Essex Property Trust, Inc. (ESS) CEO Michael Schall on Q2 2022 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

Essex Property Trust, Inc. (NYSE:ESS) Q2 2022 Results Conference Call July 28, 2022 2:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Michael Schall - President and CEO

Angela Kleiman - Sr. EVP and COO

Barb Pak - EVP and CFO

Adam Berry - EVP and CIO

Conference Call Participants

Jeffrey Spector - Bank of America

Nick Joseph - Citi

Chandni Luthra - Goldman Sachs

John Pawlowski - Green Street

Steve Sakwa - Evercore

Neil Malkin - Capital One

Rich Anderson - SMBC

Brad Heffern - RBC Capital Markets

Austin Wurschmidt - KeyBanc

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Essex Property Trust Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded. Statements made on this conference call regarding expected operating results and other future events are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements are made based on current expectations, assumptions and beliefs as well as information available to the Company at this time.

A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. Further information about these risks can be found on the Company's filings with the SEC. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mr. Michael Schall, President and Chief Executive Officer for Essex Property Trust. Thank you, Mr. Schall, you may begin.

Michael Schall

Thank you for joining us today, and welcome to our second quarter earnings conference call.

Angela Kleiman and Barb Pak will follow me with prepared remarks and Adam Berry is here for Q&A. I will start with a summary of our second quarter results and then highlight the strong underlying momentum in the Essex portfolio, especially in the markets benefiting from the return-to-office programs of large tech companies and finish with a brief overview of the apartment transaction market.

We are pleased to announce our fourth consecutive quarter of improving results with core FFO up 21.1% from the same quarter last year, exceeding the high end of our guidance range and achieving the second best quarterly growth since the Company's IPO in 1994. Given our strong year-to-date results, we increased our guidance ranges for same-property revenues, NOI and core FFO for a third time in 2022, which Barb will discuss further in her commentary.

Beginning with operating fundamentals, net effective rents for new leases are now 16% above pre-COVID levels and 20.6% higher year-over-year compared to the second quarter of 2021. Job growth remains robust at 5.6% for June year-over-year, substantially outperforming the U.S. and reflecting the ongoing recovery from the massive COVID-related job losses in 2020.