Hello, everyone, and welcome to Claros Mortgage Trust Fourth Quarter 2023 earnings conference call. My name is Bruno, and I'll be your conference facilitator today. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to hand over the call to Ann Huynh, Vice President of Investor Relations for Claros Mortgage Trust. Please proceed.

Thank you. I'm joined by Richard Mack, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Claros Mortgage Trust, and Mike McGillis, President and Chief Financial Officer and Director of Claros Mortgage Trust. We also have Kevin Cullinan, the Executive Vice President who leads MRECS Originations; and Priyanka Garg, Executive Vice President, who leads MRECS Portfolio and Asset Management. Prior to this call, we distributed CMTG's earnings release and supplement. We encourage you to reference these documents in conjunction with the information presented on today's call. If you have any questions following today's call, please contact me. I'd like to remind everyone that today's call may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including those discussed in our other filings with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements made on this call represent our views only as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update them. We will also be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures on today's call, such as distributable earnings, which we believe may be important to investors to assess our operating performance. For the reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to their nearest GAAP equivalent, please refer to the earnings supplement. I would now like to turn the call over to Richard.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us for CMTG's fourth quarter earnings call. What a difference a year makes. Or at least that's how it seems, as markets commenced 2024 with optimism. Even CMBS spreads rallied, as investors enthusiastically purchased bonds in anticipation of imminent rate cuts and a CRE market bottom. But early optimism in the real estate market for rapid monetary easing have been tempered by the reality that the US economy continues to demonstrate resilience, strong employment, and moderate-but-persistent inflation. GDP is strong. Labor numbers beat expectations. And while inflation has declined significantly, marking meaningful progress towards the Fed's inflation target, it's still above the target. And if January and February are any guide, handicapping Fed movements will be very hard in 2024. Will there be a lag effect of monetary policy, dampening growth? Will layoffs commence in earnest? Will ongoing geopolitical risks disrupt supply chains and reignite inflation? And what are the inherent complexities surrounding the election year? Cutting through the noise, most signals point to a soft landing, unless you're in the property business and counting on rapid rate cuts. Consequently, good news can be bad news for commercial real estate. With the exception of January, real estate capital markets have been constrained for the last 18 months. Higher borrowing costs coupled with muted transaction volumes have driven up cap rates. And many operators are contending with negative leverage until and unless the Fed drops rates. As a result, not much happened in real estate in 2023, despite the extreme market volatility and negative sentiment and headlines. Most real estate investors assumed a wait-and-see stance, with many postponing difficult decisions that will eventually need to be addressed. Looking ahead, we believe that 2024 and more certainly 2025 will unfold much differently. In 2024, the…

Thank you, Richard. For the fourth quarter of 2023, CMTG reported distributable earnings per share prior realized gains and principal charge-offs of $0.31 per share, which exceeded our quarterly dividend of $0.25 per share, resulting in 1.2x dividend coverage. Distributable earnings per share prior to realized gains and principal charge-offs for the prior quarter was $0.35 per share. The quarter-over-quarter change is primarily a result of a California multifamily loan placed on non-accrual during the fourth quarter, which I will discuss in more detail shortly, in addition to earnings reflecting the full quarterly impact of two loans that were placed on non-accrual during the prior quarter, offset in part by improved operating performance of the New York City REO hotel portfolio. The quarterly improvement in the REO hotel portfolio reflected the seasonality you usually see with New York City hotels, generally reporting a weak first quarter, followed by improvements in the second and third quarters, and then rounding out the year with a strong fourth quarter. Distributable earnings per share came in at $0.26 per share for the fourth quarter of 2023, and GAAP net income was $0.24 per share. CMTG's primarily floating rate portfolio was $6.9 billion at December 31 compared to $7.1 billion at September 30. The quarter-over-quarter decrease was primarily due to the reclassification of three loans secured by a variety of asset classes to held for sale, representing $267 million of carrying value as of September 30th, and loan repayments of $38 million, which was offset in part by the impact of follow-on fundings in our existing portfolio of $168 million. Subsequent to year end, the three loans held for sale were sold to a single buyer for $262 million. Effectively, two loans were sold at par, and one loan secured by a mixed-use development project…

[Operator Instructions]. We do have our first question comes from Rick Shane from JPMorgan.

