Mid-America Apartment Communities, Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the MAA First Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterward, the company will conduct a question and answer session. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded today, April 29, 2021. I will now turn the call over to Tim Argo, Senior Vice President of Finance of MAA for opening comments. Please go ahead.

Tim Argo Thank you, Christine. Good morning, everyone. This is Tim Argo, Senior Vice President of Finance for MAA. With me are Eric Bolton, our CEO, Al Campbell, our CFO, Rob DelPriori, our General Counsel, Tom Grimes, our COO, and Brad Hill, our Head of Transactions. Before we begin with our prepared comments this morning, I would like to point out that as part of the discussion, company management will be making forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from our projections. We encourage you to refer to the forward-looking statement section in yesterday's earnings release and our 34-act filings with the SEC, which describe risk factors that may impact future results. these reports along with a copy of today's prepared comments and an audio copy of this morning's call will be available on our website during this call we will also discuss certain non-gap financial measures a presentation of the most directly comparable gap financial measures as well as reconciliations of the differences between non-gap and comparable gap measures can be found in our earnings release and supplemental financial data, which are available on the For Investors page of our website at www.maac.com. I'll now turn the call over to Eric.

Thanks, Tim, and good morning. We are encouraged with the solid start to the year as core FFO results were well ahead of our expectations. A recovery in rent growth is clearly getting started. Our overall blended rents on a lease-over-lease basis are running slightly ahead of last year, and our forecast is for continued improvement. A combination of the recovery within the Sunbelt economies that is just starting to build, coupled with the continued migration of employers and jobs to this region, are driving higher levels of demand across our portfolio. We like the trends that we're seeing as we head into the important summer leasing season. Our teams are off to a strong start this year with our unit interior redevelopment program, the rollout of our smart home technology platform, as well as several new projects aimed at full repositioning of communities to higher price points. We're excited about the upside in rent growth to capture from all three of these programs. It was about this time last year when we hit the pause button on these projects in order to protect residents and staff during the initial months of COVID. and we expect to make solid progress this year. Our new development platform continues to expand and we're excited to have closed this month on our first opportunity in the Salt Lake City market. We see continued strong job growth and positive migration trends to this market and look forward to expanding our presence there. Supported by our strong balance sheet and growing demand for apartment housing across our Sunbelt markets, we believe we are poised to capture increasing earnings contribution from our development pipeline over the next few years. As the Sunbelt market economies begin to reopen, it seems clear that based on the trends that we're seeing, that the worst of the pressures associated with COVID are behind us. MAA's unique approach to diversifying across the Sun Belt has clearly worked to soften some of the pressures surrounding the recession and the slowdown in leasing over the past few quarters. However, we're frankly more excited about the prospects for outperformance over the coming recovery cycle. the growing appeal of the Sunbelt markets, the upside that we have to capture in redevelopment within our existing portfolio, higher efficiencies we expect to harvest from several new technology initiatives, and finally, a growing impact from our external growth pipeline all combined to put MAA in a solid position for the coming recovery cycle. In closing, I want to thank our team of associates for their hard work and efforts to serve our residents this past quarter. with a special nod to our team in Texas who worked through the winter storm and freezing temperatures in February. Your commitment to our mission of serving those who depend on our company is much appreciated. Tom?