EPR Properties

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q1 2024 EPR Properties Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising you your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand your conference over to your first speaker today, Brian Moriarty, Senior VP of Corporate Communications. Brian, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Stacey. Thanks for joining us today for our first quarter 2024 earnings call and webcast. Participants on today's call are Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, Greg Zimmerman, Executive Vice President and 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 and the results of operations may vary materially, from those contemplated by such forward-looking statements. Discussion of those factors that could cause the results to differ materially from those 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 we believe are useful in evaluating the company's performance. A reconciliation of these measures for 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 on the Investor Center page of the company's website, www.eprkc.com. Now I'll turn the call over to Greg Silvers.

Thank you, Brian. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's first quarter 2024 earnings call and webcast. In the first quarter, we were pleased to continue the momentum established during the fourth quarter of 2020, executing investment spending across our target experiential property types. Our coverage levels remain strong, and we believe are indicative of the resiliency of the experiences our customers offer. The box office remains in line with our expectations, and we look forward to seeing the results of the coming months as key titles come out. More broadly, I'd like to highlight some of the significant strides made to our overall value proposition as we move into 2024. Strengthen experiential portfolio. we have continued to diversify and strengthen our portfolio of experiential properties. As evidenced by our coverage metrics, we remain focused on growing an experiential portfolio that is built for the long run and is able to sustain various economic cycles. Expanded investment opportunity set. While we are currently constrained in our capital deployment, we have been actively cultivating our unique relationships and exploring new potential investments that align with our experiential portfolio. This work provides a foundation for future investments and growth in our portfolio. Economically rationalized theater exhibition business. We saw a strong rebound in the box office last year. And while we anticipate that the 2024 box office will be slightly down versus 2023, we know that this is driven by delays in titles as opposed to consumer demand, and that 2025 looks excellent. Additionally, we firmly believe that the debate around streaming versus theater exhibition for movies has been resolved. As studios look for high potential ROI on movie production costs, theater exhibition remains the essential primary distribution channel, with streaming complementing the ecosystem downstream. A high-quality balance sheet. Our balance sheet, coupled with significant free cash flow, allows us to fund our anticipated investment spending while also supporting a well-covered monthly dividend, and we are committed to sustaining these important attributes as we work toward an improved cost of capital. Finally, as we've stated previously, we're working diligently to control the factors that we can control. While macroeconomic factors can and have had a significant impact on our business, we continue to focus on being positioned for success. Now, I'll turn the call over to Greg Zimmerman to go over the business in greater detail.