Look, I'd love to talk about dividend policy at this point. Given the distributable income in '23, as you move into '24, you are in a position where you don't have to pay a dividend as high as the current run rate. And I realize that there is potentially an adverse signal to the market in terms of reducing the dividend, but the reality is there are also advantages to retaining capital, particularly in environments like this, where you're starting to see some opportunity. Is there a case to be made for a -- almost, I'm not sure what the right words are -- a bullish dividend cut, where you're retaining capital so that you can recycle it into high returns?

Rick, thanks for the question. And it's a very good question. If you recall, we cut our dividend back in the third quarter of 2023 to try to bring it to a more sustainable level, based on where we felt our moderate-term outlook was going to be on distributable earnings. And the dividend is something we look at with our Board every quarter. And as part of that, we're looking at pivots in the portfolio, market opportunities, what we need liquidity for, among other factors. But that will be something that us and our Board will continue to evaluate. But you properly highlight, right now, the cost of capital is very high. And retaining capital may be a good use of funds, but too early to foresee anything at this point in time.

Got it. And understood. Look, it's a weird balancing act, I totally get it. And I very much appreciate the answer. Thank you.

Thanks, Rick.

Our next question comes from Douglas Harter from UBS.

As you mentioned, you're looking to continue to prioritize liquidity. Are you thinking about that as not making new loans? Or are you looking to continue to sell loans and reduce future funding commitments as we go through '24?

Thanks, Doug. I think we will likely not be making future funding commitments on new loans until we see more repayment activity in the existing portfolio. And I think we continue to see opportunities to execute opportunistic loan sales in the current market environment. And that's something that we're -- as we look at liquidity needs of the business, it's something that we're constantly looking at across the portfolio every day, relative to future funding requirements on our existing construction loans, expected repayment activity, opportunities to sell loans in the marketplace. So it is -- I think the focus really is on how do we continue to generate liquidity out of the existing portfolio through repayments, loan sales, or leveraging unlevered assets until -- before we start to look at new origination opportunities.

And then I guess just to follow up, how are you thinking about which assets to target sale for? Is that assets where you can get closest to par, and therefore selling some of the better-quality loans? Or how are you thinking about which assets to consider selling?

Yeah, I mean, it's a very granular decision. It's very much loan-by-loan. And back a quarter ago, we made a -- a couple of quarters ago, we made a tough decision to sell a loan at a deep discount to the UPB. And it was it was a hard decision, but as we looked at the opportunity on that loan and the underlying collateral, we felt it was best to take our lumps and move on. And there's other cases where -- like in this case this quarter, we saw the opportunity to sell two loans that were very close to maturity and payoff. And by combining it with another loan that had a significant future funding obligation, we were able to generate near-term liquidity, deleverage the balance sheet, and reduce the future funding commitment. So that checked a lot of boxes as well for us. But it's something that we we look at regularly, and it's going to be a case-by-case analysis.

Okay. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Sarah Barcomb from BTIG.

I know you've touched on liquidity a lot here, but just hoping we can dive in on the subject of liquidity, just given there's over $1 billion of unfunded commitments. Could you walk me through your sources of liquidity for funding these commitments, particularly the $673 million of additional liquidity sources? You highlight that in your supplemental. I just wanted to make sure I had those sources clear.

Sure. I think the supplemental liquidity -- and I'm not sure which item you're referring to, but I can walk you through our sources of liquidity. We have a number of near-term, well, repayments and resolutions that we expect to occur over the near to medium term, as well as unencumbered assets consisting of about just under $600 million of loans, primarily senior loans that we own unlevered, and an REO portfolio that is also owned unlevered as well. And then with respect to the financings in place, those are financing commitments that we've already achieved or obtained on our construction loans with future funding obligations. And those loan -- those future fundings and ability to draw on that future funding remains in place, and it's spread across a variety of asset-specific financings, as well as warehouse facilities, but primarily asset-specific financings.

Okay, great. And then just switching gears here for my follow-up, could you give us an idea for the magnitude of active loan modifications that you're negotiating in the near term here? And have repo lenders been supportive of these modifications? And if so, can you give some color on the terms?

