New York Mortgage Trust, Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the New York Mortgage Trust fourth quarter and full year 2021 results conference call. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, the conference will be open for questions. If you have a question, please press the star followed by the one on your touchtone phone. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the pound key. If you're using speaker equipment, we do ask that you please lift the handset before making your selection. This conference is being recorded on Friday, February 18th, 2022. A press release and supplemental financial presentation with New York Mortgage Trust fourth quarter and four year 2021 results was released yesterday. Both the press release and supplemental financial presentation are available on the company's website at www.nymtrust.com. Additionally, we are hosting a live webcast of today's call, which you can access in the events and presentations section of the company's website. At this time, management would like to inform... would like me to inform you that certain statements made during the conference call, which are not historical, may be deemed forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Although New York Mortgage Trust believes the expectations reflected in any forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurance that its expectations will be attained. Factors and risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations are detailed in yesterday's press release and from time to time in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Now, at this time, I would like to introduce Steve Mumma, Executive Chairman. Steve, please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for being on the call. As the company announced last December and becoming effective this year on January 1st, I've taken a new role as Executive Chairman with Jason Serrano stepping up to CEO. I leave the company in great hands and look forward to the company's continued success. Now Jason and Christine will lead you through our fourth quarter financial presentation. Jason.

Thanks, Steve. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our fourth quarter 2021 earnings call. Christine and I will be speaking to our Q4 2021 supplemental presentation that was released yesterday and is available on our website. We will allow questions following the conclusion of our presentation. Before I begin, I want to thank Steve for the two decades of service at the company, which he successfully steered from a small non-agency originator to what is now an internally managed, scalable, diversified credit business. Steve is a true professional and led with exceptional care for the company's shareholders and employees. I'm thankful to have worked alongside of you, Steve, for the last three years and look forward to following the path you carve for the company's future. Now turning to page seven, key developments. Starting with the financial highlights on page seven of the supplemental, I will quickly summarize our quarterly performance, as Christine will cover this in greater detail. The company generated six cents of GAAP earnings per share. Undepreciated EPS was two cents higher at $0.08 per share. Also, book value per share ended at fourth quarter at $4.70 or $4.74 per share on an undepreciated basis. Due to a fourth quarter increase in direct investments of real property through our multifamily JV program, we will provide undepreciated earnings and undepreciated book value, which removes non-cash expenses related to depreciation and certain amortization expenses related to leasehold intangibles. After the fourth quarter dividend of $0.10 per share, our 2021 total rate of return was 11.7%, and despite a full transition to loan and JV investments, G&A remained close to 2%. 2021 was a transformational year for the company as our capital redeployment strategy was executed in direct loan investments. Generated from our... single-family origination partners, and as it relates to our multifamily strategy, loans and JVs were generated internally at NYMC by our origination team. In the fourth quarter, we added nearly $800 million of new investments, which set a record for the company. However, our quarterly earnings did not fully benefit from recurring income related to those assets as more than 70% of the investments settled after late November and in December. With high investment activity, we were able to better optimize our balance sheet, As our cash balances dropped below 10% of the capitalization, or $152 million of unrestricted cash, net of 30-day debt maturities, working through previous periods of high cash balances allowed us to re-lever unencumbered assets in the first quarter, which we'll be touching on in a minute. We also continue to utilize middle recourse leverage for book value protection and lowered costs with a preferred stock issue at 7%, which redeemed a 7.75% callable series, reducing capital costs by 75 basis points. Lastly, due to the recent market volatility, we thought it was prudent to add $200 million buyback program, which the board recently approved. Now turning to page eight, subsequent developments. Investment activity accelerated through the first six weeks of the new year, as 325 million of assets were added. We are now on pace to exceed fourth quarter 2021 investment activity. On the financing side, we have been very active as well, with two securitizations completed thus far. The first in early January against our RPL portfolio at 2.3% total cost of debt. And in February, we completed our second bridge loan, Securitization Revolver. Lastly, we redeemed $138 million convertible note, which matured on January 15th. Simply, we are committed to driving company earnings higher by growing our portfolio and have the capability to do so organically through our unencumbered loan book. We are excited to see this capital put to work and the earnings generated in subsequent quarters. At this time, I'll pass it over to Christine Ario, our CFO, to provide further detail in our quarterly financial results.