Granite Point Mortgage Trust Inc.

Good morning. My name is Paul, and I will be your conference facilitator. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Granite Point Mortgage Trust's fourth quarter and full year 2025 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Please note, today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Chris Petta with Investor Relations for Granite Point. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our call to discuss Granite Point's fourth quarter and full year 2025 financial results. With me on the call this morning are Jack Taylor, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Steve Alpart, 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 will discuss our portfolio, and Blake will highlight key items from our financial results. 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. We expect to file our Form 10-K in the coming weeks. I would like to remind you 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 the 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 a substitute for the financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release and slides, which are available on our website. I will 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 Granite Point's fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings call. 2025 was a constructive year for the commercial real estate industry. The year began with strong momentum, which after pausing briefly in the spring due to macro uncertainty, quickly resumed with heightened deal activity and spread compression throughout the balance of the year. During the fourth quarter, we saw greater capital availability for a broader array of properties, including certain office properties, as well as improving fundamentals across many markets and most property types. Lending volume has expanded and also extended to a wider range of property types and markets. This greater liquidity in the market has benefited the CMBS market and strengthened CLO issuance. Larger commercial banks have become more active, notably for warehouse financing, and regional banks are beginning to return to the market as well. Against this backdrop of available capital in the market, there continues to be a shortfall of actionable deals, which is one of the key factors contributing to the spread tightening we have been seeing over the last several quarters. For Granite Point, with the long-awaited market improvement, 2025 was an impactful year as we achieved some of our key objectives. These included five loan resolutions, seven full loan repayments, and one REO property sale, as well as a reduction in our cost of debt. The market momentum experienced in 2025 has continued into early 2026 and sets the stage for this year to be potentially a stronger year for the industry. with forecasted growth in transaction activity across property types, increased liquidity from traditional lenders, a robust securitization market, and an increasingly constructive backdrop for asset resolution activity. In 2026, we continue to make progress reducing our higher-cost debt and moving along our asset resolutions, which will continue to help reduce the risk within our portfolio and improve our net interest spread. This month, we repaid a substantial amount of additional higher-cost debt, resulting in a reduction in the cost of our repurchase facilities by roughly 60 basis points and an estimated annual savings of $0.10 per share. With respect to our two REO assets, we're investing capital where we believe it will maximize our outcome, and then we'll seek to exit and extract capital. post-quarter end, we also have received two full loan repayments of $174 million combined. Turning to originations, as we said last quarter, we expect to begin to regrow our portfolio this year and to start that process in the latter half of 2026. The exact timing and volume of originations will be driven by the pace of loan repayments and asset resolutions, as well as market conditions and idiosyncratic factors. While the timing and volume is uncertain, reallocating capital in our portfolio and recycling into new originations remains one of our highest priorities. I would now like to turn the call over to Steve to discuss our portfolio activities in more detail.

