First Industrial Realty Trust, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the first industrial 3Q21 results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to Art Harmon, Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Shelby. Hello, everybody, and welcome to our call. Before we discuss our third quarter 2021 results as well as updated guidance, let me remind everyone that our call may include forward-looking statements as defined by federal securities laws. These statements are based on management's expectations, plans, and estimates of our prospects. Today's statements may be time-sensitive and accurate only as of today's date, Thursday, October 21, 2021. We assume no obligation to update our statements or the other information we provide. Actual results may differ materially from our forward-looking statements, and factors which could cause this are described in our 10-K and other SEC filings. You can find a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures discussed in today's calls in our supplemental report and our earnings release. The supplemental report, earnings release, and our SEC filings are available at firstindustrial.com under the Investors tab. Our call will begin with remarks by Peter Basile, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Scott Musil, our Chief Financial Officer, after which we'll open it up for your questions. Also on the call today are Jojo Yap, our Chief Investment Officer, Peter Schultz, Executive Vice President, Chris Schneider, Senior Vice President of Operations, and Bob Walter, Senior Vice President of Capital Markets and Asset Management. Now let me turn the call over to Peter.

Thanks, Art, and thank you all for joining us. Our team continued its strong performance in 2021 by delivering another great quarter highlighted by increased in-service occupancy, new development leasing, and continued strong growth in rental rates on new and renewal leasing. As importantly, we were also successful in readying land for new development starts and replenishing our pipeline with strategic land acquisitions. I'll discuss those successes in more detail shortly, but let me first update you on the overall strength of the U.S. industrial market. Per CBRE EA, net absorption was a healthy 120 million square feet in the third quarter. while completions came in at 79 million square feet. Through the first three quarters of this year, net absorption was 292 million square feet, significantly outpacing new supply of 193 million. In our portfolio, we grew occupancy 50 basis points to finish the third quarter at 97.1%. Cash same-store NOI increased 6.9%, and cash rental rates for new and renewal leases were up 22.8%. Looking at rental rate growth for the full year, as of today, we have signed roughly 98% of the 2021 expirations, and including new leasing, our overall cash rental rate increase is 15.3%, which puts us on pace to top our previous company record of 13.9% in 2019. With respect to 2022 expirations, we're off to a great start with 29% of renewals signed and a cash rental rate increase of 19%. Let me move now to the primary driver of our external growth, our development program. As most of you know, as part of our underwriting process and risk management discipline, we operate with a self-imposed speculative leasing cap. Due to continued robust fundamentals in the industrial market, the strength of our balance sheet and growth in our portfolio, and the significant opportunities we have to create shareholder value through new investments, we've increased our speculative leasing cap by $175 million, bringing the total to $800 million. Now let me walk you through our recent land acquisitions, as well as three exciting new development starts that will put some of the incremental cap capacity to good use. During the third quarter, we closed on three development sites, totaling 122 acres for $59 million. Two are in the Inland Empire East, and the third is in Denver. In total, these sites can accommodate up to 2.1 million square feet of new development. At one of the new Inland Empire East sites, We are starting our first pioneer logistics center, a 461,000 square foot cross dock facility. Our total projected investment is $73 million with a targeted cash yield of 6.8%. The Inland Empire continues to be one of the strongest logistics real estate markets in the US, helped by significant net absorption from activity related to the two largest ports in North America. Market vacancy in the Inland Empire is sub 2% and market rent have grown more than 80% since we went under contract on this site in early 2020. We look forward to adding this prime asset to our Southern California portfolio, which represents approximately 23% of our rental income as of the end of the third quarter. Moving to the East Coast, We are starting another development in South Florida to serve the strong tenant demand we have experienced there with our recent leasing successes at First Park Miami and First 95 Distribution Center. First Gate Commerce Center will be a 132,000 square foot Class A distribution facility in the infill Coral Springs Submarket. Market rents in Broward County have grown 15 to 20% since the end of 2019. Our total estimated investment is $24 million, and our targeted cash yield is 5.5%. In the fourth quarter, we acquired a site in Bordentown, New Jersey, just off of Exit 7 on the Jersey Turnpike for $8 million. We immediately started construction of First Bordentown Logistics Center, a 208,000 square foot facility. We look to build upon our past successes in this location where our two prior developments were leased near construction completion. The central New Jersey market has been exceptionally strong with asking rents up 34% versus last year according to a recent market report from CBRE. Our total projected investment is $33 million with an estimated cash yield of 5.8%. In summary, these three planned fourth quarter starts total approximately 800,000 square feet with an estimated investment of $130 million and a cash yield of 6.3%. Including these planned starts, our developments in process total 6.4 million square feet with a total investment of approximately $725 million. At a cash yield of 6%, Our expected overall development margin on these projects is approximately 65%. With development as our primary driver of external growth, we're also focused on replenishing our land holdings. In the fourth quarter to date, in addition to the New Jersey site I just discussed, we also acquired a total of 10 acres in the Inland Empire and Northern California for a total of $10 million. As of today, adjusted for our planned fourth quarter starts and the aforementioned land acquisitions, our balance sheet land can support approximately 12.5 million square feet of new development. Our share of the Phoenix Camelback Joint Venture is an additional 3.8 million square feet. In total, that's north of 16 million square feet and represents approximately $1.7 billion of potential new investment activities. Now let me update you on our recent development leasing successes. We just leased the entire 548,000 square footer at First Park at PV 303 in Phoenix at completion to a leading omnichannel retailer. As part of this lease, we are also expanding the building another 254,000 square feet for a total of 802,000 square feet. The total estimated investment for the project, including the expansion, is $72 million, and the estimated cash yield is 6%. The tenant is expected to take occupancy of the just-completed space by year-end, with the expansion ready for use in the second quarter of 2020. We also leased 100% of our 303,000 square foot First Wilson Logistics Center in the Inland Empire that will be completed in the first quarter of 2022. With a cash yield of 8.7%, we substantially outperformed our underwritten yield. This lease further showcases the rapid rental rate growth in the Inland Empire that I discussed earlier. We are pleased that we have land sites in this high growth market that can support another 2.8 million square feet of development. As another example of the strength of the Southern California market and our platform, we just leased our Laurel Park redevelopment project in the South Bay. This property is very well suited for port-centric warehouse distribution users given its great location and highly sought after yard for surface use. Our first year yield is 7.5% on our $21 million investment which represents a margin of around 150%. Moving on to sales. During the quarter, we sold six properties and four units for $14 million, and in the fourth quarter, we have sold four additional buildings in Detroit, totaling $7 million, bringing our year-to-date total to $126 million. Given current visibility on our disposition pipelines, We now expect sales for the year to total $175 million to $225 million, a $75 million increase from the prior midpoint of $125 million. With that, let me turn it over to Scott to walk through additional details on the quarter and updated guidance.