Good morning. My name is Kevin, and I will be your conference facilitator. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Granite Point Mortgage Trust’s First Quarter 2023 Financial Results Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question and answer period. Please note today’s call is being recorded. I will now like to turn the conference over to Chris Petta with Investor Relations for Granite Point. Chris, please go ahead.

Thank you. And good morning everyone. Thank you for joining our call to discuss Granite Point’s first quarter 2023 financial results. With me on the call this morning are Jack Taylor, our President and Chief Executive Officer; Marcin Urbaszek, our Chief Financial Officer; Steve Alpart, our Chief Investment Officer and Co-Head of Originations; Peter Morral, our Chief Development Officer and Co-Head of Originations; and Steve Plust, our Chief Operating Officer. After my introductory comments, Jack will provide a brief recap of market conditions and review our current business activities; Steve Alpart will discuss our portfolio; and Marcin will highlight key items from our financial results. Press release and financial tables associated with today’s call were filed yesterday with the SEC are available in the Investor Relations section of our website, along with our Form 10-Q. 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 our risks that could affect results. We do not undertake any obligations to update any forward-looking statement. We 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. A 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 will now turn the call over to Jack.

Thank you, Chris and good morning everyone. We would like to welcome you all to our first quarter 2023 earnings call. And thank you for joining us today. Our business delivered strong operating results in the first quarter, despite the challenging macro backdrop and negative sentiment around commercial real estate. Our well-diversified, conservatively underwritten and granular floating rate senior loan portfolio continues to benefit from higher short-term interest rates as our first quarter distributable earnings increased to $0.20 per basic share and covered our common stock dividend. Given the highly uncertain market environment, our balance sheet remains defensively positioned, benefiting from a well-diversified funding mix leverage that is meaningfully below our target range and a strong liquidity position. We continue to emphasize protecting our balance sheet and our stockholders’ capital while actively asset managing our portfolio and rationalizing our liabilities. The diversity of our funding and the strength of our lender relationships support the execution of our objectives. During the first quarter, we successfully delivered our FL2 CLO and released a substantial amount of capital, further strengthening our liquidity position. The loans underlying the legacy CLO were refinanced on one of our large bank credit facilities, highlighting our good standing with lenders and our ability to refinance our assets even during periods of major market dislocations. Despite some signs of following and recently emerging signs of some more liquidity in the real estate capital markets, we continue to main our conservative approach to new loan originations. However, we have been opportunistic with respect to deploying capital into our own securities when they present attractive relative value. We’ve bought back our common stock capitalizing on a deep value opportunity created by what we believe to be an unwarranted market discount versus our book value. We repurchased about one million common shares…

Thank you, Jack. And thank you all for joining our call this morning. We ended the first quarter with an aggregate committed balance of $3.5 billion and an outstanding principle balance of about $3.3 billion, with only $205 million of future funding commitments, accounting for less than 6% of our total commitments. Our portfolio is well diversified across regions and property types and includes 88 investments with an average loan size of approximately $38 million. Our loans continue to deliver an attractive income stream with a favorable overall credit profile generating a realized portfolio yield of about 8% with a weighted average stabilized LTV at origination of 63%. Given our cautious stance on originations due to the market environment during the first quarter we funded about $17 million on existing commitments. Our repayments and loan pay downs totaled approximately $60 million in the first quarter, which out-pays loan funding’s and resulted in a slight decline in our portfolio balance over the quarter. As of March 31st our portfolio weighted average risk rating was 2.6, which was largely unchanged from the prior quarter of 2.5. During the first quarter we downgraded a $27.5 million senior loan collateralized by an institutional quality full service hotel property located in Downtown Minneapolis to a risk ranking of 5. The property was recently substantially renovated and reflected. It’s owned by a well-regarded institutional sponsor who invested significant cash equity to purchase and then renovate the property. Although the property’s performance and the market in general have shown recent signs of improvement, operating performance has continued to be negatively affected by the ongoing impact of delayed business travel trends in the Minneapolis CBD and from the lingering impact of social unrest. We are actively working with the owner of the property who has elected to market…

