Apollo Commercial Real Estate Finance, Inc

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Apollo Commercial Real Estate Finance Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode, so if you require operator assistance during the call, please press star then zero. After the presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star then one. I'd like to remind everyone that today's call and webcast are being recorded. Please note that they are the property of Apollo Commercial Real Estate Finance, Inc., and that any unauthorized broadcast in any form is strictly prohibited. Information about the audio replay of this call is available in our earnings press release. I'd also like to call your attention to the customary safe harbor disclosure in our press release regarding forward-looking statements. Today's conference call and webcast may include forward-looking statements and projections. and we ask that you refer to our most recent filings with the SEC for important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements and projections. In addition, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP measures on this call, which management believes are relevant to assessing the company's financial performance. These measures are reconciled to GAAP figures in our earnings presentation, which is available in the stockholders section of our website. We do not undertake any obligation to update our forward-looking statements or projections unless required by law. To obtain copies of our latest SEC filings, please visit our website at www.apolloreet.com or call us at 212-515-3200. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to the company's Chief Executive Officer, Stuart Rothstein.

Thank you. Good morning, and thank you to those of you who are joining us this morning on the Apollo Commercial Real Estate Finance Third Quarter Earnings Call. Joining me this morning are Scott Wiener and Jay Agarwal. As we move towards the end of 2021, we continue to see similar trends from prior quarters in the commercial real estate market. Specifically, the underlying performance of most commercial real estate continues to recover at a measured pace consistent with the recovery in the overall economy. There have been clear property type and geographic winners, as well as those asset types and regions that remain challenged. Ultimately, an improving economy should be positive for the commercial real estate industry, and asset level metrics should continue to improve. In contrast to operating performance, real estate investment and financing activity recovered sooner and more quickly, consistent with the broad and rapid recovery across the capital markets. At present, the pace of activity continues to accelerate, and regardless of the asset class, the combination of a low interest rate environment and significant fund flows is supporting robust transaction volume and a well-funded, highly liquid financing market. The commercial real estate lending market has surpassed 2019 levels and is on track for a record year in terms of lending volumes across CMBS, banks, insurance companies, and non-bank lenders such as ARI. In the current highly competitive environment, the strength of the Apollo Commercial Real Estate Debt Platform again has proven to be incredibly beneficial as we have completed approximately $1.5 billion of new transactions for ARI through the first three quarters of the year. The pipeline continues to be a mix of both U.S. and European transactions for well-positioned, high-quality properties with institutional sponsorship in gateway markets. We expect ARI loan origination totals for 2021 will approach pre-pandemic levels, as we have already committed to an additional $340 million of transactions in the fourth quarter, and we are working through a number of other transactions that should close by year-end. It is worth highlighting that ARI's loan originations year to date continue to favor Europe, which is reflective of a combination of the strong reputation and market position our team has developed there, slightly less competition, and our team's ability to underwrite and structure large transactions. As a result of our success in Europe, Loans securing properties in Europe represent approximately 40% of ARI's portfolio at quarter end. To reiterate what I have said previously, the types of transactions, quality of equity sponsorship, and deal structures for ARI's European loans are very similar to the transactions we complete in the United States. Our European loan portfolio is diversified by property type and geography, and we manage currency risk as we borrow and lend in local currency and use forward contracts to hedge. The strength of the CRA lending market has also led to more normalized repayment activity in our portfolio. Through September 30th, we have received almost $800 million of loan repayments and an additional $277 million of loans have repaid since quarter end. Our repayments reflect encouraging signs from the general economy as transitional assets are achieving their business plans, including construction projects achieving certificates of occupancy and for-sale residential units being sold. As a result, ARI's construction exposure continues to decline, representing approximately only 14% of the portfolio at quarter ends. We also have seen positive anecdotes from our portfolio of loans securing office properties, including the repayment of a large Manhattan office loan this quarter, as well as increased leasing activity and foot traffic at our other projects. In general, the credit quality across our portfolio remains stable, and we continue to make progress with our focus loans. Before I finish my remarks, I want to take a minute to highlight some recent corporate governance highlights with respect to our Board of Directors. In the past year, ARI expanded the company's Board of Directors from eight to ten members with the addition of Pamela Carlton and Carmen Sita Wonder. Both women are senior executives, and we believe ARI will benefit greatly from their insight and expertise. We continue to recognize the importance of ESG issues to our stakeholders, and as a reminder, ARI incorporates consideration of ESG issues into our investment analysis and decision-making processes. Lastly, I wanted to take a moment to thank our CFO, Jay Agarwal, who will be leaving us early in the new year to pursue other opportunities. Jay has made valuable contributions to ARI during his tenure, and we will be sorry to see him go. One of his greatest contributions was building a strong team below him, and he will leave us in good hands. We have already begun a search for his replacement, and we expect his departure will be seamless. And with that, I will turn the call over to Jay for the last time to review our financial results.

to it, our distributable earnings for the quarter were $49 million, or $0.35 per share. And GAAP net income available to common stockholders was $57 million, or $0.38 per diluted share. GAAP book value per share prior to depreciation and the general CECL reserve increased slightly to $15.54 from $15.48 at the end of last quarter. This increase was primarily due to unrealized gains on currency hedges. The loan portfolio at quarter end was $7.3 billion, a slight decline from the end of previous quarter due to increased loan repayments. The portfolio had an average unlevered yield of 5.2 percent in the remaining fully extended term of just under three years. Approximately 89 percent of our floating rate U.S. loans have LIBOR floors that are in the money today, with a weighted average floor of 1.20 percent. During the quarter, we made a $180 million first mortgage, $141 million of which was funded. We also made $113 million of add-on fundings for previously closed loans. With respect to our borrowings, We are in compliance with all covenants and continue to maintain strong liquidity. We increased our secure facility with JP Morgan to 1.5 billion and extended the maturity to September of 2024. We ended the quarter with almost $600 million of total liquidity, which was a combination of cash and capacity on our lives. Our debt-to-equity ratio at quarter end decreased slightly to 2.2 times, and we ended the quarter with $1.7 billion of unencumbered loan assets. Lastly, I wanted to thank Scott, Stuart, the Board of ARI, and most importantly, all my colleagues at Apollo for the support over the last five and a half years. I feel very fortunate to have been offered this opportunity, and I will truly miss working with this very talented group of individuals. And with that, we'd like to open the line for questions. Operator, please go ahead.