Timothy J. Wilmott
Analyst · Barclays
Thank you, Joe, and good morning, everyone. Well, certainly the fourth quarter had a lot of significant events that we'll talk about today, but clearly the number one is the successful completion of the tax-free spinoff to our shareholders of Gaming and Leisure Properties, Inc., the first gaming REIT, which occurred on November 1 and created a lot of shareholder value with that transaction. And now we have 19 properties under a master lease agreement between GLPI and Penn and Penn being tenant and that also includes 2 under development, the properties in Dayton, Ohio and also in Austintown, Ohio. And also in the fourth quarter with this spin, the properties of Perryville, Maryland and Baton Rouge, Louisiana have moved over to GLPI and no longer are part of Penn National Gaming. So as you'll hear shortly from Saul Reibstein, there is much noise in the fourth quarter results regarding the spin. But clearly, as we look forward today, in early February 2014, we're working with a new Penn. And I did want to introduce the new team at Penn. About 2 months ago, we were fortunate enough to bring on Saul Reibstein as our Chief Financial Officer. Saul knows Penn very well. He was a member of our board for 4 years and he's now been in place here for about 2 months and you'll hear from Saul about our fourth quarter results and also about the guidance for 2014 that we've provided you today. And then about a month ago, I was able to identify Chief Development Officer, B.J. Fair, who is with us today. B.J. joined us about a month ago with significant development experience with Disney and Universal Studios. And most recently, was the Chief Executive Officer of American Skiing Company and has a lot of experience in the hospitality industry and multifaceted amenities that attract consumers to that environment. At about the same time, I was able to promote to my former position, Jay Snowden, as our new Chief Operating Officer, and you'll hear from Jay today talking about what we're seeing in operations as we proceed into 2014. And also just this week, we are able to promote to General Counsel with the departure of Jordan Savitch, our Deputy General Counsel, Carl Sottosanti. Congratulations, Carl, as our new General Counsel effective February 1. Also with us today are our Treasurer, Robert Ippolito; and our Senior Vice President of Public Affairs, Eric Schippers. Before I turn it over to Jay to talk about what's -- what we're seeing within our operations, I did want to give you just a highlight of how we're seeing our development pipeline as we stand today. And in the fourth quarter, I'm pleased to let everyone know that we did finish the refurbishment and rebranding project in St. Louis and that project got complete right before the Christmas holiday and we now have a brand-new property in the St. Louis market with a fabulous Hollywood Casino that we fully expect will be well received by the customers in that market now that all the construction disruption is behind us. I did mention that we have 2 projects in Ohio under development, the VLT operations tied with the racetracks in Dayton and in Austintown, and we are on target with a fall of 2014 opening for both of those facilities. We also announced a couple of weeks ago that we are moving forward with our partners in San Diego County, the Jamul Indian tribe with our proposal there to develop and manage a casino east of Downtown San Diego and that is looking at an early 2016 opening. And we anxiously await the decision from the Massachusetts Gaming Commission on our application for Category 2 license, which we expect will come the end of this month and our proposal is for a $225 million facility, which is inclusive of a license fee to provide 1,250 slot machines, as well as non-gaming amenities. And again, that decision will come at the end of this month. And we're also awaiting a decision from the Pennsylvania Gaming Commission for the Philadelphia license. We were in front of the commission last week presenting our proposal. We're 1 of 5 applicants there and we expect a decision coming from Pennsylvania in the second quarter of this year as well. So that's just a brief update of our development pipeline. I did want to -- before turning it over to Jay, certainly mentioned that we continue to be challenged with the consumer as we've seen through most of 2013 into '14. And clearly, have had some impact in December and into the early part of this year with the winter weather. But I did want to highlight the job of our operations team is doing in continuing to manage the cost at our businesses in terms of managing labor levels and marketing dollars and other discretionary spending and highlight the fact that even in this tough revenue time, we're showing EBITDA margins that have improved year-over-year by 50 basis points. So with that, I'll turn it over to Jay Snowden to give him -- to give his comments regarding what we're seeing in our operations.