Thank you, Steve. Good morning everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Yesterday afternoon, we reported our first quarter GAAP net loss of $37.5 million or $0.72 per basic share, which includes a provision for credit losses of $46.4 million or $0.89 per basic share. Compared to the prior period, our GAAP net loss widened due to an increase in our CECL reserves driven by the unsettled market conditions. Distributable earnings for the first quarter were $10.7 million or $0.20 per basic share as compared to a distributable loss last quarter, which was mainly impacted by the resolution of one of our non-accrual loans in Q4. On a pre-loss basis, quarter-over-quarter our distributor earnings improved by about $0.03 per basic share, driven by higher net interest income as our floating rate portfolio continues to benefit from increases in short-term interest rates. Our distributor earnings covered our common dividend in the first quarter, despite us carrying over $200 million in cash, which represents over 20% of our equity. Our balance sheet leverage meaningfully below our target levels and the five non-accrual loans, which we estimate impacted our interest income by over $5 million in Q1 or about $0.10 per share. Our first quarter book value declined by about $0.78 per common share, or about 5% to $14.08, and was mainly affected by the increase in our CECL reserves, which was partially offset by an estimated $0.19 per share benefit from our share buybacks. As Jack mentioned earlier, during the first quarter, we were purchased about 1 million shares of our common stock, given what we believe is a deep value opportunity our stock price currently represents. Our Board’s increase in our buyback authorization of an additional 5 million shares furthers our ability to over time the opportunistic in the market…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question today is coming from Steve DeLaney from JMP Securities. Your live is now live.

Good morning everyone, and thanks for taking my question. Well, look for starters we really applaud the share buyback. I think it’s a nice way to reward your shareholders during these difficult times. Both what you’ve done and the increase that you plan. I’m wondering if you’ve also considered trying to buy back some of your convertible notes through reverse inquiry or other method. We have noticed in this earnings call a couple of commercial mortgage reads have had some opportunities and bought back some debt. So any thoughts there? I’d appreciate, thanks.

Sure. Good morning, Steve, it’s Marcin. Thank you for joining us.

Hi, Marcin.

Thanks for the question. Appreciate the nice words on the buybacks. We thought it was a good use of capital for this depress valuation. To your point of the converts, yes, it is something we’ve considered and will continue to consider. We’ve had some – we’ve had some discussions around this internally, so it is on the table as a potential use of our liquidity, obviously given the upcoming maturity in the fourth quarter. So yes, it is something that’s been debated internally.

Okay, great. That’s good to know. And I want to apologize to you the Dallas office loan that was new in the fourth quarter. I don’t think I ever really asked or dug into that. But a couple of things pop up. I mean, you would thank you for the details on the new Minneapolis hotel loan. But like I said, I kind of whiffed on this one. It’s a smaller loan, obviously $32 million compared to the couple of your other office loans that are much larger. But here’s what jumps out. It’s a 2017 loan, so it’s six years old, $35 million loan balance. The pricing is high at L plus 540, and the other thing I noticed, $35 million loan it’s almost 400 square feet, which is similar to Minne in San Diego, but those loans are $90 million, this one’s $35 million. So just help me understand that picture as to what is unique here, and I’m just curious whether that’s a Dallas is an older – an older property or just in not as attractive an area. Why the differences between Dallas and those other two office loans in your watch list? Thank you.

Hey Steve its Steve Alpart. Good morning. Thank you for your question.

Sure.

Yes. So look, I think you heard Jack say earlier in his prepared remarks that about 90% of our portfolio of office loans are Class A have recently renovated, so they are not all in that category. We’ve had other assets in the Dallas market. We think the market has some good trends in it. It’s obviously building by building, submarket by submarket and this is an asset that’s underperformed. And the leasing has been sluggish. So back to the point that it is not monolithic and every one of these is a different story. This has just been an underperformer for a number of years. And we talked about resolution strategies on few of the assets. This one kind of falls in the same general category. You can extrapolate that. We’re looking at all the typical options here. We’ve collaborative discussions with our borrower. All options are on the table and a sale of the property directly by the borrower or possibly a foreclosure or deed in lieu followed by a sale or kind of like on the menu. And it’s something that we’re actively working on, but I can’t think anything is imminent as of this call.

