Camden Property Trust (CPT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to Camden Property Trust Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. I'm Kim Callahan, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Joining me today for our prepared remarks are Ric Campo, Camden's Executive Chairman; Alex Jessett, Chief Executive Officer; Laurie Baker, President and Chief Operating Officer; and Ben Fraker, Chief Financial Officer. Stanley Jones, Senior Vice President of Real Estate Investments, will also be available for the Q&A portion of our call. Today's event is being webcast through the Investors section of our website, camdenliving.com, and a replay will be available shortly after the call ends. And please note, this event is being recorded. Before we begin our prepared remarks, I would like to advise everyone that we will be making forward-looking statements based on our current expectations and beliefs. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. Further information about these risks can be found in our filings with the SEC and we encourage you to review them. Any forward-looking statements made on today's call represent management's current opinions, and the company assumes no obligation to update or supplement these statements because of subsequent events. As a reminder, Camden's complete third quarter 2026 earnings release is available in the Investors section of our website at camdenliving.com, and it includes reconciliations to non-GAAP financial measures, which will be discussed on the call. We would like to respect everyone's time and complete our call within 1 hour. So please limit your initial question to one, then rejoin the queue if you have a follow-up question or additional items to discuss. If we are unable to speak with everyone in the queue today, we'd be happy to respond to additional questions by phone or e-mail after the call concludes. At this time, I'll turn the call over to Rick Campo.

This quarter's music choice following a decidedly patriotic theme. Tuesday was election day. And it's often is the case. About half the voters are happy with the outcome and half are disappointed. But it's important to remember that we live in the greatest country in the world. And that we have more in common than what divides us. To quote country musician Aaron Tippin, it's a big old land with countless dreams, happiness ain't out of reach. Hard work pays off the way it should. Yes, I've seen enough to know that we got it good. Camden operates in great markets in our amazing and resilient country. And it's becoming clear that happiness or a recovery is becoming closer at hand in our high-demand, high-growth markets. I want to take this opportunity to congratulate Team Camden for their commitment to improving the lives of our teammates, our customers and our stakeholders, one experience at a time. Alex is up next.

Thanks, Ric, and good morning, everyone. First and most importantly, thank you to our Camden team members for delivering yet another strong quarter. And in particular, thank you to our Camden Builders team who continue to deliver outsized fee income, leading to our third quarter core FFO outperformance. Overall, 2026 is playing out much as we expected, showing definite improvements over 2025, but not quite a full recovery. On the operations front, Camden was the only S&P 500 multifamily REIT to experience sequential improvement for both new lease rates and blended lease rates each quarter this year, and we were the only one with second to third quarter acceleration. Sequentially, blended effective lease rates improved 120 basis points in the third quarter as compared to a 10 basis point sequential decrease this time last year. And on a quarter-over-quarter basis, blended effective lease rates increased 40 basis points as compared to a 40 basis point decrease for the third quarter of last year. Clearly, things are improving. Last night, we made slight reductions to the midpoint of our anticipated full year same-store revenue and NOI growth as seasonality kicked in a bit more than anticipated in September. Concessions have remained remarkably sticky, seemingly led by many merchant builders now turned reluctant operators. That said, our current expectations for same-store growth still falls squarely within the original guidance we provided earlier this year, and the midpoint of our guidance for core FFO remains unchanged at $6.75 per share. On a macro level, things are also improving as apartment and completions in the Sunbelt markets have fallen to a 7-year low with peak supply firmly in the rearview mirror. Rising interest rates, commodity prices and labor shortages are further hampering new construction starts to mid-2010's levels or below, meaning we should have a long runway with continued low levels of future supply. Apartment absorption remains robust, with year-to-date figures exceeding expectations across many markets. Market rental prices and vacancy trends are also improving. Effective rents for new units have recovered from their lows, though they remain below peak levels in most markets. And rent growth momentum is increasing. After more than 4 years of rising market level vacancy, occupancy rates are gradually improving and reaching more normalized levels. Affordability and household income dynamics are working in our favor as well. Wage growth has outpaced rent increases for nearly 4 years, improving affordability overall, and the median rent-to-income ratio is declining, which means renters are less burdened than in previous years. Resident is financially strong and the U.S. economy remains healthy. At the same time, the time line for 30-year-olds to reach household milestones has lengthened with more living with parents or delaying homeownership. Nearly 20% of adults aged 25 to 34 live with their parents, indicating delayed independence but potential future rental demand. Turning to real estate investments and the market outlook. Apartment transaction volumes increased over the summer, but the market has recently become muted due to rising interest rates. This led us to make the decision to maximize liquidity for future opportunities by canceling the acquisition of 2 operating communities and 1 land parcel, and we do not anticipate any further acquisitions in 2026. Despite our lower-than-anticipated acquisition volume, based upon our most recent tax analysis, we do not believe we will need to pay much, if any, of a special dividend from our California dispositions. This has been a transformative year for Camden. Some may say, in light of the recent interest rate volatility that we were lucky with our timing of the California sale. But luck favors the prepared and I echo Ric's shout out and thanks to our fantastic team members who are always prepared. I continue to be very proud of and impressed by Team Camden. I will now turn the call over to Laurie Baker, our President and Chief Operating Officer.

