and welcome to Bricksmore Property Group Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Stacy Slater, EVP of IR. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you all for joining Bricksmore's second quarter conference call. With me on the call today are Brian Finnegan, CEO and President, and Steve Gallagher, Chief Financial Officer. Mark Horgan, Executive Vice President and Chief Investment Officer, will also be available for Q&A. Before we begin, let me remind everyone that some of our comments today may contain forward-looking statements that are based on certain assumptions and are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties, as described in our SEC filings, and actual future results may differ materially. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Also, we will refer today to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Further information regarding our use of these measures and reconciliations of these measures to our GAAP results are available in the earnings release and supplemental disclosure on the Investor Relations portion of our website. Given the number of participants on the call, we kindly ask that you limit your questions to one per person. If you have additional questions, please re-cue. At this time, it's my pleasure to introduce Brian Finnegan.

Thank you, Stacey, and good morning, everyone. Before turning to our results, I would acknowledge the passing of Jim Taylor. Jim's impact on Bricksmore is he cared deeply about this company, the people who make it special, everything he did, and those values remain deeply embedded in our foundation. He helped build here at Bricksmore. We crossed the industry over the past month, and our thoughts remain with him and his family. We delivered 5.8% same property and OI growth. 58 cents per share of FFO. Grocery-anchored retail remains strong. Visits to our centers continue to grow. Retailers continue to prioritize stores as the hub of customer engagement, fulfillment, and distribution. It continues to benefit from strong tenant demand, a low rent basis, and a portfolio that has been materially improved over the last several days and high 4 million square feet of blended cash spread of 19%. Now remained above 30% for three years, while renewal spreads in the mid-teens continue to reflect the lack of available space and the value retailers place in staying in our centers. Reflected in our intrinsic lease terms, as this quarter our team achieved record-embedded rent growth of 2.8% across new and renewal leases. The tenants we continue to attract is every bit as important as the rent growth itself. During the quarter, we continue to upgrade our merchandising with retailers such as Sierra, HomeSense, demand from restaurant 4.8% at redevelopment assets from painted tree and rent kitchens. Six of the eight recaptured rent and painted tree boxes at spreads of over 40%. The occupancy level we achieve this quarter is a clear reflection of the improved quality of the portfolio and the follow-on demand created by our reinvestment activity. The signed-but-not-yet-commenced pipeline reached a record $71 million of annualized base rent. That pipeline remains one of the clearest bridges from the leasing activity we are generating today to future NOI growth and gives us strong visibility into the next phase of earnings growth as leases commence over time. A significant portion of that pipeline commences in 2027 and beyond, providing visibility well beyond the current year. Nearly $350 million of active reinvestments at an expected 10% incremental yield. Beyond that, our future pipeline exceeds $700 million across the portfolio. This pipeline continues to differentiate Berksmoor, giving us a long runway of high-return internal growth in assets we already own and control. The active pipelines are in the quarter. These include Morris Hills in northern New Jersey, where we are advancing a large-scale redevelopment with a new specialty grocer, Southtown in Dayton, Ohio, where we are reconfiguring the center to accommodate HomeSense, Sierra, and Barnes & Noble, and Market Plaza in suburban Dallas, where we are repositioning underutilized space and anchored asset with Kirby Ice House. Each project reflects the same approach in simply filling half of the year to encourage incremental return momentum with the program and see significant runway for future densification outside of redevelopments moving forward. On the transaction front, we completed four strategic acquisitions during the quarter for $164 million. These included Mayfair Shopping Center on Long Island, Jones Crossing in College Station, Texas, Vintage Marketplace in Houston, and Stanford Station in Panama City, Florida. These are high-quality, predominantly grocery-anchored assets in markets where we have a large presence and where our platform can create value through re-merchandising, reinvestment, and operating execution. At the time, we used OP units as acquisition currency for a portion of the purchase price. That structure reflects the importance of relationships in sourcing and executing these types of transactions, particularly with private-disciplined external. Mayfair and Jones Crossing were also immediately added to our future redevelopment pipeline, demonstrating Mark and his team's ability to find assets that fit our reinvestment strategy. Opportunities we are underwriting and expect to continue expanding our ship-driven acquisition. The visibility we have from our leasing and reinvestment pipelines, we increased our 2026 expectations for both same property NOI growth and FFO, which Steve will discuss in more detail. The increased outlook reflects the durability of our operating platform, the continued strength of tenant demand, and the embedded growth we are creating across the portfolio into future growth. Our reinvestment pipeline continues to generate high-return internal growth. Our acquisition activity is expanding the portfolio in markets where we can create value. Our balance sheet remains positioned to support disciplined capital allocation. And most importantly, our team continues to demonstrate what Jim established with our first cultural tenant, that great real estate matters, but great people matter even more. And I want to thank the Bricksmore team for their dedication and resilience. I'll turn the call over to Steve for a deeper review of our financial results and updated 2026 outlook.

