills, COO, and Kerry Davis, CFO. I will now turn the call over to Jason Reese, CEO.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. While Great Elm made meaningful progress during the quarter to advance our strategic goals, I want to acknowledge the reality of the environment we operated in during the quarter. Fiscal second quarter 26 unfolded against a challenging backdrop for DVCs marked by heightened volatility, meaningful pressure on public valuations, and concerns over private credit quality deterioration. As a result, we recorded significant unrealized losses during the quarter, particularly related to our investment in GECC common stock, investments in special purpose vehicles related to GECC common stock, and our CoreWeave-related investment. While these valuation changes purely impacted our reported results for the quarter, it's important to emphasize that they were primarily non-cash in nature and driven by market-based movements. Liquidity across the platform remains strong and our balance sheets at the holding company and both of our primary investment vehicles are well positioned to grow our platform and invest opportunistically as we move forward. Against that backdrop, Great Elm has executed operationally. We continue to advance our alternative asset management platform, expanding both our real estate and credit businesses, and grew fee-paying assets under management on a year-over-year basis. At the end of December, estimated assets under management stood at $740 million, while estimated fee-paying assets under management grew 4% year-over-year to approximately $561 million. Radome Real Estate Ventures had another strong quarter, marked by continued execution across the Monomoy platform. Monomoy BTS completed its third design build property located in Florida and has begun actively marketing the property for sale with an expected exit in the second half of fiscal 2026. We are also engaged with a high quality tenant on a fourth design build project and continue to see a robust and expanding pipeline of development opportunities supported by a broader tenant base. Monomoy Construction Services completed its third full quarter of operations, contributing approximately $400,000 in revenue. With construction capabilities now fully integrated in-house, we're able to deliver comprehensive turnkey solutions for tenants, capture additional value across the property lifecycle, and support discipline execution as our project pipeline continues to scale. At Monomoy CRE, total investment management and property management fees increased over 15% from the prior year period, driven by the growth in fee-paying AUM and higher gross rents. During the quarter, Monomoy REIT acquired three properties at attractive cap rates for approximately $8.9 million, including development costs, while continuing renovations and design-build initiatives further enhanced by the capabilities of MCS. Turning to our alternative credit business, it's important to acknowledge that the BDC experienced a challenging finish to calendar 25, driven largely by Corweave stock declining nearly 50% in the quarter, CLO equity underperforming the broader credit markets in the quarter, and continued dispersion in leveraged credit, including first brand impacts. GECC plans to report earnings in early March and will provide additional details at that time. That said, we believe we have taken actions to position the platform for success as we move into 26. We fortified the team in September by hiring a new head of research with over 25 years of credit analysis experience. During the quarter, the investment team re-underwrote the entire portfolio and continued to work deliberately to further diversify our investments with a particular focus on senior secured opportunities. The team worked to optimize the portfolio to improve overall credit quality, trimming or exiting high-risk positions. These steps were taken with a long-term mindset and positioned the BDC with a stronger foundation from which to rebuild in 2026. While syndicated credit spreads remain near historic tights, we have redoubled our effort to shift the portfolio towards private transactions. that offer stronger lender protections, tighter covenants, and reduce the risk of liability management transactions. We believe this approach is increasingly important, given the lender and lender violence and structural erosion we continue to see in broadly syndicated markets. The BDC maintains significant liquidity, providing ample flexibility as opportunities arise. As a reminder, in the prior quarter, GECC materially lowered its cost of capital through the refinancing of its highest cost debt. Taken together, these initiatives leave GECC in a position of strength with a healthy balance sheet, meaningful deployable cash, and additional capacity to invest in attractive income-generating opportunities. In our private credit strategy, The Great Elm Credit Income Fund, launched in November 23, began an orderly wind down in response to recent portfolio events and market conditions. As the fund had not yet reached scale, we decided to begin monetizing investments in a disciplined manner. The fund recorded a net return of over 20% for the 26 months from inception through December 31, 2025. Outside of our core business, our Corwin-related investment continues to be a compelling success despite significant market volatility during the quarter. From September 30th to December 31st, Corwin's common stock declined nearly 50%, resulting in market-based valuation movements that generated $6.7 million of unrealized losses in our investment, offset by $2.2 million of realized gains from distributions. Notwithstanding this volatility, we have received distributions totaling approximately 115% of our original $5 million investment to date, and we continue to believe there is meaningful upside potential based on current trading levels. Since December 31, Coru stock price has rebounded significantly, reinforcing our conviction in the long-term value of the investment. In addition, we recorded net unrealized mark-to-market losses of $4 million and $3 million in our GECC common stock and related SPV investments, respectively. These valuation changes echo broader market trading levels for BDCs, and we expect recovery in time as GECC rebuilds its NAV. We also continue to deploy capital in a disciplined manner to enhance shareholder value. Our share repurchase program has been highly effective since inception, underscoring our conviction in the intrinsic value of the business and our long term outlook. During the quarter, we repurchased approximately 1.1 million shares of GEG stock at an average price of $2.47 per share. From inception of the program through February 3rd, Great Elm has repurchased approximately 6.4 million shares at an average price of $1.99 per share, representing a total capital deployment of $12.7 million. In aggregate, these repurchases equate to nearly 20% of our shares outstanding, materially enhancing per share value for shareholders. As we enter the second half of fiscal 2026, Gratum is well positioned with $51.2 million in cash, providing us with ample flexibility to support our growth initiatives and take advantage of attractive opportunities sourced via our sophisticated network. We remain focused on growing fee-paying AUM, scaling our alternative credit and real estate businesses, and sourcing new investment opportunities. Looking ahead, we seek to expand creative, differentiated product offerings with attractive risk-adjusted return profiles. With that, I'll now turn the call over to our CFO, Kerry Davis.

Thank you, Jason. I will provide a brief overview of the quarter and, of course, welcome all of you to review our filings in greater detail or reach out to our team with any questions. Fisco's second quarter revenue was $3 million compared to $3.5 million for the prior year period. The decrease was primarily driven by $0.6 million in property sales and $0.5 million of incentive fees in the prior year period that were not recognized in the current quarter, offset by $0.4 million in new construction management revenue from MCS acquired in February 2025. Estimated AUM and fee-paying AUM totaled approximately $740 million and $561 million, respectively, with BPING AUM up 4% from the prior year quarter end. We reported a net loss of $16.5 million for the quarter versus net income of $1.4 million a year ago. Our loss for the quarter was primarily driven by unrealized losses of $14.4 million and realized gains of $2.2 million from GEG's investments, including the company's investments in consolidated funds. This compares to an unrealized gain from the company's investments in the prior year period of $2.4 million, including its investments in consolidated funds. The unrealized losses from GEG's investments in the recent quarter were largely attributable to market-based valuation movements, including $4 million related to GEG's common stock and related investments. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was a loss of $1.6 million, compared to a gain of $1 million in the prior year period. As of December 31, 2025, we held approximately $51.2 million of cash on our balance sheet to deploy across our growing alternative asset management platform. Please refer to slide 6 for a summary of our financial position and book value per share of approximately $1.79. This concludes my financial review of the quarter. With that, we will turn the call over to the operator to open for questions.

Thank you. We will now conduct a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 to remove yourself from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Once again, that's star one to ask a question at this time. One moment while we poll for questions.

Once again, ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. There are no questions at the moment. I would like to turn it back to management for closing comments.

Thank you again for joining us today. We remain confident in the strategic direction of our business. We continue to advance our credit and real estate platforms, strengthen our balance sheet, and deliver sustained value for our shareholders over time. We look forward to keeping you updated on our progress. Thank you for your time and continued support.

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation and have a great day.