Invitation Homes Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Invitation Homes second quarter 2020 earnings conference call. All participants are in listen-only mode at this time. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Greg Van Winkle, Vice President of Corporate Strategy, Capital Market, and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for joining us for our second quarter 2020 earnings conference call. On today's call from Invitation Homes are Dallas Tanner, President and Chief Executive Officer, Ernie Friedman, Chief Financial Officer, and Charles Young, Chief Operating Officer. I'd like to point everyone to our second quarter 2020 earnings press release and supplemental information. which we may reference on today's call. This document can be found on the investor relations section of our website at www.invh.com. I'd also like to inform you that certain statements made during this call may include forward-looking statements relating to the future performance of our business, financial results, liquidity and capital resources, and other non-historical statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes or results to differ materially from those indicated in any such statements. We describe some of these risks and uncertainties in our 2019 Annual Report on Form 10-K, our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the period ended March 31, 2020, and other filings we make with the SEC from time to time. Invitation Homes does not update forward-looking statements and expressly disclaims any obligation to do so. During this call, we may also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. You'll find additional information regarding these non-GAAP measures, including reconciliations of these measures to the most comparable GAAP measures, and our earnings release and supplemental information, which are available on the Investor Relations section of our website. I'll now turn the call over to our President and Chief Executive Officer, Dallas Tanner.

Thank you, Greg. I hope everyone today is doing well and staying safe. which continues to be our top priority at Invitation Homes. Residents are choosing the Invitation Homes leasing lifestyle now more than ever, and we believe we are safely delivering what customers are asking for with exceptional execution. I'm proud of what we've led with genuine care through the pandemic, and it's showing up favorably in both our resident satisfaction scores and our financial results. AFFO per share increased over 9% year-over-year in the second quarter. Blended rent growth accelerated sequentially each month of the quarter. Turnover rate and days to re-resident continue to be materially lower than prior year, contributing to our record high occupancy of 97.5%, while at the same time helping to drive controllable costs and reoccurring capex lower year over year. Rent collections also improved over the course of the quarter, with June and July collections near historical averages. These positive trends in our business, supported by the essential nature of our product, the location of our homes, and the stability of our resident base, also gave us the validation we were looking for to resume acquisitions in June. I'm very proud that our teams have been able to accomplish all of these things over the last several months while prioritizing the safety of our residents, associates, and communities above all else. and while being there to help some residents through difficult financial circumstances with payment programs. Let me expand on what we're doing from a safety perspective for the well-being of all of our stakeholders. First, we continue to leverage self-show technology for leasing tours. As a reminder, this technology is not something new we have to implement. We have been successfully offering self-showing as an option for years. Today, our self-show capability is not only helping to keep agents and prospective residents safe, it's also serving as a competitive advantage in the leasing market. With respect to occupied homes, we have implemented optionality to perform resident move-in orientations and pre-move-out visits virtually, while we remain paused on pro-care, proactive home building. We continue to address emergency work orders as we have since the beginning of the pandemic, And in June, we resumed providing non-emergency service to residents as appropriate on a case-by-case basis. In providing service to residents, our teams and partners follow a strict set of safety protocols on which associates have been trained. Our procurement team has also worked hard to secure PPE, and we are maintaining a three-month supply of masks, gloves, and hand sanitizers. Finally, We continue to focus on ensuring that associates who are able to work from home are well equipped to do so. And we continue to provide additional COVID specific benefits to associates designed to promote their health and wellbeing. In being thoughtful about these measures, we've been able to run our business nearly as efficiently in the current environment as we did with our offices fully open. As we move forward from here, we will continue to stay nimble in the present to safely provide high-quality homes and genuine care to our residents, while at the same time pursuing growth toward a bright future. We remain bullish about the long term. We see a significant pipeline of demand moving toward single-family rental over the next decade, with over 65 million Americans aged 20 to 34 years old, and we believe single-family housing supply is unlikely to be sufficient to meet the demand that these demographics create in our markets. The ripple effects of COVID-19 seem to be intensifying shift in preferences towards single-family space over denser housing options today. In fact, we've begun surveying residents upon move-in to learn more about how the pandemic may be influencing their housing decisions. Approximately 30% of the over 500 survey respondents who moved into our homes in April and May moved from denser urban areas to our homes. And approximately 30% said COVID-19 increased their desire to live in a single-family home versus an apartment or a townhome. On top of organic growth and accretive acquisition, we are also pursuing initiatives like value-enhancing CapEx investments and ancillary service expansion to further enhance our resident experience, portfolio, and returns. As we pursue this long-term growth opportunity, And as we navigate the near-term COVID environment, there are three key differentiators that we think contribute to our advantage. The first is the location of our homes and the areas we are currently investing. Infill neighborhoods and high-growth markets where supply and demand fundamentals are most in our favor. The second is our scale and market density, with almost 5,000 homes per market. That scale is nearly impossible to replicate. and is a key driver of our efficiency in the real-time market intel we derive from our portfolio. Third is our focus on being local and leveraging on-the-ground teams in our market in collaboration with centralized support. This enhances our control over asset quality and the resident experience, and is only possible with the scale and the people we have in place. Thank you all for supporting us as we continue to put these competitive advantages to work for the benefit of our residents, associates, communities, and investors. Our mission statement is, together with you, we make a house a home. Demand for our product is as strong as it has ever been, and we will continue to meet that demand by leaning on our core values of genuine care and standout citizenship to make a house a home, regardless of what may come our way. With that, I'll turn it over to Charles Young, our Chief Operating Officer.