ACRES Commercial Realty Corp.

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If you need assistance at any time, please press star zero and a member of our team will be happy to help you. © transcript Emily Beynon ? ? ? ? . . . . . . ? ? ? ? ¶¶

Thank you for your continued patience. Your meeting will begin shortly. If you need assistance at any time, please press star zero and a member of our team will be happy to help you.

© transcript Emily Beynon ? ? ? ? ? ? Thank you for your continued patience.

Your meeting will begin shortly. If you need assistance at any time, please press star zero, and a member of our team will be happy to help you.

¶¶

Thank you. Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the fourth quarter 2025 ACRS Commercial Reality Corp. Earnings Conference Call. Currently, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session with instructions to follow at that time. If anyone requires assistance during the conference, please press star then zero on your touchtone telephone. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference, Kyle Brengel, Vice President, Operations. You may begin.

Good morning, and thank you for joining our call. I would like to highlight that we have posted the fourth quarter 2025 earnings presentation to our website. This presentation contains summary and detailed information about the quarterly results of the company. Before we begin, I want to remind everyone that certain statements made during this call are not based on historical information and may constitute forward-looking statements. When using this conference call, the words believes, anticipates, expects, and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Although the company believes these forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs and are subject to several trends, risks, and uncertainties that could cause actual results to 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 Form 8K, 10Q, and 10K, and in particular, the risk factor section of its Form 10K. Listeners are cautioned to not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. The company undertakes no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements. Furthermore, certain non-GAAP financial measures may be discussed on this conference call. Our presentation of this information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute to the financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable measures prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles are contained in the earnings presentation for the past quarter. With me on the call today are Mark Vogel, President and CEO, Andrew Fentress, Chairman of ACR, and Eldren Blackwell, ACR's CFO. I will now turn the call over to Mark.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call. Today, I will provide an overview of our loan operations, real estate investments, and the health of the investment portfolio, while Eldren Blackwell, our CFO, will discuss the financial statements, liquidity condition, book value, and operating results for the fourth quarter 2025. Of course, we look forward to your questions at the end of our prepared remarks. The ACRES team remains focused on executing on our business strategy by investing in high-quality CRE loans actively managing the portfolio, and growing earnings for our shareholders. In the fourth quarter of 2025, we closed new commitments of $571 million, offset by loan payoffs and net unfunded commitments totaling $127.2 million, producing a net increase to the loan portfolio of $443.8 million. The weighted average spread on newly originated loans is 2.83%. New loan production in the fourth quarter of 2025 and in the first quarter of 2026 put us in a position to structure and price a new CRE securitization in January. On February 12th, we closed Acres 2026 FL4, a $1 billion deal that has leverage of 86.5% and a weighted average debt spread of 1.68%. The weighted average spread of the floating rate loans in our $1.8 billion commercial real estate loan portfolio is now 3.35% over one-month term SOFR rates. The portfolio generally continues to perform, demonstrating sound and consistent underwriting and proactive asset management. The company ended the quarter with $1.8 billion of commercial real estate loans across 53 individual investments. At December 31st, our weighted average risk rating was 2.7, a decrease from 3.0 at September 30th. and the number of loans rated four or five was 10, down from 13 at the end of the third quarter. A portion of our CRE loan portfolio rated four or five based on the company's economic interest was 17% at December 31st, down from 32% at September 30th. During the quarter, another four-rated loan paid off at par, highlighting again that the vast majority of our four and five-rated loans do not suffer principal losses. Looking back through our history, when Acres assumed the management contract of ACR in 2020, the company had 23 loans with a par balance of $411 million, or 24% of the portfolio, risk-rated either four or five. As of December 31st, 2025, only two of those four or five loans remain unresolved in the portfolio. Our exceptional asset management team created sponsor-specific solutions to successfully resolve 21 of those loans, or $368 million of par value, recognizing a loss of only $4.8 million on those resolutions or just 1.3% of the par balance of those loans. We expect the same or better results on the remaining four or five rated assets in our portfolio as we work actively and strategically with our sponsors to create positive resolutions. The majority of these assets have manageable stabilized LTVs of 80% or less. I prefer to highlight this point as a firm since inception 12 years ago, Akers has incurred minimal realized losses on almost $8 billion of invested capital. We are also excited to announce that we sold one of our REO assets collateralized by an office property in Austin, Texas this quarter, which resulted in an earnings available for distribution or EAD gain of $1.3 million. During the quarter, we charged off a legacy $4.7 million mezzanine loan that was originated prior to Acres Management in 2018 and whose loss was fully reserved for and recognized in both GAAP and book value in 2022. We recognize the EAD impact this quarter in connection with settlement of that loan. We will now have ACR's CFO, Eldren Blackwell, discuss the financial statements and operating results during the fourth quarter.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Gap net loss allocable to common shares in the fourth quarter was $3 million, or 43 cents per share. Gap net loss for the quarter included $10.7 million in net interest income, which was an increase of $2.3 million over the prior quarter. This increase in net interest income was driven by net loan originations of $443.8 million in corresponding facility draws during the quarter. Gap net loss for the quarter also included a $3 million net increase in the performance of our net real estate operations to net income of $156,000 and a $1.5 million net loss on the sale of the previously mentioned office property in Austin, Texas. We saw a decrease in current expected credit losses or CECL reserves of $1.3 million or 19 cents per share as compared to a decrease in CECL reserves during the third quarter of $4 million. which was primarily driven by loan payoffs and net improvements in the model credit risk of our CRE portfolio, offset by a general decline in projected macroeconomic factors during the quarter. Also, as previously mentioned, ACR recorded a charge off of $4.7 million on a mezzanine loan that was fully reserved for in 2022. The total allowance for credit losses at December 31st was $20.4 million and represented 1.11% or 111 basis points on our $1.8 billion loan portfolio at par and was composed entirely of general credit reserves. Excluding the loss for the mezzanine loan that was fully reserved for in 2022, EAD for the fourth quarter 2025 was 20 cents per share. When the mezzanine loan is included, the company reported an EAD loss of 48 cents per share as compared to earnings of $1.01 per share for the third quarter. Gap book value per share was $30.01 on December 31st versus $29.63 on September 30th. Additionally, during the quarter, we used $10 million to repurchase 493,000 common shares at an approximate 33% discount to book value at December 31st. In December 2025, the authorized amount was fully utilized, and since November 2020, the company has repurchased 5.3 million shares at an average discounted book value of 49%. Available liquidity at December 31st was $108 million, which comprised $84 million of unrestricted cash and $24 million of projected financing available on unlevered assets. Our DAP debt-to-equity leverage ratio increased to 2.8 times at December 31st from 2.7 times at September 30th from net originations on our CRE loan portfolio. At the end of the fourth quarter 2025, the company's net operating loss carried forward was $32.1 million, or approximately $4.89 per share. With that, I will now turn the call to Andrew Fentress for closing remarks.

