Granite Point Mortgage Trust Inc.

Good morning. My name is Alicia, and I'll be your conference facilitator. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to Granite Point Mortgage Trust's second quarter 2026 financial results conference call. All participants will be on a listen-only mode. After these speakers' 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.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our call to discuss Granite Point's second 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 Morral, our chief development officer and co-head of originations, and Ethan Lebowitz, 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. 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 out 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 fill 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 will 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 measures 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 Granite Point's second quarter 2026 earnings call. U.S. commercial real estate credit continued to benefit from improving fundamentals and extended its positive trajectory during the second quarter. Geopolitical developments tied to the Iran conflict are influencing the U.S. capital markets as energy prices, along with tariffs, have sharpened investors' focus on inflation and contributed to greater uncertainty about the direction of interest rates. As a result, property values are facing potential headwinds as expectations are shifting from pricing near-term interest rate cuts to rate hikes. Nevertheless, capital continues to flow into commercial real estate assets. Debt markets have remained competitive, and lending spreads have continued a trend of tightening, helping to mitigate a potential rise in short-term rates that could impact refinancings. During the quarter, loan demand generally broadened due to a pickup in acquisitions. have been reporting net increases in commercial estate loan demand for the first time since 2022. The CMBS market continues to be strong, with issuance on pace to surpass last year's post-GFC record volumes. The increase in acquisition volumes was driven by portfolio and entity-level mega-deals, while the Iran war and other contributors to volatility in some instances paused and delayed individual asset sales, reducing volumes. Nevertheless, fundamentals and liquidity continue to improve in many office markets, which is a constructive sign for resolving legacy office loans. Our reserves increased during the quarter, due to an increase in our general reserve caused in part by a more negative macroeconomic forecast utilized in our general reserve model. Increases in the specific reserves in some situations involving a change of circumstances at the collateral or borrower level, and in others where it was a result of more particular price discovery as processes proceeded. We will go into greater detail on these items. We do expect our nearer term resolutions to offset much of these increases. Random Point remains focused on our primary objective for resolving our legacy loans. Following on the activities of the first quarter, which included two large loan repayments and the sale of a B-note secured by a hotel at a price somewhat above par, during the second quarter, we completed the resolution of the Chicago retail loan above our carrying value, realized an office loan repayment, and successfully sold two participation interest in debt secured by an office property in Dallas, Texas. for a price in the low 90s. These participation interests included a larger subordinate interest and an accompanying much smaller senior interest. These actions also furthered our goals of reducing higher cost debt. With respect to our two REO assets, we continue to make progress on maximizing value with the goal of exiting these properties opportunistically. As we continue to focus on our objectives, one of which is to lower our cost of funds, more recently, as announced in a recent press release, we refinanced the assets that were in our two legacy CLOs by extending and upsizing the J.P. Morgan financing facility, which reduced the cost of funds on these assets from SOFR plus 238 to SOFR plus 200. We are pleased to achieve this refinancing with one of our key lending partners at a favorable cost of funds which also substantiates underlying value in these loan assets which constitute a large subset of our portfolio. Taken together, we believe our initiatives are strengthening Granite Point's financial position and enhancing our ability to create long-term shareholder value. The board and management believe that the company's current market valuation does not fully reflect the underlying value of Granite Point and its assets and we remain actively focused on narrowing that gap. We intend to do so in a variety of ways, including disciplined execution, resolving our legacy assets in a value-maximizing manner, reducing our cost of capital, maintaining balance sheet flexibility, and positioning the company to redeploy capital into attractive new investments. I would now like to turn the call over to Steve to discuss our portfolio activities in more detail.