2024 Annual Report
THE PERIGON - MIAMI BEACH, FL
Shareholders of Starwood Property Trust,
Starwood Property Trust is rapidly approaching our 16th anniversary since our formation as a
blind pool of capital to take advantage of real estate lending opportunities. We are the longest
lived of the commercial mortgage REITs, 2.0, formed after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. We
have now deployed over $100 billion of capital since that time. Our shareholders have been
rewarded, receiving a 10.4% annualized total return since our inception, outperforming both the
equity REIT and mortgage REIT indexes, while paying out $7.9 billion in dividends. We are
particularly pleased that we are the only company in our REIT peer group that has never cut its
dividend. We intentionally diversified our business model entering multiple related lines of
business to not have to force capital into any one sleeve when risk and reward became
unattractive. We have all just seen the benefits of this model. Our commercial mortgage loan
portfolio has fallen from a peak of $16.9 billion to $13.7 billion while we have decreased our
overall leverage and yet we have been able to earn and maintain our dividend. We intend to
continue to be a diversified finance company, continue to build our business lines and to
opportunistically enter new lines that work in our model.
We believe our company, with underlying diverse investment cylinders, can continue to create
countercyclical revenue without using our balance sheet and should be valued at an earnings
multiple like other diversified finance companies. We also enjoy unrealized gains of over $1.5
billion in our owned property assets that give us significant cushion and unique dividend paying
ability.
While we are proud of our diversification and scale, management and our board are most proud
of our consistency. Our non-lending businesses, including our special servicer, conduit and
owned property portfolio have helped us outperform over 36 of the most difficult months for
commercial real estate.
Though interest rates have generally risen since the 2024 presidential election, to date we have
seen significant spread compression across our investment cylinders in commercial real estate
(CRE), CMBS, infrastructure and residential loan and financing spreads, and the tightening of
real estate capitalization rates. Liquidity appears to have returned to all of these markets for both
new transactions and the refinancing of the record loan originations volume from late 2020
through early 2022, giving us as strong a loan pipeline as we have seen in 3 years. Because of
capital regulations, banks continue to earn significantly higher returns on their equity lending to
non-bank lenders like us rather than making their own direct whole loans to borrowers. They
have also reduced their lending spreads to us in line with the market’s overall spread
compression. This should allow us to make our loans at tighter spreads across our platform on
high quality low leverage loans at today’s lower purchase prices, which we believe will create
attractive opportunities for us this coming year. As mentioned earlier, our low leverage balance
sheet leaves us significant room to make additional investments while still maintaining our
diversified business model.
We enter 2025 with record liquidity, and access to debt capital at the lowest spreads in our
history, allowing us to significantly increase our investing pace. Our 300 employees at Starwood
Property Trust in addition to the employees at our manager Starwood Capital Group around the
world, are working towards this goal. With the strength of our loan pipeline at the start of this
year, we expect to have a very productive 2025.
This year, we plan to access today’s receptive capital markets conditions to continue to increase
our unsecured corporate debt as a percentage of our overall debt which we believe will favor us
in discussions with the ratings agencies to upgrade our corporate debt ratings, thereby further
reducing our cost of capital, and making our planned growth even more accretive to
shareholders. Our simple goal is to achieve an investment grade rating.
Although we have much work to do, we are working hard on exiting our legacy non-accrual
loans and foreclosed real estate assets and have a plan to reduce this portfolio going forward.
While we have maintained our dividend in these difficult years where CRE was the hardest hit
by the Fed’s unprecedented rapid 500 basis point interest rate increase, we believe that freeing up
this trapped equity will help us grow our investment portfolio further and should allow us to
increase earnings in the coming years.
2024 Highlights:
x Invested $5.1 billion of capital, across business lines, including $1.7 billion in CRE
Lending
x Raised a record $3.5 billion of capital across equity, unsecured debt and term loans
x Increased the remaining duration of our corporate debt 60% to 3.5 years
x Paid $1.92 dividend per share, which has been consistent for over a decade; $7.9 billion
of total dividends paid or declared since inception
x Securitized $1.6 billion of conduit loans in 17 transactions in 2024, the highest level since
2016
x LNR regained position as largest special servicer in the U.S., with a $110 billion named
portfolio, the highest in a decade
x 83% of our outstanding debt contains no capital markets mark-to-market provisions; debt
covenants contain excess capacity
Our company sits on a solid foundation today. Our goal is for the market to not call us a
Mortgage REIT much longer. We want to be thought of as a finance company, in a REIT form,
which is the most tax-efficient way to distribute our earnings. With our diversity of income
streams, we do not believe we have any peers.
We hope that going forward we will trade at a dividend yield that reflects the reduced risk of our
diversified business model. We are in position today to continue to grow both across our existing
business lines and also add new businesses across finance and owned real estate.
We want to thank our shareholders for their continued support, and our Board of Directors for
their wisdom and guidance. With management and our Board collectively owning 5.9% of the
company’s stock, we continue to remain fully aligned with our shareholders.
Yours very truly,
Barry S. Sternlicht Jeffrey F. DiModica, CFA
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
President
Total Assets
BOARD OF DIRECTORS & EXECUTIVE TEAM
EXECUTIVE TEAM
Barry S. Sternlicht
Chairman & CEO
Starwood Capital Group & Starwood Property Trust
Jeffrey F. DiModica, CFA
President
Starwood Property Trust
Rina Paniry
Chief Financial Officer
Starwood Property Trust
PRINCIPAL EXECUTIVEOFFICE
Starwood Property Trust
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Phone:
www.starwoodpropertytrust.com
INVESTOR RELATIONS CONTACT
Zachary Tanenbaum
Starwood Property Trust
Phone: (203) 422-7788
ztanenbaum@starwood.com
TRANSFER AGENT
Computershare Trust Company, N.A.
PO Box
3URYLGHQFH5,
Within USA, US territories & Canada - Phone: (877) 373 6374
Outside USA, US territories & Canada - Phone: (781) 575 3100
BOARDOFDIRECTORS
BarryS.Sternlicht
Chairman&CEO
StarwoodCapitalGroup&StarwoodPropertyTrust
JeffreyG.Dishner
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StarwoodCapitalGroup
RichardD.Bronson
Chairman
TheBronsonCompanies, LLC
CamilleJ.Douglas
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SolomonJ.Kumin
Co-President
LeucadiaAssetManagementLLC
FredPerpall
ChiefExecutiveOfficer
TheBeckGroup
FredS.Ridley
Partner
Foley&LardnerLLP
Strauss Zelnick
Founder & Managing Partner
Zelnick Media Capital (ZMC)
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