Federal Realty Investment Trust

Good day, and welcome to the Federal Realty Investment Trust third quarter of 2024 earnings call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode for the duration of the call. Should you need any assistance today, 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 on your telephone keypad. And to withdraw a question, please press star, then two. On today's call, we ask that you please limit yourself to only one question during Q&A. You may reprompt if you have additional questions. Also, please be aware that today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Leah Brady. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us today for Federal Realty's third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Joining me on the call are Don Wood, Federal's Chief Executive Officer, Jeff Berkus, President and Chief Operating Officer, Dan Gee, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, Jan Sweetnam, Executive Vice President, Chief Investment Officer, and Wendy Sear, Executive Vice President, Eastern Region President, as well as other members of our executive team that are available to take your questions at the conclusion of our prepared remarks. A reminder that certain matters discussed on this call may be deemed to be forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include any annualized or projected information, as well as statements referring to expected or anticipated events or results, including guidance. Although Federal Realty believes the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, Federal Realty's future operations and its actual performance may differ materially from the information in our forward-looking statements, and we can give no assurance that these expectations can be attained. The earnings released in the supplemental reporting package that we issued tonight are Annual report filed on Form 10-K and our other financial disclosure documents provide a more in-depth discussion of risk factors that may affect our financial condition and results of operations. Given the number of participants on the call, we do kindly ask that you limit yourself to one question during the Q&A portion of our call. If you have additional questions, please re-queue. And with that, I will turn the call over to Don Wood to begin our discussion of our third quarter results. Don?

Thank you, Leah, and good afternoon, everyone. Look, it's a really solid quarter for us with a continuation of incredibly productive leasing, some strong occupancy gains, and an all-time record quarterly FFO per share at $1.71. The leasing productivity continues to outpace even our own elevated goals with 126 leases for comparable space this quarter, totaling 581,000 square feet. That makes 11 of the past 15 quarters since the beginning of 2021 with comparable leasing productivity above a half a million square feet. As a frame of reference, the 15 quarters immediately preceding the last 15 averaged 413,000 square feet. There's no better indicator of demand for your product than that, somewhere between 25% and 35% more volume consistently over nearly four years. This quarter's comparable leases were written on average at $35 a foot in the first year of the new lease. 14% better than the rent paid in the last year of the old lease. And by the way, those numbers include 98% of our deals, so they are truly representative of the entire company's results. But what makes that particularly impressive is that the rent on many of the previous leases has likely been growing at 3% or so over the last 5 to 10 years, and that there's still room to increase the new rent to start the next 5 to 10 years near cycle. It's actually 26% more on a straight line basis because of those very important contractual bumps. And we're also demonstrating a strong commitment to efficiently managing tenant leasing capital with net effective straight line rollover after capital of 16%. And again, that's on all leases company-wide, not a non-representative subset. The weighted average contractual bumps inherent in all the leases done this quarter are Small shop and anchors combined was 2.4%, even better than the weighted average contractual bumps in place in our entire portfolio of 2.25%. Very likely the best portfolio-wide bumps of any large shopping center company and by a considerable margin. Of course, all that leasing had better translate to higher occupancy, and as you would expect, that continues to be the case. We ended the third quarter with the portfolio 95.9% leased, and 94% occupied, up 60 and 90 basis points from the end of last quarter. And we still have room to grow on both the anchor and, incredibly, the small shop side, where we ended up the quarter at 93.1% lease. When we look toward the future, the open-air retail market remains supply-constrained, and from what we're seeing, our consumer continues to spend. I don't know how many of you saw the October 11th Bloomberg article entitled U.S. Consumer Spending is Increasingly Driven by Richer Households, but it's worth a read. The article chronicles the findings of a Fed study that has found an increasingly divergent spending pattern between the affluent customer, the ones who frequent federal realty shopping centers, and the less affluent. There was nothing at all surprising in the findings from our perspective, as it's been the thesis of our business plan for decades, but it's particularly relevant as inevitable cracks begin to show in consumer spending patterns. One of my favorite lines from that article goes like this. Higher income households are enjoying a wealth effect from gains in housing and stock markets and also receive more interest and investment income during periods of higher interest rates, all providing a stimulus for a sustained level of spending. Whatever happens with regard to consumer spending out there over the next year or two, it's reasonable to think that federal will compare favorably. Separately, but also worth noting, is that our apartment business is particularly strong. About 3,000 units concentrated at the big mixed-use properties and Darien. Year-to-date, our residential operating income on our stabilized resi properties is up 5.5% versus last year, 8.2% when including the new Darien Connecticut product. The Darien project, by the way, is impressive, with apartments fully leased with a waiting list to get in and unusually high initial retention rates. with retailers and restaurants that continue to open. For those of you that live up in that neck of the woods, check out the work we've done with that very successful development. Transaction activity during the quarter was limited to the previously disclosed $60 million acquisition of Pinal Vista Crossing in Pinal, California, although after the quarter in October, we're deep into negotiations for a couple of other market-dominant shopping centers. Due diligence is underway, and assuming all goes as expected, We hope to close on one or both of those over the next few months. Stay tuned. Also, I know a number of you were able to see Virginia Gateway, the 665,000-square-foot regional retail hub on 110 acres in Gainesville, Virginia, on one of the several tours over the past several weeks. But for those who haven't, just a couple of data points. First of all, it's looking like our acquisition timing was excellent, as our going-in cap rate of 7.25% likely couldn't be duplicated today for such a dominant asset. It would probably trade 50 to 75 basis points inside of that. And secondly, it looks like our leasing underwriting assumptions were too conservative and are following in the same vein as our earlier acquisitions. For example, we've done 22 deals at Kingstown Shopping Center in Alexandria, Virginia, since our 2022 acquisition, at an average 25% higher rent than projected. Similarly, at Pembroke Gardens in Florida, we've also done 22 deals since our 2022 acquisition at an average of 16% higher rent than projected. And while it's only been a few months, Virginia Gateway seems to be trending the same way. We believe this pricing power reflects not only a supply-constrained market, but also our reputation with retailers who want to be in our properties because they know we'll make them better places for their businesses to be successful. In any event, these assets will likely generate cash-on-cash returns and IRRs materially greater than approved by our investment committee at the time the deals were done. In other news, productive activity toward lease-up at Santana West and 915 Meeting Street at Pike and Rose continues, with those buildings expected to be 70% and 90% leased, respectively, by year-end. And construction is well underway, and so far, on time and on budget, at Ballot Kinwood Shopping Center on our 217-unit residential over retail development that we expect to yield 7% once completed and fully leased up. Also, we're continuing to make progress on some of the residential development opportunities we have at our existing assets through the combination of selective value engineering, more aggressive construction pricing, and higher forecasted rent growth. This company-wide effort to add apartment product to our best shopping centers is an important arrow in our quiver for sustained growth in the years to come. Stay tuned. Okay, well, that's all I wanted to cover in prepared remarks this afternoon, and so I'll turn it over to Dan to provide more granularity before opening it up to your questions, and go Yankees tonight.