Louis Haddad
Analyst · Stifel
Thank you, Julie. Good morning, and thank you for joining our call today. We continue to be very pleased by the performance of our company and grow even more optimistic about the future. This morning we reported another solid quarter with FFO per share of $0.19 and core FFO per share of $0.21, which was in line with our expectations. We raised our 2014 outlook and are enthusiastic about the second half of the year. This is a very exciting time for our company as each of our three divisions firing on all cylinders. We are executing on the goals we laid out at the beginning of 2014 and while only midway through the year have made significant headway. I am going to take the next few minutes to run through these goals with an update on our progress. In 2014, we set out to execute new leases for pipeline projects as well as our stable portfolio and we are doing just that. We are delighted to announce that we have rounded up the co-tenancy requirement for our anchored tenant at 4525 Main Street and properties and have completed our retail plan for the fifth phase of the Town Center here in Virginia Beach. As you may remember from previous earnings calls, we made deliberate choices regarding certain vacancies, in some cases holding space off the market in order to allow our retail plan to play out. Now I am pleased to report that this group of exciting new tenants coming to Town Center will create meaningful long term value for our shareholders across of a number of metrics including occupancy, NOI, retail same store sales, and tenant credit quality. As detailed in our press release this morning West Elm, Free People, lululemon, francesca’s and Tupelo Honey Café have signed leases for retail space at Town Center. West Elm and Tupelo Honey Café will complement Anthropologie at the base of the newly constructed 4525 Main Street Tower, bringing the retail space in that new building to a 100% leased. Free People, lululemon, and francesca’s will be across the street in the South retail property of Town Center. Anthropologie this will be West Elm, Free People, lululemon, and Tupelo Honey Café's first and only locations in South Eastern Virginia. We believe the addition of the first class roster of retailers further demonstrates what we've known for years. The Town Center is the premier address in the region. Negotiations continue for 20,000 square feet of Town Center retail space that once signed will result in virtually a 100% retail occupancy in all of Town Center. As far the office portion of 4525 Main Street, our two anchor tenants [Broadax] (ph) and the City of Virginia Beach have both moved in bringing occupancy to over 50%. In addition to the success with Town Center retail leasing, we are seeing significant momentum at our multifamily development projects. The rollout at Liberty Apartments the first project, which we delivered in the beginning of 2014, is ahead of schedule with approximately 60% of the units leased and about half of the retail space either leased, under Letter of Intent or in negotiation. Lastly, recent negotiations with a handful of retail tenants outside of Town Center are coming to a close at which time our retail portfolio of occupancy will be in the high 90s. In 2014, we set out execute on strategic and opportunistic acquisitions and we did just that. Yesterday we announced that we entered into an agreement to acquire Dimmock Square a retail power center located in Colonial Heights, Virginia just south of Richmond. This acquisition is an outstanding addition to our portfolio representing a best-in-class power center in a contiguous market. The acquisition of Dimmock Square will add over 100,000 square feet of a 100% occupied retail space to our portfolio. Current tenants at Dimmock Square include Best Buy, Pier 1, Old Navy, Dress Barn and Shoe Carnival amongst others. The center is strategically situated between the 900,000 square foot Southpark Mall and at Walmart Supercenter. The definitive agreement provides that we will acquire our 100% interest in Dimmock Square and exchange for approximately 990,000 operating partnership units and approximately $10 million of cash. We successfully deployed OP units in this transaction increasing a capital base and generating earnings for shareholders. We believe the acquisition will be accretive to annual FFO per diluted share and expected to close in the current quarter. This opportunity was born out of a deep and longstanding relationship and we will continue to pursue such strategic and opportunistic acquisitions in the future. In 2014, we set out to maintain stable portfolio occupancy in the mid 90s and we are doing just that. In the second quarter our portfolio occupancy increased slightly to 94.6% from 94.5% at March 31. We believe these figures and their trajectory for the latter half of this year represents the significant time and attention our asset management team gives to only leasing vacant office and retail space, but retaining tenants as well. We've already discussed the leasing success in our retail portfolio. In addition I should note the trajectory of our multifamily occupancy. With construction complete next door to the cosmopolitan apartments in Town Center occupancy has not only rebounded, but is peaking at about 95% as of today at highest level since the project was launched. When combined with the historically strong occupancy at Smith’s Landing apartments, we expect multifamily occupancy to be in the mid to high 90s in latter half of this year as well. In 2014, our goal was to deliver the development projects on time and we are doing just that. Our developments projects are on budget and progressing as expected. The initially delivery of 4525 Main Street here in Town Center occurred in early June, which was back to than the original timeframe of late July. The accelerated delivery date is evidence of the benefits of having our own captive general contractor. We remain on track to deliver the remaining 2014, development projects in the second half of the year. Mike will detail those in a moment. In 2014, we set out to execute contracts for third party construction work with