You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: Before discussing the details of this past year, I want to once again offer my sincere gratitude to all the associates at National Retail Properties for their hard work, perseverance, flexibility, collegiality, professionalism and dedication in 2020.
I could not be prouder of how this talented team worked tirelessly to create shareholder value and support each other during this past crazy year.
As I've said before, perhaps the best word to describe National Retail Properties is consistent: consistent investment focus on single-tenant retail properties; consistency of people and culture; consistently raising the dividend for 31 consecutive years; consistent conservative balance sheet philosophy that maintains flexibility and dry powder; consistent long-term tenant relationships.
And although our long-term track record of consistent per-share growth was disrupted in 2020 due to the pandemic, we remain committed to our multiyear business plan.
Highlights for National Retail Properties in 2020 include: increasing the common stock dividend for the 31st consecutive year, a feat matched by only two other REITs and by less than 1% of all U.S. public companies; raising $700 million of well-priced debt capital early in the year, which put us in a strong liquidity position as the pandemic began to spread and enabled us to end 2020 with $267 million of cash in the bank and nothing drawn on our $900 million line of credit; reaching collaborative rent deferral agreements during the early stages of the pandemic with a number of our relationship tenants, which solidified our relationships and set us up for future acquisition business; collecting 95.7% of our rents due for the fourth quarter and 89.7% of our annual base rent for the year 2020; supporting our associates and our community with programs and activities to advance associate well-being, employee engagement and community involvement; and lastly, enhancing our executive leadership team with the appointment of Steve Horn, a 17-year veteran with the company, as our Chief Operating Officer.
Let me now turn to some details about our fourth quarter and 2020.
As highlighted above, our rent collections continued to trend positive during the quarter, resulting in collections of 95.7% of fourth quarter rents.
For the year 2020, we collected just under 90% of rents due for the year.
And for the month of January 2021, we have collected approximately 95% of the rents due for the month.
These collection numbers compare very favorably with other retail real estate companies and are similar to the reported rent collections by companies with a significantly higher percentage of investment-grade retail tenants.
I'd also like to highlight that we forgave zero rent in the fourth quarter and only forgave less than 0.5% of our annual rents for the entire year.
Consistent with our long-term practice and multiyear business model, we do not anticipate reporting monthly rent collections in 2021.
Notwithstanding the impact of the pandemic, our broadly diversified portfolio of 3,143 single-tenant retail properties ended the year with an occupancy rate of 98.5%, which continues to exceed our long-term average of 98%.
Our high lease renewal rate also continued in 2020.
Approximately 80% of our expiring leases were renewed by the current tenants at approximately 100% of the expiring rent without material investment of lease incentive or tenant improvement dollars and with an average lease renewal term of over six years.
In our opinion, this impressive statistic validates the high demand for our well-located real estate sites.
A reminder that our tenants are typically large, well-capitalized, regional and national operators with the scale, financial wherewithal and management expertise to weather significant disruptions in the business environment.
Additionally, the majority of our properties are located in suburban markets, largely in the southern half of the United States, which have been somewhat less impacted by the pandemic than urban city centers.
We're pleased to see that many of our tenants' businesses are bouncing back more quickly than we had initially anticipated.
And as our relationship tenants return to growth mode in the fourth quarter, we ramped up our acquisition activities as well.
During the fourth quarter, we invested $102 million in 42 new single-tenant retail properties at an initial cash yield of 6.2% and at an average lease duration of 20 years.
For the year 2020, we invested a total of $180 million in 63 new properties at a weighted average initial cash yield of just under 6.5% and with an average lease duration of over 18 years.
An important strategic advantage of our business model is the long lease durations we achieve through our focus on sale leasebacks with our relationship tenants.
We also had an active fourth quarter of dispositions, selling 13 properties for $12 million.
And for the year 2020, we sold 38 properties, raising over $54 million of capital to be redeployed into our business.
Our balance sheet remains strong.
We ended the year with $267 million of cash in the bank and zero balance drawn on our $900 million line of credit.
Kevin will provide more details on the $120 million of equity capital we raised in 2020 via our ATM.
As we enter 2021, we're well positioned to take advantage of the right opportunities when they present themselves and/or weather further choppiness in the economy if that may occur.
Consistent with our long-term focus and culture, we approached guidance with a conservative mindset.
Although our portfolio continues to perform well and our relationship tenants are returning to growth mode, the pandemic is not yet behind us, and there may be additional turmoil in the economy ahead.
Kevin will review the details of our guidance in his remarks.
Looking ahead to 2021 and beyond, you should expect us to continue to adhere to the core strategic drivers of National Retail Properties' long-term success, including: first, a consistent focus on single-tenant net leased retail properties.
The real estate attributes of single-tenant retail properties are far superior to the attributes of other property types, and the universe of opportunities to acquire these properties remains vast.
Second, a broadly diversified portfolio of single-tenant retail properties that generates a stable, growing cash flow from long-term leases.
As noted above, our tenants are primarily large regional and national operators in lines of trade that provide customer services and e-commerce-resistant consumer necessities.
Third, a fortress-like balance sheet that provides us with the capability to withstand economic turbulence and positions us to be able to continue our long history of consecutive annual dividend increases.
Fourth, a relationship-oriented acquisition model that results in high-quality investments.
Our proprietary tenant relationships allow us to obtain higher investment yields, superior lease documents, longer lease duration and better quality real estate.
Fifth, an active asset management that focuses on maximizing the value of each individual property.
Our deep real estate expertise enables us to get the most out of our portfolio and to recycle capital through thoughtful, disciplined dispositions.
And last, but not least, a commitment to ESG, including a deep commitment to our team of great people in a supportive culture, which is the true backbone of our success.
Almost 3/4 of our associates have been with the company for at least five years, and approximately half have been with us for 10 years or more.
