Good day. I'd like to remind everyone that today's call and webcast are being recorded. Please note that they are the property of Apollo Commercial Real Estate Finance, and that any unauthorized broadcast in any form is strictly prohibited. Information about the audio replay of this call is available in our earnings press release. I'd also like to call your attention to the customary safe harbor disclosure in our press release regarding forward-looking statements. Today's conference call and webcast may include forward-looking statements and projections, and we ask that you refer to our most recent filings with the SEC for important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements and projections. In addition, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP measures on this call, which management believes are relevant to assessing the company's financial performance. These measures are reconciled to GAAP figures in our earnings presentation, which is available in the Shareholders section of our website. We do not, and undertake any obligation to update our forward-looking statements or projections unless required by law. To obtain copies of our latest SEC filings, please visit our website at www.apollocref.com or call us at 212-515-3200. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to the company's Chief Executive Officer, Stuart Rothstein. Thank you, operator, and good morning and thank you to those of us joining us today on Apollo Commercial Real Estate Finance, Inc.'s second quarter 2022 earnings call. I am joined today by Anastasia Mironova, our Chief Financial Officer. The H1 of the year was the most active in ARI's history, as our team completed a record $3.1 billion of new loan originations on behalf of the company. The robust pace of deployment enabled ARI to effectively and efficiently deploy capital, including the $530 million of net equity received from approximately $1.2 billion of gross repayment. Importantly, ARI achieved distributable earnings that covered the 35-cent per share quarterly dividend and is well-positioned for the remainder of the year. While the broader Apollo CRE debt team remains active in the market, we can now be selective with respect to additional deployment on behalf of ARI while continuing to produce distributable earnings that support the $0.35 per share quarterly common stock dividend. Also, reaffirming prior comments, ARI is in position to repay the 2022 convertible senior notes that mature in August with available capital and without having to complete any public capital markets transactions. Shifting to the portfolio, ARI's loan portfolio totaled $8.9 billion at quarter end, a 19% increase over the second quarter of 2021. Credit quality remained stable. As evidenced by the repayments in the quarter, our borrowers continue to achieve business plans and have access to capital to refinance our loans. As a reminder, 98% of the portfolio is comprised of floating rate loans. As illustrated on page 15 of our financial results, the increase in benchmark rates over the past quarter has had a clear benefit to ARI's net interest income, and we are clearly well-positioned for further increases in benchmark rates. It is also worth noting that 40+% of ARI's portfolio is comprised of loans on European assets. We continue to remain comfortable with ARI's European credit exposure, and as page nine of the financial results highlights, ARI has used local market financing and hedging to effectively mitigate any currency risk. With respect to repayment activity, year-to-date, 11 loans representing approximately $1 billion fully repaid, and there was additional $200 million of partial repayment. Included in the second quarter repayments was one of ARI's larger New York City office loans, which contributed to ARI's overall office exposure being reduced to 20%. We continue also to make progress with our focus loans. Construction has begun on the Fulton Street multifamily tower in Brooklyn. The project is now known as The Brook, and we are excited about ARI's partnership with The Witkoff Company to execute the development. Support for the project is evidenced by the fully negotiated construction loan we received from two well-regarded real estate lenders, which is expected to close in the next few weeks. It is also worth noting that operating performance of the Mayflower Hotel continues to improve. As mentioned on prior calls, we are actively working on selling the hotel and are encouraged by the response from potential investors. Finally, with respect to One Eleven West 57th Street, unit closings have begun with additional units under contract expected to close in the coming months. The traffic numbers are strong and have been boosted recently with more foreign buyers returning to the market. Interest in the building remains high, with several active negotiations currently taking place, and the response to the furnished model residences is positive. That being said, there is still work to be done with respect to increasing the pace of sales activity, which we anticipate will pick up in the fall coinciding with the