Good. Welcome, everyone, to the 9:15 A.M. session at Citi's 2023 Global Property CEO Conference. I'm Eric Wolfe, I'm here with Nick Joseph with Citi Research, and we're pleased to have with us, Mid-America Apartment Communities and CEO Eric Bolton. This session is for Citi clients only. If media or other individuals on the line, please disconnect now. Disclosure is available on the webcast and at the AV desk. As a reminder, the questions that I'll ask today, are not the opinions of Citi or myself, and are being asked for information purposes only. For those in the room or on the webcast, you can sign on to liveqa.com and enter code GPC23 to submit any questions if you do not wanna raise your hand. Eric, I'll leave it to you to introduce your management team, give some opening remarks, and then we'll go into Q&A. Okay. Thanks, Eric. With me today, to my immediate left here is Brad Hill, our Chief Investment Officer, Al Campbell, our Chief Financial Officer, Tim Argo, Executive Vice President over our strategy and asset management. Coming here is Andrew Schaeffer, our Treasurer in Capital Markets, Investor Relations. With that, I'll turn it back to you, Eric. All right. Questions or whatever. Perfect. More to ask about. We've been starting out each session with the same question, which is what are the top 3 reasons to buy your stock today? Well, I think, it starts with really, we believe we have a REIT platform that's, really, positioned for full cycle outperformance, that has shown an ability to be particularly strong on a relative basis during periods of economic uncertainty or worrisome times. This is really due to a uniquely diversified portfolio focused on the high-growth Sun Belt markets, a diversified product portfolio, a rent price point for the portfolio that appeals to the broadest segment of the rental market, and finally, a very strong balance sheet, which has the lowest leverage in the sector, is A-minus rated by all three rating agencies. Secondly, I'd point to really the, the exciting introduction that we've been making last year and continue this year of a lot of new technologies to our platform that I think is going to really transform in many ways, how we execute business on site at our various properties that I think is gonna lead to more effective services for our residents. It's going to support a more effective and efficient execution of all the activities that we perform on site, and ultimately, we think, lead to some pretty meaningful margin expansion over the next two or three years. Thirdly, I would point to our external growth strategy that is poised to deliver some pretty meaningful earnings growth over the next 2 or 3 years, surpassing anything that we've done historically as a public REIT over the last now over 29 years. All this external growth is supported, as I mentioned, by a very strong balance sheet. Great. Thank you. Maybe we start with the margin expansion opportunity. Could you just sort of tell us, you know, what are the specific things that you're focused on? If, you know, everyone loves numbers, so if there's any way to sort of quantify sort of where margins are today and where you think you can go over time? Tim, you wanna run with that? Sure. I think, you know, with us, we approach it probably a little bit differently than some of the others. When we think back starting to 2020, we kind of looked at some of the revenue opportunities we had on the technology side, and it's specifically tied to the smart home technology. As we sit here today, we've rolled out over 80,000 units on our smart home platform, getting about a $25 rent increase for each one of those. What that does is gives the residents automated control of their lights, their locks, thermostat, and has some leak detection functions as well. As we finish the rollout of that this year and get into kind of mid-2024, there's about $25 million-$30 million of NOI that'll be embedded into our NOI stream related just to that smart home platform. That's about well over 100 basis points of margin opportunity that we started getting kinda in 2020, and we'll continue into 2024. As we sit here now, what we're also focused on, we put in a new CRM system during last year, which gives us a lot more visibility into multiple properties, and we can have, you know, one property manager managing multiple sites and have the visibility into properties across the market. We started to roll that out this year. We have about 15 of those we're calling pods in place right now. Expect to continue to roll that out. That particular initiative is probably a $5 million-$10 million, to call it 30-40 basis points of margin expansion as we roll that out. Over the next 3 years, I would say we have a couple hundred basis points of margin expansion. With those two things, we're continuing to do some things on the AI and chat technology that's driving more and better leads. That's more on the revenue side, demand side, creating more ripe leads, if you will, but also has some time-saving impact to it as well. When you, when you factor that, some things we're doing on self-touring, some things we're doing to centralize the less value add tasks that we're doing on site, all of that together, we think, like I said, kind of a couple hundred basis points over the next 3 years or so. You just gave guidance, and I think, you know, it's pretty consistent across the board if you look at all of the residential companies, not just within your space, but outside. As of far, MH, expense growth across the board is pretty high. I