Ashford Hospitality Trust Inc

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. My name is Kelvin, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Ashford Hospitality Trust fourth quarter 2025 results conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Alison Beach, Director of Public Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome to today's conference call to review results for Ashford Hospitality Trust for the fourth quarter and full year 2025 and to update you on recent developments. On the call today will be Steven Z. Gray, President and Chief Executive Officer, Eric 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 used 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 February 25th, 2026, and may also be accessed through the company's website at www.ahtREIT.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 reported results discussed in this call compared to fourth quarter and full year ended December 31st, 2025, with a full quarter and full year ended December 31st, 2024. I will now turn the call over to Stephen Z. Gray. Go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us on today's call. Following my introductory comments, Derek will provide a review of our financial results, and Chris will provide an operational update on our portfolio. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that in early December, we announced that the company has formed a special committee to evaluate strategic alternatives to maximize shareholder value. including a potential transaction. As we highlighted in that press release, we remain frustrated by the discrepancy between the value of our underlying portfolio and the market value of our common stock, and the Board has tasked the Special Committee with proactively exploring alternatives to bridge that gap. In the interim, we will continue to execute on our strategy of driving outsized performance while pursuing opportunistic dispositions to deleverage, improve cash flow, and maximize shareholder value. Any material updates will be publicly disseminated but we do not have further details to share at this time. Our fourth quarter and full year financial results reflect the combined impact of two competing realities. On one hand, we felt the ongoing pressures across the lodging industry, industry-wide negative REVPAR growth and margin compression, substantial reductions in government spend, elevated interest rates, and increased CapEx demands have created a challenging environment for owners. On the other hand, we've made tremendous progress with our GrowAHT initiatives, and our property managers have worked diligently to maximize revenues and minimize expenses. Despite numerous headwinds in 2025, we are pleased that for the full year our portfolio delivered positive growth in comparable total revenues while achieving 2.4% growth in comparable hotel EBITDA. Our efforts also extended to corporate G&A, where we achieved more than $13 million in year-over-year improvements. In total, we estimate that the GrowAHT initiative contributed over $40 million in EBITDA improvement in 2025, and we expect to continue building on these efforts moving forward. Beyond our focus on driving outsized performance, we continue to execute on strategic dispositions to strengthen our capital structure, improve cash flow, and maximize shareholder value. Since paying off our remaining corporate-level debt last February, we've now completed the sale of six hotels. including the Hilton Houston Clear Lake, the residence in Evansville, the residence in Sorrento Mesa, the Le Pavillon Hotel in New Orleans, the Embassy Suites in Houston, and the Embassy Suites in Austin. In total, these sales generated approximately $145 million in sales proceeds, representing a blended 3.9% trailing cap rate, while also eliminating nearly $50 million in anticipated capital expenditures. Proceeds were used primarily to pay down mortgage debt, resulting in approximately $5 million in improvement to annualized portfolio cash flow after debt service. We also recently announced agreements to sell the La Posada de Santa Fe Resort and Spa for $57.5 million and the Hilton St. Petersburg Bayfront for $96 million, both of which we expect to close in the coming weeks. And yesterday, signed an agreement to sell the Embassy Suites Palm Beach Gardens for $41 million. Collectively, these three sales represent a blended 6.9% trailing cap rate and are expected to save an additional $45 million in anticipated capital expenditures. Opportunistic dispositions will remain a core component of our strategy in 2026, as we believe there are several additional assets in the portfolio that can yield 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 are currently marketing or negotiating off-market transactions on 18 additional hotels. In addition to these sales, we recently announced the maturity default on our JPM 8 mortgage loan. This $325 million loan is secured by eight hotels that generated approximately $20.2 million of net operating income in 2025. While we have engaged with a special servicer and will continue to work towards a favorable resolution, A disposition of these assets for the balance of the debt would represent a 6.2% trailing cap rate and would yield many of the same benefits for the portfolio as our ongoing sales efforts in terms of cash flow improvement and future CapEx savings. Looking ahead, while liquidity will remain constrained as we execute our plan, we expect that our continued focus on performance combined with strategic low cap rate dispositions will result in a leaner, stronger portfolio and will position the company to pursue accretive growth opportunities in the future. I will now turn the call over to Derek to review our fourth quarter and full year financial performance.