Empire State Realty Trust, Inc.

And welcome to the Empire State Realty Trust third quarter 2024 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. There'll be a question and answer session following the formal presentation. You may be placed into question queue at any time by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Jason McGrath, Senior Associate, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Jason.

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us today for Empire State Realty Trust's third quarter 2024 conference call. In addition to the press release distributed yesterday, a quarterly supplemental package with further detail on our results and our latest investor presentation were posted in the investor section of the company's website at esrtread.com. On today's call, management's prepared remarks and answers to your questions may contain forward-looking statements as defined in applicable securities laws, including those related to market conditions, property operations, capital expenditures, income, expense, financial results, and proposed transactions and events. As a reminder, forward-looking statements represent management's current estimates. They are subject to risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ from those discussed today. Empire State Realty Trust assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement in the future. We encourage listeners to review the more detailed discussions related to these forward-looking statements in the company's filings with the SEC. During today's call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures, such as FFO, modified and core FFO, NOI, same-store property cash NOI, EBITDA, and adjusted EBITDA, which we believe are meaningful in evaluating the company's performance. The definitions and reconciliations of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in the earnings release and supplemental package, each available on the company's website. Now, I will turn the call over to Tony Malkin, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

Thanks, Jason, and good afternoon to everyone. Yesterday, we reported ESRT's strong third quarter and year-to-date results. We are happy to discuss today our continued strong leasing observatory execution, and more on our latest acquisition and capital recycling activities. In the third quarter, FFO came in above consensus. Our leasing team again put points on the board with over 300,000 square feet leased in the quarter, our 11th consecutive quarter of leased percentage growth, and our 13th consecutive quarter of positive New York City office rent spreads. Our commercial portfolio lease rate today stands in the mid 90% range, on pace with the performance of newly built Trophy Office assets. The demand for ESRT's top of tier space, well located, modernized, amenitized, energy efficient, sustainable, and unique value proposition remains. ESRT is a destination for the flight quality in the market today and draws from a deep well of tenant demand in the New York City office market. TripAdvisor's number one attraction in the world, the Observatory, continued its performance with third quarter sequentially and year-over-year growth. We are still below our overall 2019 levels of volume, and have plenty of room for upside as visitation levels improve. See page 19 of our quarterly supplemental for further details on our performance year to date. Our focus remains to provide visitors with an unmatched customer experience to drive top line growth, manage expenses, and never consider our work good enough. We closed on a substantial portion of our previously announced acquisition of prime retail assets on North 6th Street in Williamsburg and have entered into a contract to acquire an additional retail asset on this street. The Williamsburg story has a long run ahead of value creation as the best retail corridor in Brooklyn and one of the best in New York City. Our best-in-class balance sheet has no unaddressed debt maturity until December 2026. The maintenance of a great balance sheet allows ESRT tremendous flexibility to lease and acquire properties and to stand our front foot and create value for our shareholders. Tenants look to partner with a financially stable landlord who maintains high standards for service and quality at their assets. We have the lowest leverage of any New York City REIT at a strong liquidity position that is attractive to tenants, especially in today's market. ESRT remains the quantitative sustainability leader in the office real estate sector. For more than a decade, we have been happy to deliver on innovation and execution portfolio-wide and to help inform policy with practice. As we announced just over one week ago, ESRT's overall GRESB score ranked first amongst all U.S. listed companies in the Americas for the second year in a row. Of course, that means as well we were first in the most competitive peer group. Hats off to the team for all their work on this tremendous accomplishment. Tom, Christina, and Steve will provide more detail on our progress in the third quarter and how we plan to accomplish these goals as we finish up the year in the fourth quarter. Tom?