Thank you, Jack, and thank you all for joining our fourth quarter and full year earnings call. We ended the year with $1.8 billion in total loan portfolio commitments. inclusive of $1.7 billion in outstanding principal balance and about $77 million of future fundings, which accounts for only about 4% of total commitments. Our loan portfolio remains diversified across regions and property types and includes 43 investments with an average UPV of about $39 million and a weighted average stabilized LTV of 65% at origination. As of December 31st, our portfolio weighted average risk rating increased slightly to 2.9 from 2.8 at September 30th. The realized loan portfolio yield for the fourth quarter was 6.7%, which excluding non-accrual loans would have been 8% or 1.3% higher. We had an active year of loan repayments and resolutions totaling about $469 million during 2025. During the year, we funded about 51 million on existing loan commitments and other investments. During the fourth quarter, we had 45 million of loan repayments and partial paydowns, including a full repayment of a $33 million loan secured by a multifamily asset located in North Carolina. We had about 15 million of future fundings and other investments, resulting in a net loan portfolio reduction of about 30 million for the fourth quarter. Post quarter end, we have received two full loan repayments of $174 million. We'll now provide some color on the risk-rated five loans. At December 31st, we had four such loans with a total UPB of about $249 million. At quarter end, we downgraded a $53 million loan collateralized by a 284-unit multifamily property in the Atlanta MSA from a risk rating of 4 to a rating of 5. While we've seen a pickup in occupancy at the property, the local market remains soft, and we are not seeing the return of the pricing power we had expected. We are reviewing resolution alternatives, which may include a property sale. We're monitoring the situation closely and expect to have more to share over the coming quarters. We discussed last quarter that we had a partial resolution on the Chicago loan. with the sale of the upper floor office space to a developer for a residential conversion. After the sale, the remaining collateral securing the $76 million loan is the retail space. The story is now cleaner and simpler, and we are continuing to work cooperatively with the borrower towards the ultimate resolution, which we expect will occur via a property sale in the nearer term. For the $27 million Tempe hotel and retail loan, we are reviewing resolution alternatives there as well, which could involve a sale of the property. Regarding the $93 million Minneapolis office loan, as previously disclosed, we anticipate a longer resolution timeline given the persistent local market challenges. Resolving these remaining five rated loans remain a top priority. Turning to the REO assets, we continue to have positive leasing successes at the suburban Boston property and remain actively engaged with our partner and the local jurisdiction and other third parties on several value enhancing repositioning opportunities. We continue to invest capital into this property to maximize the outcome. The Miami Beach office property is a class A asset located in a strong market. We are having positive leasing discussions with a variety of existing and new tenants. We'll prudently invest in the property and continue to review resolution alternatives, which include the potential sale. As we shared in prior quarters, our plan for the first half of 2026 is to remain focused on loan and REO resolutions. We expect our portfolio balance will trend lower in the near term until we start our origination efforts in the latter half of 2026 to take advantage of attractive investment opportunities and begin to regrow our portfolio. I will now turn the call over to Blake to discuss our financial results.

Thank you, Steve. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Turning to our financial results, for the fourth quarter, we reported a gap net loss attributable to common stockholders of $27.4 million, or negative 58 cents per basic common share, which includes a provision for credit losses of $14.4 million, or negative 30 cents per basic common share, and an impairment loss in the Miami Beach REO asset, of 6.8 million, or negative 14 cents per basic common share. Distributable loss for the quarter was 2.7 million, or negative 6 cents per basic common share. Our book value at December 31st was $7.29 per common share, a decline of 65 cents per share from the Q3, largely from the provision for credit losses and impairment loss on REO. Our aggregate CECL reserve at December 31st was about 148 million, as compared to $134 million last quarter. The roughly $15 million increase in our CECL reserve was mainly due to an increase in our specific reserve on our collateral-dependent loans and worsening macroeconomic forecasts in our CECL model relative to the prior quarter. Approximately 70% of our total allowance was allocated to individually assessed loans. As of quarter end, we had about $249 million of principal balance on four loans with specific CECL reserves of around $105 million. representing 42% of the unpaid principal balance. We believe we are appropriately reserved and further resolutions should meaningfully reduce our total CESA reserve balance. Turning to liquidity and capitalization, we ended the quarter with about 66 million of unrestricted cash and our total leverage increased slightly relative to the prior quarter from 1.9 times to 2.0 times. As of a few days ago, we carried about 55 million in cash Our funding mix remains well diversified and stable, and we continue to have very constructive relationships with our financing counterparties. We expect to expand our financing capacity once we return to originating new loans. I will now ask the operator to open the line for questions.

Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. you may press star two to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up the handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Thank you. Our first question is from Doug Harder with UBS.

Good morning. It's actually Marisa Lobo on for Doug today. Thanks for taking my questions. On origination, how are you thinking about the economics of new origination versus returning capital to shareholders given the large discount to book value that you showed up?

Good morning, Marisa. This is Blake. Thank you for the question today. Yes, when we look at our portfolio and the discounted book, one of our main objectives over the year is to continue resolving our loans and actually working on decreasing our leverage until we start originating again. We do plan on returning to originations later in the year, and that is our focus for 2026.

