Q3 2024 Claros Mortgage Trust Inc Earnings Call

In This Article:

Participants

Anh Huynh; Vice President, Investor Relations; Claros Mortgage Trust Inc

Richard Mack; Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer; Claros Mortgage Trust Inc

J. Michael Mcgillis; President, Chief Financial Officer, Director; Claros Mortgage Trust Inc

Priyanka Garg; Executive Vice President - Portfolio and Asset Management; Claros Mortgage Trust Inc

Doug Harter; Analyst; UBS Investment Bank

Rick Shane; Analyst; JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Steve DeLaney; Analyst; Citizens JMP Securities LLC

Jade Rehmani; Analyst; Keefe, Bruyette, & Woods Inc

Presentation

Operator

Welcome to Claros Mortgage Trust's Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Bridget, and I will be your conference facilitator today. All participants will be in a listen only mode. (Operator Instructions).
I would now like to hand the call over to Anh Huynh, Vice President of Investor Relations of Claros Mortgage Trust. Please proceed.

Anh Huynh

Thank you. I'm joined by Richard Mack, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Claros Mortgage Trust; and Mike McGillis, President and Chief Financial Officer and Director of Claros Mortgage Trust. We also have Priyanka Garg, Executive Vice President who leads MRECS Portfolio and Asset Management.
Prior to this call, we distributed CMTG's earnings release and supplement. We encourage you to reference these documents in conjunction with the information presented on today's call. If you have any questions, please contact me.
I'd like to remind everyone that today's call may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including those discussed in our other filings with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements made on this call represent our views only as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update them.
We will also be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures on today's call, such as distributable earnings, which we believe may be important to investors to assess our operating performance. For reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to their nearest GAAP equivalent, please refer to the earnings supplement.
I would now like to turn the call over to Richard.

Richard Mack

Thank you, Anh, and thank you everyone for joining us this morning for CMTG's third quarter earnings call. James Carville famously quipped in 1992, It's the economy stupid as to how Clinton would and did unseat the elder bush. In 2024, one might say that it was inflation stupid or Donald Trump's promise to tame it that brought him back to the White House.
The question however is are the President-elect stated policies actually more inflationary than Democratic Party proposals or will those proposals be escalated down in favor of more anti-inflation business friendly policies. Right now, it seems that Wall Street believes that our new and previous President will bring prosperity if not deflation. If it can bring both that will see a boon to commercial real estate, we just had a tough run for the last few years.
Like many other interest rate sensitive sectors, it has been and will continue to be disproportionately impacted by the Fed's actions, and so while the cut was very helpful to transitional real estate assets, it's unclear how much of an inflection point this will be for property values, which will be dependent on what the Fed action is to come.
Right now, many market pundits are seeing a Goldilocks environment. Inflation appears under control, while the job market also seems resilient. With inflation easing, oil prices stabilizing, shelter cost declines finally being accounted for in CPI, job growth seemingly slowing and deflationary pressures from China, we think that now is the time for the Fed to cut and to stay ahead of the curve.
However, even with Donald Trump as the President who has promised to force the Fed to lower short-term rates, we cannot count on this. And so, it is prudent for CMTG to remain patient and recognize that the industry is in a transitory phase and should be expected to stay there until sofa reflects a normalized yield curve.
Having experienced one of the most aggressive rate tightening cycles in several decades, it has been a challenging period for CRE broadly, however, expectations that the lack of new supply will raise rents, that construction costs are not likely to move downward, and that rates will reset to what may be considered normalized levels are starting to drive transaction volumes by investors who want to be ahead of asset value reinflation.
We are already seeing this, the anticipation that better fundamentals and lower borrowing costs coupled with enhanced liquidity could lead to lower cap rates is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy on the margin, while also providing tailwinds to valuations. This is a positive sign, but for transaction volumes and values to truly recover, we believe that rates will need to continue to trend downward.
As this occurs, we believe more transaction volume will promote confidence from market participants, and importantly, basis resetting, which has the potential to restart a virtuous valuation cycle and increase confidence in commercial real estate.
We see this floor on valuations in improved leasing and in unsolicited offers for our sponsors owned assets. Additionally, in CMTG's portfolio, the amount of transaction activity has been increasing. So far, this year we have had 1.2 billion in realizations.
As we look out to 2025, we anticipate transaction volume to pick up momentum as sponsors begin to favorably access the capital markets once again. We could also see an uptick in construction as developers revisit projects that have been placed on hold for two years or more.
Additionally, there will be opportunities for multifamily developers to capitalize on the persistent supply demand imbalances prominent in certain markets, especially as new inventory is absorbed on the heels of curtailed development.
With regard to our business, over the past couple of years, we've been careful and pragmatic in managing the portfolio during this elevated rate environment. We've been highly focused on proactive asset management, while being as responsive as we can to our borrower’s needs, and reducing nominal leverage levels.
While we believe that it's prudent to maintain a defensive posture during this transitory period, we also believe that there's inherent value in our portfolio to be realized. In line with the view that underlying asset values have started to recover. We are in the process of transitioning the portfolio over the medium to long term.
This may include selling watch list loans into an improving market that is now bidding them more strongly, pursuing future REO opportunities and paying down high cost debt. As we have noted in the past, multifamily continues to represent our largest portfolio exposure and remains one of our high conviction themes.
Looking ahead, we see several drivers that we believe will continue to support the multifamily investment thesis. Foremost is that supply constraints continue to challenge the overall availability of US housing due to a strong economy and muted new construction. As a result, we've been observing strong pricing trends in major urban markets and believe that so long as the economy remains relatively stable, it will support NOI growth in the years to come.
As we believe our multifamily portfolio is generally well poised to benefit from these trends, we will look to be opportunistic when borrowers are unable to support their asset. We have identified select properties that we believe would be compelling multifamily REO assets, and that also speak to our long-term confidence in the property class.
Therefore, we will seek to extract value for our shareholders by leveraging our sponsors deep multifamily real estate experience to bring select multifamily assets into REO under our management when we can and when we feel it is prudent.
If done right, we think this can be another lever to create value for investors. As always, I thank you for joining us, and I will now turn the call over to Mike.