NexPoint Real Estate Finance, Inc. (NYSE:NREF) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

NexPoint Real Estate Finance, Inc. (NYSE:NREF) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript April 30, 2026

NexPoint Real Estate Finance, Inc. beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.4195, expectations were $0.41.

Operator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. My name is Kelvin, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the NexPoint Real Estate Finance, Inc. First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Kristen Griffith, investor relations. Please go ahead.

Kristen Griffith: Thank you. Good day, everyone, and welcome to the NexPoint Real Estate Finance, Inc. conference call to review the company’s results for the first quarter ended 03/31/2026. On the call today are Paul Richards, executive vice president and chief financial officer, and Matthew Ryan McGraner, executive vice president and chief investment officer. As a reminder, this call is being webcast to the company’s website at nrep.nexpoint.com. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that this conference call contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that are based on management’s current expectations, assumptions, and beliefs. Listeners should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements and are encouraged to review the company’s annual report on Form 10-Ks and the company’s other filings with the SEC for a more complete discussion of risks and other factors that could affect the forward-looking statements.

The statements made during this conference call speak only as of today’s date and, except as required by law, NexPoint Real Estate Finance, Inc. does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. This conference call also includes an analysis of non-GAAP financial measures. For a more complete discussion of these non-GAAP financial measures, see the company’s presentation that was filed earlier today. I would now like to turn the call over to Paul Richards. Please go ahead, Paul.

Paul Richards: Thanks, Kristen, and good morning, everyone. I will walk through our quarterly results, cover the balance sheet, and provide guidance for Q2 before turning it over to Matt for a deeper dive on the portfolio and macro lending environment. For the first quarter, we reported net income of $0.42 per diluted share compared to $0.70 for Q1 2025. The decrease was driven by small mark-to-market declines on preferred stock and warrants, as well as a decrease in the change in net assets related to consolidated CMBS VIEs. Earnings available for distribution was $0.43 per diluted share in Q1 compared to $0.41 per diluted share in the same period of 2025. Cash available for distribution was $0.58 per diluted share in Q1 compared to $0.45 per diluted share in the same period of 2025.

We paid a regular dividend of $0.50 per share in the first quarter, which is 1.16 times covered by cash available for distribution. On 04/28/2026, the board declared a dividend of $0.50 per share payable for 2026. Book value per share decreased slightly by 0.3% from Q4 2025 to $18.96 per diluted share, primarily driven by unrealized losses on our preferred stock investments and stock warrants. Turning to new investments during the quarter, the company funded over $30 million on two loans; both pay a monthly coupon in the mid-teens. I want to highlight what is, in our view, the most important development of the quarter and, frankly, of this week. We have successfully refinanced $180 million of senior unsecured notes that were maturing on May 1.

We replaced those 5.75% fixed-rate notes with a new $242 million total return swap facility priced at SOFR plus 375 basis points with a three-year term and one-year extension option. This transaction does several things. First, it removes the largest near-term liability overhang on our balance sheet. Second, the floating-rate structure aligns with our floating-rate asset base and gives us refi optionality as the curve evolves. Third, the upsizing gives us approximately $45 million of incremental capacity to deploy into our pipeline at the double-digit coupons we are seeing today. And fourth, the facility allows back-lever optionality on eligible positions, which expands our origination capacity without requiring additional unsecured note issuances.

We engaged more than 20 counterparties across bank and nonbank channels to optimize the structure, and the SOFR plus 375 pricing came inside comparable mortgage REIT executions in the high-yield baby bond and term loan markets. Importantly, we did this without diluting common shareholders at a discount to book. Combined with the $21 million we raised in our Series C preferred and the re-REMIC execution I will discuss in a moment, we head into the back half of 2026 with one of the cleanest, most flexible capital structures in the commercial mortgage REIT sector. Capital recycling and book value accretion: We executed a re-REMIC of our FRAN 2017-K62 B-Piece during the quarter. We sold the B-Piece to Mizuho at 92.7, having purchased it at 68.69 in 2021, and reinvested into the HRR tranche of the new structure at an 18.5% yield.

That single transaction generated $0.46 per share of book value appreciation, reduced repo financing by $75 million, and is expected to drive approximately $0.34 per share of annual CAD accretion going forward. This is the kind of execution that does not happen by accident, and it speaks to the value we extract from a portfolio of seasoned, well-constructed credit positions. Moving to the portfolio and balance sheet. Our portfolio is comprised of 90 investments with a total outstanding balance of $1.1 billion. Our investments are allocated across sectors as follows: 39.4% multifamily, 35.9% life sciences, 17.1% single-family rental, 3.9% storage, 0.6% marina, and 2.1% industrial. Our fixed income portfolio is allocated across investments as follows: 19% CMBS B-Pieces, 22% mezz loans, 24.5% preferred equity investments, 15.6% revolving credit facilities, 10.1% senior loans, 4.2% IO strips, and 4.6% promissory notes.

