American Campus Communities Inc

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the American Campus Communities Incorporated 2021 Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. Instructions will be provided at that time for you to queue up for questions. I would like to remind everyone that this conference is being recorded, and I would now like to turn the conference over to Ryan Dennison, Senior Vice President of Capital Markets and Investor Relations for American Campus Communities. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for joining the American Campus Communities 2021 Third Quarter Conference Call. The press release was furnished on Form 8K to provide access to the widest possible audience. In the release, the company has reconciled the non-GAAP financial measures to those directly comparable GAAP measures in accordance with Reg G requirements. Also posted on the company website in the investor relations section, you will find an earnings materials package, which includes both the press release and a supplemental financial package. We are hosting a live webcast for today's call, which you can access on the website with the replay available for one month. Our supplemental analyst package and our webcast presentation are one and the same. Webcast slides may be advanced by you to facilitate following along. Management will be making forward-looking statements today as referenced in the disclosure in the press release, in the supplemental financial package, and in SEC filings. Management would like to inform you that certain statements made during this conference call which are not historical fact may be deemed forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934. as amended by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Although the company believes the expectations reflected in any forward-looking statement are based on reasonable assumptions, they are subject to economic risks and uncertainties. The company can provide no assurance that its expectations will be achieved and actual results may vary. Factors and risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations are detailed in the press release, and from time to time in the company's periodic filings with the SEC. The company undertakes no obligation to advise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect the events or circumstances after the date of this release. Having said that, our Chief Executive Officer, Bill Bayless, will be providing our opening comments today. He's joined by the following members of senior management for the call. Jennifer Bees, President and Chief Operating Officer. William Talbot, Chief Investment Officer. Daniel Perry, Chief Financial Officer. Kim Voss, Chief Accounting Officer, and Brian Winger, General Counsel. With that, I will now turn the call over to Bill for his remarks.

Bill? Thank you, Ryan. Good morning and thank all of you for joining us as we discuss our 2021 Q3 results in the current operating environment. As you may recall, on our Q2 call in July, we were still somewhat apprehensive as we had just surpassed last year's COVID-impacted leasing velocity in the emerging Delta variant was creating uncertainty around university's plans to move forward with in-person classes and a return of campus social activities. At that time, based on historical leasing velocity data, we continue to believe that the industry's COVID recovery would not fully materialize until the fall of 2022. Today, just three months later, we are extremely pleased to report that students all across the nation continued to flock back to their college towns and leased well into the months of August and September. And universities continued to press forward with their plans to return to in-person activities, including full attendance at college football stadiums across America. The result? The student housing industry has emerged from the COVID pandemic in the fall of 2021. With its investment thesis fully intact, And with the sector having tailwinds, the like of which we haven't seen in many years. As outlined in our interim update earlier this month, we're pleased that the execution of our fall 21 lease up produced an opening fall occupancy of 95.8% for our total portfolio and rental rate growth of 330 to 380 basis points for our 2021 and 2022 same-store property groupings respectively. All these metrics are above the assumptions in the high end of our prior lease-up guidance. In addition to the extremely successful lease-up, our operational and financial results also exceeded our expectations in the third quarter with ancillary income and operating expenses beating our forecast. In addition, The ongoing development and commencement of operations at Flamingo Crossing Village, our community serving the Disney College program, are also going quite well. During the quarter, we delivered the fifth phase of development and have now achieved 85% occupancy, in line with our expectations for this fall. Notably, since the DCP program recommenced only five months ago, we have already executed leases with and moved in more than 4,500 residents, demonstrating the continued vibrant demand for the Disney College program. Our lease up results and recent operational outperformance allowed us to increase the midpoint of our financial guidance by 4% to $2.08 per share, which is above the high end of our prior guidance range. Based on the progress we've made this year, total property NOI returned to pre-pandemic levels this quarter. a full year earlier than we previously anticipated. And more impressively, rental revenue is expected to exceed pre-pandemic levels in the fourth quarter for our same store properties from 2019. We now expect to grow earnings by 3% to 7% over 2020. All in all, the company's recovery in financial performance this year has certainly exceeded our expectations. As cumulatively, we have exceeded our original guidance for the first three quarters of the year by 12 cents per share, or almost 10%, as students continue to return to college campuses throughout the year. I'd like to now turn to the fundamentals of our industry. As reported by owners and operators attending the NMHC Student Housing Conference earlier this month, occupancy and supply-demand fundamentals of the sector are strong. And again, the industry is experiencing some of the most substantial tailwinds we've seen in many years. The broader comparable sector, represented by the RealPage Axiometrics 175, returned to pre-pandemic occupancy levels of approximately 94%, while also producing attractive rent growth of 2.5%. We saw robust admission applications at four-year public and private universities we serve and target, The strength in admission applications appears to have directly led to the highest level of first year student enrollment growth we've seen. In the 48 of 68 university markets for which we are able to collect first year enrollment data, there was an increase of 7.4% over fall 2020 and 6.4% above pre-pandemic fall 2019. For perspective, for four year public institutions, In the prior 30 year period, average first year enrollment growth was approximately 2%. This level of significant growth in first year students occurring this year indicates the emerging post COVID era demand from students wanting to attend high quality universities in person and should provide significant recurring housing demand in the years to come. The record number of first year students The reinstatement of on-campus housing policies and the resumption of in-person campus activities will once again allow us to implement our in-person and exclusive sports marketing program activities in the 2022 leasing season. Historically, these programs have been an integral part of our early leasing season velocity outperformance and our final fall occupancy outperformance as compared to our peers. The significant increase in first year students led to the highest level of total enrollment growth in recent years, up over 1.5% versus academic year 2020 and pre-pandemic academic year 2019. In 62 of 60 of the 68 ACC markets for which we've been able to collect total enrollment data, this represents the addition of over 30,000 students. Sector tailwinds also include a reduction in national new supply, continuing at least through the 2022-2023 academic year. This includes a projected decrease of over 25% in ACC markets and represents the lowest level of new supply we have seen in over a decade. In total, we are tracking new supply of only 15,500 beds. with only one-third of our NOI being produced in markets seeing new supply. This compares to 55 to 67 percent of NOI being produced in new supply markets over the last three years. We're also seeing significant demand from universities seeking to modernize their on-campus housing. During the quarter, we were awarded new third-party developments at Emory University and the University of Texas. And this month, we started a new third-party development on the campus of Princeton University. In all, we are tracking more than 60 universities that are evaluating privatized residential projects, a continuing increase compared to pre-pandemic levels. In summing it up, we're extremely pleased with the progress that we and the sector have made in managing through the global pandemic. Finally, with our sector's resiliency, and investment thesis fully intact as we emerge from COVID, institutional capital is once again focusing on the sector, with several notable transactions recently occurring in the space. We are highly confident in our ability to fund our business through strategic capital recycling and free cash flow generation, while producing attractive earnings growth for our shareholders. With the sector's COVID recovery now largely complete, We believe the current transaction environment affords us the opportunity to accretively fund recent and ongoing development activity and further strengthen our balance sheet in 2022. As such, we intend to accelerate $200 million to $400 million of disposition activity, which fully satisfies our projected funding needs. Including the strategic capital recycling, We believe that FFOM per share growth in the range of 12 to 15% is achievable in 2022. Based on the positive fundamentals in the student housing industry and the accretive contribution from our ongoing development program, we are excited about the prospects for continued growth beyond 2022. We believe we are now well positioned to produce long-term earnings growth, net asset value creation, and superior returns for our investors in the years ahead. With that, I'd like to turn it back to the operator to start the question and answer portion of the call.