UDR, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to UDR's second quarter 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the 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. 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 the call over to UDR's Chairman and CEO, Tom Toomey.

Thank you, Trent, and welcome to UDR's second 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 Cozat, Andrew Cantor, and Chris Van Enns will also be available during the Q&A portion of the call. Our second quarter results met the high end of our guidance expectations. In addition, our third guidance raise this year was driven by rapidly improving multifamily fundamentals across all our markets combined with our competitive advantages, which include our best-in-class operating platform, our market selection and capital allocation acumen, and a variety of additional value creation mechanisms. Mike and Joe will further address these topics in their prepared remarks. During our first quarter earnings call just over 90 days ago, we laid out why we thought a strong broad-based multifamily recovery may be imminent. Since then, our upside scenario has largely played out. From a macro perspective, additional fiscal stimulus, improved vaccination rates, normalized business conditions, and a return to office have driven jobs and wage growth. We have actively captured this incremental demand as evidence by quarter-end occupancy of 97.5%, a new high watermark for the company. Ongoing regulatory restrictions continue to hamper our ability to fully operate our business, but these are now beginning to sunset at an accelerating rate. As this occurs, we anticipate recapturing temporarily lost income from limits on renewal rate growth, charged fees, collections, and operating initiatives that were artificially constrained during the pandemic. Moving on, our innovative next-generation operating platform continues to drive a wholesale change in how we approach our customer and run our business. Since the platform initially came online in mid-2018, its self-service attributes have allowed us to gain significant cost efficiencies by reducing our onsite staffing by nearly 40%. Our slimmed-down workforce is better compensated, has more opportunities for career advancement, and can more effectively concentrate their efforts on resident satisfaction and profitability, as well as new opportunities for UDR. I count this as a win for our associates, our residents, and the company and certainly our stakeholders. To everyone in the field and at corporate, keep up the good work. You're doing a great job. I look to more progress in our future. In closing, I remain highly confident in the strategic direction of our company and our team's ability to execute on the opportunities ahead of us. We have a demonstrated ability to generate strong results over time throughout our diversified portfolio. In particular, better core operations, repeatable revenue enhancing initiatives, our innovative next generation operating platform, and certainly our accretive capital allocation. This has driven above pure average earnings growth in seven of the last nine years and total shareholder return that consistently outperforms widely recognized industry benchmarks. 2021 continues to shape up well, and our actions and approach to capitalizing on the ongoing recovery are poised to set us up for continued growth in the years ahead. With that, I will turn the call over to Mike.