Thank you, Alex, and good morning, everyone. Camden's third quarter net operating income results were in line with forecasted levels with lower operating expenses, partially offset by a slightly greater than anticipated seasonal slowdown during September. Rental rates for the third quarter had effective new leases down 2% and renewals up 3.6% for a blended rate growth of positive 1%. While renewal growth was in line with our expectations, new lease and blended lease growth were at the low end of our anticipated ranges, likely driven by the persistent concessions that remain in many of our core markets and submarkets. However, as Alex mentioned, our third quarter rental rate growth showed significant improvement over both the first and second quarters of this year and over the third quarter of 2025. New lease growth showed a 130 basis point improvement from negative 3.3% in the second quarter of 2026 to negative 2% this quarter. Renewal rates improved 80 basis points to 3.6% from 2.8% in the second quarter, and we saw 120 basis point sequential improvement in blended rate growth from negative 0.2% last quarter to positive 1% this quarter. Our preliminary October results reflect occupancy in line with last year at 95.2%, with new lease renewal and blended rates trending better year-over-year and signed leases improving from September to October. Resident retention remains strong with very low levels of turnover during October. Renewal offers for residents with December and January expirations were sent out with an average increase of 4.5%. Camden's annualized net turnover rate for third quarter 2026 was 42%, improving from 44% in the third quarter of 2025. And move-outs for home purchases remain well below long-term historical rates at 9.5% for the third quarter. Overall, I'm so pleased with how our teams continue to deliver solid results as we move from our peak leasing season into our typical end-of-year slowdown. We remain focused on the fundamentals, staying close to our markets and making thoughtful pricing decisions and executing with consistency and discipline that have always been hallmarks of Camden. With that, I'll turn the call over to Ben Fraker, our Chief Financial Officer.

