Creative Media

And welcome to the Creative Media and Community Trust first quarter 2023 earnings conference 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. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Steve Alto Brando. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. My name is Steve Alto Brando, the Portfolio Oversight for CMCT. Also on the call today is Shaul Kuba, our Chief Investment Officer, David Thompson, our Chief Executive Officer, and Barry Berlin, 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. Our earnings release includes a reconciliation 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 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.

Thanks, Steve, and thank you everyone for joining our call today. We made tremendous strides in the quarter, executing on our previously announced plan to grow the multifamily side of our portfolio to achieve more balance between creative office and multifamily. During the first quarter, we completed the acquisition of two multifamily assets in Oakland and one multifamily property in Los Angeles. These newer vintage, highly amenitized premier multifamily assets in high barrier to entry markets added 696 units to our growing portfolio. We also started construction on the luxury multifamily portion at 4750 Wilshire in Los Angeles after closing a co-investment and a construction loan in March. This will add another 68 residential units to the portfolio. We believe this is an attractive project given the assets location in Hancock Park, a supply-constrained neighborhood that is adjacent to multimillion-dollar single-family homes. In addition, we have a large pipeline of multifamily development opportunities on land we already own. As we previously mentioned, for value-add and development assets, we will look to co-invest to increase our diversification and supplement returns by generating fee-come where advantageous, just like we did with 4750 Wilshire. During the quarter, we also took steps to improve our liquidity and balance sheet. We completed a securitization of our loan portfolio that generated net proceeds of approximately $43.3 million. We also generated $23.6 million of proceeds from our Series A1 preferred stock offering in the quarter. These steps to improve liquidity followed the refinancing of our credit facility in the fourth quarter. We believe the refinancing of our secured facility, which is largely backed by several of our high-quality office assets, demonstrates the strength of our portfolio. Turning to the first quarter, we continued to see a strong rebound at our hotel asset, with NOI increasing 73% from the prior year period. Our office NOI declined year-over-year and declined 1% from the fourth quarter. We have over 50,000 square feet of leases signed but have not yet commenced. Our multifamily segment generated $675,000 of NOI in the quarter. While our lending business NOI declined year-over-year, we were able to generate significant proceeds from the segment through the securitization of the loan portfolio. CMCT reported core FFO of negative 6 cents per share compared to positive 10 cents in the year earlier period. This was primarily driven by higher interest expense due to our channel house acquisition, which is still in the process of being leased up. I would now like to turn the call over to Shaul Kuban.