robust marketing campaign and finished amenities. With that, I will turn the call over to Anastasia to review ARI's financial results for the quarter. Thank you, Stuart, and good morning, everyone. For the second quarter, we reported another quarter of stable financial results with distributable earnings of $49.5 million or $0.35 per share. GAAP net income available to common stockholders was $67.9 million or $0.48 per share, and diluted net income of $0.44 per share. GAAP net book value per share prior to the general CECL allowance and depreciation increased slightly to $15.19 as compared to $15.01 at the end of the first quarter, primarily attributable to net unrealized gains on our foreign currency and interest hedges. We have previously highlighted, we take several steps to mitigate our foreign currency risk, given that 44% of the loans in our portfolio are secured by properties in Europe. We hedge our exposure on net equity basis for all foreign currency denominated transactions by entering into forward currency contracts at closing. As we have witnessed during this period of significant fluctuations in foreign currency rates, our hedging strategy has proven effective. Our portfolio remains well positioned for rising interest rates as 98% of our loans are floating rate. At quarter-end, 87% of our U.S. and 100% of our U.K. floating rate loans were in excess of their respective floors. Therefore, we have begun to see the benefits of the increased rates flow through to our net interest income. An additional increase of 50 basis points in the U.S. and the U.K. would lead to an incremental $0.04 and $0.03 per share respectively of net interest income. As of June thirtieth, our general CECL allowance increased slightly quarter-over-quarter due to new loan originations and a more adverse macroeconomic outlook, which was partially offset by the impact of portfolio seasoning. With respect to specific CECL allowance, during this quarter, we reversed $10 million of previously recorded allowance against our loan secured with a multifamily development in Brooklyn known as The Brook. The reversal is primarily driven by additional value creation in the underlying property achieved through development activities performed to date. This reversal in specific CECL allowance was partially offset by a $7 million allowance we recorded this quarter against a loan secured by a hotel in Atlanta, Georgia. The hotel has had a slower than anticipated recovery following the onset of COVID-19 pandemic. The aggregate changes during the quarter resulted in overall CECL reserve of approximately 2.2% of amortized cost basis and is relatively flat quarter-over-quarter and compared to year-end. With respect to our borrowings, we are in compliance with all covenants and continue to maintain strong liquidity. We ended the quarter with $266 million of total liquidity, which was a combination of cash and undrawn credit capacity on our existing facilities and $1.7 billion of unencumbered loan assets. Our debt-to-equity ratio at quarter end increased to three as our portfolio continues to migrate towards predominantly first mortgage loans. With that, we'd like to open the line for questions. Operator, please go ahead. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, please press the pound key. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. One moment for our first question. That will come from the line of Doug Harter with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Thanks. Stuart, I'm hoping you could talk a little bit more about your current liquidity, especially in light of the upcoming convert maturity. You know, just kind of how that might impact liquidity balances going forward and what that might mean for future loan growth. Yeah, I think it's a good question, Doug. Look, I think even with paying off the convert, you know, I think we're still on track at this point to end the quarter, you know, end the third quarter, with call it several hundred million dollars of liquidity. I think for us, you know, as we think about that liquidity and how aggressively we wanna put it into new deployment, I think it's part driven by opportunities that we see in the market. Then I would say it's also part driven by, you know, our evolving view of what we think expected repayments throughout the rest of the year will look like just given what's going on in the overall market. I think if things play out as expected, I think we are comfortably sitting on, you know, call it $several hundred million of deployable liquidity that could support, you know, with back leverage, you know, call it somewhere between $750 million-$1 billion of deployment. I think, you know, as I indicated in my remarks, we're feeling very comfortable about where we are from an earnings perspective for the rest of the year. I think we are going to be, you know, selective and, you know, try and find things that are really interesting as we think about deploying that capital. Yeah. I guess just more on how you kind of get to that, you know, ending the quarter with still $200 million. Is that sort of tapping into some of