SITE Centers Corp.

Good day and welcome to the Sight Center's fourth quarter and year-end 2020 earnings results conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brandon Day with Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. On today's call, you will hear from Chief Executive Officer David Lukes and Chief Financial Officer Connor Finnerty. Please be aware that certain of our statements today may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal security laws. These forward-looking statements are subject to risk and uncertainty, and the actual results may differ materially from our forward-looking statements. Additional information about these risks and uncertainties may be found in our earnings press release issued today and in the documents that we file with the SEC, including our most recent reports on 10-K and 10-Q. In addition, we will be discussing non-GAAP financial measures on today's call, including FFO, operating FFO, and same-store net operating incomes. Reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in today's press release. This release, our quarterly financial supplement, and accompanying slides may be found on the investor relations section of our website at sitecenters.com. At this time, it is my pleasure to introduce our Chief Executive Officer, David Lukes.

Good morning, and thank you for joining our fourth quarter earnings call. We had a strong finish to the year with record leasing activity and continued improvement on the collection front. These results are a product of the work of everyone at SiteCenters, and I want to thank all of my colleagues for their continued dedication. 2020 was a challenging year on many fronts, and because of our tireless efforts, the company is in a fantastic position for the future. I'll start this morning with a summary of fourth quarter events and then discuss some emerging macro tailwinds which are providing support and growth to our portfolio of assets in wealthy suburban communities. Consistent with the last quarter, 100% of our properties and 98% of our tenants remain open and operating as we continue to provide the necessary support for our communities. Collections continue to move higher, and as of Friday, we've collected 94% of fourth quarter and 94% of January rent. Unresolved monthly rent is now running around 3% with remaining tenants in various forms of settlement negotiations. We continue to take a methodical approach to resolving any unpaid rent which, along with the deferral repayments, is driving continued progress on prior period collections. We've now collected 88% of rent from the April 2020 through January 2021 period. And after including deferrals for accrual tenants, we are expecting to collect 94% of base rent. To put that in context, at the time of our first quarter 2020 earnings call on April 30th, only 49% of our tenants were open, and we had collected just 50% of April rent. We've come a long way since then, and it's worth stepping back and recognizing two important outcomes that developed throughout 2020. First, around 90% of our tenants are national with a deep understanding of their contractual obligations and proven access to capital. Notwithstanding those contracts, many national tenants reacted to the early COVID fears by withholding rents while we continue to pay operating expenses and property taxes to our local communities. Over the next few months, most of these tenants realized that protecting their rights to occupy their space within our properties was extremely important and they began to repay the rent it was owed. Some of our tenants offered other financial benefits to us, such as out parcel approvals or a relaxation of exclusivity terms in return for a deferral program, which has helped us with leasing as we have more site control and flexibility to accommodate tenant demand. These negotiations are the primary reason why our collections continue to improve. even for prior quarters throughout the year. Once store openings occurred late in the summer, the second trend emerged, strong sales performance. With the increased movement to the suburbs, continued strong household income in wealthy communities, and a growing work-from-home culture, our tenants are seeing and forecasting an improvement in profitability, which is increasing their interest in signing leases at our properties. It's notable that our leasing volume in the third and the fourth quarters, as well as our pipeline of new leases being negotiated now, is running ahead of pre-pandemic levels, with the fourth quarter representing the highest level of activity since the third quarter of 2018. And based on the volume of deals in our pipeline, there's still more to come. To add some perspective on the scale of the pipeline, for the comparable site portfolio, we completed 30 anchor deals in 2019, and another 18 anchors in 2020. As of year end, we had 22 anchors in various stages of lease negotiation, with three already done as of Friday, and the rest expected to be executed by mid-year 2021. The biggest driver of the uptick in leasing, in our view, relates to pandemic-induced societal shifts that I previously mentioned. The population increases in our suburban communities and the traffic growth due to work-from-home flexibility in our properties are leading retailers to increase their store footprints in the last mile of the wealthiest suburbs and, in many cases, launch new concepts, which is broadening the universe of tenant-seeking space. Restaurants, bid counters, banks, warehouse clubs, medical care, delivery services, sporting goods, all of these users desire convenient access to these communities with ample parking, based on terms like pickup and lower operating costs compared to other formats. We believe that we are in the beginning of a multi-year trend and that the value of our offering, centered around convenience, will drive sustainable activity and cash flow growth for a number of years. Our current leasing investments will provide our initial portfolio growth, and I would expect our future capital allocation to capture these societal changes happening today that are fueling rent growth in many open-air properties. These trends are simply too apparent to ignore, and there will be investment themes that develop as a result. Turning to the dividend, the company declared the first quarter dividend of 11 cents per share, which is up from 5 cents per share in the fourth quarter. This dividend is based on the current collection rate, and our board of directors will continue to monitor our dividend policy throughout this year should operations and cash flows improve. Importantly, this dividend rate provides significant cash flow to fund our 2021 business plan. And with that, I'll turn it over to Connor.