Ashford Hospitality Trust Inc

now like to turn the call over to allison beach director of public relations thank you please go ahead good morning and welcome to today's conference call to review results for ashburn hospitality trust for the third quarter of 2025 and to update you on recent developments on the call today will be stephen zigray president and chief executive officer derek eubanks chief financial officer and chris nixon executive vice president and head of asset management The results as well as notice of the accessibility of this conference call on a listen-only basis over the internet were distributed yesterday afternoon in a press release. At this time, let me remind you that certain statements and assumptions in this conference call contain or are based upon forward-looking information and are being made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the federal securities regulations. Such forward-looking statements are subject to numerous assumptions, uncertainties, and known or unknown risks, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. These factors are more fully discussed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking statements included in this conference call are only made as of the date of this call, and the company is not obligated to publicly update or revise them. Statements made during this call do not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. Securities will be offered only by means of registration statement and prospectus, which can be found at www.sec.gov. In addition, certain terms in this call are non-GAAP financial measures, reconciliations of which are provided in the company's earnings release and accompanying tables or schedules, which have been filed on Form 8K with the SEC on November 4, 2025, and may also be accessed through the company's website at www.ahtreat.com. Each listener is encouraged to review those reconciliations provided in the earnings release, together with all other information provided in the release. Also, unless otherwise stated, all recorded results discussed in this call compare the third quarter ended September 30th, 2025 with the third quarter ended September 30th, 2024. I will now turn the call over to Stephen Z. Gray. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. After my introductory comments, Derek will review our third quarter financial results, and then Chris will provide an operational update on our portfolios. Our third quarter performance was highlighted by comparable hotel EBITDA growth of 2%. With continued economic headwinds driving the REVPAR declines and pressuring margins industry-wide in the quarter, we're very pleased with our resilient operating performance, which reflects the impact of the strategic decisions our team has made over the past several quarters and the strength of our high-quality, geographically diverse portfolio. In late 2024, we announced a transformative initiative aimed at driving $50 million in run rate EBITDA improvements that we refer to as Grow AAHT. Realizing outsized improvement in property-level performance is critical to achieving that goal. Despite challenging industry conditions, we are continuing to see the benefits of the tremendous efforts that our asset management team and property managers have made to drive total revenue growth while aggressively managing operating expenses. In addition to solid property-level performance, we've also benefited from a number of corporate cost-saving measures that our advisor, Ashford Inc., has implemented for Ashford Trust. Several GrowAHT initiatives remain underway, and we've seen meaningful impact from these efforts through the third quarter. Year-to-date, despite dispositions accounting for a $65.5 million decline in total hotel revenue compared to the prior year, corporate adjusted EBITDA RE declined just $10.1 million. We have also continued to make improvements to our capital structure. In July, we extended our Highland Mortgage Loan secured by 18 hotels. The extension provides for an initial maturity in January 2026 and an additional six-month extension option subject to the satisfaction of certain conditions with a final maturity date in July 2026. Following substantial tightening in CMBS spreads over the past several months, we are actively pursuing a longer-term refinancing of this loan and recently completed a refinancing of the Renaissance Nashville that we expect to save the company $2 to $3 million per year in interest expense. Lastly, we've continued to make progress on strategic dispositions. Reflecting our continued focus on creating shareholder value via multiple avenues, in early August, we completed the previously announced sale of the Hilton's Houston NASA Clear Lake for $27 million and the sale of the Residence Inn Evansville for $6 million. Separately, during the quarter, we signed a definitive agreement to sell the 150-room Residence Inn San Diego Sorrento Mesa for $42 million, or $280,000 per key. The sale was completed in October. Combined, these three sales achieved a very attractive blended cap rate of 5.3% on trailing 12-month net operating income. With the majority of sales proceeds applied to paying off mortgage debt, we expect these sales to improve annualized cash flow after debt service by approximately $2 million. We also expect to save an additional $36 million in projected capital expenditures that would have been spent on these assets in the coming years. We have also identified several additional potential asset sales that we believe could have a similarly positive impact on leverage, cash flow after debt service, and future capital expenditures. While we may not ultimately transact on all of them, we currently have eight additional assets being marketed for sale and have potential buyers conducting diligence on two off-market transactions. Looking ahead to the remainder of 2025 and into early 2026, we expect to benefit significantly from recent and potential future interest rate cuts. With approximately $2.5 billion of floating rate mortgage debt and none of our interest rate caps currently in the money, each 25 basis point cut in interest rates would save the company over $6 million in annual interest expense, or approximately $1 per fully diluted share. That said, we remain focused on controlling what we can control by driving outsized performance while strengthening our capital structure and exploring opportunistic dispositions to better position the company moving forward. I will now turn the call over to Derek to review our third quarter financial performance.

Thanks, Stephen. For the third quarter, we reported a net loss attributable to common stockholders of $69 million, or $11.35 per diluted share. For the quarter, we reported AFFO per diluted share of negative $2.85. Adjusted EBITDA RE for the quarter was $45.4 million. At the end of the third quarter, we had $2.6 billion of loans with a blended average interest rate of 8%. Approximately 5% of our debt is fixed and approximately 95% is floating. We ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $81.9 million and restricted cash of $166.9 million. The vast majority of that restricted cash is comprised of lender and manager held reserve accounts. Our restricted cash increased $12 million from the previous quarter, and the vast majority of that cash is set aside for future capital expenditures. At the end of the quarter, we also had $27.4 million due from third-party hotel managers. This primarily represents cash held by one of our property managers, which is also available to fund hotel operating costs. We ended the quarter with networking capital of approximately $144.3 million. As of September 30, 2025, our consolidated portfolio consisted of 70 hotels with 16,876 net rooms. Our share count currently stands at approximately 6.3 million fully diluted shares outstanding, which is comprised of 6.2 million shares of common stock and 0.1 million OP units. While we are currently paying our preferred dividends quarterly or monthly, we do not anticipate reinstating a common dividend in 2025. This concludes our financial review, and I would now like to turn it over to Chris to discuss our asset management activities for the quarter. Thank you, Derek.