SITE Centers Corp.

Welcome to the Site Center's first quarter 2021 operating results conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note, today's event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brandon Day, Investor Relations. Mr. Day, please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning and welcome to SightCenter's first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Joining me today is Chief Executive Officer David Lukes and Chief Financial Officer Connor Finnerty. In addition to the press release distributed this morning, we have posted our quarterly financial supplement and a slide presentation onto our website at www.sightcenters.com. This is intended to support our prepared remarks during today's call. 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 uncertainties and actual results may differ materially from our forward-looking statements. Additional information may be found in our earnings press release and our filings with the SEC, including our most recent report on Form 10-K and 10-Q. In addition, we will be discussing non-GAAP financial measures, including FFO, operating FFO, and same-store net operating income. The non-GAAP financial measures reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in our quarterly financial supplements. At this time, it is my pleasure to introduce our Chief Executive Officer, David Luke.

Good morning, and thank you for joining our first quarter earnings call. We had an excellent start to the year with another quarter of near record leasing activity, continued improvement in collections and deferral payments, stabilization of our lease rate, and over $200 million of growth capital raised. This year already feels a lot different than 2020, and the operating environment continues to improve each week with accelerating demand for space. The company is in a fantastic position because of the work of our site center's team, so a sincere thank you to all of my colleagues for their contributions. I'll start this morning with a summary of first quarter events and then discuss our equity offering and our acquisition pipeline as we look to grow our portfolio of assets in wealthy suburban communities. Consistent with last quarter, 100% of our properties and 99% of our tenants remain open and operating as we continue to provide convenient access to goods and services in suburban communities. Collections continue to move higher, and as of Friday, we've collected 96% of first quarter rents. Unresolved monthly rent is now running less than 3% with the majority of remaining tenants in various forms of settlement negotiations. We continue to take a tenant-by-tenant methodical approach to resolving any unpaid rent, which, along with deferral payments, is driving continued progress on prior period collections. Kudos to our leasing and our collections team for their incredible work this past year. If you consider the past 12 months, from April 2020 through March 2021, and measure the durability of our portfolio during that time, three supportive data points have emerged. Number one, rent collection on a contractual rent basis continues to move higher. We've now collected 91% of rent from April 2020 through March 2021. And after including deferrals for accrual tenants, we do expect to collect over 95% of base rent. Included in the 91% number is $2 million of deferral payments from cash basis tenants which was at one time positive benefit to us in the first quarter. Number two, leasing volume is very high. We've completed over 700,000 square feet of new leases during this period, inclusive of 23 anchor leases over 10,000 square feet. And number three, bankruptcy move-outs have been relatively low, which we believe is a testament to our credit quality and the improvement of retailer balance sheets combined with a higher top-line sales number, which are pushing occupancy cost ratios lower for the tenant. The resiliency of our portfolio and the increasing demand for space at our properties is a true testament of our team, the quality of our real estate, the credit quality of our tenants, and the durability of our cash flow. More importantly, it's a positive signal for future cash flow since many cash-based tenants are paying current rent along with back rent, which does give us a greater confidence in the durability of our income stream going forward. Moving to leasing, we had another quarter of near record activity with 219,000 square feet of new leases, including nine anchors, which is half of all anchor signings in 2020. We continue to expect the remaining anchors that I identified last quarter to be executed by mid-year, with a dozen or so additional anchors in the works. There's a good chance we end up executing more anchors this year than our peak pre-COVID years for the comparable portfolio. In terms of our new deal pipeline, the level and quality of demand continues to grow, and I'm extremely optimistic about future activity. Connor will give you some details on the pipeline relative to our company, but needless to say, our optimism on the operating side is spilling over into investment activity, which brings me to our first quarter equity offering. We raised just over $225 million of equity in March, with $150 million of the proceeds used to retire preferred stock. We expect to use the remaining cash for acquisitions and currently have $50 million of assets under contract. Importantly, the offering puts our company and our balance sheet in a position where we can pursue accretive acquisitions with cash on hand, our improved retained cash flow, which is now running north of $40 million annually, and additional future sources of capital like the RBI preferred or select accretive dispositions. So what's driving our increased confidence and growth? We believe that we are at the beginning of a multi-year positive operating environment driven primarily by pandemic-induced societal shifts that I've previously discussed. Specifically, the increased movement to the suburbs, continued strong household income in wealthy communities, and a growing work-from-home culture. Quite simply, these three changes are putting more people with more money at the footsteps of our shopping centers more frequently, and this is leading retailers to increase the value of their own existing store fleets and launch new concepts, which is broadening the universe of tenant-seeking space. All of these factors taken together are increasing the value of convenience, which is fueling market rent growth in open-air properties in select wealthy submarkets. These trends are simply too apparent to ignore, and we intend on investing around this thesis. We will provide more detail on the assets we expect to acquire, like targeted returns, geography, and format, as we move later in the year and close on the assets. But we are incredibly encouraged by the size and the profitability of the opportunity, and we're looking to accelerate our investment activity. And with that, I'll turn it over to Conor.