Chatham Lodging Trust

during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce you to your host, Chris Daly, President of DG Public Relations. Thank you, Chris. You may begin.

Thank you, Aisha. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Chatham Lodging Trust First Quarter 2025 Results Conference Call. Please note that many of our comments today are considered forward-looking statements that are defined by federal securities laws. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, both known and unknown, as described in our most recent Form 10-K and other SEC filings. All information in this call is as of May 6, 2025, unless otherwise noted, and the company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement to conform the statement to actual results or changes in the company's expectations. You can find copies of our SEC filings and earnings release, which contain reconciliations to non-GAAP financial measures referenced on this call, on our website at chathamlodgingtrust.com. Now to provide you with some insights into Chatham's 2025 first quarter, allow me to introduce Jeff Fisher, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, Dennis Craven, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, and Jeremy Wagner, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Let me turn the session over to Jeff Fisher. Jeff?

Thanks, Chris. Good afternoon, everyone. I certainly appreciate you all being on our call today. Before I turn it over to Dennis for a recap of the first quarter, I'm going to talk about a few key corporate developments, as well as our current outlook on lodging and our operating environment. I'd like to start the call by talking about a first for us, and that is the announcement that our Board of Trustees have approved a $25 million share buyback plan. We've been discussing a repurchase program for quite some time with our Board and felt the time was right to initiate the plan. For the last few years, we positioned ourselves to be able to address the $500 million of maturing debt we had in 2023 and 2024. And we successfully completed that phase of recapitalization last fall. Since then, we've sold five older hotels and generated an additional over $80 million of proceeds. We're in great shape to use our low leverage, I believe it's the lowest since our IPO, to enhance shareholder value, and we view the share repurchase plan as another tool in our toolbox of ways to add value for our shareholders. At current trading levels, we are trading at approximately $150,000 per key, and at an approximate 9.5% cap rate on forecasted 2025 NOI, a historically low multiple for us, as well as most of our peers. Additionally, seems like a long time ago, but another exciting development in the first quarter was that we increased our quarterly common dividend by 29% or two cents per common share to nine cents per share. On an annualized basis, our dividend equates to a yield of over 5%. This was the first increase since we reinstated the dividend and is another way we are adding value for our shareholders through this increased dividend payment. Next, we certainly were very pleased with our execution of the sale of all five hotels we listed in the fourth quarter. With the last closing in April, we sold five hotels with an average age of 25 years at an approximate 6% capitalization rate on 2024 NOI levels for proceeds of $83 million. Each of these five hotels were among the six lowest-repair hotels in our portfolio. Of course, we are going to use a portion of these proceeds to buy back shares of our stock or acquire hotels, both options that will be accretive in the short term and value-enhancing over the long term. Given the yields we can opportunistically recycle assets at, we can grow accretively and enhance shareholder value, whether that is by buying hotels for the right return or repurchasing shares. We're actively looking at external growth acquisitions and opportunities since you never know when potential opportunistic acquisitions will present the kind of returns we need to add shareholder value. We have been focusing our attention on high quality premium branded targets that further diversifies our portfolio across demand generators and geographic areas where we believe future economic growth will be concentrated. Successfully selling hotels at an approximate six cap rate and repurchasing shares or acquiring hotels that yields over 9% are both great options. Operationally, we've delivered a great first quarter with REVPAR growth among the highest of all lodging REITs, and we substantially exceeded industry growth yet again. We were able to grow our GOP profit margins in the first quarter, and we delivered adjusted FFO per share near the top of our guidance range. Last year, our only acquisition was the Home 2 Suites Phoenix downtown, and we beat our budgeted first quarter top line by 12% and EBITDA by approximately 25%. Now, I'm switching gears to spend a few minutes discussing the latest demand trends that we've seen within our portfolio and our outlook for the future. After a great start to the year for us, REVPAR growth in March was flat, and in April, we saw REVPAR decline 4%. As highlighted in the release, April was meaningfully impacted by the success of Passover and Easter holiday weekends. So through the first 12 days of April leading into Passover, Revpar was up over 1%. And then for the 10 days from April 13 to 23, surrounding the holidays, Revpar was down approximately 15%. And we finished the month with Revpar up slightly over the last eight days of the month. Though we're early in the month, May rev par is projected to be flat to up over 1%. Of course, everyone wants to know about the status of government-related travel. The good news is that government-driven room revenue is a fairly small piece of our overall portfolio at approximately 5% or less this year and last year. A lot of our government-related business is centered in our three hotels in Washington, D.C., in and around D.C. And after seeing the drop in demand, we quickly shifted our sales efforts to gain more leisure travelers and also retarget certain special corporate business. That is the advantage of having Island Hospitality as our manager. As we look forward to the rest of the year, demand remains strong. However, the ability to grow REVPAR over last year's numbers is somewhat limited at this point. We're currently projecting flat REVPAR given the uncertainty in the economy as of now. It is worth noting that it's this same uncertainty I'm referring to that should result in even less new supply than the already low supply numbers that exist today. The past several down cycles have been characterized by weak demand and historically high supply at the same time. Today's situation is exactly the opposite, which should provide a strong runway for future growth in REVPAR and earnings. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Dennis to give some more color on the quarter. Dennis?