Four Corners Property Trust, Inc.

and gentlemen thank you for standing by the fcpt fourth quarter 2023 financial results conference call will begin shortly if you would like to register a question at any time please press star 1 on your telephone keypad thank you Hello and welcome to the FCPT fourth quarter 2023 financial results conference call. My name is Elliot and I'll be coordinating your call today. If you would like to register a question during today's event, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. And I'd like to hand over to Jerry Morgan. The floor is yours. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Elliot. During the course of this call, we will make forward-looking statements, which are based on our beliefs and assumptions. Actual results will be affected by factors that are beyond our control or ability to predict. Our assumptions are not a guarantee of future performance, and some will prove to be incorrect. For a more detailed description of potential risks, please refer to our SEC filings, which can be found on our website. All of the information presented on this call is current as of today, February 15, 2024. In addition, reconciliation to non-GAAP financial measures presented on this call, such as FFO and AFFO, can be found in the company's supplemental report. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Bill.

Thank you, Jerry. Good morning. Thank you for joining us to discuss our fourth quarter results. I will make introductory remarks. Patrick and Josh will comment further on the acquisition market, and Jerry will conclude the discussion of our financial results and capital positions. We reported fourth quarter AFFO of 43 cents per share, which is up two cents or 4.9% from Q4 last year. Our existing portfolio is performing exceptionally well with 99.8% rent collections for the quarter and 99.8% occupancy at quarter end. FCPT had a record acquisitions year with 333 million of capital deployed in 2023. That was up 16% from a full year of 2022, which was also a previous record acquisition year. We are benefiting from establishing verticals in medical retail, auto services, and other retail in addition to restaurants, our historical core area of focus. These transactions were primarily funded with equity raised in late 2022 and early 23 at an average price above $27 per share. And with our June debt offering, where we benefited from hedge gains to lock in a 5.4% yield to maturity. After utilizing these funds, we slowed down acquisition activity in the second half of the year to reflect the impact of higher interest rates on equity and debt sources of capital. I would also highlight that an impact of purposely slowing down acquisition activities in 2023 was an elevated level of broken deal costs, which increased property expenses by approximately $250,000 versus the 2022 level. While these impacted 2023 AFFO, it was the right decision to terminate transactions if they were no longer accretive. Year over year for the restaurant sector as a whole remained positive in the fourth quarter in the 4% range, according to Baird research. Although the casual dining sector is seeing small declines off strong levels in the prior year period. Darden was a standout from that trend, reporting same-store sales growth of 4.1% and 4.9% for Olive Garden and Longhorn, respectively, for their quarters ending November 26th. And Chili's saw same-store sales rise 5% for the most recent quarter ended December 27th. All three brands saw margins expand as well as commodity and labor inflation easing. Our EBITDA to rent coverage in the fourth quarter was 4.9 times for the significant majority of our portfolio that reports this figure. This remains amongst the strongest coverage within the net lease industry. Turning to capital sources, we issued 25.4 million of equity in the fourth quarter at an average price of $25.34. We start the first quarter of 2024 with 234 million of available capacity on our revolving credit facility, very minimal near-term debt maturities, and highly attractive properties to sell to 1031 buyers if we choose to access that source of liquidity. As we look ahead, the current capital market environment is making it challenging to deploy capital accretively. I want to restate something I said last quarter. In this environment, we remain disciplined allocators of capital. Since our inception in 2015, we have established mental models and structured our team incentives to discourage deploying capital just to grow the company's overall size. without also increasing per share metrics of earnings or intrinsic value. Our investment team does not work on commission, and their goal is not tied to acquisition volumes, as we have never given acquisition or earnings guidance. Finally, we benefit from low absolute and relative overhead and can be nimble and modulate our investment activities up and down without negatively impacting the organization or employee morale. All that said, the team is laser focused on building a creative pipeline. while minimizing risk. Cap rates have widened, and we have found interesting investment opportunities that Pat will elaborate on. We believe that we are prepared to operate successfully in today's environment and expect to ratchet up activity when we believe it is creative to do so. With that, I'll turn it over to Patrick to further discuss the investment environment.