Good day ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Fortress Transportation & Infrastructure Investors LLC First Quarter 2016 earnings conference call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference, Mr. Alan Andreini. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you. I would like to welcome you to the Fortress Transportation and Infrastructure first quarter 2016 earnings call. Joining me here today are Joe Adams, our Chief Executive Officer, and Jon Atkeson, our Chief Financial Officer. We have posted an investor presentation in our press release on our website which we encourage you to download if you have not already done so. Also please note that this call is open to the public in listen-only mode and is being webcast. Before I turn the call over to Joe, I would like to point out that certain statements made today will be forward-looking statements. These statements by their nature are uncertain and may differ materially from actual results. We encourage you to review the disclaimers in our press release and investor presentation regarding forward-looking statements and to review the risk factors contained in our quarterly report filed with the SEC. Now I would like to turn the call over to Joe.

Thank you, Alan. To start the conversation, I am pleased to announce our fourth dividend as a public company and our 19th consecutive dividend since inception. The dividend of $0.33 per share will be paid on May 31, based on a shareholder record date of May 20. We remain committed to this dividend and there is nothing in this past quarter or ahead that we see, which places the dividend in question. In fact, as we continue to deploy capital at attractive levels in aviation and make progress at Jefferson Terminal, our confidence in both the dividend and our business model grows. In addition, we announced last night that our board has authorized a $50 million stock repurchase plan and as we do with all of our capital allocation decisions, we will be opportunistic and prudent with our purchases. Having said that, at the current level and with the progress we have made we believe the price of our stock to be a compelling value. While the new investment pipeline remains extremely robust, this gives us another way to deploy capital at attractive prices and assets we know very well. Let me start and give you an overview for the quarter before going into the numbers and into detail on the respective areas. I love our aviation business still, and we continue to deploy capital at attractive levels. The market opportunities for older aircraft and engines remain strong, our portfolio is growing as we had hoped, while returns are meeting or exceeding our expectations. The market today for older aircraft continues to expand due to rising global traffic and low fuel prices. We have a unique business model run by a team with the skills, relationships and engine knowledge, which is perfect for this environment and our strategy, which as…

Thank you, Joe. Operator, you may now open the call to Q&A.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Chris Wetherbee of Citigroup. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

. Hi, thanks. Good morning guys. Wanted to touch on the pipeline, so Joe some of our last comments there, you mentioned aviation, railroads distressed. Outside of Repauno and Hannibal, just wanted to get a sense of your thoughts around infrastructure, I know you have detailed the Jefferson opportunity, you have given us some thoughts around Repauno and Hannibal, but when you think about that pipeline, is there more or less from an infrastructure perspective that is new business for you in that pipeline than there was maybe three months or six months ago?

I would say that there probably are more deals in the pipeline, but they are probably of a smaller size. So, there might be 100 million to 200 million deals as opposed to 500 million to billion dollar deals. So I would say more by count and probably less by dollar amount.

Okay, all right, that is helpful. And then add a few specifics, from a Jefferson prospective, so when you think about these three opportunities, if you can give us a sense of maybe when we could see some revenue up tick coming from these, obviously you have sort of the baseline business there and you mentioned the unit train of Canadian heavy, but when you think about ethanol distribution, origination for refined products, how do we think about sort of how that could play out from a revenue standpoint?

Well, I think in order of soonest to longest, I think refined products to Mexico has the potential to happen the fastest, and then I would say, the ethanol would be behind that and then the storage deal, just because we have to build new storage tanks, it is probably 9 to 12 months out. So, I would say that you probably will not see a lot of revenue in 2016, but that kind of gives you the sense of the progression I think of when they could happen.

Okay, that is helpful. And then, when you think about the Jefferson as well, there was I think an equity compensation reversal in the quarter, just want to get a sense sort of if you can give us any color on what is going on and if there is anything that gets impacted from a deal perspective or if there is something else that is sort of tied to that, I just want to make sure I understand how to think about that opportunity?

I think that is related to a specific earn out that the original owner had and it has a time fuse on it, and so as we got closer to the end of that time fuse, it is less likely that those targets would be hit. So that is all it was.

