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: Our unique strategy of concentrating assets around U.S. defense installations executing priority missions continues to produce highly resilient, growing cash flows, as demonstrated by our strong first quarter results, representing a great start toward shaping up to be another strong year.
Driven by solid operations and interest savings from our recent bond financing, first quarter FFO per share, as adjusted for comparability, of $0.56 met the high end of guidance and is 10% higher than the first quarter results in 2020.
Additionally, NOI from real estate operations in the quarter was up 6% from a year ago.
And AFFO increased an impressive 26%.
As these year-over-year comparisons demonstrate, we are clearly on a path of sustainable and highly visible growth.
First quarter leasing results were solid, totaling 258,000 square feet, and second quarter leasing is off to a blistering start.
In April, we've completed 662,000 square feet of renewals and vacancy leasing, eclipsing first quarter volume by 2.5 times.
Better-than-planned outcomes on vacancy and renewal leasing are driving our increased guidance for same-property results for the year.
Development leasing in the quarter totaled 11,000 square feet.
However, we're in advanced negotiations on nearly 900,000 square feet that should close in the coming months.
Bridging to financing activities, we completed a second landmark bond offering last month.
The $600 million 10-year issuance has a 2.75% coupon and was the strongest debt financing in the company's history.
The bonds priced a full notch higher than our current ratings, reflecting the market's growing recognition of the durability of our portfolio, our strategy and our cash flows.
So for the second time in six months, the fixed income investor community unequivocally recognized and rewarded our company with robust demand for and exceptional pricing of our bond offerings.
The improved outlook for same-property cash NOI and interest savings from the bond refinancing are driving the $0.03 increase in the midpoint of 2021 guidance for FFO per share as adjusted for comparability, which at the midpoint implies 4.7% growth over the elevated 2020 results.
And with that, I'll hand the call over to Todd.
First quarter total leasing of 258,000 square feet included 154,000 square feet of renewals.
Renewal economics were in line with expectations, with cash rents rolling down 2.2%, annual escalations averaging 2.6% and leasing capital being only $1.93 per square foot per year of term.
This month, we renewed 596,000 square feet of expiring leases, achieving an 88% renewal rate.
Cash rents on April renewals rolled up 0.5% and carried an average lease term of 4.8 years.
To date, we have completed 750,000 square feet of renewal leasing with a 77% retention rate and average lease term -- or an average term of 4.5 years and cash rents rolling flat.
Based on our renewal achievement to date, we are increasing our full year retention guidance to a new range of 70% to 75%.
We completed 93,000 square feet of vacancy leasing in the quarter and 66,000 square feet in April, bringing our total to 159,000 square feet, and our leasing activity ratio remains strong.
One lease to highlight from the quarter was a 2-floor 55,000 square foot lease at 6721 Columbia Gateway with Rekor Systems, a provider of real-time technology to enable AI-driven decisions.
Recall that the nonrenewal of that building's anchor tenant a year ago left it 20% leased.
We took the opportunity to reposition the asset, creating amenity areas which appeal to a growing list of high tech and cyber companies in the market.
This property is now 80% leased with strong demand for the remaining availability.
In April, we completed a 7,000 square foot expansion with IntelliGenesis, a cybersecurity defense contractor at 6950 Columbia Gateway, bringing that 2020 redevelopment to 100% leased.
We believe our leasing success at both properties demonstrates the value we add by repositioning buildings, as well as Columbia Gateway's growing importance as a preferred location for cyber and high-tech companies.
Development leasing in the quarter was light at 11,000 square feet at Redstone Gateway.
So far in the second quarter, we have 265,000 square feet of development leasing out for signature, and are in advanced negotiations for another 610,000 square feet.
Our development leasing pipeline remains deep and diversified across our Defense IT locations and customer base.
We are tracking up to 2.1 million square feet of development opportunities, and are confident we will meet or exceed our one million square foot development leasing goal.
During the quarter, we placed 7100 Redstone Gateway into service.