Okay. That’s helpful to understand the status. And is there a – I assume there’s a specific reserve on this loan. Can you share with me what that amount would be?

Yes. So we’ve – so the five loans that are rated 5.

Yes.

Have an aggregate asset specific reserve of about $67.5 million, that’s about 25%.

Okay.

They’re all a little bit different, but they’re you can kind of maybe estimate based on what the aggregate is.

Got it. I understand. And also understand probably why it’s not a great idea to put your specific reserve out there when you’re negotiating with buyers, et cetera, et cetera. So thank you – thank you very much for the comments. Appreciate it.

Thank you, Steve.

Thank you. Next question is coming from Stephen Laws from Raymond James. Your line is now live.

Hi, good morning.

Yes. One second. What Steve said about the buybacks, I think that’s a good sign to support your stock given concerns in the market, especially that these valuations where so accretive. First question really more on the portfolio, it seems like in total four and five rated loans there were nine of them and I know the hotel moved from four to five. Were there many changes from three to four back and forth, or are we seeing the portfolio kind of separate into these nine loans that are four and five and you feel good about everything else? Kind of – can you maybe talk about that a little bit?

Sure. It’s Steve Alpart again. Hey, Steve, good morning. So we talked about our aggregate risk rating was relatively stable in the quarter booking 2.5 to 2.6. There was no movement in the fours and fives as a group, except we did move that Minneapolis hotel loan from a four to a five, but the total of those four or five loans is the same. And then as far as the rest of the portfolio we did have a couple of other downgrades. They generally fall in the category of good performers that were not moved to a four obviously, but they move from like say two to three where we think it’s on track, everything’s fine. But just given the market environment we thought it as prudent to maybe movement one notch, but it was more along those lines, nothing that we’re at this moment concerned about.

Great. As you have discussion with borrowers around extensions or modifications; how are those discussions going? Any pushback or inability to buy new caps? Are there other protections you’d like to see in an extension or modification maybe instead of a cap at this point? Kind of – can you talk about how those discussions are going on borrowers at the original maturity date?

Yes. The tone of the conversations we’ve talked about this in prior quarters is still constructive. We have a good playbook where if a borrower is coming up on an extension or more recently maybe even a final maturity in exchange for pay downs, additional economics, spread, fees, structure we will work with those borrowers who are doing everything right. Some of those conversations that you can imagine involve getting a new cap. All things being equal we like to have a new cap. The majority of our portfolio has either an active cap in place or other structure around the cap. So certainly in some cases, if a borrower wants to put money into a reserve account – debt service reserve account that’s something that we would consider. But we look at the cap or other structure is important, so we’re almost always getting one or the other.

Great. Appreciate the comments this morning. Thank you.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question is coming from Douglas Harter from Credit Suisse. Your line is now live.

Thanks. Can you talk about how much of the – or how much debt you have against the current non-accrual loans and/or risk rated 5 loans?

Sure. Good morning, Doug. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for your question. So I would say most of the – most of those loans in terms of UPB are financed on the two sort of new facilities that we put in place in Q3 and Q4. So you see there’s over $100 million of leverage against three of those assets. I would say that’s the majority of the borrowings against those loans. There’s a little bit more on the other two, but this is the majority of the leverage against them.

Great. And I appreciate the update on the properties that Steve gave. But just any more clarity on as far as timing as to when you might be getting some of that that capital back that you could either then use for the new buyback authorization or for new loans?

Yes. So it’s Steve again. So we are as you can imagine actively working on all five of these loans. They’re all on a different path. Ideally we like to resolve some or all of these in the next couple of quarters. Just given the market the timing is hard to predict, but high level, look we certainly don’t want to be, and we’re not going to be a forced seller. We’re trying to be thoughtful about it, but certainly the objective is over the next couple of quarters to start resolving as many of these as we can.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. Next question today is coming from Jade Rahmani from KBW. Your line is now live.

