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, Inc., 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. 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 shareholder section of our website. We do not 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. Good morning and thank you to those of us joining us on the Apollo Commercial Real Estate Finance 2Q 2023 Earnings Call. As usual, I am joined today by Chief Investment Officer, Scott Wiener, and Anastasia Mironova, ARI's Chief Financial Officer. ARI had another consistent quarter of distributable earnings prior to net realized losses on investments comfortably above the common stock dividend, driven by higher base rate tailwinds in ARI's $8.3 billion floating rate loan portfolio. Over the past 12 months, the weighted average yield of the company's loan portfolio has increased approximately 350 basis points. Despite ARI's solid performance, the real estate market continues to go through a period of recalibration, highlighted by the prevailing negative sentiment around the asset class. Notwithstanding the sentiment, property-level fundamentals across most property types remain stable. However, concerns with respect to refinancing risk and the impact of a potential economic slowdown persist, creating differences of opinion on valuations between buyers, sellers, owners, and lenders. As a result, transaction volumes continue to be muted amidst ongoing price discovery. Within ARI's loan portfolio, there were several positive events that occurred during the quarter. The borrower on ARI's largest office construction loan commitment signed a letter of intent with a global financial institution for a 20-year lease for the entire building, significantly de-risking the transaction. As a reminder, only 18% of ARI's portfolio is comprised of loans secured by office properties, with approximately 60% secured by properties in Western Europe. Beyond the transaction referenced above, which represents 13% of ARI's office exposure, partial repayments totaling approximately $125 million have been received or are in process across another five office loans, encompassing situations whereby the borrowers are paying down between 15% and 20% of the outstanding loan balance and renewing guarantees for carry costs and future leasing costs in exchange for a short period of extended maturity. Year to date, ARI has received $595 million of full or partial loan repayments, and there is an additional $300 million that has or expected to occur during Q3. Elsewhere in the portfolio, the Mayflower Hotel continued to have strong operating performance, with net cash flow up significantly since ARI took ownership and now exceeding pre-pandemic levels. ARI also received a $104 million partial paydown on the loan secured by a portfolio of parking garage in connection with the sale and re-lease of certain collateral. And subsequent to quarter end, ARI received full repayment from the $20 million mezzanine loan secured by the Las Vegas Renaissance Hotel, which had been a risk-graded 4 loan. In general, ARI's borrowers remain engaged on asset management issues, and ongoing dialogue is constructive and focused on borrowers injecting additional equity into transactions in exchange for extension of term. Turning to the Steinway project, this quarter, the decision was made to put all of ARI's loans secured by the asset on non-accrual status. Year to date, through the end of the Q2, unit sales reduced ARI's exposure by approximately $64 million, with a further reduction of $9 million occurring from a unit sale early in the Q3. There is an additional unit under contract that is expected to close in the Q3, which will further reduce ARI's exposure by approximately $40 million. While there has been a modest pick-up in foot traffic and buyer interest resulting in some active negotiations on a handful of units, the velocity of unit sales remains behind expectations. Shifting to the right side of our balance sheet, ARI continues to maintain robust liquidity and has access to additional capital from the company's various secured financing facilities. ARI's lenders remain actively engaged in the sector, with ongoing dialogue around in-place or potential new financing. ARI continues to diversify the company's lender base and expand sources of capital, having entered into a new secured borrowing facility during the quarter with a new counterparty. Lastly, in the Q2, ARI repurchased an additional $37 million of the coming due convertible notes and an additional $10 million post-quarter end, reducing the outstanding balance to $106.76 million. As we look to the remainder of 2023, ARI is well positioned with a portfolio that continues to generate stable distributable earnings while maintaining excess liquidity. We continue to see bright spots across the portfolio and importantly, meaningful borrower engagement. With that, I will turn the call over to Anastasia to review ARI's financial results for the quarter. Thank you, Stuart, good morning, everyone. ARI produced another consistent quarter of financial results in Q2, with distributable earnings prior to net realized loss on investments and realized gain on extinguishment of debt of $65.8 million or $0.46 per share. We declared a common stock dividend of $0.35 per share, the level consistently maintained over the course of the last 13 quarters. This translates to a dividend coverage ratio of 131% and a dividend yield of 12.5%- I'm sorry, 12.4% as of June 30. GAAP net loss was $86.5 million or $0.62 per diluted share of common stock. ARI's portfolio ended the quarter with an