Regency Centers Corporation

Hello and welcome to the Regency Centers Corporation third quarter 2023 earnings call and webcast. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. You may be placed into question queue at any time by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Christy McElroy, Senior Vice President, Capital Markets. Please go ahead, Christy.

Good morning, and welcome to Regency Center's third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Joining me today are Lisa Palmer, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mike Moss, Chief Financial Officer, Alan Ross, EVP, National Property Operations and East Region President, and Nick Wibbenmeyer, EVP and West Region President. As a reminder, today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements about the company's views of future business and financial performance, including forward earnings guidance and future market conditions. These are based on management's current beliefs and expectations and are subject to various risks and uncertainties. It's possible that actual results may differ materially from those suggested by these forward-looking statements we may make. Factors and risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements may be included in our presentation today and are described in more detail in our filings with the SEC, specifically our most recent Form 10-K and 10-Q filings. In our discussion today, we will also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures. The comparable GAAP financial measures are included in this quarter's earnings materials, which are posted on our Investor Relations website. Please note that we have also posted a presentation on our website with additional information, including disclosures related to forward earnings guidance. Our caution on forward-looking statements also applies to the presentation materials. Lisa?

Thank you, Christine. Good morning, everyone. We had another strong quarter of operating results, supported by continued positive momentum in our business. Tenant demand remains really healthy and consistent, and this is evident in the strength of our rent growth and our ability to further increase leased occupancy despite elevated bankruptcies. And you're going to hear a lot more about this from Alan in just a few minutes. We continue to drive success within our development program as well. This is reflected in the leasing progress that we've made across our in-process pipeline, as well as our significant volume of project starts year to date. Development is a core competency of our company. And as you've heard me say before, I believe we have the best national platform in the business. We have proven our ability to create meaningful value and earnings accretion over time. and we remain well-positioned to reach our targeted annual pace of $200 to $250 million of redevelopment and development spend annually. On the transaction side, we were proud to close our merger with Erstadt Biddle in mid-August. And since then, we've made significant headway integrating the assets into our platform and welcoming our new Regency team members. Our short time with the portfolio and the people has only served to reinforce our confidence in the combination of our two great companies. We also recently acquired two shopping centers. Nick will discuss these in more detail, but despite a pretty thin transaction market, I'm really proud that we were able to find some higher total return needles in the haystack. So turning to the macroeconomic environment, yes, we continue to see positive trends. We are seeing in real time the spending power of the consumer In our trade areas, this is evident in the solid sales performance for our tenants and for traffic to our centers. And while a deceleration perhaps has been expected by many, we are not seeing it. We remain really encouraged by the structural supply demand trends that are supporting our business today. Our tenants continue to invest in brick-and-mortar stores that are profitable as a last-mile distribution channel. and our suburban trade areas continue to thrive. And while we continue to create value, we continue to create value through ground-up development, overall, there is very little new retail space being added in the U.S., supporting the value and scarcity of existing space. That said, we do acknowledge that increased interest rates and significantly higher borrowing costs in the recent months do create uncertainty. First is the future to our earnings from refinancing next year's debt maturities. Our intentional strategy of maintaining low leverage and a ladder debt maturity schedule do act as mitigants to changes in rates, but we still expect to see an impact in 2024. The bottom line, though, is that in today's uncertain world, the one thing that we, that I, am certain about is that Regency remains well positioned. And this is a direct result of many attributes, one of which is our intentional portfolio composition. We believe the quality of our grocery-anchored neighborhood and community centers and the strength and demographics of our trade areas support durability of occupancy and create a wide buffer to insulate against potential economic impacts to our tenants and to our customers. And another attribute is our strong balance sheet and liquidity position, including our significant free cash flow. With this, we have flexibility in our capital allocation decision-making and an ability to self-fund and maintain consistency in our value creation pipeline through economic cycles. And importantly, we can also continue to play offense and be opportunistic. All of this is what's enabled us to maintain our dividend through the pandemic and raise it again this quarter by another 3%. We're now up 15% from 2019. Alan?