Thank you, Laurie, and good morning, everyone. I will cover our third quarter results, capital allocation, our balance sheet and liquidity and our fourth quarter and full year outlook. We reported third quarter core FFO of $1.71 per share, $0.02 above the $1.69 midpoint of our guidance, driven primarily by higher third-party construction fees and higher interest and other income. Our same-store portfolio performed in line with expectations through the first 2 months of the quarter with greater-than-expected seasonality in September reflected in our revised fourth quarter and full year outlook. We closed the $1.625 billion sale of our California portfolio on July 29, completing a large component of our 2026 capital recycling plan. Here is how we have used those proceeds. $900 million to repay the debt that funded our earlier share repurchases and acquisitions, $125 million to fund our August operating acquisition and land purchase, $50 million to repurchase shares in August and early September, $495 million after quarter end towards the redemption of our $500 million of senior notes due in November and to pay down borrowings under our commercial paper program, and $55 million remaining in cash investment accounts for general corporate purposes. On the investment side, we acquired 3 communities during the quarter for approximately $305 million, bringing year-to-date community acquisitions to $755 million. In development, we started construction on Camden RTP, a 398-unit $130 million community in the Raleigh metro area on a site we purchased in May. Separately, we decided not to move forward with the Camden Gulch in Nashville and Camden Baker in Denver development projects at this time as we want to ensure we are allocating capital to projects with the best possible returns. We recorded noncash impairment charges on those 2 sites based upon current third-party estimated market values. We also recorded a small noncash impairment on our Arts District parcel in Los Angeles. We sold that parcel after quarter end for $10.7 million, and we now have no remaining assets in California. On share repurchases, we bought back $50 million during the quarter at an average price of $105.34. Since the third quarter of 2025, we have repurchased a total of $740 million worth of shares with $248 million remaining available under our current program. On financing, we funded a new $350 million unsecured term loan due July 2027 and paid off a $12 million secured note just before quarter end. After quarter end, we redeemed our $500 million of senior notes at par that had a floating rate of 5.2% using sale proceeds and commercial paper. And we have no significantly dilutive debt maturities coming due over the next 8 quarters. On liquidity, as of November 4, we had nothing outstanding under our $1.2 billion credit facility as well as $55 million in cash investment accounts. This gives us ample liquidity to fund future cash needs, including the remaining cost of our current development pipeline. With leverage at 4.0x net debt to EBITDA and multiple sources of capital, we have significant financial flexibility. Turning to our outlook. For the fourth quarter, we are providing core FFO guidance of $1.63 to $1.67 per share, with a midpoint of $1.65 compared to third quarter core FFO of $1.71 per share. This $0.06 per share sequential decline results from $0.01 of lower same-store NOI, resulting from lower seasonal revenues partially offset by lower expenses, $0.06 from a full quarter without NOI from our California dispositions, $0.04 from lower third-party construction fees and interest income, offset by $0.01 from incremental NOI from our 2026 acquisitions and $0.04 from lower interest expense driven by the October repayment of our $500 million senior notes and a full quarter of debt payoffs funded by the California sale. For the full year, we are maintaining our core FFO midpoint of $6.75 per share with an updated range of $6.73 to $6.77. Relative to our prior outlook, slightly lower same-store NOI is offset by higher third-party construction fees, higher interest and other income and the incremental benefit from our third quarter share repurchases. We are revising our full year same guidance to reflect operating trends through the third quarter and our expectations for the remainder of the year. The midpoint of our revised same-store guidance is within the range we gave at the beginning of the year with revenue growth of 0.0% compared to our prior outlook of 0.5%, expense growth of 1.75% and compared to 2.5%, NOI growth of negative 1.0% compared to negative 0.6%. The lower revenue outlook primarily reflects greater than anticipated seasonality in the fourth quarter, resulting in slightly lower-than-anticipated rents, occupancy and other property income. Importantly, our expense outlook continues to improve. We now expect full year same-store expense growth of 1.75%. That is 75 basis points better than our prior midpoint and 125 basis points better than our original beginning of the year guidance. The improvement reflects continued expense discipline, including lower repairs and maintenance and property tax savings. We're pleased to maintain our full year core FFO midpoint of $6.75 per share as lower operating expenses and higher third-party fees offset the slightly lower revenues. To close, this was a quarter of execution. To close the California sale, we put that capital to work in newer Sunbelt communities. We kept our balance sheet strong and flexible with a leverage at 4.0x, and we delivered core FFO above the midpoint of our guidance. Thank you, and we will now open the call to questions.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question for today will come from Nick Joseph with Citi.

It's Eric here with Nick. You mentioned that you canceled 2 property acquisitions and I think you said one land acquisition. I guess where would you transact today, I guess, in the current capital market environment, sort of what cap rate and IRR? And now that you've built this leverage capacity by paying off your bonds, how should we think about your willingness to take up leverage to repurchase shares?

Yes. So it was interesting. We had those acquisitions under contract. And then obviously, we had the movement in interest rates. And we went back looking for price adjustments. And clearly, the sellers were not quite willing to capitulate to what we were looking for. The way we sort of think about it is, if you look at what's going on with cap rates right now, we think cap rates have probably expanded about 15 to 40 basis points and call that sort of like a 3% to 8% change in value. And so for us, we would like to see it closer to that sort of 40 basis points higher if we were going to buy something. That being said, remember, the reason why we were buying was entirely to maximize the tax efficiency. And since based upon our latest tax analysis, we actually don't have to buy anything else. And so based upon that, at this point, I think I'd rather buy shares at a clear discount than buy acquisitions. So that's sort of how I would rank it right now. And if you look at where we are on the leverage side, you're exactly right. Because we did not buy the additional assets, we've got debt-to-EBITDA at 4x. And we've always said that we would be comfortable within a 4 to 5x range. And we also said the reason we want your leverage to be low is because it gives you the opportunity to take advantage of what's out there. And clearly, we think there are opportunities on the share repurchase side, but we also think that we may get some opportunities on the acquisition side maybe next year at better pricing.