outstanding principal balance of $8.6 billion, with a weighted average unlevered yield of 8.6%. During the quarter, ARI funded $131 million of add-on fundings from previously closed loans and received $243 million in loan repayments, including a $60 million full repayment from a loan secured by a hotel in Phoenix, Arizona. During the quarter, there was an increase in the general CECL allowance of $2.1 million, bringing it to 46 basis points of the loan portfolio's amortized cost basis as of June 30. The increase is attributable to a more conservative macroeconomic outlook and changes in remaining expected term for some of our loans. This increase was partially offset by the impact of portfolio seasoning as well as loan prepayments. With respect to the Steinway building, during the quarter, we recorded a $126 million specific CECL Allowance on the junior mezzanine A loan and downgraded the risk rating to a 5. We also increased the previously recorded specific CECL Allowance on the junior mezzanine B loan by $15.5 million, resulting in the full allowance against this position. We therefore, wrote off the junior mezzanine B loan, realizing a loss of $82 million, which was beneficial to us from a tax planning perspective. ARI's book value per share, excluding general CECL reserves and depreciation, was $14.80, representing a 6% decrease from previous quarter end. With respect to our borrowings, ARI is in compliance with all covenants and continues to maintain strong liquidity. As Stuart mentioned, during the quarter, ARI entered into a new $130 million secured credit facility with a counterparty that is new to us, further expanding our capital sources. ARI ended the quarter with $407 million of total liquidity, which was a combination of cash and undrawn credit capacity on existing facilities. Our debt-to-equity ratio at quarter end was 2.9 times, and the company had $857 million of unencumbered real estate assets. And with that, we would like to open the line to questions. Operator, please go ahead. Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one, one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one, one again. One moment for questions. Our 1st question comes from Sarah Barcomb with BTIG. You may proceed. Hi, everyone. Just given the reaction that we're seeing in the stock today, I want to touch on the Steinway Tower a bit more. Do you think, now that you've ring-fenced all of the loss potential at 111 West 57th, and why do you feel that way now versus what you were, were expecting at Q1 end? Thank you. Hey, thanks, Sarah, it's Stuart. Look, I think at a high level, and, and as I've said multiple times on various earnings calls, you know, we're, we're trying as best we can to sort of assess where deals get done, both on a price perspective and on a timing perspective. I think based on dialogue we've had with various potential buyers, we were certainly hopeful, that there'd be more velocity in terms of the number of units, that would be signed. I think at this point, you know, I think we are still reasonably confident in what we're seeing from a pricing perspective, and I think we've certainly, dialed back, expectations with respect to timing. I think by turning off the accrual of interest, on the senior parts of the capital structure. We've certainly eliminated future basis creep over time, which I think puts us in a position to not create any additional pressure from a pricing perspective. I think at this point, you know, there's definitely active dialogue going on, on, you know, a handful of units. Foot traffic is up. I think as we look at how we forecast out the current reserve, it seems reasonable to us based on what the dialogue is today and how we forecast out. I think for everybody's benefit, I think we've said this before, in coming up with the reserve from an accounting perspective, there's both a nominal analysis as well as a time value of money analysis, so it does require us to be, you know, as accurate as we can from a pricing and timing perspective. I would say sitting here today, you know, certainly looking out over coming quarters based on dialogue and what we've seen, you know, based on the estimate we've done today, we feel, you know, we feel confident in the way we've reserved or written off. Okay, thank you. That's it for me. Thank you. One moment for questions. Our next question comes from Jade Rahmani with KBW. You may proceed. Thank you very much. I guess the 1st question on 111 would be, you know, how much of the portion that you haven't reserved relates to large units that could be, you know, very hard to predict, such as remaining penthouses? Because if we just look at average sale prices and price per square foot, it would seem to me that there's, you know, potentially the risk of further write-downs. That would be one, you know, aspect of this deal to try to understand. Yeah, no, I, I appreciate the question, Jade. Obviously, you know, I would say in some respects, there's, there's better foot traffic and more interest at the penthouse level than in the middle of the building, if you just think about the uniqueness of certain units versus other units. Ultimately, it's, you know, it's, it's just dollars and timing, and whether it's, regardless of where the units occur in the building, you know, it's just trying to get units sold and chip away at the outstandings. I would say per your question, we certainly took a high-level, unit-by-unit perspective of the building. But I would say the analysis does not, does not overemphasize one unit versus the other, as we think about timing and pacing. Okay. Are there about 35 units remaining? There are a little bit less than that, yes. Okay. But- The 2nd question would just be on, you know, the full position now being on non-accrual, you know, making some assumptions for yields. I think we estimated an impact annually around, you know, $0.30-$0.32. I also do recall you have an interest rate cap that expired in the Q2, which you previously said would be an annual earnings impact of around $20 million. You know, that's another $0.10-$0.15 EPS impact. How do we think about all of this and where the dividend stands? Is that gonna be, you know, a year-end decision for next year, or do we expect something there imminently? If you could provide any commentary or parameters to assess that, would be great. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, my pleasure. Let me answer it this way. We ultimately have 3 investments that I would say are under- Hello, operator? Hello. Please stand by. Jade, do you mind repeating the question, please? This is Anastasia. Sorry. Looks like we're having some difficulties with technology this morning. Yeah, I, I, I got it, Anastasia. I mean, I think, Jade, to answer your question, the interest rate cap did burn off, and so that was not reflected in this quarter. Then we put Steinway on non-accrual after one month. This, this quarter actually takes into account a lot of the impact that you're already saying. I think based on our projections, you know, we comfortably cover the dividend through the end of the year. To answer your question, you know, I'm not. You know, maybe Anastasia and Hillary, and you can kind of go through your math offline. You know, the combination of those things, you know, we're not seeing as much of an impact as I think you're anticipating. Okay. appreciate that. Thank you for taking the questions. Thank you. One moment for questions. Our next question comes from Stephen Laws with Raymond James. You may proceed Good morning. Stuart, I know you touched a little bit on the REO assets in your prepared remarks, kind of wanted to revisit that, specifically the Atlanta Hotel is held for sale, kind of update on timing for that? On the D.C. hotel, 6.2 Q income, no debt on that asset. You do have some debt on the Brooklyn development. Is the D.C. hotel something you may look to hold and operate in that debt, or how do you think about moving that into a held for sale or looking to exit that asset? Yeah, I'm not sure. It's Scott again. I'm not sure if Stuart was able to rejoin. Addressing that, with the Atlanta asset, we did take that over. We brought in new management and rebranded it. It was formerly a Sheraton, now it is under the Wyndham flag. Been pleased with the transition. You know, we've had some approaches unsolicited, which, you know, we're hopeful will translate into a sale, which is why we moved it to the for sale. You know, nothing's done till it's done, but there is some active dialogue happening there. With respect to the Mayflower Hotel, as referenced in the prepared remarks, the performance is actually doing better than pre-COVID. Again, we have, you know, brought on management to work with Marriott. It's a Marriott-flagged hotel, so doing well there and continue to evaluate the markets. Obviously, we're in dialogue with various brokerage firms and kind of continue to get updates in the market. You know, the positive is that cash flow is flowing through. As you mentioned, it is a source of liquidity for us because we don't have any debt on it. We'll continue to evaluate the markets and, you know, if we think the execution makes sense, yeah, later this year, early next year, you know, we'll certainly take advantage of that. I think the last one was the multifamily development in Brooklyn continues to move along, you know, pouring the foundation, everything. That, that deal is fully capitalized with, with 3rd-party, debt financing. You know, the New York City multifamily market and the Brooklyn multifamily market continues to be very strong. That just continues to need to get built. Great, thanks. Then one follow-up to Jade's question. Anastasia, do you, I think it was mentioned that Steinway was maybe in Q2 numbers for a month before it went on non-accrual. Do you have the amount in $ millions that it contributed to 2Q interest income? Yes, thank you for this question. As you mentioned, we have put Steinway on nonaccrual effective May 1st. If you translate it into earnings, for this quarter, this was about a $0.06 per share net loss in Q2. On a quarterly basis, it's about $0.10 per share looking forward. As Scott has previously mentioned, in response to Jade's question, based on our projections, taking into account that Steinway, the full stack, is now on nonaccrual basis and as well taking into account the interest rate cap, which, as Jade mentioned, had terminated early in June, we are still projecting that we will be able to comfortably cover the dividend in Q3 and Q4 for the remainder of the year. Great. Thanks for your comments this morning. Appreciate it. Thank you. One moment for questions. Our next question comes from Richard Shane with JPMorgan. You may proceed. Thanks for taking my questions this morning. 