Okay, all right. Now that is helpful. Last question, just when the board thinks about buybacks versus other investment opportunities, I guess I just want to make sure I understand the message coming from the buyback relative to sort of the potential pipeline of investment opportunities, the buyback could be attractive at certain levels, but doesn't generate sort of organic FAD, and I guess I just want to understand sort of how you guys view that opportunity or if this is sort of a sign that maybe some of the potential business that you thought was coming might be just further down the pipeline?

No, I don’t think – I think we like both and I think the board appreciates that and there are certainly some advantages to buying assets you already own, which is effectively what a buyback is, but we like both. I mean, I think the accretive nature of buying back stock at a discount is appreciated as is the potential for a new acquisition. So it is not one or the other. It is really both.

Okay, all right. Thanks very much for the time. I appreciate it.

Yes.

Thank you, and our next question comes from the line of Ari Rosa of Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning Joe, Jon and Alan. I was hoping first that you guys could talk through the [extrications] around some of the capital projects at CMQR, I noticed that you obviously upped your revolver facility, wanted to hear about some of the projects that might be in development there?

Yes, one specific reason is that we received the TIGER Grant, and the TIGER Grant is a matching investment program. So, our portion of the TIGER Grant I think was 6 million and then we invest 4 million or so and you have to do that around the same time you receive that money, but that does – is it means really for the next four years you have front ended a lot of the CapEx on the railroad. So it is really just pulling that forward and spending it now, and having the government pay for half of that. So it is a great economic outcome. So it is really – it is more just a timing – shifting of timing issues. With respect to other longer-term projects, those would be specific to new contracts and new businesses, and activities around the port of Searsport with respect to autos, woodchips, chemicals would be separate and they are not included in those numbers at this point, but they would be tied to new business.

So, you see a lot of other railroads even short line railroads operating with operating ratios in the mid 70s range, obviously you guys had a big challenge at CMQR, but do you think you can get there or is there – are there certain structural differences that prevent that from being a realistic target?

No, I think it is a very realistic target and we have talked about that at the beginning. It is just that we have started from a cold start. I mean this railroad was literally totally shut down in July of 2014. So it is a ramp-up, but there is nothing that is different about this railroad and there is some positive attributes given that you connect to a port. So very much like many of the properties that we owned and operated at RailAmerica that did operate in that 25% and 33% EBITDA margin, or the reverse of what you just quoted.

Got it. So turning really quickly to the aviation side, your $110 million FAD target, could you talk about kind of what assumptions you guys are making to get to that number?

Mostly just that the rent is pretty much all currently contracted. So they basically just get what you are – you get what you are owed and then there is some assumption that the hours flown, when you have a lease that has maintenance reserves, it is a function of hours and cycles, and so as long as the airline is flying those hours and cycles, you will receive all that money.

Okay. So it sounds like that is a pretty reliable number. It sounds like it is pretty well baked in.

Yes. I feel good about it.

Okay, so just kind of last question, and this is piggy-backing a little bit on Chris’ question, but looking at Jefferson obviously, and I understand obviously the industrial economy has been a lot tougher than we expected at that time of the IPO, but we also did expect a much quicker ramp up in terms of earnings and certainly contribution from Jefferson to the extent that we have already kind of reached that expectation – I mean how far into the future is it before we can realistically expect some cash flow contribution from Jefferson, what is it that really needs to happen to get us there?

Well, I think with these new deal opportunities we are there more or less, just if we execute on those, and then the rest would be upside.

So is it a 6 to 12-month target. It sounds like that meaningful FAD contribution could be coming from Jefferson – from the three opportunities that you have laid out, and maybe some increased train activity, is that what I am hearing?

Yes.

Okay got it. Thank you.

Thank you, and our next question comes from the line of Justin Long of Stephens. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Thanks and good morning. So maybe to follow up on the question on aviation, clearly it continues to be a highlight of the business, but I wanted to get your opinion on how this segment could be impacted if oil prices rise, based on your current asset base, is there a good way to frame up the sensitivity in the model to let us call it, $10 move in oil prices, and how that could impact your FAD expectation?

