Invitation Homes Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Invitation Homes first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. All participants are in a 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 conference over to Scott McLaughlin, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome. I'm here today from Invitation Homes with Dallas Tanner, Chief Executive Officer, Charles Young, President and Chief Operating Officer, Ernie Friedman, Chief Financial Officer, and John Olson, EVP of Corporate Strategy and Finance, and as previously announced, the company's CFO beginning June 1st. Following our prepared remarks, we'll conduct a question and answer session with our covering sell-side analysts. In the interest of time, We ask that you limit yourselves to one question and then re-queue if you'd like to ask a follow-up question. During today's call, we may reference our first quarter 2023 earnings release and supplemental information. This document was issued yesterday after the market closed and is available on the investor relations section of our website at www.invh.com. Certain statements we make 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. We describe some of these risks and uncertainties in our 2022 Annual Report on Form 10-K 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. We may also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures during the call. You can find additional information regarding these non-GAAP measures, including reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures, in yesterday's earnings release. I'll now turn the call over to Dallas, our Chief Executive Officer.

Good morning and thank you for joining us. We were pleased to report a strong first quarter result yesterday afternoon, reflecting a great start for a year. Average same store occupancy improved 50 basis points over the fourth quarter to 97.8% and new lease rent growth has accelerated sequentially every month so far this year. We're encouraged by the execution of our teams and remain bullish on our industry and our business. As long-term fundamentals continue to be favorable, bolstered by our superior balance sheet and liquidity, and backed by our best-in-class platform, we will seek to continue to deliver sector-leading NOI growth as we've done for the past five years. Since our inception, we've matured and performed through a variety of operating and macroeconomic environments, including a global pandemic and record high inflation. Throughout this time, we've witnessed the resilience and the relative strength of our business, This is illustrated by a great chart from John Burns Research and Consulting that we included in our March investor deck. This data shows that over the past 40 years, national SFR rent growth has historically stayed positive even during recessions. In addition, in a recessionary period, we would expect that our business could see a reduction in move outs and a benefit to occupancy, and that external growth opportunities could become more attractive. For these reasons and more, we believe single-family leasing is one of the most stable property types in real estate. And that Invitation Homes offers one of the best risk-adjusted return propositions compared to other commercial real estate sectors. To start, supply and demand fundamentals continue to favor our business. On the demand side, this includes the demographic surge of the millennial generation who have begun reaching our average resident age of 39 years old. But it also includes individuals and families of all ages who desire the flexibility, and convenience of leasing a single-family home. Like all of us on the call today, our residents value great schools, proximity to growing job centers, access to transportation corridors, and desirable neighborhoods for their families. They usually need or want more space, with a garage and a yard to better fit their growing household, and to have more room for a home office, a kid's playroom, and their pets. And more importantly, today's residents are requesting flexibility and choice, along with the appeal of a down payment light lifestyle. Further driving the demand for single family home leasing is the rising costs of home ownership, as well as the lack of inventory of for sale housing. According to John Burns March data and weighted by our markets, the monthly cost of owning a single family home remain on average over $900 more expensive than leasing that same home. Others have calculated an even higher cost of average for ownership versus leasing. On the supply side, the U.S. continues to suffer from a shortage of housing, with the shortfall in supply relative to demand estimated to be in the millions of units. Like most economists, we think the best way to improve housing affordability is to grow the U.S. housing stock, and more specifically, by encouraging development of new housing supply. This important work really needs to begin at the state and local levels including planning and zoning boards, and we stand in strong support of those who want to bring positive change in this regard. In fact, we see ourselves as part of the solution to increasing housing supply through our new product pipeline that is now approaching $1 billion. We will continue to seek out responsible opportunities to add supply, and as a result, help improve housing availability and affordability. In consideration of these fundamentals, We believe leasing a home is a great option for anyone who wants all the benefits of living in a home without the hassle or expense of home ownership. And we believe Invitation Homes offers the best service, platform, and locations for residents to choose from. One reason for this relates to the core belief we've held since the early days of our business, that we could revolutionize the single-family resident experience by professionalizing resident service. In short, we took a decades-old, antiquated, mom and pop model and transform that based on the needs and desires of a 21st century resident. As part of that approach, we continue to expand our service offerings and look for new and better ways to enhance the simplicity and convenience of the leasing lifestyle. At the same time, we continue to explore ways to improve efficiency through size and scale. We also remain focused on growing our portfolio creatively over the long term. And more importantly, in locations where we would expect the most favorable long-term fundamentals. With regards to growth, we're committed to being prudent capital allocators through all real estate cycles. For the first quarter of 2023, this meant being a net seller of homes, disposing of 284 wholly owned homes for gross proceeds of $95 million and buying 181 wholly owned homes for $62 million. For the most part, we've recycled capital out of less desirable homes and into brand new, well-located homes. as part of our new product pipeline. We believe our strategy of partnering with the best homebuilders is a superior approach to investing on a risk-adjusted basis, as it keeps development and its associated risks, including an expensive land bank and high G&A load, off of our balance sheet. At the same time, our strong balance sheet and current liquidity, including JV capital, allows us to remain nimble, and as opportunities arise, we will be ready. Before I close, I want to speak to the continued dislocation between the retail pricing of single-family homes and public market valuations. Strong demand for housing continues to support home prices in our markets and in our price points, while the lock-in effect, which existing homeowners are discouraged from giving up their lower mortgage rates, is keeping resale supply relatively low. We're seeing evidence of this supply and demand imbalance when we list our homes for sale and receive multiple competing offers at great prices. We believe the resilience of the U.S. housing market in the current cycle has been underestimated over the past year and that the protracted supply and demand imbalance for single-family housing continues to provide good structural support for home prices, just as it does for rent growth. Lastly, on the topic of sustainability, I hope you've taken a moment to read our new progress overview, which we published last month. It's available on our sustainability webpage It includes information about our efforts to increase the quantity and the quality of our ESG disclosures. This includes new greenhouse gas emission disclosures and an opportunity for engaged stakeholders to participate in an online survey to share their thoughts and their ideas with us. We welcome this feedback. My thanks again to all of our teams for their hard work, dedication, and commitment this past quarter and for the remainder of the year ahead. Our associates are the heart and soul of Invitation Homes. and we appreciate how they embrace the responsibility to deliver the highest level of service to our residents and strong results for our shareholders. Our plan is to keep pushing to be great here. With that, I'll pass it on to Charles, our President and Chief Operating Officer.

