The Macerich Company (NYSE:MAC) Q2 2022 Earnings Conference Call July 28, 2022 1:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Samantha Greening - Director of Investor Relations

Tom O'Hern - Chief Executive Officer

Scott Kingsmore - Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Doug Healey - Senior Executive Vice President of Leasing

Conference Call Participants

Greg McGinniss - Scotiabank

Derek Johnston - Deutsche Bank

Craig Schmidt - Bank of America

Floris Van Dijkum - Compass Point

Alexander Goldfarb - Piper Sandler

Linda Tsai - Jefferies

Michael Mueller - J.P.Morgan

Todd Thomas - KeyBank Capital Markets

Operator

Good day, and welcome to The Macerich Company Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. Today's conference is being recorded.

At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Ms. Samantha Greening, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Samantha Greening

Thank you for joining us on our second quarter 2022 earnings call. During the course of this call, we'll be making certain statements that may be deemed forward-looking within the meaning of the Safe Harbor of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding projections, plans or future expectations. Actual results may differ materially due to a variety of risks and uncertainties set forth in today's press release and our SEC filings, including the adverse impact of the novel coronavirus on the US, regional and global economies and the financial condition and results of the operations of the company and its tenants. Reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in the earnings release and supplemental filed on Form 8-K with the SEC, which are posted on the Investors section of the company's Web site at macerich.com. Joining us today are Tom O'Hern, Chief Executive Officer; Scott Kingsmore, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and Doug Healey, Senior Executive Vice President of Leasing.

With that, I turn the call over to Tom.

Tom O'Hern

Thank you, Samantha, and thanks to all of you for joining us today. We are very pleased to report another strong quarter with the majority of our operating metrics trending very positively. After a strong first quarter, we also had a very strong second quarter. We saw a high level of retailer demand, the resiliency of the American consumer was again on display and that is reflected in the 2.2% tenant sales increase in the second quarter compared to a very tough comp quarter of the second quarter of '21. Our portfolio average annual sales per foot for tenants under 10,000 square feet was 860, that's our highest level ever. We continue to see traffic at about 95% of pre-COVID traffic, but tenant sales are exceeding 2021 levels and also pre-pandemic levels. First half of '22 sales were up 7.6% versus the first half of '21 and sales per feet were up 11% compared to the pre-COVID quarter ended in the second quarter of 2019. The quarter's leasing activity continue to reflect retailer demand that is at a level that we have not seen since 2015.