Veris Residential, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to Veris Residential Incorporated's third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press the star key followed by the zero on your telephone keypad. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to the General Counsel, Taryn Fielder. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Veris Residential's third quarter earnings conference call. I would like to remind everyone that certain information discussed on this call may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities law. Although we believe the estimates reflected in these statements are based on reasonable assumptions, we cannot give assurance that the anticipated results will be achieved. We refer you to the company's press release and annual and quarterly reports filed with the SEC for risk factors that impact the company. With that, I would like to hand the call over to Mahbub Nia, Veris Residential's Chief Executive Officer, who is joined by Amanda Lombard, Chief Financial Officer. Mahbub?

Thank you, Taryn, and good morning, everyone. We're pleased to report another quarter of strong NOI and core FFO growth, driven by the better than anticipated resolution of our non-controllable expenses and continued market rent growth, resulting in a 17% increase in core FFO during the first nine months of the year. We continue to build upon the strong results delivered in the first half of the year, making steady progress across a number of strategic initiatives aligned with our three-pronged value creation plan. We refinanced an additional $308 million of mortgages during the quarter, utilizing the corporate facilities secured earlier this year, further reducing our property level debt and now have no remaining consolidated debt maturities until 2026. We continue to achieve strong operational results despite the wider market slowdown, realizing NOI growth of 6.7% and blended net rental growth of 4.8% for the first nine months of 2024. This resulted in core FFO per share of 17 cents for the third quarter as compared to 12 cents in the third quarter of 2023, an uplift of 42%. As we look toward the last few months of 2024, we remain confident in the performance of our highly immunitized, newer vintage, average age eight years, well-located Class A portfolio. This is reflected in our RAISE guidance, which Amanda will discuss in further detail. Looking more closely at our operational performance, our portfolio maintained 95.1% occupancy, with retention increasing to 55% as we realized 4.6% blended net rental growth for the quarter, or 4.8% for the first nine months of 2024. Portfolio-wide, renewal growth remained stable at 6.5%, and new leases grew by 1.3%, above the national average of 0.9%. New York City recorded September's highest national year-over-year growth in asking rents at 5.4%, which has continued to drive demand for our waterfront assets. Historically, approximately 30% of our move-ins have come from the New York area, taking advantage of the compelling relative value proposition of our apartments, which offer generally larger units and a wider range of amenities. These factors, coupled with extremely limited new supply have driven strong performance in our Jersey City and Port Imperial assets. Our Jersey City portfolio recorded blended net rental growth of 6.7%, accelerating from 5.7% in the second quarter, while our Port Imperial portfolio recorded equally strong growth of 6.3%. As rental growth remains strong, the average rent per home across our portfolio reached almost $4,000. Our portfolio's affordability ratio stands at 12%. underpinned by move-ins with an average income per home of $388,000, a 17% increase from the fourth quarter of 2023, or $180,000 per person. We remain focused on our ongoing pursuit of operational excellence as reflected in the further improvement in our operating margin, which now stands at 67%, up from 57% at the beginning of 2021. In the same period, we've reduced our controllable expenses as a percentage of revenue to 17.6% from nearly 20%, well below the average controllable expense ratio of 19% across our public peers. These improvements are a testament to our continued optimization initiatives, including the adoption of new technologies, operational enhancements, and changes to our organizational structure and processes. Our AI-based leasing assistant, Quinn, continues to be highly effective in capturing demand at the top of our leasing funnel, effectively converting 31% of leads year to date and contributing to a 2% saving in payroll expenses compared to 2023. Along with engaging prospects, Quinn now interacts with residents on a day-to-day basis, assisting with maintenance requests, renewals, and a wide range of other resident inquiries. In September alone, Quinn sent almost 21,000 messages to residents and prospects, equating to over 1,700 staff hours. In addition to further improving our margin, these initiatives have had a positive impact on the overall resident experience across our portfolio, enhancing Barrister's sector-leading reputational standing as reflected in our J. Turner Research AURA score, which has steadily increased throughout the year, exceeding 84 in September, ranking well ahead of our public peers. We're incredibly proud of this achievement, and I would like to thank our teams for their hard work and dedication in making it possible. In line with our three-pronged approach to value creation, we continue to look for accretive opportunities to recycle capital within the company, including investments in our own portfolio. Earlier this year, we commenced an extensive renovation of Liberty Towers, a 648-unit apartment building in Jersey City. We're pleased to share that the amenity floor renovations have been completed on schedule. During the quarter, we also unveiled a refreshed modern brand for Liberty Towers and began unit and corridor renovations. Upon completion, anticipated to take three to four years, we expect to generate a mid- to high-teens return on invested capital. This project alone is expected to contribute an additional six cents of annual core FFO per share upon completion, while significantly enhancing the value of the asset. To put this into context, the anticipated accretion from this asset represents approximately 10 percent of the high end of our 2024 core FFO guidance range. Finally, I'm pleased to share that VERUS has once again been recognized by GRESS for our ESG efforts, earning our third consecutive five-star ESG rating with the highest listed residential score in the US and the third best listed residential score worldwide. As such, we've been designated as a regional listed sector leader in the residential category, a recognition highlighting the top performers in the Americas. As previously shared, we've met the sustainability KPI provisions included in our credit facilities, unlocking a five basis point margin saving. We're also proud to have been recognized by NAREIT with the Mid-Cap Diversity Impact Award for our social responsibility policies. With that, I'm going to hand it over to Amanda, who will discuss our financial performance and provide an update on guidance.