iStar Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Good morning and welcome to I-STAR's fourth quarter and fiscal year 2021 earnings conference call. If you need assistance during today's call, please press star zero. If you'd like to ask a question, please press one zero. That's one zero 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 Jason Fuchs, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to review I-STAR's fourth quarter and fiscal year 2021 earnings. With me today are Jay Sugarman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Marcus Alvarado, President and Chief Investment Officer, and Brett Adness, our Chief Financial Officer. This morning, we published an earnings presentation highlighting our results, and our call will refer to these slides, which can be found on our website at istar.com in the Investors section. There'll be a replay of the call beginning at 2.30 p.m. Eastern time today. The replay is accessible on our website or by dialing 1-866-207-1041 with the confirmation code of 3597852. 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, will be forward-looking. ISTAR's 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. ISTAR disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements except as expressly required by law. Now I'd like to turn the call over to ISTAR's Chairman and CEO, Jay Sugarman.

Jay? Thanks, Jason. Thanks to everyone for joining us today. ISTAR's fourth quarter was once again highlighted by progress on the plan we laid out at the beginning of last year. Excellent growth at Safehold and in the modern ground lease industry we created, and ongoing success in monetizing non-ground lease assets, helped us deliver strong earnings results in the fourth quarter and for all of 2021. Gap net income of 11 cents per share and adjusted EPS of 87 cents per share in the fourth quarter helped drive full-year gap earnings to $1.15 per share and adjusted EPS to $3.12 per share. The expected closing later this quarter of our recently announced agreement to sell our net lease platform sets us up nicely to deliver strong results again in 2022. During the quarter, we continued to move out of non-core assets and redeploy the proceeds into our growing ground lease businesses. Monetized assets generated $140 million of capital, with approximately half being redeployed either into safehold via share purchases or into ground lease-adjacent business lines like Ground Lease Plus and SafeStar leasehold loans, where I-Star can earn solid returns and help expand the market for ground leases. Capital freed up from the closing of the net lease sale should enable us to continue the strategy even as the pool of legacy assets becomes much smaller. Progress at I-Star was mirrored by strong progress at Safehold during the fourth quarter as well. Safehold added a record number of ground leases to its portfolio and recorded strong earnings growth, powering a 29 percent year-over-year increase in quarterly EPS. Other highlights at Safehold since the end of the year includes successfully placing its first 30-year unsecured bonds with several top-tier fixed income accounts and closing its first private offering of carrot units with top-tier venture capital, family office, and sovereign wealth funds. While the market may not yet understand the importance of these milestones, we were very pleased both by the number of high-quality investors participating in both offerings and the execution of these key strategic initiatives well ahead of schedule. As the year progresses, we'll highlight the value to I-Star from the unique potential from Carrot, and the demonstrated principle safety, attractive growth rate, and the inherent inflation protection built in the state's cash flow stream. And we remain confident the market will come to recognize the value of these key benefits over time. With that, let me turn it over to Marcus to go into some more detail. Marcus?