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Text: We hope that everyone listening continues to be safe and healthy as we work through the challenges related to the pandemic.
It is impossible to review ARI's 2020 performance or discuss current market conditions and the implications for ARI's future strategic priorities without acknowledging the initial and ongoing impact of the pandemic.
Ultimately, the real estate market resides at the intersection of the economy and the capital markets.
To frame my comments in the appropriate context, it is important to note that despite initial concerns expressed by those who viewed the pandemic through the lens of the Global Financial Crisis, over the past 11 months the capital markets have remained functioning and experienced an historically rapid recovery.
However, overall economic performance is recovering slowly, and the ultimate trajectory of the economy will depend on the pace at which fiscal and regulatory policies and capital investment are able to minimize the impact of the pandemic and the ongoing vaccination efforts enable the reopening of as much of the pre-pandemic economy as possible.
Unlike every other year-end earnings call in ARI's history when we would typically highlight origination volume, growth in the capital base and portfolio as well as capital efficiency, we believe ARI's performance in 2020 is best measured by the company's balance sheet durability and effective proactive asset management.
During the year, the in-place strength of the balance sheet was enhanced through effective liquidity management predicated on strong relationships with each of our lenders as well as opportunistic and well-priced asset sales.
ARI's asset management efforts benefited from our ongoing investment in both talent and systems and our historic practice of keeping originators involved with their transactions, which facilitates dialogue with and information flow from our borrowers.
The tremendous skill set of Apollo's commercial real estate debt team and the resources, thought leadership and relationships that come from being part of the broader Apollo organization were instrumental to ARI's achievements in 2020 and continue to differentiate ARI in the marketplace.
Importantly, the net result of our 2020 efforts was ARI's continued ability to pay a well-covered dividend to our shareholders.
The onset of the pandemic immediately led to concerns over liquidity throughout the real estate sector and heightened security of balance sheet strength and bank lending relationships across mortgage REITs.
In managing ARI's balance sheet, we have always focused on implementing a leverage strategy consistent with our asset mix, balancing the use of leverage with return targets, not relying on max leverage on any one asset to generate a target return and maintaining an unencumbered pool of loans.
We have consistently maintained strong relationships with our lenders, always seeking to keep an open and candid dialogue and ensuring that ARI fully benefits from the One Apollo approach to managing relationships with key financial partners.
This approach was validated during 2020, as we materially increased ARI's short-term liquidity without the need for any form of rescue capital or having to access the capital markets from a position of weakness during the peak of capital markets volatility.
Beyond ARI's basic financial strategy, we also chose to opportunistically sell loans at attractive pricing, generating excess liquidity and eliminating some of our construction and future funding commitments.
During 2020, ARI sold approximately $634 million of loans at a weighted-average price of 98.1% of par, generating net proceeds of $208 million.
Given the significant amount of capital searching for yield, the market for loan sales remains active, and when and if appropriate we may consider additional sales on behalf of ARI.
Another highlight of 2020 was ARI's considered use of its share repurchase plan.
In growing ARI, we have maintained our commitment to only issue common stock above book value.
In 2020, we remained thoughtful with respect to how our capital allocation could positively impact book value given the pandemic-driven downward pressure on our common stock price.
As such, we determined repurchasing ARI's common stock would achieve the best risk-adjusted return on equity for our excess capital.
As a result, we repurchased over $128 million of common stock at an average price of $8.61, resulting in approximately $0.61 per share of book value accretion.
I also want to highlight that yesterday we announced our board of directors authorized a $150 million increase to ARI's share repurchase plan, providing us with total capacity of $172 million.
Pivoting to the portfolio, ARI's focus for 2020 was proactive asset management.
Our efforts were greatly enhanced through the access to the resources of the Apollo platform, providing our team with extensive real-time data and information.
In prior quarters, we have spoken extensively about the challenges within various property types or specific assets in our portfolio.
Given the underlying LTV of our loans, the ongoing dialogue with our borrowers and the measured recovery in the economy, I am pleased to report that there are no material changes to the credit quality of the portfolio or to our credit outlook since the last call.
Anecdotally, with respect to our loans underlying the hospitality assets, we continue to see steady improvement within the roughly 65% of our portfolio which are resort or destination locations, while business-oriented hotels continue to face challenges.
With respect to the Anaheim hotel that was foreclosed upon and is being carried as REO, the hotel is under contract to be sold, and a hard deposit has been posted.
Lastly, with respect to two of our largest focused loans, we have had positive momentum at both the Miami Design District loan and the Fulton Street loan.
