UDR, Inc.

Greetings, and welcome to UDR's first quarter 2022 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Senior 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 measures 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 first quarter 2022 conference call. Presenting on the call with me today are Senior Vice President of Operations, Mike Lacey, and Chief Financial Officer, Joe Fisher, who will discuss our results. Senior Officers Andrew Cantor and Chris Van Enns will also be available during the Q&A portion of the call. Let me start off by saying this remains the strongest operating environment that I or any of my fellow associates at UDR have ever encountered. Demand remains robust, turnover continues to decline, blended lease rate growth has continued to accelerate from already elevated levels, and new supply growth remains relatively stable. These factors, when combined with the accretion we are seeing from our repeatable operating and capital allocation competitive advantages, drove our strong first quarter results and full year guidance raises. as outlined in yesterday's earnings release. We, as an industry, do continue to face a variety of challenges, many of which are out of our control. First, inflation. On balance, inflation is a net positive as wage increases correlate to rent growth, and rising hard costs mean higher replacement costs and increased asset values. The downside is higher personnel and repair and maintenance costs, G&A increases to attract and retain associates, and rising interest rates. We have effectively mitigated these negative factors through, one, our platform efforts that constrain controllable expense growth below inflationary levels, and two, proactive debt management whereby over the past three years we have increased our duration and to have minimal debt maturities prior to 2025. Second, ongoing regulatory restrictions, elongated grace periods once restrictions are removed, and backlog court systems continue to hamper our ability to efficiently run our business. The current environment is decidedly better than in 2020, 2021, and while our ultimate collections rate have been between 98 to 98.5%, This is over 100 basis points below our pre-COVID levels. And last, how current geopolitical risk may ultimately impact the U.S. economy and consumer remains to be seen. Given this, at UDR, we continue to focus on what we do control, which includes first utilizing operating and capital allocation competitive advantages when opportunities present themselves. These unique capabilities drive our top and bottom line growth and enhance our sizable, controllable operating margin advantages versus public and private peers. Second, continually innovating to find the most profitable and efficient ways to conduct our business that are wins for our associates, the company, our residents, and our stakeholders. And third, ensuring that we continue to cultivate and enhance our already vibrant, inclusive, and engaging culture as it is and will remain the cornerstone of our success. All in all, I'm excited as I've ever been about our prospects for 2022 and 2023. To all associates listening, keep up the great work and know that the senior management deeply values what you continue to accomplish. Moving on, we continue to build on our position as a recognized global leader in ESG with our commitment to investing in multiple climate tech and ESG-focused funds. These investments should help identify both in the apartment home and property-wide solutions to better address climate change and lower our carbon footprint. Similarly, our commitment to adopt SBTI this year along with extensive company-wide resources we already dedicated to enhance our sustainability will help to further refine our long-term ESG strategy. In closing, we remain very optimistic on the strength of the multifamily industry as well as the ultimate resiliency of the American economy and consumer. We have the right strategy competitive advantages, and a team in place to capitalize on the opportunities set that lies ahead of us. I look forward to when we can share another update with you. That most likely will be at NAERI. And with that, I will turn it over to Mike.