Equity Residential (EQR) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending June 30, 2023

July 28, 2023 11:00 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Please standby. Good day, and welcome to the EQR 2Q '23 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. Today's conference is being recorded.

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Martin McKenna.

Martin McKenna

Good morning, and thanks for joining us to discuss Equity Residential's second quarter 2023 results. Our featured speakers today are Mark Parrell, our President and CEO; Michael Manelis, our Chief Operating Officer; and Bob Garechana, our Chief Financial Officer; Alex Brackenridge, our Chief Investment Officer is here with us as well for the Q&A. Our earnings release is posted in the Investors section of equityapartments.com.

Please be advised that certain matters discussed during this conference call may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements are subject to certain economic risks and uncertainties. The company assumes no obligation to update or supplement these statements that become untrue because of subsequent events.

Now I will turn the call over to Mark Parrell.

Mark Parrell

Thank you, Marty. Good morning, and thank you all for joining us today to discuss our second quarter 2023 results. As we work our way through the leasing season, the business is performing well with same-store expenses now looking a little bit better than we thought leading us to lower our guidance for that item last night.

As a result of this, and lower expected interest expense, we are pleased to again raise our same-store net operating income and normalize funds from operations guidance after raising same-store NOI and NFFO guidance just two months ago based on better expected revenue results.

In a moment, Michael Manelis will give you color on revenue drivers across our markets. After Michael’s remarks, Bob will address the details of the improvement in our expense, and NFFO guidance, as well as our successful pending refinancing activity.

The overall theme here is that Equity Residential continues to benefit like most of the multifamily industry from solid demand, but with the more unique benefit of our mostly coastal portfolio being less exposed to the significant levels of supply just beginning to be delivered in the Sunbelt markets. We also continue to manage expenses well in an inflationary environment, which we expect will allow us to drive more dollars to the bottom-line than our competitors over time.