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, 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 the GAAP figures in our earnings presentation, which is available in the Stockholder section of our website. We do not undertake any obligation to update 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 for joining us on the Apollo Commercial Real Estate Finance Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. As usual, I am joined today by Scott Wiener, our Chief Investment Officer, and Anastasia Mironova, our Chief Financial Officer. Before I speak about ARI's second quarter performance and portfolio updates, I would like to provide an update on a subsequent event disclosed in the 10-Q filed yesterday. In March 2022, ARI and other Apollo-managed entities co-originated a 55% loan-to-cost first mortgage loan secured by eight hospitals in Massachusetts. At origination, ARI's portion of the loan totaled $379 million. The loan was made in connection with the capitalization of a joint venture between two parties to own the hospitals. That joint venture then leased the properties to Steward Health Care System, who also served as the operator of the hospitals. Apollo did not lend to Steward and does not have any involvement in Steward's operations of the hospitals or performance under the lease. The structure and covenants in the loan have provided for cash collateral and amortization since origination that represents approximately 11% of the original loan balance, and ARI's amortized cost was $342 million as of June 30th, 2024. As of today, the loan remains current on all contractual interest payments. Steward filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May 2024. During the second quarter, the loan's risk rating was downgraded from 3 to a 4. Subsequent to quarter end, bids were received, and the bid process and negotiations are continuing to evolve with multiple constituencies. While there is still a high degree of uncertainty, based upon the information available as of the 10-Q filing and taking into account Steward's bankruptcy court documents made publicly available on July 30th, we currently anticipate recording a specific CECL allowance in a subsequent quarter, which we currently estimate to be approximately $90 million. The actual specific CECL allowance may differ materially based on continuing developments. Shifting to second quarter performance, ARI continued to receive a healthy level of loan repayments, which totaled $759 million for the first six months of the year. During the quarter, ARI redeployed approximately $505 million of capital into four new transactions, and following quarter end, we completed two additional transactions in the United Kingdom, totaling approximately GBP 270 million. All of these new vintage transactions have lower attachment points and wider spreads than the legacy loans in our portfolio and are structured to enable ARI to earn attractive levered ROEs on newly deployed capital. As we continue to receive capital back, we benefit from the broader pipeline of Apollo's real estate credit platform, which continues to gain market share and fill the void in the market as traditional capital sources retrench. Turning now to the portfolio. At quarter end, ARI's portfolio was comprised of 50 loans totaling $8.3 billion. During the quarter, there was significant sales momentum at 111 West 57th Street, with six units closing, totaling approximately $74 million of gross proceeds, which were used to pay down the senior mortgage that is currently held by a third party. Notably, subsequent to quarter end, an additional two units went into contract, including one of the penthouses. Following the paydown and inclusive of what is under contract, the senior loan will have a balance of approximately $70 million once those units close. There has been a renewed marketing effort through the hiring of a new sales brokerage team renowned for their global luxury market leadership. Their dedicated focus on this property, coupled with their international reach, has already proven successful, and we are confident this momentum will continue. 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. ARI reported distributable earnings of $0.35 per share of common stock for the second quarter. GAAP net income attributable to common stockholders was $33 million, or $0.23 per diluted share of common stock. ARI portfolio ended the quarter with a carrying value of $8.3 billion and a weighted average un levered yield of 8.9%. In addition to the new investments Stuart discussed, during the quarter, we completed $116 million of gross add-on fundings from previously closed loans, bringing year-to-date gross add-on funding to $438 million. For the first six months of 2024, ARI received $759 million of proceeds from loan repayments and sales. Subsequent to quarter end, we received an additional $421 million from the repayments of three senior and one subordinate loan. During the quarter, ARI recorded $7.5 million specific CECL allowance on a subordinate loan secured by our interest in a Class A office building in Troy, Michigan, that had previously been risk rated 4. In conjunction with recording a specific CECL allowance for this loan, we downgraded its risk rating to a 5. It is worth noting that this loan is current on all its contractual debt service payments. The general CECL allowance stood at 