ABR

Morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the first quarter 2026 Arbor Realty Trust earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during this period, you will need to press star one on your telephone. If you want to remove yourself from the queue, please press star two. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you should need operator assistance, please press star zero. I'd like to now turn the call over to your speaker today, Paul Elenio, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Okay, thanks, Stephanie. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the quarterly earnings call for Arbor Realty Trust. This morning we'll discuss the results for the quarter ended March 31, 2026. With me on the call today is Ivan Kaufman, our President and Chief Executive Officer. Before we begin, I need to inform you that statements made in this earnings call may be deemed forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, including information about possible or assumed future results of our business, financial condition, liquidity, results of operations, plans, and objectives. These statements are based on beliefs, assumptions, and expectations of our future performance, taking into account the information currently available to us. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from Arbor's expectations in these forward-looking statements are detailed in our SEC reports.

Listeners are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements which speak only as of today. Arbor undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after today or the occurrences of unanticipated events. I'll now turn the call over to our President and Chief Executive Officer, Ivan Kaufman.

Thank you, Paul, and thanks to everyone for joining on today's call. As you're all aware, our stock has been subject to attacks by short sellers in recent years. Some of those short reports appear to have provoked investigative interest from regulators as well as class actions and derivative claims from plaintiffs' law firms. We have steadfastly maintained that these attacks and claims they made against us were baseless and misleading. We are pleased to report in that regard that we believe that any pending investigations that were initiated in the wake of the short reports have now been closed without any action against us. Additionally, and very recently, our motion to dismiss the class action lawsuit against us was granted and the claim dismissed without prejudice. We were very pleased with these developments.

Although our management team never lost sight of our shareholders and their interest during this challenging period, we are happy to put this chapter behind us and to focus on creating shareholder value free of these costly and unwarranted distractions. On our last earnings call, we discussed at length how we feel we are at the bottom of the cycle and have ring-fenced the majority of our non-performing and sub-performing loans and are working exceedingly hard at accelerating the resolution of these loans into performing assets which will allow us to start to build back our run rate of interest and income for the future. This is our top priority as these loans are having a tremendous drag on our earnings.

We also mentioned that if rates went down, the process would accelerate, and if rates increase, it would lead to a longer period of time needed to resolve these loans. Unfortunately, given the geopolitical landscape, the 5 and 10-year have actually increased roughly 50 basis points in the first quarter, which is certainly pushing our timetable out a little bit. Despite these challenges, we continue to make progress from working through our assets. Again, we believe we have a clear line of sight on resolving the bulk of these assets over the next several quarters. We ended the first quarter with approximately $500 million in delinquencies and around $500 million of REO assets for total non-performing assets of roughly $1 billion. These numbers are down approximately $100 million from the last quarter or a 9% reduction.

This is steady progress. Again, our goal is to continue to accelerate the resolution of our non-interest earning assets and redeploy the capital into performing loans and grow our run rate of income. We had $200 million of new delinquencies in the first quarter and $300 million of resolutions, which is consistent with our goal of continuing to shrink our total delinquencies each quarter. Additionally, we have line of sight on roughly another $200 million-$300 million of delinquencies we expect to resolve in the second and third quarter, in addition to another $100 million we believe we have the potential to resolve by the end of the year.

We also remain optimistic that we can reduce our REO assets to around $250 million-$300 million by the end of 2026, even after adding an additional $100 million of REO assets over the next few quarters, which were already reflected in our delinquency numbers in March 31. We have been actively marketing several of these assets for sale, which will go a long way towards helping reduce the drag on earnings and increase our run rate of income for the future. As we discussed in detail in our last quarter, we continue to focus heavily on our legacy portfolio, which currently sits at approximately $5 billion. $500 million of these loans are delinquent that we're working through very aggressively, and $ one and a half billion continue to perform in accordance with their original terms.

The other $3 billion have modified to pay-and-accrue features, of which only half of these loans we are accruing the full rate of interest on. We continue to make progress in reducing the amount of accrued interest outstanding on certain loans subset by resetting the rates to today's market spreads and requiring that the borrowers pay down a large portion of the outstanding accrued interest as part of the modified terms.