Okay. And on the CECL reserve build, how are you viewing the current reserve position and the likelihood for further reserve build? How are current microeconomic assumptions factoring into that?

Oh, that's a very good question. Thank you. Yeah, so as of year end, we go through our CECL process as in every quarter end. And when we went through the process, we update the general reserve for the latest and greatest economic forecasts in our TREP model. So that includes a change in assumptions, and the biggest driver for this quarter was a decrease in the CRE price index. These forecasts can change going forward, so the general reserve could change. But as of right now, that is the most recent assumption as far as what our general reserve should be. Moving to the actual specific reserve, that is based on our collateral dependent loans. So as of quarter end, we had four collateral dependent loans. In each quarter end, we assess what the fair value of the underlying collateral is. So absent any changes in the collateral itself, we do believe we are appropriately reserved for on those loans.

Okay, thank you. Appreciate the answers.

Our next question is from Jade Romani with KBW.

Thank you very much. Do you have any views as to where book value per share may trough in this cycle? It's down quite sharply year over year and quarter over quarter, which clearly based on today's stock performance is a surprise. So can you just comment as to what your expectations are for the risk of future losses going forward?

Well, I'll address that first and then turn it over to Steve to talk about credit migration. We believe that there's a risk that there will be Upgrades and downgrades and future losses may be part of that. We've assessed that risk in our book today, and that's embedded in the reserves that we have. With respect to credit migration, maybe, Steve, you would speak to that, but I've been very clear over the quarters, I don't believe it's over in terms of workouts and delinquencies for the whole industry and not for us. And there have been some prizes to us, and we expect to have some upgrades and some downgrades. Steve, is that everything you were going to say?

Hey, Jay. Good morning. It's Steve. I think Jack and Blake covered it pretty well. I would just say that we feel that the majority of the portfolio is performing well. We are working through These remaining loan resolutions, which are not entirely but heavily in the office sector and the impact of the rate hike that we went through. We're pleased with the progress we've had to date. We had a lot of resolutions in 24. We have five more in 2025. We're in process on a couple more right now. We just talked about the Chicago deal where we had the partial resolution. of the office, and we're working on full resolution, which involves the retail, which we think can get done in the near term. We did have two new fives during the quarter, so there's always a possibility that there could be more of that. But we also hope to have more resolutions, some upgrades, and we are happy to see that we are in a constructive environment as far as capital, certainly debt, also increasingly equity. And we think that'll be helpful on further repayments and resolutions.

And just overall, when you look at the portfolio, clearly the portfolio has a legacy vintage prior to the Fed rate hikes. So nearly every single loan in the portfolio is going to have probably some cost of capital issue when it's up for maturity. But then looking beyond that, multifamily was an area of downgrade this quarter, which was so much surprising. So can you comment on the vintage and the multifamily property type and what your expectations are there?

Sure. I think there's two related questions in there. So We are working through these loans, including these kind of older vintage loans. We have pretty good visibility, I would say, on about a quarter of these loans in terms of a near-term payoff where there's a process underway and we're expecting a loan repayment. I would say there's another, I don't know, call it 40% or so, if I had to kind of take an estimate where there's an upcoming maturity. We have communicated to the borrower that we expect an exit this year by the maturity date. And there may be a refi or a recap or a sale process that's underway or expected. We certainly can't say that all those will get done, but we have some visibility on those that we think that there's a process that there's an exit out of. And then there's another call in about a third or so where there are a couple of 2027 and 2028 maturities. And then I would throw in the Minneapolis office deal that are a little bit further out. So I would say we're kind of chipping away at it. And some have near-term visibility. Some we're expecting and pushing on. And then a few will be kind of 2027 and 2028. Then as far as your question on multifamily, the multifamily in our portfolio we feel pretty good about. We did have the credit migration on the Atlanta deal and we have talked about certain markets that we're looking at and we have kind of flagged in the past Atlanta. So I would say that one for us has been a bit of an exception. And that one has some unique factors that we can talk about. But I think the overall trend line that we're seeing, including in the Sun Belt, is that I think the recovery that we were all expecting has been a little bit more sluggish. And you see that in the read-through on some of the public multifamily REITs. The spring leasing season last year was a little slower than expected. But the supply picture overall is improving. There hasn't been a lot of pricing power for landlords, but when we sit back and look at macro supply and demand, it feels like over the second half of this year and kind of going forward, we feel like the trend line in multifamily is fairly positive. And there's obviously a lot of liquidity in the asset class, and the sentiment coming out of the NMHC this year was very positive. So overall on multifamily, overall and in our book, we feel pretty good about it medium to longer term.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jay.

