Michael Frankel
Analyst · John Kim with BMO
Thank you, David, and welcome, everyone, to Rexford Industrial's third quarter earnings call. I'll begin with a few remarks, followed by Howard, who will provide some additional market operational color, then Laura will provide more detail related to our performance and financial results. To begin with, I'd like to thank our Rexford team for delivering a strong quarter across all of our value creation initiatives. Compared to the prior year quarter, our team grew FFO by 33% and grew FFO per share by 12%, driven by strong same property pool average occupancy of 97.8%, exceptional leasing spreads of 65% on a GAAP basis and 51% on a cash basis as well as the substantial cash flow per share growth generated from our investments completed over the prior year. Tenant demand within our infill Southern California industrial markets continues to demonstrate resilience with market occupancy hovering around 98%, roughly equating to the 2019 market occupancy levels immediately preceding the pandemic. As expected, we continue to see market rent growth normalizing from the unprecedented growth we experienced during the pandemic. With regard to our Rexford portfolio, providing high-quality prime locations within our submarkets, we continue to experience healthy diverse tenant demand as reflected in our strong operating metrics. Although general economic conditions remain uncertain, Rexford remains well positioned. The company is currently situated with an estimated 33% embedded cash NOI growth within our existing portfolio, realizable over the next two years, assuming today's rents. Our largest of NOI growth derives from our repositioning and redevelopment work, which we continue to grow as we mine our in-place portfolio for incremental value creation opportunities. And as we layer in new investments, that are delivering strong levels of FFO per share accretion. Looking forward, as markets nationwide normalize towards their post-pandemic levels of equilibrium and supply, we believe Rexford's entrepreneurial asset management, repositioning and value-add investing programs will enable the company to further differentiate our performance and FFO per share growth. We also believe over the near term, that the favorable supply-demand dynamics associated with our infill Southern California industrial markets will continue to drive the strongest tenant demand fundamentals of any major market in the nation. Further supporting Rexford's favorable outlook, we remain focused on maintaining our investment grade, low leverage balance sheet ending the quarter at 16.7% net debt to total enterprise value, which provides the ability to both protect the company during uncertain times while also positioning Rexford capitalized upon accretive investment opportunities as they may arise. With that, I'd like to acknowledge our Rexford team once again for your market-leading efforts that continue to differentiate Rexford's performance. And now it's my pleasure to hand the call over to Howard.