AvalonBay Communities, Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Avalon Bay Community's third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. Following remarks by the company, we will conduct a question and answer session. You may enter the question and answer 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 queue, 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 conference call is Mr. Jason Riley, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. Riley, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Doug, and welcome to Avalon Bay Community's third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Before we begin, please note that forward-looking statements may be made during this discussion. There are a variety of risk and certainties associated with forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ materially. There's a discussion of these risks and uncertainties in yesterday afternoon's press 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. 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 Ben Shaw, CEO and President of Avalon Bay Communities, for his remarks. Ben?

Thank you, Jason, and thank you everyone for joining us today. I'm here with Kevin, Matt, Sean, and after our opening comments, we will open the lineup for questions. In many ways, Q3 continued our strong momentum from the first half of the year with significant year-over-year increases in our earnings and operating metrics. As referenced on slide four of our quarterly investor presentation, core FFO for the quarter increased 21% as compared to a year ago. Same-store revenue increased almost 12% from last year and 2.2% sequentially compared to our strong Q2 figure. Before progressing further into the presentation, I wanted to emphasize a number of Avalon Bay-specific drivers of future earnings growth. First up, and as Sean will describe more fully, we expect to head into 2023 with an earn-in above traditional levels. In short, just the simple roll-through of our existing rent roll creates positive earnings momentum, which can then be further enhanced by our underlying loss to lease. There are then three other drivers of earning growth, which we estimate to generate in the range of $200 million of incremental NOI over the next several years. The most significant of these drivers is the development projects we have underway, which we refer to as projects with yesterday's costs and today's rents. Our current lease-ups continue to outperform, currently yielding nearly 7%, And we expect our current development activity to deliver $130 million of incremental NOI upon stabilization, which Matt will cover further. The other two significant drivers are further margin improvement from our operating model initiatives, which we've targeted for $50 million of NOI uplift and expect to have delivered about 40% or 20 million of this NOI uplift to our bottom line by year end. And the return on our structured investment program, as we build that book of business up to $300 to $500 million. In a potentially recessionary environment, the $200 million in incremental earnings generated from these activities collectively serve as a ballast for our future earnings. Turning to slide five, while our Q3 performance was strong, it was short of guidance. Q3 core FFO per share was two cents below guidance, and we reduced our full year core FFO per share figure by seven cents, updating our estimate of full-year core FO growth to 18.5%. For the full year, on the revenue side, while we contemplated the return of rent seasonality, the seasonal trend line has been slightly greater than historical norms. On the expense side, turnover has been slightly higher than we forecasted, leading to higher repairs and maintenance costs to turn apartments, and utility costs are projected to be higher. Slide six highlights how we've been actively adjusting our balance sheet and investment strategy during the year based on the changing capital markets environment. Based on the steps taken by Kevin and Joanne Lockridge and our capital markets team, our balance sheet is stronger than ever. Recently, we increased our line of credit by $500 million to $2.25 billion and extended the maturity date out to 2026. Additionally, we have an interest rate swap in place for our next $150 million of debt borrowings and our $500 million equity forward proactively addressed the bulk of development funding through the end of 2023. On the transaction front, we shifted our strategy earlier this year to a posture of selling assets first and locking in the cost of that capital before selectively deploying capital into acquisitions in our expansion markets, which given cap rate movements has worked to our benefit. As part of this shift, We also pivoted during the year from expecting to be a net buyer of approximately $275 million to being a net seller of $400 million, or a nearly $700 million total swing. In an environment where profit margins on new development were likely to come down and the cost associated with that incremental capital has increased, we've also reduced new development starts. For 2022, we've reduced our starts from $1.15 billion to a projected $850 million. In 2023, while we haven't provided guidance regarding new starts, our expected start figure is trending lower than we previously anticipated as we use the flexibility we have with our development rights pipeline to manage our land contracts and the timing of potential starts. We will continue to make adjustments based on trends in rent and construction costs, the spread between potential development yields and underlying market cap rates with a continued target of 100 to 150 basis to spread, and our cost of incremental capital, with a laser focus on making the appropriate long-term value creation decisions. And with that, I'll turn it to Sean to more fully discuss the operating environment and our approach.