Douglas Emmett, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Douglas Emmett's quarterly earnings conference call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, you will receive instructions for participating in the question and answer session. I will now turn the conference over to Stuart McElhinney, Vice President of Investor Relations for Douglas Emmett.

Thank you. Joining us today on the call are Jordan Kaplan, our president and CEO, Kevin Crummey, our CIO, and Peter Seymour, our CFO. This call is being webcast live from our website and will be available for replay during the next 90 days. You can also find our earnings package at the investor relations section of our website. You can find reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures discussed during today's call in the earnings package. During the course of this call, we will make forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs of, assumptions made by, and information currently available to us. Our actual results will be affected by known and unknown risks, trends, uncertainties, and factors that are beyond our control or ability to predict. Although we believe that our assumptions are reasonable, they are not guarantees of future performance, and some will prove to be incorrect. Therefore, our actual future results can be expected to differ from our expectations, and those differences may be material. For a more detailed description of some potential risks, please refer to our SEC filings, which can be found in the investor relations section of our website. When we reach the question and answer portion in consideration of others, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. I will now turn the call over to Jordan.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. In Los Angeles, we have seen a remarkable shift in the prevalence of COVID over the last six weeks. During the first quarter, L.A. County was reporting three times the infection rate of any other U.S. county. By early April, L.A. County was reporting the lowest infection rate among the nation's 10 largest counties. On April 5th, L.A. County permitted non-essential workers to return to their offices. And on April 6th, Governor Newsom announced plans to fully reopen California by June 15th. Our first quarter results still reflect the impact of the pandemic. Our collections during the quarter continued to improve so that during the four quarters affected by the pandemic, our aggregate rent collections totaled 93.1%, including 96% of our residential rent, 96% of our office rent, and 44% of our retail rent. We executed more workout agreements with minimal rent forgiveness. Less than $100,000 in the first quarter, mostly for retail tenants. But the big catalyst for collections will come once the eviction moratoriums expire, which we believe will accompany the full reopening in June. Some medium and larger tenants are starting to make leasing decisions. In the first quarter, we signed leases totaling 750,000 square feet. Given our seasonally larger expirations, this leasing was not enough to create positive absorption. As we have said, we expect to lose occupancy during the first half of the year. I feel confident and optimistic as the pandemic subsides. Our operations and our markets are uniquely positioned considering our supply constraints, industry's driving demand, and tenant build-outs that already accommodate a COVID-sensitive return to work. Our operating platform, which is designed for the small tenants that are leading office reoccupancy is the largest and most effective in our markets. Our development and repositioning activities are progressing nicely and our balance sheet is strong. We are pursuing refinancing opportunities that may even further lower our cost of debt and working on new acquisitions as they emerge. Last quarter, we discussed our now completely digitized leasing experience. This quarter, Kevin will describe the progress we have made on sustainability. With that, I will turn the call over to Kevin. Thanks, Jordan, and good morning, everyone. We remain very pleased with the progress of our two multifamily development projects. At 1132 Bishop, our downtown Honolulu office to residential conversion, we have now leased 100% of the 174 total units we've delivered. validating the demand for high-quality rental housing in the heart of Honolulu. Our Brentwood high-rise apartment construction has topped off at 34 stories. Once finished, our 376 units will offer stunning ocean views and the first new high-rise residential tower west of the 405 freeway in more than 40 years. We plan to begin pre-leasing the units after the summer and remain on schedule for occupancy in early 2022. Property transactions in our markets remain slow, with potential sellers still in a watch and wait mode. We're hopeful that the signs of recovery and planned reopening will bring some deferred sales to the market. Our investment in sustainable systems and technology at our properties continues to produce outstanding results. At year end, More than 88% of our eligible office space had qualified for ENERGY STAR certification. During 2020, we took advantage of lower tenant attendance at our properties to aggressively accelerate our LED lighting retrofit program. These efforts will generate annual energy savings of 3.3 million kilowatt hours per year. You can find more information about our environmental performance as well as our social and governance efforts and our recently published 2020 ESG report on our website. I will now turn the call over to Stuart.