guess as we're updating our models and we're thinking about, you know, what 2024 could look like, you know, is there a reason to believe that some of these expenses should start normalizing by the end of this year? Do you think we're just gonna be in a sort of structurally, you know, higher expense environment for some time and, you know, that's the kind of expectation we should have at least for the next, call it, 1-2 years? Well, I mean, I would suggest that we think this year is probably a high watermark in a lot of ways on the expense side. You know, our biggest line item, of course, is real estate taxes, and as I think everyone knows, that's a backwards-looking game. A lot of the tax bills coming due in 2023 are a function of value assessments performed in 2022. I think as we are transitioning to sort of a different pricing environment, I think that suggests to us at least that taxes in 2024 are likely to look a little better than they did in 2023. We think 2023 may be slightly below 2022, but we are optimistic as we get into next year that we start to see some relief in that regard. Beyond that, you know, a lot of the inflationary pressures that we saw with materials and repair and maintenance expenses as well as in the labor front, a lot of those pressures were really evident in the early part of 2022, and we think that as we get into the back half of 2023, that we start again to see some relief on a year-over-year basis in that regard. Some of the things that Tim has just mentioned with some of our staffing model changes that we're working through, we'll be implementing some of that this year, more in 2024. That will continue, we think, to have some benefits to our labor cost line, which is obviously another big expense that we have. You know, a lot of questions yesterday in our meetings about insurance costs and, you know, we the way our program is structured, we renew our policy effective July 1 each year. The first 6 months of this year is really the renewal that we put in place last year, which is about running about 13% higher than it was previously. We've dialed into our expectations this year for a 20% increase in July 1 on that line item. That line item constitutes about 4% of our expense structure, so it's not a particularly impactful line item. That's probably the one area of our expense component of the P&L that we think is unlikely to see any relief over the next year or so. We'll more to come on that. Yeah, we do think that this year becomes sort of a high watermark on expenses. That's helpful. Sticking with operations, you put out your update for February. It looks like 4.2% blended growth. Obviously you should have, at this point, I think reasonably good visibility into March and April just based on where you're signing leases today. Could you just give us a sense for how March and April are shaping up? Then, you know, as you think beyond the next two months, what are the forward demand indicators telling you about how the overall peak leasing season could end up? Tim, you want to- For those who have the presentation, page 11, we updated some of the pricing and occupancy stats. On the renewal side, saw 8.7% in January, 8.8% in February. For what we're getting in March and April, it's right in line, kind of in that 8% range for those two months. That's what we've actually gotten accepted or signed, if you will. We expected, you know, particularly with the way pricing went last year, where new lease pricing overtook renewal pricing, that we would have some pretty good tailwind on renewals for the first 6, 7 months of this year. It's kind of doing what we expected, where renewals have been really strong, and then we're starting to see new leases slowly sort of accelerate. I think as we get into the spring and summer, we'll see new leases start to pick up. Renewals probably moderate a little bit just from a comparison standpoint, probably back to that 7% range is what I would expect. Then have some of the new leases taking on a little more of the acceleration as we get into spring, summer. Yeah, so far I would say pretty much everything's kind of going in line with what we expected, kind of a return to normal seasonality, though, I mean, this January, February, even with new lease pricing slightly negative is still better than outside of 2022, better than any new lease pricing we've seen in this time of the year for really as long as we've been tracking it. The other thing I'd point to is one of the things that we really track is what we refer to as exposure, which is a combination of the vacancy we currently have, coupled with the notices to move out that we have in hand. You know, I'm comfortable by the fact that our exposure at this point in the year is lower than the exposure at this point last year. We think that we're, you know, well-positioned as we head into the spring and summer. It's obviously the important part of the year for us from a leasing perspective. We have many more of our leases set to expire in the second and third quarter of the year as opposed to the first quarter. More to come, but, we think we're about as well positioned now as we could be. In terms of markets, we got some questions from the audience. First question is, besides Austin, what other markets are you concerned about supply in both 2023 and 2024? Do you feel that demand is strong enough to surpass supply? Beyond Austin, you know, we're keeping an eye on Phoenix, Charlotte a little bit, as well as Nashville. I think that, you know, historically for us, you know, we've