Elme Communities (NYSE:ELME) Q4 2022 Earnings Conference Call February 17, 2023 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Amy Hopkins - Vice President, Investor Relations

Paul McDermott - President and Chief Executive Officer

Steve Riffee - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Steven Freishtat - Vice President, Finance

Grant Montgomery - Vice President and Head, Research

Drew Hammond - Vice President, Chief Accounting Officer and Treasurer

Conference Call Participants

Michael Lewis - Truist Securities

Alan Peterson - Green Street

Anthony Paolone - JPMorgan

Operator

Welcome to the Elme Communities Fourth Quarter and Year End Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, today’s call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Amy Hopkins, Vice President, Investor Relations. Amy, please go ahead.

Amy Hopkins

Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us for our fourth quarter earnings call. On the call with me today are Paul McDermott, President and Chief Executive Officer; Steve Riffee, Executive Vice President, and Chief Financial Officer; Steven Freishtat, Vice President of Finance; Grant Montgomery, Vice President and Head of Research; and Drew Hammond, Vice President, Chief Accounting Officer, and Treasurer. Today’s event is being webcast through the Investors section of our website at elmecommunities.com, and a replay will be available this afternoon. We will have a slide presentation in conjunction with our prepared remarks and those slides will be available on our webcast replay.

Before we begin our prepared remarks, I would like to remind everyone that this conference call contains forward-looking statements that involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ materially and we undertake no duty to update them as actual events unfold. We refer to certain of these risks in our SEC filings. Reconciliations of the GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures discussed on this call are available in our most recent earnings press release and financial supplement, which was distributed yesterday and can be found on the Investors page of our website.

And with that, I’d like to turn the call over to Paul.

Paul McDermott

Thank you, Amy. Good morning, everyone and thanks for joining us today. We ended the year with a strong fourth quarter performance and 2023 is off to a good start with solid operating fundamentals and favorable demand indicators. We are reiterating our 2023 guidance, which reflects double-digit same-store NOI and core FFO growth. Our investment grade balance sheet is in great shape with low leverage and ample liquidity and we have no debt maturities until 2025. We feel very good about our AFFO growth outlook and we are increasing our quarterly dividend by approximately 6%.