Well, it is a good question and we do think that clearly the airlines are holding airplanes longer now given that low – fuel prices are low. I think it matters a lot less with narrow body fleets than it does with the wide body fleets, and so one of the experiences that I always tell people is back in, when we owned Aircastle and we owned a lot of 737-300 and 400s, which were older airplanes at the time, and fuel price shot up to $140 a barrel in 2007, and our original thought was gee, that is going to be bad for 737-300s and 400s because they are less fuel-efficient than 737-700s and 800s, and in fact what happened is people that had MD80s were scrambling to find 737-300s and 400s because they were even worse. So these rates on the older assets actually went up with the higher fuel price, which was not, it was a little bit counterintuitive. So I think the key is to buy assets that you feel can operate well in both economic environments and that is what we do. And so when we buy 737-700s and 800s and A320s and 757s, we think those assets will be in demand in really a very, very wide range of fuel prices given the demand for traffic and the lack of the ability to replace those assets. And so I couldn't give you a specific algorithm which says every $10 in a barrel of oil equates to a lease rate amount because I don’t think it really works that way.

Okay, that is all helpful. Next I wanted to ask a question about Jefferson, Joe you gave some color on the potential capital outflow for the ethanol distribution and crude storage opportunities, but on the third opportunity to export refined products to Mexico, is there any ballpark number you could provide on the capital that you could deploy, so just give us a sense for the order of magnitude?

Well, there is probably different levels, but it is not a lot of capital to get it started. If you turn it into a higher volume, more permanent infrastructure, I would say probably between 20 million and 30 million would be a decent number. But it is possible to get it started with a little new infrastructure.

Okay and I think the last one from me, you mentioned deals in the rail sector picking up and I was wondering if you could provide some more color on that front because any way that you could kind of look at your pipeline today and share what percentage of that is rail related and then just a typical side of the rail deals you are considering?

I would say it’s bigger than it has been for a while and rail deals tend to be episodic, they commonly it’s hard to scheduling because some of these railroads have been, we worked at railroads that we would like to buy 10 years ago but they are still available out there. So most of what we are focusing on I would say would be between $50 million and $200 million and they are several.

Okay great. That’s helpful. I appreciate the time.

Thank you and our next question comes from the line of Devin Ryan of JMP Securities. Your line is now open, please go ahead.

Good morning. I guess may be first here on the aviation side, can you may be talk a little about what you guys are seeing on the pricing side you really had that trended in the market, since that come to you guys but I know you spoken about may be opportunity there. So I'm just curious kind of what you see pricing where your source from right now? And then just a follow up on that what's the wide utilization after closing at [indiscernible] how many months until you come with a full utilization.

When you say pricing you mean the price of an asset or the rent?

Yes, the price and asset what you are purchasing.

It's really bifurcated market, if you have an asset say under ten years, five year older asset with three to five years of attached cash flow or three to seven years, prices are really-really high and we generally don't, we are sometimes putting the indications but we could be substantially lower than where people are being able to sell things and I think some of that is due to new money coming from many different sources that wants to get into aviation. So that market is extremely competitive. The market that we participate in it tends to be very uncompetitive of course and that's what we look for and so we're buying assets either don't have a lease or that might have one or two airplanes deal that has something about it, it's difficult for the conventional buyer to just figure out. And those deals I figure are still, there's still enough of them around for us to keep us happy, we've also done a couple of deals where we've bought some airplanes and then sold the airplane to the operator and lease them engines as part of the deal which is something I've been trying to do for a while and we've got a couple of them now we've done, that to me is the best of all awards as we earned. We have earned the best asset, we collect almost the same amount of cash flow but we don't own the airplane. So there's a lot of stuff out there. Our area of focus to do, I haven't seen any decrease in that activity but I would say on the more conventional down the middle assets which is highly competitive.

Got it ok that's helpful and just in terms of utilization, how many months just after you kind of the deals closure we think about those assets coming on lease?

Well, I think it ranges. Some deals were actually by that have cash flow attached, so its immediate and then other times you could take three or four months to get them on lease sometimes will buy something has to be overhauled or might need maintenance which another way to create significant value.

