EPR Properties

Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q1 2021 EPR Properties Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Brian Moriarty, Vice President of Corporate Communications. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Alicia. Hi, everybody, and welcome. Thanks for joining us today for our first quarter 2021 earnings call and webcast. Participants on today's call are Greg Silvers, President and CEO, Greg Zimmerman, Executive Vice President, CIO, and Mark Peterson, Executive Vice President and CFO. I'll start the call by informing you that this call may include forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Act of 1995, identified by such words as will be, intend, continue, believe, may, expect, hope, anticipate, or other comparable terms. The company's actual financial condition of the results of operations may vary materially from those contemplated by such forward-looking statements. Discussion of these factors that could cause results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements are contained in the company's SEC filings, including the company's reports on Form 10-K and 10-Q. Additionally, this call will contain references to certain non-GAAP measures, which we believe are useful in evaluating the company's performance. A reconciliation of these measures to the most Directly comparable gap measures are included in today's earnings release and supplemental information furnished to the SEC under Form 8K. If you wish to follow along, today's earnings release, supplemental, and earnings call presentation are all available in the Investor Center of the company's website, www.eprkc.com. Now I'll turn the call over to the company president and CEO, Greg Silvers.

Thank you, Brian. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's first quarter 2021 Ernie Paulin webcast. Against the backdrop of the reopening of the U.S., we are seeing consistent improvements in our business fundamentals. Key among these include accelerated cash collection levels and significant progress in our theater portfolio. Our increased cash collection levels reflect strengthening businesses and an increasingly more positive environment for the experiences our properties deliver. At a macro level, with the broad increase of vaccine deployment, we are seeing a meaningful improvement in consumer confidence and stabilization of the economy, as is evidenced by employment and GDP data. Separately, the new protocols from the CDC for fully vaccinated people reflect the opportunity to achieve increasing levels of normalcy and life as we once knew it. Across our portfolio, consumers have been exhibiting their desire to experience out-of-home entertainment, and our tenants' businesses have been beneficiaries of this pent-up demand. In particular, during the quarter and continuing through April, consumers demonstrated their desire to return to theaters as we achieved new box office highs since the onset of the pandemic. Importantly, this momentum has been established in an environment with capacity constraints, limited content, and direct-to-consumer streaming options which provide the opportunity to view select features at home. Said another way, even with the challenges and limitations of the current operating environment, these results indicate that consumers still value the theater experience for new movie titles. We look forward to being able to fully maximize the reopening of theater exhibition, as we expect that 98% of our theaters will be open by the end of May, and consumers will have the opportunity to see a strong lineup of film titles for the remainder of 2021, many of which have been delayed several times. As we continue to manage the business, we remain laser focused on our goals for 2021, including our exit from covenant relief, reestablishment of a dividend, and a return to sustained growth. During the quarter, we also made progress on our strategic capital recycling activities and utilized proceeds from dispositions and stronger collections to pay off the remaining $90 million balance on our $1 billion unsecured revolving credit facility. These steps of strengthening liquidity and optimizing the portfolio are supportive of our goals and should fuel growth as we move into the second half of the year. This was an important quarter as we sustained ongoing positive trends and key business measures necessary for us to add our existing debt covenant waivers, most specifically continued improvement of our cash collection levels. As I stated earlier, the trends appear to be very favorable at this point, including vaccinations, consumer demand, and exhibition recovery. Having positive momentum across all these areas should propel us forward toward the achievement of our goals. Now I'll turn the call over to Greg Zimmerman to discuss the business in greater detail.