Thank you, Eldren. We're pleased with continued execution of our plan to drive shareholder value. In the fourth quarter, we originated $571 million of new loans. We repurchased shares at accretive levels, sold an REO asset, improved the credit quality of the portfolio, and positioned the company to resume paying a dividend to common shareholders. Since assuming the role of manager in July of 2020, ACR book value has increased a total of 66%. All the team here at Akers is energized by the opportunity that we see in front of us both in the asset class and the competitive landscape. We will continue to deploy capital through careful underwriting and then manage each investment to the optimal outcome for shareholders. We greatly appreciate your continued support and investment in ACR and we look forward to your questions. This concludes our opening remarks. I'll now turn the call back to the operator for questions.

Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, press star 1 on your keypad. To leave the queue at any time, press star 2. Once again, that is star 1 to ask a question. And we'll pause for just a moment to allow everyone a chance to join the queue. Thank you. Our first question comes from Matthew Erdner with Jones Trading. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.

Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the question. Could you touch a little bit more on the loans that you guys completed this quarter as a Really impressive number in terms of net loan growth. I heard you mention the 283 spread there, but could you give any additional kind of color on that? And then, you know, as well, what the current pipeline looks like?

Sure, Matt. This is Mark. The color on that portfolio is it was mostly multifamily type execution. The average loan size was probably about $40 to $50 million. Spreads range between $250 and $325 million. And it was purposely focused, our origination effort, on multifamily this quarter and the next quarter in that we were in the process of looking to execute a new CLO, and CLO execution was extremely dependent on a significant amount of multifamily. On the bright side, our CLO execution includes reinvestment opportunity to do up to 40% of our assets outside of multifamily.

Got it. And then how long is that reinvestment period? Is it 24 months?

30 months.

Got it. Awesome. And then, you know, with the additional kind of equity investments, you know, page 11 of the deck, you know, what's your plan for that? And, you know, would we or should we expect an exit from any of those assets as we go through the year?

I think on one of them right now, you can expect an exit. One of the smaller land deals that we have, we're actually under LOI right now to sell that asset. One of the other assets is out on the market right now. We expect that we'll get some offers during the year and we'll make a decision based on where those offers come in.

Got it. That's helpful. And then last one for me, just... I noticed something on the balance sheet. Non-controlling interest jumped up to about $130 million, call it, from about one. I was just curious what that was.

