iStar Inc.

Good morning and welcome to I-STAR's second quarter 2022 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 and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to review I-Star's second quarter 2022 earnings. With me today are Jay Sugarman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Marcus Alvarado, President and Chief Investment Officer, and Brett Asness, 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 6846235. 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 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. Lastly, I wanted to highlight that ISTAR recently filed an amended 13 , disclosing that a special committee of the Board of Directors of ISTAR and a special committee of the Board of Directors of Safehold are in advanced discussions with respect to a potential strategic corporate transaction and that they are proceeding to negotiate definitive agreements. However, because no definitive agreements have yet been executed, and there can be no assurance that definitive agreements will be executed, we won't be able to discuss the potential transaction on this call. Now I'd like to turn the call over to ISTAR's Chairman and CEO, Jay Sugarman. Jay?

Thanks, Jason, and thank you all for joining today. During the second quarter, we continued to execute on our stated strategies of simplifying ISTAR, strengthening the balance sheet, and scaling Safehold. With the net lease sale behind us, Ground-lease ecosystem assets make up over 80 percent of our portfolio, and we continue to monetize non-ground-lease related assets and recycle the proceeds into ground-lease adjacent business lines or to pay off debt. Partially retiring our convertible notes due in September was also a big part of the quarter, and the conversion into shares had a material impact on our P&L, share count, and equity balances. Brett will walk you through that in a moment. Safehold had a strong quarter, with earnings per share up over 30 percent and the portfolio nearing $6 billion. The level of engagement with building owners has been very good, but we expect market volatility is likely going to make go-forward transactions somewhat more difficult in the second half of the year. UCA was also up strongly, adding over a half a billion dollars in mark-to-market value to the portfolio and is now nearing $10 billion. Lastly, As Jason mentioned, conversations between I-Star and Safehold regarding the future progressed significantly. As you saw in our recent 13D, we're in advanced discussions with Safehold, so again, we won't be able to share details of those conversations on this call. We do hope to be able to do so in the near future. Okay, let's turn it over to Brett and Marcus. Marcus?