Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Alexandria Real Estate Equity's first quarter 2024 conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal conference specialists 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 touchtone phone. And 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 Ms. Paula Schwartz with Investor Relations. Please go ahead, ma'am.

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, Paul, and welcome, everybody, to Alexandria's first quarter 24 earnings call. With me today are Hallie, Peter, and Mark. First of all, a thank you and congratulations to our ARA family team for a very solid first quarter against a continuing tough macro with stubbornly high interest rates and continuing non-transitory inflation instigated by the federal government's really uncontrolled spending. In fact, our annual debt service now is greater than our defense budget, crazy. Also, huge congratulations to the entire team as Alexander has once again been named one of the most trustworthy companies in America by Newsweek. And nominated as such by our three constituencies, our customers, our investors, and our employees. Guided by Alexandria's core values of integrity, mutual respect, egoless leadership, humility, transparency, teamwork, and trust, we have established ourselves at the vanguard in the heart of the $5 trillion secularly growing life science industry. We're very honored that Newsweek has again recognized us with this important award, which is a testament to companies' values and to the trust that our tenants, investors, and employees have in our one-of-a-kind brand. And as we said before, as Jim Collins has said, Alexandria has achieved the three outputs that define a great company, superior results, distinctive impact, and lasting endurance. We remain unwavering in our efforts to build upon these outputs and to continue to maintain our stellar reputation and the most trusted brand for life science real estate, providing essential infrastructure, enabling the development of new, safe, and effective medicines. Remember, over 90% of diseases have yet to have addressable therapies or cures. Remember, too, the top causes of death in the United States remain cancer, heart disease, and the third, fentanyl and methamphetamines. And that is a profoundly sad statement of fact. So my quick take on the first quarter. Alexandria is a one-of-a-kind company with a great brand, as I said, scale, dominance, and our unique cluster strategy together with the Fortress Balance Sheet. We've posted 7.6% year-over-year NOI growth, which is, I think, very solid in this environment, 7.3% year-over-year FFO growth, 5% dividend growth, and our collections, 99.9%. We had a strong leasing quarter with solid leasing spreads and we continue strong occupancy despite recently acquired vacancy. We also have posted very solid same store growth and also very solid guidance. We are particularly laser focused on leasing for the 2025 pipeline as well as redevelopment space to be delivered in 2025. And, of course, the leasing of vacant space in 2025, which is the fastest space to deliver to our growing tenants. And much like we did during the great financial crisis, we're pushing forward our pipeline because of the need for Alexandria's lab space coupled with solid indicators of positive rebound for life sciences in 2024, which Hallie will address. Lease expirations for 2024 and 2025. on a combined basis are down as well as unresolved expirations for both 2024 and 2025 on a combined basis being down as well. Peter will talk about capital recycling, but for the quarter so far, we've had approximately $275 million of non-core assets sold or pending, and we're about, so that means we're about 20% through our targeted $1.4 billion. of recycling of capital for our business for 2024, and we feel very comfortable where we are today. And then finally, before I turn it over to Hallie, I mentioned in our last earnings call our decision to sell 219 East 42nd Street, New York City, the former Pfizer headquarters building, ultimately for residential use, a very good decision reinforced by the continuing my own view, incompetence of the state of New York and the city of New York in continuing to incentivize and foster empty one-off buildings for so-called life science use while turning their backs on fundraising of startup companies, which is the heart and soul of the New York City life science ecosystem and which is so badly needed. There has been, of all the regions, no lab leasing in New York City in the first quarter whatsoever. and yet the state and the city are proposing fostering more and encouraging more people to deliver space. We sit in a very good position with our campus, but nonetheless, when you have local and state governments who are not mindful of using funding better spent on funding startups and also the health, welfare, and safety of the citizens, it's very disconcerting. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Hallie for a number of important comments. Hallie?