We delivered another strong quarter with second quarter results continuing to demonstrate the strength of the operating environment. In addition to base rent, performance was strong across virtually every component of NOI, reflecting favorable collections, strong expense recoveries, and continued improvement in the overall performance. Taken together, this quarter's results demonstrates that growth is not driven by a single factor, but rather by healthy underlying portfolio performance and the cumulative benefit of the leasing activity. $0.58 benefited from the strong underlying property performance, results were partially offset by lower non-cash rental income resulting from straight-line reversals. On the rent and payment return to our run rate for the returning to guidance, the same property NOI growth of 5 to 5.75%, and FFO guidance of $2.35 to $2.37 per share reflects the continued strength of operations. The increase primarily reflects the improved expectations from revenues deemed uncollectible, which we now expect to be 60 to 85 basis points of total revenues, reflecting the strength of our tenant base. Leasing activity remains strong, rent spreads remain healthy, and our snow pipeline provides visibility to delivering same property NOI over 5% this year. From a balance sheet perspective, S&P revised our outlook to positive, reflecting the improvements to the balance sheet and portfolio, resulting from our value-add business. During the quarter, we repaid our June $600 million maturity and issued $400 million of 5.799%, resulting in an effective yield on the new notes of approximately 5.2. Our near-term maturity, 2027. We ended the quarter with leverage of 5.3 times on $15 million of unsettled operating performance, a record signed but not commenced pipeline, and a redevelopment pipeline that provides another source of future earnings growth. Combined with our balance sheet strength and liquidity, we remain well positioned heading into the second half of the year and as we begin to look towards 2020. I'll turn the call over to the operator for Q&A.

Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. As a reminder, we ask that you please limit to one question and re-queue if necessary. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from Michael Goldsmith with UBS. Your line is now live.

Good morning. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. Occupancy was down sequentially in the second quarter, and you had messaged that last quarter as a result of anticipated box recapture. So was the occupancy decline that actually happened in line with those expectations, or were there any incremental headwinds? And as you look ahead, can you discuss the cadence of the occupancy recovery and maybe provide some color on the redevelopment, releasing, or other projects that are enabled by recapturing those boxes? Thanks.

Good morning, Michael. Thanks for question it was definitely in line with what we expected as we touched on last quarter we did have some tenants in the first quarter with on those with occupancy is not always linear as we talked about we do expect to get back on a trajectory of growth in the back half of the year very much

good luck in the back half you got it thanks our next question comes from handle st just with mizuho your line is now live hey guys i guess uh first uh condolences on jim he was a great man will be missed. My question, I guess it's somewhat similar to Michael's question just now. I wanted to get maybe a bigger sense of why the strong same-story and wide growth that you're seeing here isn't translating into better FFO growth in the updated guide. I think you mentioned straight lining in your remarks. Could the timing of dispositions or maybe some conservatism be playing a role? And maybe some added color on if there's anything else in the back after you were not appreciating and some color on the cadence for Saints Row and Hawaii and FFO would be helpful too. Thank you.

I'll let Steve Chapman here, but first, Handel, thanks for the second quarter.

But I think importantly, we're equally as focused on making sure that top line growth and all the tailwinds we have in the business continues to drop.