AVB - Avalonbay Communities Inc. (AVB) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

2024-04-26 17:00:08 ET

Avalonbay Communities, Inc. (AVB)

Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call

April 26, 2024, 11:00 ET

Company Participants

Jason Reilley - VP, IR

Benjamin Schall - President, CEO & Director

Sean Breslin - COO

Matthew Birenbaum - CIO

Kevin O'Shea - EVP & CFO

Conference Call Participants

Nicholas Joseph - Citigroup

James Feldman - Wells Fargo Securities

Austin Wurschmidt - KeyBanc Capital Markets

Bradley Heffern - RBC Capital Markets

John Kim - BMO Capital Markets

Linda Tsai - Jefferies

Michael Lewis - Truist Securities

Stephen Sakwa - Evercore ISI

Alexander Goldfarb - Piper Sandler & Co.

Anthony Powell - Barclays Bank

Adam Kramer - Morgan Stanley

Joshua Dennerlein - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Presentation

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to AvalonBay Communities First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. Your host for today's conference call is Mr. Jason Reilley, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. Reilly, you may begin your conference call.

Jason Reilley

Thank you, Diego, and welcome to AvalonBay Communities First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. Before we begin, please note that forward-looking statements may be made during this discussion. There are a variety of risks and uncertainties associated with forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ materially. There is a discussion of these risks and uncertainties in yesterday afternoon's press release as well as in the company's Form 10-K and Form 10-Q filed with the SEC.

As usual, the press release does include an attachment with definitions and reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures and other terms, which may be used in today's discussion. The attachment is also available on our website at www.avalonbay.com/earnings. And we encourage you to refer to this information during the review of our operating results and financial performance.

And with that, I will turn the call over to Ben Schall, CEO and President of AvalonBay Communities, for his remarks. Ben?

Benjamin Schall

Thanks, Jason, and good morning, everyone. I'm joined by Sean Breslin, our Chief Operating Officer; Matt Birenbaum, our Chief Investment Officer; and Kevin O'Shea, our Chief Financial Officer. Sean will speak to our operating outperformance year-to-date and our positive momentum as we enter the prime leasing season. Matt will discuss the continued outperformance of our developments and lease-up and how we are strategically deploying capital to generate value. And Kevin is here for questions and is more than happy to speak to our preeminent balance sheet and liquidity profile.

Utilizing our earnings presentation. Slide 4 provides the highlights for the quarter and identify these key themes as we look ahead. First and foremost, we are off to a strong start to 2024 with first quarter results outpacing expectations. We were able to build occupancy earlier than expected, and we also experienced meaningful improvements in bad debt in February and March.

Second, we feel well positioned as we enter the peak leasing season, given low turnover, solid occupancy and positive rental rate momentum. We also expect our suburban coastal footprint to continue to outperform, given steady and improved demand drivers and [indiscernible] delivering in our markets versus the rest of the country.

Given our first quarter outperformance, applications for Q2 and improvement in underlying trends, we have increased our full year guidance. We also remain laser-focused on executing on our strategic initiatives, including our operating model transformation. We remain on track here to deliver $80 million incremental annual NOI uplift from our operating [indiscernible], a target we raised from $55 million at our Investor Day in November.

And finally, with one of the strongest balance sheets in the sector, we are focused on growth opportunities in which we can tap our strategic capabilities from our operating prowess to our development strength to drive outsized returns for shareholders. With that summary, let me go a layer deeper on our results, the wider supply and demand backdrop and our increase to guidance. ...

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