Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome to the Alexandria Real Estate Equity's fourth quarter 2021 conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Paula Schwartz of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good afternoon, everyone. This conference call contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. The company's actual results might differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements is contained in the company's periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Joel Marcus, Executive Chairman and Founder. Please go ahead, Joel.

Thank you, Paula, and welcome everybody to our fourth quarter and 2021 year-end call. With me today are Peter Moglia, Steve Richardson, and Dean Shigenaga. And with that welcome, I wanted to thank you for joining and wish everybody a happy Chinese New Year, starting today, the Year of the Tiger. We at Alexandria are very honored and pleased to report on a truly historic and remarkable fourth quarter and 2021 year end results, really demonstrating operational and strategic excellence by really each and every metric. And what I think is truly unique and audacious is that Alexandria has operated during this past two years, the 2021 2020 and 2021 will be known as the COVID era, really at the highest operational tempo ever and at a sophistication and scale that few REITs could ever accomplish. And in the words of Jim Collins, Alexandria has truly achieved three outputs that define a great company, superior results, distinctive impact, and lasting endurance. And I want to thank profoundly each and every one of the extraordinary Alexandria family team members on a sensational performance during 2021. Napoleon once said, strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle. And over the last 25 years, we came public in May 97, so we'll have our 25th anniversary in May. We took this small company public three years after we started it with $19 million Series A. And as of the end of the year, December 31, 2021, we had reached a phenomenal total market cap of $44 billion. For the period of COVID, the 2020 and 2021 Alexandria's TSR approximated 45 plus percent, exceeding by a wide margin the office index with the total return of minus 0.5%. And since our IPO 25 years ago in May 97, we've been proud and fortunate that our total shareholder return has exceeded 2,500%, significantly outperforming the S&P 500 and office REIT indices at 939% and 552%, respectively. And we're always playing the long game. Speaking about fourth quarter and year end, very robust results. Our life science markets, as evidenced by our fourth quarter and full year results, truly were a blowout in many respects, and most of which, as clearly highlighted, has been leasing. And that really sets us up nicely for a very strong 2022 and beyond. The continued robust demand from really one of the most innovative and transformative industries in the United States, the life science industry, one which is not really cyclical but which is event-driven, I think does set us up and enables us, our brand and our talented and special operational lab space affords us a very strong pricing power in each of our cluster markets. And really, in many ways, sets us up to have a very strong earnings growth year here in 2022 and into 23 and 24. We continue to create highly accretive value creation opportunities. to meet the current demand of over our 850 innovative tenants, and importantly, provide a path for future growth. And although we've reiterated 2022 guidance, and Dean will speak more about that in a moment, the 826 to 846 FFO per share, we will clearly revisit and update that in the first quarter earnings release. We have very strong momentum at our backs. As most of you know, and we often comment, with 10,000 known diseases to humankind, less than 10% really have addressable therapies today. And we are truly in the early days of the golden age of biotechnology and biology. Advances in innovation are happening at unprecedented speed and driving human health and quality of life in a positive direction. Steve Jobs commented many years ago, when he predicted he thought that the biggest innovations of the 21st century would be the integration of biology and technology. We've achieved historic milestones in many respects, and hopefully you enjoyed the press release and supplement where we tried to highlight those in both graphical and word form. Trulia and others will speak about this in a moment. The highest leasing volume in the company's history 9.5 million square feet, just an awesome achievement. Doubled annual revenues at our 2017 Investor Day. We gave a framework that we would hope to double annual rental revenues in five years, and we exceeded that about a year and a half ahead of time. We also concluded the largest acquisition in the company's history during 2021, our entry into the Fenway sub-market. And over 1 million square feet was leased to our longtime tenant and very close relationship, Moderna. And I would say probably most importantly, and I think Dean, Peter, and Steve will probably all comment on this, our historically high and strong leasing value creation pipeline really foreshadows outside growth coming into the upcoming years, including 2022. Nearly 8 million rentable square feet under construction are expected to commence over the next six quarters to generate over $610 million of incremental annual revenue, we think really sets us up in an extraordinary fashion. So with that, let me turn it over to Steve for some important commentary.