Thanks, Dallas, and good morning, everyone. I'd like to begin by thanking our associates for starting off the year strong. I'm really proud of the efforts you display every single day to ensure that our residents feel heard, served, and appreciated. I'll now review the details of our first quarter operating results. Our start with same store core revenues, which grew 7.7% year over year. This growth was primarily driven by an 8.5% increase in average monthly rent and a 7.3% increase in other income. These results include some encouraging signs. Over half of our markets are now operating in a more normal course of business in terms of timely rent payments and resolution processes. For our other markets, progress continues to move in the right direction as we work through these lease compliance backlogs. These improvements were reflected in our first quarter bad debt, which beat our expectations by holding flat with our fourth quarter reported results, even as rent assistance declined by over half during the same period. This indicates to us that residents are returning to a more normal payment pattern post-COVID. We're also seeing stronger demand return following the winter leasing season. with new lease rent growth accelerating sequentially each month during the first quarter. Overall, for the first quarter, same-store new lease rent growth came in at 5.7%, and same-store renewal growth was 8%, resulting in blended rent growth at 7.3%. Our preliminary April results show further acceleration in the new lease side to 7.5%, with renewals at 7.2%, and blend at 7.3%. Preliminary average occupancy in April was 97.8%. Turning back to our first quarter same-store results, core operating expenses increased 14% year-over-year, representing a favorable result compared to our initial guidance expectations for the first quarter expense growth in the mid-teens. The year-over-year increase was driven by an expected year-over-year increase in property taxes due to robust home price appreciation. in addition to the under-accrual of property taxes expenses in the first three quarters of 2022, as we've previously discussed. Expense growth was also impacted by progress we've made in working through more of the lease compliance backlog compared with last year, as well as higher vacant utility costs and rates, and continued inflationary pressures. Taken together, these results led to first quarter growth in same-store NOI of 5% year over year. Our teams continue to pursue various ways to improve our efficiency and resident experience with technology upgrades frequently topping the list. For example, we continue to put mobile technology into the hands of our residents. This includes a mobile experience for maintenance, which we've spoken about previously. This has been a great success with residents using it to send us over 40% of maintenance requests. In addition, we've also just launched a new mobile experience for leasing. That enables prospective residents to create a profile, save searches, and view their favorite houses. In today's mobile-first world, these new mobile experiences are game-changers for our residents and us. Many thanks to all of our teams for working diligently to manage all the details of our business this past quarter, while staying focused on resident service and operational excellence. I believe we are well equipped and energized to carry the positive momentum you've begun through our peak leasing season and the remainder of the year. I'll now turn the call over to John Olson, the company's next Chief Financial Officer.

