Creative Media

Good day and welcome to Creative Media and Community Trust's second quarter 2022 earnings call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note that this event is being recorded. I'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. Steve Otebrando. Portfolio Oversight for CMCT. Please go ahead, sir.

Morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. My name is Steve Altibrando. I'm the Portfolio Oversight for CMCT. Also on the call today is David Thompson, our Chief Executive Officer, Shaul Kuba, co-founder of CIM Group and CMCT board member, and Nate DeBacher, our Chief Financial Officer. This call is being webcast and will be temporarily archived on the investor relations section of our website, where you can also find our earnings release and latest investor presentation. Our earnings release includes reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures discussed during today's call. During the course of this call, we will make forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs of assumptions made by and information currently available to us. Our actual results will be affected by known and unknown risks, trends, uncertainties, and factors that are beyond our control or our ability to predict. Although we believe that our assumptions are reasonable, they are not guarantees of future performance, and some will prove to be incorrect. Therefore, our actual future results can be expected to differ from our expectations, and those differences may be material. For a more detailed description of potential risks, please refer to our SEC filings, which can be found in the investor relations section of our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to David Thompson.

David Thompson Thanks, Steve, and thank you for joining our call today. This morning, we announced our second quarter 2022 earnings. We were pleased that we generated a large increase in our FFO on a year-over-year basis, accelerated leasing activity, made significant progress on our value-add assets, and we continued to add to our development pipeline. Starting with our earnings, our core FFO per share was $0.11 in the second quarter compared to $0.06 in the prior year period. The significant year-over-year improvement was primarily driven by improving results at our one-owned hotel, as well as a significant reduction in our cost structure. On the cost side, our corporate overhead, which includes asset management fees, G&A, and expense reimbursements, declined by 34% from the prior year period. This was driven by the reduction in the management fees we announced earlier this year. We executed approximately 39,000 square feet of leases in the quarter, and our lease pipeline for the second half of the year is strong. We continue to make progress on our value-add assets, most notably at our Beverly Hills building, where we just executed an approximately 18,000 square feet long-term lease with a Rolls-Royce dealership. The ground-level retail is now 100% leased, and the entire building is now more than 90% leased. Entering this year, the building was just 67% occupied. Finally, we've assembled a very attractive growth pipeline, a majority of which are multifamily-focused. In the quarter, we closed on our second Jefferson Park site, where we plan to develop multifamily. We will seek to raise third-party capital on a portion of these investments, which will reduce the risk profile for CMCT and improve our returns if we will structure the deals so CMCT can earn or promote. So, overall, we're very pleased with the direction of the company, given improving earnings, increased leasing activity, progress made on our value-add assets, and a compelling pipeline of growth. I would now like to turn the call over to Shaul Kuba.