Claros Mortgage Trust, Inc.

Hello and welcome to the Clarus Mortgage Trust's fourth quarter 2025 earnings conference call. My name is Becky and I will be your conference facilitator today. All participants will be in a listen only mode. After the speaker's remarks there will be a question and answer period. If you wish to ask a question in this time please press start followed by one on your telephone keypads. I would now like to hand the call over to Ana Nguyen, Vice President of Investor Relations for Claris Mortgage Trust. Please proceed.

Thank you. I'm joined by Richard Mack, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Claris Mortgage Trust, and Mike McGillis, President, Chief Financial Officer and Director of Claris Mortgage Trust. We also have Priyanka Garg, Executive Vice President who leads credit strategies for Mack Real Estate Group. Prior to this call, we distributed CMTG's earnings release and supplement. We encourage you to reference these documents in conjunction with the information presented on today's call. If you have any questions, please contact me. I'd like to remind everyone that today's call may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors. including those disclosed in our other filings with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements made on this call represents our views only as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update them. We will also be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures on today's call, such as distributable earnings, which we believe may be important to investors to assess our operating performance. For reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the nearest GAAP equivalents, please refer to the earnings supplement. I would now like to turn the call over to Richard.

Thank you, Ann, and thank you all for joining us this morning for CMTG's fourth quarter earnings call. CMTG made a meaningful amount of progress last year, executing on several critical path items. In 2025, we accomplished the priorities we established at the start of the year, including resolving watch list loans, enhancing liquidity, and further deleveraging the portfolio. One year ago, we established a $2 billion total resolution target for 2025, and I'm pleased to report that we meaningfully exceeded this target, closing the year with $2.5 billion of total resolutions. This included the resolution of 11 watch list loans representing an aggregate UPB of $1.3 billion. This activity reflects our commitment to repositioning the portfolio by transitioning out of watch list loans through thoughtful and decisive action. We also generated significant liquidity over the course of the year, which we used to meaningfully de-lever the portfolio and to reduce corporate debt. This momentum has carried into the new year, with $389 million of full loan repayments happening, including a New York City land loan that was a watch list loan that had been on non-accrual since 2021. More importantly, subsequent to year end, we retired the term loan B that was scheduled to mature in August of 2026. The term loan had a balance of $718 million in the first quarter of 2025 and was replaced with a new $500 million senior secured loan from HPS. This facility has four years of duration. Mike will provide additional color on this financing later in the call. We view this financing agreement with HPS as a positive for CMTG as it extends the maturity of our corporate debt to 2030 and provides the necessary flexibility to continue executing our business plan of resolving watch list loans, delivering our balance sheet, and reducing our capital costs over time. Looking ahead to the coming year, we remain optimistic but mindful of the macroeconomic backdrop and the uncertainty that has been a defining theme across the broader financial markets. With regard to real estate, we do not believe there will be a single catalyst that will drive an overnight recovery. Rather, we anticipate a period of gradual and steady improvement that will support transaction volume and investor confidence over time, especially if the bond market rally holds and rate cuts continue as expected. As it relates to property market fundamentals, we continue to observe encouraging indicators, including a reduction in new supply, tightening credit spreads and improving financing costs for new originations. We also see increased demand for industrial space and significant investments in areas such as artificial intelligence and domestic manufacturing. We believe that investments in domestic manufacturing will support job growth and incremental demand for real estate over time. While AI investments are likely to support future productivity gains, the impact on commercial real estate, excluding data centers, is still quite uncertain. Overall, we see a constructive backdrop for commercial real estate and CMTG in the years ahead. But in 2026, our focus will remain on asset management and decisive execution as we continue to resolve watchlist loans and work through our REO assets. Our goal is to position the company to begin to evaluate new lending opportunities towards the end of 2026 and lay the groundwork for portfolio growth in subsequent years. Before turning the call over to Mike, I want to acknowledge that the last 24 months have been the most challenging business period of my career and for many others in the real estate industry. And so I want to thank Mike, Priyanka, and our entire team for their dedication and hard work during this difficult time. and their commitment to overcoming the remaining challenges that are still ahead. I look forward to providing an update on our continuing progress in the coming quarters. And now I would like to turn the call over to Mike.