consistent segment profit and we did just that. In the spring we announced that we entered into a contract to build Harbor Point project a 20 story mixed use power for Exelon Corporation. Work on this project located on Baltimore Waterfront adjacent to Harbor East is underway with completion expected in the Spring of 2016. While the first phase of any construction project always carries the most risk from a timing standpoint we are tracking on schedule. We believe the size and scope of this project will help to drive our construction division's annual growth profit contribution in the coming years. As evidenced by the noted accomplishments our team has a lot to be proud of. At this point, I would like to transition from our accomplishments and provide you additional color on our longer-term strategy. We are currently in the process of our budget planning for 2015, so it’s a bit early to be precise on our expectations for next year. However, I would like to provide you a roadmap of our longer term strategy over the next three to five years. Our long-term strategy is simple, continue to grow NOI. Through organic NOI growth in our stable portfolio, there are development pipeline projects through our third party construction growth profits and through strategic acquisitions. When combined with measured decisions about our corporate matrix and balance sheet, we are focused on ensuring that our future NOI growth will translate into healthy FFO per share growth over time and we discussed each of these drivers of growth individually. While we enjoy organic growth from contractual length consistent with our competitors, we recognize that our same store NOI growth is somewhat limited by our high occupancy level. This is a situation we are happy to be in and it means that our assets are well positioned solid by tenants and to be valued at lower relative Cap rates. Turning to our third party construction division, in addition to sourcing development opportunities as well as controlling costs and timely delivery of development projects, the gross profit from this business have been a reliable source of income year in and year out. As we discussed the construction division provides the unique opportunity to reject our brand and capabilities throughout the market place. Historically the construction business contributed approximately $4 million of gross profit annually. We believe that in 2014, and for the next couple of years that $4 million run rate will be the low end of our range. Our development pipeline is a key driver of further growth and our supplemental package this quarter you can see that there are approximately $230 million of developmental pipeline projects marching through our identified and next generation pipeline, which will together refer to going forward as simply our development pipeline. This figure will ultimately be closer to $300 million once we include the John Hopkins Project that we've previously discussed and continue to finalize. We've historically discussed the value creation from our pipeline projects in terms of equity creations from our wholesales to retail spread. We strive to maintain this spread with all of the development and construction tools we have previously discussed including structuring land acquisitions, managing the design process, acquiring municipal support through public-private partnerships and managing the construction process. The same value creation can be quantified through NOI. Assuming the inclusion of John Hopkins, we expect in excess of $25 million of NOI from these development projects once they are all stabilized, which is in excess of 60% growth over 2014 NOI. We expect approximately one-third of the $25 million of NOI to come online in 2015 with the remainder in 2016 and 2017 as the development project stabilize. Over time we are looking forward to continue developing a $150 million to $175 million of assets every 18 to 24 months. As a complement to growth from our developmental pipeline we are committed to strategic acquisitions. We recently announced the Dimmock Square as a great example of an opportunity where we were able to take advantage of a longstanding relationship while utilizing our operating partnership unit as currency to ensure both topline revenue growth and accretive FFO per share metrics. We look forward to augmenting the stable income from our business with accretive acquisitions. In the context of our long term strategy, let me now touch on the last annual goal we laid out for 2014, to manage the balance sheet to ensure appropriate leverage metrics and position the company for continued FFO growth. The translation of this NOI to FFO per share growth will come through prudent balance sheet management. We believe we continue to have all the levers at our disposal that we have previously discussed including potential equity raises, dispositions, acquisitions with OP units, sale of pipeline projects and joint ventures and subject to market conditions and other factors, we expect to use them appropriately to provide value to our shareholders. This is important to us as we and our former partners represent approximately 40% of the ownership of the company. As a result, we are continuing our longstanding strategy of selling single tenant assets from time to time. Across our stable portfolio and pipeline, we have a half a dozen such assets, but the majority of these existing within our developmental pipeline and not yet delivered. To this end we have entered into an agreement to sell the Virginian Natural Gas office building, which we can see from our Town Center offices for approximately $8.9 million, which represents a Cap rate of approximately 6.25%. The company will net approximately $7.7 million after tax protection payments and other disposition costs. We believe that investor should focus on this transaction as it relates to company evaluation given the proximity of this property to Town Center. With that, I’ll ask Mike to walk you through some of the key financial and portfolio metrics contained in the second quarter supplemental package and then we will take questions you may have about this discussion during Q&A. Mike?