47 basis points of the loan portfolio's amortized cost at June 30, a 3 basis point increase as compared to the end of Q1. This increase was primarily attributable to new loan originations, as well as a more adverse outlook for certain property types. Our total CECL allowance was 440 basis points of the loan portfolio's amortized cost basis at June 30, which represents $2.47 per share of book value. ARI book value per share, excluding general CECL reserve and depreciation, was $13.62, up from $13.58 at the end of last quarter. We repurchased $38 million of our common stock during the quarter at a weighted average price of $10.16 per share, which was $0.11 accretive to book value and generated 15.3% ROE. Post quarter end, we acquired an additional $2 million of our common stock at a weighted average price of $9.92 a share. With respect to our borrowings, ARI is in compliance with all covenants. The company ended the quarter with $193 million of total liquidity, comprised of cash on hand, undrawn credit capacity on existing facilities, and loan proceeds held by the servicer. At June 30, we also held $507 million of unencumbered assets. During the quarter, ARI put in place a $74 million, $74 million of accretive financing for The Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., enabling ARI to earn an enhanced levered return on equity as we continue to monitor the market to determine the optimal time to sell the hotel. We also upsized our secured credit facility with Barclays during the quarter, providing ARI with an additional $300 million of additional capacity. Our debt-to-equity ratio at quarter end was 3.4x. As a reminder, we have no corporate debt maturity until May 2026. With that, we would ask the operator to open the line for questions. 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 first question comes from Doug Harter with UBS. You may proceed. Thanks, and good morning. On the hospital loan, just wondering if you have any recourse or obligations to the ultimate borrower, you know, and the operator of the hospitals? No, we do, we do not. Got it. So it's just the real estate? We have, I mean, it's a real estate loan from our perspective, Doug, and we'll, you know, do what we can to protect our rights as a lender. Great. And, you know, and I guess just as you think about, you know, that asset class, you know, how do you think about recovery values or, you know, to the extent that some of those prop, you know, hospitals are ultimately closed? Look, I think while we lent against it as a portfolio of eight hospitals, I would say we look at them each as eight individual assets right now. And there's, you know, things are somewhat in flux, but I would say we're sort of doing, you know, the work necessary to think about each piece of collateral individually and how we recover as much value, while also keeping in mind the, the concerns of other constituents in the process as well. Great. Appreciate it. Thank you, Stuart. Thank you. Our next question comes from Rick Shane with JP Morgan. You may proceed. Thanks, everybody, for taking my question. Look, the world has evolved a great deal in the last month in terms of interest rate outlook, and I'm curious, I think over the next few years, we're going to operate on two timelines. One is the emergence of additional challenges within the portfolio, and the other is the resolution of existing problematic loans. Can you just talk a little bit, do you feel like we are now sort of reaching the end of the emergence period, that you have a pretty good idea of where the risk is within the portfolio, and that going forward, it's going to be about the resolution? Can you sort of tell us what inning we're in in each of those? Yeah, I think I agree with the general premise of your question, Rick, which I feel like we sort of know what our focus list is or what our hotspots are, and I think at this point, we're focused on, you know, a path towards resolution, which could play out over some time. You know, I think we've all been around this sector long enough to know that, just because there is a stated maturity date or a target resolution date, sometimes things can go through an iterative process where it plays out over time. I think we are encouraged by the fact that the market in general, there seems to be more activity, which I think that leads to, you know, some enhanced clarity around where value is and where things can get resolved. But I would say sitting here today, given where you started the question, I feel like we've got, you know, a good sense of what those things are that we need to focus on, and it's really a matter of getting to resolution on the things that are on our focus list, while at the same time, making sure we're doing a good job of getting capital that comes back to us redeployed into transactions we're excited about. Got it. And look, there's a concept of rational expectations, and I'm curious how quickly you see the rate outlook impacting sentiment and behavior amongst your borrowers. I mean, again, we're just weeks into this, in terms of a pretty seismic shift in terms of rate outlook, but you guys are in the market every day. You're having conversations. Are you seeing the tenor of things change that quickly, or what should we expect in terms of how you think borrowers are going to potentially become more aggressive about defending their