In fact, we are currently working on several loans totaling approximately $400 million that we think we can modify in the second and third quarter that will result in receiving approximately $19 million in back accrued interest and reducing the loans outstanding and accrued interest down to around $1.1 billion. This is a very effective strategy that will also put these loans in a much better position to cover our debt service from property operations and is resulting in improved terms from our line lenders. This, combined with having the proper guarantees and requiring the borrowers to commit significant additional capital to support the deals, gives us comfort about how these loans will perform going forward and will greatly limit the potential risk of future losses. As Paul will discuss in more detail, we produced distributable earnings of $0.18 a share in the first quarter.

Clearly, our earnings are being greatly affected by the significant drag from our non-interest earning assets as well as from resetting legacy loans to today's market rates. This is something we believe we will improve in the next several quarters. We continue to make progress in resolving our legacy issues and grow our business volumes. Our first quarter numbers were also affected as we expected a normally slow start in the agency business from the seasonal nature of that platform, which was also impacted by the increase in rates. On our last call, we mentioned that we would continue to evaluate our dividend policy based on how quickly we think we could resolve our delinquent loans and sub-performing loans and reduce that drag on earnings.

With the recent increase in rates as well as the expectation that rates could continue to remain volatile, we are now predicting a slightly longer life-line timeline in resolving these loans. As a result, the board has decided to reset our quarterly dividend to $0.17 a share. We believe this is a dividend we will be able to cover from earnings for the rest of the year and the potential for growth in the later part of the year and in 2027 as we work aggressively to reduce the earnings drag from our legacy assets and improve our run rate of interest income. We also believe it is very prudent in this current environment to retain our capital to fund the growth of our platform and to buy back stock where appropriate, which generates strong risk-adjusted returns on our investment.

Turning now to the production numbers for the first quarter in our different business lines. In our agency platform, we originated $708 million in volume. In addition to our first CMBS brokerage transaction of $88 million of a total first quarter volume of $795 million. These numbers were in line with our previous guidance as we normally experience a lighter first quarter due to the seasonal nature of the business. Despite the challenging rate environment, we are seeing an influx of new opportunities that is increasing our current pipeline significantly.

We're off to a good start for quarter two with $350 million of volume closed through the first week of May, and we still feel we can produce similar volumes as last year and a strong second half of the year, which is obviously rates dependent. In our balance sheet lending business, we originated $400 million of volume in the first quarter. This business continues to be incredibly competitive, and as a result, we are being highly selective and are focusing our attention on large deals with high-quality sponsors. The bridge lending business is a very important part of our overall strategy as it generates strong levered returns on our capital in the short term, while it continues to build up a pipeline in the future agency deals.

With the significant efficiency we continue to see in the securitization market and with our line lenders, we are able to produce strong returns on our capital despite the competitive landscape. In fact, in the first quarter, we issued another CLO with very attractive pricing and terms. We priced the deal at 1.73 over and 88% leverage with a two and a half year replenishment feature. This was an incredible accomplishment, especially in light of the fact that we priced the deal during the height of the Iranian conflict. We continue to have access to this market and are a leader in this space, which allows us to finance our new originations with non-recourse, non-mark-to-market debt and drive higher returns on our capital.

In our single-family rental business, we experienced unusually slow start to the year which was primarily driven by the noise surrounding the housing bill that is being considered. This bill, in its current form, surprisingly does not have a full carve-out for the build-to-rent business as initially expected and definitely keeps folks on the sidelines due to this uncertainty. There's been a tremendous amount of talk lately that this bill will not get passed in its current form and will be serious considerations to building in the appropriate carve-outs for the build-to-rent business, including the removing the for-sale provisions in year seven that currently exist in the proposed legislation. As a result, things are starting to loosen up now that people believe this will occur, and we expect to see a real uptick in our new originations in this platform going forward.

We originated approximately $125 million in the first quarter and expect we will see a significant increase in these volume numbers over the next few quarters. This is a great business as it offers us returns on our capital through construction, bridge, and permanent lending opportunities and generates strong levered returns in the short term while providing significant long-term benefits by further diversifying our income stream. In our construction lending business, we continue to see our share of high-quality deals with very experienced developers. We closed one deal for $113 million in the first quarter and are expected to close another $250 million in the second quarter. Our pipeline continues to grow each day, give us comfort in our ability to hit our target of between $750 million and $1 billion of production in 2026.

