Chicago Atlantic Real Estate Finance, Inc. (NASDAQ:REFI) Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call May 9, 2023 9:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Harry Sullivan - SCR Partners

John Mazarakis - Executive Chairman

Anthony Cappell - CEO & Director

Phillip Silverman - Interim CFO, Company Secretary & Controller

Conference Call Participants

Aaron Hecht - JMP Securities

Mark Smith - Lake Street Capital Markets

Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Chicago and Atlantic Real Estate Finance, Inc. First Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions].

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Tripp Sullivan. Please go ahead.

Harry Sullivan

Thank you. Good morning. Welcome to the Chicago Atlantic Real Estate Finance conference call to review the company's results for the first quarter of 2023. On the call today will be John Mazarakis, Executive Chairman; Tony Cappell, Chief Executive Officer; Andreas Bodmeier, Co-President and Chief Investment Officer; and Phil Silverman, Interim Chief Financial Officer.

Our results were released this morning in our earnings press release, which can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website, along with our supplemental filed with the SEC. A live audio webcast of this call is being made available today. For those who listen to the replay of this webcast, we remind you that the remarks made herein are as of today, May 9, 2023, will not be updated subsequent to this call.

During this call, certain comments and statements we make may be deemed forward-looking statements within the meaning prescribed by the securities laws, including statements related to the future performance of our portfolio, our pipeline of potential loans and other investments, future dividends and financing activity.

All forward-looking statements represent Chicago Atlantic's judgment as of the date of this conference call and are subject to risks and uncertainties that can cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. Investors are urged to carefully review various disclosures made by the company, including the risk and other information disclosed in the company's filings with the SEC.

We also will discuss certain non-GAAP measures, including, but not limited to distributable earnings and adjusted distributable earnings. Definitions of these non-GAAP measures and reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures are included in our filings with the SEC.

I'll now turn the call over to John Mazarakis. Please go ahead.

John Mazarakis

Thanks, Tripp. Good morning, everyone. With all that's transpired in the financial sector these past months, I believe we've proven out our original thesis from several years ago. That thesis being, we could bring a direct lending approach to help institutionalize the cannabis credit market and quickly become the leading capital provider in the space.