UDR, Inc.

Greetings. Welcome to UDR's third quarter 2023 earnings call. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Vice President 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 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 third quarter 2023 conference call. Presenting on the call with me today are President and Chief Financial Officer, Jill Fisher, and Senior Vice President of Operations, Mike Lacey, 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. To begin, for much of the third quarter, the multifamily industry continued to benefit from a resilient consumer, continued job and wage growth, and relative price point affordability versus alternative housing options. These tells wins served as an effective break against elevated apartment deliveries during the quarter. Our quarterly results reflect this relative stable demand versus supply environment. With year-over-year same-store NOI growth of 6% and FFOA per share growth of 5%. Both of these growth rates were at or above our historical norms. However, towards the end of the third quarter and into the fourth quarter thus far, the stable supply and demand dynamic changed as the seasonally slower leasing period took hold. Since mid-September, increased concessionary activity from new supply deliveries and lease-up have put more pressure on our lease growth rate and occupancy across A and B quality communities throughout our portfolio. This dynamic and its impact on our B quality communities in particular was unexpected and unprecedented in my 30 years in the multifamily industry. Even more so, as demand has continued to hold up relatively well. While this situation being felt across our industry, it has led us to lower our same-store and FFOA per share guidance for the full year 2023 with yesterday's earnings release. While we cannot control macro factors that impact our business, such as interest rates, inflation, and job growth, to name a few, we are focused on what we can control. These include, first, we continue to innovate, which is added to our bottom line in 2023 and will do so for the years to come. We expect our two largest near-term initiatives being building-wide Wi-Fi and enhanced customer experience to increase revenue, improve resident retention, and further expand our operating margin over time. Mike will provide greater detail in his remarks. Second, we anticipate driving cash accretion from the six Texas communities we acquired during the third quarter. By bringing these communities onto the UDR platform and operating them more efficiently, we expect to capture approximately 800 basis points margin over time. Third, the joint venture partnership executed at the end of the second quarter is poised to grow with positive redeployment spreads, which should expand our fee income and result in scale-oriented efficiency benefits to our operations. We are actively engaged with our partner on where to deploy capital that should provide future earnings accretion and enhanced ROE. And fourth, we can actively enhance our liquidity to be in a strong position to take advantage of growth opportunities when our cost of capital eventually improves and supply pressures lessen. Looking ahead to 2024, we expect that our validated apartment deliveries will continue to pressure organic growth and capital markets recession should limit external growth prospects. Mike and Joe will add comments in color on these as well. Moving on, we continue to build on our position as a recognized ESG leader with the publication of our fifth annual ESG report being named a sector leader by Graspi. Our Gresby survey score of 87 matched the highest in our history, and for the fifth consecutive year, our public disclosure was an A rating. These are achievements that all UDR stakeholders should be proud of as we work towards a more sustainable future. Lastly, I believe that UDR multifaceted diversification, leading operating platform, and investment-grade balance sheet with nearly $1 billion of liquidity will help us to successfully navigate whatever macro environment we face moving forward. In closing, to my fellow UDR associates, thank you for your continued hard work and dedication. With that, I will turn the call over to Mike.