Brixmor Property Group Inc.

Greetings and welcome to Bricksmore Property Group Incorporated fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, our participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief 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 is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Casey Blair, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Capital Markets. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you all for joining Bricksmoor's fourth 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 Horgan, 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. Our results this quarter once again demonstrate the strength of our value-add plan, the quality of our team and portfolio, and importantly, the transformative impact our execution continues to deliver. Consider, for example, that during the quarter we signed another 954,000 square feet of new leases at an average cash spread of 44%, bringing our total new ABR for the year to a record $62 million, at an average spread of 37% and a record new lease average rent per foot of $19.08. We achieved a record total lease occupancy of 93.8% for the portfolio, which does reflect a 360 basis point spread to build occupancy and which also reflects a drag of 130 basis points associated with our reinvestment activity. Both of these reflect powerful tailwinds as we commence billing those leases and deliver those reinvestment projects. We also achieved a record small shop lease document fee for the portfolio of 89.2 percent, which has more room to run as we execute our value-add strategy. And we drove our overall ABR per foot to a portfolio record of $16.19, demonstrating our continued progress, but also our continued opportunity for growth given that attractive basis. And we continue to drive leading market share of new store openings throughout 22 with core tenants like Burlington, HomeGoods, Ulta, Five Below, Fresh Market, Ross, Chipotle, and Starbucks, while also bringing new to the portfolio concepts that drive traffic to our centers like Bark Social, Yardbird, and Free People. From a revenue perspective, bottom line, our team once again delivered with top of the sector same store NOI growth and FFO growth of 7.3% and 6.5% respectively. Simply phenomenal job by Brian and the leasing teams capitalizing on the strong tenant demand for our well-located centers. Importantly, we've also leveraged this tenant demand to recapture space from watch list tenants at accretive returns. where we can capitalize on our low rent basis to bring in better tenants at better rents. This is a critical point. Our low rent basis and the strong demand from thriving retailers to be in our well-located centers positions us to outperform in 23 and beyond while also delivering substantial value creation. Let me pause here. Am I coming through? Okay. For example, we expect eight bed bath anchor boxes in two Harmon small shop locations to close. We already have control of four of the eight bed bath anchor boxes and are at lease or LOI on all four with best-in-class specialty grocery, off-price, and home goods retailers at average spreads of close to 60%. Our remaining bed bath and bye-bye baby anchor boxes have an average in-place rent of $10.35 per foot, which compares very favorably to the mid-teens rents we expect to achieve as we take control of them. Looking forward, we have $54.7 million in signed AVR that will commence, as Angela will detail, over the next several quarters, and an additional $34 million of annual base rent in our forward leasing pipeline. These pipelines provide us tremendous visibility on robust revenue growth in 23 and beyond, even after the assumed bankruptcy impacts embedded in our revenue guidance that Angela will discuss further. Importantly, this top line momentum will allow us to continue to grow NOI and FFO at a strong pace for the sector, even with the headwinds of naturally declining collections of prior period rents, which top 23 million and 22. and more normalized levels of bad debt. Simply put, we're well-positioned to continue to be at the top of the sector from an NOI and FFO growth perspective, all while continuing to create long-term value as we recapture space. From a reinvestment standpoint, Bill Hague and our ReDev construction teams delivered another 12 projects during the quarter, bringing our total stabilizations during the year to $179 million at an average incremental return of 10%. We are creating tremendous value here with the additional follow-on benefits of higher rates and occupancy as we do follow-on leasing at the centers impacted. Importantly, we have another $343 million of reinvestment pre-leased and underway at an incremental return of 9%, creating value even in a higher rate environment. In a forward pipeline of over a billion in projects, that importantly exist in assets that we own and control today. We are excited that this year we'll be bringing great projects online like the Shops at Palm Lakes outside of Miami, Marco Town Center in Naples, Florida, and Vale Ranch Center in Riverside, California. From a capital recycling standpoint, Mark and team continue to execute well even in a disrupted capital markets environment. closing in 22 on $287 million of dispositions at attractive cap rates, which included the highly profitable sale of campus village shops in College Park to a student housing developer. We redeployed that capital into $411 million of acquisitions with upside in our core markets. In addition to upside in rents versus market, these acquisitions also feed our forward reinvestment pipeline as we execute our value add strategy and leverage the strength of our platform. Under Angela's leadership, we continue to enjoy maximum flexibility from a balance sheet perspective to continue to fund our growth strategy without reliance on the volatile capital markets, all while benefiting from our earlier decisions to prepay 22 and 23 maturities. From an external growth perspective, we do expect to see some attractive acquisition opportunities in our core markets as private owners face debt maturities and re-tenanting requirements. Expect us to remain disciplined, however, as we are able to continue to drive out performance and growth and value creation for the next several years through opportunities that we own and control today. With that, I'll turn the call over to Angela for a more detailed discussion of our results, our balance sheet, and our outlook.