In summary, we are laser-focused on resolving our legacy book as quickly as possible, which will reduce the significant drag that these assets are having on our earnings. We believe we have a clear path to resolving the majority of the assets over the next several quarters, which will set us up nicely and build our earnings base heading into 2027. We also continue to focus on growing the many different verticals we have and generate strong returns on our capital that are being enhanced by the significant improvements and efficiencies we continue to create on the right side of our balance sheet. We will continue to work exceedingly hard through the bottom of this cycle. As always, we remain focused on maximizing shareholder value. I will now turn the call over to Paul to take you through the financial results.

Thank you, Ivan. In the first quarter, we produced shareholder earnings of $37.4 million or $0.18 per share, excluding one-time realized losses of $23 million in the resolution of certain delinquent and REO assets. On our last quarter earnings call, we guided to around $10 million in realized losses in Q1, all of which we had previously reserved for. We had some success resolving some loans ahead of schedule, resulting in additional $13 million in losses in Q1. We will continue to do our best to give guidance on expected resolutions, although it is a very fluid process and often hard to predict the exact timing of these resolutions.

Having said that, our best estimate is a range of approximately $15 million-$25 million of realized losses a quarter for the balance of the year that we will continue to reserve for as we receive more price discovery on these assets. As Ivan mentioned, our first quarter numbers were in line with our expectations, especially given the light first quarter we usually experience in our agency business. We also expect that it'll take a little longer to work through our legacy book given the current rate environment, which will likely keep our earnings in a similar range for the next few quarters before we start to see an increase in our run rate towards the end of the year as we reduce the drag on our earnings from our underperforming assets.

This should put us in a position to start to show growth in our earnings in 2027 as we realize the full benefit of converting our delinquent assets into performing loans. With that said, the 2nd and 3rd quarters of this year are likely to be our low water mark and hover around $0.17 a share as we continue to reset certain underperforming loans to lower rates that'll affect our earnings run rate for the next few quarters. We do expect this number to grow in the 4th quarter with further upside potential in 2027 as we're working diligently to resolve nearly all of our non-performing assets over the next several quarters.

We're estimating the second quarter will actually come in around $0.15 a share as there is roughly $0.02 a share of unusual drag from some inefficiencies related to our financing costs that are resulting in a temporary overlap of interest for a few months. This includes the $100 million ramp feature in our new CLO that we expect to be able to fully utilize by the end of May, and the timing of redrawing on our repo lines to pay off our 4.5% unsecured notes last week as we used some of the proceeds from the December bond issuance to temporarily pay down higher cost repo debt until the April notes came due.

Given the non-recurring nature of this expense, combined with the expectation that we resolve the bulk of our delinquent loans by the end of the year, we believe we'll be able to start to grow our earnings in the fourth quarter, with additional upside expected in 2027 as well. In the first quarter, we recorded an additional $twelve and a half million of impairment on our REO book to properly mark these assets to where we think we can effectuate a sale. We have engaged brokers to sell the bulk of these REO assets quickly and create interest-earning loans for the future. As Ivan mentioned, we're expecting to take back roughly another $100 million of assets as we work to the bottom of the cycle, $50 million-$75 million of which will likely happen by the end of the second quarter.

Most of these assets are already reflected in our delinquent numbers. Again, we are working very diligently to dispose of these assets quickly with an estimated $100 million-$150 million of sales scheduled in the second quarter and another $200 million-$250 million expected in the third and fourth quarter. This should put our REO assets between $250 million and $300 million by the end of 2026 and greatly improve our run rate of income for the future. We also booked another $9 million of specific reserves on our balance sheet loan book for total REO impairment and specific reserves of $21 and a half million in the first quarter.

We expect to book similar level of reserves and impairments over the next few quarters, which is consistent with our strategy of accelerating the resolution of problem loans as we look to mark certain loans that we are marketing for disposition to where we think we can execute a sale. In our GSE agency business, we originated $708 million in volume and had $671 million in loan sales in the first quarter. The margins on these loans were very healthy at 1.86% this quarter compared to 1.36% last quarter, which was mostly due to a shift in product mix and loan size with some larger deals in Q4 that contained lower margins.

We also recorded $10 million of mortgage servicing rights income related to $734 million of committed loans in the first quarter, representing an average MSR rate of 1.32%. Our fee-based servicing portfolio of $36.3 million on March 31st with a weighted average servicing fee of 35.5 basis points and an estimated remaining life of 6 years and will continue to generate a predictable annuity of income going forward of around $129 million gross annually. In our balance sheet lending operation, our investment portfolio was $12 billion on March 31st with an all-in yield on that portfolio of 7.03% compared to 7.08% at December 31st.

