Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Alexandria Real Estate Equity's second quarter 2023 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 a touch-tone telephone. To retry your question, please press star then two. Please note, today's event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Paula Schwartz with 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 second quarter earnings call. Our one-of-a-kind company, which pioneered the lab space niche, continues to perform well in both good times and tough times, demonstrating the resiliency of our unique business model in our now post-pandemic world. In fact, COVID-19 has really reaffirmed the sustained strength of our life science industry fundamentals and the need for our essential lab space infrastructure. This favorable backdrop for this nation's, one of the nation's most mission critical industries, which we serve, continues to underpin our business, driving demand for our world-class brand and highly differentiated assets and operations. I want to thank each and every member of the Alexandria family team for an operationally and financially excellent second quarter. A big shout out to the finance and accounting team for winning the 2023 Nareit Gold Award, awarded by Nareit in June for the best REIT reporting and transparency, and amazingly, an unprecedented eighth award and most ever by any REIT. Alexandria is truly a best in class REIT which pioneered the lab space niche and which I believe has made a metamorphic and innovative and transformational impact on our life science industry for the last 29 years. We're very proud of the stellar balance sheet we built since the days of the great financial crisis when we were a small and unrated REIT. Upon the closing of our one billion line of credit accordion add-on, One of the banks said of Alexandria, quote, congratulations on the successful expansion of your credit facility to $5 billion. This is a significant accomplishment in any environment where many real estate owners are struggling to source debt capital. It is a testament to the strength, quality, and endurance of the Alexandria platform. So let me turn to some highlights of the quarter. Dean will cover in detail, but I want to just give a little bit of perspective. The second quarter was a very strong reporting quarter, generally in line with our five and 10-year historical run rates, rate financial metrics, and certainly outside of the rocket ship performance during COVID. We had strong FFO per share growth in both the second quarter and the first half, approximating 7%, especially in a continuing challenging macro and nicely beating consensus. Strong leasing quarter at 1.3 million rentable square feet ahead of the historical run rate of about 1.1 million square feet. And NOI was up nicely, almost $200 million for the quarter. Positive rental growth, stable occupancy, and solid same-store NOI increases also posted. The continuing strength and I think overall solidity of our fortress balance sheet continues. Our ability to reiterate and maintain strong guidance, Ray, all the metrics should demonstrate our continuing confidence in our tenants' demand for essential lab space, coupled with our ability to operate successfully in a moderately elevated supply dynamic environment. And then let me make a couple of comments on the life science industry, which Jenna will detail in just a moment. couple of high-level observations. M&A, a critical part of the capital recycling, continues to increase mostly with bolt-on product deals, which is a good and positive sign. Series A rounds in 2023 so far have averaged about $60 million, an all-time high. And biologics, not surprisingly, have attracted the majority of early-stage investments. And with that kind of brief intro, let me turn it over to Jenna Fogarty.