Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. My name is Kelvin and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Next Point Real Estate Finance first quarter 2026 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn Nicole over to Kristen Griffith, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good day, everyone, and welcome to NextPoint Real Estate Finance Conference Call to review the company's results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2026. On the call today are Paul Richards, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Matt McGriner, Executive Vice President and Chief Investment Officer. As a reminder, this call is being webcast to the company's website at www.nrep.nextpoint.com. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that this conference call contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that are based on management's current expectations, assumptions, and beliefs. Listeners should not place a new reliance on any forward-looking statements and are encouraged to review the company's annual report on form 10k and the company's other filings with the sec for a more complete discussion of risk and other factors that could affect the forward looking statements the statements made during this conference call speak as only as of today's date and except as required by law interrupt does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward looking statements this conference call also includes an analysis of non-GAAP financial measures. For a more complete discussion of these non-GAAP financial measures, see the company's presentation that was filed earlier today. I would now like to turn the call over to Paul Richards. Please go ahead, Paul.

Thanks, Kristen, and good morning, everyone. I'll walk through our quarterly results, cover the balance sheet, and provide guidance for Q2 before turning it over to Matt for a deeper dive on the portfolio and macro lending environment. For the first quarter, we reported net income of $0.42 per deluded share compared to $0.70 for Q1 2025. The decrease was driven by small mark-to-mark declines on preferred stock and warrants, as well as a decrease in the change in net assets related to consolidated CMBS VIEs. Earnings available for distribution was 43 cents per diluted share in Q1 compared to 41 cents per diluted share in the same time period of 2025. Cash available for distribution was 58 cents per diluted share in Q1 compared to 45 cents per diluted share in the same period of 2025. We paid a regular dividend of $0.50 per share in the first quarter, which was 1.16 times covered by cash available for distribution. On April 28, 2026, the Board declared a dividend of $0.50 per share payable for the second quarter of 2026. Book value per share decreased slightly by 0.3% from Q4 2025 to $18.96 per diluted share, primarily driven by unrealized losses on our preferred stock investments and stock warrants. Turning to new investments during the quarter. The company funded over $30 million on two loans that both pay a monthly coupon in the mid-teens. I want to highlight what is, in our view, the most important development of the quarter and, frankly, of this week. We have successfully refinanced $180 million of senior unsecured notes that were maturing on May 1st. We replaced those 5.75% fixed rate notes with a new $242 million total return swap facility priced at SOFR plus 375 basis points with a three-year term and one year extension option. This transaction does several things. First, it removes the largest near-term liability over Hank on our balance sheet. Second, the floating rate structure aligns with our floating rate asset base and gives us refi optionality as the curve evolves. Third, the upside gives us approximately $45 million of incremental capacity to deploy into our pipeline at the double-digit coupons we are seeing today. And fourth, the facility allows for back lever optionality on eligible positions, which expands our origination capacity without requiring additional unsecured note issuances. We engaged more than 20 counterparties across bank and non-bank channels to optimize this structure, and the SOFR plus 375 pricing came inside comparable mortgage read executions in the high yield baby bond and terminal markets. Importantly, we did this without diluting common shareholders at a discount to book combined with the 21 point million dollars we raised in our series c preferred and the re-remic execution i'll discuss in a moment we head into the back half of 26 with one of the cleanest most flexible capital structures in the commercial mortgage reach sector capital recycling and book value accretion we executed a re-remic of our friends 2017 k62 b piece during the quarter we sold the bps to mizuho at 92 spot 7 having purchased it at 68 spot 69 in 2021 and reinvested into the hrr tranche of the new structure and the 18.5 percent yield that single transaction generated 46 per share of book value appreciation reduced repo financing by 75 million and is expected to drive approximately 34 cents per share of annual cat accretion going forward this is the kind of execution that does not happen by accident and it speaks to the value we extract from a portfolio of seasoned well-written structured credit positions. Moving to the portfolio and balance sheet. Our portfolio is comprised of 90 investments with a total outstanding balance of 1.1 billion. Our investments are allocated across sectors as follows. 39.4% multifamily, 35.9% life sciences, 17.1% single-family rental, 3.9% storage, 1.6% marina, and 2.1% industrial. Our fixed income portfolio is allocated across across investments as follows. 19% CMVBPs, 22% MES loans, 24.5% PREP equity investments, 15.6% revolving credit facilities, 10.1% senior loans, 4.2% Iowa strips, and 4.6 promissory notes. The asset collateralizing our investments are allocated geographically as follows. 28.7% Massachusetts, 17.6% Texas, 5.9% Florida, 4.9% Georgia, 5.2% California, and 4.7% Maryland, with the remainder across states with less than 4% exposure, reflecting our heavy preference to Sunbelt markets, with Massachusetts and California exposure heavily weighted towards life science. The collateral on our portfolio is 81.2% stabilized, with 59.9 loan-to-value and a weighted average DSCR of one spot three, two times. We have $665.2 million of debt outstanding, with a weighted average cost of 5.2% and has a weighted average maturity of 0.8 years. Our secure debt is collateralized by $571.3 million of collateral with a weighted average of 3.8 years and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.7 times. Moving to our guidance for the second quarter, earnings available for distribution, $0.43 per diluted share at the midpoint with a range of $0.38 on the low end and $0.48 on the high end. Cash available for distribution, $0.54 per diluted share at the midpoint with a range of $0.49 on the low end and $0.59 on the high end. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Matt for a detailed discussion of the portfolio in the current market environment.

