Getty Realty Corporation

Realty's earnings conference call for the fourth quarter 2023. This call is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Prior to starting the call, Joshua Dicker, Executive Vice President and General Counsel and Secretary of the company, will read a safe harbor statement and provide information about non-GAAP financial measures. Please go ahead, Mr. Dicker.

Thank you. I would like to thank you all for joining us for Getty Realty's fourth quarter and year-end earnings conference call. Yesterday afternoon, the company released its financial and operating results for the quarter and year-ended December 31, 2023. The Form 8K and earnings release are available in the investor relations section of our website at gettyrealty.com. Certain statements made in the course of this call are not based on historical information and may constitute forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs and are subject to trends, events, and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. Examples of forward-looking statements include our 2024 guidance and may also include statements made by management, including those regarding the company's future company operations, future financial performance or investment plans and opportunities. We caution you that such statements reflect our best judgment based on factors currently known to us and that actual events or results could differ materially. I refer you to the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022, and our subsequent filings made with the SEC for a more detailed discussion of the risks and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements made today. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which reflect our view only as of the date hereof. The company undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statements that may be made in the course of this call. Also, please refer to our earnings release for a discussion of our use of non-GAAP financial measures, including our definition of adjusted funds from operations, or AFFO, and our reconciliation of those measures to net earnings. With that, let me turn the call over to Christopher Constant, our Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you, Josh. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our earnings call for the fourth quarter and year-end 2023. Joining us on the call today are Mark O'Lear, our Chief Operating Officer, and Brian Dickman, our Chief Financial Officer. I will lead off today's call by summarizing our financial results and investment activities and will provide commentary on how we are effectively executing on our growth objectives in a thoughtful and disciplined manner. As usual, Mark will then take you through our portfolio and Brian will further discuss our financial results and guidance. 2023 proved to be another strong year for Getty and set us up for continued growth in 2024. We invested a record $326 million, raised $295 million of attractively priced capital, and continued to advance our portfolio diversification objectives. We entered new markets and expanded our presence in top MSAs around the U.S. We spread our investments across all of our target sectors and carefully structured transactions to provide certainty of funding for our growing tenants and to minimize our risk. Our successful investment activities combined with our healthy in-place portfolio produced strong revenue and AFFO per share growth and a sector-leading dividend increase. This excellent performance was the direct result of the hard work by the Getty team, who embraced the challenge to accelerate our growth despite precarious and at times unpredictable market conditions. The net result of our record investment activity was an annual total revenue increase of 12.2%, and when you factor in our effective capital markets executions, AFFO per share grew 5.1% for the year ended 2023, meeting the high end of our revised guidance range. We think these would be strong results in any given year, but I'd argue they were exceptional in light of all that transpired in 2023. Our performance was driven by our focused strategy and the competitive advantages we believe we've developed over many years in our space. With the backdrop of volatile transaction markets, we remained disciplined and relied on our core principles, including prioritizing relationships and being experts in our transaction markets. Our tenants are often making long-term financing decisions and rely on us to effectively structure and close transactions on a timely basis, irrespective of where we are in the economic cycle. To that end, we strengthened relationships with existing tenants and aggressively pursued new business with both mature and emerging retailers. We also lean heavily on our knowledge of the underlying sectors we invest in and our database of thousands of previously underwritten properties to make us smarter investors. Notably, we continue to add newly built stores, which we refer to as new to industry or NTI locations to our portfolio. And in 2023, approximately 80% of our investments were for these NTI sites. From an operations standpoint, we believe it benefits our portfolio to acquire state of the art new builds that reflect the latest tenant prototypes, including increased store sizes, prominent branding, the latest technology, and in certain cases, drive-through lanes. And from an investment perspective, we leveraged our expertise to carefully underwrite each opportunity, set appropriate rents, limit our gross capital outlay, and ultimately acquire these assets either at or below their construction costs. Another core principle at Getty is the concept of continuous improvement with respect to our operations. We took two important steps on this front in 2023. First, We realigned some of our team for an increased focus on our investment program in order to better align with our growth plans. We now have more than one third of the company focused on sourcing, underwriting, negotiating, and closing acquisition opportunities. We also launched a multi-year technology initiative to ensure that we have the systems in place to support a larger platform and to make us more efficient and better investors. The initial phases of implementation will go live in early 2024. As we enter this year, Getty is well positioned for the current environment, given the essential nature of our assets, the operating strength of our institutional tenant base, our distinctive sourcing and underwriting capabilities, and our strong balance sheet. We expect our 2024 earnings growth to be driven by the escalators from our in-place portfolio, additional income from investments acquired or partially funded in 2023, by our investment pipeline which currently includes more than 67 million of assets under contract the majority of which are projected to close in the first half of this year our target retail sectors continue to be healthy as evidenced by the resilience of the us consumer and operators in the convenience and automotive retail space are pursuing a variety of growth strategies to meet consumer demand although our investment volume in 2024 will ultimately depend on market conditions including sellers' expectations regarding rates and their willingness to transact. We think our relationships, underwriting expertise, and liquidity will serve us well as we source and diligently underwrite opportunities to acquire new convenience and automotive retail assets. We remain confident in the strength of Getty's in-place portfolio and our ability to create value for earnings growth and portfolio diversification. And with that, I will turn it over to Mark to discuss our portfolio and investment activities.