Newlake Cap Partners Inc

Good morning. I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the New Lake Capital fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings conference call. Today's call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Walter Pinto, Managing Director of KCSA Strategic Communications. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning and welcome everyone to the New Lake Capital Partners fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings conference call. I'm joined today by David Weinstein, Chief Executive Officer, Anthony Coniglio, President and Chief Investment Officer, Fred Starker, Chief Financial Officer, and Jared Annenberg, Director of Acquisitions. Before we begin, I'm going to remind everyone that statements made during today's conference call may be deemed forward-looking statements with the meaning of the safe harbor of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and actual results may differ materially due to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors. For a detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties of the company's business, I refer you to the press release issued this morning and filed with the SEC on Form 8K, as well as the company's 10K and other reports filed periodically with the SEC. The company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. With that, it's my pleasure to turn the call over to Mr. David Weinstein.

David, please go ahead. Thank you, Walter, and thank you again, everyone, for joining our call. 2021 was a transformative year for New Lake. During the first quarter of 2021, we completed our merger of New Lake and Green Acreage, raising over $100 million in connection with that event. Five months later, in August of 2021, we successfully closed on our initial public offering, raising another $100 million in gross proceeds. Over the entirety of 2021, our team has worked diligently to build relationships, source transactions, and invest our capital in strategic cannabis real estate with high-quality tenants. While we are proud of our growth, we are keenly focused on quality, not quantity. Our long-term success will be built upon the discipline we continue to exercise when making investment decisions. Our model is quite simple. We want to create long-term partnerships with the highest quality cannabis operators, that are strategically located in limited licensed states and jurisdictions throughout the United States. While we do not expect to announce a transaction every week or every month for that matter, the focus of our strategy is long-term ROI for our shareholders. As of December 31st, our portfolio had a 14.5-year weighted average lease term, a 12.5% weighted average yield, and built-in growth through unfunded tenant improvements, and lease escalators. This built-in growth, combined with our ability to continually invest capital, has allowed us to increase our dividend each quarter since going public. Our conviction in the growth of the business remains strong. The cannabis industry is still in the early innings, expected to grow to $46 billion by 2026 from $24 billion in 2021. Operators will need to continue to access capital to fuel this growth. Today, our portfolio is comprised of 28 properties across 11 states, totaling 1.4 million square feet, 90% of which are cultivation facilities and 10% of which are dispensaries. Our nine tenants include premier cannabis operators, both public companies such as Cureleaf, Cresco, Trulieve, and ColumbiaCare, and private companies such as Organic Remedies, Mint, and Revolutionary Clinics. We also have provided one mortgage loan collateralized by a cultivation facility. Our financial performance reflects the quality of our strategy and portfolio. We recently announced a first quarter dividend of 33 cents per share, or $1.32 annualized, and our long-term expected target AFFO payout ratio is 80 to 90%. As a reminder, Aside from $2 million of outstanding seller financing related to our organic remedies acquisition, we currently have no outstanding debt. We are actively pursuing, with a number of lenders, debt capital to fund additional acquisitions. While there is no guarantee that we will be able to raise this capital, we are optimistic given the current ongoing discussions. We are currently in negotiation on a number of transactions and will provide more details on these and any debt capital as these situations progress. Finally, I'd like to address certain dynamics relating to trading in cannabis-related stocks. It has become more challenging for investors to trade in these stocks as certain banks have restricted secondary trading of cannabis-related stocks that do not trade on either the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ. We believe that this has created a less than optimal trading volume and liquidity in all OTC-traded cannabis-related stocks, including ours. We have been evaluating alternatives to uplist to a major exchange such as NASDAQ. We are currently engaged with NASDAQ regarding a potential approach for an uplist, but there is no certainty that we will ultimately receive approval. It is premature for us to say much more other than we understand that this is an important issue for our company and our shareholders, and we are very focused on working through this issue. I'd now like to turn the call over to Anthony to discuss our investment portfolio in more detail. Anthony?