New York Mortgage Trust, Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the New York Mortgage Trust first quarter 2022 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 rejoin the question, please press the pound key. If you are using speaker equipment, we do ask that you please lift the handset before making your selection. This conference is being recorded on Wednesday, May 4, 2022. A press release and supplemental financial presentation with New York Mortgage Trust First Quarter 2022 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 presentation section of the company's website. At this time, management would like me to inform you that the 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 expectation will be attained. Factors and risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectation are detailed in yesterday's press release and from time to time in companies' filings with the Securities and Exchange Commissions. Now, at this time, I would like to introduce Jason Serrano, CEO and President. Jason, please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Welcome to our 2022 first quarter call. I'm joined here in the room by Christine Nario, who will be touching on our financial results. I'll be speaking from our supplemental that's available on our website, starting on page seven. After a turbulent period with Fed wrestling with inflation by taking an aggressive stance on rate increases, fixed income markets suffered a significant setback, which drove our undepreciated book value down by 6%. After a declared dividend of $0.10 a share, providing 11% yield at the share price at quarter end, we finished the quarter with 80 base points of total rate of return. Despite a setback on our portfolio and asset pricing, we were able to grow our book by a record amount, primarily in short-duration, high-coupon residential investor loans. Given the high rate of redemption activity of the one-and-a-half-year maturity loan, We increased our portfolio by $645 million in the quarter, nearly doubling last quarter's portfolio growth. Also, we were active early in the securitization space and was able to lock in in a rated loan securitization against our longer duration RPL and scratch and dent loans with a 2.3% weighted average cost of funds. Additionally, we locked in our second revolver bridge loan securitization at a 4.1% weighted average cost of funds. Both deals provide for double-digit equity returns. In the case of the BPL deal, we can now add additional investor bridge loans in our pipeline with loan payoffs in the portfolio for three years. We prepared for these deals over the holidays at year-end, which enabled us to quickly get these deals to the market in the quarter. We are pleased with the execution here. Lastly, we also redeemed $138.6 million in a quarter converts at par. Last year, we issued a $5.75 million senior unsecured note in anticipation of this redemption, which ultimately lowered our bond debt cost by 50 basis points. Given our focus of non-recourse, non-mark-to-market financing structures, we are still well below one-times leverage and expect to continue with this low rate of utilization of recourse leverage. At this time, I'll pass it over to our CFO, Christine, to provide more details on our financial results. Christine?

Thank you, Jason. Good morning, everyone, and thank you again for being on the call. In discussing the financial results for the quarter, I will be using some of the information from the quarterly comparative financial information section included in slides 25 to 35 of the supplemental presentation. I want to start off on slide 11 to reiterate what Jason mentioned earlier. In the first quarter of 2022, we funded the acquisition and origination of $985 million of investments, a record quarter for the company, which included $828 million and $157 million in single-family and multifamily investments, respectively. On a net basis, investments increased by approximately $645 million during the quarter, with prepayments and redemptions fueled by repayments received on our short-duration loan book. This acquisition activity follows on the heels of a very active fourth quarter of 2021 when we added $325 million of investments on a net basis. Our financial snapshot on slide 9 covers key portfolio metrics on a quarter-over-quarter comparison. The company had GAAP loss per share of 22 cents and undepreciated loss per share of 17 cents. GAAP book value was 4.36 and undepreciated book value ended at 4.45, down 6% from the previous quarter. Notably, Despite the decline in undepreciated book value, our net interest margin for the first quarter was 3.87, an increase of 24 basis points from the previous quarter. Our portfolio yield on average interest earning assets was 6.80%, a quarterly improvement of 23 basis points. The increase was largely attributable to our continued investment in higher yielding business purpose bridge loans. Our funding costs improved slightly, ending at 2.93%, largely due to the two loan securitizations that we completed early in the quarter that were issued at a lower cost. The company's recourse leverage ratio and portfolio recourse leverage ratio remain low at 0.5 times and 0.4 times. Slide 10 details our financial results, and slide 26 details the components of net interest income. We had portfolio interest income of $52.5 million an increase of $7 million as compared to the previous quarter. Our continued investment in residential loans, particularly higher-yielding business-purpose loans, contributed to the $6.8 million increase in single-family interest income, partially offset by a $0.5 million decrease in multifamily interest income due to redemptions of our mezzanine lending investments accounted for as loans. Interest expense in our portfolio increased by $5.2 million, primarily due to increased utilization of our financing arrangements, which would include securitization and non-mark-to-market repurchase agreements. The cash generated from these financing activities can be redeployed into our targeted assets, which will generate additional earnings for the company. Total net interest income, which includes interest expense related to our corporate debt and mortgages payable on real estate, decreased to $29.9 million as compared to the previous quarter. The increase in portfolio net interest income of $1.8 million was offset by the increase in non-portfolio-related interest expenses of $2.7 million. The increase in non-portfolio-related interest expenses can be attributed to the increase in interest expense related to our mortgages payable on real estate by $5.1 million from the previous quarter as a result of the full quarter impact of the multifamily JV investments consolidated in the previous quarter as well as additional multifamily JV investments entered into and consolidated in the current quarter. This was partially offset by a decrease of $2.4 million in expense related to the company's convertible notes, which were fully redeemed in January. We had non-interest-related losses totaling $46.8 million, mostly from net unrealized losses of $83.7 million as a result of increases in rates and credit spread widening in the first quarter. This loss was partially offset by a 3.8 million of net realized gains from residential loan prepayment activity and non-agency RMBS sales, a 5.7 million of preferred return generated by our mezzanine lending investments accounted for as equity, and 1.8 million of other income primarily comprised of redemption premiums recognized from early repayment of mezzanine lending investments during the quarter. In addition, We also generated $25.6 million of income from real estate. This income is related to multifamily apartment properties in which the company has equity investments in, in the form of preferred equity or joint venture equity. As mentioned in prior quarters, because of certain control provisions, we consolidate these properties in our financial statements in accordance with GAAP. These properties also incurred interest expense and other expenses of $7.2 million and $48 million, respectively. The expenses incurred by these properties during the quarter is primarily related to depreciation expense and amortization of lease intangibles, totaling $35.6 million. After reflecting the share in the losses to the minority partners of $14.9 million in total, these multifamily apartment properties incurred a gap net loss of $14.7 million for the quarter. But excluding the company's share in depreciation and lease intangible amortization expenses, These multifamily apartment properties generate $5.5 million of undepreciated earnings. As detailed on slide 29, both income from and expenses related to real estate increase in the first quarter, and this is primarily related to the full quarter impact of multifamily JV investments made in the previous quarter, as well as additional multifamily joint venture investments made during the quarter, which required consolidation in our financial statements. We had total G&A expenses of $14.5 million, which increased compared to the previous quarter due to increase in commission, salary, and stock-based comp. We had portfolio operating expenses of $9.5 million, which increased primarily due to the growth of our investment portfolio. Jason will now go over the market and strategy update. Jason?