Agree Realty Corporation (NYSE:ADC) Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call February 14, 2024 9:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Brian Hawthorne - Director of Corporate Finance

Joey Agree - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director

Peter Coughenour - Chief Financial Officer, Secretary & Investor Relations Professional

Conference Call Participants

Spencer Allaway - Green Street Advisors

Smedes Rose - Citigroup

Ki Bin Kim - Truist Securities

Robert Stevenson - Janney Montgomery Scott

Haendel St. Juste - Mizuho Securities

Mitch Germain - JP Securities

Richard Milligan - Raymond James & Associates

Linda Tsai - Jefferies

Eric Borden - BMO Capital Markets

Connor Siversky - Wells Fargo Securities

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the Agree Realty Fourth Quarter 2023 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] This event is being recorded today.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Brian Hawthorne, Director of Corporate Finance. Please go ahead.

Brian Hawthorne

Thank you. Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us for Agree Realty's fourth quarter 2023 earnings call. Before turning the call over to Joey and Peter to discuss our results for the quarter, let me first run through the cautionary language.

Please note that during this call, we will make certain statements that may be considered forward-looking under federal securities law. Our actual results may differ significantly from the matters discussed in any forward-looking statements for a number of reasons. Please see yesterday's earnings release and our SEC filings including our latest annual report on Form 10-K for a discussion of various risks and uncertainties underlying our forward-looking statements. In addition, we discuss non-GAAP financial measures, including core funds from operations or core FFO and adjusted funds from operations or AFFO and net debt to recurring EBITDA. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release, website and SEC filings.

I'll now turn the call over to Joey.

Joey Agree

Thank you, Brian. Good morning and thank you all for joining us today. I'm pleased to report that 2023 was another strong year for our company. Looking back on the past year, we executed several strategic initiatives that positioned our company for continued success. In anticipation of capital markets volatility, we pre-equitized our balance sheet in the fourth quarter of 2022 with $560 million of forward equity raised at a net price of just over $67.50. While at the time, many thought our mindset was conservative, we were confident that while interest rates rose rapidly, cap rates would be slow to exhibit expansion in our large illiquid and fragmented space.