Good day and welcome to this Host Hotels and Resorts, Incorporated first quarter 2009 earnings conference call. Today’s call is being recorded. At this time for opening remarks and introductions I would like to turn the call over to the Executive Vice President, Mr. Greg Larson. Please go ahead sir.

Thank you. Welcome to the Host Hotels and Resorts first quarter earnings call. Before we begin I’d like to remind everyone that many of the comments made today are considered to be forward-looking statements under federal securities laws. As described in our filings with the SEC, these statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause future results to differ from those expressed, and we are not obligated to publicly update or revise these forward-looking statements. Additionally on today’s call we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial information such as FFO, adjusted EBITDA and comparable hotel results. You can find this information together with reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP information in today’s earnings press release, in our 8-K filed with the SEC and on our website at hosthotels.com. This afternoon Ed Walter, our President and Chief Executive Officer, will provide a brief overview of our first quarter results and then will describe the current operating environment as well as the company’s outlook for 2009. Larry Harvey, our Chief Financial Officer, will then provide greater detail on our first quarter results including regional and market performance. Due to the equity issuance announced this afternoon, we will be unable to take questions on this call. And now here’s Ed.

Thanks Greg. Good evening everyone. We apologize for the short notice and late hour of this earnings call, but let’s start with our results for the quarter. Unfortunately as expected the first quarter proved to be a [inaudible] earning environment for the lodging industry. First quarter RevPAR for our comparable hotels decreased by 19.8% driven by a decrease in average room rate of 8.6% and a decline in occupancy of 8.5 percentage points. For the quarter our average rate was $181 and our average occupancy was 60.8%. Food and beverage revenues at our comparable hotels decreased more than 20% for the quarter. Overall comparable revenues decreased approximately 19.7% for the quarter. Aggressive cost cutting in light of the weak operating environment limited the decline in comparable hotel adjusted operating profit margins to 400 basis points and resulted in adjusted EBITDA of $174 million in the first quarter. Our FFO per diluted share for the quarter was $0.10. That included a reduction of $0.08 due to non-cash impairment charges associated with potential asset sales. Excluding these charges our FFO per diluted share would have exceeded the consensus estimates by $0.07. In looking at our mix of business for the quarter as expected the negative trends experienced at the end of 2008 accelerated into 2009 as both group and transient business were weak. On the transient side, our corporate and premium priced business continued to deteriorate as room nights fell by 26% and rates declined by 13. At this point our higher priced segments have fallen to roughly 12% of our overall business which is comparable to the levels we experienced in 2003. Overall, our transient business was down by 10% and rate was off by 14% as hotels were forced by market conditions to reduce rates to compete for business and…

Thank you Ed. Let me start by giving you some detail on our comparable hotel RevPAR results. Looking at the portfolio based on property types, our suburban hotels performed the best during the first quarter with a RevPAR decline of 18.3%. RevPAR for our airport hotels decreased 18.9% and RevPAR for our urban hotels fell 19% while RevPAR at resort conference hotels decreased 23.9%. Turning to our regional results as expected the D.C. metro region had a very strong quarter with RevPAR growth of 11.7% led by our downtown properties as both group and transient business performed well due to the inauguration and other government related activities. We expect the D.C. metro region to continue to outperform in the second quarter. The south central region also outperformed on a relative basis as RevPAR fell 16.1%. The outperformance was driven by our Houston properties, primarily due to strong transient group business and partial renovations at two properties in the first quarter of 2008. We expect the Houston and New Orleans markets to perform better than the overall portfolio in the second quarter due to relatively strong booking pace and rate trends. The north central region also performed better with RevPAR declining 16.7% led by our downtown Chicago hotels which benefited from favorable year-over-year comparisons with two downtown assets under renovation in the first quarter of 2008. We expect the north central region and Chicago in particular to have a weaker second quarter as a result of weaker citywide activity and lower transient and group pace. RevPAR for our Florida region fell 22.2%. Our Tampa properties outperformed due to strong transient business and a lift from the Super Bowl. The rest of the region struggled with lower transient and group demand. We expect the Florida region to under perform in the second…

All right. Well thank you very much everybody for joining us on this call this evening. Again we apologize for the late hour. We appreciated the opportunity to discuss our first quarter results and outlook with you. We look forward to providing you with more insight into how 2009 is playing out at our second quarter call in mid-July. Have a good evening everybody.

That does conclude our conference for today. We appreciate your participation and hope that you have a good day.