Well, I show at 8:45 A.M., so we will get started. Thanks for being here this morning. My name is Eric Bolton. I'm Chairman and CEO of Mid-America Apartments. To my left is Brad Hill, who is our President, Chief Investment Officer. To his left is Tim Argo, our Executive Vice President, Head of Strategic Planning and Analysis and Asset Management. And to my right is Clay Holder, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. I'm gonna just offer some introductory comments about our company for those who may not be familiar with our story. Brad will give a quick update on some operating trends, and then Clay will give a quick update on our balance sheet, and then we'll open up for whatever discussion or conversations that you guys wanna have. Hopefully everyone has got a copy of the presentation. Andrew, in the back there, who is also on our team, our Treasurer and Head of Investor Relations, has those, if you don't have one. Just looking at the presentation quickly, by way of introduction, on page three, we are an apartment-only focused, apartment-only REIT focused on the Sunbelt region of the country. We've been public and focused on these markets in the apartment industry for 30 years. You see roughly the size of the company, right around $20 billion market cap, a little over 100,000 apartments. Very strong balance sheet, one of the few A-rated balance sheets, A-minus rated balance sheets in the apartment space. For 30 years, we've paid a steady growing dividend, have never reduced or suspended our dividend through all various phases of cycles over the last 30 years. Our strategy is really built around, as recapped quickly on page five, is really built around the idea of trying to drive the best full-cycle performance we can for shareholder capital, through all phases of the cycle. Our execution is really built around the idea that, first and foremost, it starts with being positioned with real estate properties, where we believe that the demand side of the business is likely to be the strongest and steadiest over a full cycle, and thus our orientation towards the high-growth Sunbelt markets that we have. We've over the years have just continued to see. M ore recently, really in the last five years to 10 years, particularly, have seen migration trends, job growth trends, the relative more affordable lifestyle that a lot of these markets offer. J ust continue to bring more and more jobs and demand for apartment housing across these markets. Continue to believe very much in being oriented with our capital in these high-growth markets as we are. Pages 13 and 15 really get into a bit more about the demand side of the business, as we see it from the markets where we are invested. Obviously, the challenge that we occasionally will run into in these Sunbelt markets is supply. The barriers to new supply coming into the market are not quite as high as you might see in other regions of the country. And while we cannot eliminate supply pressure, there are things we can do to help mitigate that pressure. We talk a little bit about some of that. Our footprint is actually recapped on page seven in your presentation. You can see where we are. But broadly, from a diversification perspective, in terms of portfolio diversification, we focus our capital intentionally on both some of the larger markets across the region. A s well as some of the more mid-tier markets, where we believe the supply dynamics play out a little bit differently. We offer a price point that appeals to a broad segment of the rental market, which provides some downside protection as well. Elsewhere in the presentation, you'll see on pages 23-25, a number of initiatives we have underway involving new technologies, opportunities we think over the next few years to continue to drive higher operating margins from the existing asset base that we have. And then, I'll also then quickly point you to, and Clay will touch more on this, towards the back of the presentation, a bit about our balance sheet. We have a lot of capacity to put capital to work right now and are continuing to start to see a few more opportunities to do so. And the final point I'll just make is, we are obviously, as I think most everyone in this room probably is aware of, we are working through a supply cycle at the moment, that we continue to see play out much along the lines of what we expected. Nothing really surprising occurring in that regard. And, you know, over the years, we have just come to appreciate that the pressures that we get from an operating perspective as a function of higher supply coming in the market. T he pressure that that creates, in our experience, is not nearly as great as the pressures you can see from disruption on the demand side of the business. And thus, our orientation towards these markets, we think, drives the opportunity for really full cycle performance. And I think that's recapped a little bit. If you jump to the back of the presentation, on pages 28 and 29. What we're really laying out there, particularly on page 28, is just sort of a recap of our performance relative to the other five big apartment REITs, over a long period of time there. You can see the variation that occurs in our story as a function of disruption on the demand side of the business, which occurred during the COVID years, 2020- 2021. Then you begin to see the impact of supply coming into the market reacting to the very strong demand that we saw coming out of COVID. And you can see that performance disparity laid out there. And again, you know, what we're trying to do is protect the downside more so than anything, and over time, again, drive performance that outperforms the sector over a full cycle. If you go all the way back to slide four, which just sort of recaps what we've done for shareholders over the last 30 years, we think that obviously the proof is in the results there. We continue to believe that we are positioned to see a very significant recovery begin to take place, probably early next year. We think some of the pressures we're seeing from supply begin to mitigate late this year. And then, for the next three years -four years, we think the conditions are teeing up to be very strong. So we're very, yeah, optimistic about where we sit today and look forward to really driving some pretty strong performance over the next few years. Brad, do you wanna update a bit? Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Eric. What I thought I'd do is just to give a quick update on our operating performance. A nd then maybe talk a little bit about some of our growth initiatives. You know, on the operating side, if you take a look at slide nine. Y ou know, as we set out this year, as we kinda laid out our expectations for the year, we certainly expected our renewals to really be pretty consistent in that 4.5%-5% range throughout the full year. And as you can see, we're really right in line with that, mid-4% or 4.8%, upper 5%, sorry, upper- 4% and low- 5% on our renewal rate, so that's pretty steady. We expect that to be the case throughout the full year. And as we expected, as we got into the summer, spring and summer leasing season, we do expect renewal rates to hold steady. We expect new lease rates, which is the most competitive, with the new supply we're seeing in our market. We do expect that to trend up and improve a bit as we get into this summer leasing season, and we are seeing that. If you look at our May performance that we just put out, it's about 140 basis points better than it was in April. So we're seeing the trends in line with our expectations for the year. We're about 150 basis points better than what we were in the first quarter. So all of the trends are tracking in line with our expectations at this point. Encouragingly, our occupancy is holding in there at 95.5%, so we're not having to give up occupancy in order to get the new lease rate performance that we're getting. So we feel really good about where we are. You know, as Eric mentioned, you know, our strategy is built on being located where the demand is, and we're seeing demand at our property levels, our traffic levels, our leads, things of that nature are above where they were in 2018-2019. So we feel good about where we are at this point here in the second quarter. You know, the next thing I wanted to do is really talk a little about some of our growth initiatives. If you look at page 21, you know, redevelopment, as Eric mentioned. O ne of the benefits of the supply coming into our region of the country is it does provide an opportunity for us to really focus on redevelopment of some of our units. It's a strategy that we have employed for years. And generally, the new supply that's coming into our markets is about $300 per unit on average, more expensive than our existing communities, which gives us the opportunity to go in to renovate our kitchen and our baths, to be able to drive additional rent growth above market rent growth, and really compete a little bit closer with some of that new supply. So it does provide an opportunity for us. And as you can see on slide 21, you know, our plan for this year is about 5,000-6,000 units in that program. We're able to generate 6.5%-7.5% rent growth above market rent growth, so it continues to be one of our best uses of capital. And then on slide 24, as Eric hit on just a little bit, you know, while we're tasking our teams on-site to really focus on performing for today and really capturing everything we can from a performance perspective today, we're always keeping an eye out to the future, improving our platform, investing in technology, really to help us improve our customer service, drive efficiencies, increase our revenues, and decrease expenses, and you'll see a number of initiatives that we have on that page there. Our smart home technology is something that we've now rolled out to almost all of our units across the portfolio, which really helps drive efficiencies. It also has a revenue component to it, as well. We're on the front end of some of these initiatives that we think will lead to efficiencies on-site over time. Some of our centralization and specialization efforts, we're really in the early innings of that. But a lot of work really going on, you know, continuing to invest in our platform to drive efficiencies over time, which will continue to help us improve margins. The other thing I would just mention is on the external growth front, if you look at slides 18-20... That continues to be a focus of ours, investing our balance sheet capacity that Clay will talk about, and really getting ahead of what Eric mentioned, we think is gonna be a really good operating environment in 2026- 2027, as the new supply continues to come down. We are investing in some new developments today. We have about $650 million under construction right now. We have started two new developments here in the second quarter. Yield expectations of those in the mid-6%, which brings us to about $850 million under construction. We'll look to start another one-two deals later this year, which will continue to increase that and bring our under-development pipeline to about $1 billion, which we think is where we want that on a run rate basis. So the team's done a great job really helping us get up to speed there. And all of these developments that we'll start this year will deliver in that 2026-2027 timeframe, which again we think is a really good time to have new units coming online from a performance perspective to help us continue to drive incremental growth into the future. And then the other thing we're doing is continuing to focus on the acquisition market. While the transaction market has been slower, we are finding opportunities there. Just over the last few quarters, we have purchased three deals. T wo in the fourth quarter of last year. O ne here in the second quarter. We continue to look at new opportunities in that area that are in their initial lease-up, where it's harder for buyers to get financing lined up. We're able to come in during lease-up, which we're very comfortable managing properties that are in their lease-up, and we're able to get a higher yield and return out of that than what the market, where market cap rates are. So we