Veris Residential, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Veris Residential Inc. Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. Should anyone 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, Taryn Fielder, General Counsel. Thank you. You may begin.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Veris Residential's second quarter 2025 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 Ana Milhari, Chief Operating Officer, and Amanda Lombard, Chief Financial Officer. Mahbub.

Thank you, Taryn, and good morning, everyone. I'll begin today's call by providing details on our quarterly results, yesterday's performance, and key dynamics of our markets. We're turning to Anna to update you on our operating performance and Amanda to provide details on our financial performance and outlook. The second quarter marked another period of solid operational and financial results for Veris, including 17 cents of core FFO and 5.6% same-store NOI growth. We also made significant progress with the corporate plan that we announced earlier this year, alongside continued enhancements to our operational platform further optimization of our balance sheet, allowing us to meaningfully reduce our cost of debt. Year-to-date, we've either completed or executed binding contracts for approximately $450 million of non-strategic asset sales, largely fulfilling our stated target of selling $300 million to $500 million of non-strategic assets by the end of 2026, well ahead of schedule. We intend to utilize proceeds from these sales primarily to reduce leverage to around 10 times by year-end 2025, and are on track to further reduce this to below nine times by year-end 2026. The rapid progress we've made in deleveraging our balance sheet is translating into tangible value creation for our shareholders as we realize an immediate 55 basis point improvement in our borrowing costs through our amended credit facility with potential for a further improvement in our borrowing costs as we continue to delever. Our robust operational performance, combined with the significant progress we have made executing non-strategic asset sales, resulting in the reduction of debt, has enabled us to raise guidance on key metrics. We've now closed $268 million of the aforementioned $450 million of non-strategic asset sales, including the recent sales of Signature Place, a 197-unit property located in suburban New Jersey, for $85 million. and 145 Front Street, a 365-unit property located in Worcester, Massachusetts, for $122 million. These assets, generally smaller in size, were sold at an average cap rate of 5.1%, in line with what we believe to be their intrinsic value. We've also entered binding contracts for The James in suburban New Jersey and Quarry Place, our only asset in New York. posting an additional $180 million of sales, which are anticipated to close in the coming months. As previously announced, during the second quarter, we consolidated our partner's 15% stake in Sables, formerly the Jersey City Irby, and have already begun to realize meaningful operational synergies through the integration of this asset into the various platforms. Before I hand over to Anna to walk through our operational performance, I'd like to say a few words regarding the current dynamics in our markets. The Northeast multifamily landscape continues to perform encouragingly well, driven by favorable supply-demand dynamics and resilient urban migration trends. New York City, to which Jersey City is highly correlated, remains one of the strongest markets nationwide, underpinned by historically low vacancy of below 3% metro-wide, despite the delivery of approximately 15,000 new units over the past year. Demand has also remained strong in Boston, where vacancy has edged lower year over year and rent growth has remained above national levels. New construction in Jersey City remains concentrated in Journal Square, a less established submarket which does not compete directly with the Jersey City waterfront where our assets are located. The waterfront submarket maintains clear advantages, lower vacancy, approximately 25% higher asking rents, and almost three times the rental growth of Journal Square this year. The Jersey City waterfront has successfully absorbed 3,900 units with minimum impact to our occupancy rates over the past five years. In the next four years, around 3,000 units across four projects are currently under construction. Only 385 units delivered over the past three years well below historical levels, we expect the market to readily absorb the new supply in line with the historical absorption rate of approximately 630 units annually. These robust supply-demand dynamics leave our waterfront portfolio well positioned to sustain strong rental growth going forward. With that, I'll hand it over to Anna to discuss our operational performance for the quarter.