PARTICIPANTS
Corporate Participants Sarah Watterson – Director of Investor Relations, Newcastle Investment Corp. Wesley R. Edens – Chairman, Newcastle Investment Corp. Jonathan R. Brown – Interim Chief Financial Officer and Principal Accounting Officer, Newcastle Investment Corp. Andrew White – Managing Director, Newcastle Investment Corp. Kenneth M. Riis – President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, Newcastle Investment Corp. Other Participants Douglas M. Harter – Analyst, Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker) Bose George – Analyst, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc. Jason M. Stewart – Analyst, Compass Point Research & Trading LLC Matthew P. Howlett – Analyst, UBS Securities LLC MANAGEMENT DISCUSSION SECTION
Operator: Good morning, my name is Holly and I’ll be your conference operator today. At this time, we’d like to welcome everyone to the Newcastle Second Quarter 2013 Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] I’d now like to turn today’s conference over to Ms. Sarah Watterson. Please go ahead, sir. Sarah Watterson, Director of Investor Relations Thank you, Holly, and good morning, everyone. I’d like to welcome you to the Newcastle second quarter earnings call. Today with me I have Wes Edens, Chairman of the Board; Ken Riis, CEO; Jonathan Brown, CFO; and Andrew White, the Head of our Senior Housing Investments. Before I turn the call over to Ken, I would like to point out that certain statements made today may be – are not statements of fact. These statements describe the company’s current beliefs regarding events that, by their nature, are uncertain and outside of the company’s control. The Company’s actual results may differ materially from the expectations expressed in any forward-looking statements, so you should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. I encourage you to read the disclaimers in our earnings release and supplement regarding our forward-looking statements and expected returns to review our most recently filed documents with the SEC. Thank you and I would actually like to turn the call over to Wes Edens. Wesley R. Edens, Chairman Great. Thanks, Sarah, and welcome, everyone. As Sarah mentioned, we have posted on the Web a supplement for our Newcastle that we are going to refer to as we go through it and hopefully you’ll find helpful in terms of keeping track of the call this morning. So let’s begin on the overview page, page number 2, and I’ll just make a couple of overall comments and I’ll turn it over to Jon Brown to go through the financial results. For the full quarter, GAAP income was $52 million, $0.20 per diluted share, core earnings $43 million or $0.16 per diluted share. |