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 first quarter 2026 financial results conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, there will 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 Petta, head of 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 first quarter, 2026 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. We'll discuss our portfolio, and Blake will highlight key items from our financial results. The press release, financial tables, and earnings supplemental associated with today's call were filed yesterday with the SEC, along with our Form 10-Q, and are available in the investor relations section of our website. 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 will refer to 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 measures can be found in our earnings release and slides and 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 Granite Point's first quarter 2026 earnings call. U.S. commercial real estate markets continued their positive trajectory during the first quarter. However, recent geopolitical developments tied to the Iran conflict are influencing the U.S. capital markets as rising energy prices have sharpened investors' focus on inflation trends and contributed to greater uncertainty about the timing of further interest rate cuts. Notwithstanding some of these headwinds, capital continued to flow into commercial real estate assets. Commercial real estate lending activity is expected to continue to improve through 2026, supported by steady demand and continued investor interest. While securitization volumes may moderate due to broader economic uncertainty surrounding the conflict in Iran and a mixed U.S. outlook, and deals are taking longer to complete, The market has shown strong resilience. We believe that recent fluctuations in the commercial mortgage-backed securities and CRE CLO spreads, along with a temporary slowdown in unsecured bond issuance, primarily reflects a recalibrating of risk, while investors continue to be engaged and constructive in the commercial real estate sector. For Granted Point, our primary objective continues to be capitalizing on the improving environment to resolve legacy loans and to set the stage to begin regrowing our portfolio in the latter half of 2026. To that end, our accomplishments since the beginning of the year included two sizable full loan repayments, the sale of a B note secured by a hotel at a price somewhat above par, the final resolution on the Chicago retail loan above our carrying value, and the successful sale of a subordinate interest in debt secured by an office property located in Dallas, Texas. These actions furthered our goals of reducing higher cost debt and setting the path for future growth. Given the improved capital markets and to continue to address our legacy loan portfolio and pending maturity dates, we have been less inclined to provide borrowers with additional time and are pushing further for repayments through property sales refinancing, and recapitalization, and we are also selectively looking at some loan sales. In some cases, this approach was a contributing factor in recent downgrades for certain loans in our portfolio. With respect to our two REO assets, we are investing capital where we believe it will improve our outcome, and will then seek to exit and extract capital. All of these initiatives will free up capital for us to optimize our balance sheet. and set the stage for us to regrow our portfolio in future quarters. Restart of new origination activity is expected to improve our net interest spread and earnings, which has remained a key goal, which Blake will go into further shortly. I would now like to turn the call over to Steve Alpart to discuss our portfolio activities in more detail.