UDR, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to UDR's first quarter 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will be taken after the presentation. If you need operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Director of Investor Relations, Trent Trujillo. Thank you, Mr. Trulio. 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. A 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 first quarter 2021 conference call. On the call with me today are Mike Lacy, Senior Vice President of Operations, and Joe Fisher, Chief Financial Officer, who will discuss our results. Senior Officers Harry Alcock, Matt Kozad, and Chris Van Enns will also be available during the Q&A portion of the call. To begin, first quarter results met our guidance expectations, and we anticipate same-store growth and FFOA per share will improve from here. As evidenced by our guidance increase and the demand trends which we will speak to during the balance of our prepared remarks. We are often asked the reason for our optimism on the recovery of the multifamily sector and the magnitude of the potential upside UDR can capture. Our response is twofold. First, on the macro front, we expect to see the typical demand and growth cycle witnessed in the past recoveries. The U.S. economy appears primed to accelerate growth, As additional fiscal stimulus kicks in, vaccination rates continue to improve and the return to office plans crystallize. Business conditions across most of our markets returning to more normalized levels. These factors should have a positive impact on job growth and wage growth, which drives demand for multifamily housing. It is difficult to put a range on the potential economic benefit from this unfolding, but recent operating trends put us in great position to realize this upside as we enter peak leasing season. Second, this recovery will have an additional tailwind that no past recovery has had, the potential relaxation of regulatory restrictions. These COVID-related regulations cost UDR an estimated $8 to $10 million of NOI during the first quarter alone. Mike will further detail this opportunity in his remarks, but we are optimistic in our ability to recapture this income as restrictions sunset and the recovery ensues. Collectively, our macro view is the acceptance of our next generation operating platform by our residents, and our ongoing ability to accretively source and deploy capital drove the full year 2021 guidance increases provided in our release. Joe will discuss this further in his remarks. Let me take a step back. and look at our business over the intermediate time horizons of 2019, 20, and 21 and into the future. I firmly believe we have the correct strategy in place to outperform. Our business model is somewhat unique in the multifamily space as we are widespread diversification, innovative culture, and a focus on operations makes UDR a full cycle investment capable of performing well across a variety of macro backdrops. This proved true in 2019 when we accretively acquired nearly $2 billion of properties with attractively priced capital. In 2020, amid a pandemic, we made tremendous strides implementing our next generation operating platform. which represents an entirely new way of conducting business in the multifamily industry that has and should continue to drop more dollars to the bottom line. For 2021, we believe we are well positioned to take advantage of the accelerating economic recovery and eventual relaxation of regulatory restrictions in many of our larger markets. All in, UDR has generated better than average FFOA per share growth in seven of the last nine years, a track record I'm immensely proud of. In closing, I remain highly confident in the strategic direction of our company and our team's ability to execute on an opportunity set that's in front of us. The ongoing commitment of our team has delivered increasingly higher performance levels of service and satisfaction to our residents as we progress towards the full rollout of our platform, while also making more efficient. For this, a heartfelt thank you goes out to all our associates for skillfully adapting to a new way of conducting business and executing our strategy. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mike.