Innovative Industrial Properties, Inc.

Good day, and welcome to the Innovative Industrial Properties Q1 2024 earnings 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 a touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brian Wolf, General Counsel. Please go ahead.

Thank you for joining the call. Presenting today are Alan Gold, Executive Chairman, Paul Smithers, President and Chief Executive Officer, David Smith, Chief Financial Officer, Katherine Hastings, Chief Operating Officer, and Ben Regan, Chief Investment Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that statements made during today's conference call may be deemed forward-looking statements and then the meaning of the safe harbor of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and actual results may differ materially due to a variety of risks, uncertainties, and other factors. Please refer to the documents filed by the company with the SEC, specifically the most recent reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q, which identify important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the full eviction statements. We are not obligated to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. In addition, on today's call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial information, such as FFO, normalized FFO, and adjusted FFO. You can find this information, together with reconciliations, to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure in our earnings release issued yesterday, as well as in our 8K filed with the SEC. I'll now hand the call over to Alan. Alan?

Thank you, Brian, and welcome everyone. We are pleased to discuss our results here today as we enter into our eighth full year of operations. The first four months of 2024 have been very productive for our team, with our focus on driving releasing activity and monitoring the completion of significant development projects at our properties. along with continued support of our tenants in funding critical infrastructure improvements to both further enhance production capacity and efficiency and activate significant projects under development. In the first four months of 2024, the company executed new leases at four properties representing $69 million of invested capital. and completed construction on three fully leased properties totaling 732,000 square feet. We also strategically divested our Los Angeles, California property, which was leased until the closing, with a combined consideration exceeding our carrying value of the property. As you may recall, that property was never fully built out for cannabis operations. Ben and Catherine will discuss this progress in more detail. The company notched another solid quarter in Q1, generating $2.21 in AFFO per share and further enhancing the company's liquidity position in the first four months of the year with the upsizing of the revolving credit facility from $30 million to $50 million. While AFFO per share was down modestly quarter to quarter, we note that rents for the new leases we executed in late 2023 and year-to-date are not expected to commence for some months to come, as new tenants need the time to obtain the requisite approvals to operate and transition into these properties, in addition to certain pre-lease properties under development where construction needs to be completed. As we have reiterated in the past, we are really pleased with our capital position. especially in light of the macroeconomic environment impacting real estate companies and the cannabis industry as a general matter. Our total available liquidity exceeded $200 million as of the quarter end and fully funds any remaining development commitments we have along with providing ample dry powder for additional strategic investments. As Ben will share in more detail, we are evaluating a number of promising new investments in several state markets. Additionally, we have one of the lowest levered balance sheets in the REIT industry at 11% debt to total gross assets. No variable rate debt. No debt maturities until May 2026. David will provide more detail as well as our financial results for the quarter and capital positions. From a regulatory perspective, all eyes continue to be focused on potential rescheduling of cannabis from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3 under the Controlled Substances Act, with the recent media reports indicating that the DEA is expected to agree with the HHS recommendation on this matter. Paul will discuss our thoughts in more detail on this rescheduling process pending federal legislation and state-level dynamics that we are seeing. I will now turn the call over to Paul to discuss market dynamics and regulatory developments. Paul?