The assets collateralizing our investments are allocated geographically as follows: 28.7% Massachusetts, 17.6% Texas, 5.9% Florida, 4.9% Georgia, 5.2% California, and 4.7% Maryland, with the remainder across states with less than 4% exposure, reflecting our heavy preference to Sunbelt markets, with Massachusetts and California exposure heavily weighted towards life science. The collateral on our portfolio is 81.2% stabilized with 59.9% loan-to-value and a weighted average DSCR of 1.32x. We have $665.2 million of debt outstanding with a weighted average cost of 5.2% and a weighted average maturity of 0.8 years. Our secured debt is collateralized by $571.3 million of collateral with a weighted average maturity of 3.8 years and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.7x.

Moving to our guidance for the second quarter. Earnings available for distribution: $0.43 per diluted share at the midpoint, with a range of $0.38 on the low end and $0.48 on the high end. Cash available for distribution: $0.54 per diluted share at the midpoint, with a range of $0.49 on the low end and $0.59 on the high end. With that, I would like to turn it over to Matt for a detailed discussion of the portfolio and the current market environment.

Matthew Ryan McGraner: Appreciate it, Paul. I am excited to walk through another strong quarter for NexPoint Real Estate Finance, Inc., and to thank our team and our partners for executing in what continues to be a noisy macro backdrop, including and especially the exciting and accretive financing completed with Mizuho that Paul just mentioned. Now on to the verticals. On the residential front, this is where we have our largest exposure at roughly 56% of the portfolio between SFR and multifamily. We are now firmly in the supply trough that I have been describing on these calls for several quarters. The thesis is playing out. We are coming off of a record national multifamily supply cycle. Net deliveries peaked at approximately 695,000 units in the trailing 12 months ended Q4 2024.

For context, that compares to roughly 282,000 units of average annual deliveries since 2001. CoStar now forecasts 2026 deliveries to fall approximately 49% from their 2025 levels, with another 20% decline forecast for 2027. 2027 and 2028 forecasts have been revised down meaningfully from prior estimates as well. On the supply side, multifamily construction starts are running approximately 70% below their 2022 peak, and that is locking in a multiyear supply trough. On the demand side, the structural backstop has not changed. The cost to own a home in our markets remains roughly three times the cost to rent, and there is no reasonable mortgage rate scenario that closes that gap quickly. Our on-the-ground leasing data is consistent with the inflection thesis.

By putting it all together, we believe 2026 and 2027 will be meaningfully better than 2025 for residential operators and, by extension, for the residential debt collateral on our balance sheet. On life sciences, I want to spend a minute here because I know it is a sector that has attracted some discussion; I think the conversation deserves a little more nuance than it has been getting. Our exposure is concentrated, intentional, and increasingly de-risked. Our Alewife project is now 71% leased, anchored by Lila Sciences, a pioneering AI and life science company, on a long-term lease for 245,000 square feet with options to expand. The active pipeline of RFPs, LOIs, and leases on the project today represents approximately 92% of the remaining vacant square footage.

This is a high-conviction underwrite into a project where leasing momentum and credit improvement are visible in the data, not aspirational. An additional and increasingly relevant point I want to drive home is the demand funnel of our life science collateral has widened materially because of AI, not in spite of it. AI companies need exactly the same purpose-built infrastructure that traditional lab tenants need: power density, cooling capacity, structural floor loads, ventilation, and vibration tolerances. They cannot retrofit older converted assets at any rent. They need the bones, and they will pay for the bones. Alewife is exactly that asset in the right submarket adjacent to MIT and the broader Cambridge cluster. Our life science exposure is not a generic bet on the sector.

It is a concentrated bet on first-to-fill, infrastructure-grade assets in elite educational districts that are now also AI corridors. The credit profile of these assets is improving, not deteriorating, as the tenant universe widens. Moreover, our capital is largely placed in the last 12 to 18 months at a reset basis that primes billions of dollars of equity versus loans originated in the go-go days of the post-COVID liquidity craze where capital was much less discerning. On to self storage. Storage is in the cyclical bottoming process. Industry-wide second quarter earnings for the public REITs were consistent with guidance and largely in line with sell-side estimates. Expectation for the full year is roughly flat, with flat revenue and 50 to 150 basis point declines in NOI.