always sort of built our strategy around the idea that, you know, we wanted to be invested where we expected demand to remain more resilient and stronger over the course of a full economic cycle. Recognizing that, in return, we have to be willing to incur, you know, a few quarters from time to time of supply pressure, which can create, you know, some degree of moderation. Certainly historically, the demand for the particularly last two or three years has been just incredibly strong. you know, a market that we saw particularly heavy levels of new supply last year, for example, in Austin, also happened to be one of the strongest rent growth markets that we had last year. I think, from a demand side, as we think about, you know, what things look like heading into the spring and summer, I'm still very confident that we will. While things have moderated a little bit as a function of some of the supply, that the demand dynamics are still very firmly in place, particularly in these Sun Belt markets. We're continuing to see job growth. We're continuing to see wage growth. We're continuing to see migration trends to these Sun Belt markets. We also continue to see very low turnover. The ability for our resident to go out and purchase a home is still very tough, and move-outs to buying a home are down significantly. As we think about the tailwind from that home buying challenge, coupled with what we are seeing in these Sun Belt markets is continued steady employment trends. We're pretty comforted by, you know, what we think will be healthy demand over the course of the summer. You know, the really the only sector that we've seen, you know, news of layoffs is really in the tech area. The two markets that probably are more at risk in that regard in our portfolio would be Austin and Raleigh to some degree. You know, on the ground, we've not seen any, you know, evidence of people coming in saying, "Look, I've just been laid off," or, "I lost my job, and I've gotta move. I've gotta get out of my lease." We're not seeing that at this point. You know, continue to also have a lot of confidence in the, you know, pretty diversified employment base that we have across these Sun Belt markets. You know, service-related industries continue to see strong job growth, manufacturing, a lot of the, you know, other, you know, industries and that really drive job growth in this region continue to hold up quite well. You mentioned the kind of the shifts in population that have really been a benefit over the past few years, probably accelerated by COVID. Are you seeing any changes to that, either the rate of kind of traffic coming in from out of state, or anything else from a population growth perspective, relative to the past few years? You know, Nick, it's still running higher than it has historically, pre-COVID. I mean, pre-COVID, as you look at the leases that we were writing for people coming into the Sun Belt markets, from outside of the Sun Belt, it constituted somewhere around 8%-9% of the leases that we were writing. During the sort of the peak of COVID, it jumped to, you know, not a lot, to about 14% of the leases that we were writing. Today, it's running around 12% of the leases that we are writing. I think that, you know, I think the migration trends to the Sun Belt markets, you know, have always been there to some degree. COVID accelerated it. Certainly, I think one of the things that we got out of COVID, a couple of things. One is just the, you know, I think there's a healthier appreciation for living in some of these Sun Belt markets perhaps than there had been before. Then, of course, I think we've all discovered a little bit more flexibility in terms of where we live and you know, where our employer is based. I think that is gonna continue to support these trends. My guess is, you know, we don't go back to 8%-9% of the leases. Maybe we hang out at 10 to 12 for a while, but, we haven't seen any sort of giant reversal, back that would suggest that all that happened over the last 2, 3 years is somehow gonna become undone. We're just not seeing that at all. That's helpful. Thanks. How about the reverse, right? You track where residents are moving out to, you know how many are moving out to buy homes. Are you seeing trends pick up of people leaving the states at all, or? No. About, when we look at, move-outs, about 4%-5% of the residents that leave us are turnover, are people moving back, to, you know, cities outside of the Sun Belt. That 4%-5% has been fairly consistent for since we've been tracking the data, frankly. We didn't see a lot of change in that regard, certainly during COVID, and we haven't seen a lot of change in that regard, you know, post-COVID. One of the most, I think, common questions and comments that Nick and others have heard is simply, that when they look at the Sun Belt markets, they like where the demand is today, but they're concerned that if you look at sort of the cadence of supply, that there's gonna be this wave of supply that hits later this year and into next year, at the same time that the job market starts slowing. I guess, you know, who knows what the job market's gonna do, but maybe you speak to the cadence of supply, sort of when you think sort of the deliveries will peak in your market, if that's later this year or early next year? On the reverse, if you think that they're gonna come down materially simply because of, you know, where capital costs have gone, for developers, land costs, construction costs. You know, I'll start with the fact that, you know, I've