Yes, I agree with that. I think the bottom line is, is that today, our shares are the are the best value that we see on the board in terms of investments. We acquired $743 million of shares so far. We did $50 million in the quarter. And to Alex's point, I mean, we positioned ourselves to be -- have low leverage, so we can pull the levers on and create value for shareholders that way, and we will.

Next question will come from Jamie Feldman with Wells Fargo.

I was hoping you could just get a little bit more granular on what changed in your outlook from the last update you gave in September? Like it sounds like concessions were a little higher than you thought. Can you talk more specifically about which markets are driving it? And then as you think about kind of October, November, did things change meaningfully to the upside? Or just how should we just read into that? Because you gave a September update and took it down pretty shortly thereafter?

Yes, absolutely. So when we last gave an update was early September and clearly, September, as we said in the prepared remarks, came in softer than we had expected. A couple of things. Number one, traffic just wasn't there. Now by the way, we typically do see that on for seasonality, but it was better -- it was greater decline in traffic than we had expected. And when we had the decline in traffic, obviously, you have to reduce your prices if you're trying to increase traffic. And so that's what we were doing. And clearly, what we saw was that concessions were, as we said, just incredibly sticky. If you sort of look at our markets and you look at the communities in our markets that are offering concessions, they sort of a range anywhere from 3 weeks up to 2 months. And if you think about it from the low end, sort of the 3-week side would be, considered like West Palm Beach and the 2-month side would be Austin, Texas. But we are seeing those continue, and we didn't see really any drop-off, which is surprising because the third quarter, at least July and August were so strong that we would have expected to see others start to dial back their concessions and they absolutely did not do it. Now that being said, the answer to your second part is, we have seen signed new leases improved pretty dramatically in October as compared to September. And when we look at our October numbers and we compare them to October of last year, we're seeing really significant improvements. So I do -- we do expect a little bit of a bounce back in October, but it's unfortunately, if you hit your sort of the shoulder seasons and when you hit it, beginning in September and September is weaker than you expect, that has a run-through effect for the rest of the year.

The next question will come from Jana Galan with Bank of America.

Maybe following up on that question. You also mentioned some of these kind of developer-led concessions getting a little bit more aggressive. Just curious if you could kind of call out a few markets. And then there was a little reprieve in rates. Just curious how quickly these adjust?

So well, as far as concessions in some of the markets that we talked about. If you look at where the concessions have definitely improved, we're seeing like the strongest market in Atlanta, Southeast Florida, Dallas and Houston. And so where those lower concessions are, we're obviously getting a little more pricing power, and we're having the ability to improve our occupancy. Now if you look at kind of the weaker markets, we still are continuing to see Denver, Nashville as those that have concessions that have been persistent. Then you talk about -- I know we continue quarter-over-quarter to focus a little bit on Austin because that one in itself has showed our strongest occupancy in the third quarter as well as it was the best occupancy for all of Camden. So not only in just Texas but across Camden. And so when you look at kind of trough to peak, and that's because you've seen these high-supply markets with a lot of concessions, we had our worst quarter, if you look at kind of the lowest rent prices in the fourth quarter of '24 and new lease rates have improved 10.6% to the third quarter this year where our negative lease went from where we saw fourth quarter at negative 13.1% to only negative 2.5% in the third quarter. So again, where those concessions have been very sticky and they're starting to improve, then we'll be able to maintain a little stronger pricing power. But Rainey Street, again, is one of those properties. It's led the company with finishing strong at 98.6% occupancy, even though you have concessions in the market. So it just depends on exactly the submarket, but continuing to see some strong concessions or a little more than we'd like to see in Raleigh-Durham. You had asked about a couple of those markets, Raleigh-Durham as well as Houston has seen some concessions in the market, but that's another market that we're seeing improvement.

Your next question will come from Haendel St. Juste with Mizuho Securities.

This is [ Mike ] on with Haendel at Mizuho. My question is, how are blends trending across your portfolio by region? And where are you seeing the most sequential improvement in terms of exit rate from 3Q '26? In your opening remarks, you did call out some improvement sequentially from September to October. So I just wanted some more detail there.