Appreciate it, Paul. I'm excited to walk through another strong quarter for NREF and to thank our team and our partners for executing in what continues to be a noisy macro backdrop, including and especially the exciting and accretive financing completed with Mizuho that Paul just mentioned. Now on to the verticals. On the residential front, and this is where we have our largest exposure at roughly 56% of the portfolio between SFR and multifamily, we are now firmly in the supply trough that I've been describing on these calls for several quarters. The thesis is playing out. We're coming off a record national multifamily supply cycle. Net deliveries peaked at approximately 695,000 units in the trailing 12 months ended Q4 2024. For context, that compares to roughly 282,000 units of average annual delivery since 2001. COSTAR now forecast 2026 deliveries to fall approximately 49 percent from their 2025 levels, with another 20 percent decline forecast for 2027. 2027 and 2028 forecasts have been revised down meaningfully from prior estimates as On the supply side, multifamily construction starts are running approximately 70 percent below their 2022 peak, and that is locking in a multi-year supply trough. On the demand side, the structural backstop has not changed. The cost to own a home in our markets remains roughly three times the cost to rent, and there's no reasonable mortgage rate scenario that closes that gap quickly. Our on-the-ground leasing data is consistent with the inflection thesis. Putting it all together, we believe the second half of 2026 and 2027 will be meaningfully better than 2025 for residential operators, and by extension, for the residential debt collateral on our balance sheet. On to life sciences. I want to spend a minute on here because I know it's a sector that has attracted some discussion, and I think the conversation deserves a little more nuance than it's been getting. Our exposure is concentrated, intentional, and increasingly de-risked. Our air life project is now 71% leased, anchored by Lila Sciences, a pioneering-backed AI and Life Science Company on a long-term lease for 245,000 square feet with options to expand. The active pipeline of RFPs, LOIs, and leases on the project today represents approximately 92 percent of the remaining vacant square footage. This is a high conviction underwrite into a project where the leasing momentum and credit improvement are visible in the data, not aspirational. An additional and increasingly relevant point I want to drive home is the demand funnel of our life science collateral as wide materially because of ai not in spite of it ai companies need exactly the same purpose-built infrastructure that traditional lab tenants need power density cooling capacity structural floor loads ventilation and vibration tolerances they cannot retrofit older converted assets at any rent they need the bones and they will pay for the bones likewise is exactly that asset in the right sub market adjacent to mit in the broader cambridge cluster our life science exposure is not a generic bet on the sector it's a concentrated bet on first to fill infrastructure-grade assets in elite educational districts that are now also ai corridors the credit profile of these assets is imper is improving not deteriorating as the tenant universe widens moreover our capital was largely placed in the last 12 to 18 months at a reset basis that prime billions of dollars of equity versus loans originated in the go-go days of post-COVID liquidity craze, where capital was much less discerning. On to self-storage. Storage is in the cyclical bottoming process. Industry-wide, second-quarter earnings for the public REITs were consistent with guidance and largely in line with sell-side estimates. Expectation for the full year is roughly flat revenue and 50 to 150 basis point declines in NOI. Supply remains muted also. According to ARTI, facilities under construction are less than 3% of existing supply, that's the equilibrium benchmark. Forecasted deliveries over the next several years could be as low as 1% of existing stock. And combined with the difficulty of bank financing for new development, the cost of land and materials, and a higher rate environment than the 2015-2020 development cycle, we expect supply discipline to persist and pricing power to return. Our NSP portfolio continues to outperform the industry meaningfully. Occupancy in