Sure. This is Andrew. So the company sold a position or a portion of its previously issued financing arrangement with J.P. Morgan, and so that interest is recorded as an NCI. Got it. That's helpful. Thank you, guys. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll now move on to Chris Muller with Citizens Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Nice to see originations come in really strong. And based on your illustrative earnings slide, it looks like there's some at least capacity to grow the portfolio and push leverage a little bit. Could we see this pace of deployment we saw in the fourth quarter in the near term, or was that mostly due to the CLL execution in January?

No, Chris. We expect we'll see a decent amount of additional employment significantly in A significant amount of it occurred in the first quarter of 2026. We're projecting net growth in the portfolio of 500 million to 700 million in 2026.

Got it. It's great to hear. And I guess turning gears a little bit, I believe the capital loss carry-forwards expired at the end of the year. So thinking about potential upside to book value, would any future gains on REO be fully taxed going forward, or are there any other offsets that would apply?

Hey, this is Aldrin. Let me start with we still have remaining NOLs, $32.1 million at the QRS. So that's available to us. That's a win, not an if. But as long as we continue to have depreciation, some of our normal operating expenses, I don't expect in the future that any gains on those capital items would be taxable. Got it. That's helpful. We also have NOLs, NRTRS, so any activity down there is also protected.

Got it, got it. So there's still a little bit. That'll flow through. I guess just a quick clarifying one. The $3.4 million of realized losses on core activities, was that just the mezzanine loan write-off that you guys talked about, or is there something else in there?

That was a big chunk of it. We recorded it. recorded a $4.7 million EAD loss attributable to this mezzanine loan that we inherited as part of our taking control of the REIT. And we recorded a specific reserve for that back in 2022.

And the specific or the CECL reserve release in the quarter, that was a specific reserve release related to this asset, is that right?

Part of it was a specific reserve, the $4.7 million. Part B, the other $1.3 million was just improvement in net credit of the portfolio and our general reserves.

Got it, got it, got it. I appreciate you guys taking the questions today, and great to see the capital deployment picking up.

Thanks, Chris.

And once again, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star and 1 on your keypad now. Thank you. We'll move on to Gabe Poggi with Raymond James. Your line is now open.

Hey, good morning, and thanks for taking the questions. I've got a couple. For year-to-date originations, has there been any change in spreads? Has there been any mixed shift away from multifamily? Just anything you could provide there would be helpful. Pardon me.

In 2026, originations to date have mostly been multifamily. As I said, we've been geared towards, we were geared towards ramping up for our CLO. Spreads overall in that portfolio are about 2.83%. You know, we're seeing spreads come down on the multifamily side for sure across the board. But as I said, we're looking at other asset classes for reinvestment activity. And going forward, you'll see a different type of mix within our portfolio. You know, we're pretty heavily weighted towards multifamily right now. And I would expect that some of that will sort of start to fall off over the course of 2026. Got it.

So is the goal there to kind of maintain that 280 over? spread while mixing out to other asset classes, or do you just want to, are you content to kind of have asset yields bleed a little bit lower just because of the competitive nature of the market?

No, our intent is to be above and beyond 283. There are certainly a lot of opportunities in other asset classes where spreads are better. You know, some more risk-reward opportunity in self-storage and office and retail. You know, historically, Our portfolio has been only 60% to 65% multifamily, and that's where we expect it to get back to.

Okay, thanks for that. Question on repayments in 26. You've got about $400 million update there. Obviously, the CECL reserve has come down. Do you expect just a normal cadence of repay activity for 26? Anything in there that we should be aware of?

We expect that repayments in 26 will be healthy. We're projecting about $500 million of repayments in 26, mostly older vintage assets. Importantly, what that does for us, if you mix in new originations in 26, is it brings down our older vintage, call it 23 and older type assets, down to about only 15% of the portfolio.

Thank you for that. And one more, and this is kind of a high level question, but as you guys think about ramping the portfolio, right, and slide 14 in the deck and taking total leverage to three and a half, because of the capital structure and press versus common, you tilt more to a higher leverage ratio on the common level. Where's the comfort level as you think about leverage to the common and where do you want to max out there? in that ramp? I see the current state, the mid, and then the full tilt, but just how do you think about that in the bigger macro environment where the comfort level is leveraged to the common equity? Thank you.

Yeah, Gabe, it's Andrew. I think what we show is we're inside of our comfort level at that inside of four turns, and I don't think you'll see us go above that.

Got it. So inside of four on total, my words, leverageable capital, which then could push the leverage on the common higher, but total leverageable capital inside of four. Right. Okay. That's helpful. Thank you, guys.

Thank you. At this time, there are no further questions in queue. I will now turn the meeting back to our presenters.

Thank you, everyone. We appreciate your support and we look forward to reconnecting with all of you in the coming weeks. If you have any questions, please reach out to myself or Eldrin. Have a great day.

Thank you. This brings us to the end of today's meeting. We appreciate your time and participation. You may now disconnect.