Sarah, it's Priyanka. I'll jump in here. So we are -- you see our watch list, we did migrate a handful of loans to 4s. And those were really driven by exactly what you just pointed out, which is near-term maturities that are occurring or have occurred, and also modification discussions that we're having with different borrowers. So if you look at the watch list, that gives you a good sense of active dialogue with borrowers. In terms of the flavor of those modifications, it's very granular, deal-by-deal, dependent on market sponsorship, all the things you would expect. But we've really held firm to two different guiding principles. One is that we need a committed sponsor, and that means both with capital and with operational expertise. So if a borrower is bringing some capital to the table that's meaningful to them and also demonstrating that they're adding value, we're going to work with that borrower. We're in the business of lending, not owning, and that's what we want to do. But the second guiding principle is we're not interested in kicking the can down the road, so we're not agreeing to picking interest or accruing partial interest. We want to make sure we're not exacerbating issues on basis on the back end. As we sit here today in our portfolio, we only have two small loans that have any kind of pick feature, and that's only about 1% of our UPB. So we're being very, very disciplined as we approach these modifications. And then the last part of your question was as it relates to our financing counterparties. And they've generally been very supportive, where we believe in the early and often when it comes to conversations with them. We're making sure we're effectively having a tri-party negotiation, and want no surprises. So there -- depending on the situation and what their own hot buttons are, we'll have discussions around that. But we really want to make sure that we're identifying the issues up front.

Thank you.

Yeah, no problem.

[Operator Instructions]. Our next question comes from Jade Rahmani from KBW.

Hi, this is Jason Sabshon, on for Jade. It'd be helpful if you could walk us through the change in overall liquidity and where it stands today. I see you as around $430 million in third quarter, $238 million at year end. And then the February update, it was around $215 million, so any color on that would be helpful. Thank you.

Sure. I would say that we continue to work on resolutions of existing loans of the portfolio and continue to work through potential repayments of some of those loans. In addition, we also continue to use available liquidity to deleverage. I think that's primarily what you've seen between the end of 2023 and a week or so ago: a combination of the dividend payment as well as paying down leverage on our existing facilities. Obviously, we had generated net liquidity from the loan sales, which we have used that liquidity to pay down borrowings in an accretive manner. I think we're going to continue to see a lot more of this going forward, where we we continue to try to work through repayments on existing loans and execute opportunistic loan sales across the portfolio and use that liquidity to deleverage the balance sheet.

Great. Thank you. And just to switch gears, can you comment on the CECL reserve? It was flat quarter over quarter despite the increase in risk 4 loans. Also, the earnings presentation shows that general reserves declined on both risk 4 and on the 1- to 3-rated loans. So you could -- it would be helpful if you could comment on that.

Sure. The CECL reserves staying relatively flat despite the increase in 4-rated loans is a function of how we have built out our CECL model. So those loans that migrated into the 4 category, we had -- even though there were 3-rated loans, we had already applied a projected loss factor multiplier to those, given the underlying property type of those assets. So that that had already been captured in prior reserves. And then with respect to the general CECL Reserve, that's very much a function of a lot of the macroeconomic data that goes into the model. And really, from third quarter to fourth quarter, there were favorable movements in some of the historical loss history. I know it sounds a little counterintuitive, but that's what the data said. That was a relatively small impact during the quarter.

Great. Thank you very much.

We currently have no further questions, so I'd like to hand the call back to Richard Mack for closing remarks. Over to you.

Thank you, and thanks to all of you for joining us, and for your insightful questions, as always. Let me summarize some of the questions and the call by saying that this is, of course, a balancing act on liquidity offense, having capital deployed, and delevering in a difficult environment. We do see opportunities to lend in this market, but we want to see the real estate capital market show stability first. The benefit of being low levered is that we are likely able to increase leverage and pivot to offense once we have confidence in market stability. In the interim and as always, it is about asset managing. We are in the weeds in every asset that we -- making sure that the borrowers do the right thing. And if they do not, we're ready to step in and force them to do so. And we believe that this principle is highly valued by our lending counterparties, and we are in constant transparent communication with them. And I think that has made a tremendous difference for our business from day one. So while this is a tough time, we know how to work through it. And I think we are starting to look forward to a different capital market. But until we see that, we're going to keep assuming that things are going to be higher for longer and difficult for longer, and look with optimism towards a change in the market. So we thank you all for your support and for joining us today. And we look forward to talking to you all again soon. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call and thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.