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: And we're pleased to report another solid quarter for National Retail Properties with increasing acquisition volume, high occupancy and rent collections and a rock-solid balance sheet.
We increased our common stock dividend in August, making 2021 our 32nd consecutive year of increased dividends.
Only 86 other U.S. public companies, including only two other REITs, can offer that impressive track record of consistent dividend growth to investors.
We're also issuing guidance for 2022 core FFO per share of $2.90 to $2.97, reflecting approximately 4% growth over 2021 from midpoint to midpoint.
Kevin will provide more details on the individual factors behind our guidance for both 2021 and 2022.
But the Reader's Digest version of the story is that National Retail Properties is humming on all cylinders.
Turning to the highlights of our third quarter financial results.
Our portfolio of 3,195 freestanding single-tenant retail properties continues to perform exceedingly well.
Occupancy ticked up slightly from the prior quarter to 98.6% and remains above our long-term average of 98%.
We also announced collection of 99% of rents due for the third quarter.
Collection of previously deferred rent remained at an equally high percentage, and we forgave no rent during the quarter.
These impressive collection results compare very favorably to other retail real estate companies, including those with a significantly higher percentage of investment-grade tenants.
Moreover, we believe these results validate our strategy of doing direct sale-leaseback transactions with large regional and national operators for well-located real estate parcels at low cost per property and reasonable rents.
Our acquisitions, which are sourced primarily from our portfolio of relationship tenants with which we do repeat programmatic long-term sale-leaseback transactions, continued to ramp up.
During the third quarter, we invested $247 million in 49 new properties at an initial cash cap rate of 6.4% and with an average lease duration of 19 years.
Year-to-date, we've invested $455 million in 107 new properties at an initial cash cap rate of 6.5% and an average lease duration of 18 years.
Our relationship tenants with which we do the majority of our business have returned to growth mode, and our transaction volume has ticked up accordingly.
We've increased our 2021 acquisition guidance to a range of $550 million to $600 million.
And we've issued initial guidance for 2022 acquisitions in the range of $550 million to $650 million as we anticipate returning to our typical pre-pandemic run rate of acquisition volume.
During the third quarter, we also sold 27 properties, raising $30 million of proceeds to be reinvested into new acquisitions.
Year-to-date, we've now raised over $70 million from the sale of 53 properties, divided roughly equally between leased properties and vacant properties.
Our balance sheet remains one of the strongest in our sector, highlight by -- highlighted by our issuance of $450 million of 3% interest-only 30-year notes in September.
With over $200 million of cash remaining after redemption of our 5.2% preferred in October, a zero balance on our $1.1 billion line of credit, no material debt maturities until 2024 and a weighted average debt duration of almost 15 years, we have one of the strongest balance sheets in our sector and remain well positioned to fund future acquisitions and take advantage of opportunities that may present themselves.
We reopened our office fully in July, and I'm absolutely certain that we are all better together under one roof.
I'm also proud of our company's recent recognition as a 2021 Cigna Well-Being Award recipient.
Let me close by reiterating our long-term approach to all aspects of our business.
Although we will continue to review and refine our strategy, we believe that the right long-term approach for creating consistent per share growth on a multiyear basis is to own a broadly diversified portfolio of well-located real estate acquired at reasonable prices and leased to strong regional and national tenants at reasonable rents, all supported by a low-leveraged balance sheet and long-tenured staff of industry experts.
This strategy has once again proven to be resilient and durable during a period of upheaval and crisis and has put us in a great position to play offense as we look ahead to 2022 and beyond.
As usual, the cautionary statement.
That's up $0.01 from the preceding second quarter $0.70 per share and up $0.09 from the prior year's $0.62 per share.
Today, we also reported that AFFO was $0.75 per share for the third quarter.
That's down $0.02 from the preceding second quarter $0.77, and that's largely a result of scheduled deferral repayments beginning to taper off from the peak levels in the first half of 2021.
