SITE Centers Corp.

Good morning and welcome to Site Center's first quarter 2022 results conference call. All participants will be in a 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. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Monica Kukraza, Capital Markets and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning and welcome to SightCenter's first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Joining me today is Chief Executive Officer David Lukes and Chief Financial Officer Connor Fennerty. In addition to the press release distributed this morning, we've posted our quarterly financial supplement and slide presentation on our website, at www.sitecenters.com, which is intended to support our prepared remarks during today's call. Please be aware that certain of our statements today may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities law. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from our forward-looking statements. Additional information may be found in our earnings press release and in our filings with the SEC including our most recent reports on Form 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 income. Reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in today's quarterly financial supplement. At this time, it is my pleasure to introduce our Chief Executive Officer, David Lukes.

Good morning and thank you for joining our first quarter earnings call. We had an excellent start to the year with OSFO ahead of plan, another quarter of record leasing volume, and the investment of the remaining proceeds from the $190 million distribution from RBI in three compelling properties. On top of all this, our balance sheet remains in great shape with debt to EBITDA on the low fives at quarter end, which is well ahead of the peer group and the sector overall, which provides capacity for continued external growth. I'll start this morning discussing first quarter results, talk briefly about leasing and tenant demand, and then discuss our investments and capital allocation as we look to grow our portfolio of assets in wealthy suburban communities. As I mentioned, first quarter OFFO was ahead of our budget on better operations, which Connor will provide more details on later. Our strongest tenants continue to take market share, and our construction and property management teams have done a great job getting tenants open for business ahead of schedule which is part of our outperformance this quarter. Moving to leasing, tenant demand remains elevated across the portfolio, and we built upon our fourth quarter activity with another quarter of record volume relative to the last five years. Shop leasing in particular continued to surprise to the upside with a number of key deals with first-to-portfolio tenants, including several leases at our tactical redevelopment projects in Princeton, Boston, and Portland. To put shop leasing volume in context, in the last 12 months, we signed 62% more square feet of shops than in 2018 and 52% more square feet than in 2019. The success and the quality of our leasing is giving us increased visibility and confidence on our allocation of capital, which I'll discuss later in my remarks. Looking forward, we have another 600,000 square feet at share in lease negotiations which we expect to be completed the next six months with similar characteristics to the deals we signed in 2021 and year to date in 2022, meaning a concentration on national publicly traded tenants with excellent credit. We continue to expect leasing to be the material driver of our growth over the next several years. Shifting to investments, we had another very active quarter buying out a partner in Orlando, and adding convenience properties in Boca Raton and Scottsdale. I'll start with our two Florida acquisitions. With Castleberry Commons, we acquired another Publix-anchored property from our partner. We obviously know the property well and have significant leasing momentum with two recently signed anchors and elevated shop demand. The asset is accretive to our grocery-anchored portfolio and well above national average sales, and an underwritten five-year NOI CAGR of almost 9%, in an excellent submarket with great demographics. At shops at Boca Center, we acquired for $90 million an asset that has all of the attributes of the convenience properties that we've been focused on and investing in. Excellent demographics with trade area household incomes of $126,000, convenient access and parking, and a site plan that offers a mix of simple liquid shops in demand from a wide range of national, regional, and local tenants. Despite a total GLA of just 117,000 square feet, the property draws from an actual trade area of over 600,000 customers, resulting in high tenant volumes, as the restaurant sales alone averaged almost $1,000 a square foot. With lease up, mark the market, and a new pad opportunity, Shops at Boca has an underwritten five-year NOI CAGR of over 7%, which instantly adds to the company's growth profile. Proforma, for these two acquisitions, Florida now represents over 20% of the company's value and is an excellent representation of Site Center's portfolio overall with a diverse mix of assets located in the wealthiest submarkets of the state and populated by national credit tenants. The portfolio includes convenience properties like the shop at Boca Center and shops at Addison Place in Delray Beach, dominant regional properties like the shops at Midtown Miami and in downtown Miami, and Winter Garden Village in Orlando, grocery-anchored properties like Castleberry Common in Orlando, and the shops at New Tampa. The site center's Florida portfolio has an expected five-year NOI CAGR of over 4%, average household income 70% higher than the national average, and an average expected population growth 200 basis points higher than the country overall. It's an irreplaceable collection of properties in a high-growth state, and we're excited about the prospects for additional investments in our other key submarkets. Moving to Phoenix, we bought another convenience property in the core Scottsdale submarket and are confident we can find more opportunities to grow our portfolio in this key market. The Scottsdale corridor has incomes of over $148,000 and significant population growth, attracting a wide range of tenants, including a mix of food service, and service users. Going forward, I continue to expect us to be active in both anchored and unanchored assets that fit our growth and submarket criteria. That said, we remain encouraged by our investments in convenience properties, and this compelling subsector in open-air shopping centers remains a key area of focus for the company. Over the last few years, we've invested over $300 million at a blended cap rate of roughly 5.5% in convenience asset with average health incomes of $117,000 and an underwritten five-year CAGR of 4% with minimal CapEx. Each of these properties, all located in key markets for the company, including Miami, Scottsdale, and Atlanta, will be drivers of the company's future growth. The convenience subsector is clearly benefiting from recent societal shifts favoring hybrid work and suburban housing growth. Our property data aggregated over the past few years is showing a distinct rise in customer traffic, especially in wealthier suburbs, where it's difficult getting new retail construction approved or pencil given rising construction costs. And it's driving outsized rent growth due to the scarcity of convenience retail locations close to where people are now living and working in greater numbers. You'll see us to continue to pursue this external growth strategy, and we've been diligently focused on sourcing a pipeline of potential deals that fit our investment criteria and our return hurdles. Thank you to the entire site center's team for an excellent start to the year. We've been hard at work for some of the time positioning the company to outperform and remain excited about the prospects for the remainder of 2022. And with that, I'll turn it over to Connor.