Blackstone Mortgage Trust, Inc.

Thank you for standing by. You're on hold for the Blackstone Mortgage Trust fourth quarter and full year 2025 investor call. At this time, we're gathering additional participants and should be underway shortly. We appreciate your patience and ask that you continue to hold. Good day and welcome to the Blackstone Mortgage Trust fourth quarter and full year 2025 investor call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. If you require operator assistance at any time, please press star zero. If you'd like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Tim Hayes, Vice President, Shareholder Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome everyone to Blackstone Mortgage Trust's fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings conference call. I'm joined today by Tim Johnson, Chief Executive Officer, Tony Marone, Blackstone's Global Head of Real Estate Finance, Austin Pena, President, and Marcin Urbasic, Incoming Chief Financial Officer. This morning, we filed our 10-K initiative press release with a presentation of our results. which are available on our website and have been filed with the SEC. I'd like to remind everyone that today's call may include forward-looking statements which are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors outside of the company's control. Actual results may differ materially. For discussion of some of the risks that could affect results, please see the risk factors section of our most recent 10-K. We do not undertake any duty to update forward-looking statements. We will also refer to certain non-GAAP measures on this call, and for reconciliations, you should refer to the press release and 10-K. This audio cast is copyrighted material of Blackstone Mortgage Trust and may not be duplicated without our consent. For the fourth quarter, we reported gap net income of $0.24 per share, while distributable earnings were negative $2.07 per share, and distributable earnings prior to charge-offs were $0.51 per share. A few weeks ago, we paid a dividend of $0.47 per share with respect to the fourth quarter. With that, I will now turn the call over to Tim.

Thank you, Tim. BXMT reported strong fourth quarter results. further building upon the positive momentum in earnings power and credit performance achieved throughout 2025. We reported 51 cents per share of distributable earnings prior to charge-offs in the fourth quarter, an increase of over 20% from Q1 and covering our dividend for the second consecutive quarter. Our loan portfolio is now 99% performing, reflecting strong progress on loan resolutions in the quarter. and we've actively rotated our portfolio, concentrating new investment in our highest conviction themes. We closed approximately $7 billion of investments in 2025, nearly 85% of which were in multifamily and industrial loans, our growing net lease strategy, and two bank loan portfolios we acquired at discounts. We've strategically broadened BXMT's scope to target these complementary investment channels, supporting capital deployment over the past year and reinforcing earnings power with greater diversification and duration. Turning to markets, the real estate credit market today is highly liquid and underpinned by solid real estate fundamentals, with new construction still sharply lower from pre-cycle levels and value steadily increasing. CMBS issuance accelerated in 2025 to its highest level since the GFC, up 40% year over year and demonstrating a significant increase in debt capital availability as performance in the sector has improved. As a result, we've seen the deal dam start to break with more enthusiasm from investors to transact. We see this in our loan origination business where new loan requests in January were up 50% from the prior year. Within this backdrop, the breadth and expertise of our global real estate debt platform with over 170 professionals is a differentiator. providing BXMT access to a proprietary pipeline of diverse investments across the US, Europe, and Australia. In 2025, our global platform closed over $20 billion of private loan originations and acquisitions and traded more than $15 billion of real estate securities. The robust data and insights gained from our private and publicly traded market activity guides our investment decisions and positions us well to source attractive opportunities across various markets. With such a wide funnel and a well-invested portfolio, we can pick and choose our spots and lean in where we see compelling relative value. Our activity also informs our balance sheet and capital market strategy, where BXMT has capitalized. executing over $5 billion of corporate and securitized debt transactions in the past 12 months, including $2.8 billion of corporate term loan repricings and extensions, which reduced our weighted average borrowing spread by nearly 90 basis points over the year over year. These transactions extended the duration of our liabilities, drove funding costs lower, and further diversified and strengthened our capital structure. Market tailwinds are also supporting performance within our portfolio with no new impaired loans or watch list additions in the fourth quarter. And we expect to see opportunities to selectively exit our owned real estate properties, further supporting earnings as we more efficiently redeploy capital into our core investments. We will remain patient and disciplined with our approach and focus on maximizing long-term shareholder value. While we delivered an attractive 21% total return for shareholders in 2025, we see a strong case for additional upside in the stock. BXMT shares still trade below book value. Our current dividend yield of 9.5% implies a 540 basis point spread to the 10-year treasury. That's approximately 40% above our tightest level, which was achieved when rates were much lower. In contrast, spreads in liquid real estate credit and the broader credit markets have tightened. with BBB CMBS spreads and high yield bond spreads within 10 to 20% of their all time tights. This valuation gap is wide and emphasizes the highly compelling relative value proposition of BXMT stock today. We believe the credit trends in our portfolio and earnings power of the business should warrant further retracement to historical levels. A view we've expressed with another $60 million of share repurchases this quarter and approximately $140 million since establishing our program in July of 2024. Before turning it over to Austin to discuss our fourth quarter investments and portfolio in more detail, I want to thank Tony Marone, who will be stepping down as CFO of BXMT to focus on other responsibilities within Blackstone. Tony has been instrumental in BXMT's growth since inception, joining us through the Capital Trust acquisition in 2012. I'm grateful for his service to the company and our shareholders and wish him all the best. I'd also like to congratulate Marcin Urbacic, who will be stepping into the role of CFO, completing the transition started when he joined the company in 2024. With that, Austin, over to you.