Regency Centers Corporation (REG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to Regency Center Corporation's 2020 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. I am Barbara Johnston, Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of Regency Centers. I am pleased to turn over the meeting to Martin E. Stein, Jr. Our Executive Chairman.

Thank you, Barbara. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of the company, I want to welcome and thank you for joining us at this virtual meeting of shareholders of Regency Centers Corporation. At this time, the annual meeting of shareholders is now called to order. First and foremost, we hope that all who are listening in today are staying safe and healthy during these challenging times. I offer sincere thanks to all those in our communities who are placing their lives at risk by going to work every day to help our country with essential goods and services, such as health care workers, first responders, grocery store employees, delivery personnel and public service workers, to name just a few. They have our deepest gratitude. We at Regency have a deep and abiding faith that in spite of the severity of the pandemic and resulting uncertainties, our world, our nation and our communities will find effective ways to fight the spread of the virus and move towards an economic recovery. This is Regency Centers' first ever virtual annual meeting. We chose this format this year because the safety of our shareholders, directors and employees is of paramount importance. It allows for our shareholders to participate remotely, and nonshareholders will also have the ability to listen to this webcast over the internet. Our rules of conduct and procedure have been posted to the web portal. It is our intention to conduct this meeting in accordance with those rules. The company has appointed Broadridge Financial Services to act as our inspector of election. The polls to vote online are now open. After the meeting has been adjourned, I will answer questions from shareholders submitted in the appropriate field on the virtual meeting screen provided for shareholders. Before asking a question, we invite you to refer to our proxy statement for this meeting, which contains information regarding our proposals to be taken up at this meeting. We do not plan to answer questions unrelated to these proposals or for which the answers are clearly covered in our proxy statement. We do invite you to listen to our earnings call scheduled for May 8, 2020, for business-related updates, as we will not be addressing questions relating to the business or financial matters during this meeting. I've been informed that a proper notice of the meeting and the company's proxy statement were mailed to our shareholders on or about March 12, 2020. The Board of Directors fixed March 9, 2020, as the record date. And as of that date, they are 167,722,024 shares entitled to vote. We are informed by the inspector of election that there are approximately 156, 084,749 or 93% of the shares are represented here today, either in person or by proxy. Since this represents more than a majority of voting power of all outstanding stock entitled to vote, a quorum is present for the meeting. Before we conduct the business of our meeting, I would like to introduce our Board of Directors. Joe Azrack, a Director since 2017, is the principal of Azrack & Company; Bryce Blair, a Director since 2014, serves as Chairman of Invitation Homes LP; Ron Blankenship, a Director since 2001, is our lead independent director and also serves as Director of Civeo Corporation; Deirdre Evens, a Director since 2018, is Executive Vice President and General Manager of Records and Information Management of Iron Mountain Incorporated; Tom Furphy, a Director since 2019, is CEO and Managing Director of Consumer Equity Partners; Karin Klein, a Director since 2019, is founding partner of Bloomberg Beta; Peter Linneman, a Director since 2017, also serves as Director of Ag Mortgage Investment Trust, Inc. and Paramount Group, Inc.; David O'Conner, a Director since 2011, is Co-Founder of High Rise Capital Management, L.P. and also serves as a Director of Prologis, Inc.; Lisa Palmer, a Director Since 2018, is our President and CEO. Tom Wattles, a Director since 2001, also serves as Director of Columbia Property Trust. The shareholders of Regency, in my view, owe a deep bit of gratitude -- amount of gratitude for these exceptional directors. And a more complete biography of each of our directors can be found in our proxy statement. Turning now to the business of our meeting. The first matter to be acted upon is the election of 11 directors to serve until the 2021 Annual Meeting. Information with respect to the nominees is set forth in the proxy statement. No other nominations were recommended for consideration. If there are comments specifically relating -- related to the election of directors, this would be the appropriate time to raise them. Hearing none, I declare the nominations closed. The next matter to be acted upon is to approve an advisory resolution on executive compensation. Management's statement in support of such a vote is set forth in the proxy statement. If there are comments specifically relating to the compensation of our named executive officers, this would be an appropriate time to raise them. Hearing none, I declare the matter closed. The next matter to be acted upon is the ratification and appointment of KPMG as our independent registered public accountants for 2020. Management statement and support of such vote is set forth in the proxy statement. If there are comments specifically relating to the appointment of KPMG as our independent registered public accountants, this would be the appropriate time to raise them. Hearing none, I declare the matter closed. Please vote your shares now with respect to those matters, if you have not voted already. [Voting]

Now that everyone has had the opportunity to vote, I now declare the polls closed at 9:07 a.m. Eastern Time. Barbara Johnston as the company's Corporate Secretary, please report the preliminary results of the shareholder vote.

Thank you. We have been informed by the inspector of election that the preliminary record will reflect that sufficient votes were cast prior to and during our meeting so that all directors nominated to serve on the Board until the 2021 Annual Meeting have been elected. The advisory resolution on executive compensation has been approved, and KPMG will serve as Regency's independent registered public accountants for the year ending December 31, 2020. The final tabulation of the shareholder vote on these proposals, which will reflect any votes cast today, will be reported in our Form 8-K, which we will file with the SEC shortly.

That concludes the formal business for this meeting. I declare that the 2020 Annual Shareholder's Meeting to be adjourned. At this time, we will answer questions that may have been submitted by our shareholders. We have allotted 10 minutes to answer questions. Again, please note that only questions that are relevant to the proposals presented in this meeting will be answered at this time. Are there any questions? No questions relating to the purpose of this meeting have been submitted. I would like to thank everyone for participating in this year's shareholder meeting of Regency Centers Corporation. And I'd also like to thank Lisa Palmer, the Regency executive team and all Regency employees for their hard and diligent and thoughtful work in navigating the company through this challenging time. We invite you to join our earnings call scheduled for May 8, 2020, details of which can be located on our investor page. Have a good day.