Supply remains muted also. According to the data, facilities under construction are less than 3% of existing supply; that is the equilibrium benchmark. Forecasted deliveries over the next several years could be as low as 1% of existing stock, and combined with the difficulty of bank financing for new development, the cost of land and materials, and a higher-rate environment than the 2015 to 2020 development cycle, we expect supply discipline to persist and pricing power to return. Our NSP portfolio continues to outperform the industry meaningfully, with occupancy in the low 90s near the top of the industry, and rent growth and NOI performance materially ahead of the sector decline by almost 300 to 500 basis points. Moving to our pipeline. Today, it consists of approximately $190 million of NexPoint Real Estate Finance, Inc.

investment across 11 active deals, three closed and eight under executed LOI, plus an additional $275 million of structured product opportunities, specifically across multifamily senior loans and CMBS pools. These are real deals at real spreads. The pricing power remains very much in our favor for disciplined capital providers like us. The pipeline’s blended return profile is well in excess of our cost of capital and the new TRS facility that Paul mentioned, which is already driving modest increases in CAD, which we expect to see continuing throughout 2026. Before I close, I want to take a moment on something that I believe will be a meaningful differentiator for NexPoint Real Estate Finance, Inc. over the next several years. We are deploying AI across our underwriting, portfolio monitoring, credit risk, and operations functions, and we believe we are ahead of the commercial mortgage REIT peer group on this.

On the underwriting side, we are piloting AI-assisted deal screening and diligence across CMBS, mezzanine, and preferred equity originations. The system ingests rent rolls, comps, and market data, and our target is a 50% reduction in underwriting cycle time. That means more deals are being evaluated, sharper credit work, faster execution, all without expanding headcount. On the portfolio monitoring side, we are deploying always-on surveillance across all 92-plus investments. Machine-learning-driven signals on occupancy, rent growth, debt service coverage ratios, and sponsor health flag risk before it shows up in the financials. We believe this will result in earlier identification of watch list assets and meaningfully tighten the feedback loop between credit underwriting and portfolio surveillance.

We are also building predictive credit models for borrower default probability, LTV stress paths, and loss given defaults. This reinforces our existing disciplined underwriting with data-driven early warnings. It does not replace our investment committee process. In our operations and reporting, we are using generative AI to accelerate investor reporting, SEC filings prep, earnings supplemental drafting, and internal research, freeing our team for higher value analytical work. Our roadmap is the sequence foundation in Q2 and Q3 of this year, scale across the full portfolio by Q4, and full optimization throughout 2027. We expect this to translate into faster decisions, sharper risk management, and a more scalable platform for growth. A few closing points on capital and the balance sheet.

Net debt to equity continues to run below 1x, among the lowest in commercial mortgage REIT space. Combined with the re-REMIC execution that Paul just mentioned and the new TRS facility, we do indeed have the capital structure flexibility to be opportunistic on origination and on our own stock. Speaking of which, at current levels, we continue to trade at a meaningfully deep discount to book value of approximately $19 per share. To be clear, we view buybacks at this discount as an accretive use of capital, and you should expect to see us continue to buy back stock opportunistically alongside funding the pipeline I just walked through. Given our liquidity position and having successfully refinanced near-term maturities, the two are not mutually exclusive.

Our Series C preferred programs continue to provide flexible, nondilutive capital. Our book value is stable. Our dividend coverage is sound. Leverage is low, and the portfolio’s credit profile is improving. That is a setup we feel very good about heading into 2026. To summarize, strong quarter on earnings and credit, a transformative refinancing on the liability side, a continuing supply-driven tailwind in the residential space, a de-risking and broadening demand picture in life science, a robust pipeline of accretive deployment, and an AI platform initiative that we believe will set NexPoint Real Estate Finance, Inc. apart over the coming years. As always, I want to thank the team here for their hard work, and now we would like to turn the call over to the operator to take your questions.

Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press the star button followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star one again. One moment please for your first question. Your first question comes from the line of Jade Joseph Rahmani of KBW. Please go ahead.

Q&A Session

Jade Joseph Rahmani: Thank you very much. Rates are trending higher year to date, and I was wondering what you think the impact to the CRE recovery outlook will be, particularly around multifamily as bridge loans taken out during the COVID years are up for maturity.