This was mainly due to resetting rates on certain legacy loans and from the slight decline in SOFR. The average balance in our core investments was $12.04 billion this quarter compared to $11.84 billion last quarter and the full effect of our fourth quarter growth. The average yield on these assets increased to 7.5% from 7.38% last quarter, mainly due to significantly more back interest and default interest collected in Q1 on loan resolutions, which was partially offset by a decline in SOFR in the first quarter. Total debt on our core assets was approximately $10.7 billion at March thirty-first.

The only cost of debt was approximately 6.4% at 3/31 versus 6.45% at 12/31, mainly due to a reduction in SOFR, along with a lower rate on our new CLO issuance in March. The average balance on our debt facilities was approximately $10.4 billion for the first quarter compared to $10.1 billion in the fourth quarter, mainly due to funding our fourth quarter growth and from a full quarter of the new unsecured debt issued in December of last year.

The average cost of funds in our debt facilities was 6.52% in the first quarter, down from 6.66% for the fourth quarter, excluding interest expense from leveraging our REO assets, the debt balance of which is separately stated in our balance sheet and therefore not included in our total debt on core assets. This decrease is mostly due to a reduction in SOFR, which was partially offset by the unsecured debt we issued in December. Our overall spot net interest spreads were flat at 0.63% at both March 31st and December 31st. In summary, we continue to make steady progress in resolving our delinquencies and are extremely focused on completing the process as quickly as possible, which will significantly reduce the drag on our earnings.

This, combined with growing our origination platforms, will go a long way towards allowing us to increase our run rate of income in 2027. That completes our prepared remarks for this morning. I'll now turn it back to the operator to take any questions you may have at this time. Stephanie?

Thank you. We'll take our first question from Jade Rahmani with KBW. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thank you very much. Could you comment on the outlook for SFR originations picking up? Also if you can give any color on the types of borrowers that you are dealing with, you know, the number of properties they hold, what their intended hold period is, and how the financing terms from counterparties are changing, you know, the cap rates and return profile of that business.

Can you repeat the first part of that question? It didn't come through clearly. Jay?

Yeah, sorry about that. Could you comment on the outlook for the single-family for rent originations business? If you could provide some color on the types of borrowers you're dealing with, you know, whether they're institutional or whether they're smaller, number of properties they hold and their hold period. Just about your comments regarding the housing legislation and how that's changing that business.

Sure. Let me respond to that part first. Let's talk about the legislation because I think the business got frozen a little bit initially with the concern and the fear. The consensus now, a very strong consensus, is those prohibitions that we're putting, put into that bill, closing the sale is not going to be put in the bill. As a result, we've seen a real momentum over the last couple of weeks in that business. I think we've already have $200 million, we expect to exceed $300 million for the quarter. We're back in line and back in pace and enthusiasm is back in the business. Most of the people we're dealing with, a lot of their investors are institution-based.

A lot of them have anywhere between, you know, five and 30 assets. That seems to be the typical profile of who we're dealing with. Some have high net worth families, but a lot of them are institutional-based.

After you can go through, can you refresh me on your second part of the question?

I think it was cap rates, returns, and how we're seeing the financing side of that business, which I think has been really strong right out.

Yeah. Listen, the credit markets are extremely aggressive right now, and the cap rates are very aggressive. It's a very, very well-liked business, and we think there's a lot of momentum in the business. It's viewed very favorably. Anything that's completed and goes to a bridge loan is priced extraordinarily competitively. The agencies, Fannie and Freddie, as well as the CMBS market, they love this product.

Great. Thanks for that's really good to hear in terms of the resiliency of that asset class. Just turning to the outlook on credit, I think you touched on it that the 5- and 10-year move this year is kind of slowing the pace of resolution. My main question would be if there's any, you know, new delinquencies or new defaults you would expect as a result of where the 5- and 10-year. I imagine that there's at least some cohort of borrowers that have been kind of on the fence as to what they're going to do, the outlook for rates makes a huge difference in their consideration. If you could just comment on how the 5- and 10-year move this year has affected the credit outlook.

