Arbor Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:ABR) Q2 2023 Earnings Conference Call July 28, 2023 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Paul Elenio - Chief Financial Officer

Ivan Kaufman - President and Chief Executive Officer

Conference Call Participants

Steve Delaney - JMP Securities

Stephen Laws - Raymond James

Crispin Love - Piper Sandler

Jay McCanless - WedBush

Jade Rahmani - KBW

Rick Shane - JPMorgan

Leon Cooperman - Omega Family Office

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Second Quarter 2023 Arbor Realty Trust Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to your speaker today, Paul Elenio, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Paul Elenio

Okay. Thank you, Todd and good morning, everyone and welcome to the quarterly earnings call for Arbor Realty Trust. This morning, we will discuss the results for the quarter ended June 30, 2023. With me on the call today is Ivan Kaufman, our President and Chief Executive Officer.

Before we begin, I need to inform you that statements made in this earnings call maybe deemed forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, including information about possible or assumed future results of our business, financial conditions, liquidity, results of operations, plans and objectives. These statements are based on our beliefs, assumptions and expectations of our future performance, taking into account the information currently available to us. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from Arbor’s expectations in these forward-looking statements are detailed in our SEC reports. Listeners are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of today. Arbor undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after today or the occurrences of unanticipated events.

I’ll now turn the call over to Arbor’s President and CEO, Ivan Kaufman.

Ivan Kaufman

Thank you, Paul and thanks to everyone for joining us on today’s call. As you can see from this morning’s press release, we had another outstanding quarter as our diverse business model continues to generate earnings that are well in excess of our dividend. This has allowed us to once again increase our dividend to $0.43, reflecting our 12th increase in the last 14 quarters or 43% growth over that time period all while maintaining the lowest dividend payout ratio in the industry, which was 75% for the second quarter.

In fact, we are the only company in our space that has continued to grow our dividend while many are either cutting their dividends or are electing to pay out over 100% of their earnings. Additionally and very significantly, we are also one of the only companies in the space to have experienced significant book value appreciation over the last three years, with roughly 45% growth from approximately $9 a share to nearly $13 a share. Put simply, we have increased both our dividend and book value by over 40%, all while maintaining the lowest dividend payout ratio in the industry.