Our next question is from Chris Muller with Citizens Capital.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. So I guess starting on the portfolio, it's been shrinking as you guys have been focused on asset management. Sounds like new origination starting up is still the expectation for later this year. So I guess the question is, do you guys have a ballpark of where the portfolio size could trough? And maybe kind of playing into that a little bit is what is scheduled maturities look like in the first half of this year in addition to what you guys already disclosed?

Hey, Chris, it's Steve. So just high level on the first part of your question, look, just given the near-term focus on repayments and resolutions, we do expect the portfolio to tick down through mid-2026 and then begin to restabilize and regrow in the latter part of the year. Ultimately, that will depend on the timing of repayments and resolutions relative to new originations, but it will get a little lower over the next few quarters and then begin to regrow. Got it.

And any visibility you guys have on scheduled maturities that may play into that?

Yeah. I mean, part of that's what I just mentioned to Jay, that we have, we do have visibility on certain loans that are coming up on maturity. As we kind of look out, you know, I'm kind of looking out into 2026 overall. Some of these will just pay off in the normal course. A couple will extend as of right. which has happened on some loans recently. Then to the extent, and then we have other loans that I mentioned are not up for maturity yet, but they're up, you know, kind of call it, you know, third, fourth quarter. And, you know, we're in anticipation of that. We are having conversations with a number of borrowers that we've done previous extensions on, where they've done everything right, where they put new money in. And we are looking to get the portfolio turned. So we're having conversations clear communications with borrowers about our expectations, and if they can't do it via a refi, do it by an equity recap, do it via a sale. So that's been kind of the playbook. And look, case by case, we have extended out loans in win-win-mod situations, but we feel like that was the playbook the last couple of years, and we're trying to move past that and get to just turning the portfolio.

Got it. And just a quick clarifying one. Did I hear you guys correctly that there were two new five-rated loans in the quarter? I see the Georgia multifamily in the deck, but what was the other one if I heard that right?

There is one new five-rated loan.

Got it. So I just misunderstood. Thanks for taking the question, Sadef.

Yeah. It is the Georgia multifamily. Correct. Got it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chris.

Our next question is from Gabe Pogge with Raymond James.

Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the question. I may have missed this before, but can you tell us what the two sectors were and any details around the repayments you received year-to-date thus far this year in 26?

Well, hey, Steve, maybe I can just lead in on that for a moment. I would say it's a Retail, a multifamily, and importantly, I want to point out relating to an earlier question, these were vintage loans. COVID period and the higher interest rate period and paid off at par.

Thank you.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time.

I would like to hand the floor back over to Jack Taylor for any closing comments. I just wanted to elaborate on something that was said earlier, which is the portfolio will shrink, as we said, but we have many tools to regrow the portfolio through our loan repayments and resolutions, releasing capital, our REO, which will extract capital We'll be repaying our higher-cost debt and then rebuilding with an originations team that has been intact from when we were originating at $1.5 to $2 billion. We have a lot of tools to re-leverage our balance sheet internally through the assets as they move from lower-level assets, you know, the vintage loans that are being carried at lower leverage, to the new loans that we add. that we also can move into CLOs and the like and source capital as we've done in the past successfully to bring our lower leverage of 1.7 closer back to our target leverage and to start repairing our earnings. Thank you for your time. And I just want to say thank you everybody for joining us for the call. And I look forward to speaking to you next year for further positive resolution events.

This concludes today's conference call. We thank you again for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.