the low 90s near the top of the industry, with rent growth and NOI performance materially ahead of the sector decline, almost 300 to 500 basis points. Moving to our pipelines. Today, it consists of approximately $190 million of in-ref investments across 11 active deals, three closed and eight under-executed LOI, plus an additional $275 million of structured product opportunities, specifically across multifamily senior loans and CMBS pools. These are real deals at real spreads. The pricing power remains very much in our favor of disciplined capital providers like us. The pipeline's blended return profile is well in excess of our cost of capital in the new TRS facility that Paul mentioned, which is already driving modest increases in CAD, which we expect to see continuing throughout the back half of 2026. Before I close, I want to take a moment on something that I believe will be a meaningful differentiator for NREF over the next several years. We are deploying AI across our underwriting, portfolio monitoring, credit risk, and operations functions, and we believe we are ahead of the Commercial Mortgage Read peer group on this. On the underwriting side, we are piloting AI-assisted deal screening and diligence across CMBS, mezzanine, and preferred equity originations. The system ingests rent rolls, comps, market data, and our target is a 50% reduction in underwriting cycle time. That means more deals are being evaluated, sharper credit work, faster execution, all without expanding headcount. On the portfolio monitoring side, we're deploying always-on surveillance across all 92-plus investments. Machine learning-driven signals on occupancy, rent growth, debt service coverage ratios, and sponsor health flag risk before it shows up in the financials. We believe this will result in earlier identification of watchlist assets and meaningfully tighten the feedback loop between credit underwriting and portfolio surveillance. We're also building predictive credit models for borrower default probability, LTV stress paths, and loss given defaults. This reinforces our existing discipline underwriting with data-driven early warnings. It does not replace our investment committee process. and on operations and reporting we're using generative ai to accelerate investor reporting sec filings prep earning supplement supplemental draft drafting and internal research freeing our team for higher value analytical work our roadmap is sequenced foundation in q2 and q3 of this year scale across the four full portfolio by q4 and full optimization throughout 2027 we expect this to translate into faster decisions, sharper risk management, and a more scalable platform for growth. A few closing points on capital on the balance sheet. Net debt to equity continues to run below one-times among the lowest in commercial mortgagery space. Combined with the re-rim execution that Paul just mentioned in the new TRS facility, we do indeed have the capital structure flexibility to be opportunistic on origination and on our own stock. Speaking of which, at current levels, we continue to trade at a meaningful discount at book value of approximately $19 per share. We've been clear that we view buybacks at this discount as an accretive use of capital, and you should expect to see us continue to buy back stock opportunistically alongside the funding pipeline I just walked through. And given our liquidity position and having successfully refinanced near-term maturities, the two are not mutually exclusive. Our Series C preferred programs continue to provide flexible, non-dilutive capital. Our book value is stable, our dividend coverage is sound, leverage is low, and the portfolio's credit profile is improving. That is a setup we feel very good about heading into the second half of 2026. To summarize, a strong quarter on earnings and credit, a transformative refinancing on the liability side, a continuing supply-driven tailwind in the residential space, a de-risking and broadening demand picture in life science, a robust pipeline of accretive deployment, and an AI platform initiative that we believe will set NREF apart over the coming years. As always, I want to thank the team here for their hard work, and now we'd like to turn the call over to the operator to take your questions.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press the star button followed by the number one on your telephone keypad.

