ACRES Commercial Realty Corp.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Q1 2019 Exantis Capital Corp. Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. If anyone should require assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your touchtone telephone. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference, Steve Landgraber, Vice President of Corporate Finance. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you. Good morning and thank you for joining our call. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that certain statements made in the course of this call are not based on historical information and may constitute forward-looking statements. When used in this conference call, the words believes, anticipates, expects, and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Although the company believes that these forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs and are subject to a number of trends, risks, and uncertainties that could cause results that differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties are discussed in the company's reports filed with the SEC, including its reports on Forms 8K, 10Q, and 10-K, and in particular, the risk factors section of our form 10-K. Listeners are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as the date hereof. The company undertakes no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements. Furthermore, certain non-GAAP financial measures will be discussed on this conference call. Our presentation of this information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute of the financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable measures prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles are contained in our earnings release for the past quarter. I will now turn it over to the Chairman of Exantus Capital Corp., Andrew Farkas, for opening remarks.

Thanks, Steve. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining. With me today are Bob Lieber, our CEO, Matt Stern, our President, Dave Bryant, our CFO, Paul Hewson, head of commercial real estate lending, and Steve Landgraver, from whom you've just heard, vice president of corporate finance. We remain pleased with our progress in continuing to advance our operating strategy with the expectation of reaching full deployment later this year. The acceleration of core earnings and the corresponding increases to our dividend are driven by the success of our origination strategy, our focus on the transitional commercial real estate market, and the growth of our commercial real estate and CMBS portfolios. To that end, we're pleased to announce our expectation of an increase in our quarterly dividend for the second quarter of 2019 to 22.5 cents, or a 12.5% increase over the first quarter of 2019. That's a 125% increase over the second quarter of 2018. So we are proceeding apace very effectively. With that, I'll turn it over to our CEO, Bob Lieber. Bob.