American Assets Trust, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the American Assets Trust third 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, today's event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Adam Weil, President and Chief Operating Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to American Assets Trust third quarter 2023 earnings call. Yesterday afternoon, our earnings release and supplemental information were furnished to the SEC on Form 8K. Both are now available on the Investors section of our website, AmericanAssetsTrust.com. And with that quick intro, I'll turn the call over to Ernest Rady, our chairman and CEO, to begin the discussion of our third quarter 2023 results. Ernest?

Thanks Adam and good morning everyone. During these times when the economic and business landscapes are so unpredictable, it has become imperative for us to focus on what we can control, including how we can adapt to meeting the evolving market demands in such a turbulent economy. Along these lines, we have a history of overcoming challenges with resilience, and we are confident that our high-quality operating platform and real estate portfolio will remain steadfast in spite of market adversity as we face persistent inflation, higher for longer federal funds rates, much tighter credit conditions, and truly unfortunate geopolitical instability and war. We are certainly not naive to the fact that the office sector in particular seems to be painted with a broad negative brush. It may take time for the office sector to see meaningful bifurcation of performance and value between the more modernized and amenitized office projects like ours versus that of commodity offices. But we are confident that we'll be on the right side of that equation. And not to mention, as we see replacement costs for high-quality property like ours soaring and likely to continue to climb over the years to come, I think that today's real estate prices for premier properties will be a bargain in the future. Meanwhile, in Q3 2023, we were once again encouraged by our operating fundamentals, which were stronger than our projections against the negative backdrop for commercial real estate. Nevertheless, we remain optimistic that our earnings trajectory for the rest of the years as we have once again increased our full-year guidance based on our better-than-expected performance so far in 2023. Candidly, the outlook beyond this year, at least in the short term, is less certain with the prevailing economic and global challenges. But as always, I promise you, we'll work hard, do our very best, and look forward to presenting our 2024 guidance next February. Adam, Bob, and Steve will go into more detail on our various asset segments, financial results, and guidance. But first, I want to mention that the Board of Directors has approved and maintained a quarterly dividend of 33 cents per share for the fourth quarter, which we believe is supported by our financial results. and is an expression of the Board's confidence in our expected performance. The dividend will be paid on December 21st to shareholders of record December 7th. Again, on behalf of all of us at American Asset Trust, we thank you for your confidence and continue support in allowing us to manage your company. I'm now going to turn the call back to Adam.