Safehold Inc

Good morning and welcome to Safehold's second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. If you need any assistance during today's call, please press star zero on your phone. If you'd 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, and thank you for joining us today for Safehold's earnings call. On the call today, we have Jay Sugarman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Rhett Asness, Chief Financial Officer, and Tim Daugherty, Chief Investment Officer. This morning, we plan to walk through a presentation that details our second 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 50921. 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?

Jay Sugarman Thanks, Pierce, and thanks to all of you for joining us this morning. The second quarter was highlighted by solid earnings, attractive deals, and progress on G&A. New originations improved, but the smaller dollar size and allocations to our sovereign wealth partner under our existing JV limited the net origination number. That said, we were pleased to see activity pick up and with the overall level of customer engagement. Earnings were helped by further efforts to run the business as efficiently as possible. Not sure how much more we can do on that front, but we've made good progress against our targets so far. In terms of the market environment, the potential for lower rates later this year should help overall real estate markets and transaction activity. The multifamily sector remains our focus, with opportunities in other asset types more limited. Lastly, valuations from CBRE for our UCA estimate were again impacted by higher cap rate assumptions and tougher office market fundamentals, somewhat offset by UCA additions from new originations. leaving overall UCA little change for the quarter. With that, let me turn it over to Brett to review the quarter in more detail.