Paul H. McDowell
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on Orion Properties second quarter earnings call. Today, I will highlight the continued progress we are making on our new business strategy and discuss our second quarter performance and operations. Importantly, leasing momentum continues, and we are energized that the marketplace has been receptive to our accelerated asset sales. Following my remarks, Gavin will review our financial results and provide our improved outlook for the rest of the year. With 639,000 square feet of leasing completed as of July 31, we are successfully building on last year's strong momentum that saw Orion lease 1.1 million square feet. Specifically, the 639,000 square feet of leasing is a combination of new and renewal transactions with a weighted average lease term of 6.4 years. Included in this total for the second quarter and shortly thereafter are 3 new leases, a 15.7-year agreement for 46,000 square feet at our Parsippany, New Jersey property, a 5.4-year agreement for 80,000 square feet at our Kennesaw, Georgia property and a 7.6-year agreement for 23,000 square feet at our Plano, Texas property. The Kennesaw, Georgia property is currently leased to Home Depot for almost 3 more years, making the combined lease term more than 8 years. Additionally, we signed 110,000 square feet of short-term lease extensions at 2 properties during the quarter at over 6% positive lease spreads on average. We are encouraged by our strong leasing activity to date and the momentum that has continued to build in our future pipeline, including various longer duration renewals and new leases with terms greater than the average of our portfolio. We are working hard to get a substantial portion of this more than 800,000 square foot pipeline of leasing activity, which includes transactions in both the discussion and documentation stage to the finish line by year-end. Orion's operating property occupancy rate was 77.4% at quarter end, an increase of 310 basis points sequentially. And the operating property lease rate was 79.1%, an increase of 170 basis points sequentially. And the weighted average lease term increased to 5.5 years from 5.2 years last quarter and 4.2 years this time last year. We do anticipate tenant retention will continue to fluctuate due to the smaller size of our portfolio and the timing of certain expected move-outs in the remainder of the year. We continue to expect that our portfolio occupancy will rise after 2025 as we lease vacant space, sell vacant properties that do not meet our long-term goals and generally labor to overcome the significant lease expirations and rollovers of the past few years. This will be important as we continue to work to reduce property operating costs. One area that is particularly noteworthy is the increasing pace of property dispositions we have been able to achieve this year at strong prices when compared to previous years. During the second quarter, we closed on the sale of 4 vacant properties totaling 434,000 square feet for a gross sales price of $26.9 million or approximately $62 per square foot. Additionally, we have agreements in place to sell 5 traditional office properties, which includes one vacant property, 3 near-term vacant properties and 1 stabilized property totaling 540,000 square feet for $57 million or $106 per square foot and are expected to close in the second half of the year. For comparison, we sold just 2 properties last year totaling 164,000 square feet for about $5.3 million. All 4 properties sold so far this year have been vacant noncore buildings, and we believe the additional sale transactions we are working on will provide very attractive exits and avoid the uncertainty and significant capital investment and carrying cost to re-tenant the assets. These transactions demonstrate our continued ability to monetize noncore assets and redeploy capital while improving the overall quality and durability of our remaining portfolio as demonstrated by our increasing WALT. We expect to have additional dispositions throughout the remainder of the year and into next. Finally, the demolition of the outdated office buildings on our former Walgreens campus in Deerfield, Illinois, is well underway and should be completed before the year-end, which will allow us to lower carrying costs materially and make the property more attractive to potential investors while we continue to evaluate our alternatives for this approximately 37.4 acre site. As we shared on our year-end 2024 results call, we are continuing to shift our portfolio concentration away from traditional generic suburban office properties and towards dedicated use assets or DUA properties, where our tenants perform work that cannot be replicated from home or relocated to a generic office setting. These property types include medical, lab, R&D flex and non-CBD government properties, all of which we already own. Our experience is that these assets tend to exhibit stronger renewal trends, higher tenant investment and more durable cash flows. As we continue to recycle capital, we are continuing to look carefully at DUA acquisition opportunities. At quarter end, approximately 32.2% of our portfolio by annualized base rent and approximately 25.3% by square footage were DUA properties, and this percentage will increase over time through disposition activity and targeted acquisitions. Turning to the balance sheet. Orion has been very proactive in maintaining significant liquidity to support our ongoing leasing efforts. To do so, we have sold vacant properties, used sale proceeds and cash flow to pay down debt, manage G&A, have been highly selective and targeted on acquisitions and aligned our dividend policy. As a result, our net debt to annualized year-to-date adjusted EBITDA was 6.93x at quarter end. We do expect this ratio to rise modestly in the coming year, which we expect to be offset by anticipated earnings growth in subsequent years. As we head into the third quarter, we have a solid leasing pipeline and remain focused on investing in our well-located properties within target markets. To support this, we will continue to fund capital expenditures that enhance asset value that enable us to lease space, retain tenants and attract new ones. Our disciplined approach to capital allocation, including maintaining a low leverage balance sheet over the past several years has positioned us to navigate the current environment even as we face continued cash flow pressure from higher interest rates, elevated vacancy from recent lease roll and the impact of the 23 properties we've sold since the spin. With another strong quarter of leasing and asset sales behind us and a healthy leasing and disposition pipeline ahead of us, we are encouraged that Orion's transformation is accelerating. I want to take a moment to reiterate and emphasize that our approach to unlocking value has not wavered. We remain committed to disciplined execution and continued portfolio stabilization and enhancement. It takes time to evolve a net lease office portfolio, but we have made incredibly strong progress. And as we look ahead, beyond repositioning the portfolio, management and the Board will continuously evaluate the best path forward to maximize value for all our shareholders. With that, I will turn the call over to Gavin. Gavin?