Eagle Point Credit Company Common Share of Beneficial Interest

Greetings and welcome to the Eagle Point Credit Company fourth quarter 2023 financial results call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Garrett Edson of ICR. Thank you, Garrett. You may begin.

Thank you and good morning. By now, everyone should have access to our earnings announcement and investor presentation, which was released prior to this call and which may also be found on our website at eaglepointcreditcompany.com. As a reminder, before we begin our formal remarks, the matters discussed on this call include forward-looking statements or projected financial information that involve risks and uncertainties that may cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those projecting such forward-looking statements and projected financial information. For further information on factors that could impact the company and the statements and projections contained herein, please refer to the company's filings with Securities and Exchange Commission. Each forward-looking statement and projection of financial information made during this call is based on information available to us as of the date of this call. We disclaim any obligation to update our forward-looking statements unless required by law. A replay of this call can be accessed for 30 days via the company's website, EaglePointCreditCompany.com. Earlier today, we filed our Form NCSR, our full year 2023 audited financial statements, and our fourth quarter investor presentation with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The financial statements and our fourth quarter investor presentation are also available within the investor relations section of the company's website. The financial statements can be found by following the financial statements and reports link, and the investor presentation can be found by following the presentations and events link. I will now turn it over to Tom Majewski, Chief Executive Officer of Eagle Point Credit Company.

Thank you, Garrett, and welcome everyone to Eagle Point Credit Company's fourth quarter earnings call. If you haven't done so already, we invite you to download our investor presentation, which provides additional information about the company and our portfolio. I'll start off by saying that the company had both a strong fourth quarter and a great 2023. For the year, we generated a gap return of equity of 20.79% and a total return on our common stock, assuming reinvestment of distributions, of 18.92%. We believe our portfolio remains well positioned for 2024 and also that our portfolio has room for continued upside. The right side of the company's balance sheet is also positioned very well. Some highlights from the fourth quarter include that our net income and realized capital gains totaled 33 cents per common share. We received recurring cash flows on our portfolio in the fourth quarter of $60.7 million, or 82 cents per common share. This exceeded our aggregate common distributions and expenses for the quarter by 14 cents per share. NAV per share as of December 31st was $9.21, and this is a modest decrease from September 30th, but up 2% for the full year. During the quarter, we paid 48 cents per share of cash distributions to our common shareholders, distributions with record dates during the year to $1.86 per share. During the quarter, we continue to actively manage our portfolio, opportunistically deploying $34 million in net capital into new investments that we believe will increase the earning power of our portfolio over time. Along with our overall portfolio performance, we continue to prudently raise capital through our at-the-market program, and issued approximately 4.5 million common shares at a premium, generating NAV accretion of 3 cents per share during the quarter. As of December 31st, the weighted average effective yield of our CLO equity portfolio was 16.7% based on amortized cost, and this is an increase from 16.29% at the end of September. The new CLO equity that we purchased during the fourth quarter had a weighted average effective yield of 22.9%, which should help bolster the portfolio's weighted average effective yield prospectively. The company also had a number of meaningful subsequent events that I would like to highlight. We estimated our NAV at January month end to be between $9.22 and $9.32 per share, and that's an increase from year end. Along with our regular monthly common distributions of 14 cents per share, We also declared additional variable supplemental distributions of 2 cents per share for aggregate monthly common distributions of 16 cents per share through the end of June 2024. I also want to highlight that inclusive of the January 31st distributions, we've now crossed an important milestone, and the cash distributions paid to our shareholders have now totaled $20.15 per share since our IPO in 2014. This means a shareholder who invested in our IPO less than a decade ago has now received over 100% a full return of invested capital of our IPO price in the form of cash distributions while still owning their shares in Eagle Point. We are immensely proud of this milestone and the value that we have created for shareholders. During the first quarter, we were also pleased to be able to further strengthen our balance sheet, raising an additional $47 million of net proceeds through the issuance of a new Series F term preferred stock due in 2029. Consistent with our long-time strategy for operating the company, all of our financing remains fixed rate and we have no financing maturities prior to April 2028. In fact, some of our preferred stock financing is even perpetual with no set maturity date. We continue to focus most of our investment efforts in the secondary market during the fourth quarter as the yields and convexity available in the secondary market offered, in our view, better risk-adjusted returns than the primary market. We remain focused on finding opportunities to invest in CLO equity with generally longer reinvestment periods remaining. As a result of our consistently proactive portfolio management, as of December 31st, our CLO equity portfolio's weighted average remaining reinvestment period, or WARP, stood at 2.4 years, well above the market average of 1.6 years. As we have consistently stated, we believe keeping our weighted average remaining reinvestment period as extended as possible is our best defense against future market volatility. With a notable increase in demand for CLO AAA bonds, we're starting to see a pickup and reset and refinancing activity within the CLO market. we expect to be active in completing resets and refinancing where attractive in order to further increase our portfolio's weighted average remaining reinvestment period and potentially lower our CLO's cost of debt. For the first time in a while, we're also seeing an increase in attractive new issue CLO equity opportunities, several of which we're pursuing. Before turning the call over to Ken, I'd like to take a moment to highlight Eagle Point Income Company, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange under symbol EIC, EIC primarily invests in CLO junior debt. For the fourth quarter, EIC generated net investment income of $0.56 per share, excluding non-recurring expenses, once again exceeding its common distributions for the quarter. Given our continued confidence in EIC's portfolio, we recently raised its monthly common distribution by 11% to $0.20 per share. This is the highest distribution in the company's history. EIC has performed very well over the last few years and we believe remains well-positioned to continue generating strong net investment income. We invite you to join EIC's investor call at 11.30 a.m. today after this call and to visit the company's website, eaglepointincome.com, to learn more. After Ken's remarks, I'll take you through the current state of the corporate loan and CLO markets. I'll now turn the call over to Ken.