Ares Commercial Real Estate Corporation (NYSE:ACRE) Q3 2023 Earnings Conference Call November 3, 2023 10:00 PM ET

Company Participants

John Stilmar - Managing Director, IR

Bryan Donohoe - CEO

Tae-Sik Yoon - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Sarah Barcomb - BTIG

Steve DeLaney - JMP Securities

Donald Fandetti - Wells Fargo

Jade Rahmani - KBW

Stephen Laws - Raymond James

Richard Shane - JPMorgan

Operator

Good morning. Welcome to Ares Commercial Real Estate Corporation's Third Quarter September 30, 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded on Friday, November 3, 2023.

I will now turn the call over to your host, Mr. John Stilmar, Managing Director of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

John Stilmar

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's conference call. I'm joined today by our CEO, Bryan Donohoe; our CFO, Tae-Sik Yoon and other members of the management team. In addition to our press release and the 10-Q that we filed with the SEC, we've posted an earnings presentation under the Investor Resources section of our website at www.arescre.com.

Before we begin, I want to remind everyone that comments made during the course of this conference call and webcast and the accompanying documents contain forward-looking statements and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Many of these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as anticipate, believe, expects, intends, will, should, and similar such expressions.

These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations of market conditions and management's judgment. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, condition or results and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. The company's actual results could differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements as a result of a number of factors, including those listed in its SEC filings. Ares Commercial Real Estate assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements.

During this conference call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. We use these measures of operating performance, and these measures should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for measures prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. These measures may not be comparable to like title measures by other companies.

Now I'd like to turn the call over to our CEO, Bryan Donohoe.

Bryan Donohoe

Thanks, and good morning, everyone. During the third quarter, we continued to execute on three primary goals we have discussed previously. First, we intended to maintain strong levels of liquidity and moderate leverage. Secondly, we wanted to take advantage of the lending market and our liability structure to selectively originate new loans that would be accretive to our earnings. And finally, we wanted to continue to maximize the value of our underperforming assets.