Vornado Realty Trust

Good morning and welcome to the Vornado Realty Trust first quarter 2021 earnings call. My name is Vanessa and I will be your operator for today's call. This call is being recorded for replay purposes. All lines are in a listen only mode. Our speakers will address your questions at the end of the presentation during the question and answer session. At that time, please press star then one on your touch tone phone. I will now turn the call over to Ms. Kathy Cresswell, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Welcome to Vornado Realty Trust's first quarter earnings call. Yesterday afternoon, we issued our first quarter earnings release and filed our quarterly report on Form 10-Q with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These documents, as well as our supplemental financial information package, are available on our website, www.vno.com, under the Investor Relations section. In these documents and during today's call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in our earnings release, Form 10-Q, and financial supplement. Please be aware that statements made during this call may be deemed forward-looking statements and actual results may differ materially from these statements due to a variety of risks, uncertainties, and other factors. Please refer to our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020, for more information regarding these risks and uncertainties. The call may include time-sensitive information that may be accurate only as of today's date. The company does not undertake a duty to update any forward-looking statements. On the call today from management for our opening comments are Stephen Roth, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Michael Franco, President and Chief Financial Officer. Our senior team is also present and available for questions. I will now turn the call over to Stephen Roth.

Thank you, Kathy, and good morning to everyone. I hope all of you continue to be safe and healthy and that you're all vaccinated or on your way to being vaccinated. We are full speed ahead on the Penn District and are confident of its success. Farley is well along. We delivered half of Facebook's 730,000 square feet on January 1st, and we will deliver the second half on June 1st, just one month from now. At Pen 1, we will deliver the 34th Street Lobby in July, the building's enormous amenity package in October, and the 33rd Street Lobby at year end. And Pen 2 and the Long Island Railroad Concourse developments are now under full scale construction. This transformation will take over a couple of years to complete. The decision to permanently close the Hotel Pennsylvania will allow us to get this site ready for development in less than two years from now, which is perfect timing for the next phase of our Penn District mega project. I believe that the Hotel Penn site will be the best development site in town. Notwithstanding that we will be delivering for tenants the most robust and unique amenitized offering in the city, with the added convenience of being directly on top of New York's main transportation hub, our strategy here is to price Penn I and Penn II below our neighbors to the west under their price umbrella. Since we are coming off $60 rents, this will be an outstanding outcome. Over time, as we continue to remake the Penn District, I fully expect rents will aggressively rise to the premium that they deserve. Over the summer and into the early fall, New York will be reopening and returning to normal. All of our tenants are telling us that they are anxious to bring their employees back to the office and we are anxious to welcome them back. We remain strong in our belief that working from the office will be the preferred mode of work for companies and their employees post-pandemic. The kitchen table may be a place for some, but I continue to believe the urban office is the workplace of the future. As I have said, I believe we will come out of this difficult year in an economic boom fueled by a tsunami of government stimulus of which New York is a very major beneficiary. The financial sector is now booming, tech is now booming, healthcare is now booming, retailers like Walmart, Target, and Home Depot are now booming, and there is enormous pent-up demand from consumers eager to travel, meaning tourists returning to New York, and spend on all manner of goods and services. This is beginning to happen all across the country. The major tech companies are telling us that they intend to continue growing their office footprints in New York and that New York's deep and diverse talent pool is unrivaled anywhere. As you can tell, we are very bullish on New York. Finally, a word about ESG. We filed our 2020 ESG report on Form 8K on April 12th. We continue to demonstrate our leadership here, and we're proud of the many awards and recognitions we have received. This is an important topic that we believe in. Please do take a look at this important report. Now over to Michael for comment on our numbers and our businesses.