UDR, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to UDR's third quarter 2020 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Director of Investor Relations, Trent Trujillo. Thank you, Mr. Trujillo. You may begin.

Welcome to UDR's quarterly financial results conference call. Our press release and supplemental disclosure package were distributed yesterday afternoon and posted to the investor relations section of our website, ir.udr.com. In the supplement, we have reconciled all non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure in accordance with Reg G requirements. Statements made during this call which are not historical may constitute forward-looking statements. Although we believe the expectations reflected in any forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, we can give no assurance that our expectations will be met. Discussion of risks and risk factors are detailed in our press release and included in our filings with the SEC. We do not undertake a duty to update any forward-looking statements. When we get to the question and answer portion, we ask that you be respectful of everyone's time and limit your questions to one plus a follow-up. Management will be available after the call for your questions that did not get answered during the Q&A session today. I will now turn over the call to UDR's Chairman and CEO, Tom Toomey.

Thank you, Trent, and welcome to UDR's third quarter 2020 conference call. On the call with me today are Jerry Davis, President and Chief Operating Officer, Mike Lacey, Senior Vice President of Operations, and Joe Fisher, Chief Financial Officer, who will discuss our results. Senior Executives Harry Alcock, Matt Kozad, and Chris Van Enns are available during the Q&A portion of the call. Simply stated, our business is predicated on revenues we bill and our ability to collect those revenues. For the former, the third quarter remained challenging due to the combination of ongoing regulatory restrictions, slow coastal reopenings, work-from-home trends, and elevated concession levels in our high-rent coastal markets, combined with the highest number of leases and expirations for any quarter during the year. Despite this, billed revenue appears to have stabilized across August, September, and now October. For the latter, our ability to collect revenue remains strong and is consistent with prior months. While these observations have yet to show up, In our company-wide same-store revenue and NOI results, I draw some degree of comfort from the approximately 80% of our portfolio, which is experiencing stabilizing or slightly improving fundamentals. This is in our suburban and sun-bought communities. Combined, these factors provided the basis for our issuance of same-store and earnings guidance for the fourth quarter. But we have not lost sight of the fact that many uncertainties and challenges remain. Every recession has a couple quarters where the headwinds converge. The third quarter had that type of feel to it for us. And based on our guidance, the fourth quarter, which has fewer leases coming due, could as well for same-store statistics. The stabilization of fundamentals, occupancy, build revenue, and collections is the first step towards a recovery. But to inflict higher, we need meaningful improvement in our hardest hit high rent markets of San Francisco, Manhattan, and downtown Boston. These markets make up 20% of our portfolio, and while improvement in our October occupancy has been encouraging, they have come at a cost of higher concession levels. We have not lost faith in the long-term viability of these urban areas. But we need a vaccine for widespread reactivation and recovery. Mike will provide more commentary in his remarks. With all that said, we remain focused on maximizing cash flow and bottom line results. On that front, the midpoint of our fourth quarter earnings guidance implies a full year 2020 FFOA of $2.04 per share. which is down only 2% year over year. This is a result I'm very proud of, given the challenges this year has presented. Shifting gears, I'm pleased at the ESG achievements UDR has made over the past year, as detailed in our recently published 2020 Corporate Responsibility Report, which covers our 2019 actions. We remain committed to driving our ESG platform forward and have laid out a variety of sustainability targets through 2025 and have improved our reporting disclosure to provide the most relevant and comprehensive metrics to the investor community. We look forward to sharing our continued success in the years ahead. Next, all of you, DR, would like to welcome Diane Moorfield as the newest member of the board. Diane has an accomplished history as a senior executive in the REIT industry and as an independent director will bring valuable perspectives as we continue to execute our strategy. Finally, as we wrap up 2020 and turn our attention fully to 2021, we continue to focus on controlling what we can, which is how efficiently we price our homes how well we execute the implementation of our NextGen operating platform, the quality of our customer service we provide to our residents, the support we give our associates in the field, and maintaining a strong liquid balance sheet. The executive team would like to thank all of UDR's associates for their efforts to move our business forward, keep up the good work. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mike.