We did footnote this AFO -- this AFFO amount included $4.3 million of deferred rent payment in our accrued rental income adjustment for the third quarter, without which would have produced AFFO of $0.73 per share.
Excluding all deferral repayments, our AFFO dividend payout ratio for the first nine months was 73.5%, and that's fairly consistent with prior year levels.
As Jay noted, occupancy was 98.6% at quarter end.
That's fairly consistent with recent quarters.
G&A expense was $11.1 million for the third quarter, and that increase for the quarter and the nine months is really largely driven by incentive compensation.
We ended the quarter with $706 million of annual base rent in place for all leases as of September 30, 2021.
As Jay mentioned, rent collections continue to remain strong in the third quarter with rent collections of approximately 99% for the third quarter.
Collections from our cash-basis tenants, which represent about $50 million or 7.1% of our total annual base rent, improved to approximately 94% for the third quarter.
That's up from 92% in the second quarter and 80% previously reported in the first quarter of 2021.
We -- today, we did increase our 2021 core FFO per share guidance to a range of $2.75 to $2.80 per share, and that's up from a range -- I'm sorry, we increased it from a range of $2.75 to $2.80 to a new range of $2.80 to $2.84 per share and similarly increased the AFFO guidance to a range of $3 to $3.04 per share.
Notably, this guidance exceeds our 2019 results by approximately 2% to 2.5% despite the headwinds and reduced acquisition levels in 2020.
Today's 2021 guidance incorporates the continued strong collections and increased acquisition activity.
And they're largely unchanged from last quarter's guidance with the exception of the increased acquisition guidance of $550 million to $600 million of acquisitions versus the previous guidance of $400 million to $500 million.
We expect to continue the high level of rent collection rates but have assumed a total of 1.5%, 1.5% of potential rent loss.
In time, we're optimistic that will drift back toward our usual 1% rent loss assumption in our guidance.
Today, we also initiated 2022 core FFO per share guidance of $2.90 to $2.97 per share.
That represents a 4.1% increase over 2021 results using the guidance midpoint for both years.
We've assumed rent collections remain at high levels and have assumed potential rent loss of 1.5% of annual base rent.
Switching over to the balance sheet.
Largely as a result of the $450 million, 30-year 3% debt offering we completed in September, we ended the third quarter with $543.5 million of cash on hand.
However, $345 million of that cash was used shortly after quarter end on October 15 to redeem our 5.2% preferred stock.
So that would have left us with approximately $200 million of cash on a pro forma basis and no amounts outstanding on our $1.1 billion bank credit facility at quarter end.
So our liquidity remains in excellent shape.
Weighted average debt maturity is now approximately 14.9 years with a 3.7% weighted average fixed interest rate.
Our next debt maturity is $350 million of 3.9% coupon debt that's due in mid-2024.
So with leverage and liquidity in very good shape, the balance sheet is well positioned for 2022.
A couple of leverage debt -- net debt to gross book assets was 39.8%.
Net debt-to-EBITDA was 5.4 times, and that's at September 30.
And that's pro forma for the preferred redemption that we completed soon after quarter end.
Interest coverage was 4.8 times and fixed charge coverage was 4.2 times for the third quarter of 2021.
That is not pro forma for the preferred redemption and the dividends on preferred.
So 2021 looks to be another very solid year.
We're well positioned to continue that performance into 2022.
And as Jay noted, our focus remains on the long term as we continue to endeavor to grow per share results on a consistent basis.
So with that, Matthew, we will open it up to any questions.

user
qtrly affo per common share $0.75.
compname says core ffo per share guidance for 2021 increased to $2.80 to $2.84 from $2.75 to $2.80.
compname says 2021 affo is estimated to be $3.00 to $3.04 per share.
sees fy 2022 core ffo guidance of $2.90 to $2.97 per share and sees 2022 affo to be $2.99 to $3.06 per share.

assistant