Realty Income
Q2 2023 Earnings Call
Aug 03, 2023, 2:30 p.m. ET
Contents:
- Prepared Remarks
- Questions and Answers
- Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Good afternoon, and welcome to the Realty Income second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. [Operator instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Steve Bakke, vice president of capital markets and investor relations. Please go ahead.
Steve Bakke -- Vice President, Capital Markets and Investor Relations
Thank you, all, for joining us today for Realty Income's second quarter operating results conference call. Discussing our results will be Sumit Roy, president and chief executive officer; Christie Kelly, executive vice president, chief financial officer, and treasurer; and Jonathan Pong, senior vice president, head of corporate finance. During this conference call, we will make statements that may be considered forward-looking statements under federal securities laws. The company's actual future results may differ significantly from the matters discussed in any forward-looking statements.
We will disclose in greater detail the factors that may cause differences in the company's Form 10-Q. [Operator instructions] I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Sumit Roy.
Sumit Roy -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Steve. Welcome, everyone. We successfully executed on our strategy in the second quarter and continued to see momentum across the business. I would like to sincerely thank our One Team whose focus and commitment to continue to propel our business forward, serving all our clients and stakeholders.
We believe the strength of our platform and quality of our real estate portfolio were evident in the quarter's results. Despite a challenging interest rate environment, AFFO per share grew 3.1% from last year to $1 per share. Combined with our dividend, we are pleased to have delivered a total operational return of over 8% on a trailing 12-month basis. Delivering stable and consistent growth is foundational to our mission at Realty Income.
Underlying this growth, our team continues to invest in high-quality properties at accretive spreads to our cost of capital while partnering with our clients who are leaders in nondiscretionary low price point and service-oriented industries. Partnering with industry leaders across over 13,000 properties in a diversified real estate portfolio offers us durability of cash flows that results in the predictable nature of our revenues, earnings, and dividend payments. Our investment activities remain robust as we continue to demonstrate that size and scale are unique advantages in the sale-leaseback and portfolio transaction markets. In the second quarter, we closed on approximately $3.1 billion of high-quality real estate investments, which brings our year-to-date investment activity to over $4.7 billion.