AvalonBay Communities, Inc.

good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome to avalon bay community's fourth quarter 2022 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 queue at any time during the 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 fourth 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 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 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 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 Ben Shaw, CEO and President of Avalon Bay Communities, for his remarks. Ben?

Thank you, Jason. And hello, everyone. I'm joined by Kevin, Sean, and Matt. And after our prepared remarks, we will open the line for questions. I'll start by quickly summarizing our 2022 results and highlighting our progress on a number of strategic focus areas. As shown on slide four, from operating results perspective, 2022 was a phenomenal year and one of the strongest in the company's history, with 10.9% same-store NLI growth and 18.5% core FFO growth. We ended the year with core FFO of $9.79 per share, which just to reflect back was 24 cents above our initial guidance at the beginning of 2022. On the capital allocation front, we proactively adjusted during 2022 as the environment and our cost of capital changed. In April, we raised approximately $500 million of forward equity at a spot price of 255 per share, which is still fully available. As the year progressed, we pivoted from our original expectation of being a $275 million net buyer to ending the year as a $400 million net seller, a shift of roughly $700 million in total. We also ratcheted down new development starts given the shifting environment to $730 million for original guidance of $1.15 billion. Collectively, these moves put us in an extremely strong liquidity position and fully match funded with capital secured for all of the development we have underway. We also made significant progress during 2022 on our strategic focus areas, three of which I want to highlight today. First, as detailed on slide five, we continue to make very strong inroads on the transformation of our operating model. We captured approximately $11 million of incremental NOI from our operating initiatives in 2022. In 2023, we're projecting an additional $11 million of incremental NOI from these initiatives. And looking further out, expect meaningful contributions in 2024 and beyond. This uplift is being driven by a number of initiatives, including our Avalon Connect offering, which is our package of seamless bulk internet and a new development's managed Wi-Fi, which we have now deployed to over 20,000 homes and expect to be at over 50,000 homes by the end of 2023. During 2022, we revamped our website and fully digitized our application and leasing process. What used to take 30 plus minutes of associates time can now be completed digitally in about five minutes. We also rolled out our mobile maintenance platform across the entire portfolio, allowing our residents and maintenance associates to interact much more efficiently and seamlessly. As a result of these initiatives, we believe we are enhancing the customer experience while also driving operating efficiencies, which over the past few years has resulted in a roughly 15% improvement in the number of units managed per onsite FTE. Turning to slide six as a second strategic area, we are focused on optimizing our portfolio as we grow. Our goal is to shift 25% of our portfolio to our six expansion markets over the next six to seven years. In addition to diversifying our portfolio, this shift reflects the reality that more and more of ABB's core customer, knowledge-based workers, are increasingly in these markets. At the end of 2022, including our development currently underway, we increased our expansion market exposure to 7%. And subject to the capital allocation environment this year, we expect to be at 10% by the end of 2023. We're funding a large portion of this shift through dispositions in our established regions, which also allows us to prune the portfolio of slower growth assets and or those with higher CapEx profiles, which should lead to stronger cash flow growth in the portfolio in the years ahead. A third strategic focus area has been on leveraging our development expertise in new ways and in ways that drive additional earnings growth. More specifically, as detailed on slide seven, we're expanding our program of providing capital to third-party developers, primarily as a way to accelerate our presence in our expansion markets. In 2022, this included a project start in Durham, North Carolina, and a new commitment in Charlotte. During 2022, we also successfully launched our structured investment business, with over $90 million of preferred equity or mezzanine loan commitments made during the year. We believe that both of these programs will be increasingly attractive to third-party developers in 2023. We're also fortunate to be building these books of business now at today's economics and basis versus in yesterday's environment. Before turning it to Kevin to provide the specifics of our 2023 guidance, I want to provide some additional context on our underlying economic assumptions for the year. From a forecasting perspective, we are overlaying the consensus forecast from the National Association of Business Economists, or NABE, on top of our proprietary sub-market by sub-market research data and model. The NABE consensus assumes a significant slowing in job growth during the year, down to about 50,000 jobs per month by the third quarter, and a total of approximately 1 million of net job growth in 2023. The output of our models is a forecast of market rent growth of 3% during the year. In a year in which we will need to be prepared for a wider set of potential outcomes than usual, there are a number of attributes of our portfolio, and particularly our concentration in suburban coastal markets, that we expect to serve as a ballast in a potentially softening economic environment. As shown on slide eight, the cost of a median price home relative to median income in our markets continues to serve as a barrier to home ownership and support demand for our apartment communities. This is in addition to the repercussions of today's higher mortgage rates. which make the economics of renting significantly more attractive. The other side of the equation is supply. In softening times, having an existing asset that is in direct competition with a recently built nearby project and lease up can be particularly challenging. Our portfolio has some of the lowest levels of directly competitive new supply across the peer group at only 1.4% of stock, which we believe positions us well. And with that, I'll turn it to Kevin to detail our 2023 guidance. Thanks, Ben.