Retail Opportunity Investments Corp.

Welcome to the Retail Opportunity Investment Second Quarter 2023 Conference Call. Participants are currently in a listen-only mode. Following the company's prepared remarks, the call will be open for questions. Now I'd like to introduce Laurence Silvera, the company's Chief Accounting Officer.

Thank you. Before we begin, please note that certain matters, which we will discuss on today's call, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements involve risks and other factors which can cause actual results to differ significantly from future results that are expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Participants should refer to the company's filings with the SEC, including our most recent annual report on Form 10-K, to learn more about these risks and other factors. In addition, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial results on today's call. Reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial results to GAAP results can be found in the company's quarterly supplemental, which is posted on our website. Now, I'll turn the call over to Stuart Tans, the company's Chief Executive Officer.

Stuart? Thank you, Lauren, and good day, everyone. Here with Lauren and me today is Michael Haines, our Chief Financial Officer, and Rich Schovel, our Chief Operating Officer. We are pleased to report that our grocery anchored portfolio continues to perform well. Demand for space continues to be strong, coming from a growing broad range of necessity, service, and destination tenants, all of which continue to seek out our grocery anchored shopping centers. Capitalizing on the demand and building on our record leasing activity in the first quarter, during the second quarter we again posted a record amount of leasing. In fact, in just the first six months alone, we've already leased approximately 1 million square feet of space, which is a new record for the company. For reference, at the start of the year, we had 859,000 square feet scheduled to mature during all of 2023. The fact that we've already surpassed that amount at mid year speaks to the success of our length, long standing hands on approach and the fundamental appeal of our grocery anchored shopping centers. Additionally, not only are we capitalizing on the demand to lease a record amount of space, we are also capitalizing on the demand to drive rents higher and to enhance the tenant mix at each of our centers. Importantly, Our overriding objective is to continue enhancing the long-term competitive position of our portfolio and the long-term strength and stability of our portfolio's income stream and bottom line cash flow. With respect to dispositions, we are currently on track to close in the third quarter the property sale that we discussed on our last call. We were also currently planning to bring to market for sale in the second half of 2023 are two infill, undeveloped land parcels in the San Francisco Bay Area that are slated for multifamily development. Altogether, we expect that the three dispositions could generate between 30 and 40 million of proceeds in total. In terms of acquisitions, during the first half of 2023, the broader market on the West Coast was relatively quiet. as the market digested the impact from the increase in interest rates over the past year and the recent banking turmoil. For the few transactions that did close involving sought-after stable grocery-anchored properties, pricing was in the high fives, low six percent range, driven in part by being all cash, no leverage transactions, typically with buyers that are passive institutional investors focused on long-term stability. We're starting to see signs of the market potentially picking back up, as there's been a bit of an increase here recently in the number of properties being brought to market, which will hopefully bring greater clarity in terms of pricing shifts. As it relates to off-market opportunities, we continue to be proactively engaged in seeking out transactions. We currently have several interesting opportunities in the pipeline that we believe have significant long-term embedded growth, However, we're not there yet with the private owners in terms of initial yield pricing, so it's a bit too early to discuss specifics. Additionally, we continue to get a number of inquiries regarding potential OP unit transactions, which we are exploring as well. Now, I'll turn the call over to Michael Haynes to take you through our financial results. Mike?