The Macerich Company (NYSE:MAC) Q1 2022 Earnings Conference Call May 9, 2022 1:00 PM ET
Company Participants
Samantha Greening - Director of Investor Relations
Thomas O'Hern - CEO & Director
Scott Kingsmore - Senior EVP, CFO & Treasurer
Douglas Healey - Senior EVP & Head of Leasing
Conference Call Participants
Derek Johnston - Deutsche Bank
Craig Schmidt - BofA Securities
Samir Khanal - Evercore ISI
Floris Van Dijkum - Compass Point Research
Linda Tsai - Jefferies
Mike Mueller - JPMorgan
Ki Bin Kim - Truist Securities
Richard Hill - Morgan Stanley
Michael Bilerman - Citigroup
Caitlin Burrows - Goldman Sachs
Operator
Good day, and welcome to The Macerich Company First 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 first 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 COVID-19 on the U.S., 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 website 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.
Thomas O'Hern
Thank you, Samantha, and thanks to all of you for joining us today. We are pleased to report another outstanding quarter, with virtually all our operating metrics trending very positively. After a strong second half of 2021, the first quarter of '22 was even better, which is a tribute to our team and the quality of our portfolio. We continue to see robust and accelerating retailer demand. The resiliency of the American consumer is once again on display. Shoppers have come roaring back to our centers to shop with a purpose. We continue to see a high conversion rate, higher than pre-COVID as traffic is about 95% of 2019 traffic levels, but tenant sales are exceeding pre-pandemic levels, with the first quarter of '22 sales up 11.5% over the first quarter of 2019 and exceeding the first quarter of '21 sales by 14.5%.