feel really good about our opportunities over the balance of this year to hit our forecast of $400 million in acquisitions. And then I'll turn it over to Clay, and he can tell you how we're gonna pay for those. Thanks, Brad. I'm gonna touch on some of the balance sheet highlights that are on pages 26 and 27 of the slide deck. And as Eric mentioned, our balance sheet is in great shape. At the end of the first quarter, we had $1.1 billion in combined cash and borrowing capacity under our revolving credit facilities. So as Brad mentioned, this provides ample opportunity to be able to fund those future investments. Our leverage at the end of the quarter remained low and it was at 3.6 x from a debt-to-EBITDA ratio perspective. Our outstanding debt was approximately 95% fixed, with an average maturity of just over seven years at an effective interest rate of 3.6%. Subsequent to the first quarter, we issued $400 million of public bonds at a rate of just under 5.4%, and those bonds will mature in 2032. Those proceeds from that bond issuance will effectively be used to retire a maturity that we have coming due this month. And then once we pay off this maturity here in June, our next maturity isn't until November of 2025. With that, I'll turn it back over to Eric and to wrap it up. Well, thanks, Clay and, Brad. I think at that point, this point, I think you've hopefully got a kind of a good view of where we are. Just open it up for questions, and happy to talk about whatever you guys wanna talk about. Yes. This is a big-picture question. B ut as an investor, I always worry about the wrong things. Looking back five years ago, I didn't worry about COVID, Ukraine, and all of that jazz. As people in the industry focus on this day- to- day, what do you think investors are worried about that they don't need to be worried about? What are investors not worried about that they should be worried about? Well, that's a good question. You know, the two things that I think the capital markets have historically worried about as it relates to our story, and worried about it in ways that were, you know, more than they should. T wo things: One is the threat of new apartment supply coming into the market, and two is the more affordable single-family housing market that we tend to operate in. And over full cycle, over time, I can tell you, neither of those two issues have ever really been a problem. We find that when supply delivers, you know, we go through a cycle where demand is really strong, supply is not keeping up with demand, developers have access to capital, developers do what they do, and as they really start building, and as long as they get capital, they keep building. And somewhere along the way, we realize that we've supplied the market more than it really needed for a period of time. And so what you're faced with, typically in our experience, is you go through four quarters- eight quarters of moderation in terms of our ability to push rents because there's just more supply in the market, and it really affects our primarily our pricing capabilities as it relates to new move-in residents. Historically, we've always been able to capture fairly steady performance as it relates to renewal pricing, but in terms of new leases, that's where you tend to be more at risk for supply issues coming to the market. But I would just tell you that in our experience, you just sort of... because of the things that we've done to try to protect ourselves against periodic periods of supply pressure through a very thoughtful diversification approach that we've taken with the portfolio and maintaining a price point of the portfolio that appeals to a broad segment of the rental market. We've always been able to work through those supply cycles without, you know, really seeing anything resembling a collapse. And we've been through multiple supply cycles. So, and I will take that modest pressure from time to time in an effort to stay positioned in front of a significant amount of growing demand. You wanna talk about where you can really see a collapse in performance, is when you have something nobody really wants to buy. W here demand dries up, that's where you run into real problems. And, these Sunb elt markets tend to provide an ability to be better positioned over a full cycle, from a demand perspective than, than other regions of the country. We've been through a number of recessionary periods, in our history, going all the way back to 2018- 2019, during the Great Financial Crisis. We were one of the very few REITs that really did not see a significant amount of pressure, on our performance. We didn't suspend. W e didn't cut our dividend, didn't do any dilutive equity issuances, and we worked through those cycles, better than most. So I would tell you that the worry that the market subscribes to supply, and it's always very headline-grabbing, and it's very definitive in nature, and you can see it coming, and so people just tend to overreact, I think, to supply pressure. The other thing I can tell you is, you know, while single-family housing is broadly more affordable as in our markets as compared to some of the coastal markets, single-family housing broadly has never, again, never really been a problem. Of course, we're in a period now where mortgage rates have jumped up to a point that housing costs, because the migration trends and the population growth trends in these Sunb elt markets have been so strong. W e've seen a rapid rise in single-family housing cost across our markets. So it's actually... You know, and our turnover for people leaving us to go buy a house is at record low levels. We've never seen it this low before, and we don't really see that changing in a significant way anytime soon. But, but typically, when the single-family housing market is really booming, it's usually accompanied by also pretty strong economy, and that's creating jobs and other things that are driving demand for overall housing. So I would just, to answer your question about what are the worries that sometimes the market has that are, you know, more so than they should be, I would point to