Safehold Inc

Good morning and welcome to Safehold's first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. If you need assistance during today's call, please press star zero. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one. That's star one to ask a question. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. At this time, for opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the conference over to Piers Hoffman, Senior Vice President of Capital Markets and Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for Safehold's earnings call. On the call today, we have Jay Sugarman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Brett Asness, Chief Financial Officer, and Tim Doherty, Chief Investment Officer. This morning, we plan to walk through a presentation that details our first quarter 2024 results. The presentation can be found on our website at safeholdinc.com by clicking on the investors link. There will be a replay of this conference call beginning at 2 p.m. Eastern time today. The dial-in for the replay is 877-481-4010 with a confirmation code of 50475. In order to accommodate all those who want to ask questions, we ask that participants limit themselves to two questions during Q&A. If you'd like to ask additional questions, you may re-enter the queue. Before I turn the call over to Jay, I'd like to remind everyone that statements in this earnings call which are not historical facts may be forward-looking. Our actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements, and the risk factors that could cause these differences are detailed in our SEC reports. Safehold disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements, except as expressly required by law. Now, with that, I'd like to turn it over to Chairman and CEO Jay Sugarman. Jay?

Thanks, Pierce, and thank you to everyone joining us this morning. Safehold delivered solid earnings in the first quarter, highlighted by important progress on the right side of the balance sheet and continued efforts to run more efficiently and keep G&A under control. Deal activity in the first quarter was limited, with higher interest rate headwinds slowing overall market activity, though the pipeline has a good number of deals that should close in the second quarter. In terms of the overall market, CBRE continues to provide updated UCA value marks, reflecting higher cap rate assumptions and incorporating tougher office underwriting standards. The resulting lower building values are driving higher GLTV ratios, which makes sense given the current market environment. Lastly, with respect to Carrot, we received requests from the VC investors who participated in the first round to exercise the redemption option that was expiring this year. As a result, we decided to simply redeem the entire round and focus on future round investors. This will simplify our go-forward structure while we work to position Carrot for investment by the longer-term family office type investors that participated in the second round and continue to express interest in Carrot. And with that, let me turn it over to Brett to review the quarter in more detail. Brett?