The building is a build-to-suit for Cummings Aerospace.
Our pipeline of active developments totals 1.4 million square feet that are 85% leased.
During the remainder of the year, we expect to place 739,000 square feet of these projects into service, bringing our total for the year to 785,000 square feet.
Regarding DC-6, our discussions with the 11.25-megawatt customer continue to progress.
The original lease continues until such time as either party exercises a termination or the lease is amended or replaced, and we continue to believe the tenant will remain.
First quarter FFO per share as adjusted for comparability of $0.56 met the high end of guidance, driven primarily by operations and interest savings from the recent bond refinancing.
Similar to our transaction last fall, our March bond deal was an enormous success.
Our original plan and guidance for 2021 assumed a $450 million bond issuance to repay or refinance some higher coupon debt.
On March 3, we launched a new 10-year offering at initial price talk on credit spreads of 175 basis points.
The offering was 8 times oversubscribed with an order book that totaled close to $3.5 billion.
Strong demand from many high-quality investors allowed us to upsize the offering to $600 million and significantly drive down the credit spread.
The deal priced at 140 basis points over the 10-year treasury, resulting in a 2.75% coupon and a 1% discount.
We used the proceeds to retire two higher-cost issuances, blocking in annual interest savings of $7 million.
The fixed income investors were highly focused on our ability to deliver large volumes of highly leased, low-risk development to continue to grow EBITDA and FFO.
They also appreciated our strategy of concentrating assets around mission-critical defense locations, which greatly insulates our cash flows from the impact of any work-from-home trends.
The March bond issuance represented the fifth most oversubscribed book of all time in the office sector, and the seventh lowest coupon of any length note ever issued by an office REIT.
This offering reset our credit spreads, which now are well within the band of spreads of peers who are rated one notch higher.
Fixed income investors have expressed their views with their wallets, and clearly value the performance of our portfolio, the resiliency of our cash flows and our growth from low-risk developments.
Regarding operations, same property cash NOI was roughly in line with the low end of our first quarter range.
As forecasted, weather-related expenses were at normal levels compared to extremely light levels in the first quarter of 2020, and parking income continued to be lower than last year, as employees start to return to our urban locations.
Based on current negotiations, we expect several positive leasing outcomes that increase our forecast of same-property cash NOI from our original midpoint of negative 1% to a new range that is flat at the midpoint.
As a reminder, our full year guidance continues to assume same-property occupancy declines modestly during the year, due to the diminished vacancy leasing volume last year and the projected impact of joint venturing additional wholly owned data center shells this year to raise equity.
Our central strategy of value creation through low-risk development, deeply concentrated adjacent to Department of Defense priority missions that support the U.S. government and its contractors, has and continues to provide an average of one million or more square feet of new development opportunities, and by extension, high-value defense IT assets each year.
Our strategy also has created a portfolio of high-credit tenants, whose business cycles are not correlated to the general economy, who have durable and growing business demand, and who are supported by healthy defense spending on priority national defense programs.
These attributes allowed both our company and our tenants' businesses to outperform during the pandemic shutdowns, and continue prospering now during the emerging recovery.
Our 2021 business plan had a great start in the first quarter and adds accelerating achievement and demand levels thus far into the second quarter.
Our recent experience in the debt markets, achieving landmark results for our company, combined with our stock's relative outperformance last year, demonstrate that the investment community recognizes the strength of our strategy, our assets and tenants that result in the strength of our franchise.
Our increased midpoint of full year FFO guidance of $2.22 implies 4.7% growth over the elevated 2020 results and 4.8% compound growth from 2019.
We're firmly on a path of sustainable growth, driven by a durable operating portfolio, a strong balance sheet and a reliable low-risk development program that is producing incremental NOI annually.
We look forward to capitalizing on the growing set of impressive opportunities we have before us.

user
compname reports first quarter 2021 results; raises midpoint of full year guidance by 3-cents, implying 4.7% growth.
q1 adjusted ffo per share $0.56.

assistant