Mike Mas
Chief Financial Officer at Regency Centers
Thanks, Jim. Good morning, everyone. I'll start by addressing second quarter results, walk through key changes in our 2022 revised guidance and touch base on our balance sheet. First would like to point out some new disclosure on page 8 of our supplemental, where we now summarize the contributing elements of our same-property NOI growth.
Last quarter, we spent time describing the noise that exists in the quarterly cadence of our NOI growth rate throughout 2022 driven primarily by the collection of prior year reserves as well as an expense recovery adjustment that occurred in the second quarter of last year. Due to the continued significant impact of these items, we stress that base rent growth is the best indicator of what is truly driving our business and is the best representation of our continued growth trajectory. You should find that this new disclosure is helpful in making these things more clear and as you can see in the table, the largest positive contributors to second quarter performance where growth in base rent and improvement in current year uncollectible lease income which together added the total 450 basis points to our NOI growth rate while the offsetting factors include the tougher year-over-year comparisons related to prior year reserve collections and expense recoveries detracting a total of 380 basis points from our results.
We've also had a gap more straight-line rent spreads to our supplemental on Page 19 as a complement to our historically reported cash spreads. GAAP spreads have always been an important metric for us internally given our strong focus on embedding contractual rent growth into our leases and we believe this metric helps provide an even more fulsome picture of the primary drivers of our base rent growth over time. Notably, as of the second quarter even after removing the positive impact of prior year collections. Our core operating earnings per share has returned to pre-pandemic 2019 levels. This achievement is a testament to our portfolio's quality and resiliency. We also converted more cash basis tenants back to accrual in the second quarter continuing a trend over the last year following improvement in both collections and underlying tenant credit.
The resulting reversal of straight-line rent reserves contributed $3.5 million or $0.02 per share to Nareit FFO which was not included in prior guidance. We now have about 12% of our ABR remaining on a cash basis of accounting. Turning to our updated current year guidance we refer you to page 6 of our second quarter earnings presentation, specifically the column indicating the drivers of the increase in our Nareit FFO range at the midpoint. The biggest change was to our same property NOI growth forecast of 100 basis points of the midpoint positively impacting our Nareit FFO per share outlook by about $0.06. All the positive operating trends we are seeing that Jim outlined and that impacted our second quarter results are supportive of the 100 basis point increase for the full year.
The primary drivers include higher average commenced occupancy benefiting both base rent and expense recoveries and better collections on cash basis tenants leading to decreasing levels of uncollectible lease income. Another driver of the increase is non-cash revenues up $0.03 per share at the midpoint primarily driven by the impact on the straight-line rent from the conversion of cash basis tenants back to accrual during the second quarter. Recall that we only include these impacts and results and guidance on an as-converted basis.
Our balance sheet remains in excellent condition and in the quarter, with full capacity on our revolver with total leverage at the bottom end of our targeted range of 5x to 5.5x net debt to EBITDA. This strong balance sheet position enabled us to take advantage of an opportunity to repurchase our shares in the second half of June.
We bought back 1.3 million shares for about $75 million representing an average price of $58.25 per share. As Lisa mentioned this price implied a cap rate in the a price at which we would happily buy assets that match Regency's quality and growth profile. Notably, the share repurchase was about a penny accretive to 2022 earnings. The debt markets have remained volatile and the movement in both treasuries and spreads has impacted our cost of debt capital. But, with no unsecured maturities until 2024 we have the luxury to remain patient waiting for more opportunistic windows. We are also reminded that during periods of dislocation in the capital markets, the importance of our significant level of free cash flow was highlighted which at north of a $130 million annually, allows us to continue investing accretively.
Looking ahead from an operational perspective, inflationary impacts on the consumer combined with a softer economic backdrop introduces some uncertainty into our outlook beyond 2022. But as we reflect on our resiliency throughout the pandemic the impacts from which could be described as indiscriminate towards property location and tenant quality. We believe Regency's portfolio is well positioned ahead of a more traditional economic recession with greater bifurcation in performance across the quality spectrums of trade area locations, property formats and tenant exposures.
As Lisa indicated, you won't hear us say we're immune to the impacts of a downturn but the good news is that we are starting from a position of strength. Our leasing pipelines are very active, feature in a healthy mix tenant demand across all markets, categories and sizes with retention rates that continue to be above historical averages. One silver lining of the pandemic, is that the less resilient operators were called out during 2020 and our tenant base has emerged even stronger providing stable footing in our occupancy.
We also have a strong value creation pipeline fully funded with free cash flow with visibility to more meaningful NOI contributions in 2023 and 2024 and maybe most importantly as we consider the rising economic uncertainties. We have one of the strongest balance sheets in the sector allowing us the ability to remain on offense and create value through investment should opportunities arise.
With that, we look forward to taking your questions.