Michael Mas
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer at Regency Centers
Thanks, Nick, and good morning, everyone. I'll start with some highlights from our first quarter results, then walk through a couple of changes to our full year earnings guidance and assumptions. Excluding COVID period reserve collections, we delivered same-property NOI growth of 6.3% in the first quarter. The largest driver was base rent contributing a strong 430 basis points in the quarter. Base rent growth is the most important indicator of our portfolio strength, and we continue to see positive impacts from embedded rent escalators, positive spreads on re-leasing space and higher occupancy year-over-year.
We also saw meaningful outperformance on percentage rents in the quarter, contributing 100 basis points to same property NOI growth despite tougher year-over-year comps, driven by continued strength in grocery and restaurant sales. Notably, percentage rents tend to be seasonal, with the majority of sales-based billings occurring in the first quarter of the year. The other meaningful driver to first quarter same-property NOI was a 130 basis point positive contribution from uncollectible lease income. We continue to isolate the collection of COVID period reserves from 2020 and 2021 to provide a better picture of normalized results.
But the realities of cash basis tenancy can create some variability in the bad debt line item from quarter-to-quarter. To that end, and due to the better-than-expected collection rates on cash basis tenants, we experienced a positive contribution to uncollectible lease income this quarter as we collected on rents originally billed and reserved in 2022. The increase in collection rates and decline in receivable and reserve balances demonstrate the health and resiliency of our tenant base.
Turning to 2023 guidance. I'd like to point you to the helpful detail on Slides 5 through 7 in our investor presentation. We've increased both our NAREIT FFO and core operating earnings guidance ranges, each by $0.04 per share driven largely by the outperformance in percentage rents and uncollectible lease income in the first quarter. Collectively, these items also drove the 50 basis point upward revision in our same-property NOI growth guidance to a new range of 2.5% to 3.5%, excluding COVID period reserve collections.
I also want to spend a minute on our credit loss assumption, which we revised to a lower range of 60 to 90 basis points for the full year from 75 to 100 basis points previously. Notably, the midpoint of our new same-property NOI and earnings per share ranges now capture the potential for a full liquidation of Bed Bath & Beyond by mid-year. This scenario was previously contemplated in the low end of those ranges. However, this change was offset by first quarter outperformance in bad debt that I discussed earlier, which positively impacted our full year credit loss assumption.
On the capital side, in late March, we repurchased roughly 350,000 shares for $20 million at an average price just over $57 per share. This repurchase was executed to hedge the planned issuance of a like kind of Mountain OP units to the seller of the development project in New York that Nick mentioned earlier. I'll end as I typically do, highlighting the strength and afforded opportunity of Regency's balance sheet, the importance of which is never more evident than in times of capital markets turmoil.
Leverage remains at the low end of our targeted range of 5x to 5.5x debt-to-EBITDA, we are generating significant free cash flow projected to be north of $140 million this year, funding our investments pipeline. We have access to significant liquidity with our $1.25 billion line of credit and there are no significant debt maturities for over a year. This position of strength allows us to be patient and opportunistic in this evolving environment.
With that, we look forward to taking your questions. Thank you.