Well, I think, you know, it's very clear from management standpoint that, you know, we've taken a look at the change in the rate environment. In the fourth quarter, we clearly had a drop in rates. There was a lot of liquidity flowing into the sector and a lot of enthusiasm. Now with the Iran situation and rising rates and with the approach that rates will remain a little bit higher, we've adjusted our philosophy. We're getting ahead of where we think the market is, and that's why we, you know, adjust our dividend to reflect more difficult environment. We don't wanna be sitting here in the second and third quarter making the adjustments. We think that this rate environment is gonna slow the resolutions.

It's gonna slow liquidity into the sector, and it's gonna slow, you know, where these resolutions go. In fact, as Paul has guided in his comments, we're expecting to continue to have reserves going in the second, third, and fourth quarter, and it's reflective of where this new environment is. We've made the adjustments. I'm not sure everybody else has, but we do think that this new rate environment is gonna affect the balance of the year, and that's what we reflect in our comments.

Thanks for taking the questions.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Chris Muller with Citizens JMP Securities. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. I was having some connection issues, so apologies if you already hit on some of this. Looking at originations in the bridge portfolio, average loan size looked to be about $128 million versus $38 million in the fourth quarter. I think Ivan touched on this a little bit, but was this more opportunistic, or are you guys intentionally moving up the loan size spectrum, and we should expect to see more of this going forward?

Well, I think it's a great question, and, we are definitely going in a larger loan size. The market's extremely competitive. You know, it's to the point where on each individual loan you have to make certain credit decisions in order to bring those loans on. We've chosen to go to larger spots or deals, and be more selective in that sense, to put more management attention on each and every loan that we do, and the larger loans gives us the ability to do that.

Got it. That makes a lot of sense. I guess gain on sale margin stepped up quite a bit in the quarter to 1.86% from 1.36%. Can you just remind me if there was a large deal in 4Q numbers, or is something else driving that dynamic?

No, that's exactly right, Chris. A couple of things happened. If you go back and look at our margins, you may wanna go back and look at, you know, 3Q, 4Q, and even 2Q of last year. If you look at 1Q and 2Q of last year, the margins were actually very strong. Similar, 186 is a very healthy margin. We did 170 I think we did 175 in the first quarter of last year, 170, I think, in the second quarter of last year. In the third and fourth quarter, you saw that dip of 115 and 136.

In the fourth quarter and third quarter, we had some really large off-market deals that we were able to get over the line, and we also had a lot more Freddie Mac business in the fourth quarter, which is a different type of business. In the first quarter, we had a lot more Fannie Mae business, and we had a lot more smaller deal size, so we were able to extract a higher margin. It all depends on what's in our pipeline. We do have a lot of large deals in our pipeline that we're working through. Our pipeline is growing each and every day. You could see that number dip a little bit in the second quarter and the third quarter, depending on deal size. It's deal size and mix.

To your point, the fourth quarter did have some really large deals in it.

Got it. That makes a lot of sense. Appreciate you guys taking the questions this morning.

Sure.

Thank you. As a quick reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 now. We'll take our next question from Rick Shane with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions this morning. Couple different things. In prior calls, you had talked about some fairly substantial capital investments in REO properties. I'm curious how much you guys have spent life to date in terms of that CapEx and what you expect going forward, given your sort of expectations for additional REO.

Sure, Rick. I think we look at it a couple of different ways. We break down the REO book. As I said in my commentary, we've been in the process recently of engaging brokers and really trying to find people that are interested in these assets that are experts in that particular market with that particular asset. We're doing a really nice job, I think, of getting a significant amount of bids. There's certainly more capital out there now chasing deals, we've seen a real influx in opportunities to dispose of the assets quicker, which is why we are guiding to getting our REO book down to roughly $250-$300. I would say that from a CapEx perspective, there are certain assets that we expect to hold onto.

There's a subset of assets in that 250-300 that we expect to hold onto a little longer and stabilize, we are feeding those assets with CapEx. Let me see if I can get some numbers for you, what we've done. In the quarter, I think we put about $8 million-$10 million in CapEx in certain assets. That's what happened in the first quarter. Let me see if I can find for you what we've done life to date, because that was your question, right?

Yeah.

Let's see.

Well, and actually it's interesting. I appreciate you referencing the comment about working with the brokers. I was curious. That comment's what precipitated my question. I'm curious if there's a little bit of a change in strategy here, which instead of sort of investing and trying to potentially optimize outcome on a longer timeline, whether you're sort of taking a first loss, best loss approach here and accelerating the disposals.