The executive leadership team averages almost two decades of tenure at the company.
That level of commitment to culture and institutional knowledge is invaluable.
We believe that as we continue to execute on these strategic drivers in the post-pandemic world, we will consistently deliver core FFO per share growth and outperform REIT averages on a multiyear basis.
That's up $0.01 from the preceding third quarter's $0.62.
And AFFO per share was $0.69 per share for the fourth quarter, which is $0.07 per share higher than the preceding third quarter's $0.62.
Additionally, we recognized $2.5 million of deferred rent repayment that was repaid in the fourth quarter and was included in calculating AFFO.
As Jay noted, occupancy was 98.5% at quarter end, up 10 basis points from the prior quarter.
G&A expense for the fourth quarter was 5.7% of revenues and -- for the fourth quarter and then 5.8% for the full year 2020, which is fairly flat with 2019's G&A levels.
Rent collections, as Jay noted, continue to improve throughout the fourth quarter.
Today, we reported rent collections of approximately 95.7% for the fourth quarter and 95% for the month of January 2021.
So we have seen steady incremental improvement on the rent collections front over the past eight months.
To be clear, these rent collection percentages are for the regular original rent owed for those respective periods, meaning that it does not include collections of previously deferred rent.
In the fourth quarter, we also collected, as I mentioned, $2.5 million of rent that was previously deferred, which represented approximately 100% of the deferred rent repayment that was due in the fourth quarter of 2020.
As we've previously noted as well, the majority of deferred rent is due in 2021, and the very early indications suggest good collection results for those deferred rents.
We have included on page 22 of today's supplemental, which is on our website, some disclosure on the amounts and timing of the anticipated repayment of deferred rent over the next couple of years.
At the end of the fourth quarter, we had approximately $50 million or about 7.4% of our annual base rent being recognized on a cash basis as a result of our estimation that it was not probable these tenants were going to pay substantially all of their remaining lease payments.
So this classification required us to write off all outstanding receivable balances for these tenants, which in the fourth quarter was $2 million of rent receivables and $5 million of accrued rent balances totaling $7 million or approximately $0.04 per share for the fourth quarter.
So without this noncash write-off, FFO results would have been notably better.
However, please note that despite this GAAP accounting write-off, we will be pursuing these receivables and ongoing rent payment with the usual vigor.
Rent receivables from cash-basis tenants totaled approximately $10 million as of December 31.
Again, these receivables are not reflected on our balance sheet.
Now over to receivables that are on our balance sheet.
First, rent receivables of $4.3 million were -- was fairly flat with September 30 levels and now very much in line with our pre-pandemic rent receivable levels of $3 million to $4 million.
These rent receivables include a general reserve of 16% or $835,000 at December 31.
Secondly, accrued rental income receivables decreased slightly to $54 million and had a general reserve of 11% or $6.9 million at December 31.
In the fourth quarter, we collected $2.5 million of previously deferred rent, which would -- reduces the accrued rental income receivable.
This collection of previously deferred rent is excluded from GAAP earnings, FFO and core FFO results.
We did note that -- what AFFO would have been if we had excluded the pandemic-related accrued rent, both via deferral and the subsequent repayment.
We have currently less than 1% of our annual base rent coming from tenants in bankruptcy, and that primarily consists of Ruby Tuesday today.
I will note, Chuck E. Cheese exited bankruptcy during the fourth quarter.
And while we agreed to a 25% rent reduction for 15 months ending December 2021, none of our 53 leases were rejected in bankruptcy.
As Jay noted, today, we initiated 2021 core FFO per share guidance of $2.55 to $2.62 per share.
While our rent collections materially improved throughout 2020, compared to many previous years, we have assumed there would be some continued uncertainty in this variable going forward into 2021.
$50 million of our $675 million of total annual base rent as of 12/31/2020.
We've assumed these cash-basis tenants pay 50% of the rent due in 2021 in our guidance, and that's relatively consistent with what they've been paying in recent months.
Additionally, on top of this, we have assumed 2% rent loss from the remainder of our annual base rent, which equates to about $12 million or $13 million in rent.
This rent loss or vacancy estimate is not made with any particular tenant concerns and on its face feels like a conservative assumption, meaning the actual rent loss could be better than guidance.
But given this is our first issuance of guidance in this pandemic, it seemed prudent to be more conservative than not.
And those of us -- those of you who have known us for the past 25 years are probably not too surprised by that approach.
We ended the fourth quarter with $267 million of cash on hand and no amounts outstanding on our $900 million bank credit facility.
We did not draw down our bank line as many companies did in 2020.
We raised $60 million of equity in the fourth quarter at just over $40 per share.
Our next debt maturity is in April 2023.
It's $350 million with a 3.3% coupon.
So we're in a very good liquidity position.
Our weighted average debt maturity is now 10.2 years with a weighted average interest rate of 3.7%.
So the balance sheet and our leverage profile remains very strong.
A couple of numbers.
Net debt to gross book assets was 34.4%.
Net debt-to-EBITDA was 5.0 times.
Interest coverage was 4.5 times and fixed charge 4.0 times for the fourth quarter of 2020.
Only five of our 3,000-plus properties are encumbered by mortgages totaling only $11.4 million.
So 2021 seems the beginning of where 2020 left off with sustained rent collection levels and incremental improvement in tenant health, which allows us to continue to shift to a more offensive posture.
As our focus remains on the long term, we will continue to endeavor to give NNN the best opportunity to succeed in the coming years.
And Matthew, with that, we will open it up to any questions.

user
compname reports qtrly ffo per common share $0.62.
qtrly ffo per common share$0.62.
qtrly affo per common share $0.69.
sees 2021 core ffo per share $2.55 - $2.62 per share.

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