Michael O’Hara: Thank you, Lou and good morning. Today I want to cover the highlights for the quarter including a discussion on our balance sheet and insight into the Dimmock Square acquisition. I will wrap up with an overview of our updated 2014 outlook. FFO for the second quarter was $0.19 per share and core FFO was $0.21 per share. Second quarter was in line with our expectations. We report core FFO as we believe the core FFO is a more meaningful statistic in analyzing our business. Core FFO exclude certain items including, but not limited to non-cash stock compensation expense and the effect from non-stabilized development projects. We add back non-cash compensation expense for those shares that were initially allocated from our public offering. Our adjustments from FFO to Core FFO are illustrated on Page 11 of the supplement package. These adjustments include a reduction to second quarter FFO of 300,000 from non-stabilized development projects. During the second quarter, we executed approximately 49,000 square feet of new and renewal office and the retail leases. This does not include a leasing activity at 4525 Main Street and our other development projects. Office releasing spread for the quarter were higher by $0.79 per square foot on a GAAP basis, lower by $2.18 per square foot on a cash basis. The retail releasing spreads were higher by $0.81 per square foot on a GAAP basis and lower by $0.46 per square foot on a cash basis. Same-store NOI for the quarter was positive $62,000 or 0.7% on a GAAP basis and negative $43,000 or 0.5% on a cash basis. These numbers do not include the leasing activities Lou discussed earlier. During the second quarter, our portfolio occupancy increased slightly from 94.5% at March 31 to $94.6%, while with this increased leasing activity comes TI Leasing Commission which will impact AFFO over the next couple of quarters. Projecting cost in this leasing is approximately $4 million as outlined in our supplemental package of which approximately $1 million impacted the second quarter. Cost-related to retail leasing activity are higher than our typical long-term run rate at tenant leasing outlays, and the return on cost associated with these leases are creating value for our stockholders. On the construction fund, we report a segment gross profit in the second quarter of $1.1 million and revenue of $20 million. During the quarter, we executed approximately $6 million of new contract and at the end of the second quarter the company had total construction backlog of approximately $179 million. Now turning to our balance sheet, we continue to execute on our balance sheet strategy to review the flexibility to fund our growth objective and multi efficient in cost effective manner, while managing upcoming loan maturities. At the loan maturities, we have all exposure to 2015 as we have one loan maturing in 2014 for the balance of $1 million and two loans maturing in 2015 with combined balances of less than $9 million. At the end of second quarter, we had total outstanding debt $350 million including $88 million outstanding on our credit facility. Our core debt, annualized core EBITDA multiple at quarter end was seven times. Our weighted average interest is 3.5% and average averaged loans maturity is 8.9 years. Approximately 42% of our debt was fixed at June 31, and taking into account interest rate caps approximately 75% of our debt was fixed or hedged. Please see Page 14 of the supplement package and details of our interest rate caps. We believe that using interest rate caps limits our exposure to rising rates while giving us the flexibility at a reasonable cost. As our development projects ramp up and start to come online, we're evaluating our leverage metrics and our ratio of fixed rate debt to overall debt. The first step we are taking to reposition our balance sheet is the disposition of an asset. We announced that we’re selling the VNG building and using the net proceeds of approximately $7.7 million to pay down the credit facility. We are also evaluating other dispositions. Now turning to the Dimmock acquisition, we’re acquiring 100% interest in the LLC that owns the Dimmock’s Square Shopping Center in exchange for $10 million of cash and approximately 190,000 op units. We expect to close on this transaction during the third quarter. Assuming a mid third quarter closing this acquisition will add approximately $470,000 to FFO in 2014 and a time weighted share impact to third quarter will be 500,000 shares. Now we’ll walk you through our update full-year of 2014 outlook. We raised our full-year 2014 total Core FFO outlook which excludes the impact from non-stabilized projects and non-cash compensation expense to approximately $27.5 million from the previous expectation, which was in-line from full-year 2013 Core FFO, approximately $26.5 million. This includes the impact from the Dimmock Square acquisition, as I’ve just discussed, which we expected to positively impact Core FFO by approximately $470,000, assuming a mid-third quarter 2014 closing. We remain on-track to deliver five development projects this year which will be excluded from our Core FFO results. These projects include, Greentree Shopping Center during the second quarter we turned over the pad to [indiscernible]; the Encore Apartments; which is expected to open in the first week of September, and the Whetstone Apartments, which are expected to open in mid September. This is in addition to the already delivered 4525 Main Street, delivered in July 2014, and Liberty Apartments, which were completed and acquired in January 2014. Based on the leasing activity we are experiencing, we now expect a negative impact from non-stabilized projects on FFO 2014 to be $1.0 million down from the previous expectations of $1.5 million. In addition, we lower our expected full year 2014 G&A expense to approximately $7.6 million compared to $7.8 million previously which includes $750 of non-cash comp which will add back for Core FFO. Now lastly, we increased the third party annual segment gross profit to approximately $4.3 million from the previous expectations of $4 million. This increase reflects the impact of 170 million new contracts signed in 2014, which begin in earnest later this year. And finally our dividend, yesterday we announced that the Board of Directors declared a cash dividend of $0.16 per share for the third quarter of 2014. The dividend will be payable in cash on October 9 to stockholders of record on October 1. I’ll now turn the call back over to Lou.