American Assets Trust, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the American Assets Trust fourth quarter and year end 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 2. Please note that statements made on this conference call include forward-looking statements based on current expectations, which statements are subject to risks and uncertainties discussed in the company's filings with the SEC. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, as actual events could cause the company's results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mr. Adam Weil, President and COO for American Assets Trust. Thank you, Mr. Weil. You may begin.

Thank you, Gary. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to American Asset Trust year-end and fourth 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 investor section of our website, AmericanAssetsTrust.com. With that quick intro, I'll turn the call over to Ernest Rady, our chairman and CEO, to begin the discussion of our year-end and fourth quarter 2023 results. Ernest? Thanks, Adam.

Good morning, everybody, and thank you all, shareholders, for your continued support. I wanted to reiterate our continuing focus on making disciplined business decisions that will support the growth of our earnings and shareholder wealth over the long term. We believe that long-term focus, guided by high-quality, irreplaceable, and diverse portfolio properties, as well as the strength of our balance sheet, our top-notch management team, our very nimble and efficient operating platform, and our ability to quickly and prudently adapt to meet the evolving demands, will allow us to remain well-positioned to continue growing our earnings on an accretive basis and could contribute to our outperformance over the long term. Particularly as we see replacement costs for high quality property like ours soaring and likely continue to climb over the years to come, we think that today's real estate prices for premium property like ours will be a bargain in the future. In the meantime, we are encouraged by our operating fundamentals. as we built upon our solid growth over our record FFO year in 2022. In fact, we have exceeded that in 2023 to achieve our highest FFO per share since our IPO, and that's over 13 years ago, which makes me so proud of our company, the management team, and all of our associates. And by the way, that growth has been, notwithstanding the difficulty, and generally unpredictable economic cycles, volatility, and world events that we've been focusing and facing and likely will continue to face. To me, that speaks volumes about the resilience of American Assets Trust. Yet we will see opportunity for organic growth over the ensuing years, including through the lease-up of our new developments, the eventual rebound of Asian tourism to Oahu, pushing rents and prudently managing expenses that we will do our absolute best to capitalize on. But during these volatile and uncertain times, our number one priority is maintaining a strong balance sheet with ample liquidity and an increasing dividend. Adam, Bob and Steve will go into more detail on our various asset segments, financial results and guidance. But first, I want to say that the Board of Directors has approved a quarterly dividend of 33.5 cents per share for the quarter, an increase of 1.5% from our previous dividend, which you 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 March 21st to shareholders of March 7th. On behalf of all of us at American Gust, we thank you for your confidence and continued support in allowing us to continue to manage your company. I'm going to turn the call over back to Adam. Thank you.