Redwood Trust, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Redwood Trust First Quarter 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Kate Moritz, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for Redwood's first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. With me on today's call are Chris Abate, Chief Executive Officer, Dash Robinson, President, and Brooke Carrillo, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I want to remind you that certain statements made during management's presentation today with respect to future financial and business performance may constitute forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions, and include risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. We encourage you to read the company's annual report on Form 10-K, which provides a description of some of the factors that could have a material impact on the company's performance and cause actual results to differ from those that may be expressed in forward-looking statements. On this call, we may also refer to both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. The non-GAAP financial measures provided should not be utilized in isolation or considered as a substitute for measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures are provided in our first quarter Redwood review, which is available on our website, redwoodtrust.com. Also note that the content of today's conference call contain time-sensitive information that are only accurate as of today. We do not intend and undertake no obligation to update this information to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. Finally, today's call is being recorded and will be available on our website later today. With that, I'll turn the call over to Chris for opening remarks.

Thank you, Kate. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining Redwood's first quarter conference call. A month into the second quarter, it's safe to say that the latest new normal is now sweeping the markets. rendering most macro projections for 2025 either obsolete or at best under review. Many have analogized this April with March of 2020 in terms of the extreme price and spread volatility we've seen across most financial markets. Fortunately for the mortgage market, we have not seen any disproportionate effects this time around. Redwood continues to navigate this current bout of market volatility from a position of strength. As mentioned in the Q1 shareholder letter we published last week, our gap book value per share was estimated at April 21st to be up 1% to 1.5% from quarter end. And we believe that estimate still holds today. As we move forward, it's worth reiterating that the results of our strategic initiatives have begun to take hold. We believe the way mortgages are financed is undergoing a period of transformation. The risk-reward balance has shifted for many originators, with banks actively looking for balance sheet solutions for both new production and legacy collateral. To that end, we saw billions of dollars of seasoned jumbo loans change hands in the first quarter, and we positioned ourselves to be in the hunt for much of that production. We are also in the early stages of shifts in housing finance policy in Washington. that have the potential to create a significant greenfield for our platform. We have witnessed a flurry of activity at the GSEs, including mass voluntary and involuntary workforce reductions, and an almost complete board-level turnover that we believe reflects ideological shifts aimed at reassessing the GSE housing footprint. This isn't a surprise to us. In recent years, taxpayers have found themselves backstopping GSC mortgages with balances over $1 million, mortgages on investment and vacation homes, second lien mortgages, and other products not squarely aligned with the federal government's housing mission. All of these are examples of products that we believe can and should be financed by the private sector without government support. We remain optimistic that over time the GSEs can be reoriented back to their core housing missions, with much of this work able to precede any plan for a full release from conservatorship. We've also recently been spending time in Washington to advocate to members of the new administration, as well as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, for a leveling of the playing field between private capital and the GSEs. particularly through streamlining regulatory burdens that drive up costs. For example, there is room to rationalize outdated securitization rules that are holding back private capital formation and to sensibly update disclosure and execution burdens that would make the mortgage capital markets far more efficient, ultimately benefiting mortgage borrowers and supporting broader housing finance reform. As we look ahead, There remains strong demand for the assets we create, which trillions of dollars raised by private credit institutions were actively looking to crowd their capital into the residential mortgage space. The fact that they have not already done so in greater scale is a direct byproduct of the government's outsized role in housing. As the landscape in Washington evolves, our role as an intermediary between these large capital sources and our extensive network of loan originators and sponsors has the potential to become transformative. As we pursue our 2025 volume objectives, strategic partnerships with entities on both the supply and demand side of this market will remain a key part of our growth initiatives. And with that, I'll turn it over to Dash to cover our operating results for the first quarter.