Matthew Ryan McGraner: Yes, it is a good question. What I can say is in terms of the last, I would say, four to six weeks with rates going up as a result of geopolitical tensions, the processes that we have seen that started prior to that time, in terms of the capital markets transactions both on loan sales and investment sales, have all continued without, I would say, material disruption. There have been, I would say, some slight walkbacks in terms of buyers underwriting a 5.5% all-in rate on a Freddie or Fannie agency, and then the 10-year moves against them, and so they will seek a little retrace. So there is, I would say, a little disruption in the capital markets, but nothing that would halt it, and liquidity is still very, very plentiful on the multifamily side.

And I think what is even more important than that is we, and I think the broader public REIT universe in the reporting yesterday and today, are really starting to see the fundamentals in the multifamily sector turn and firm up. Concessions are getting weaker. In our own portfolio, for example, concessions are down by 50% from Q4. All of that is offsetting, I think, any near-term interest rate rise as it relates to multifamily.

Jade Joseph Rahmani: Life science update has been quite impressive, and I was wondering if you could give some thoughts. Do you view the Alewife exposure as unique to NexPoint Real Estate Finance, Inc., or are you also seeing green shoots elsewhere in the portfolio? And then overall, do you view NexPoint Real Estate Finance, Inc.’s exposure as better than the market? One of the commercial mortgage REITs downgraded a loan to risk five and took a quite large reserve on that. They are also expecting an REO in life science and much of it is vacant in the sector, so just looking for some additional thoughts there.

Matthew Ryan McGraner: Yes, you bet. I think the important point on our project in Alewife is, again, it is brand new, it is purpose-built with incredible infrastructure. And the land that the asset is built on was assembled over years, three to five years; it was not just a spec build. It was very intentional and in the cluster submarket. I think that, for one, is unique. Our own investment in terms of the loan-to-cost is roughly 30%. That is our unique sponsor relationship there and the ability for us to provide capital at a time, like I said, in the last 12 to 18 months where there was literally no capital available in the life science sector. So I think the loans that I have seen as well that you are referring to were, again, originated in a more speculative environment with more hope to lease, on the outskirts of the cluster markets where we have exposure.

Cambridge and the Longwood and Fenway districts are going to be the first-to-fill locations, and we are seeing real depth in the project leasing in terms of demand coming out of big pharma and the venture space. I think the green shoots you could point to are the biotech index nearing cyclical highs, venture capital at a high since 2021, and then, again, the AI spend and the assets that AI needs just widen the demand funnel for our assets. We are in the right locations where they want to be, and they have the critical infrastructure that is demanded by their compute and other real estate needs. So I do think we are different. I do think our exposure is different, and I think it is, again, more recent at a reset basis versus loans that were originated perhaps in 2020, 2021, and 2022.

Gabe Poguey: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. I want to actually piggyback on what Jade was just asking. It sounds like Alewife is doing great. Some other exposures, you know, Holly Springs and Vacaville, California. You guys have low attachment points, but it looks like the senior mortgages are due maybe by the end of the year. Just any color you can give on expectations for the underlying asset, whether it is a refi or a sale, etc., I think would be helpful as it pertains to life science exposure away from Alewife. And then one more kind of just on the accounting side. In the other income, the $17 million, can you guys break out the components of that for us before we get the 10-Q, or do we need to wait for the 10-Q for that?

Matthew Ryan McGraner: Great question, and thanks for it, Gabe. So Holly Springs and Vacaville are both advanced manufacturing assets, which, if anything, is stronger in the last six months than life science. The Holly Springs underlying collateral, I believe, is now topped out, has a tenant, and I think we will likely be refinanced out of that deal. The tenant is a battery manufacturer for the Department of Defense. They are seeing a ton of growth right now, and I see that exposure being reduced by a loan payoff at some point this year. Same thing goes for Vacaville. It has eight to 10 project names in and around both semiconductor manufacturing and advanced manufacturing in the pharmaceutical side. To your point, the attachment is very low there, so I think there are a lot of ways to win, and I would say that we would probably be taken out of that asset in the next 12 months as well.

And then one thing that is on the horizon that could be good and bad is Alewife being repaid. With the success of leasing there, going from zero to 71% leased, and the tenant quality and the clustering that is happening—like I said, there are RFPs and LOIs on that asset that almost get it to 100% full—we could see that capital come back to us in 12 months as well.

Paul Richards: Yes, hey, Gabe. Great question. I think we wait until the 10-Q for that one. It will give you a good breakdown of the other income, and we can provide a breakdown in the supplement as well going forward for better analysis.

Operator: There are no further questions at this time. And with that, I will now turn the call back over to the management team for final closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Matthew Ryan McGraner: Thank you again for everyone’s participation this morning, and we look forward to speaking to you next quarter and providing another good update. Have a great day. Thanks.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect your lines.