Apollo Commercial Real Estate Finance, Inc

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.apollocreft.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, Operator. Good morning and thank you for joining us on the Apollo Commercial Real Estate Finance fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings call. I am joined today by Anastasia Maranova, our Chief Financial Officer. In light of our recent announcement to sell ARI's loan portfolio to Athene and the subsequent call we hosted on January 28th, I will provide a brief update on the four REO assets ARI will retain, and then we'll turn the call over to Anastasia to review our Q4 financial results. ARI continues to actively manage its real estate-owned portfolio with a clear focus on improving run rate, cash flow, and maximizing value at exit. With respect to the Brook, which as a reminder is a newly built Class A multifamily tower with 591 residential units and approximately 20,000 square feet of ground floor retail in Brooklyn, New York, The current the property is currently approximately 56% leased across market rate units and is experiencing strong leasing momentum. The retail component is 88% leased to Din Tai Fung with occupancy expected next year. Management Marines focused on completing lease up and achieving stabilization, which is expected later this year, while also evaluating options to unlock additional value from an adjacent owned land parcel. With respect to the two hotels, starting with the Mayflower, management has implemented cost savings initiatives which should provide a notable pickup in net cash flow once completed. In Atlanta, ARI is executing value-add upgrades to the rooms and common areas of the Cortland Grand aimed at driving group business in 2026. Following a fire in October 2025 that temporarily took some rooms offline, The company is receiving business interruption insurance proceeds and continues to evaluate restoration and insurance recovery paths to maximize value. Finally, ARI has a minority interest in a Massachusetts pre-development portfolio consisting of two former hospital sites owned through a joint venture with other Apollo affiliated vehicles and is actively working through zoning changes to increase the value of each site. With that, I'll turn the call over to Anastasia to walk through our financial results for the quarter and the full year.

Thank you, Stuart, and good morning, everyone. In the fourth quarter, ARI reported distributable earnings of 37 million, or 26 cents, per diluted share of common stock. For the full year, distributable earnings totaled 139 million, or 98 cents, per diluted share. Gap net income available to common stockholders was $26 million or $0.18 per diluted share for the fourth quarter and $114 million or $0.81 per diluted share for the full year. During the fourth quarter, we recorded specific CECL allowance of $3 million associated with a 2019 vintage commercial mortgage loan secured by a hotel property in Chicago. The loan has an outstanding principal balance of $45.5 million and is expected to pay off over the course of the next few months. There were no other charges to specific CECL allowance during the quarter, and the overall credit portfolio, I'm sorry, overall credit profile of the portfolio remained stable. The weighted average risk rating of the loan portfolio was at 3.0, unchanged from the previous quarter and prior year. The balance of loans on non-accrual decreased by over $117 million year-over-year, driven primarily by net proceeds received from unit sales at 111 West 57 and partially offset with the addition of Chicago hotel loans to the population of loans on non-accrual. Our exposure to 111 West 57 decreased by $215 million year-over-year and $105 million quarter-over-quarter. with six contracts closed during the fourth quarter. The general FISO allowance was flat compared to previous quarter end at approximately 45 million. Total FISO allowance stood at 383 million at year end. This equates to 418 basis points of the loan portfolio's total amortized costs down from 507 basis points a year ago. The decrease is attributable to sequential portfolio growth year over year. Turning to the portfolio, the fourth quarter and the full year 2025 was highlighted by strong loan origination activity. During the quarter, we committed $1.3 billion to new loans with $1.1 billion funded at close and completed approximately $200 million of gross add-on funding for previously closed loans. For the full year, ARI committed $4.4 billion to new loans with $3.3 billion funded at close and completed about $900 million of cross add-on funding. Loan repayments and sales totaled $852 million in the fourth quarter and $2.9 billion for the full year, reflecting continued borrower execution and portfolio rotation. Notably, over 60% of our loan portfolio is now represented with post-2022 origination. This activity resulted in the overall growth of the loan portfolio, which increased by approximately $1.6 billion year-over-year on amortized cost basis. We ended the year with a total loan portfolio of approximately $8.8 billion by amortized cost with a weighted average and levered all-in yield of 7.3%. The portfolio has 99% for its mortgages and 96% floating rate exposure. The weighted average loan-to-value ratio is approximately 59%. Shifting to the right side of our balance sheet, ARI ended the year with $151 million of total liquidity. We also held over $430 million of unencumbered assets, primarily represented with first mortgage loans and cash flow in REO assets. During 2025, we added $1.8 billion of net financing capacity, including the closing of four new secured credit facilities, the expansion of our revolving credit facility, and the upsize of several other credit facilities. Book value per share was $12.14 at year end, relatively flat to the prior quarter end. With that, we would ask the operator to open the line for questions.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. One moment for questions. And our first question comes from Rick Shane with JP Morgan. You may proceed.