Thank you very much. Beyond the risk five rated bucket of office, how is everything else going? You have a substantial amount of office loans, some of which are probably slated for maturity this year, given the origination date. So wondering if you can give an update there?

Hi, Jade, this is Jack. I’ll give the more general update, and Steve if you want to say something more specific. Yes, the headwinds are pretty intense in office nowadays. I would say that the majority of the conversation we’re having with borrowers about it relates not to work from home dynamics and things like that, but which seems to dominate the press quite a lot. But really the absolute level of rates and it’s a – that the Fed has imposed on the market and the cost of carry has – they moved through this. So which I believe is the main driver for stress in real estate, commercial estate and in office. So for the rest of our portfolios. So we’ve gone through our risk rankings and our CECL reserves. There are some that we have our eyes on and are having more significant conversations. But as we said, our portfolio is supported by borrowers that are looking at the embedded value over time in their assets and are putting money in to support it. It’s difficult when rates are so high to navigate for some of them. But I’ll point out another thing too which is what we’ve observed is in the more middle market with substantial institutional owners, but not so much the mega funds, if you will, they scramble a lot more to support their properties because it’s more meaningful to them as opposed to some of the larger fund operators who view it as an opportunity maybe just to move on to the next fund that they have already raised. And they will exercise their put option, if you will, for the lender. And so we’re seeing that it’s kind of a funny dynamic in that you might think that the bigger fund operators would be those that would stand behind their properties more. We’re seeing it actually bifurcate a bit. And the middle market loan our property say that $50 million with a $30 million loan, they are really stepping up to the plate. I want to say though, that this is not – I’m not guaranteeing that we’re not going to see any more credit migration downward. It’s really path dependent, I believe, largely on the Fed. And I think there’s a lot of inter dynamics about the effect of rates not just on the intentional destruction of value that they sought but also the effect on much broader swaths of the economy and things like major city centers and the stress that it’s putting on municipalities. So, those paths are very uncertain still. And we are watching it very closely and in deep discussion with our borrowers on a daily or weekly basis.

How on top of these loans are you in terms of asset management? What’s your level of dialogue? I mean, right now there is four loans within the office portfolio. I don’t know, I think, it’s beyond the Fed that’s affecting office. I think that the Fed is affecting the other property sectors, multifamily, industrial, et cetera, where we’ve seen cap rates widen, but not the level of distress playing out in office. Office, it’s the complete inability to underwrite rent and a lack of demand. I think, yes, you are seeing some leasing activity. And I think the best, most renovated buildings are seeing demand, which is also somewhat surprising, given your comments about the two conversions, those are freshly renovated projects. But what level of dialogue are you currently having with these borrowers? I mean, there’s many loans that were originated years ago. Can you also talk about the magnitude; the dollar amount of office maturities you will be facing in the next three quarters?

So Jade, let me address it. I thought I heard you, I’m sorry if I misheard you. I thought you were asking me, about the nature of the conversations and what we’re seeing with them. And so we are in repeat frequent asset management dialogue with our borrowers. And there’s many that are doing quite well. There is some that are in between, and there is the ones that we cited. And so, I do agree with you that rates are affecting all of commercial real estate. For example, multifamilies that were originated, bought or originated last year and put into CLOs are coming under significant stress compared to the cap rate levels that they were bought at and at the level of rates. But sticking with this, we’re in intense touch with these borrowers on the office side. And I did not mean to say, if you took it this way, I did not mean to say that the work-from-home dynamic and the reduction in demand was not a factor. I think it’s a quite significant factor. I think in the near term though, the bigger factor is well, liquidity, liquidity and liquidity. The demand affects that. But when you have an outer favor asset category, the liquidity first ranges from it, we’ll see where it goes next, right. I personally believe that there will be a healing in the capital markets and in the office market generally. I was reflecting what our borrowers are reflecting back to us about where their main stresses are.

And practically speaking, in terms of, let’s just say across the office portfolio, are you in touch with all of the borrowers and what’s the frequency of dialogue?

