Eagle Point Income Company Inc.

gentlemen thank you for your patience the conference will begin momentarily again thank you for your patience Greetings and welcome to the Eagle Point Income Company first quarter 2026 financial results 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, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. At this time, I will turn the conference over to Mr. Darren Delherty from ProSec Partners. You may now begin.

Thank you, operator, and good morning. Welcome to Eagle Point Income Company's earnings conference call for the first quarter of 2026. Speaking on the call today are Thomas Wajewski, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the company, Dan Koh, Senior Principal and Portfolio Manager for the company's advisor, and Lina Umnova, Chief Accounting Officer for the advisor. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that 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 such projections. 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 SEC. Each forward-looking statement or projection of financial information made during this call is based on the 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. Earlier today, We filed our first quarter 2026 financial statements and investor presentation with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These are also available in the investor relations section of the company's website, eaglepointincome.com. A replay of this call will also be made available later today. I will now turn the call over to Thomas Skajewski, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Eagle Point Income Company.

Tom? Thank you, Darren, and good morning, everyone. We're glad you're joining us today for Eagle Point Income Company's quarterly earnings call. Despite facing some broader market challenges, EIC had a strong first quarter. During the quarter, we had an increase in our net investment income from the prior quarter, and our recurring cash flows covered our distributions and our total company expenses. The CLO market faced challenging conditions in much of the first quarter of 2026, and the company was not immune to these broader dynamics. While CLO fundamentals remained relatively stable, a decline in loan prices, especially in the software sector, and a cautious tone across credit markets due to the ongoing war in Iran, weighed on our NAB during the quarter. The software sector was a particular area of focus during the quarter, and investors continued to assess the potential impact of artificial intelligence on certain business models and revenue streams. Importantly, however, our exposure to is principally through broadly syndicated loans, not middle market loans that are commonly found in BDCs. The loans in our CLOs are typically larger, more liquid, institutionally syndicated credits with observable market pricing. While this observable pricing can result in more immediate mark-to-market volatility during periods of volatility, it provides clarity to investors as to the valuation of the underlying investment. While that volatility impacted quarterly valuations of many CLOs, we believe it also created opportunities for CLO collateral managers to reinvest proceeds from sales and paydowns into discounted loans with attractive forward return potential. While these factors led to a decline in CLO valuations during the quarter for many securities, we believe the market typically undervalues the reinvestment option embedded in CLOs during times of volatility. The ability to buy loans at material discounts to par has allowed CLO equity to deliver attractive intermediate and long-term returns many times in the past. In addition, we believe our floating rate CLO junior debt portfolio will benefit from higher income should we see an upward movement in short-term rates. With an increase in inflation, more and more the outlook by many market participants it seems the potential for a rise in short-term rates may be more on the table than we thought even just three months ago. During the quarter, we deployed $56 million into new investments across multiple credit asset classes with a weighted average effective yield of 16% as we took advantage of compelling relative value opportunities created by a particularly uncertain macro environment. Throughout the quarter, we continued to actively manage our CLO portfolio by completing four resets and two refinancings of our CLO equity positions. This resulted in weighted average CLO debt cost savings of 48 basis points for those CLOs. In addition to lowering debt costs, the reset positions extended their reinvestment periods to five years. While CLO junior debt remains central to EIC's strategy, we opportunistically increased our exposure to other credit classes, including infrastructure credit, regulatory capital relief transactions, portfolio debt securities, and other structured and private credit investments. Eagle Point's platform has a dedicated team with deep, specialized expertise across all of these asset classes, and this is a meaningful platform advantage, enabling EIC to access originated investment opportunities, increase portfolio diversification, and generate excess returns above traditional CLO securities. NAV decreased to $11.99 per share as of March 31st from $13.31 per share at year end. The decrease primarily reflects negative mark-to-market adjustments on the company's CLO debt portfolio, driven by wider spreads and weaker risk appetite for CLO junior debt during the quarter. Our gap return on first equity was negative 7.2%. That said, we saw a meaningful rebound in April, and indeed EIC's NAV increased to between $12.48 and $12.58 per share. This is a 4.5% increase at the midpoint of the range. Despite the decline in NAV during the first quarter, our net investment income increased quarter over quarter to $0.36 per share, and that's up from $0.35 per share in the fourth quarter of 2025. Both of these measures are in excess of the 33 cents per common share in distributions that we paid. Turning to our capital structure, during the first quarter, we launched our 6% Series AA and Series AB convertible perpetual preferred stock offering. This provides the company with a source of low cost, long duration capital and increases our financial flexibility. We are unaware of any other publicly traded entity that invests primarily in CLO debt with perpetual financing and consider this to be a material competitive advantage for our company. Subsequent to quarter end, we completed the full redemption of our 8% Series C term preferred stock, which had been our highest cost debt financing. These actions reflect our continued focus on lowering our cost of capital, lengthening our maturity profile, all with a goal to enhancing our long-term's earning power. During the quarter, we repurchased almost 390,000 shares of our common stock at an average discount to NAV of 19.3%. This resulted in NAV accretion of $0.04 per share. And since June of 2025, when the board initially announced the share repurchase authorization, through March 31st of this year, we've repurchased a total of $50 million of common stock and an average discount of 13% of NAV, resulting in NAV accretion of $0.26 per share. We plan to selectively continue our common share buybacks as market opportunities present themselves. We believe the actions we've taken during the quarter, together with our current portfolio positioning, leave us well-situated for the quarters ahead. I'll now turn the call over to Senior Principal and Portfolio Manager Dan Coe for an update on the market.