Medical Properties Trust, Inc. common stock

Good day and welcome to the first quarter 2024 Medical Properties Trust Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a 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 touchtone phone. And to withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. And if you have further questions, you may re-enter the question queue. Today's call is scheduled for 60 minutes. Please note this event is also being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Charles Lambert. Please go ahead.

Charles Lambert Thank you and good morning. Welcome to the Medical Properties Trust conference call to discuss our first quarter 2024 financial results. With me today are Edward K. Albeck, Jr., Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of the company. Stephen Hamner, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Kevin Hanna, Senior Vice President, Controller, and Chief Accounting Officer, and Rosa Hooper, Senior Vice President of Operations and Secretary. Our press release was distributed this morning and furnished on Form 8K with the Securities and Exchange Commission. If you did not receive a copy, it is available on our website at medicalpropertystrust.com in the Investor Relations section. Additionally, we're hosting a live webcast of today's call, which you can access in that same section. During the course of this call, we will make projections and certain other statements that may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our financial results and future events to differ materially from those expressed in or underlying such forward-looking statements. We refer you to the company's reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for discussion of the factors that could cause the company's actual results or future events to differ materially from those expressed in this call. The information being provided today is as of this date only and except as required by the federal securities laws, the company does not undertake a duty to update any such information. In addition, during the course of the conference call, we will describe certain non-GAAP financial measures which should be considered in addition to and not in lieu of comparable GAAP financial measures. Please note that in our press release, Medical Properties Trust has reconciled all non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures in accordance with Reg G requirements. You can also refer to our website. at MedicalPropertiesTrust.com for the most directly comparable financial measures and related reconciliations. I will now turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Ed Aldag.

Thank you, Charles, and thanks to all of you for joining us this morning on our first quarter 2024 earnings call. I'm pleased to be joined again today by Steve Hamner, Rosa Hooper, and Kevin Hanna. You will hear from each of them shortly. For the past several quarters, you've heard me say that we're focused on executing a capital allocation strategy to generate at least $2 billion of additional liquidity in 2024. I'm pleased to share that we've made strong progress on this strategy, executing $1.6 billion of total liquidity transactions this year, including the recently announced sale of 75% of our interest and five Utah hospitals to a new joint venture with a leading multibillion-dollar asset manager. We've used the proceeds from these transactions to pay down near-term debt, including full repayment of our Australian term loan that was due in 2024. Importantly, while we've already reached 80% of our initial liquidity target, we're just getting started, and now expect to exceed that amount for the year. Our early results prove there's strong demand for our assets at attractive valuations. We have several available levers to generate additional liquidity, and we remain actively engaged in numerous discussions. As with the transactions already executed, we expect to continue demonstrating the value and cash flow potential embedded in our portfolio throughout the year. Turning to Stuart and his decision earlier this week to commence a Chapter 11 restructuring process. There has obviously been a great deal of media attention on this filing, and we want to take a few minutes to share our perspective directly with all of you. First, if you've had an opportunity to read through the first day declarations that Stuart filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, you will find a clear story of how Stuart got here. No mention was made of rent as a contributor to Stewart's distress. We believe that bankruptcy will facilitate the retenanting or sale of Stewart hospitals in an orderly and timely fashion. We firmly believe that an orderly transition of Stewart hospitals to new operators is in the best interest of everyone, and we're committed to providing a $75 million in dip financing to help achieve that. We expect Steward to use this financing to ensure continuity of patient care while accelerating the retenanting of its hospitals. To be clear, we have not committed to providing any additional funding beyond this initial $75 million. As I said before, rent is never mentioned by Steward on the list of contributing factors to its financial stress. That's because rent, which represents only a small fraction of a hospital's total revenue, is virtually never the primary cause of financial stress for hospitals. And if Steward wasn't paying rent, they'd be paying interest in principal repayments on some type of financing for the facilities, because as we all know, buildings are not free. While we've seen a great deal of misinformation recently reported about our business model, the fact remains that NPT provides hospital operators permanent and affordable capital enabling them to redirect the substantial cash resources that would otherwise be used for real estate to their primary mission, healing patients. We continue to be pleased with the progress we are making with parties interested in the Stewart Hospitals. It would be inappropriate for us to discuss the details of each of these transactions until they are approved by the court. I will now turn it over to Rosa to discuss the performance of our portfolio. Rosa?