Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Alexandria Real Estate Equity's fourth quarter and year-end 2024 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, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon, everyone. This conference call contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Federal Securities Wallet. 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 report filed with the SEC. 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. With me today are Hallie, Peter, and Mark, and want to welcome you to Alexandria's fourth quarter and year-end 2020 for Earnings Call Podcast. Our team has been hit pretty hard by the California wildfires during this month of January, but luckily they are supremely resilient. Our profound prayers are with all those impacted as well as our own team. And we are by the side of our team each and every step of the way to recovery. Despite the inadequate preparation by the local utilities, the city, the county, and the state, as we have had or actually as there were several days of violent wind warnings ahead of time, largely ignored by those empowered to protect us. Really disheartening start to 2025. Let me give a couple observations on fourth quarter and overall year end on the operating and financial results. We're very proud of producing an almost 6% FFO per share growth in a very tough macro environment. Another very solid year of leasing, both on a quarterly and a yearly basis, and Peter will get into depth on some of that. We had a solid fourth quarter and full year capital recycling program as we shrink our land bank to focus on future mega campuses and exit non-core assets. We have continued stability, strength, and flexibility of our balance sheet, great liquidity, and a increasing and well-covered dividend. A couple of thoughts on the life science industry. I'll leave it to Hallie to do more in-depth, but I think the three reasons for a go-forward 2025 optimistic view are, one, the anti-industry ideologues of the last administration are gone, and the FTC is maybe a simple example of that. The new administration is focused on cracking down on the middlemen and PBMs taking 40% to 60%. the economic value of therapeutics in the chain of value and adding very little. And so that's going to be a welcome bullseye. And then likely there'll be positive reform of the IRA provisions and a repeal of the unconstitutional 95% excise tax. And as the new administration wins the day versus the Fed, interest rates are likely to come down and the life science industry will experience a solid return to hopefully a normalized bull market. The quarter ahead, we're super laser focused, as you all know, on the redevelopment and development pipeline. It is, as Hallie and Peter will tell you, it's a It's been a very diversified demand from leasing. Actually, biotech has been the slowest because they're really an adjusting time syndrome given the macro, but that's likely to change when we see the Fed start to ease up. The vast majority of our leasing has come from other sectors. Our pipeline for this year is almost 90% leased or undersigned LOIs. Next year is looking very strong. The year 2027 and beyond is where we have a lot of work to do. We're seeing good activity and actually new activity across some of our sub markets. South San Francisco remains slow as we have predicted for a long time. We're laser focused on leasing spaces coming back to us as we noted at investor day, obviously in the rollovers for this year and making very good progress. We're also laser focused on capital recycling for this year. and also making very good progress as well. As I said at Investor Day, the critical components of our enduring success have been a preeminent brand, superior knowledge of our customer, a superior product, highly focused niche, our industry leadership, and we believe we possess all those characteristics. And as I said, you know, back on Investor Day on December 4th, We've been through three major cycles as a collective management team in general, and I must say that we've successfully navigated each of these very different market cycles successfully, and we've emerged in an even stronger industry position of leadership and strength. And finally, it's interesting that like the real world legacy media, there are always a bunch of legacy pundits who back in 2009 urge us to unload Mission Bay and Cambridge Land during the GFC as worthless non-income producing assets that weighed on our balance sheet. And they turned out to be the growth engines of the next decade. Those legacy pundits are here again and got it all wrong. We look forward to our first quarter call where we'll give you an update on the strong leasing progress we're already seeing during this quarter. and some strong new pockets of demand and give a peek into our 2026 trends transaction plans. And then finally, let me wish everyone we need a new new year since the last one just January alone, we saw the tragedy in New Orleans in Las Vegas, and obviously the wildfires here in Southern California. So the year of the dragon starts tomorrow. And The key symbols are wisdom and transformation, which I think epitomize Alexandria. And with that, let me turn it over to Hallie.