Stuart A. Rothstein
Analyst · FBR
Thank you, operator. Good morning, and thank you for joining us on the Apollo Commercial Real Estate Finance First Quarter Earnings Call. Joining me this morning in New York are Scott Weiner, our Chief Investment Officer; and Megan Gaul, our Chief Financial Officer, who will review ARI's financial results after my remarks. Not surprisingly, given the modest, but continued recovery in the overall economy, and the continued low interest rate environment, the commercial real estate market has had a healthy start in 2014. U.S. commercial real estate transaction volume reached $61 billion in the first quarter, which was a 61% increase over the same period a year ago, and on a global basis, transaction volume topped $130 billion, a 23% increase over Q1 2013. Operating fundamentals have continued to improve with occupancies and rents continuing to rise. Further supporting the recovery in operating fundamentals is the relative lack of development across most property types and markets. The derth of development is a trend that has been ongoing for approximately 10 years, and the lack of new supply combined with the strong fund flows into this sector continues to be a powerful factor supporting underlying asset values. Given that ARI has now been public for approximately 5 years, it is worth commenting on where the CRE financing market stands today, versus when the company first came public. Clearly, the market has recovered and in most respects there is a fully functioning commercial real estate finance market. While not at the peaks we saw in 2006, 2007, the CMBS market has continued to recover and most expect volume to top $100 billion this year. In addition, insurance companies, money center banks, as well as newly created REITs and other private finance companies are all actively looking to grow their commercial real estate debt books of business. As a result, there is clearly more competition today than in 2009, and owners and acquirers of assets are benefiting from lower rates and more aggressive leverage levels. From ARI's perspective, the fiercest competition witnessed is for conduit eligible loans, a market in which the company has never participated. There is also increased competition in the market for senior and junior mezzanine loans, which we fully expected would occur at this point in the recovery cycle, but, to date, we will generally describe the competition as rational. It is also worth noting that, as of yet, we still have not seen a significant proliferation of commercial real estate CDOs in the mezzanine space. We monitor this closely, as these types of vehicles were very instrumental in the mispricing of risk and the over leveraging of assets that contributed to the 2006, 2007 bubbles in commercial real estate financing. At ARI, the focus, first and foremost, is to compete based on the broad commercial real estate finance platform we have built at Apollo. That platform has created best-in-class relationships with brokers, senior lenders, and borrowers and has cemented a reputation for being a reliable counter party that is highly thoughtful around underwriting, pricing and structuring. The success of the platform is evidenced by the over $7 billion of transactions Apollo has completed for ARI and other non-overlapping vehicles since 2009. At present, ARI's global pipeline is robust and, in all cases, the investments being pursued remain consistent with the company's credit first philosophy. This approach is evidenced by the 3 transactions totaling $240 million that ARI has completed to date in 2014, which included $80 million whole loan for the construction of condominiums in Bethesda, Maryland, a $106 million first mortgage secured by a geographically diverse portfolio of 229 single-family and condominium vacation homes, and a $54 million mezzanine loan for the acquisition of an existing commercial building in London that is expected to be redeveloped into residential condominiums. Each of these bespoke transactions was with strong sponsors and is expected to provide ARI with an attractive risk adjusted return. As I just mentioned, one of ARI's initial transactions, this year, represented the company's first investment in Western Europe. Over the past year, Apollo has completed over $500 million of commercial real estate debt transactions in the United Kingdom, and this mezzanine loan was presented to the company through an existing Apollo client. We are cautiously optimistic about our ability to find additional transactions for ARI in Europe. And to support that effort, we are adding commercial real estate debt focused investment professionals to Apollo's existing team of real estate equity investment professionals located in London. In addition, as many of our co-origination partners in the United States are active in Western Europe, we are aggressively pursuing those relationships to source transactions through their origination channels. Finally, ARI's investment in KBC Bank Deutschland is on track for closing in the second half of 2014, pending final regulatory approval. And we expect this investment also will be beneficial in the efforts to expand ARI's European commercial real estate lending business. Rounding out ARI's investment activity year-to-date, the company deployed approximately $25 million of equity into a $123 million of legacy CMBS formerly rated AAA. ARI financed the balance of it's purchase using a new $100 million term repurchase facility. As we have demonstrated previously, from time to time we do identify CMBS strategies in which we believe the risk is not being adequately priced. Coupling the ability to identify these assets with our ability to source and structure matched term financing, we are able to execute on these strategies, which we believe will generate attractive risk-adjusted returns for ARI. The newly purchased CMBS have been underwritten to generate an IRR of approximately 17%. In general, we are extremely pleased with ARI's progress year-to-date, and we continue to see ample opportunities in our core businesses. At this point, I would like to turn the call over to Megan to review our financial performance.