Acadia Realty Trust

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Acadia Realty Trust first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I'd now like to hand the conference over to Lynelle Ray, Lease Administration and Due Diligence Analyst. Please go ahead.

Good morning and thank you for joining us for the first quarter 2026 Acadia Realty Trust earnings conference call. My name is Lynelle Ray and I'm a Lease Administration and Due Diligence Analyst. Before we begin, please be aware that statements made during the call that are not historical may be deemed forward-looking statements within the meeting of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, and actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements. Due to a variety of risks and uncertainties, including those disclosed in the company's most recent Form 10-K and other periodic filings with the SEC, forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this call, April 29, 2026, and the company undertakes no duty to update them. During this call, management may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures including funds from operations and net operating income. Please see Acadia's earnings press release posted on its website for reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures with the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. Once the call becomes open for questions, we ask that you limit your first round to two questions per caller to give everyone the opportunity to participate. You may ask further questions by reinserting yourself into the queue, and we will answer as time permits. Now, it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Ken Bernstein, President and Chief Executive Officer, who will begin today's management remarks.

Thank you, Lynelle. Great job. Welcome, everyone. As you can see in our press release, we had another strong quarter in what is shaping up to be a very solid year, both with respect to our internal as well as our external growth initiatives. And while geopolitical events have certainly added unwanted uncertainty to the global economy, thankfully, due to the tailwinds for open-air retail in general, and then even more so for street retail, we are seeing continued strong results driven by strong tenant demand, strong tenant performance, and attractive investment opportunities. As the team will discuss in more detail, we delivered 11% year-over-year earnings growth driven by nearly 6% same-store growth. And even with heightened uncertainty in the capital markets, we completed over $2.5 billion of transactional activity, comprised of $600 million of new investments, over $500 million of recapitalizations within our investment management platform and a new $1.4 billion corporate borrowing facility. Now, since I have discussed in detail the key drivers of the tailwinds in open-air retail on our previous calls, I will limit my explanation a bit. But in short, our continued strong performance is being driven most significantly by our street retail portfolio and more specifically by five key factors. First, limited supply that continues to shrink. Second, and probably more importantly, increasing demand due to the ongoing focus by retailers to having their own physical locations rather than being so heavily reliant on either wholesale or digital channels. strong tenant performance due to a resilient consumer, especially the upper-end shoppers at our street locations. Fourth, lighter relative capex in our retenanting of street locations. And finally, stronger annual income growth in our street locations due to both higher contractual growth and then more frequent mark-to-market opportunities. These continued tailwinds are enabling us to deliver solid internal top line growth and having that growth hit the bottom line both in terms of earnings growth as well as net asset value growth. A.J. Levine will discuss our progress last quarter and why we are poised to continue to deliver superior growth for the foreseeable future and then supplementing this internal growth. And ensuring that we can continue to deliver this steady growth well into the future is our external growth initiatives. Reggie Livingston will discuss our acquisition activity over the last quarter, where we continue to deliver on our goals, both with respect to our on-balance sheet acquisitions of street retail and our execution through our investment management platform. But let me give a few observations. As we have seen more investor interest in retail over the past year, competition has increased for most formats of open-air retail. But so has the volume of deals coming to market. So even with increased competition, we expect to be able to meet our acquisition goals. And while we welcome the company, it has been a bit more difficult to simply buy existing yield to make our targeted returns. So as it relates to street retail investment opportunities, while competitive, it's still a less crowded field than in other formats with fewer capable buyers. So we're still seeing enough attractive investments that are accretive day one, both to earnings and net asset value. And we are most focused on investments where there are near-term value creation opportunities where we can use our skill set and relationships to unlock that value. We're still finding deals that get us to a 6% plus yield in the near term, but require a few more moving pieces. And since our team has never been hesitant to use its value add skills and relationships, this shift is welcomed. Same is true for our investment management platform. The ability to achieve opportunistic returns by simply buying stable assets as we successfully did during our Fund 5 investment period a few years ago, is becoming increasingly difficult. Thus, our recent investments over the past year have been much more value-add focused, and we expect that focus to continue. And as it relates to our investment management activity, we can actually team up with the increasing pool of institutional capital and harness that increased interest. So we don't have to just beat them. We can join them as well. And to be clear, with respect to both our REIT and investment management acquisitions, our goal continues to be to make sure our investments are accretive to earnings and to net asset value day one, and to achieve a penny of FFO for every 200 million of assets acquired. Reggie will walk through how our most recent activity is meeting our goals, both in terms of volume and accretion, and then equally importantly, how we are planting seeds for continued superior growth down the road. Then finally, John Gottfried will walk through our balance sheet metrics and how we are positioned to continue to drive both internal and external growth with plenty of dry powder and diverse sources of capital. So to conclude, our street retail investment thesis is working. The internal and external opportunities we see provide a clear line of sight. into providing solid multi-year top line growth and then having that growth drop to the bottom line. Then with ample balance sheet capacity, we're in a position to capitalize on the exciting opportunities that we have in front of us. I'd like to thank the team for their continued hard work. And with that, I will hand the call over to AJ.