Granite Point Mortgage Trust Inc.

Good morning. My name is Rob, and I'll be your conference facilitator. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to Granite Point Mortgage Trust's second quarter 2025 financial results conference call. All participants will be on a listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, there'll be a question and answer period. Please note, today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Chris Pettit with Investor Relations for Granite Point.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our call to discuss Granite Point's second quarter 2025 financial results. With me on the call this morning are Jack Taylor, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Steve Alpert, our Chief Investment Officer and Co-Head of Originations, Blake Johnson, our Chief Financial Officer, Peter Morrell, our Chief Development Officer and Co-Head of Originations, and Ethan Leibowitz, our Chief Operating Officer. After my introductory comments, Jack will provide a brief recap of market conditions and review our current business activities. Steve Appart will discuss our portfolio, and Blake will highlight key items from our financial results and capitalization. The press release, financial tables, and earnings supplemental associated with today's call were filed yesterday with the SEC and are available in the investor relations section of our website, along with our Form 10-Q. I would like to remind that remarks made by management during this call and the supporting slides may include forward-looking statements. which are uncertain and outside of the company's control. Forward-looking statements reflect our views regarding future events and are subject to uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. Please see our filings with the SEC for a discussion of some of our risks that could affect results. We do not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements. We also refer to certain non-GAAP measures on this call. This information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. The reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measure can be found in our earnings release and slides, which are available on our website. I'll now turn the call over to Jack.

Thank you, Chris, and good morning, everyone. We would like to welcome you and thank you for joining us for Grand Point's second quarter 2025 earnings call. Before turning to our results, we would like to express our condolences to the families and friends of those who lost their lives at 345 Park Avenue last week. Our thoughts are with all who were impacted, including our friends and colleagues at Blackstone, Rudin Management, KPMG, as well as the NFL and the heroes of the New York Police Department. We share a particular grief and heartbreak over the passing of Wesley LePatner. Many of us at Granite Point have known her and her family for decades, having worked extensively over that time with Wesley's father, Larry Mittman, as well as her brother, Jordan, and came to include the family as friends. The passing of such an exceptional and giving person is a tremendous loss to all who knew her. Now, turning to our earnings. During the first half of 2025, we saw continued improvement in sentiment and liquidity in the commercial real estate market, as refinancing activity notably increased and sales transaction volume ticked up with more and more participants willing to transact in the market. Although the commercial real estate lending market recovery had initially stalled post-Liberation Day, with credit market spreads widening due to the uncertain impact of looming tariffs, Since then, there has been a resumption of the recovery with the stabilization of spreads and associated improving liquidity. The MBS issuers have been originating at a strong pace. Commercial banks are actively pursuing warehouse lending opportunities, and the transitional floating rate lending market has continued to strengthen across most property types with the ability to lend at a reset basis. So far in 2025, we have continued to meaningfully reduce are risk-rated five loans. After quarter end, the Louisville student housing loan was resolved at over $3 million above the carrying value. A majority of the total proceeds from this resolution have been applied to reduce higher cost debt. With this and earlier resolutions, we have decreased our risk-rated five loan count from seven at year end to two remaining today, significantly reducing the impact of non-accrual assets on our earnings and de-risking our portfolio. Also, we sold an office REO asset, leaving just two REO properties remaining. We are pleased with these ongoing asset resolutions and the successful reduction of higher cost debt, both of which are key elements of our business strategy, creating a positive path forward for the company. As previously noted in our press releases, we extended our three repurchase facilities during the second quarter for approximately one year. And during July, we extended the maturity of our secured credit facility from December 2025 to December 2026. As part of the secured credit facility extension, we reduced the financing spread by 75 basis points and the outstanding borrowings by $7.5 million. We also continued to work with our borrowers and have seen ongoing loan repayments, including the full repayment of two office loans during the second quarter. Here to date, we have realized about $109 million of loan repayments, paydowns, and amortization. As we proactively manage the balance sheet, we are maintaining higher liquidity, extending our financings, and engaging in other value-enhancing activities. To that point, we have again opportunistically deployed capital into our own securities. During the second quarter, we repurchased 1.25 million shares of our common stock. It is our view that our current market price relative to book value does not reflect the value of the business or the progress we have made to date, including the pace of asset resolutions in the past 12 months and our ongoing pace of repayments. We have about 2.6 million shares remaining under our existing authorization for buyback, and we intend to remain opportunistic with respect to any future buyback activities. We expect the investment opportunities to expand over time, and with our continued repayments, resolutions, and REO sales, and further pay down of our remaining higher cost debt, we will be positioned to start new originations again for the first phase of the regrowth of the portfolio, all of which will improve our run rate profitability. I would now like to turn the call over to Steve Alpart to discuss our portfolio activities in more detail.