those two things. I think in terms of, you know, at least what I worry about, and the thing that is, I think would be the most impactful from a negative perspective, is really a deep recession in the country. S ome sort of major pullback in the broader economy, which really causes the demand for housing to start to slow or constrict in some form or fashion. That can really impact pretty significantly your top line. And, you know, I... But I would say, and add that, as I mentioned a moment ago, during a deep recession, when the job market really pulls back and the demand for housing really slows,. Historically, at least, our markets have tended to weather those periods better than some of the coastal markets. And so, you know, I—as long as the demand is strong and demand is there, we can work through whatever challenges the market wants to throw our way. And, you know, I think that, you know, from my perspective, being positioned where demand is likely to be the best over time, over a full economic cycle, is the right approach to take, and that's our orientation to the Sunb elt. But, that's what I worry about the most. Yes, sir? Can you talk about development costs and what they look like today, versus what they looked like pre-COVID, and what the current trend is as far as those costs are concerned? Yep. Yeah, I mean, versus pre-COVID, I mean, they're up substantially. You know, I don't know if I could give you an exact number, but, they're up substantially. I would say the trend over the last year or so has certainly not been broad reduction in costs. It's been more stabilization. We've seen. Depends on the market, but construction costs generally are hanging in there. We're not seeing large increases at this point. We are seeing, from contractors, better coverage. You know, certainly as the contractors look out and look at their book and, you know, they thought they had 10 projects for the year, and now they have two projects. W e are seeing them certainly have better coverage from their subcontractors, so performance should be better going forward. You know, my hope is that as we continue to work through the reduction in supply later this year, that we're able to see some level of cost reduction, whether it's in profit margins for some of the subcontractors. You know, you probably aren't gonna see a reduction in some of the materials and things of that nature, but profit margins, some of the labor costs you could see a little bit of reduction there. But we're not expecting to see a significant reduction in construction costs at this point, but are certainly hopeful that we get some later this year. I mean, the way we've positioned our development pipeline at this point, you know, we own 10 sites at the moment, about 2,800 units that are really ready to go if we're able to get some reduction in construction costs or some improvement in the operating metrics that help us hit our return requirements. So, we're certainly in the market every day, pricing new projects and seeing where the construction market is. But it's stable, but we're not seeing a broad reduction at the moment. How much of a move in costs coming down would you mean to see [audio distortion]? You know, pro, I'd say in the 5%-7% range is what we would need to see across the board to make a lot of these projects more feasible. You know, one thing I'll add about, sort of the current environment for delivering, construction projects and, and getting those projects built out that's different today than it was two years ago, three years ago, is that we're seeing a tendency for projects, much more so today, to stay on schedule. Starting, you know, two or three years ago, when the development pipelines, or the construction projects really started going and all these starts really started, picked up in a big way, we were seeing, real pressures from local, inspection code enforcement, permitting, delays. The staffs were just understaffed relative to the demand to get out there and approve projects and inspect projects as they were being built, creating a lot of delays in construction. Coupled with two years-three years ago, we were still fighting through a lot of supply chain issues and, other, you know, delays in delivery. So you were seeing routinely a lot of projects that were slated to start delivering one quarter slip, you know, one quarter-three quarters in some cases. We're not seeing that at this point, which is partly what gives us a lot of confidence that as we look at, you know, the starts peaked two years ago. A nd based on our experience, the max pressure that comes from, you know, new units coming into the market is about two years after the starts occurred. So that really coincides with, we think right now, we are in the, in the time frame where the supply pressure is being the most felt. And as we get later into this year, it starts to dissipate a bit. And, and I think that given the fact that, over the last, you know, four quarters-six quarters, as this supply has been coming into the market, the absorption has actually been pretty strong. And, and as a consequence of the absorption remaining strong as it is, the market is absorbing the supply at a pace that I think it was surprising most people. And, and it's not like we're digging a big hole that we got to dig out of. Occupancy are holding in the 95.5% range. Rent growth is not as good as it was two years ago, but it's hanging in there just fine, such that when you start to turn the supply spigot off, which we think is happening later this year and into next year, the opportunity for recovery, we think, is really gonna be pretty quick and pretty strong. Yes, sir? Yeah, just, on that point. J ust turnover. H ousing turnover has been so low with mortgage rates 7%. Is there any, is there any worry that maybe the absorption's been so high because there's some shadow demand, housing demand, that is going to apartments now because they just can't get a home? Well, I mean, certainly, the move-outs that we are having, as I've mentioned a moment ago. T he move-outs that are occurring due to people leaving us to go buy a