Camden Property Trust

Good morning. Welcome to Camden Properties' second quarter 2020 earnings conference call. Our participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Kim Callaghan, Senior VP of Investor Relations. Go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining Camden's second quarter 2020 earnings conference call. Before we begin our prepared remarks, I would like to advise everyone that we will be making forward-looking statements based on our current expectations and beliefs. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. Further information about these risks can be found in our filings with the SEC, and we encourage you to review them. Any forward-looking statements made on today's call represent management's current opinions, and the company assumes no obligation to update or supplement these statements because of subsequent events. As a reminder, Camden's complete second quarter 2020 earnings release is available in the Investors section of our website at camdenliving.com. and it includes reconciliations to non-GAAP financial measures, which will be discussed on this call. Joining me today are Rick Campo, Canada's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Keith Oden, Executive Vice Chairman, and Alex Jesset, Chief Financial Officer. We will attempt to complete our call within one hour, so we ask that you limit your questions to two, then rejoin the queue if you have additional items to discuss. If we are unable to speak with everyone in the queue today, we'd be happy to respond to additional questions by phone or email after the call concludes. At this time, I'll turn the call over to Rick Campo.

Thanks, Kim. The theme for our on hold music today was strange days. It's one of the most common ways I've heard people describe life during this pandemic. Strange days, indeed. It's common for some to refer to the current state of affairs as unprecedented. I've concluded that while almost all agree that these are strange days, whether or not people believe these strange days are unprecedented is definitely age-related. Younger people are more likely to view our current situation as unprecedented. People my age or older are far less likely to see these current strange days as unprecedented. In 1967, when I was 13 years old, and a rock band named The Doors released a song titled Strange Days. Clearly, I have a background from that. This is the first verse of the song. Strange days have found us. Strange days have tracked us down. They're going to destroy our casual joy. We shall go on playing or find a new town. The Doors were way ahead of their time both musically and culturally, and indeed, The next few years after 1967 would bring an extended period of strange days and civil unrest that were orders of magnitude stranger than what we've seen thus far during the COVID storm. I'm naturally optimistic and I promise you this too shall pass. Since we're all in this together, we will continue to encourage our Camden team to stay true to Camden's why. Our purpose for being, that is to improve the lives of our team members, residents, and shareholders one experience at a time. Department demand is stronger in our markets than we expected given the nearly 40 million Americans that have filed for unemployment benefits with an official unemployment rate of 11.1%. Canada's geographic and product diversification has continued to lower the volatility of our rents and occupancy. Camden Sunbelt markets have fewer job losses than coastal markets in the U.S. overall. Our product mix that offers varying price points in urban and suburban locations continues to work for us. Camden was prepared for the pandemic. We have a great culture and a flexible workplace and amazing employees that have adapted very, very well to the current work environment. Our investments in technology, moving to the cloud-based operating systems and our CHRP access systems have allowed us to not miss a beat when it comes to leasing or operating our portfolio or making payroll and some basic things like that. We have the best balance sheet in the sector and one of the best in REIT land overall. We were prepared and continue to be prepared to do as well as we can in this environment. I think we'll do well long term. I want to give a shout out to our amazing Camden teammates for all that they do for our residents and taking care of each other every single day. I'll turn the call over to Keith Oden now for a couple comments from him.