With respect to Miami Design, since the last earnings call we entered into a partnership with an extremely well regarded local developer who is converting the space into an open-air marketplace and working on leasing the existing space, while retaining the option to redevelop the property at a later date.
On Fulton Street, we partnered with a best-in-class New York developer to redevelop the site into a multifamily property.
The one additional loan I want to discuss is our first mortgage secured by an urban retail property in London.
The property is located in one of the most trafficked locations on Oxford Circus in London, and it houses Topchop's and Nike's flagship stores.
Last quarter, Topshop's parent company, Arcadia, filed for bankruptcy.
This was an outcome we considered when we underwrote the loan, as we were extremely familiar with the credit.
The property is currently being marketed for sale, and the initial feedback from the process indicates the proceeds will be well in excess of our loan.
The loan is currently accruing interest, including default interest, and we believe we are well covered.
As we look ahead, we believe ARI is well positioned to capitalize on the significant increase in real estate transaction activity which began in the latter part of 2020 and has continued in 2021.
The commercial real estate market is benefiting from the low interest rate environment and record amounts of dry powder in real estate funds, which is leading to increased deal activity.
ARI entered 2021 with excess capital on its balance sheet and is positioned to deploy that capital into attractive risk-adjusted return opportunities.
Also, given the current strength of the capital markets, we believe ARI will be repaid on some of its existing loans, thereby providing additional capital to be invested.
Apollo's real estate credit platform remained active throughout 2020 and continues to see a tremendous amount of transaction flow, which has enabled ARI to thoughtfully build a pipeline of potential new deals.
Importantly, ARI's lenders have indicated their willingness to provide ARI with financing for new transactions, and we are confident that levered returns achievable today are consistent with the returns on the capital we are expecting back this year.
As always, our focus on capital allocation will remain on generating the most attractive risk-adjusted ROE.
We will remain steadfast to our credit-first methodology, and we will be prudent in our capital management in funding new business.
We recently committed to our first transaction in 2021, a large first mortgage loan in Europe, and the pipeline continues to build.
This was achievable even with excess liquidity on our balance sheet through most of 2020.
Our common stock offers investors in excess of an 11-plus percent dividend yield, which we believe is extremely attractive in this current low yield environment.
Before we review earnings, I wanted to discuss our secured financing arrangements.
From March 15 of last year, total deleveraging on our $3.5 billion financing arrangements were $190 million, which is less than 6% of our outstanding balance.
Our strong relationships with key counterparties were beneficial as we navigated volatility in the capital markets throughout the past 11 months.
We also proactively worked with our financing partners and availed ourselves of the benefits of the broader Apollo platform to ensure adequate liquidity and term-out financing.
I want to highlight that beginning of this quarter we will use the words "distributable earnings" instead of "operating earnings," with no change to the definition.
For the fourth quarter of 2020, our distributable earnings prior to realized loss on investments were $51 million, or $0.36 per share of common stock.
Distributable earnings were $21 million, or $0.15 per share, and the realized loss on investments was comprised of $25 million in previously recorded specific CECL reserves and $5 million on loan sales and restructurings.
GAAP net income available to common stockholders was $33 million, or $0.23 per share, and the common stock dividend for the quarter was $0.35 per share.
As of December 31, our General CECL Reserve remained relatively unchanged, declining by three basis points to 68 basis points, and our total CECL reserve now stands at 3.24% of our portfolio.
Moving to book value.
GAAP book value per share prior to the General CECL Reserve was $15.38, as compared to $15.30 at the end of the third quarter.
The increase was primarily due to the accretive share repurchases Stuart mentioned earlier.
Since the end of the first quarter of last year, our book value prior to General CECL Reserve increased by $0.44 per share.
At quarter-end, our $6.5 billion loan portfolio had a weighted-average unlevered yield of 6.3% and a remaining fully extended term of just under three years.
Approximately 90% of our floating-rate U.S. loans have LIBOR floors that are in the money today, with a weighted-average floor of 1.46%.
We completed $109 million of add-on fundings during the quarter for previously closed loans, bringing our total add-on fundings to $413 million for 2020.
And lastly, with respect to our borrowings we are in compliance with all covenants and continue to maintain strong liquidity.
As of today, we have $250 million of cash on hand, $30 million of approved undrawn credit capacity and $1.1 billion in unencumbered loan assets.

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compname reports q4 earnings per share $0.23.
q4 earnings per share $0.23.
apollo commercial real estate finance - company's board of directors authorized increase of $150 million to existing share repurchase plan.

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