heard about supply concerns for 30 years, you know, we've been in this region, these markets forever. I've always said I've never, you know, really been worried about supply pressure. What really would keep me up at night and what I worry about more than anything is the demand side of the business. I think that, you know, moderation can occur as a function of supply in a given market, but disruption of the demand side of the equation is where, you know, things can really get ugly. We think that we're, you know, for that reason, we've always focused our capital on these Sun Belt markets. I do think that, you know, clearly the statistics and the starts and so forth out there suggest that we're gonna see more deliveries this year as compared to 2022. You know, it's not as significant as you might think. You know, the last 2 years or so, we've seen, particularly last year, we saw deliveries coming into our markets as a percent of existing stock, somewhere in the 3% to 3.5% range overall. That'll be up a little bit this year. Of course, it varies a good bit by market, as we talked about earlier, Phoenix, Austin, Charlotte, Nashville are some markets we're keeping an eye on. All the information that we see and Brad talking to developers and others suggest to us that, you know, permitting has absolutely come to a screeching halt. With the rise in construction costs that took place over the past year or so, we really think that we're gonna see sort of a peak from a supply perspective, probably late this year or first half of next year timeframe. I do think as we get towards the back half of 2024, we probably begin to see a little relief in that regard. Certainly, as we get into 2025 and 2026, we think we're poised to see some significant pullback in supply dynamics. You know, underwriting, what's likely to happen in terms of the broader economy and the employment market, is hard to say. You know, I just would point to the fact that, you know, we think that, on a relative or comparative basis to some of the other regions of the country, that it's more likely than not that these Sun Belt markets continue to capture, you know, more stability, at least. I don't know, you know, to what degree job growth continues in an accelerated fashion if we find ourselves in a weaker economy or slip into a recession. I do think that these Sun Belt markets have demonstrated a resiliency to the demand side of the business, on a comparative basis to some of the other regions of the country. While we may, you know, see the balance between demand or, you know, demand and supply moderate a bit over the next, you know, call it six to seven quarters, we do think that, we'll probably hang in there pretty well, and feel pretty good about, you know, our ability to continue to deliver results that compare favorably within the sector. As we get into 2025 and 2026, we're very bullish. One point I might add that I think is somewhat of a mitigating factor is, you know, looking across all markets, the new development coming in is about 20% or so higher than what our rents are. Our average rent's about $1,650 or so across the portfolio, so quite a bit higher in what's coming in. I think that creates a little bit of mitigation as well. That really gets back to the full cycle performance profile that I started our comments with. You know, we have a unique approach. Not only, you know, do we have a more affordable price point, which I think provides some ability to mitigate some supply pressure from time to time, but we have a very broad diversification across this region. While we have exposure to a number of the larger cities, we also have significant exposure to some of the secondary markets across the region, places like Jacksonville, Charleston, Greenville, South Carolina, Savannah. We find that these markets don't tend to get quite as supplied. They're not quite as volatile, and it brings a little bit more of a stabilizing influence into the performance of the portfolio, when we find ourselves in a period of, you know, higher deliveries. How do you think about the redevelopment opportunity coming off of that higher price point of supply? Well, you know, it's fueling a lot of redevelopment opportunity for us. We've been focused on unit interior renovations for the past several years, running, you know, anywhere from 7,000-8,000 units that we'll renovate each year. We'll obviously do that again this year. As, you know, Tim alluded to, with that gap, on average of a 20% difference between you know, rents coming in with new supply relative to where we are, it really creates the opportunity to do the repositioning or do the redevelopment, capture meaningful accretive returns on that use of capital, but still offer the rental market a price point that is at a discount to new supply. In particular, we got a lot of that opportunity, enhanced or embedded in the portfolio through the acquisition we made a little over 5 years ago, Post Properties, which is, you know, in some superior locations, but the product had some age on it that we've been able to address, and I think is gonna create, you know, some, continue to create some, you know, good organic or internal earnings growth opportunity for us. Do those rent bumps that you get when you reposition, do they normally hold? I'm just curious whether the rent bumps, you know, over time reflect the, you know, the longer-term IRR that you can expect, or is it at some point, you know, you need to actually just kind of redo the same thing over and over such that, you know, the