Brixmor Property Group Inc.

Greetings and welcome to Bricksmore Property Group Incorporated third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Stacey Slater, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Capital Markets. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you all for joining Bricksmoor's third quarter conference call. With me on the call today are Jim Taylor, Chief Executive Officer and President, and Angela Ahman, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, as well as Mark Corrigan, Executive Vice President and Chief Investment Officer, and Brian Finnegan, Executive Vice President, Chief Revenue Officer, who will be available for Q&A. Before we begin, let me remind everyone that some of our comments today may contain forward-looking statements that are based on certain assumptions and are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties as described in our SEC filings, and actual future results may differ materially. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Also, we will refer today to certain non-GAAP financial measures, Further information regarding our use of these measures and reconciliations of these measures to our GAAP results are available in the earnings release and supplemental disclosure on the investor relations portion of our website. Given the number of participants on the call, we kindly ask that you limit your questions to one or two per person. If you have additional questions regarding the quarter, please re-queue. At this time, it's my pleasure to introduce Jim Taylor.

Thanks, Stacey, and good morning, everyone. I'm really pleased to report another quarter of phenomenal execution by our Bricksmore team that highlights the accelerating and transformative impacts of our disciplined value-add strategy. Those impacts are reflected in every metric, many of which are post-IPO records for the company. And importantly, that execution provides exceptional visibility on forward growth through 23 and beyond. even in a more disruptive economic environment. Allow me to dig into our results and highlight how our all-weather plan positions Brixmore for continued outperformance. During the quarter, we signed 1.7 million feet of new and renewal leases at a record rent of $19.26 a foot and a blended cash spread of 14.2%. which included 660,000 square feet of new leases at a record rent of $21.20 and a comparable cash spread of 32%. And, as reflected in our strong net effective rents, we achieved those records while remaining disciplined with capital. This record-setting performance underscores the transformative impacts of our value-add plan and the related tenant demand to be in our well-located, highly trafficked centers. I'm also pleased by the breadth of that demand, as we continue to drive strong market share of store openings for our core tenants in categories like grocery, fast casual, wellness, and value apparel, and have also recently brought exciting new concepts to the portfolio that will drive additional traffic, such as Yardbird, Best Buy's outdoor furniture concept, or Bark Social, or the Live by Cordish Venue. Our leasing activity drove overall lease occupancy to a company record of 93.3%, a year-over-year increase of 180 basis points. And importantly, we commenced another $14 million of new ABR during the quarter, driving our bill occupancy to 89.6%. Importantly, we also set another record in small shop occupancy, which rose to 88.8% on new rents achieved of $24.78 a foot. More than any other milestone achieved, this growth in occupancy and rate for our small shops truly underscores the transformative follow-on benefits of our reinvestment strategy. We also drove our average in-place AVR to over $16 a foot, another record for the company, but which still has plenty of room to run as demonstrated by the nearly $20 a foot achieved on all new leases over the trailing 12 months. As we've said many times, our attractive rent basis provides the opportunity to outperform through disruptive environments, such as we experienced in 2020, as well as strong supply-demand environments, such as we're experiencing today. Our execution delivered top-line same-store growth of 4.8% and NOI growth of 3.6%, which is particularly impressive when you consider the drag of 250 basis points from revenues deemed uncollectible due primarily to declining prior period rent collections as we work down our remaining receivables. Year-to-date, as we've driven occupancy and improved recovery rates, we've grown bottom-line FFO by 6.5% on a comparable basis. Looking ahead, we have $53 million of signed but not commenced rent, which will commence over the next several quarters, as well as $40 million of annual base rent in our forward new leasing pipelines. Even with the naturally declining rate of prior period collections, as those receivables are paid in full, and the increased possibility of disruption as economic concerns loom, we still expect continued outperformance in our revenue and NOI growth in 2023 and beyond. This level of visible forward growth truly underscores the all-weather nature of our plan. Given our increased cash flow and confidence in continued growth, we are pleased to announce a dividend increase of 8.3%, which will keep us still at one of the lowest payout ratios in the sector as we utilize free cash flow to self-fund our value-add plan without reliance on the volatile capital markets. Speaking of that plan, our reinvestment pipeline continued to deliver despite ongoing supply chain issues as we partnered with tenants to get stores open on time. We stabilized $46 million in projects during the quarter and an incremental yield of 8%, bringing our year-to-date deliveries to $113 million at a 10% yield, creating significant value even in a higher cap rate environment. Since we began this program, we've completed over $800 million of reinvestments at an incremental return of 11%. And importantly, we have another $400 million leased and underway, providing a significant future value creation. Please do check out our At the Center video series on our website that truly highlights the transformative impacts and accretive returns of our program. From an investment standpoint, we continued our pause on acquisitions. Keeping our powder dry as we believe there will be compelling opportunities in the coming quarters as private, less well-capitalized landlords struggle with upcoming debt maturities and cash flow constraints. With that said, even in this more challenging capital markets environment, we've continued to find some liquidity to sell smaller non-core assets at opportunistic values, with over $110 million in sales transactions completed during and subsequent to the end of the quarter. And importantly, as Angela will discuss further, we have $1.3 billion of liquidity and no debt maturing until 2024, allowing us to be opportunistic from an external growth perspective. With that, I'll turn the call over to Angela for a detailed discussion of our results, our outlook, and our capital structure. Angela?