Alexandria is at the vanguard of meeting the historic and high unprecedented demand from many of our more than 750 tenants for growth needs now and a critical path for future growth very importantly.
We're very proud that we've got almost 7% quarter-to-quarter per share FFO growth, more than 40% rental rate growth, almost 18% NOI growth, almost 8% same-store NOI growth and a $1.3-plus billion annual NOI run rate, not to mention about $545 million in incremental revenue in our development and redevelopment pipeline.
There is a proposal right now to increase the fiscal year '22 NIH budget up to $51 billion, nearly a 20% boost over fiscal year '21.
The FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, better known as CDERS approved 23 new molecular entities in the first half of 2021, putting it on the pace to exceed 2020's near-record approval high of 53.
Following a historic year of 2020, venture capital in Life Science continues at a very strong pace of almost $36 billion already raised in the first half of 2021, on pace to eclipse 2020's all-time high of $46 billion.
Following a record 2020 for IPOs and follow-on offerings, the first half of this year have continued to reach new highs, with over $8 billion raised in 52 IPOs and over $17 billion raised in many follow-ons, positioning 2021 for an all-time record year of public market investment in life science.
We only produce now about 11% to 13% and self-sufficient in next-gen manufacturing of complex medicines.
A total of 3.7 billion vaccine doses have been administered worldwide with nearly 10% of these doses in the U.S. alone.
Roughly 57.5% of the vaccine-eligible population in our country, that's 12 and over have been fully vaccinated by either tenant Pfizer or Moderna's 2-shot mRNA-based vaccine or tenant Johnson & Johnson's single shot.
This is just over 49% of the total U.S. population, and we hope this number of fully vaccinated individuals will continue to steadily rise.
The fact that our tenants Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson were able to develop, run robust clinical trials, manufacture and distribute billions of vaccines at scale in less than 12 months is absolutely unprecedented.
These vaccines achieved such astounding safety and efficacy in the 90-plus percent range when the FDA has set the original bar at 50%, with an amazingly low incidence of side effects reported from the millions of people who have now received that is truly astounding.
It's been just over 18 months since the first U.S. COVID case was reported on January 21, 2020.
In the U.S., this highly continuous Delta variant, approximately 50% more transmissible with 1,000 times higher viral load account for at least 83% of COVID cases.
Average daily confirmed COVID case count now exceed 50,000, which is guide x that of the mid-June lows with hospitalization and deaths rising as well.
More than 95% of people hospitalized for COVID-19 are unvaccinated, and the vaccine still remain effective even against the Delta variant.
With regards to children, Pfizer has an emergency use authorization for children over 12, and the FDA is urging Pfizer and Moderna to expand their studies in children aged five to 11.
At Alexandria's Annual Investor Day during December 2017, we presented a bold framework to nearly double the company's annual rental revenues from a little more than $800 million to $1.5 billion by the end of 2022.
We are pleased to share those annualized revenues for Q2 2021 are, in fact, in excess of $1.5 billion.
The company has also grown from a mission-critical operating asset base and development pipeline of 29 million square feet at the end of 2017, to a total of 62 million square feet at the end of Q2 2021.
And as we fielded questions during the 2020 as to whether the healthy leasing activity for Alexandria's mega campus platform was perhaps a short-term blip driven by COVID-19, the second quarter of this year's leasing volume of more than 1.9 million square feet, the highest quarterly leasing volume in the history of the company is again evidence of the company's unique position as a trusted partner to the growing life science industry, providing a durable and sustainable competitive advantage in the market.
As we just stated, the 1.9 million square feet lease represents the highest quarterly leasing activity during the 27-year history of the company.
I'll direct you to page two of the supplemental, where it indicates the 3.4 million square feet under construction is 80% leased and the additional 3.6 million square feet anticipated to commence construction during 2021, 2022 is 89% leased and negotiating.
So robust leasing and our growth pipeline provides exceptional clarity, and these projects in total will drive incremental revenues in excess of $545 million.
Cash increases this quarter of 25.4% and GAAP increases of 42.4%.
Occupancy remained very solid at 94.3% and the operating portfolio, which would have been 98.1% if were not for the 1.4 million square feet of vacancy in recently acquired properties, which provide for near-term incremental annual rental revenues in excess of $55 million.
We're closely evaluating Greater Boston's ground-up pipeline, which is 56% leased.
In the second quarter, we delivered 755,565 square feet, spread over five assets located in South San Francisco, San Carlos, Long Island City, San Diego and the Research Triangle.
This is double what we delivered in the first quarter, and these deliveries will provide more than $31 million in annual rental revenue over the next year.
Assets contributing notably to this outcome include 840 Winter Street and Waltham Mass, which is a testament to our ability to capture demand from companies needing facilities for next-gen manufacturing.
3160 Porter Drive in Palo Alto, a joint effort with Stanford to commercialize the University's most innovative science.
And 5505 Morehouse in Sorrento Mesa, which is benefiting from Alexandria's place-making expertise and strong demand drivers in San Diego.
In addition, we expect to have another 3.6 million square feet in 19 properties commenced construction this year, and next that are already 89% leased or under negotiation.
As Steve also mentioned, these properties will cumulatively add approximately $545 million of annual rental revenue once fully delivered.
A year ago, lumber was $500 per thousand board feet, which was about $100 above its historical norm.