Thank you, Charles. I'm excited to join you all today. I've been part of the Invitation Homes team since 2012, and I'm honored to have been named CFO upon Ernie's departure next month. Ernie has led our finance organization for the past seven and a half years. And in that time, he has overseen tremendous growth and many important milestones for the company. We're both here in the room this morning to answer any questions you may have following our prepared remarks. I'll begin by covering our financial results for the first quarter and then provide an update on our investment grade rated balance sheet and liquidity position before wrapping up to open the line for questions. As we've stated, our first quarter results were in line with or slightly ahead of our expectations. and offer a solid start to the year. Core FFO for the first quarter of 2023 increased 9.5% year-over-year to $0.44 per share, primarily due to an increase in NOI, and AFFO increased 9% to $0.38 per share. Our full-year 2023 guidance remains unchanged from the initial guidance we provided in February as we are still early in the year. Next, I'll cover our balance sheet and liquidity position. We believe this is an area of strength for us, not only in comparison to how far we've come since our public listing over six years ago, but also relative to many of our investment-grade peers today. In the six years since our IPO and merger, we have applied a consistent and measured strategy to delever the balance sheet, improve the laddering of our debt maturities, refinance secured debt with unsecured debt, unencumber assets, and lower our net debt to EBITDA ratio. We ended the first quarter with over $1.3 billion in available liquidity comprised of our unrestricted cash and undrawn revolver capacity. We have no debt reaching final maturity before 2026. And at the end of the first quarter, over 99% of our debt was fixed rate or swapped to fixed rate. Nearly three quarters of our debt was unsecured. and over 83% of our homes were unencumbered. Our net debt to EBITDA ratio improved from 5.7 times at the end of 2022 to 5.5 times as of March 31st. In recognition of the great work by our team and the meaningful progress we've made, in March, S&P Global Ratings upgraded our issuer and issue level credit ratings from BBB- to BBB-. In addition, Last week, Moody's Investor Service revised our rating outlook from stable to positive. In closing, we're pleased to start the year strong and believe our favorable fundamentals, best-in-class operating platform, dedicated associates, and strong balance sheet position us well to continue delivering solid results. On behalf of everyone at Invitation Homes, we extend our thanks to Ernie for the enormous impact he has made and look forward to furthering the legacy he helped build. With that, operator, please open the line for questions.

We will now begin our question and answer session. To ask a question, please press star, then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star, then one again. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. In the interest of time, we ask that participants limit themselves to one question and then re-queue by pressing star 1 to ask a follow-up question. One moment while we poll for questions. The first question comes from the line of Josh Fennerlein with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Josh Fennerlein, your line is open.

Oh, hey, sorry, guys. It's Josh Ehrlein. Sorry about that. In the opening remarks, you mentioned demographics are influencing demand, and it sounds like you expect sector-leading NOI growth to kind of continue as a result. I guess, could you maybe walk us through the demographics that you're seeing come through your portfolio today and how that's impacting your outlook?

Yeah, I think this is Dallas, by the way. One of the things we've been most bullish on has been the consistency around the fundamentals of who our customer is as they come in, the strength of what we would call kind of the credit quality and the personal balance sheet. And I think lastly, the duration of stay. And as we've looked at our business over the last decade, literally quarter over quarter, we're seeing that duration and length of stay push well into, you know, the 40-ish type of months with us as they move out. We're seeing that in our West Coast markets and we're seeing our Eastern markets start to, you know, quickly kind of close the gap. And so I think as you think about this money of cohort, the types of things they want, the flexibility around choice, a leasing lifestyle, Charles talked about it on an opening remarks, this mobile friendly kind of universe that we all operate in personally, it sets itself up to be very favorable for somebody who is looking for choice and flexibility while maintaining a down payment light approach. We're seeing continued strength in the underwriting of the customers. I mentioned my second point, And it continues to be impressed upon us that our top of funnel and the demand side of our business is extremely healthy. We have a lot of intrigue in properties as they become available. We have a lot of pre-leasing activity. And we're not seeing any real degradation in our customer as of today.

Your next question comes from the line of Eric Wolf with Citibank. Your line is open.

Thanks. Dallas, you've talked a lot about the lock-in effect on interest rates and what it's doing to sale inventory and ultimately transactions. Just curious whether you can see anything that would change that going forward, or should we ultimately just expect a pretty depressed level of acquisitions for a long time?

