Eagle Point Income Company Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Eagle Point Income Company fourth quarter 2024 All Links Conference 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 signal the operator by pressing star and zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Peter Skusa with ICR. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning. As a reminder, before we begin our formal remarks, the matters discussed in 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 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, www.EaglePointIncome.com. Earlier today, we filed our form NCSR, which includes our full year 2024 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 the call over to Tom Majewski. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Eagle Point Income Company.

Thank you, Peter, and welcome everyone to Eagle Point Income Company's fourth quarter earnings call. We appreciate your interest in Eagle Point Income Company, or EIC. If you haven't done so already, we invite you to download our investor presentation from our website at eaglepointincome.com. This presentation contains detailed information about the company and our investment portfolio. 2024 was another excellent year for EIC and capped off by a solid fourth quarter. For the year, we generated a gap return on equity of 21%, and the total return on our common stock was 24.8%, assuming you reinvested your distributions. We paid $2.40 per share in cash distributions to our common stockholders, or about 15.2% of our average stock price during the year. We received strong and consistent recurring cash flows from the company's investment portfolio, totaling $3.30 per share for the year, and this is in line with the common stock distributions and expenses, excluding certain non-recurring items. Among our highlights for the quarter, the company received recurring cash flows of $16.1 million, or 82 cents per share. This compares to cash flows from the prior quarter of $13.1 million, or 76 cents per share. We saw strong cash flows from our CLO debt investments in the quarter, bolstered by first payments on new investments purchased in prior quarters. We continue to deploy significant capital into new CLO investments, which will make their first cash payments to us in 2025. The company generated net investment income and realized gains of 54 cents per share in the fourth quarter. For the second consecutive quarter, we realized 8 cents per share of realized gains as we fully realized discounts on many of the purchases over the past quarters, sooner than anticipated. Our NAV as of December 31st stood at $14.99 per share, which is a 1% increase from September 30th and a 4% increase from where it stood at the beginning of 2024. In line with prior quarters, we paid three monthly common distributions of 20 cents per share during the fourth quarter, and we've declared those same monthly distributions through June 2025. We continue to strengthen our balance sheet through our At-the-Market Program, or ATM, and our now-concluded Committed Equity Finance Program. We issued approximately 2.5 million common shares at a premium to NAV, generating NAV accretion of $0.05 per share during the quarter. We also received about 12 million proceeds from additional issuances of our Series B and Series C term preferred stocks. Daily average trading volume for our common stock also continues to increase, with volume in the fourth quarter about 18% higher than the third quarter. Fourth quarter volume was nearly triple the average trading volume that we saw one year ago. While many of our BB coupons remain in the double digits today, they do float based on short-term interest rates. As many of you are aware, the short end of the curve has come down by about 1% over the past few months as the Fed cut rates. This will lower interest rates on our CLO BBs and could impact our NII in the coming quarters. That said, we are actively managing our portfolio towards maximizing yields, and the portfolio's CLO equity exposure continues to enhance our portfolio's earnings ability. As investors focused on long-term earnings, we remain consistent in our approach to construct a portfolio that we believe can weather any economic cycle. For additional commentary on the overall market and our recent portfolio activity, I'd like to turn the call over to Senior Principal and Portfolio Manager Dan Coe.