Well, Steve, maybe you can address that. The answer is yes, and it varies right by the situation. And some of them it’s not a weekly discussion when there’s not that much to be concerned about and others, it’s more frequent and intense. Steve, do you want to elaborate?

Yes. So the way we’re set up the originations team that sources a loan, underwrites and closes a loan is responsible for that loan to repayment. So there’s a real kind of soup to nuts approach here. So, we’re not really originating right now, so we have a – so this is our focus point for our deal team. The amount of touch we’re having is pretty significant. There is conversations about if there is a mod coming up, it’ll be a little bit more intense. We’re looking at leases, we’re reviewing leases, there is site tours, there’s business plans, reviewing business plans, budgets there’s still draws going on for CapEx, some leasing. So the amount of touch we’re having, it’s certainly not daily. Although it can be daily at certain points, but – we’re very much in touch with all these borrowers. As you can imagine, a four- or five-rated loan might have more of a touch than a one or a two. But I would say the level of dialogue both with us and our borrowers, us and our lenders is kind of daily, weekly, ongoing and constructive.

And Jade, I just want to point back a little bit. We had over 20% in repayments during the course of 2022, including on a run rate running through to December. And over half of that was in office. And while we fully expect that we’re going to see a decrease in the amount of prepayments this year because of the market environment, and all the shocks to the system by the continued raising of rates, those office loans that we paid last year were financed or blocked by parties, as I said, included through the end of December. And we’re seeing a, I don’t want to say anywhere near the robust pace as last year, but a significant pace of repayments in site now, including for office loans now. That’s evidence that we are working with our borrowers and being in touch with them and accommodating or demanding depending on the situation their needs in the as we go on. And so, it is something where we think that plan of working with them, extending out, renegotiating for higher rates, et cetera, has proven fruitful for us.

Thank you. And on the multi-family side, I know everyone’s focus is on office. Generally, I would say summarizing first quarter earnings multi-family has been pretty good. Probably better than expected. However, there have been a few problem areas. One of your competitors, which has a GSE servicing business, Freddie Mac delinquencies spiked quite notably within the portfolio. And just today the Wall Street Journal is talking about performance and CLOs deteriorating.

Right.

How are you seeing the multi-family performance?

Maybe you want to talk about performance and I’ll make another comment.

Sure. So, notwithstanding the rising rates and the economic environment, the multi-family properties in our portfolio are generally exhibiting healthy fundamentals and we feel good about them. The portfolio is fairly diverse. It’s mainly As and Bs. Our largest concentrations are in the southeast and southwest. We’re not just in the southeast and southwest. Those business plans typically involve renovation, CapEx plan, pushing rent, not so much growing rent as far as market rent growth, but more looking at the property next door and saying, if we do this amount of renovation work, we can get the rent to guys are getting next door. So we are still seeing as rent rolls turn monthly, quarterly, we are still seeing borrowers getting those underwritten rent bumps. Obviously the housing market is expensive and rates are high. So, that’s helping the multifamily market. We’re certainly seeing rent flowing. We did some but not a ton of business, I think, when the say late 2021 into early 2022. So, we don’t have a ton of that vintage. The vintage what we did do at that time period we had dialed back leverage probably on average about five points. And we had pushed up exit debt yields. So I fully expect that there will be some multifamily loans that are going to need another turn or two of the rent roll to get to the exit. But these are obviously three plus one plus one, and in good markets they might pay off in two or three years. Maybe some need an extra year. And we have one right now, by the way, that we did kind of near the peak of the market that they ended up putting in less CapEx, got higher rent bumps, and they are taking it down on an agency deal. I’m not saying everything is going to look like that, but I would say, in general we saw the headlines, in general we feel good about the multifamily.

That’s great to hear. Thanks so much.

Thank you, Jade.

Thank you. We have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the floor back over to Jack for any further or closing comments.

I would like to thank everybody for joining us for today. We really appreciate your time and attention. And I would like to thank our team for all the hard work that you’ve been putting in to maintain our portfolio and the quality of it. And I especially want to thank our investors for the support you have showing to us.

Thank you. That does conclude today’s teleconference and webcast. You may disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.