Geo Group Inc (The) REIT

Good morning, and welcome to the GEO Group Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event has been recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Pablo Paez. Executive Vice President of Corporate Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for today's discussion of the GeoGroup's third quarter 2021 earnings results. With us today are George Zoli, Executive Chairman of the Board, Jose Gordo, Chief Executive Officer, Brian Evans, Chief Financial Officer, and James Black, President of GeoSecure Services. This morning we will discuss our third quarter results and our outlook. We will conclude the call with a question and answer session. This conference call is also being webcast live on our investor website at investors.geogroup.com. Today we will discuss non-GAAP basis information. A reconciliation from non-GAAP basis information to GAAP basis results is included in the press release and supplemental disclosure we issued this morning. Additionally, much of the information we will discuss today, including the answers we give in response to your questions, may include forward-looking statements regarding our beliefs and current expectations with respect to various matters. These forward-looking statements are intended to fall within the safe harbor provisions of the securities laws. Our actual results may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors contained in our Securities and Exchange Commission filings including the Form 10-K, 10-Q, and 8-K reports. With that, please allow me to turn this call over to our Executive Chairman, George Olley. George?

Thank you, Pablo, and good morning to everyone. We are pleased with our strong third quarter results and the significant progress we've made year-to-date towards reducing our net debt leverage. We believe our financial performance is representative of the resiliency and strength of our diversified business segments. For over 30 years, we've been a trusted government services provider. We currently provide support services for immigration processing centers on behalf of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and for secure facilities and residential reentry centers on behalf of federal and state agencies. During the third quarter, we renewed eight of our facility contracts including four immigration processing centers and four residential reentry centers under contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons or state correctional agencies. Additionally, we received a six-month extension for our U.S. Marshals contract at the Western Regional Detention Facility in San Diego, California. We also entered into a new five-year contract for our Mooshannon Valley facility with Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, to provide support services under a five-year intergovernmental agreement between the county and the Department of Homeland Security. In early September, our GeoCare business unit began providing services at our new residential reentry center in Tampa, Florida. under contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons. On November 1, we transitioned the operations of our Guadalupe County facility to the New Mexico Corrections Department and began a new lease agreement with the State of New Mexico with a two-year base period and successive two-year renewal opportunities through October 2041. In the third quarter, we also completed the previously announced transition of two managed-only contracts in Florida to another operator and the discontinuation of our managed-only contract for the Dunn-Gaville facility in the United Kingdom. Further, we were notified by the BOP of the non-renewal of our contracts for the Big Spring and Flightline facilities in Texas at the end of November 2021, consistent with our previous expectations. Our operational focus remains on addressing the challenges of the ongoing COVID pandemic while delivering high-quality support services on behalf of our government agency partners. Understanding the challenges created by the pandemic, we invested significant resources to mitigate the impact of COVID, including $2 million in for 45 Abbott Rabbit testing devices and $3.7 million in bipolar ionization air purification systems. We are proud of our frontline employees who have continued to provide humane and compassionate care to all those entrusted to our facilities and programs. At the management and board level, we remain focused on reducing our debt and deleveraging our balance sheet. We are pleased to have reduced our net recourse debt by approximately $175 million through the end of the third quarter, thus already meeting our previous net recourse debt reduction goal of $150 to $175 million for the full year 2021. We recognize there have been several concerns regarding our future access to financing. Accordingly, we have adopted a multifaceted approach to address these concerns, including our focus on debt reduction, a review of potential sales of company-owned assets and businesses, and the ongoing evaluation by our board of our corporate tax structure as a real estate investment trust. We believe these initiatives and considerations are in the best interest of our shareholders and our other stakeholders as we work proactively to address our debt maturities and enhance long-term shareholder value. At this time, I'll turn the call over to Brian Evans to address these initiatives in more detail and review our results and guidance. Brian?