positions, given the carrying costs are likely to go down over the next 12 months-24 months? Yeah, I mean, I think you're asking the right question. I think it is anecdotal at best right now because things are occurring fairly quickly, and it's also, you know, arguably a month where people sort of get somewhat detached for a period of time. But I could say, certainly anecdotally, I would say, both in terms of existing borrowers as well as potential new transaction in the market, anecdotally, it feels like there's renewed interest on the equity side of the real estate business in general, for people feeling like if they can sort of step into assets today, they might end up in a fairly attractive financing market from a rate perspective sooner than they might have thought. Got it. Really appreciate it, Stuart. Thank you so much. Sure. Thank you. Our next question comes from Stephen Laws with Raymond James. You may proceed. Hi, good morning. Stuart, I guess first to follow up on Doug's question around the hospital. Any thoughts on how timing plays out, or, you know, do you expect the loan to go non-performing? I know you said it's current as of today, and, you know, will that specific reserve hitting Q3, or are there events that happen further out in the future that drive that? You know, best guess today is that, you know, the reserve should be coming in the second half of the year. There's just a lot of moving pieces, a lot of constituents involved, and I don't want to sound non-responsive, but it is playing out daily, and it's tough to give any more clarity right now. Understood. Shifting gears to the investment pipeline, you know, pretty active quarter there with a lot of new originations. That's continued in July. You know, I think it's coincidental, but Q2 had four U.S. loans. July had two Europe loans. But can you talk about your pipeline, what you expect as far as, you know, portfolio turning over with repayments coming in in the back half and being recycled into new investments? And, you know, should we, should we take this recent pace of the last four months and, and expect that to continue over the remainder of the year? I mean, look, as I am, you know, as I indicated in my response to the question from Rick, I mean, it's a pretty active market right now. I think both equity investors and lenders are finding ways to get transactions done. And I would say, if anything, you know, the volatility around the economy over the last week or so and what that certainly implies for certain people, vis-a-vis rate movements, probably only adds to the, call it, positive momentum behind transaction activity. So, you know, broadly speaking, across the real estate credit business at Apollo, the pipeline is robust, and we're looking at a lot of things, and we're gonna have a pretty robust year in terms of overall deployment. And I think we remain optimistic about ARI getting paid back on the things we anticipated repaying this year. As a result, we think we're well positioned to get that capital redeployed as capital comes back to us. Great. And then finally, wanted to touch on the dividend. You know, the current dividend rate implies about a 10.5% ROE on book, and pro forma for the specific reserve coming on the hospital loan, it would be a little over an 11% return on book. You know, do you view that as sustainable, given, you know, your outlook for portfolio returns and kind of what you're seeing on the new investment side? I mean, I think as I implied in my remarks, I think, you know, we're, we're generating ROEs consistent with what we've done historically, so that feels good. I think as always, you know, we'll handle the dividend through our quarterly discussion with the board, which is ±5 weeks from now. I think for us, we just wanna make sure we are being mindful of what the earnings trajectory looks like over time. Obviously, there's positive momentum for us as we bring back hopefully some of the underperforming capital, but we might be facing a different interest rate curve environment. So a lot of factors will go into the dialogue overall. But just in terms of the ROEs we're generating on new transactions, they're pretty consistent with where they've been historically. Great. Appreciate the comments this morning, Stuart. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Steve Delaney with Citizens JMP Securities. You may proceed. Thanks. Good morning, Stuart and team, and congrats on your full dividend coverage in a challenging market for the second quarter. You know, my question is gonna piggyback Stephen just a bit. But looking back to the first half of the year, ironically, or maybe it's by design, but your portfolio was $8.3 billion, including the subs and the seniors at year-end 2023, and it's right on the same number, you know, within $100 million, it rounded, you know, at June 30. As you look forward to the second half of this year, would you think the best approach from the analyst and modeling would be to maybe stick with a kind of flattish portfolio as we look for the rest of the year? It sounds like you are seeing opportunities that would prevent, like, material shrinkage. But just curious about your thoughts. Can you maintain the portfolio? And given that it feels that... Sorry for the long question, but I want you to just have to answer one question, not two. You know, given what appears to be more of a lender's