UDR, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to UDR's fourth quarter 2023 earnings call. If anyone should require 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, 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, supplemental disclosure package, and related investor presentation were distributed yesterday afternoon and posted to the investor relations section of our website at 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 Tooney.

Thank you, Trent, and welcome to UDR's fourth quarter 2023 conference call. Presenting on the call with me today are President and Chief Financial Officer Joe Fisher, and Senior Vice President of Operations, Mike Lacey. Senior Officers Andrew Kanter and Chris Van Enns will also be available during the Q&A portion of the call. To begin, for this quarter's call, we enhanced how we communicate our outlook for the year ahead. The volatility we have experienced over the last five years, combined with the supply-induced challenges our industry is expected to face in 2024, translate into a wider range of potential outcomes for this year versus our typical year. As such, in conjunction with our earnings release, we published an outlook presentation that highlights these potential outcomes and their drivers. Our prepared remarks align with the presentation, and those on our webcast should see the slides on your screen. We will resume our usual format of prepared remarks only on future earnings calls. Moving on, key takeaways from our press release and our 2024 outlook are summarized on slide four of the deck. These are first, fourth quarter and full year 2023 FFLA per share and same store results met the guidance expectations set forth on our third quarter call. Full year 2023 same store NOI growth of 6.8% was particularly strong and one of the highest amongst our peer group. Second, based upon consensus estimates, we expect that economic growth and apartment demand will remain resilient in 2024, but historically high new supply will continue to lay on our core growth. Third, ongoing investments and innovation will continue to drive incremental NOI growth above the broader market in 2024. Mike Lace will give you greater detail on this subject. Fourth, We're maintaining a capital-wide strategy given our still elevated cost of capital, but we will take advantage of opportunities when appropriate. For example, in 2023, we executed roughly $1 billion of accretive deal through joint venture and operating partnership unit opportunities. We will continue to keep our eyes open for external growth and heed our cost of capital signals. And fifth, our balance sheet remains well positioned to fully fund our capital needs in 2024 and beyond. With that, I'll turn the call over to Joe.