Lument Finance Trust, Inc.

Good morning, and thank you for joining the Lumen Finance Trust Fourth Quarter 2020 Earnings Call. Today's call is being recorded and will be made available via webcast on the company's website. I would now like to turn the call over to Charles Duddy with Investor Relations at Lumen Investment Management. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our call to discuss Lumen Finance Trust Fourth Quarter 2020 Financial Results. With me on the call today are James Flynn, CEO, Michael Larson, President, James Briggs, CFO, and Priscilla Torres, Head of Real Estate Investment Strategies. On Monday, we filed our 10-K with the SEC and issued a press release which provided details on our fourth quarter results. We also provided a supplemental earnings presentation which can be found on our website. Before handing the call over to Jim, I would like to remind everyone that certain statements made during the course of this call are not based on historical information and may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. When used in this conference, words such as outlook, evaluate, indicate, believes, will, anticipates, expects, intends, and other similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statement. These risks and uncertainties are discussed in the company's reports filed with the SEC, including its reports on Form 8-K, 10-Q, and 10-K, and in particular, the risk factors section of our Form 10-K. Additionally, many of these risks and uncertainties are currently amplified by and will continue to be amplified by or in the future may be amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic. It is not possible to predict or identify all such risks. Listeners are cautioned not to place any reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. The company undertakes no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements. Furthermore, certain non-GAAP financial measures will be discussed on this conference call. Presentation of this information is not intended to be considered in isolation, nor as a substitute to the financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable measures prepared in accordance with GAAP can be accessed through our filings with the SEC at www.sec.gov. I will now turn the call over to James Flynn. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Charlie. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Women Finance Trust Earnings Call for the fourth quarter of 2020. Appreciate you joining us this morning. First and foremost, I would like to express my hope that you and your families are all staying well, healthy during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. I'd also like to express my optimism that we're all hopeful that we're approaching the beginning of the end of life as we've known it over the past year. So really looking forward to and hopeful that as we enter the spring and summer of this year that we are able to move back to some form of normalcy and then beyond and get through this as safe and healthy as possible. Obviously, COVID-19 has continued to have a significant impact on the economy, our industry, and certainly how we all live and work. Our business and our employees, we continue to seek ways to keep them safe and keep them available to operate with as little disruption as possible. We continue to work from home or primarily work from home since March of 2020, so we're now past the one year mark, but we do hope a return to the office, at least for some, is in the cards for 2021. Despite those challenges, we've been able to execute on all of our investment management, asset management, servicing, portfolio monitoring, and related functions on a daily basis. We continue to, we in Lehman Finance Trust and the manager, along with our parent company leadership, continue to monitor the progress that we've made and continue to be encouraged by the progress and improving circumstances of vaccine distribution and hopefully, if not entirely stamping out, immediately moving toward, again, that sense of normalcy we've all been waiting for for quite some time. Before turning the call to Mike, I wanted to provide a summary of our achievements for the year. As I just mentioned, we successfully navigated the challenging economic environment resulting from COVID-19. As of December 31, 2020, our loan portfolio was 100% performing with no impairments, no loan defaults, or any loans on non-accrual status, and no loans subject to forbearance. Furthermore, we have not granted or needed to grant any single forbearance, and we have not experienced any loan default during the entire period. not just at the end of the period. I believe this is a testament to both our rigorous credit standards as well as our proactive asset management efforts. As a reminder, multifamily assets make up the vast majority of our collateral. We do not own any assets backed by hotels, and we have limited exposure to retail and office properties and other asset types. With regards to shareholder returns, Lumen Finance Trust generated an industry-leading 13% total return inclusive of dividends for the full year 2020. We believe this compares extremely favorably to the competitive set. The number of commercial mortgage REITs in the space had negative returns for 2020, and certain competitors have struggled with loan delinquencies and or margin calls from financing counterparties. From an earnings perspective, we were able to increase full-year distributable earnings by 29% year-over-year from $7.6 million in 2019 to $9.8 million in 2020. During the year or during 2020, our dividend increased meaningfully from 7.5 cents in Q4 of 2019 to 9 cents in Q4 of 2020, representing a 20% increase. We also declared an incremental 4-cent special dividend in Q4 of 2020. From a liquidity perspective, we have not experienced any material adverse liquidity events due to COVID or otherwise. We are comfortable with our current liquidity position based on our current business plan and our structure. I would like to note that we do not currently utilize repurchase or warehouse facility financing at LFC, and therefore we have not been subject to margin calls on any of our assets Our utilization of non-mark-to-mark financing has proved valuable during last year's disruption. Finally, in December of 2020, we announced our rebranding to Lumen Finance Trust in conjunction with the rebranding of LTE's manager from OREC Investment Management to Lumen Investment Management. These overwhelmingly positive feedback from our borrowers and partners on the rebranding We look forward to leveraging the breadth and expertise of the broader Lumet platform in the years to come. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Jim Briggs, who will provide details on our financial results. Jim?