Well, I think there's two questions in that question. So the first piece on the lock-in effect, and with 80 some odd percent of mortgages being sub 5%, it has probably caused a lot of us and people that are in the market for housing to think about staying put, which I think has also impacted some of the resale supply. That's had a positive effect on our business because I also think it's helping support longer duration of stay, demand, et cetera. I think in terms of your question around the resale market and what we'd expect from sellers, yeah, there's no doubt that if people are a mortgage today, if you acquired it or you refinanced in the last 36 months is an asset for folks. And so that may have an impact on resale supply. Good news for us is our focus the last couple of years has been building out a much more robust new product pipeline, which today sits close to a billion dollars. And we're really excited about that product as it's coming into our portfolio both this year and years beyond. I think the resale environment has been limited the last three to four years. It hasn't really been a source of truth for people as they're trying to build up, you know, call it their base. Fortunately for us, we have real scale in markets. I think where we may see other opportunities down the road this year could be, you know, as we see some of these smaller operators who are having trouble getting scale or sizing up, there could be opportunities where, you know, potential M&A over the next couple of years. So I think we'll stay, you know, aggressive in our new product pipeline. We're obviously always looking at things as the resale market changes. But just being ready, and I think we're in a position to do that.

Your next question comes from the line of Austin Werschmitt with KeyBank. Your line is open.

Great, thanks, and good morning. I'm just curious if you guys are surprised at all by the strength in new lease rate growth year to date, which you highlighted as accelerated each month and surpassed renewals in April. And I'm just wondering if that enables you to pull back a bit on renewals to limit turnover and help control costs. And if you could provide an update on loss to lease, that would be helpful as well. Thank you.

Yeah, this is Charles. Thanks for the question. Yeah, look, we've seen really healthy demand here in the first quarter. And while we expected it to be solid, it's a little bit out ahead of our expectations, which is great. The funnel is strong. We've been able to grow occupancy by 50 basis points from 97.3 to 97.8, while, as you mentioned, accelerating new lease rent growth. Renewals still have been really strong. We've been in the mid-7s, and that's slightly above where we thought we'd be, and we're maintaining that in April in the 7s. And as you look forward, May and June, we went out in the mid-7s on our ask, and we'll see where that ends up. You're asking the right question. There is a balance here as we're seeing this demand and trying to balance off the lease compliance backlog that we're working through to make sure that we maintain strong occupancy. But right now we like our kind of balance that we have, the optimization and demand to catch up when we do turnover at home because we are slightly up on turnover, but historically really low numbers still in the 22%. So we like where we are. We'll see how the summer plays out. we're slightly ahead of expectations and optimistic going into the summer. Oh, and then the last question around loss to lease. Yeah, we're in that, as we updated it today, about 5% to 6% loss to lease.

Your next question comes from the line of Jamie Feldman with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks for taking my question. I was hoping you could talk more about the expense side of your outlook, you know, any of the moving pieces that may be you have a little bit less confidence in, whether it's insurance, taxes, utilities, anything, R&M, anything else we might want to think about here as the year unfolds? And also, if you can give a date for when you did or you will renegotiate your insurance for the year. Thank you.

Sure. Thanks for the question. This is John. Our insurance policy period runs from March to February. So we have now put our new insurance policy in place. Recall that on our last call, we talked about our expectation for the property policy being up somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 to 25% year over year. The actual policy came in right in the middle of that range, actually a little bit closer to the bottom end. And as we've talked about in the past, the other insurance line items showed smaller year over year increases. So our expectation for the balance of the year is that for the next three quarters, we'll see the insurance line item be up in the neighborhood of 20% year over year. And then for the full year, we'd expect insurance to be up about 16% year over year.

Your next question comes from the line of Brad Heffern with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Yeah, thanks. Morning, everyone. On the property tax front, I noticed that it was down 3% from the fourth quarter. Can you talk about what that's related to? Is it lower appraisals or appeal wins or is there something else going on there?

Actually, no. So recall that last year in the fourth quarter, we talked about having been under accrued for property taxes in the first part of 2022. And so we had a fairly sizable catch up entry in the fourth quarter. So what you can expect to see this year is much higher year over year property tax increases in the first three quarters of the year. and then moderating in the fourth quarter. And we've said that we expect property taxes to be up in the range of 6.5% to 7.5% for the full year.

Your next question comes from the line of Handel St. Joost with Mizuho. Your line is open.