Hey, everybody. Thanks for taking my questions. Probably not a ton to ask here, but I am curious what sort of feedback you are getting from investors and given the gap between the implied value of the transaction and where the stock's trading right now. What do you think is driving that in investors' minds?

Hello?

Hey, Rick. This is Anastasia. Let us check.

We have a technical difficulty. One second.

Can you guys hear me? Can you hear me? Hey, Rick. I can hear you, Stuart. Okay. Hey. Just quickly. Look, overwhelmingly, the feedback has been positive. I think people greatly appreciate the efforts to unlike unlock value um obviously as you might expect there's also been a number of questions around what we envision doing with the capital um broadly speaking what type of strategies are in mandate not in mandate um we've revealed you know as expected Not a lot at this point and are more focused on getting through the go shop period and then obviously getting to a proxy filing, which will provide more information to people. Not for me to say exactly. what is driving the disconnect between, you know, the announced book value of 12 plus and a stock which sort of has been bouncing between 1070 and 1080 other than, I would say, people still looking for further clarity on what the strategy may or may not be going forward versus our further comments on, you know, dissolution also being a potential strategy. But I think as we provide more clarity on what we're thinking about and where we're headed with the vehicle, I would expect the gap to narrow over time.

Got it. And as you think about alternatives, I guess the question, and I realize you have to be pretty circumspect about how you answer this, but at this point, are there clear options on the table for you that you were evaluating? And, you know, do you have three plans and pros and cons? Or is it still, hey, we don't know what we're going to do and we are seeking a solution in the abstract?

I would say we're exactly where we thought we would be, which is I would say there are some specific ideas that have germinated organically internally that we are evaluating, but I would say too early to conclude whether one of those ideas will ultimately be what we decide to pursue or not. And then not surprisingly, post the announcement, a lot of incoming phone calls around ideas that people would like to propose to us, which was Very much expected, and we will very much engage in a number of dialogues just to hear people out on what other thoughts they may have. So a mix of two at this point.

Great. I appreciate the answers, and I thank you for taking the time this morning. Sure.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Doug Harder with UBS. You may proceed.

Thanks.

Stuart, can you talk about, you know, kind of how you think about ultimately marketing the REO assets? You know, I appreciate the update you gave. You know, if we take the brook, you know, as you get to stabilization, you know, how much longer after that do you look to monetize the asset? What are the, what would be the key signs to think about there?

Um, yeah, uh, look, I think with the, the Brooke, let me, um, let me respond to a couple of ways. I think for the Brooke itself, um, lease up is going. As expected and overall is pretty strong releasing you know, depending on the month 20 to 40 units a month rents are where we expected them to be and, as I indicated in my comments, I think we'll hit stabilization the latter part of this year. At that point. It really becomes sort of an assessment of. WHAT DOES THE MARKET LOOK LIKE IN TERMS OF THE TRANSACTION ENVIRONMENT, THE INTEREST RATE ENVIRONMENT, ETC., AS WE THINK ABOUT MAXIMIZING VALUE. ON THE BROOK, THE ONE CAVEAT I WOULD ADD IS, AS I THINK THOSE OF YOU THAT FOLLOW THE COMPANY CLOSELY ARE AWARE, THERE IS A parcel adjacent to the Brook that the expectation was always that that would be a call it jewel box retail site adjacent to the Brook. We are exploring some other strategies to create more value on that vacant site. And if we thought we could meaningfully increase value of that vacant site, we might factor that into our decision around timing of when we'd look to exit the Brook. I think with respect to the hotels, I think the Mayflower has been performing quite well as a hotel in general since we've taken it over. We think there's a real opportunity to move net cash flow um significantly over the next uh next 12 months or so with some uh strategies around efficiency and cost savings that we want to implement as soon as those are implemented and a higher run rate net cash flow is achieved um i would say we're ready to bring that to market and then i think with respect to The Cortland Grand, I think, you know, unfortunately, the fire on a portion of the hotel has given us an opportunity to sort of rethink through the best way to achieve value at the Cortland Grand. But I would say, given where we're currently carrying the Cortland Grand, we feel pretty good about the value there.