I think a lot of it's loan specific. If we feel we can get to the market with an asset, you know, fairly quickly without putting CapEx in, we will do it. Early on, there were certain assets that really required CapEx to, you know, to put them in a better position. It's really an asset-specific type of situation.

It is asset-specific, maybe, but I would say we're leaning towards the side, as you referenced, if we can resolve the asset on an accelerated basis, at our mark. We're certainly looking to do that. We've had a few of those this quarter in my commentary as part of that $23 million of realized losses, and we continue to push that way. It is asset specific. We are definitely leaning towards if we can resolve them quicker, we will.

Got it. Okay. That actually relates to something that someone pinged me about, which is, during the quarter, you sold a property for $25 million, provided $24.5 million bridge loan, which seems like a fairly aggressive financing structure. As you are resolving the REO, is part of the intention to provide financing for those transactions, and is that type of advance rate gonna be typical of how you're approaching things, and how should we think about that from a credit perspective?

I think once again it's asset specific, but a lot has to do with loan structures as well. While it may be a high advance rate, there are capital commitments and guarantees that are required on those loans from the people who are stepping into those transactions. We'll look at, you know, our recoveries on our returns and look at it on each particular case. Many of the times it's borrowers we've done a lot of business with, have strong balance sheets and while we may give them a, you know, a high level of leverage going in and create a very seamless process, their commitment to maintain that asset with the right guarantees of CapEx and interest guarantees offset that high leverage.

Got it. Okay. Last question, I know I've asked several, as we think about dividend policy going forward, again, it really, you know, you guys have clearly trued the dividend up to distributable earnings. I know different commercial mortgage REITs talk about distributable earnings ex realized losses, not always, our favorite metric. I'm curious, as we are looking at our models, what do you think we should use as the guidepost for dividend? Is it distributable earnings, or is there something else, particularly, you know, obviously, you know, we know that you guys have an incentive ultimately to increase the dividend, it's aligned with shareholder interest. I wanna make sure we're looking at the right metrics so that we catch any inflections either up or down going forward.

You're right. Good question. We clearly look at it, distributable earnings ex the realized, one-time realized losses that we've provided for already that have reduced book value already. That's how we look at it. What are we earning from a cash perspective? That's how we look at it. In this quarter, we put up $0.18 ex the losses. What I've guided you guys to is a little bit of a low watermark in second and third quarter. You know, absent the $0.02, you know, one-time drag that probably puts me at $0.15 for the second quarter. I think we're really at $0.17 if you add that back in Q2 and $0.17 in Q3.

What I've guided to is if we can execute our business strategy very effectively, which we're laser focused on, and really start to turn a lot of these non-performing assets into performing assets, we'll start to see growth in the fourth quarter in that distributable earnings number. We've set the dividend where we think we can earn it for the rest of the year, and we've set it to where we think distributable earnings will be ex those one-time losses.

Got it. Okay. Thank you, guys.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Stephen Laws with Raymond James. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Hey, good morning, guys. Roughly 40% of your loan portfolio is in Texas and Florida, where there's quite a bit of housing supply across multi-family, SFR and single-family housing. Can you please provide some updated commentary on what you're seeing on the ground in those geographies?

Sure. What we're really seeing is being at the bottom of the market, I think the last 24 months, there's been an extreme amount of softness, but we're seeing it per month. I think some of the issues that we face is excess market and in the Florida market in particular and also in the Atlanta market. The issue with immigration and the issue with the ICE raids really had a real negative impact on the portfolio, and it's really accelerated some of the delinquencies. We've had assets that were 90% occupied for years and years and years and occupancy dropped to 50% overnight. Over the last 12 months, I think with the ICE raids, it's had a negative impact in those markets.

That's kind of getting behind us at this point, and we are seeing a reset of rental rates, growth in occupancy rates. We also saw for a period of time, there's a real slowness and a real issue with respect to credit on our tenants.

Also the inability to remove them from occupancy. That has changed. The court system has sped up. I think that the software that's been put in place and the discipline that put in place to catch fraud and put the right tenant base in place, that's improved dramatically as well. The other thing we're seeing is we're accelerating our efforts in terms of assets that are not performing properly. We are requiring management changes and/or taking control of these assets. It's generally the case when, you know, assets are cashed off, that they get poorly managed.