the unencumbered assets or kind of using repayments as they come in to kind of replenish? Yeah, it's a combination of both. I think one of the, you know, one of the big events is what I referred to in my remarks, which is the construction loan on the development in Brooklyn. What that allows us to do is pull out a fair bit of the capital that we funded into the project to date. That capital will theoretically go back in over time as the development moves along. It initially puts a fair bit of capital back in our pocket, and then there's some other larger transactions that we've created during the year where we will complete the financing on those, and that will give us increased liquidity as well. Great. Thank you. Sure. Thank you. One moment for our next question. That will come from the line of Jade Rahmani with KBW. Please go ahead. Thank you very much. Stuart, as you consider the outlook for commercial real estate for ARI's portfolio, for the transitional lending market in particular, what benchmark in the fixed income market do you think matters most? What should we be focused on? For example, the 10-Year Treasury has declined meaningfully of late. That could suggest a soft landing in terms of where cap rates ultimately settle. Would you agree with that, or do you believe it's more reflective of the current risk-off environment and not really signaling anything with respect to commercial real estate? Maybe if you could just provide what you look at and also ring fence some magnitude of severity or turbulence that you're kind of expecting. Yeah, look, I think, you know, first and foremost, you know, at the end of the day, Jade, we spend a lot of time looking more at, you know, call it broader speaking macro data as opposed to just interest rate movements as we think about what's going on vis-a-vis the broader economy. Are we gonna have a soft landing? Are we gonna have a hard landing? What's going on with inflation, et cetera. As we think about the environment into which we're lending into, we try and use the real-time data that we are getting from the loans that we are long and what we're hearing from borrowers, both with respect to those that are loans in the ARI portfolio and those loans that are elsewhere within the broader Apollo real estate loan portfolio. We also obviously are getting a fair bit of data from what Apollo does on the real estate equity side of our business, and we're also getting, you know, beneficially a fair bit of data, broadly speaking from what, you know, others of Apollo are doing away from real estate and what they're seeing in the sectors or industries that they invest in. There's also a fair bit of macroeconomic data produced at Apollo. That, you know, I would say broadly speaking is how we start to think about where's the economy headed, what are we seeing, and how do we think about deploying new capital, or what does it mean for our existing portfolio. We don't ignore interest rates in the sense that it certainly has an impact on how we think about pricing and what others away from the Apollo environment might be thinking. I would say we come back to data, and I would say as we think about new opportunities and as we think about even just protecting ourselves in the current Apollo portfolio, I would say, given my earlier comments about us getting somewhat ahead of things from a deployment perspective, you know, I would say we are certainly approaching new deployment with a more cautious view as to what may happen in the economy. I think until we see some real evidence of a, you know, achievable soft landing, I think we will continue to take that somewhat cautious view in terms of underwriting new business plans or even as we think through asset managing the existing portfolio and the various requests we get from borrowers from time to time. In that data that you're tracking, in terms of the real-time data from the loan portfolio as well as the other areas you referenced, are you seeing anything pointing in either direction of soft versus hard landing? Specifically with ARI's credit outlook, how are you feeling about the portfolio? Are there other areas aside from the watch list assets, including the Atlanta loan that we should be attuned to? I mean, it's a broad question, and let me try and answer it in various pieces if I can. You know, obviously, if you think about, you know, the various either geographies or property types that are, you know, important to the ARI portfolio, generally speaking, hotels are performing quite well. You know, putting aside the Atlanta transaction, which just to be clear, the Atlanta hotel is still cash flow positive and covering debt service. So, you know, the definition of challenge can be debated, but, and then take my earlier comments on the Mayflower. And then look at our hotel portfolio more broadly. Certainly we continue to see positive trends throughout the hotel portfolio. I think the office portfolio, obviously, I commented earlier on the repayment of one of our major New York City office exposures, which was a refinancing on the back of some very successful leasing activity. I