Eagle Point Credit Company Common Share of Beneficial Interest

Greetings. Welcome to the Eagle Point Credit Company's third quarter 2024 financial results call. At this time, all participants will be in listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone today should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero from your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. At this time, I'll now turn the conference over to Garrett Edson of ICR. Thank you. You may now 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 of projected financial information that involve risks and certainties that may cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those projected in 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 the 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 third quarter 2024 financial statements and our third quarter investor presentation with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The financial statements and our third 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 third quarter earnings call. We'd like to invite you to download our investor presentation from our website, which provides additional information about the company and our portfolio. Recurring cash flows from our portfolio for the third quarter were $68.2 million, or 66 cents per share, in line with our quarterly aggregate common distributions and total expenses. This compares to $71.4 million or 79 cents per share in the previous quarter. The lower recurring cash flows were driven in part by loan spread compression and off-cycle semi-annual interest payments received from certain of the assets in our CLOs. Additionally, approximately 10% of our CLOs, principally new issue investments and refis and resets, hadn't yet made their first payment dates in the third quarter. Some fluctuations are expected in our cash flows from quarter to quarter, due to new investing activity and some semiannual payers in our CLOs portfolios. Cash flows received in the fourth quarter so far total $73 million, outpacing both the second and third quarters. The company generated net investment income less realized losses of 23 cents per share, which comprised of 29 cents of net investment income per share and about 6 cents per share of realized losses. The realized losses included an $0.08 per share write-down of amortized costs to fair value associated with three legacy CLO equity positions, which had already been reflected in the company's NAV as an unrealized loss. We also realized $0.02 per share of gains principally from selling appreciated CLO debt positions as part of our portfolio rotation strategy. Excluding the accounting reclassifications, Net investment income and realized gains were $0.31 per share, in line with our second quarter results. NAV as of September 30th was $8.44 per share, and it rose approximately 1.9% to $8.60 per share at the midpoint of our range as of October 31st. The third quarter was very active for us in deploying capital. Two of our major portfolio objectives were to rotate from BBs into more CLO equity and to continue lengthening our portfolio's weighted average remaining reinvestment period. While there's debate in the market right now if rates will go up or down from here, it's an important reminder that the vast majority of both the assets and liabilities are floating rate within CLOs. The impact of moderate rate moves up or down typically does not have a big impact on CLO equity cash flows. Ken will walk you through more of our financial results shortly, but I'd like to take you through some additional highlights from the third quarter. We deployed over $171 million in net capital into new investments. The new CLO equity purchases that we made during the third quarter had a weighted average effective yield of about 18.5%. During the quarter, we also completed 14 reset transactions, lengthening the portfolio's weighted average remaining period to about three years. This is 47% above the market average of about two years. Our Series AA and Series AB non-traded 7% convertible perpetual preferred stock offering generated net proceeds to the company of approximately $10 million. and we believe this offering will continue to be significantly accretive to ECC over time. We issued approximately 7.5 million additional common shares through our at-the-market program, or ATM. These shares were issued at a premium to NAV, generating NAV accretion of $0.08 per share. We also issued some preferred stock under the ATM program during the quarter. We continue to sell CLO double Bs from our portfolio during the quarter to harvest gains and rotate the proceeds into CLO equity and other investments that we expect to generate additional yield. We expect to continue this rotation in the near term. During the third quarter, along with our regular monthly common distribution of 14 cents per share, we paid an additional variable supplemental monthly distribution of 2 cents per share for an aggregate monthly distribution of 16 cents per share. Consistent with our longtime financing strategy for operating the company, all of our financing remains fixed rate, and we have no financing maturities prior to April 2028. In addition, some of our preferred stock financing is perpetual with no set maturity date. Our portfolio is actively managed towards long remaining reinvestment periods to drive performance and guard against periods of future market volatility. In this prolonged environment of tightening CLO debt spreads, we have been active in refinancing and resetting our investments throughout the year. As I mentioned earlier, during the quarter, we completed 14 resets and refinancings, and which successfully extended the reinvestment period of each of the reset CLOs to five years. Even with a large number of resets in the quarter, our current pipeline of additional resets and refinancing opportunities remains robust. Our proactive focus on these specific areas leads us to where we stand as of September 30th with our CLO equities weighted average remaining reinvestment period, or WARP, standing at 3.0 years. This is 0.3 years longer than where it stood on June 30th, despite the lapse of three months' time, and 0.6 years longer than where it stood at the beginning of the year. Our portfolio is 47% above the market average of 2.0 years. In my opinion, that's very important. We continue to believe keeping our warp as long as possible is our best defense against future market volatility. I would also 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. EIC continues to perform well and we believe remains well positioned to continue generating strong net investment income. We invite you to join EIC's investor call, which will be 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 loan and CLO markets. I'll now turn the call over to Ken.