If you would like to withdraw your question please press star one again one moment please for your first question your first question comes from the line of jade romani of kbw please go ahead thank you very much um rates are trending higher year to date and was wondering what you think the impact to uh the seri recovery outlook will be particularly around multi-family as bridge loans taken out during the coveted years are up for maturity?

Yeah, it's a good question. What I can say is in terms of like the last, I'd say, four to six weeks with rates going up as a result of geopolitical tensions, the processes that we've seen that started prior to that time in terms of the capital markets transactions, both on loan sales and investment sales. They've all continued without, I would say, material disruption. There have been, I'd say, some slight walkbacks in terms of, you know, buyers underwriting, you know, a five and a half percent all-in rate on a Freddie or Fannie agency, and then, you know, the 10-year moves against them, and so they'll seek a little retrade. So nothing that would halt it, or I would say, you know, liquidity is still very, very plentiful on the multifamily side. And I think what's even more important than that is, you know, we, and I think the broader public read universe in their reporting yesterday and today are really starting to see the fundamentals in multifamily sector turn and firm up. You know, concessions are getting weaker in our own portfolio, for example, concessions are down by 50% from Q4. So, all that is kind of offsetting, I think, any near-term interest rate rise as it relates to multifamily.

The life science update has been quite impressive, and I was wondering if you could give some thoughts. Do you view the alewife exposure as unique to NRF, or are you also seeing green shoots elsewhere in the portfolio. And then overall, do you view NRAP's exposure as better than the market? One of the commercial mortgage rates downgraded a loan to RISC-V and took a quite large reserve on that. They're also expecting an REO in life science, and much of it is vacant in the sector. So just looking for some additional thoughts there.

Yeah, you bet. I think the important point on our project in Alewife is, again, it's brand new. It's purpose built with incredible infrastructure. And the land that the assets built on was assembled over, you know, years, you know, three to five years, not, you know, it wasn't just a spec built. It was very intentional and in a cluster built, you know, sub market. I think that for one is unique. Our own investment in terms of the loan to cost, it's roughly, you know, 30%. You know, that is our unique sponsor relationship there and the ability for us to provide capital at a time, like I said, in the last, you know, kind of 12 to 18 months where there was literally no capital available in life science sector. So I think the loans, you know, that I've seen as well that you're referring to were, again, I think, you know, originated in a more speculative environment, you know, with more hope to lease on the outskirts of the cluster markets that we have exposure. So, again, the Cambridges and the Longwood and Fenway districts, these locations are going to be the first to fill locations, and we're seeing real depth in the project leasing in terms of the marketing coming out of big pharma and in the venture space. You know, I think the green shoots you can point to or the biotech index is, you know, nearing cyclical highs. Venture capital is, you know, I think at a high since 2021. And then, you know, again, the AI spend and the assets that AI needs just widens the demand funnel for us, for our assets in particular. we're in the right locations where they want to be and they have the critical infrastructure um that's demanded by their you know their compute and other and other um uh yeah real estate needs so i do think we are different i do think our exposure is different and i think it's again more recent um at a reset basis uh versus you know loans that were originated perhaps in 2020 2021 on in 2022.

Thanks very much.

Thanks, Jay.

Your next question comes from the line of Gabriel Poggi or Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. I want to actually piggyback on what Jay was just asking. It sounds like Ale Wife is doing great.

Some other exposures, Holly Spring, Vacaville, California, you guys have low attachment points, but it looks like the senior mortgages are due maybe kind of by the end of the year just any color you can give on expectations for the underlying asset whether it's a refi or a sale etc I think would be helpful as it pertains to light science exposure away from um airways yeah great great question um and thanks for it Gabe so uh Holly Springs and Vacaville are both um uh advanced manufacturing assets which um if anything is stronger you know in the last you know six months it's that uh versus versus life science so um the holly springs uh underlying collateral um i believe is is now topped out um has a tenant and uh i think will probably likely be refied out of those uh out of that deal um uh it's actually the tenant's a battery manufacturer for the department And so they're seeing a ton of growth right now, and I think that I see that that exposure being reduced by by a loan payoff at some point this year. Same thing goes to Vacaville. It's got, I think, you know, eight to 10 project names in and around both semiconductor manufacturing and advanced manufacturing in the pharmaceutical side. to your point the detachment is very low there so I think there's a lot of ways to win and I would say that we'd probably be taken out of that asset in the next 12 months as well and then one thing that is on the horizon that could be good and bad is ALY being repaid I think with the success of leasing there going from zero to 71 percent lease and the tenant quality and then the clustering that's happening. Like I said, there's RFPs and LOIs on that asset that almost get it to 100% full. We could see that capital come back to us in the next 12 months as well.

Got it. That's really helpful. And then one more kind of just on the accounting side.

In the other income, right, the $17 million, can you guys break out kind of the components of that all shift for us before we get the cue or do we need to wait for the cue for that yeah it's a great question i think we wait to the queue for that one it'll give you uh you know a good breakdown of the other income and uh you know we can provide a breakdown of the supplement as well too going forward for uh you know for better uh analysis okay cool thanks guys thanks good there are no further questions at this time and with that i will now turn the call back over to management team for final closing of months.

Please go ahead.

Yeah, thank you again for everyone's participation this morning and look forward to speaking to you next quarter and providing another good update. Have a great day. Thanks.

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