I appreciate that, Stuart.

And then how do you think about making decisions to monetize? Will you wait to determine what the future of ARI is in case some of those assets might fit into that future? Or just how are you thinking about the sequencing in that construct?

I think right now, obviously, we're not making any decisions in a vacuum, but I think, you know, sitting here today, given my comments to Rick on strategies going forward, I'm not sure I envision any of the REO portfolio as critical to where we think we're taking, we may take ARI in the future. So in some respects, I think, you know, exit strategy and maximizing value for the REO assets is very much sort of a walled-off decision as we think about just maximizing value.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. And as a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 1-1 on your telephone. Our next question comes from Jade Romani with KBW. You may proceed.

Thank you very much. The first one would be just a quick one is on the dividend. What will happen post the portfolio sale? Will there be a period in which there is no dividend? Because otherwise it will be coming out of book value. So the 1205 will presumably go down by the dividend.

I think all we've disclosed at this point, Jade, is... we do envision paying a q1 dividend of this year still subject to board approval but um envision paying a q1 dividend uh consistent with the run rate uh for the past number of quarters which is 25 cents a share per quarter um beyond that the remarks we made on the call whatever it was a week two weeks ago indicated a desire to keep paying a dividend but also subject to board approval and fully appreciate your comment on return of capital and i would say we will have further discussions with our board as we move towards any type of q2 decision which is in the latter part of the second quarter vis-a-vis the interplay between dividend thoughts on ongoing strategy versus dissolution and the right way to provide capital back to shareholders if, in fact, we end up in a situation where any type of distribution would be a return of capital.

Thanks. And then following up on Rick Shane's question about strategy and thinking about potential options if you do not choose the dissolution path, I wanted to see if you agree with these broader themes. I mean, to create an entity that would trade above book value, I think you would need to create an earnings stream that offers a return that's higher than what the public market discount rate is for these kinds of stocks. And so that higher return might look along the lines of what ARI actually originally started out doing, mezzanine and construction lending, because I think that's one of the only ways to generate very high returns today. Otherwise, you could go the super safe return path and perhaps use leverage in a way that private players aren't able to access, you know, using Apollo's access to business, to bank lines and other businesses like Atlas via securitization. Or third, invest in operating companies that have franchise value and perhaps retained earnings or potential for equity gains. So I just wanted to see if you agree with those things, if there's anything that jumps out that I didn't cover, just your overall thoughts.

Look, I think at a high level, what I'd say is, and you got to it with your last point, is I think We are spending a lot of time these days debating the public markets and the value of being in a call it price to book model versus a multiple of earnings model and which affords the better opportunity for future growth, better trading opportunities, ability to continue to capitalize opportunities to the extent you see them. in the market, I would say both are within purview today. And I guess the last thing I would say is the notion of Trying to come up with a strategy that we think will trade better is to indicate that what we're trying to spend time on is an opportunity. For something that has more legs than just being a one off trade to put a billion and a half dollars worth of capital to work right like there's. There's plenty of places to put a billion and a half dollars, but if long term, if we don't view it as an opportunity to invest in something that we think has continued growth trajectory and an ability to, as you put it, either generate outsized returns or create some sort of operating company slash platform value.

I don't think we're just going to do a quote unquote print a ticket to say we printed a ticket. Thanks a lot. Sure.

Thank you. I would now like to turn the call back over to Stuart Rothstein for any final remarks.

Thank you, operator. Obviously, always appreciate people getting on a call to discuss. We are always available, myself, Hillary, Anastasia, to the extent people have follow-up calls. Thanks all.

Thank you. This concludes the conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.