market developing over the next one to two years, beyond the second half of this year, could 2025 be a pretty active and, you know, new equity coming into CRE? What's your, what's your expectation and hope for 2025 after, you know, we get, we get through the end of this year? Thanks very much. So, I'd say a few things. I think your notion of 2024 sort of moving sideways in terms of portfolio side is a reasonable assumption. We'll get capital back, we'll put capital out, but there's really not a catalyst for growth per se. So, again, don't give me a hard time if we're talking $100 million bucks in either direction, but that feels pretty good. I think sitting here today, and I'm looking at it both through the lens of what we're seeing in our real estate credit business, but also what we and others are thinking about vis-a-vis various pools of real estate equity capital. I do think, you know, 2025 could be a pretty active year. Obviously, there's sort of an overall economic overlay around that, but if we achieve the hoped-for soft landing with some moderation of interest rates, but the economy hanging in there, I do think there's still a lot of capital looking to be active, and 2025 could be pretty busy. I think the greatest opportunity for us to be growing and more active in 2025 is around turning some of our more challenging asset management situations into resolutions which give us back capital with which to deploy. So if you go back to my comments, you know, I'm harping on getting the senior paid back on 111 West 57th Street, because once the senior is paid back, every incremental dollar of unit sales comes back to us directly, which provides capital to put to work offensively. Obviously, I think everybody's aware of some of the other situations we're involved in as well. That's helpful. And of course, and if we get something close to a 3% Fed funds rate, I guess that, that doesn't do anything but help that scenario, right, for 2025? I think you're right. I would think. Yes. Yeah. All right. Thanks. Stay well. You as well. Thank you. Our next question comes from Jade Rahmani with KBW. You may proceed. Thank you very much. Starting with 111 West 57th Street, if we could just summarize the deal and ARI's position. Could you give the remaining units left to be sold, at this stage? I'd rather not be specific on the number of units, but to start the question, Jade, as I sort of indicated in remarks, we ended the first quarter with there being a $200 million senior loan in front of ARI's position. That has been paid down to about $140 million, and there's roughly another $70 million of units under contract. So we think we are in short order, down to $70 million in front of us, with you know, confidence around continued sales on that front. The $70 million that's under contract, over what time frame will that close? It'll close during the second half of the year. Okay. As of the second quarter, ARI's position included $261 million of senior mezz and $74 million and $28 million of junior mezz for a total of $363 million. Yep. Okay. Just wanted to make sure that was clear. Turning to the healthcare situation, can you say whether this will be an REO property? Because it's quite complicated. The owner of the real estate is in a joint venture, 50/50, and then there was an operator. You know, there's media reports that the operator rejected the lease. There's reports that there weren't bids on at least two of the hospitals, and also that the rent payments are too high, complicated the situation. So I don't know there's ongoing negotiations with the state and such, but do you anticipate this will be an REO? I think I'll refer back to what I said to, I think it was Doug's question, which is, at this point, I think you need to think about it as eight individual assets as opposed to one consolidated portfolio. I think it is certainly possible that there will be differentiated outcomes for different hospitals. Okay. And then the adequacy of the $90 million reserves. You know, sorry to say this about the industry, but mortgage REITs don't tend to be overly conservative when it comes to reserves. Anything you could talk about as to how you got to the $90 million? I know it is about 26% of ARI's, you know, loan exposure, but any color on that? I think the process we went through for this reserve was consistent with the process we've been through for every other specific CECL reserve we've taken. Okay. Then on the new origination front, you know, I've always appreciated ARI's differentiated perspective on multifamily. So now I see two multifamily loans, which are refinanced loans, at quite a low LTV as well. So I'm not sure if that's, you know, a future projected stabilized LTV or what the basis is. But how are you thinking about approaching the multifamily space, something historically ARI has not really played in? Yeah, look, I think the perspective at the macro level is that long term, there is still need for and demand for high-quality multifamily, so we like the space in general. Our historic reticence with respect to multifamily has been a combination of concerns over valuations, competition in certain situations from GSEs, et cetera. I think sitting here today, we've been in a window whereby, on the margin, there's been, for a brief period of time, maybe less competition on certain of the transactions we've pursued. We like the