Okay. [indiscernible] update there. And may be the bigger picture to trying to run through all the puts and takes dividend, coverage, aviation it sounds like it's pretty close to more than covering before dividend but just on a net basis still clearly a lot of moving parts...

Well, I think if you were on a cell, I think we might have lost you.

And our next question comes from the line of Brandon Oglenski of Barclays. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking our question. I just wanted the follow up on the earlier question about the buyback and what we might be able to derive from that regarding the health of the market, obviously your stock has gotten cheap since IPO but it feels like other investment opportunities have as well. I guess, what is changed, that kind of mix reinvesting in the assets that you own a little bit more attractive than what else is out there.

Well I don't think anything has really changed. I think we view both of them attractive investment opportunities and so it's having the ability to do that is what the board is now authorized us to do.

Okay and is there anything to drive in terms of the opportunities out there in the pipeline on the infrastructure side versus aviation in that launch?

No, I think, I mean it's a very strong pipeline, as I went through is specifically like create a number of opportunities that we see and we are very active and busy and see things that we think are very good value as well. So no commentary on the pipeline.

Okay and then just quickly on the Jefferson projects. I know you gave a little bit of detail on the sizing, is there any way to quantify the potential side contribution from those?

I would say there is a range obviously and it's probably high single digits up to 15 million or may be as high as 20 million of contribution over time.

Okay. I appreciate it.

Okay and our next question comes from the line of Art Hatfield of Raymond James. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Thank you. A couple of things and I don't think you touched on these but in the aviation deals that you closed in April and the analyze should we think about comparable returns to what the business is already being getting on those investments?

Yes.

And any thought on timing on when the [ROI] will be acted on and closed.

They're pretty near term, I would say April or May.

Okay so those deals that should close in Q2 and we start to get benefit in Q3. Just I could add on Jefferson and again most of my questions have answered but on Jefferson when we think about the opportunity for growth in the volume that runs through Jefferson ultimately it’s going to drive that is that absolute price of crude is a regional spread differential that you need to think about or is it really the structure where you see and the opportunity you have to serve specific customers within that area.

Yes. You summarized it very well. In all matters, I am agrees, having a higher price crude means people have more money to play around with and it is just more and more easier pricing environment, secondly the differentials can matter from time to time and obviously that was what drove originally a lot of crude by rail activity was huge spread between WTI and Brant and then thirdly it's just the activity in the gulf is a very good market. It's a very a strong refinery market, very strong chemical market. Now you've got VLGC is going out with propane to the Asian markets through the Panama Canal. It has tremendous diversity and strengthened that diversity and so we're in a great position in that market and I think that adding new lines of businesses and new products and will allow us to keep diversifying out and have multiple opportunities be it, not just crude but refined products be it and things like ethanol, propane, natural gas, liquids. There's lots of ideas and opportunities that we keep pursuing.

Great and last question, Joe, you had mentioned earlier regarding the pipeline that you've seen a shift and the deals that you're looking at more on the smaller side and less on the larger side, what has driven that specifically?

I don't know. I mean I don't really control what people put up and are willing to sell, it's very hard for me to pinpoint that and I think it's partially and I guess I would say that it's a tougher economic environment today than it was nine months or year ago. So I think people have softened up a little bit in terms of needing cash, needing liquidity and recognizing that maybe the world isn't going to grow as fast as they thought it was and so I think it's probably a combination of those factors that you do see more, we see more properties now available.

Very good, thanks for your time this morning.

[Operator Instructions]. And our next question comes from the line of Robert Salmon. Your line is now open, of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

This is Alan Clark on for Rob. In regards to the aviation portfolio, I know you've got plans available to a billion dollar portfolio but do you have a target sort of the end of the year there we could flow through the model? What you guys are referring to?

We don't. We try not to say that we have to invest this much capital in any time period. It is sort of a bad investment philosophy. So we don't set targets on how much we want to invest and reset. We really have more targets around how much money we make, how much you can produce. So I would not, I mean I know you can take and extrapolate from what we've done in the past and past investing and assume that if that continues and I wouldn't disagree with that.

Okay that’s fair and then I think you've talked about in the past but you have any plans to use leverage in that portfolio at all down the road.

