Ares Commercial Real Estate Corporation

Good morning. Welcome to ARES Commercial Real Estate Corporation's fourth quarter and year-end December 31st, 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded on Thursday, February 22nd, 2024. I will now turn the call over to Mr. John Stillmar, partner of Public Markets Investor Relations.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us on today's conference call. I'm joined today by our CEO, Brian Donho, our CFO, Kasich Yoon, and other members of the management team. In addition to our press release and the 10-day that we followed the SEC, we've posted an earnings presentation under the investor resources section of our website at www.AriesCRE.com. Before we begin, I want to remind everyone that comments made during the course of this conference call and webcast, as well as accompanying documents, contain four living statements and are subject to risks and uncertainty. Many of these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as participates, believes, expects, intends, wills, should, may, and similar such expressions. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations of market's condition and management's judgment. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, condition, or results and involve a number of risks and uncertainties.

The company's actual results could differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements as a result of a number of factors, including those listed in its SEC filing.