1st, you know, as we think about the space, one of the things that from a projection perspective we're, and I think everybody's struggling with, is the timing of realized losses. Can you just walk through what the triggers were in the Q2 to actually create the realized loss? Sure. Anastasia, do you want to talk about the taxing impact? I mean, I think it's twofold. One is, you know, as we look at and update our model, you know, we don't think there will be a recovery of that, of that junior most mezz, whereas I think Stuart referenced part of the analysis on the other reserve is time. And so there is a discount factor, so we are hopeful that if our estimates of sale prices are correct, you know, our absolute dollar recovery will be higher than the reserve we've taken, just because we had to discount that, you know, over a period of time that we think it'll take to sell the units. Whereas on the junior, we don't, we don't think we recover that, but as Anastasia mentioned, there's also, a tax implication. Anastasia, you want to talk about that? Yeah, absolutely. And piggyback in on Stuart's earlier remarks and Scott's remarks, definitely based on where we stand today, we previously had the $66.05 million reserve against the bottom, the junior mezzanine position. It's an $82 million position. So it with us raising the CECL Allowance this quarter, that position became fully reserved. It had a 100% specific CECL Allowance against it, and we deemed it to be unrecoverable. As far as the timing that you are highlighting, there was an opportunity for us to take an advantageous tax treatment, which is why we have opted to take the realized loss in the current quarter, as opposed to taking it later. Got it. To continue this a little bit further, you guys have talked about the expectation of dividend coverage through the year. Really, there are two earnings metrics. There's distributable earnings, including and excluding realized losses. When we look at it on a realized loss basis, you guys are probably about $0.35 year to date versus the dividend, so the payout ratio is actually below 100%. Is the implication then that the dividend for the year, based upon that, will be characterized partially as a return of capital? Yeah, we, I think we're in the middle of the year now, so we will have to complete the assessment as we near the end of as we near in the end of the year. I think it is still in the early stages, but I think the bottom line here is that the dividend will be fully covered, based on our earnings projections as of today. Fully covered on an earnings projection basis for distributable earnings, excluding losses? Yes. That's correct. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. One moment for questions. Our next question comes from Douglas Harter with Credit Suisse. You may proceed. Thanks. Can you just talk about your plans and the, the amount of liquidity you plan to hold, once you kind of settle the, the convert, in the, you know, the remainder of the year? Yeah, absolutely. I, I can take that. This is Anastasia. I think as you can see from the current quarter and the preceding quarter, and definitely as we look forward towards the rest of the year, we're definitely focused on maintaining excess liquidity for ARI. Based on where our liquidity is as of June 30, it is clear we are comfortably paying down the convertible notes that are coming due in October. And as of June 30, we have already bought back some pieces of that debt, so it's, it's stood at $186 million outstanding principal as of June 30. Other than that, we don't have any corporate debt maturities coming up this year, or next year, actually, until 2026. But overall, we're definitely focused on maintaining excess liquidity, and we'll continue... You will continue to see us having a significant cash cushion as well as available liquidity- available capacity on our existing facilities. Great. And I guess would the, the unencumbered assets be the, kind of the main source to, to drive extra liquidity? Or, you know, if you needed to create more liquidity, or, or how do you think about the options for, for creating that, that extra liquidity? I think you can, you can think about it as a combination. We have available capacity in our facilities. We have our revolving credit facility. We have definitely our unencumbered assets. We're also projecting a healthy level of repayment activity in our portfolio. All of these can be potential sources of our liquidity going forward. Great. Thank you, Anastasia. Thank you. Thank you. One moment for questions. Our next question comes from Steve DeLaney with JMP Securities, a Citizens Company. You may proceed. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking the question. Look, I, You know, in the commercial real estate world, obviously, the lenders, finance companies, the top priority has obviously been liquidity and asset management, which you've, you've commented on this morning. I'm just curious, you know, your $8 billion portfolio, you've seen about $400 million of shrinkage, for the 1st 6 months of the year. I'm just curious to know what the appetite is for new lending. I would think there's some pretty attractive terms out there. If, if you are considering new loans, where would you, where would you focus, and where do you see the best opportunities? Thank you. Scott, do you want to take that? Yeah, sure. Yeah, look, I mean, I think as we mentioned, you know, we, we continue to build up liquidity. We are getting repayments, so there is plenty of liquidity in the market and activity. We, we are very active across our overall platform, so we're in the market every day, you know, making loans. I think we've, for at this point in time, made the decision, you know, to, to keep that liquidity, you know, for ARI, whether it be looking at our own capital structure or future fundings that we have. Even if we don't do new deals, we do have future fundings, on deals- Right. and continue to evaluate things. You know, I would say, you know, there