house, are at record low levels. I think that where were we to see mortgage rates start to fall in a meaningful way and the market adjust in some fashion such that home buying became increasingly more affordable, it probably does translate into some higher level of resident turnover that begins to occur, and we will probably someday trend back to something more normal in terms of that. But what I would tell you is that if the single-family housing market does begin to really take off and, you know, people are being much more active in buying homes, that's usually accompanied by a pretty good economy, and people are feeling confident in their employment. The job market is good. The job market is, you know, wages are growing, and all those things also drive demand for apartment housing as well. So we've been through cycles. I mean, the only time, I will tell you, the only time that single-family housing ever really created some meaningful pressure for us was the two years or so leading up to the Great Financial Crisis, when, you know, you really didn't have to have any meaningful credit history to get a mortgage. 2016, 2015... Or, no, before that, 2008- 2009. It was. You know, we were having single-family developers, you know, come into our apartment communities at night and put hangers on the door saying, "You know, we'll pay to move you. No down payment, you know, no, no job history, whatever. You can buy a house." And, you know, that was probably the most, the only time we ever really saw pressure from single-family housing. So, I think that, you know, at some point, you know, turnover will become, will pick up again. But the other thing I would also mention to you is the demographic shift that's occurring broader across society and also as it applies to our portfolio is worth making note of. And I think the demographic shift that is occurring is driving, at least based on what we see, a lower level of demand in the future, I think, for single-family housing. When you look at the demographics, and we have a slide there in our presentation, over 80% of our residents are single. M ajority are female. And largely, this is a demographic that is not as prone to want the single-family commitment, the single-family housing. They want the on-site amenities, the on-site fitness, the on-site maintenance, the structured parking deck, the ability to get out of their park their car in a parking deck, get on an elevator, and go to their apartment. All those, the, those lifestyle options really cater to the, the, the clientele that we are increasingly serving. And so I think to some degree, a lot of the, the, the rut, the, decline in move-outs to single-family housing are really associated with some of these shifts in society. I'll also quickly add, when you look at the amount of turnover that we have with people leaving us to go rent a single-family house, it's, it's very, very minimal. It's about 4% of our total turnover are people leaving us to go rent a house, and it's just never been a problem. Yes, sir? When you talk about the transactions market, if you're seeing an uptick, would you characterize it as modest or significant? And also, just a comment on, you know, cap rates, where they're trending? Yeah, I mean, we have seen an uptick in kind of marketed deals coming out in the second quarter, and I think we would expect as the interest rate volatility you know, is lower, that that would pick up a bit as we get into the late second quarter and third quarter. You know, transaction volume in general continues to be depressed, but we're seeing that pick up a little bit. I think in terms of cap rates, you know, what we saw really in the first quarter and continue to see are cap rates for well-located properties in our market. High-quality properties are in, call it, low fives on average. So, continues to be a lot of demand from capital for properties in our region of the country, again, for the well-located assets. And, you know, there's plenty of bids on those. The bid sheets are often, you know, four, five, six deep in the best and final round. So there's a lot of interest at those cap rates within our markets. Got time for one more question. Yes? Given that your stock trades, you know, at a cap rate that's higher than what you see in the private market, why not buy stock as opposed to, you know, engage in acquiring new property? Well, the way we look at share repurchase as a compared to an alternative investment, along the lines of what Brad's talking about, it really, for us, is a process of considering which option is going to offer the best after- CapEx yield on the incremental capital that we deploy. And then the second thing I would say is that as a REIT that is really in business to drive returns to shareholder capital through compounding earnings growth and compounding dividend growth, we have to think about, you know, the residual cash flow after- CapEx and the best opportunity to deploy that capital over a long period of time to create that compounding value growth proposition. You know, long time being 10 years or generally longer than that. Today, when you look at, sort of where we're being priced, the opportunity to invest in our existing real estate portfolio through share repurchase, as compared to one of these other alternatives that Brad's talking about, all brand-new properties. When you look at the yield of those two alternatives on an after-CapEx basis, while the initial yield opportunity associated with investing in our existing real estate portfolio is more attractive, those lines cross at about year four right now. And then the performance beyond that is much stronger with the, on an after-CapEx basis, with the newer product that we're looking at. Now, that's not to say... I mean, there is a price point where investing in your existing real estate portfolio, your existing earnings stream, is more compelling over a long time. I hope we don't see that kind of stock price, but it is possible to get there. And so, but as we sit here today, it's not compelling enough versus the alternative that we have. We appreciate your time. Thank you.