American Strategic Investment Co.

Good morning and welcome to the New York City REIT fourth quarter and full year 2020 earnings call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please ring all conference specialists by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask your question, you may press star then one on your 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 Louisa Korda, Executive Vice President. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for NYC's fourth quarter and full year 2020 earnings call. This event is being webcast in the investor relations section of NYC's website at www.NewYorkCityREIT.com. Joining me today on the call to discuss the quarter's results are Mike Weil, NYC's Chief Executive Officer, and Chris Masterson, NYC's Chief Financial Officer. The following information contains forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. We refer all of you to our SEC filings, including Form 10-K, filed for the year ended December 31, 2019, filed on March 19, 2020, and all subsequent SEC filings for a more detailed discussion of the risk factors that could cause these differences. Any forward-looking statements provided during this call are only made as of the date of this call. As stated in our SEC filings, NYC disclaims any intent or obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements except as required by law. Also, during today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe can be useful in evaluating the company's financial performance. These measures should not be considered in isolation or the substitute for our financial results prepared in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure is available in our earnings release. Please also refer to our earnings release for more detailed information about what we consider to be implied investment grade tenants, a term we will use throughout today's call. I'll now turn the call over to Michael Weil, Chief Executive Officer of New York City REIT. Please go ahead, Mike.

Thanks, Louisa. Good morning and thank you for joining us today. New York City REIT continues to drive results through a proactive asset management strategy, highlighted by our fourth quarter cash rent collection of 82% across the portfolio and 89% from our top 10 tenants, despite the ongoing challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although 2020 was a challenging year for everyone, we remain highly confident in the long-term strength of New York City, its real estate, our business model, and the opportunity to further grow our portfolio and create shareholder value. We've built a pure play New York City portfolio that features a mix of large investment grade tenants, including City National Bank, CVS, TD Bank, and other government agencies. As of December 31st, NYC's top 10 tenants were 73% investment grade or implied investment grade rated. and have an average remaining lease term of almost 10 years, which we believe increases the quality and stability of earnings in our portfolio. Our $860.6 million, 1.2 million square foot portfolio has high occupancy of 87 percent, a weighted average remaining lease term in excess of 7.2 years, and the opportunity for substantial incremental earnings growth as we lease up available space. Despite the challenges New York City has faced in the last 12 months, we believe that New York is a resilient and irreplaceable city, capable of rebounding and remaking itself in times of crisis. The signals we're currently seeing bolster our confidence that the long-term value of New York City real estate will outweigh the short-term effects of the pandemic. New York City continues to be a leader in the fight against the COVID-19 virus and has an aggressive in-place recovery plan and vaccination policy that we believe will expedite a return to normalcy. New York State has administered more than 2.5 million COVID-19 vaccine doses, 43% of which have been given in New York City. Mayor de Blasio has provided an outline of a plan to return children to classrooms and workers to offices that includes vaccinating 5 million residents by the end of June. We are expecting a return to normalcy to at least start as we move through the summer consistent with a six-month lag from the mass rollout of vaccination efforts. This is a similar expectation as some of our peers who have estimated that office usage will start returning to pre-pandemic levels during the second half of 2021. Further, major employers ranging from Goldman Sachs to BlackRock to Netflix have expressed their intentions to bring employees back to the office at scale before the end of this year. Throughout the course of the pandemic, we've seen some of the world's largest technology companies affirm their confidence that New York City continues to emerge as an important tech hub and that collaborative physical workspaces will remain essential to productivity and innovation. Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and others have signed significant leases and announced plans to hire thousands of office-using workers. These commitments continue a trend that began well before the COVID-19 pandemic, of tech companies seeking to capitalize on New York's human capital. In our own portfolio, we've recently seen evidence of tech's commitment to the city as we executed a short-term lease and a non-binding letter of intent with a Fortune 50 technology company to lease over 15,000 square feet at 123 William Street for five years. This agreement is a unique opportunity to help this tenant expand its New York City footprint and capitalize on tech's increasing Manhattan presence. The Fortune 50 tech company was a subtenant of Notel, a shared space operator and tenant of ours at 9 Times Square and 123 William Street. Early in 2020, we identified operator problems that ultimately led to the company's filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month and the termination of their leases with us. We engaged with notel and their sub tenants early on and are now on the unsecured credit committee. We'll continue to protect our rights at every step along the way and seek to recover as much past due rent as possible. In addition to the previously mentioned tech lease, we have also entered into a two year lease with a global human resource company combined. These two agreements represent over 65% of the previous notel space. and 68% of the previous no-tell rent at 123 William Street. At Nine Times Square and 123 William Street, we believe there's an opportunity for us to create significant value by aggressively leasing prime space that's in turnkey condition to creditworthy tenants. The space previously leased to no-tell is in excellent condition, is fully furnished, and requires minimal tenant improvement to release. Leading the effort to lease former no-tell space and increase our occupancy across our portfolio is Chris Chow, who joined NYC's team in the fourth quarter and has responsibility for asset management across our portfolio. Chris is an industry veteran who comes to us with over 15 years of experience in real estate, spanning asset management, acquisition, and commercial lending. Most recently, he was a director of asset management for the Paramount Group in New York. Chris's impact can already be seen in the NYC portfolio, and I'm pleased to have him as part of our team. To help generate leasing momentum at Nine Times Square, we've hired Cushman and Wakefield as our leasing broker to support Chris's effort and attract creditworthy tenants. Leasing available space and working on expending the leases of our current tenants remains a top focus of our asset management team in 2021. As Chris Masterson will discuss in more detail, The tenants who were most impacted by COVID had a material effect on our results for this quarter, primarily in the form of one-time write-offs. In addition to Notel, other tenants in our portfolio who've been significantly impacted by the pandemic include two parking garages and Universal Sports. Management has engaged with these tenants and we're confident that we'll be able to reach a mutually beneficial agreement as COVID-related headwinds subside. We believe parking garages may be on the early end of the recovery timeline as workers and residents return to the city, and the garages we own will bounce back to their pre-COVID operating levels swiftly. As a counterweight to the impact from these tenants, our proactive approach to portfolio management has delivered results that enhance the overall quality of the NYC portfolio. We're in advanced discussions for a five-year lease extension with an AA2 credit tenant at 123 William Street. Earlier last year, we signed an early 10-year lease extension with City National Bank that increased the remaining lease term to 13 years from three years and increased the expected gross rent over the term of the lease by $44 million. Finally, we also executed a lease amendment with MakeSpace at 123 William Street that recaptured all of the past due and future 2021 cash rent due discounted by 25% in exchange for a two-year reduction in lease term. Since the beginning of the year, we've executed one new lease that represents approximately $250,000 of annual cash rent once rent commences later this year. We also have a forward leasing pipeline of over 32,000 square feet that would increase annual base rent by $1.4 million if these leases commence. Rent expirations compare favorably to our peers, with 37% of rent scheduled to expire through 2025. Turning to corporate matters, as you know, in August of last year, NYC's Class A common shares were listed on the NYSC. This is the first step of a phased listing, and as of today, 75% of NYC's outstanding common shares are Class A shares, trading under the symbol NYC. We'll complete the phased lifting with the final conversion of Class B shares later this year. I'll turn it over to Chris Masterson to go over the fourth quarter and full year financials. Chris, can you take us through the results?