Ares Commercial Real Estate Corporation (NYSE:ACRE) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Bryan Donohoe: It’s a good question, Jade. I appreciate it. What I’d say first and foremost is the factor that is uniform throughout all types of real estate lending is the precipitous increase in base rates, right? I think certainly we saw assets benefit from lower LIBOR so for going back two, three years and the stress in the system when you have a 400 basis point increase in rates obviously hurts from a coverage perspective, but also eventually cap rates as well. I think the advantage if I could point to one with respect to the mortgage REIT or private lending space if you will is the more active asset management that is available to us without some of the fee loads that you might see in the CMBS sector as you work through some of these issues. And I think the capitalization obviously is a bit different. But Tae-Sik let me see — turn over to you for anything you might want to add as well.

Tae-Sik Yoon: Yes, Bryan just to maybe add to some of your points. Jade, I think, what we’re seeing is borrowers who are most impacted by the movements in interest rates are the ones that are being obviously the most impacted given the dramatic volatility for on the drop in rates and now the sharp increase in rates. We’re also seeing maybe a second category of borrowers who have what we define as maybe a little bit more challenging business plans that are harder to execute again in a market where not just interest rate volatility, but different trends happening in terms of for example office utilization more supply coming on into certain markets. So really those are I would say the two general trends or buckets of challenges we’re seeing those that are really impacted directly and I don’t say just by changes in interest rates but primarily by changes in interest rates.

And then those that have a bit more challenged or difficult business plans that are just more difficult to execute again in a more macro challenge environment.

Jade Rahmani: Thank you very much. The risk four and five rated loans I believe those would be considered the watch list? And can you talk to the percentage of those that are funded on credit facilities and that are funded within CLOs and what the liquidity requirements there in would be from ACREs available capital?

Bryan Donohoe: Yes Tae-Sik do you want to…

Tae-Sik Yoon: Sure. Yes. No absolutely. Thank you, Bryan. Jade it’s a great question. And obviously when we look through our portfolio as you know we are very, very careful about making sure that when we finance an asset that we know that if something goes wrong with that asset or there’s a challenge with that asset that we have the liquidity and the capability to resolve that. So one of the things that we mentioned is obviously the amount of liquidity that we have available to us today more than $200 million in our opening remarks. And certainly one of the potential uses of that is to potentially deal with any loans that we have in either CLOs or on one of our warehouse lines. So the loans that have been status four or status five, the one loan that we had in status five, the ones that we have had on for a while, those are either unlevered in some situations or we are clearly working with the warehouse lender on those situations.