Medical Properties Trust, Inc. common stock

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to Medical Properties Trust second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Charles Lambert, Senior Vice President. Charles, please go ahead.

Good morning. Welcome to the NPT conference call to discuss our second quarter 2026 financial results. With me today are Edward K. Aldag Jr., Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of the company, Steven Hamner, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Kevin Hanna, Senior Vice President, Controller and Chief Accounting Officer, Rosa Williams, Senior Vice President of Operations and Secretary, and Jason Fry, Managing Director, Asset Management and Underwriting. 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 mpt.com in the investor relations section. We are 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 gap measures in accordance with Reg G requirements. You can also refer to our website at mpt.com for the most directly comparable financial results in 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 second quarter 2026 earnings call. Before I begin today, we'd like to extend our thoughts and prayers to the people of Columbia after this morning's earthquake. Now let me begin with the most significant update. Today we announced a comprehensive refinancing transaction that extends $2.4 billion of debt maturities to 2032, significantly reducing near-term maturities and positioning us well to pursue a balanced capital allocation strategy. Moving forward, Steve will discuss this transaction in more detail shortly. Turning to our performance highlights, total portfolio EBITDARM coverage remains steady. As we continue to see robust demand for rehabilitation services around the world, our post-acute operators again delivered the strongest growth in the portfolio, with EBITDARM increasing more than $70 million year over year. led by a 24% increase in median and a 13% increase in earnest health. General acute performance was stable. Behavioral health remains a source of pressure on the overall portfolio. Despite the increased importance and demand for these services, we continue to see around the world. In the UK market especially, revenue continues to be impacted by funding pressures at the NHS, as the new administration in the UK works to rebalance its entire budget. I spent last week in the UK spending time with many of our operators there. I walked away from those meetings impressed with the level of activity across those facilities, confident in the opportunities for high quality general acute providers and encouraged that behavioral market remains a compelling long-term investment. As most of you know, our Swiss joint venture went public this summer It is now listed on the sixth exchange. Infracore continues to see attractive opportunities for growth, and the company was able to access capital for further growth. We retain a significant ownership position in Infracore and remain bullish on Switzerland and look forward to seeing our overall investments grow there. Finally, to further strengthen our portfolio, we consolidated all of our Scion Health general acute hospitals and LifePoint Leases into one LifePoint Master Lease. As a part of this conversion, Scion transitioned certain MPT-owned acute hospitals to LifePoint, and we are pleased with the resulting single-lease relationship with a mature operator with an enhanced credit profile. With the strong trends we continue to see across our diverse portfolio of operators, the proving enduring value of our assets, and a plan to clear the runway of debt maturities until late 2028. We're well positioned to achieve our goal of over one billion annualized cash rent by the end of the year and to create value for the shareholders moving forward. Rosa.