Creative Media

Hello and welcome to the Creative Media and Community Trust third quarter 2024 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. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad and to withdraw from the queue, you may press star then two. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the call to Steve Alto Brando. Please go ahead.

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us. My name is Steve Alto Brando, the portfolio oversight for CMCT. Also on the call today are 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 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 other 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 continue to work through the challenges in the real estate market, particularly the traditional office asset class, as well as the challenges in the Bay Area. We remain committed to increasing our multifamily portfolio as well as reducing our traditional office assets, a strategy that we have pursued for more than two years and believe is best suited for the current market environment. In the third quarter, we announced actions to accelerate our focus towards premier multifamily assets. These steps are also aimed at strengthening our balance sheet and improving our liquidity and cash flow. We are making progress against these goals. First, we are in the advanced stages of refinancing several of our assets, including our Sheraton Grand Hotel and several of our high quality Los Angeles office assets. We intend to use the proceeds from these property level refinancings to fully repay and retire our recourse corporate level credit facility. We plan to invest any remaining proceeds, along with proceeds from future potential asset sales or refinancings, principally to acquire additional Premier multifamily properties. Second, we continue to make progress on rebalancing our portfolio, including through our multifamily development pipeline and the renovation of our hotel asset. And we will continue to evaluate the disposition of assets that do not fit our strategy. With respect to our multifamily pipeline, We recently completed an office to multifamily conversion at 4750 Wilshire and are on track to complete our 36-unit multifamily development in Echo Park in Los Angeles in the third quarter of 2025. We also just closed a co-investment at 1902 Park Avenue, another premier Class A apartment property, which is located also in Echo Park. That transaction provided a cash distribution to CMCT and will contribute recurring management fees. We believe we have a growing portfolio of premier assets and these steps will better position the company to participate in the real estate recovery. Turning to our third quarter results, we continue to be impacted by elevated short-term interest rates, continued soft rental rates at our Bay Area multifamily assets, lower office occupancy, and renovation disruption at our hotel. With respect to the office, we noted last quarter our largest tenant at 1 Kaiser Plaza gave back approximately 130,000 square feet at the end of July. With respect to our hotel, our results were significantly impacted this quarter by a temporary disruption from the renovation of our hotel property in Sacramento. However, we anticipate finalizing the room renovation around year end, which will be in time for the busier seasonal period, typically in the first and second quarters of each year. With that, I will turn it over to Steve to provide a further update on our development pipeline, the portfolio, and our co-investment activity. Thanks, David.