Thank you. First, congrats to John and Charles on new roles. And Ernie, I guess you'll be around for a while, but you'll be missed. Dallas, I wanted to go back to your comments earlier on, I think you mentioned, you're working to find a responsible way to help add more supply. I'm curious if you can elaborate on what that means. Are you inclined to do more development partnerships or even do it on balance sheet? And if I could sneak in one, can you comment on the new SEC inquiry on page 55 of the 10K, the inquiry into your compliance with building codes and permitting requirements? Thank you.

Thanks, Sandil. I'll comment briefly on your last, which is we don't comment on any other legal matters other than to say that we always fully cooperate with any inquiries we get. In terms of new product pipeline and the opportunities there, today we've been really cautious and careful around not putting the balance sheet in a position where we'd have to take maybe more of an egregious share of the risk in terms of how we want to build product. We really like our approach thus far. We are doing a lot of different underwrites and reviews on opportunities in the marketplace across a variety of you know builders and developer potential partners it's well noted that we have a really good partnership with pulte homes we'll continue to do as much with pulte as we can they've been terrific and i would say that you know with the announcement of that partnership what roughly 18 24 months ago it's expanded to many other builders and developers coming to us looking for opportunities to grow together so You know, we've been able to be deliberate. We've been able to be picky about where we want to invest and why. And I think we've been able to do it at a risk basis that is very valuable to our shareholders in terms of not having an outsized portion of risk, a bunch of land sitting on our balance sheet, etc. And by the way, I just had like very little G&A. It's synonymous with our investment management team here. We've added a couple of people over time on the biz dev side and also on the project management side. But It's going really well, and we're coming into these homes on really a creative basis that we feel good about. I'm excited to see where that continued chapter for our company develops and has greater magnitude.

Your next question comes from the line of Adam Kramer with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. Thanks for the question, and best wishes to you. I really appreciate all the help over the years. I just wanted to ask about bad debt on kind of a gross and net basis. Maybe just kind of walk us through how gross bad debt in 1Q compared to 4Q and then maybe the same for net. And then the areas where, you know, geographic areas, markets where you're still kind of worse than pre-COVID levels on kind of that gross bad debt line. Maybe just kind of highlight for us which markets are kind of still outliers on that basis.

Yeah, with regards to bad debt, what we saw was that our rent assistance that we received from the fourth quarter, the first quarter actually got cut in half. And so what's happening is that we're seeing a good pickup, and you can see it when we reported in our earnings supplemental that for the first time in a while, that zero to 30 payment is increasing. It got to 93%. So we're actually seeing a nice improvement in the gross bad debt and not getting as much help from things like rent assistance, as we expected. And, in fact, the collections coming forward in the zero to 30 bucket were a little bit better than we had anticipated. They were able to clean up a little bit more than we anticipated in the first quarter. Hence, we made the reference in our earnings release that things came in a little bit better than we expected for the first part of the year, and that certainly bodes well. But it's early, too, so we don't want to call it a trend yet, but we're certainly happy with where it's at, not only for the first three months of the year, but for the first four months of the year. I'll turn it over to Charles, and he can talk a little bit about what we're seeing on a market-by-market basis.

Yeah, so as Ernie said, we're starting to see kind of a return to normal, and all trends are generally positive. And this is while rent assistance has gone with half of last quarter and 20% year over year. So we're starting to get back into our normal rhythm. In terms of markets, about half of our markets are operating at their historical levels, which are great. There are a few markets that, because of kind of the lease compliance backlog in the courts and that, It's a little slower, SoCal being kind of the largest of that. But the LA County, LA City adjustment is favorable, and we'll see how that plays out. There's still kind of the courts are backlogged there, so it'll take a little bit of time to clean up. The other markets that are a little slower are Atlanta. Vegas, but that's changing and adjusting quickly and NorCal just to California courts as well. Then we have another handful of markets that are trending in the right direction, but not quite back to historical level. So we feel like we're moving in the right direction and things are kind of working themselves out. And as we talked about in the last call, we knew bad debt was going to be elevated in the first half of the year. and we're trending nicely, and we'll see if we can continue to keep that momentum, and by the second half, we'll be trending back towards where we want to be in cleaning this up.

Your next question comes from the line of John Pawlowski with Green Street. Your line is open.

Thanks for the time. Dallas, I want to circle back to the QETAM lawsuit. I know your views haven't changed where you do not think it has merit, I'm curious if the internal views have changed at all when trying to size the potential impact if you're wrong and things go south in court. Can you give us a sense of whether your views have changed on the potential financial impact for shareholders?

No change in our views. And again, we're really careful, guys. We don't want to comment on any pending litigation. But no, it's just the same, John. And we'll continue to defend ourselves vigorously and I believe that the claim is really without merit.