Ellington Credit Company

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Ellington Credit Company's second fiscal quarter-ended September 30, 2025 results conference call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for your questions following the presentation. If you would like to ask a question at that time, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. At any time, if your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star 2. Lastly, if you should require operator assistance, please press star 0. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Aladin Shele, Associate General Counsel. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that this conference call may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are not historical in nature and involve risks and uncertainties detailed in our registration statement on form N2. Actual results may differ materially from these statements, so they should not be considered to be predictions of future events. The company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Joining me today are Larry Penn, Chief Executive Officer of Ellington Credit Company, Greg Borenstein, Portfolio Manager, and Chris Mernoff, Chief Financial Officer. Our earnings call Our earnings conference call presentation is available on our website, ellingtoncredit.com. Today's call will track that presentation, and all statements and references to figures are qualified by the important notice and end notes at the back of the presentation. With that, I'll turn it over to Larry.

Thanks, Aladin, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate your time and interest in Ellington Credit Company, which we often refer to by its New York Stock Exchange ticker, EARN, or EARN for short. Please turn to slide three. The credit markets generally rally during the third calendar quarter, supported by a dubious shift from the Federal Reserve, which delivered its first interest rate cut of the year in September. Most corporate credit and CLO spreads tightened overall, as shown here on slide three. And that was even despite some notable pockets of weak credit performance in the high-yield corporate bond and leveraged loan markets. Major equity indexes also advanced on expectations of further monetary easing. Turning now to slide four, Ellington Credit delivered another strong quarter against this backdrop. Our CLO portfolio ramp-up continued at a steady pace, and our net investment income rose accordingly. Our results also benefited from several CLO note redemptions at par on discounted purchases, as well as our robust trading activity. with more than 90 distinct CLO trades executed during the quarter. Finally, I'm very pleased to announce that Ellington Credit Company achieved full dividend coverage from net investment income in September, underscoring the earnings power of our portfolio as we get closer to being fully invested. Active trading remains at the core of our investment approach, and we believe it enables us to capitalize on mispricings, to manage risk more effectively, and to continually reposition the portfolio for optimal relative value. This past quarter, we saw a yield compression between the CLO debt tranche markets and the leveraged loan markets, and that led us to reposition our portfolio in two important ways. First, this yield compression led us to increase our portfolio allocation to mezzanine debt, gaining more attractive yields on a relative value basis. especially with the downside protection they offer. Second, the yield compression led us to reduce our exposure to new issue equity. Instead, we gained similar exposures, but at better pricing, in secondary market acquisitions of longer duration equity. Another advantage of frequent trading is that it provides more accurate and more actionable information on real-time market conditions, and it improves our valuation process, as Greg will discuss later. Our predisposition towards active trading also highlights an advantage of EARN's relatively modest size. With $225 million of equity to invest, rather than, say, a billion dollars or more, we can remain nimble, rotate the portfolio decisively, and be highly selective in our investments without feeling compelled to own the market. Our portfolio maneuvers this past quarter echoed many of our moves from the prior quarter. Looking back over the last two quarters, so dating back to our April 1st conversion to a closed-end fund, approximately 70% of our net CLO purchases have been of mezzanine debt tranches, reflecting our deliberate move up in credit quality. We believe that mezzanine debt tranches currently offer a compelling combination of yield and downside protection, complementing the equity positions we hold. We've also leaned more heavily into the secondary market, where relative value opportunities are often more compelling than a new issue. As I mentioned, we've been especially favoring secondary market acquisitions in the case of CLO equity. As shown on slide seven, as of September 30th, our $380 million CLO portfolio was almost evenly split between mezzanine debt and equity tranches, with about 14% of total investments in Europe. With that, I'll hand it over to Chris to review our financial results in more detail.