Apartment Income REIT Corp. (NYSE:AIRC) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Terry Considine: Rich, you followed both the industry and Aimco AIR for a long time. And so you know that we will be comfortable doing one-off acquisitions and entity acquisitions. I think it really depends on what opportunities the market brings. I think that the impact of higher interest rates and for how long is still reverberating and I don’t think the market has found a clearing place. But I’m delighted to see the 10-year back down a little bit but I don’t think it’s going back to where it was. And I think that’s not yet fully reflected or understood by the market.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of John Kim from BMO Capital Markets.

John Kim: I had a question on your guidance, which you maintained on same-store revenue at the midpoint. The last quarter, in an answer to a question, you guys had mentioned that the assumptions to reach midpoint would be to get blended rent in the mid-4s to 5% in the second half of the year, which you achieved in the third quarter. But since then, it has decelerated in October. So, can we take from that the midpoint of your guidance is a stretch goal at this point?

Paul Beldin: John, I disagree with that articulation. I think the midpoint of guidance is right in line with where we expect to land. And so, when we talked last quarter about our expectations for blended lease rate growth for the year, our expectations are the same today as they were at the end of July. And in a deck that we put out in September, we talked about our expectations for full year blended lease rate growth to be between 5.5% and 6%. I think year-to-date through September, I think we’re up 6.1% in that ballpark. So we’re doing well in that regard. And then, when you think about the impact of fourth quarter leasing, you just have to remember for our business, it’s not that impactful because we don’t have that many transactions during the quarter.

Another point on guidance that I would just speak to that you didn’t explicitly ask, but I think it’s an area of interest, relates to the implied acceleration for fourth quarter revenue relative to the third quarter. And if you look at that, you can see that in the third quarter, our revenue growth was affected by a headwind in the form of lower occupancy. Occupancy during the quarter was 60 basis points lower than a year ago. But conversely, in October, our ADO is already 30 basis points ahead of where we were a year ago and growing. So, we feel very comfortable about our guidance and we still have two months to go to hit it, but we view it as a likely outcome.

John Kim: Your leasing metrics and same-store revenue have been sector leading. It looks like you’re on track to repeat that feat next year. This year, it hasn’t translated FFO growth for various reasons, including the separation from Aimco. But next year, you do have that $0.05 headwind on nonrecurring items in FFO. Do you foresee any other headwinds to earnings that will impact your ability to match earnings with internal NOI?

Paul Beldin: John, I’ll start and if Terry might want to jump in or anybody else. But you’re right to call out that we do have $0.05 of nonrecurring income in our expectations for the current year. And so that’s why we have pointed you and others to our run rate FFO growth, which is up at a rate that is during the quarter, up about 6%, 7%. I should do a better job of remembering my own script, but it’s failing me now. But more importantly, for next year, we’re going to have a benefit of continued strong same-store NOI growth. We have the benefit from our portfolio, composition changing and evolving in a higher growth rate of the AIR Edge properties growing quicker. One headwind, which is apparent, if you look at our earnings supplement is that our weighted average interest cost will be higher next year than this year because of the balance sheet restructuring that I spoke about in my prepared remarks and just other changes.