Yes. If you look at Dallas, for instance, third quarter versus the third quarter this year versus third quarter of last year, rents have improved across new leases, renewals and blended, both signed and effective. Additionally, new lease rate in third quarter, although slightly negative. We're talking like negative 0.1, so which is basically flat. That has improved 700 basis points from the lowest rate that we saw in 2024. So that's one of the markets we're seeing improvement. Southeast Florida, specifically, if you're looking at Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, those are a handful of the markets in Florida that are seeing improvements as well as concessions going down. And it's really suggesting the first signs of using competition, improving conditions in those markets.

Your next question will come from Brad Heffern with RBC.

Yes. As a fellow Texan, I wanted to get your thoughts specifically on the election, just given you have roughly 1/4 of your NOI here. Do you think anything has changed substantially? I think on one hand, you have protections in the state constitution, the cities were all kind of blue leaning anyway, but then at the same time it is an unprecedented when compared to how Texas has been run historically. So I appreciate any comments.

Sure. Clearly, there was a big change in Texas with every state-wide election going to a Democrat that hadn't happened in 30 or 40 years. So there are going to be changes, but the good news is that, generally speaking, Texas Democrats tend to be more middle-of-the-road Democrats than on the coast. And the other thing that I think is important, even though people talk about how Texas has turned blue, it's actually purple because you still have a divided government in the Texas Senate Republicans still have a 19 to 12 margin in the Senate. And without any bipartisan -- without bipartisan support, nothing will get done in the legislative session this year. So -- and I think a real positive thing. And I think this is actually -- I've been hearing this nationally and also big time in Texas. And that is that the governor, for example, and the Senator-elect, have both come out real fast after the election and said that they are both focusing on bipartisan support that they want to do better for workers in America, including in Texas. And so I think that is a real positive that's come out of this kind of shocker for Republicans is that is that -- the Democrats are, a, not hardcore progressives and b, they are -- they know they have to work across the aisle to get anything done. So I don't think that you're going to see any dramatic changes in how Texas has operated. And I think that they understand that they will be held accountable for killing the golden goose if that happens. And so I'm pretty optimistic about how this massive shift to the left is actually what I think is going to be a massive shift to the center rather than a hard right versus hard left shift because in order for them to govern properly, they do have to have bipartisan support.

And I think the other thing I would add to that is if you look at the actual results, the young folks swung really hard to the left. Young folks are typically our renters. And so it will be interesting to see if some of the more unpopular positions that we have in Texas and popular for young people, if those getting dialed back may actually make Texas even more appealing for young folks on here.

The next question will come from Ami Probandt with UBS.

What happened with the Denver and Nashville development projects that means them no longer viable? And at the same time, you acquired a land parcel, so how are you thinking about rebuilding the land bank and the attributes of that land parcel that you acquired that made it attractive?

Yes. So we've been talking about the Denver and Nashville land sites on these calls for probably 2 years. And every time I was asked about it, I said the math didn't work. And the math didn't work at those points in time. And we were hoping that we'd find ways to make it so that they did work. And the reality is we just couldn't get there. And what was really interesting and sort of the driver, in particular for the Nashville asset, is that we bought an existing asset directly across the street from our land site. And that's the Gulch. And so we bought an asset for $370,000 a door, plus or minus. And it would have been north of $600,000 a door to build it. And so we're in the capital allocation business. And so if we can find a way to deliver a better return for our shareholders by buying an asset and not building an asset, that's exactly what we're going to do. And so we've made the decision not to go forward on the Nashville site. Now by the way, that may change in a couple of years. We're certainly not going to sell the land right now because it's a horrible time to sell land. And so maybe we can build it in a couple of years, but it doesn't make sense for us right now. And the same thing is true for Denver. That -- both of those land sites were bought at the absolute peak. And we look at capital allocation and where we can spend our money, and we think we can spend our money and deliver better returns doing other things, including the land sites that we did buy. Those land sites have much better returns. And by the way, they are less dense developments. And obviously, when you have less dense developments, oftentimes, you can build those for a lot less. And so that's why we think what we did is the right thing to do. And as I said, we'll continue to make that we make the appropriate capital allocation decisions for our shareholders.

The next question will come from Wes Golladay with Baird.

Can you zoom in on the competitive landscape? Are the developers that are offering concessions starting to get to an occupancy point where they can dial back or you start to see fewer lease-ups? I can appreciate that we're in the shoulder season now. But are we getting to a point where you have a better setup for peak leasing season next year?