IRR gets compressed a bit? You wanna go at that? Yeah. I mean, we underwrite it on an unleveraged basis, kind of 10%, 11% IRR, and that's really giving really no terminal value, kind of a 7-8 year run. What we've seen is typically they hold up, and then perhaps there's an opportunity, as you mentioned, to do it again in 8 or 10 years as tastes change or designs change and the neighborhoods are strong. Like Eric said, I mean, we've been doing it at some level for probably 15 years or more, and we still have, you know, 15,000 units we've identified or so right now that we think we can do that. That tends to be somewhat evergreen. We'll do, call it 6,000 or 7,000 this year, and we'll start looking at additional opportunities, and typically we can find some pretty good opportunities to continue that going forward. The way we do it, where we're trying to, you know, we do it on turns and measure against a non-renovated unit, helps us ensure that we are getting that rent increase that we intended, and if we're not, we can halt it or stop it or change it up. Eric, you mentioned that your contacts have told you that permits have come to a screeching halt. You know, we're not seeing any distress yet, but maybe that's finally is maybe a first sign of some stress happening, cap rates are widening. I guess my question is, a number of your peers, and others in the private side have been looking more like mezz lending, structured investment opportunities. Is that something that sort of interests you in this environment? Maybe just not only for the return that you get, but also potentially to get your hands on some high-quality assets that are either in lease-up or under development right now. No. It doesn't. You know, I have long believed that, in an effort to sort of meet our obligations as a REIT, that one of the things that, you know, sort of founding principles that we have to protect is a high-quality earning stream. You know, I've long avoided any sort of investment opportunities that have sort of a short-term element to it. You know, anything that is structured as mezz financing or, you know, any sort of joint venture structures that we've ever entertained. It was absolutely, you know, essential that we have a clear pathway to definitive ownership of the asset when that relationship ended. I think that, you know, introduction of nonrecurring revenue streams into our profile is something that we don't really endorse doing. We do have, like many of our peers, we do have a merchant builder program, if you will. We call it essentially a pre-purchase program, where essentially we will structure a JV with merchant builders in the region, and we will bring the capital to them. They have a land site or they have some, you know, opportunity tied up. We bring the capital, they build it. Sometimes they lease it up, sometimes we lease it up. It's with a clear understanding that upon lease-up and upon stabilization, they leave, and we own it. We've had that program in place now for several years, and, you know, Brad manages. Again, it's, you know, it provides, a mechanism for... I mean, as we're investing money through the development in a JV structure, we know we will own the asset. And we've got the recurring revenue stream that will come from that. Any sort of just, you know, mezz lending with the opportunity to maybe or maybe not get the asset is not something that we're interested in doing. In your guidance, you have about $400 million of acquisitions, I think at around a 3% yield. I mean, that's a really specific number. Should we take from that you're already pretty far along with some of those opportunities, and that's why you're guiding to that? Or is that just simply a sort of a conservative placeholder at a low yield, Brad? Yeah. I mean, that's just a conservative placeholder at this point. I mean, you know where we found success in the acquisition market over the last five years has really been assets that were early on in lease-up. I think our view is, as we get later in this year, again, our ability to be successful in the acquisition market is likely gonna be in lease-up properties. You know, a property, when it gets its CO, is generally about 30%, 40% leased. We're assuming that these assets are, you know, right out of construction, have their CO and early in lease-up. That's where you're getting the 3% yield number from. I'll tell you, the $400 million is also back-end loaded of the year, just based on what we're seeing in the transaction market right now. You know, it just takes a little time for buyers and sellers right now to see pricing through a very similar lens. I think as we get closer to the back half of this year, there'll be more transaction volume, and we'll start to see some opportunities there. We're very early in that. I would say we're starting to get a lot more call, inbound calls from developers and sellers in our market. It feels like we're on the early stages of that beginning, but that's all back end of the year in lease-up assets. I guess everyone's been talking about the, you know, sort of wide bid-ask spread is what closes that spread. Just simply that, the people that you're getting calls from just don't have other capital options, and they're coming up on, you know, debt that's due in two or three quarters. I guess, what's changing between today versus, you know, the second quarter and third quarter that's actually gonna lead to more normal transaction environment? Well, I think it's a couple things. I think, one, visibility that everybody is seeing