are attractive deals in, in the, in the hotel and, and other space, you know, conversions things, where we can get attractive spreads. You know, the financing markets are open. You know, we've always been really a, a, a warehouse borrower as opposed to the CRE CLO market, but that. Right. even that market is showing signs of life. So I think we're, we're very comfortable that the business model works. But at the same time, you know, we're, we're comfortably earning the dividend. It's always good to have liquidity. At the same time, you know, unlike in the past, we're actually earning money on our cash. I think we're getting, like, 5%. Sure. There's not as much of a drag as it has been, you know, as we continue to look at things. But you know, I, I, I think, you know, as we continue to look at, you know, to the extent the repayments are higher than we expect, and we're sitting on more cash, then, you know, then we can always look to turn back on, you know, the originations. At this point, not something we're going to be doing in the near term. That's helpful, Scott. Thank you for the comments. Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. Our next question comes from Jade Rahmani with KBW. You may proceed. Yes, I just wanted to ask a follow-up, you know, unrelated to Steinway, but across the portfolio, seems like things actually, performance improved. So if you could comment on perhaps why you haven't seen any stresses elsewhere, if there's any specific loans you'd call out. Seems like things have improved, and Europe performance remains pretty solid, it seems. Any comments on that? I would take that as a comment, Jade. Thank you very much. Yes, I mean, I think, look, we, we, we've always said Steinway is our, the issue that, that we're dealing with. We've been pleased with the performance. You know, as referenced, you know, one of our four rated loans and actually one of our last mezzanine loans, got paid off, on a hotel in Las Vegas. There's been other repayments in the portfolio. Yeah, look, we, we dealt with our issues early on, which is always something that we've said. Dealt with our, our, two hotel problems early on in, in the land in Brooklyn, and, and quite honestly, just continued to active manage and, and work with borrowers. Thankfully, we have a good stable of borrowers who, who believe in their deals and think they have equity in them, because we never really did high leverage loans in that sense, and they've continued to support them. Europe has been, you know, a bright spot, in terms of whether it be hospitality or industrial or return to office. Obviously, we had hedged our currency exposure there, so, so we're at risk there. Yeah, look, we've, we've been pleased, you know, with the rest of the portfolio. Not to say there aren't. You know, we, we don't actively work on it every day and, and work with borrowers, but, you know, we've continued to get pay downs. The, the transaction in London, is going to be, the, the bank's new world headquarters, which is obviously great. That, that de-risks that transaction dramatically. When that, when that lease is officially signed, I would expect that rating to be upgraded. Right now, it's a lengthy, lengthy heads of terms and public announcement, but when that lease gets signed in the next few weeks, we'll, we'll look to upgrade that loan. Yeah, overall, again, we just continue to see, you know, repayments. We, we, you know, I think part of our modeling is, you know, we've gotten notices of repayments on, on various deals. We know that that cash will be coming in. Thanks. The table in the portfolio in the 10-Q showing loan portfolio overview, I mean, it shows the overall yields on the portfolio being pretty consistent at 8.6%, but the subordinate loan piece, the balance is $463.6 million. The yield is just 2.2%. Is that mainly reflecting Steinway, or was there something else, modification? Yeah, if you think of it, I would say by the end of this quarter, pretty much Steinway is going to be the only sub-debt that we have, and it's, it's sub-debt for historical accounting reasons, because, you know, we're in the 1st mortgage. The reality is we own the whole stack. But you know, the, the hotel in, in Las Vegas was a subordinate debt that got paid off. There is a piece of CMBS, which we anticipate getting paid off, you know, in, in the near term, that's in there, and then it's really, you know, all, all Steinway. That, and which, which, like we said, we put on non-accrual. That, that line item will continue to shrink. The mezzanine on Steinway is yielding or picking at an interest rate of 2.2%? It's a non-accrual, you can say- It's a non-accrual. We're not, we're not taking any income. Zero. Zero. Okay. The, the yield in this table, what does it actually reflect? What is the 2.2%? Maybe that's just the performing mezzanine loans that are on accrual- The total balance is accrual and non-accrual, and so that's why the yield is off. Yes. You're taking- Okay. a majority of it at 0, and then you have other stuff at, you know, 10%, right? All right. You had $60 million, $70 million at 10%, and you had $400+ million at 0. Okay. That's, that's the way it happens. All right. That makes sense. Thanks for clarifying that. Thank you. I'd now like to turn the call back over to Scott Weiner for any closing remarks. Thank you, operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. To the extent anyone has any more follow-up questions, you know, both Stuart, Anastasia, and I are available, and enjoy the rest of the summer. Thank you. Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.