Blackstone Mortgage Trust, Inc.

Thank you for standing by. You're on hold for the Blackstone Mortgage Trust first quarter 2026 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 first quarter 2026 investor call. Today's conference 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 would 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 conference over to Tim Hayes, Vice President, Shareholder Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome, everyone, to Blackstone Mortgage Trust's first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. I'm joined today by Tim Johnson, Chief Executive Officer, Austin Pena, President, and Marcin Urbasic, Chief Financial Officer. This morning, we followed our 10-Q and issued a 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 a 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 N10Q. This audio cast is copyrighted material of Blackstone Mortgage Trust and may not be duplicated without our consent. For the first quarter, we reported a GAAP net loss of $0.04 per share, while distributable earnings were $0.21 per share and distributable earnings prior to realize gains and losses were 49 cents per share. A few weeks ago, we paid a dividend of 47 cents per share with respect to the first quarter. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Tim.

Thanks, Tim. BXMT's first quarter results clearly demonstrate the breadth of our platform and our ability to execute on both sides of the balance sheet amidst an ongoing real estate recovery. Our key competitive advantages drove distributable earnings prior to realize gains and losses of 49 cents per share, marking our third consecutive quarter of dividend coverage. We leveraged our scale and proprietary sourcing channels to capture attractive investments across a range of sectors, markets, and strategies, with a focus on several of our highest conviction themes, such as diversified industrial portfolios and essential use net lease properties. We also closed our first data center loan this quarter and invested in a diversified portfolio of low-leverage loans originated by a leading UK bank, investments offering compelling relative value, which Austin will detail further in his remarks. Real estate fundamentals continue to recover, benefiting from steadily increasing values and the sharp decline in new supply across all major property types. The public equity markets recognize this, with REITs significantly outperforming the S&P 500 year to date. And despite recent global volatility driven by the conflict in the Middle East, real estate equity and debt markets have remained resilient. U.S. CMBS issuance is up nearly 15% from this time last year and on pace for yet another post-GFC record. And spreads sit 15 basis points tighter compared to the beginning of the year. In Europe, we've observed a slightly larger impact with a slowdown in CMBS new issue activity and spreads modestly wider. However, real estate lending markets in the region remain open and active. Just a few weeks ago, we were fully repaid on a 177 million pound UK student housing loan that was refinanced by a bank syndicate. And we are aware of several other large, recently awarded deals in the market. Importantly, we've observed no change in the fundamental performance across our UK and Europe portfolio. Today, BXMT is in an advantageous position. We have a well-invested portfolio generating strong in-place current income, allowing us to maximize return on new capital deployment. Leveraging our scaled platform of over 170 real estate debt professionals, we cast a wide net across the global real estate credit markets, both in terms of sourcing new opportunities and also driving strong capital markets execution. setting up diversified investments to generate highly compelling risk-adjusted returns. To that end, our investments this quarter generated levered returns of 900 basis points over base rates, in line with our investment activity over the past year. We also accretively refinanced $700 million of corporate debt, issued $1.3 billion of securitized debt, and added a new non-mark-to-market credit facility to our 16-counterparty complex. all further demonstrating the strength and creativity of our dedicated capital markets team. Moving to the portfolio, we continue to be pleased with performance. We received over $600 million of repayments, with more than half in U.S. office. We resolved one impaired hospitality loan via foreclosure, and we executed on the sale of a multifamily property, the first from our owned real estate portfolio, as we capitalized on the supportive capital markets backdrop. While there is more work to do, including the eventual disposition of the remainder of our owned real estate portfolio, the trend in our business is now crystal clear. Resolutions and redeployment are driving earnings that cover our dividend and offer investors an attractive current yield of approximately 9.5%. These initiatives are supported by a compelling real estate credit backdrop, with loans secured by hard assets, property values still early in their recovery, and spread still wide relative to other credit alternatives. With this setup, BXMT continues to be exceptionally well-positioned, with unique insights from our Blackstone real estate platform guiding our strategy and delivering strong results for our investors. I'll now turn it over to Austin to discuss our investments and portfolio in more detail.