that the interest rates are likely to remain higher for a longer period of time. I think what you saw at the end of last year, first part of this year, is folks are just buying time, trying to push off in the hopes that interest rates are coming down next year. I think what we're seeing is that's likely not the case. These sellers that, you know, for all of the projects, in our region of the country, they're predominantly merchant developers, where those assets do need to trade. That's the way they make their living, sell their assets, move on to the next deal. Those will need to trade at some point. The lenders are not likely to extend their loans. I think when visibility of the interest rate environment becomes a bit clearer, which I think it is now, the realization that interest rates are not coming down begins to hit. I think the visibility into pricing and cap rates occurs when we get more transaction volume. Until we get more volume, it, you know, your 1031 buyers, your loan assumptions are really what's driving the market right now. We need more volume to really get visibility there. Gotcha. I guess on the flip side, in dispositions, I know you've been asked this question before, Eric, but just in terms of the D.C. portfolio, you're still holding on to numbers from the Post Properties exposure there. You know, at what point does it make sense just to kind of lower that, just get rid of it and just say, purely focus on the Sun Belt? Or do you actually like the little bit of balance that it provides? I'm sorry, you're asking about D.C., is that? Yes. Okay. Sorry if it's not coming across clearly. No. My wife tells me I'm hard of hearing. I guess I am. I would say that, you know, with really most of what we have in that area, frankly, is predominantly more Northern Virginia. We only have one property actually in the D.C. market per se. We sold one up in the Maryland market, sub-market last year. We'll sell another one this year. I think that, you know, basically what we're left with is some exposure to suburban Northern Virginia, and we like that. My guess is we'll probably hang on to that for a while. We've done some repositioning of those properties that is working out quite well. No immediate needs to do anything with the residual we have up there at the moment. If there's no investor questions, we've been asking in each session, top ESG priority this year. Yeah, I'll take that. As we recently reported, MAA achieved a 22% reduction in energy use intensity and a 31% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions intensity from our 2018 baseline, meeting our goal 7 years before our original 2028 target. In 2023, we'll be establishing new targets on both energy use and GHG emissions. Great. Since we actually have a few more minutes, let's ask one on top of that. What's the technology innovation that you're most excited about? Eric, if you think about the sort of ability to change your business to sort of redefine how it works, what could surprise people, say, five years from now when they look at the apartment business versus how it's run today? Well, I think that, you know, the CRM program that Tim alluded to, which stands for, you know, customer relationship management program, is really an opportunity to, I think not only be more effective and more efficient in our leasing operation, but it's what also gives us the capability to, for an individual sitting, you know, frankly, in front of a computer anywhere to work with leasing prospects anywhere. I think that, and then also some other things that we're doing with AI and chat, some other technologies, we're getting better about screening the traffic such that we're only spending our energy and time on the transaction or the traffic that we think has the highest probability of conversion. I think the opportunities from that not only benefit, you know, ultimately some staff saving opportunity, but importantly, you know, we think it drives, frankly, a higher level of quality traffic that leads to more leases and ultimately has some benefit on the revenue side in terms of pricing as well. You know, as Tim alluded to, you know, we've been very mindful of trying to, you know, think about margin expansion, not just from, you know, cutting overhead or cutting people and cutting staffing. It, it's, you know, as we talked about yesterday, you know, we have a $2 billion revenue line, and our operating expenses are $700 million. you know, what I don't wanna do is one of the things we have to be really careful with is we, you know, get in our zeal for efficiencies, and cutting, you know, something on that $700 million of expenses. I don't wanna cut $1 of expense and wind up losing $1 revenue along the way because our service or our product has deteriorated in some way. I think the technology surrounding CRM allows us the opportunity to not only, you know, drive some benefits on the expense side, but I'm very mindful of the importance of also protecting quality of service, quality of product and quality of brand along the way. I'm as interested in growing revenues as I am cutting expenses. Really rapid. What will same-store NOI be in 2024 for your property sector? I'm sorry, in a what? Same-store NOI in 2024 for apartments. I would put it at 6%. What's the best real estate decision today, buy, build, sell or redevelop or hold? Sell. All right. Best real estate decision today. For us, it's renovate and then develop. Great. Then will there be the same, fewer or more apartment companies this time next year? Fewer. Thank you.