Douglas Emmett, Inc.

Gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Douglas Emmett's quarterly earnings call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, all participants are in 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. Please go ahead.

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. Our revenue during the first quarter is up compared to the first quarter of 2022. but the increase was offset by higher operating costs and interest expense. The slowdown in the leasing pipeline that we mentioned on our last call resulted in a decline in our leased rate, even though we actually signed more leases in the quarter than usual. We continue to have strong demand from tenants under 10,000 square feet who dominate our markets, but because larger tenants have become more conservative in response to recessionary concerns, released less total square footage. Accordingly, we have reduced our assumptions for average office occupancy and same-property cash NOI. The national economy is challenging for all of us, but for some, office CBDs, remote work, oversupply, an overwhelming reliance on large tenants, and concerns about reduced urban appeal seem to pose additional obstacles. As I have said before, our market's supply constraints, smaller tenants, short commutes, and low reliance on public transit supported relatively high leasing volume and utilization during the pandemic. As the pandemic eased, leasing in our markets was very strong until the fourth quarter of 2022 when larger tenants became more concerned about recession. While economic downturns are unpleasant, they are not new to us. We remain confident in the resilience of our portfolio and in our ability to navigate these challenges. We have guided our company through four recessions and always found the silver lining. We repurchased 6 million shares of our common stock in late March and early April, and we are well positioned to take advantage of other opportunities created by the current economy. With that, I will turn the call over to Kevin.