Ivan Kaufman: Listen, we always have tremendous discussions of maintaining, raising and how much we have raised. And we have had such a huge cushion and our performance has been outstanding. I think the Board in discussions and Paul can comment it on as well as, we just don’t get the credit in the market and at this period of time, there is really no upside in the market to raising the dividend. Everybody else is lowering their dividend. And the Board felt the credit is really — everybody’s dropping their dividend or paying it out of capital. And clearly the cushion we have and the thought was there is no real benefit to it. Paul, you want to give a little color on it?
Paul Elenio: Yes. I think that’s right, Crispin. I think our view is, as you know, we have a lot of cushion and easily could have just done it again. But we look at when you come into these markets. And we have been — as Ivan said in his prepared remarks, we have been strategically looking over the last 18 months of what we think would be a challenging recession. We think our assets in our portfolio are in great shape. We are in the right asset class. We have a lot of structure. We do a lot of deals that repeat borrowers. Having said that, when you come into challenging environments, cash and liquidity is crucial. And we’ve been — we’ve done a great job of accumulating, really stockpiling a war chest of cash. And at this point, we just don’t see a lot of value in increasing that dividend today, and that may change.
We may see where our earnings go, and we’ll continue to evaluate it with the Board on a quarterly basis. But again, raising it 3 times this year 10 of the last 11 quarters, and when I look at the peer group is I think only one peer group that actually — one person out here that actually raised their dividend and it was nominal over the last three years. So, we just feel like the credit isn’t there at this point. And we’ll continue to evaluate it.
Ivan Kaufman: And we’re trading at a just similar dividend to some others in our peer group, and they haven’t raised their dividend, and their payout ratio is close to 100%. And the Board just said, well, what’s the benefit of increasing the dividend? And let’s see how that goes. We are such an outperformer in paying out 67% or 70% increasing a dividend. What is the market even going to care? That was kind of a consensus.
Operator: We’ll take our next question from Lee Cooperman with Omega Family Office.
Lee Cooperman : Thank you. I have three questions. Before I ask my question, I just want to give you guys a well-deserved shout out. I’ve been an investor, I think from the day of the IPO. I think for well over 10 years, you guys have done a absolute sensational job in managing the affairs of the company. And I want to thank you for that. My three questions are: number one, as you said in your press release, we have a best-in-class return equity of 18%. In your view is that sustainable at the current time, where do you think that we’re over earning? Number two, I need a little bit of an education. There are certain tax laws that require you to pay out a percentage of your taxable income as a REIT. Based upon your budget this year, do you think you’ll be flushed to pay an additional dividend before the end of the year or not?
And third, I think the answer is self-evident, we don’t have any need for any additional equity here because you have plenty of equity on the balance sheet.
Ivan Kaufman: So that’s three questions.