We've taken very aggressive steps to make those corrections, and that's why it's reflected a little bit in our forecast because we're taking control of all those assets. That period of time, we're gonna have a little bit of a drag on our earnings while we're doing it. We're seeing the benefit of our effort by seeing a real stabilization in these assets and now a growth back in occupancy and operating income.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Jade Rahmani with KBW. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thank you. I wanted to ask you about the CECL reserve or the credit loss reserve, which currently stands at $131 million, which is 1.1% of the portfolio. You said you expect realized losses of about $15 million-$25 million a quarter for the next three quarters, so that's $70 million. Assuming that comes out of CECL, you know, there would be a remaining $60 million of CECL, which is 0.6% of the portfolio. You know, I think the question is if you're going to be taking additional CECL reserves in future quarters, and if there's a normalized CECL reserve ratio that should be on this portfolio. You mentioned that there's about $1 billion of, you know, non-performing assets, including REO and non-accruals.

Sure. Jade, I think you can't look at it just on the non-performing assets, on the delinquencies. You gotta look at it with the REO assets. Yes, we have $130 million of CECL on the balance sheet book, and obviously we have $500 million or $481 million of delinquencies on the balance sheet book. We also have $520 million of REO assets that we took another twelve and a half million of impairment this quarter, took twenty and a half the prior quarter. Before those loans were transferred to REO, we had booked CECL reserves on those. There's about $85 million of reserves sitting in the REO book. That REO book has been written down by $85 million.

You've gotta take that 85, you gotta take the 130, and you've gotta divide it over the REO and delinquency book, which puts your ratio more like 1.7, 1.8 times, and that's probably the right ratio. To answer your second question, a couple of parts of your question I want to address. One is, yes, we've guided to 15-25 in realized losses going forward, but not all of those will be delinquencies. Some of those will be REO. You've gotta look at those buckets together. That's how we look at it.

Third, yes, we are guiding that in this market, given the interest rate environment, given the fact that we've engaged brokers and we're getting more price discovery on assets, that it's hard, you know, hard to sit here and tell you exactly what the numbers will be. If past performance is an indication of future events, given this rate environment, we think the range of CECL reserves we'll be booking, including impairment on REO, is probably in the same range for the next few quarters. Does that help answer that question?

Yes, definitely. Lastly, I think I missed the weighted average of the interest rate on the portfolio, which is 6.49%. Can you parse out the weighted average cash pay rate or current pay rate?

Sure. I can do that for you. Yeah, 6.49 is the pay rate. Another, you know, call it 25 basis points of that is origination and exit fees that we accrued over time. That is cash. The other $25 million, you know, is PIK. I wanna talk about the PIK a little bit 'cause we had some commentary on the call. I think it's helpful for you guys. During the quarter, we booked just about $5 million of PIK interest on our bridge loans. Okay, we have about $2 million PIK interest on our mezz and PE. That's standard. That's how mezz and PE operates. You put on a mezz and PE behind an agency, you get a certain pay rate and the rest is a PIK.

That's always happened since the beginning of time on our, on our mezz and PE. On the balance sheet business, the bridge business, the PIK for the quarter was down to $5 million. If you remember going back about a year ago, that PIK was probably about $18 million. Certainly it's come down a lot. It's a lot smaller portion of our earnings for a few reasons. One, SOFRs dropped. Two, we've worked out a lot of the loans, and we've reset them at current rates, and the PIK has now been paid or recovered and doesn't have PIK going forward. As Ivan mentioned, we're working on a bunch of deals now, some pretty big ones, that we're gonna get a fair share of that PIK paid back, and then it won't have PIK going forward.

I'm thinking that in that all-in rate that we gave you of 7.03 was probably $5 million-ish of balance sheet loan PIK, maybe $2 million-ish of mezz and PE PIK. I think the balance sheet PIK will actually go down because when we work these loans out, there won't be PIK. I'm thinking that $5 million a quarter goes down to probably, like, $4 million a quarter on the balance sheet loans.

Okay, great. Thanks for the color.

Thank you. I'm showing no additional questions at this time. I'd like to now turn the conference back to Ivan Kaufman for any additional or closing remarks.

Thank you, everybody, for your participation today, and everybody have a great weekend.

Thank you. This brings us to the end of today's meeting. We appreciate your time and participation. You may now disconnect.