Claros Mortgage Trust, Inc.

Welcome to Claris Mortgage Trust's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. My name is Elodie and I will be your conference facilitator today. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. I will now hand the conference over to Anh Huynh, 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 Clarence Mortgage Trust. We also have Priyanka Garg, who serves as Executive Vice President of CMTG and President of 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 meeting 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 discussed in our filings with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements made on this call represent 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 their operating performance. For reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to their nearest GAAP equivalents, please refer to the earnings supplement. I would now like to turn the call over to Richard.

Thank you, Anh, and thank you all for joining us this morning for CMTG's second quarter 2026 earnings call. The broader macroeconomic environment continues to present investors with both opportunities and challenges. Inflation has remained above targeted levels, interest rates remain elevated, and geopolitical developments continue to contribute to periods of volatility across financial markets. At the same time, commercial real estate fundamentals have generally improved, supported by limited new construction, healthy levels of capital seeking deployment, and improving transaction activity. With this as a backdrop, CMTG's second quarter results represent continued progress, albeit painful progress, towards returning to originating loans on transitional real estate. As we have highlighted previously, our strategic priorities for 2026 have been turning over the portfolio, resolving watch list loans, repositioning our REO assets, and deleveraging the balance sheet. Our second quarter results and activity to date in July reflect this commitment to working towards these goals. Highlights include another $482 million of loan and REO resolutions, including three watchlist loans. These resolutions reduced leverage, generated additional liquidity, and reduced watchlist loan exposure while moving us closer to the point where we can make capital allocation decisions. Last quarter, we mentioned eight lender-driven sale processes that were being held across our portfolio. These processes have yielded pricing discovery on liquidation values versus our view of the inherent value of the underlying assets over a longer-term horizon. While demand in these sales processes has generally been strong, in certain cases, pricing levels have fallen short of our expectations, especially in the multifamily sector which we would have expected to be more resilient given demand we see from investors in that asset class. Therefore, and consistent with our stated goals, we took additional specific CISO reserves during the quarter on certain office and Sunbelt multifamily loans to reflect anticipated near-term resolutions. We also reduced the carrying value of two REO assets that we moved to held for sale These adjustments resulted in a Q2 2026 book value of $8.58 per share. This reduction in book value is primarily attributable to nine loan and REO positions in the portfolio. The balance of the portfolio can be divided into three categories. First are 15 loans on accrual subject to general CECL reserves. Two of these repaid in July. and we currently anticipate the remaining 13 loans to repay in full, similar to the $464 million of UPB that have had full repayments in this calendar year. Second, there are only four loans subject to specific CECL reserves that have not yet been subject to price discovery and are likely to be longer term resolutions. And finally, there are seven additional REO assets with appropriate carrying values and perhaps some upside. These provisions reflect our commitment to turning over the portfolio, resolving watch list loans and REO assets, deleveraging the balance sheet and building liquidity in order to reallocate capital to more creative uses in the near future. As we continue to make progress in our strategic priorities, we hope to cause the disconnect between our book value and our stock price to become less pronounced. That said, we acknowledge that our goals of returning to a largely performing loan portfolio, executing on other accretive transactions such as share buybacks, and ultimately resuming a dividend will take time. But our continued focus on executing our strategic priorities should position us well to meet those objectives. As you've heard me say before, we've had to make difficult decisions over the last two years. And although we still have work to do, Based on the progress to date, we believe we have largely turned the corner and now expect to be in a position to make capital allocation decisions in the coming quarters which may include new loan originations, additional deleveraging, investment in select REO assets, and share repurchases. We are committed to these strategic priorities because they are necessary for us to capitalize on what we believe will be an increasingly attractive investment environment for CMTG over time. I'll now turn the call over to Mike.