Yes we have the ability to do that we have300 plus million of cash to invest for us but if the right deal came along, yes we could and leverage but right now still under 20% debt to total cap. So we are very low leverage which gives us the ability to move that up with a deal.

Okay and then switching to offering, you talked up some of the seeing increased distressed opportunities, are there just any similar investments do you have now or would there be other verticals or something like or?

Well I think we would only look, we're currently only contemplating doing something in the inspection repair maintenance market. There are distress across the board there though.

Right, right.

Our focus and I think we like the market, there's a lot of deferred maintenance subsea installations around the world and as people have cut back on their budgets and that work is going to have to be done. And so that's what I like about that market. It’s s not a function of the price, not a function people will have hydro bass[ph] start drilling again. It is going to, have to be done because you have to maintain these fields or they either have accidents or you shut them down which either which are bad alternatives. So that's why I like that space and that's where we would continue to look.

Alright, that’s all, that’s it from me. Thank you very much.

Yes.

Thank you. And I am showing a follow up question from the line of Devin Ryan of JMP Securities. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Thanks guys, let me try this one again here. So, I guess I'm just really trying to bigger picture thinking about dividend coverage and clearly a lot of puts and takes here and really good to hear the new aviation update and the run rate there and clearly that's going to continue to grow, but there's also a lot of kind of other moving parts, CMQR is ramping, some uncertainty around leases in offshore the comments around Jefferson. So I am try to get a sense of, can we point to a quarter where we say okay at this point we were covering the dividend or is there still some uncertainty just around timing of investments going back in the business. I’m just trying to think if we can by 3Q will formally be there.

Well, I don't have a formal, specific answer but I think if you assume aviation we continue to invest and continues to grow, that's good. Jefferson, I have indicated we're very close to being positive or contributor CMQR is a positive contributor. Offshore, I think could be not much of a significance distributor this year but could be next year and you sort of add that up and if we have any new investments then we would be above that.

Got it, okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you and our next question comes from the line of Jared Shojaian of Wolfe Research. Your line is now open please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. So can you guys give some guidance on second quarter FAD and full year FAD and I'm really just trying to see how the dividend in the buyback fit in here.

We don't give specific guidance on what I would tell you is that the contribution that we saw from containers in the first quarter will obviously not be recurring in the second quarter. The aviation we should see some pick up there because of the increased deployment of capital and then I think everything else is really looking what happened in first quarter and looking towards what's happening in the second quarter. So in the offshore will benefit a little bit from the charter deployment of the price but that's really starting up in mid June. The operating expenses should be a little bit lower there and then the Jefferson activity that we hope to announce soon will start to contribute but that's probably a quarter or two away in terms of developing and deploying the capital associated with those contracts and getting that ramped up.

Okay, I understand that but if I look at the first quarter asset sales, working capital, I mean that's basically driving your entire FAD for the quarter and you've got $100 million dividend given over the next 12 months you've got to$ 50 million buyback I mean, how do you get 150 million in FAD here, any of you can share just going into 2Q, 3Q 4Q, are we going to continue to just remain under covered on the cash deployment or how do we think about that?

Well I think, we try to give the aviation FAD numbers. We indicated at the current investment level it's over 110 million that's without any asset sales.

Right okay so is that run rate starting in 2Q immediately or when does that start?

I think at the end of Q2.

Okay and then should we assume $30 million of offsets from corporate and infrastructure and so you're somewhere around 80 million, is that the right way to think about it?

It's, 30 from the corporate and then the infrastructure I think is on top of that. So that’s probably another 20 million.

Okay, I mean there is still a shortfall with the cash deployment. I am trying to figure out at what point do you pull back may be pause a little bit on the dividend or the buyback, at what point do you do that?

Well we don’t see the need to do that. Obviously we just said, we believe that we will cover the divided and stock buybacks are accretive because you are buying back stocks which are paying dividends, so it’s not a, those are not net negative as deployment of capital.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. And I am showing no further questions at this time, I will like to turn the call over to Mr. Alan Andreini for closing remarks.

Thank you all for participating in today’s conference call. We look forward to updating you again after Q2.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This concludes today's program. You may all disconnect. Everyone have a great day.