Cherry Hill Mortgage Investment Corporation

Thank you for standing by and welcome to Cherry Hill Mortgage Investment Corporation's fourth quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. To remove yourself from the queue, you may press star 11 again. I would now like to hand the call over to Emma Little, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

We'd like to thank you for joining us today for Cherry Hill Mortgage Investment Corporation's fourth quarter 2025 conference call. In advance of this call, we issued a press release that was distributed earlier this afternoon. That press release and a fourth quarter 2025 investor presentation have been posted to the investor relations section of our website. On today's call, management's prepared remarks and answers to your questions may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those discussed today. Examples of forward-looking statements include those related to interest income, financial guidance, IRRs, future expected cash flows, as well as prepayment and recapture rates, delinquencies, and non-GAAP financial measures, such as earnings available for distribution, or EAD, and comprehensive income. Forward-looking statements represent management's current estimates, and Cherry Hill assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements in the future. We encourage listeners to review the more detailed discussions related to these forward-looking statements contained in the company's filings with the SEC and the definitions contained in the financial presentations available on the company's website. Today's conference call is hosted by Jay Lown, President and CEO, Julian Evans, the Chief Investment Officer, and Apeksha Patel, this Chief Financial Officer. Now, I will turn the call over to Jay.

Thanks, Emma, and welcome to our fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. Themes that resonated in the third quarter continued into the fourth quarter. A further reduction in tariff rhetoric and above-trend domestic growth allowed realized and implied volatility levels to drop. The limited government shutdown and a slightly weaker employment picture were offset by additional FOMC eases, which lowered the Fed funds rate by a total of 50 basis points during the quarter. All these factors contributed to the improvement of the equity and credit markets. Mortgage spreads embraced the lower volatility, coupled with a steeper yield curve tightening throughout the quarter. Specific to Cherry Hill, portfolio performance was driven by tighter mortgage spreads and a steeper yield curve. All portfolio components aided in the performance. Mortgages, swaps, futures, and MSRs performed well, with lower and middle coupon mortgages outperforming the wings of the coupon stack. The RMBS portfolio positioning remained consistent with the third quarter, and that positioning benefited performance. In addition, our MSR portfolio which remains 250 basis points out of the money given current mortgage rates, performed well given the steeper yield curve. All in, we were pleased with our performance for the quarter. For the fourth quarter, we generated GAAP net income applicable to common stockholders of 14 cents per diluted share. Book value per common share finished the quarter at $3.44. compared to $3.36 on September 30th. On an NAV basis, which includes preferred stock, NAV was up approximately $3.1 million, or 1.3% relative to September 30th. Financial leverage at the end of the quarter remained relatively consistent at 5.4 times, as we continued to stay prudently levered. We ended the quarter with $55 million of unrestricted cash on the balance sheet, maintaining a solid liquidity profile. Along with our solid portfolio performance, our strategic partnership and investment with Real Genius LLC, a Florida-based digital mortgage technology company, continues to grow steadily and in line with our expectations. As a reminder, Real Genius has developed a proprietary direct-to-consumer platform offering an efficient, fully online mortgage experience, including instant prequalification, automated document process, and real-time loan tracking, all of which is supported by their custom-built point-of-sale system. With 30-year mortgage rates still hovering around 6% and the potential for additional Fed rate cuts later this year, We remain optimistic that the reduction in mortgage rates may facilitate an acceleration in Real Genius' growth as more homebuyers and homeowners look to purchase homes or refinance. As we progress through 2026, we will continue to seek out investment opportunities we believe would be accretive to our business. We will also remain focused on thoughtfully growing the company while consistently maintaining our strong liquidity and prudent leverage positioning. With that, I'll turn the call over to Julian, who will cover more details regarding our investment portfolio and its performance over the fourth quarter.