Camden Property Trust

Welcome to the Camden Property Trust fourth quarter 2020 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a 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. To ask a question, you may press star then one. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Kim Callahan, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining Camden's fourth 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 fourth 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 the call. Joining me today are Rick Campo, Camden'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, seriously, as we know that another multifamily company is holding their call right after us. 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. Good morning, and thank you for joining our call today. The theme for our on-hold music this morning was change. The COVID pandemic has brought with it sweeping changes in the lives of every American, including how they work, where they work, and whether they can even work. Every business has had to change and adapt to this unprecedented pandemic. In thinking about the scope of these changes, I recall the quote from Jack Welch that I heard years ago, which is, change before you have to. With only five words, Jack perfectly captured what has separated many companies' abilities to successfully navigate through the past year. Throughout our history, we have grown and maintained a culture that encourages and rewards efforts by Team Camden to change before we have to. Examples include migrating to cloud-based financial systems over 18 months ago, making work from home seamless for most of our employees, creating a technology package for Camden communities that provides discounted high-speed internet, creating a more robust work-from-home experience for our residents. implementing a resident package delivery program that requires packages to be delivered directly to each resident's front door, creating the same flexibility and convenience enjoyed by most single-family homeowners, and developing CHIRP, a mobile access solution which we sold to RealPage last fall. When fully rolled out in 2021, this product will enhance our on-demand virtual leasing and self-guided tours while enabling unassisted tours and leasing outside of our normal office hours. Residents will also be able to schedule package and grocery deliveries directly to their apartments when they're away from home. We will continue to find ways to change before we have to in everything we do. For the past year, we have utilized virtual meeting platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams for investor and analyst meetings, industry conferences, and internal Camden meetings. Beginning next quarter, we hope to offer our quarterly earnings calls on a more interactive virtual platform as well, so stay tuned. As we start 2021, our outlook is optimistic. Our assumptions are based on the first half of the year enduring a continued battle against the COVID virus, with ongoing difficulties for many businesses and workers until the country's vaccination rates accelerate. We hope that the second half of the year will show improvement as more businesses reopen and more people ultimately get back to work. Fortunately, many of our Sunbelt markets in which we operate have already reopened businesses and added back many of the jobs that were lost early in the pandemic, setting the stage for recovering the second half of 2021 and beyond. I want to thank Team Camden for a great 2020. While the operating environment we faced was one of the toughest ever, you had made sure that we improve the lives of our teammates, customers, and stakeholders, one experience at a time. Well done, and thank you. Keith, your chance for change.