long-term macro positioning of multifamily, and we found some situations that work for us. As always, we continue to run the portfolio on a bottoms-up, deal-by-deal basis, so I would not read into this any change in sort of overall thesis or a desire to create something at a certain percentage. We'll continue to look deal by deal, but for a moment in time, given the volatility in the marketplace, the team was able to source some pretty interesting opportunities. We've always had a positive macro thesis about this space. It's really been about sort of valuations at a moment in time and how we thought about the ROEs on a risk-adjusted basis for multifamily deals versus other opportunities. The two deals in the slide deck, are these, at least, one of them in California, looks like a new build, you know, Class A, perhaps luxury, but, you know, what, what are you going after? Are these recently completed construction deals, and you're doing the lease-up financing? Yeah. Or... Okay. It's new product lease-up place. All right. Thanks a lot for taking the questions. Yeah, I think, Jade, the one in D.C. was recently built, I think it was like 2016. That was—it's not a, I guess, lease-up play in the normal one. If you recall, D.C. had some pretty liberal laws in terms of, you know, with tenants and stuff, with COVID and stuff like that. So it had some disruptions with, with tenants in terms of evictions and things like that, that the sponsor's been working through. So on that one, it was a refinance where the sponsor invested substantial equity, paid down the loan, and they're working on cleaning up the rent roll, if you will. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Eric Dray with Bank of America. You may proceed. Hi, good morning. Jade covered most of my questions, but just one, I guess, is can you talk a little bit about the opportunity in Europe and kind of what you're seeing over there in terms of the pipeline? And also, was just curious about kind of the office trends there. Most of the upcoming office maturities in your portfolio are in Europe, so any color you could kind of give on that would be interesting as well. Thanks. You want to talk, Scott? Go for it. Yeah, sure. So I'll start with the office question. I would say, look, it's similar to the U.S., every market city is a little different. I would say, thankfully, you know, most of our exposure is in London, which continues to be one of the better tighter markets, people going back to the office. I would say the other phenomenon, if you will, in London and Europe, much more so than here in the U.S., is the importance of LEED and environmentally friendly offices. It's taken much more seriously by occupiers, and so you see a real need for tenants to be in new, modern green space. And at the same time, you know, I think London is viewed as a safe place for capital, so you continue to see international capital going there. So I would say you're seeing in London, in particular, people being back in the office, occupiers signing leases at the newer buildings, and you also see capital, both financing is available as well as acquisitions. You know, thankfully for us, our largest office exposure is in London, and it also is a long-term lease headquarters building. So we have a 20-year lease to a large financial institution as their headquarters. So that, that's our largest one, and that will continue to fund up over time. So that's why you're seeing our office exposure going up, because that continues to fund. But obviously, we're very comfortable, you know, on that deal. But I would say generally seeing positive trends, you know, in London and other markets in Europe. As far as deal opportunity, I would say, you know, Europe, given solvency, if you're not for other reasons, really has never had a large CMBS market or capital market that way. They did have, I would say, a much more robust corporate bond market that the REITs over there took advantage of, but CMBS really never took root. So whereas in the U.S., everything seems to be getting done by the SASB market, that doesn't really exist in Europe. And so for us, we've really seen opportunity, where you're getting into pan-European deals because they're having to go multi-jurisdictional. The banks there don't like as much. We have some good technology there, you know, acquisition facilities, industrial, other property types, and then also just larger deals where we can marry Apollo capital across vehicles, right? And basically not have a bar and not take syndication risk. Those have all been things that where we've had a competitive advantage. And then I would say similar to the U.S., the loan-on-loan or warehouse financing business is very much alive in Europe. So we're able to get very attractive terms in terms of, you know, not mark-to-market stuff, you know, advance rate spread. You know, so we're able to create a you know, attractive you know, absolute return. And then I would say on the hedging basis, things obviously shift. I would say there's not much of a pickup right now from pound or any pickup really from pound to dollar. There does continue to be a little bit of a pickup from euro to dollar. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Rothstein for any closing remarks. Thank you all for participating. Thank you. This concludes the conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.