David J. Kimichik
Management
Good morning. For the fourth quarter, we reported a net loss of $9,941,000; EBITDA of $89,707,000; and AFFO of $42,808,000 or $0.30 per diluted share. At quarter-end, Ashford had total assets of $4.4 billion including $145 million of cash. We had $2.7 billion of mortgage debt with a blended average interest rate of 5.9%, leaving net debt to total gross assets at 61.5% at year-end. With 19% of our debt LIBOR based, we have recently benefited from a reduction in overall interest cost. The company’s weighted average debt maturity, including extension options is seven years, and the company’s EBITDA to fixed charge ratio was 2.4 times for 2007. At year-end, our portfolio consisted of 110 hotels in continuing operations, containing 25,483 rooms. We owned a position in eight mezzanine loans with total principal outstanding of $94 million, with an average annual unleveraged yield of 12.4%. Subsequent to the end of 2007, we’ve placed an additional $58 million of mezzanine debt at a blended annual un-leveraged yield of 14.1%. For the quarter, pro forma RevPAR for all hotels was up 6.1% as compared to the fourth quarter 2006. For the hotels not under renovation, which is all but 11 hotels, the pro forma RevPAR was up 7.8%, driven by a 5% increase in ADR and 176 basis points increase in occupancy. Pro forma hotel operating profit for the entire portfolio was up by $7.3 million or 8.4% for the quarter. For the 99 hotels not under renovation, pro forma hotel operating profit increased 13.7%. Our pro forma hotel operating profit margin improved 175 basis points for the hotels not under renovation and 88 basis points for all hotels. As we typically do, I would like to remind you to consider the detailed information that we provide in our filing, particularly the pro forma seasonality table which adjusts each quarter as we sell assets. During the fourth quarter we purchased in the open market 2.4 million shares of our common stock at an average price of $7.67. We ended the quarter with 120.4 million common shares outstanding; 7.4 million Series B convertible preferred shares outstanding, 13.3 million OP units issued for total share count of 141.1 million. For the fourth quarter, we reported CAD of $32,557,000 or $0.23 per diluted share and announced to pay the dividend of $0.21 per share. Our dividend coverage ratio was 120% of CAD and 152% of AFFO for the full year 2007. I’d now like to turn it over to Doug to discuss our capital allocation strategies.