Veris Residential Inc. (NYSE:VRE) Q4 2022 Earnings Conference Call February 22, 2023 8:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Mahbod Nia - Chief Executive Officer

Amanda Lombard - Chief Financial Officer

Taryn Fielder - General Counsel, Secretary

Conference Call Participants

Steve Sakwa - Evercore ISI

Tom Catherwood - BTIG

Joshua Dennerlein - Bank of America

Nicholas Joseph - Citi

John Pawlowski - Green Street Advisors

Derek Johnston - Deutsche Bank

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the Veris Residential Inc. fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call.

All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star then zero on your telephone keypad. After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two.

Please note this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Taryn Fielder, General Counsel. Please go ahead.

Taryn Fielder

Good morning everyone and welcome to the Veris Residential fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call.

I would like to remind everyone that certain information discussed on this call may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Although we believe the estimates reflected in these statements are based on reasonable assumptions, we cannot give assurance that the anticipated results will be achieved. We refer you to the company’s press release, annual and quarterly reports filed with the SEC for risk factors that impact the company.

With that, I would like to hand the call over to Mahbod Nia, Veris Residential’s Chief Executive Officer. Mahbod?

Mahbod Nia

Thank you Taryn. Good morning and welcome to our fourth quarter 2022 earnings call. I am joined today by our CFO, Amanda Lombard.

Before I turn to our financial results, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the tremendous progress our team made during 2022 on our path to becoming a pure play multi-family company. Despite the significant market volatility and resulting slowdown in transaction activity, we successfully executed on $1.4 billion of non-strategic asset sales, $925 million of which has closed since the beginning of 2022, significantly reducing our office exposure and fully exiting the hotel segment.

We also completed and stabilized our newest ground-up multi-family development, Haus25, and completed the acquisition of The James, together adding almost 1,000 units to our portfolio, reflecting approximately 15% growth for the second consecutive year. As a result, we increased the share of our multi-family business from 56% of NOI at the beginning of 2022 to approximately 98% by year end pro forma for sales under binding contract and the stabilized NOI from Haus25, net of concessions that we expect to burn off during the next 12 months. This progress has also allowed us to further strengthen our balance sheet, reducing net indebtedness by nearly $570 million. Amanda will discuss this further.