think, you know, generally speaking to comments I've made on prior earnings calls, I would say newly created office space is generally getting an audience as I think you know I think there's many companies still in the mindset of in order to get people back to the office, you need to offer them more modern, more highly amenitized office space. That's a theme we continue to see throughout the portfolio. I would say on the, you know, for sale side of things, there continues to be activity. Broadly speaking, it's not as robust as it was in 2021, but we're still seeing transactions close. We're still seeing units put under contract. I think, you know, I think at some level, you know, all of that activity that I just referenced, you know, in some respects supports the notion that there's still, the economy is still churning along and wouldn't be surprising to see the need for continued rate movements to sort of cool things off a bit. For now, you know, the watch list represents those assets that we're concerned about, and generally speaking, the portfolio beyond that is, fairly stable to performing quite well. Thanks for the comments. Appreciate it. Sure. Thank you. One moment for our next question. That will come from the line of Eric Hagen with BTIG. Please go ahead. Eric. Eric, thanks. Good morning. A couple follow-ups on the unsecured. Hey, good morning. Can you guys hear me okay? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, good. Eric? Okay, thanks. Yeah. A couple of follow-ups on the unsecured debt. Can you get more specific around the borrowing rate that you expect to pay from drawing on the unencumbered assets? Is there a level at which you'd be constructive on possibly even issuing here if spreads continue to tighten further out over the last few weeks? Yeah, look, I think it's fair to say, generally speaking, that the repo market has moved a little bit, away from in favor of the borrower and more towards in favor of the lender. I think that's not surprising, you know, as you think about what's going on in the broader securitization markets, the CMBS market, the CRE CLO market, as things have gotten a little bit more expensive or spreads have gapped out. You know, some of that has taken place in the market or the banks that we borrow from as well. That being said, you know, I'd say we're still borrowing at rates that work extremely well for us. I'd call that, at a high level, benchmark plus, you know, high ones to low twos, depending on the asset and depending on how much leverage we're using. As I think about borrowing at those levels versus what might be available in the broader public capital markets, you know, whether it be, you know, the term loan B market or the convertible notes market, I would say continuing to use the bank market and sort of maintaining optionality before we really do anything with real duration to it still seems to be the much more cost-effective way to do things right now. I think, again, being inside the Apollo umbrella, I think we've benefited from the efforts of the firm overall as well as some folks specifically on the real estate team in doing a very effective job of making sure we continue to broaden our group of bank lenders, so we always have multiple places to take assets. Long-winded way of saying I don't envision us doing anything in the public capital markets given what we're seeing on offer today. Gotcha. That's helpful, sir. Thank you. Sure. When you guys think about overall conditions in the U.S. and in Europe, and you see the euro weakening versus the dollar, how sensitive do you think the demand is for commercial real estate, or how sensitive will it develop with respect to that migration of capital? Are you talking about the demand for assets in Europe in light of the currency movement? Exactly. Yep. Yeah, look, I think sitting here today, if you look at the European market, there still seems to be, you know, a healthy level of capital looking on the equity side for opportunities. I would say, again, no different than what I would say, about the U.S. I think there's a lot of capital available. I think everybody is trying to figure out where the overall economy is headed. I think we've said you know, on prior calls, and I'd say it today, Europe probably feels potentially closer to a recession today than the U.S. does, though both have the ability to achieve it if things don't go. Well, I think people are clearly taking a more measured view of what the next few years look like. I also think lending has pulled back a little bit, so I think there's clearly demand for assets, but I think volumes will be down. It will take longer for people to get comfortable and complete transactions. There's still an open functioning market, and there are still, you know, bids at various price levels. Gotcha. Well, thank you very much. Sure. Thank you. One moment for our next question. That will come from the line of Steve DeLaney with JMP Securities. Please go ahead. Good morning, Stuart and Anastasia. Congrats on the progress in Brooklyn and the New York office repayments. Great quarter. You know, repayments in the H1 