It climbed to $1,700 per thousand board feet in early May, but has since dropped back down to $600 per thousand board feet, and is still dropping.
Thus, prices remained very high with metal studs up 75% since January.
I discussed our record 4% cap rate at 213 East last quarter, but I want to add that in addition to achieving that cap rate, we also achieved an unlevered IRR of 9.6%.
And a value creation margin, which is calculated by dividing our gain by gross book value of 56%.
We achieved a 12% unlevered IRR on this sale and a value creation margin of 61%, a truly remarkable outcome, and it's very reflective of the high-quality assets we've developed and continue to develop in the Seattle region and elsewhere.
In Sorrento Mesa, an asset known as The Canyons, which contains a little over 1/3 of lab and manufacturing space with the balance being office, sold at a 4.48% cap rate and a value of $575 per square foot.
9615 Medical Center Drive, located in the Shady Grove submarket and adjacent to a number of Alexandria properties was sold to a U.S. insurance company for a 5.18% cap rate and a valuation of $610 per square foot.
Revenue and net operating income for the second quarter was up 16.6% and 16.8% over the second quarter of 2020, respectively.
And NOI for the second quarter was up 6.9% over the first quarter of '21.
Now venture investment gains included in FFO per share were $25.5 million for the second quarter and was consistent with the first quarter of '21.
Now looking back over the last two quarters, we raised our outlook for FFO per share, $0.03 when we reported first quarter results.
And during the second quarter, we raised our outlook for FFO per share again by another $0.02.
Now this $0.02 increase was announced in connection with our Form 8-K filing date at June 14, when we were substantially through the second quarter and had solid visibility into the strength of core results for the quarter.
Same-property NOI growth for the first half of '21 continue to benefit from our high-quality tenant roster, with 53% of our annual rental revenue from investment-grade rated or large-cap publicly traded companies.
Same-property NOI growth for the first half of '21 was very strong at 4.4% and 7.4% on a cash basis.
High rental rate growth on lease renewals and releasing the space was the key driver for the improvement in our outlook for 2021 same-property net operating growth to 2% to 4% and 4.7% to 6.7%, an increase of 30 basis points and 40 basis points, respectively.
It's important to highlight that the lease-up of 1.4 million rental square feet of vacancy at these properties will provide further growth in annual rental revenue in excess of $55 million.
Now occupancy that we reported for June 30 was 94.3% and 98.1% on a pro forma basis, excluding vacancy from recently acquired properties.
And it's also important to highlight that if we set aside recently acquired properties, our occupancy is on track to improve by 100 basis points in 2021.
We have one of the highest adjusted EBITDA margins in the REIT industry at 69%.
We reported our lowest AR balance since 2012 at $6.7 million, truly amazing when you consider that our total market capitalization was over $26 billion as of June 30.
And we continue to consistently report high collections at 99.4% for July.
We reported record leasing velocity at over 3.6 million rentable square feet executed in the first half of this year.
And this run rate is significantly exceeding the strong leasing volume for 2020 and on track for exceptional rental rate growth in the range of 31% to 34% and 18% to 21% on lease renewals and releasing the space the last figures on a cash basis, by the way.
Now as a trusted partner with access to over 750 tenants in our portfolio, we are well positioned to capture the tremendous demand from our tenant roster and life science industry relationships.
We have a super exciting pipeline of projects under construction, aggregating 3.4 million rentable square feet, 80% lease negotiating.
Near-term projects starts 89% leased were under negotiations, aggregating 3.7 million square feet.
Now this aggregates about 6.9 million square feet, 90% of which is related to space requirements from our existing relationships.
These projects will generate an amazing amount of incremental annual rental revenue exceeding $545 million or a 34% increase above the second quarter rental revenues annualized of $1.6 billion.
As of June 30, unrealized gains were $962 million on an adjusted cost basis of $990 million.
Realized gains on our venture investments for the second quarter were $60.2 million, including $34.8 million of realized gains excluded from FFO per share.
Now for the first half of '21, we realized gains aggregating about $57.7 million that related to significant gains in three investments that were excluded from FFO per share as adjusted.
We remain on track for net debt to adjusted EBITDA of 5.2 times by year-end.
We continue to maintain significant liquidity of $4.5 billion as of June 30.
We're in a solid position with debt maturities with our next maturity representing only $184 million comes due in 2024.
Now to date, in 2021, we have completed $580 million at cap rates in the 4% to 4.2% range.
And we have about $1.4 billion in process at various stages and expect to move along other dispositions that will push us well above the top end of our range for dispositions, which are currently at $2.2 billion.
Now we are targeting about $1 billion in dispositions to close in the third quarter and the remainder in the fourth quarter.
We narrowed the range of guidance from $0.10 to $0.08 for both earnings per share and FFO per share.
EPS was updated to a range from $3.46 to $3.54 and FFO per share as adjusted was updated to a range from $7.71 to $7.79 with no change in the midpoint of FFO per share diluted as adjusted of $7.75.
Now as a reminder, since our initial FFO per share guidance for 2021, we have increased the midpoint of our guidance by $0.05 for growth in 2021, representing an increase of 6.1% over 2020.

Summary:
EPS was updated to a range from $3.46 to $3.54 and FFO per share as adjusted was updated to a range from $7.71 to $7.79 with no change in the midpoint of FFO per share diluted as adjusted of $7.75.