AvalonBay Communities, Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Avalon Bay Community's first quarter 2019 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following remarks by the company, we will conduct a question and answer session. You may enter the question and answer session queue at any time during this call by pressing star 1. If your question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from the chat, press star 2. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before asking your question and we ask that you refrain from typing and have your cell phones turned off during the question and answer session. Your host for today's call is Mr. Jason Reilly, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. Reilly, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Jessica, and welcome to Avalon Bay Community's first quarter 2019 earnings conference. Before we begin, please note that forward-looking statements may be made during this discussion. There are a variety of risks and uncertainties associated with forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ materially. There's a discussion of these risks and uncertainties in yesterday afternoon's first release, as well as in the company's Form 10-K and Form 10-Q filed with the SEC. As usual, this press release does include an attachment with definitions and reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures and other terms, which may be used in today's discussion. The attachment is also available on our website at www.avalonbay.com forward slash earnings, and we encourage you to refer to this information during the review of our operating results and financial performance. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Tim Naughton, Chairman and CEO of Avalon Bay, to please make his remarks. Tim?

Thanks, Jason, and welcome to our Q1 call. With me today are Kevin O'Shea, Sean Breslin, and Matt Bierenbaum. Sean, Matt, and I will provide some brief comments on the slides that we posted last night, and then we'll all be available afterward for Q&A. Our comments will focus on providing a summary of Q1 results, an overview of development activity, and lastly, progress in our expansion markets of Denver and Southeast Florida. So now starting on slide four, it was a solid quarter. Highlights include core FFO growth of 5.5%, driven by healthy internal growth, with same-store revenue and same-store NOI growth coming in at 3.4% and 4.9%, respectively. Interestingly, every region posted 3% plus same-store revenue growth for the first time in over six years. As you recall from last quarter's earnings call, we expect little contribution to earnings in 2019 from external investment activity, primarily due to significantly lower apartment deliveries from our development portfolio this year, and secondly, the relatively higher cost of capital raised in late 2018, most of that being through dispositions. In Q1, we completed two communities in the very attractive suburban towns of Sudbury and Hingham in the Boston market, totaling $150 million at an average initial yield of 6.3%. And then lastly, we raised $220 million of capital, external capital, in the quarter, two-thirds of that being raised as equity from the CEP and the balance from a D.C. area disposition. The initial cost of this capital is 4.5%, and our leverage remains at a cyclical low of 4.6 times debt to EBITDA. So with that, I'm going to turn it over now to Sean, who will discuss portfolio operations, including performance RLE subs.