of the year were pretty healthy at $1.2 billion. Could you give us some sense, Stuart, of what you expect over the H2 of the year relative to that $1.2 billion figure? Yeah. Look, I think. Yeah, I think it's a fair question. Look, I think if things, generally speaking, go according to plan, and that includes some, call it, biased sort of ranking of things on our part, I think you're potentially looking at another, you know, call it, $few hundred million of repayments on sort of a net equity basis, which sort of implies $400 million-$500 million of gross repayments if you think about it, on a gross level. I think we're, you know, for the stuff that we expect to get repaid in Q3, we feel pretty comfortable about that because we know a fair bit of it is, you know, effectively just moving towards closing at this point. As we move a little bit further out in the year, obviously a little bit more risk to those things happening. Generally speaking, the market is functioning. We expect, you know, to be pretty close in our estimate of what we think will happen, and I think that sort of implies probably ±$400 million of repayments between now and the end of the year, which will give us $200 million to deploy should we choose to deploy it. Okay, great. The $400 million-$500 million compares to the 1.2 figure. Yeah, exactly. Just 'cause they're both gross figures. Yes, they're both gross. Okay, great. Thank you. Stuart, you know, short-term rates are probably. Everybody's worried about the economy, you know, longer term, but I think short-term rates are sort of top of mind, you know, for the market. You know, 150 now on LIBOR, maybe we're 350 by the end of the year. It's a pretty significant impact of a couple hundred basis points when you're making $100 million loans to people. In your front-end underwriting, how much sensitivity stress do you put on the cost to carry? To what extent would you require, you know, caps or swaps be obtained by your borrowers? We will always require a cap. You know, 100% of the things we will do will be interest rate hedge. Hedge will typically cause someone to hedge for the initial borrowing period, and any extension beyond that will require an extension of any hedging instrument. We're certainly well protected from that perspective. As we think about cost of carry, we're basically, you know, using the capped cost and the forward curve to think about what's needed inside the deal in order to cover that debt service over the initial period. Yeah. Yeah. Makes perfect sense. I just wanted to get confirmation because I'd asked the question before and I've received answers that weren't nearly as clear as what you just stated. Maybe I'm getting better. Thank you. Maybe I'm getting better at this. Yeah. Asking the question. You're doing pretty good. Last question from me. Miami. I think we all took note of Citadel's decision to relocate its headquarters. With respect to your Miami property, how far away are you from where the current path of, you know, new office development to support, you know, incoming corporate tenants. You're sort of more mixed use is my memory of having walked the property, you know, with you. Is it feasible that over the next three to five years that more decisions like Citadel could positively impact your exposure there in Miami? Yeah, look, I think Citadel aside, and it's obviously great news to Miami. Look, Miami, I can only describe as a clear post-pandemic winner, right? Right. There's just, you know, demographic shift, tax implications, you know, more working remotely or in different locations for people. There's just been so much positive news for Miami, and I think Citadel only adds to that. I think we are maintaining, you know, full flexibility with respect to what our sites in Miami could become. If you've looked at, you know, if you were part of the various discussions over the last six months, certainly some type of boutique office is possible, but there are many other thoughts as well. I think the net-net of all of that, Steve, is that I would say the incoming dialogue to us with respect to the sites in Miami continues to be increasing and more positive. Optimistically, I would say that over the next three-six months, we should be in a position to have a much clearer picture about what the resolution for us will be on those sites. When you own a piece of property, it's nice when the phone rings, doesn't it? Yeah. Incoming calls are a good thing. From an owner's rep or something. Yeah. You know, I think there's. You know, I don't wanna overpromise by Q3 earnings call, but I think between the next two earnings calls, there'll be definitely some commentary from us on what the path forward is on Miami. Well, thanks for the color. Stay well, and, all the best in the H2. Thanks, Steve. You well. Thank you all for participating in today's question and answer session. I would now like to turn the call back over to Stuart Rothstein for any closing remarks. Thank you, operator, and obviously, thanks to everybody who participated this morning. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. You may now disconnect.