Lou Haddad
Analyst · Baird. Please go ahead
Thanks, Julie. Good morning and thank you for joining our call today. We continue to be very pleased by the performance of our company. This morning we reported another solid quarter with FFO per share of $0.20, which was in line with our expectations. For the full-year we reported FFO of $0.80 per share. This morning I am going to start with a synopsis of the year. I will then comment on new activity, including pending acquisitions, our commitment for a new unsecured credit facility and our recently announced dividend increase. I will conclude my remarks with our long-term outlook. Mike O'Hara will then provide details on the quarter as well as our 2015 guidance, which we introduced this morning. This is a very exciting time for our company. We successfully executed on the goals we laid out at the beginning of last year and are poised to build on that success. In 2014, we set out to maintain a stable portfolio of occupancy in the mid-90. In fact our occupancy reached 95.7% as of the end of the fourth quarter, up 60 basis points from the third quarter of 2014 and up 130 basis points compared to the end of last year. Our retail occupancy is 96.4% as of the end of the fourth quarter, up 300 basis points compared to the end of last year. Our office and multifamily occupancy figures are also strong at 95.2% and 95.7%, respectively. Our success in leasing is evidenced by a quarter-over-quarter increase in same-store NOI on both a GAAP and cash basis. With occupancy at almost 96%, the opportunities to continue to grow same-store NOI are somewhat limited. Remember, it is primarily the NOI from our development pipeline that we expect to drive our growth. In 2014, our goal was to deliver the development project on time. Property is slated for completion in 2014 came in on budget and were delivered on time. We delivered one office high-rise, three multifamily apartments and one shopping center. On the leasing side, we made significant progress in leasing our development pipeline. The initially delivery of 4525 Main, here in Town Center occurred in early June, which was faster than the original timeframe of late July. Retail occupancy at 4525 Main is 100% and the office occupancy is over 50% with ongoing activity across a number of prospects. Let me reiterate that this building is positioned as the most expensive address in the region. It's completely state-of-the-art. It's the premier location in this market and is designed to give us a couple of years worth of office absorption within Town Center. For the last several years, with essentially no vacancy here in Town Center, we have had to turn many prospects away. We now have the capacity to absorb tenant demand over the next few years as well as the opportunity to allow existing tenants to upgrade and/or expand their office space. As for multifamily, we delivered three projects in 2014, Encore, Whetstone and Liberty Apartments. Overall, we are very pleased with our multifamily projects and continue to believe that our disciplined approach in selecting high barrier to entry sites will drive occupancy, stabilization and value over the long-term. In the fourth quarter, we also delivered Greentree Shopping Center in Chesapeake, Virginia. With a shadow-anchored, corporate-owned Walmart, this property is over 90% leased or under LOI and we expect to reach stabilization long before our original projections. In addition, we are set to open four more projects in the first quarter of 2015, including two build-to-suit office buildings for the Commonwealth of Virginia. In fact, these two properties have already been delivered and are 100% leased with 15-year leases for both locations. This month, we will also deliver a new office and manufacturing building for Oceaneering International, which is also 100% pre-leased. And lastly in March, we will deliver Sandbridge Commons, Harris Teeter anchored shopping center in Virginia Beach. Currently this property is nearly 90% leased or under LOI which also is ahead of expectations. As you will note in our supplemental on page 18, for the first time we have included new information on the Johns Hopkins Project as part of our development pipeline. This $65 million development project is adjacent to Johns Hopkins Homewood main campus in Baltimore, Maryland and is part of the Charles village redevelopment program. It will include student housing with some retail space, restaurants and parking. Currently, half of the retail space is pre-leased to DBS Health. We anticipate that work begin next month and expect completion by the third quarter of 2015 at which time this property will be added to our portfolio. In 2014, we continue our long-standing strategy of selling non-core and single tenant assets from time to time. In the back half of the year, we sold the Virginia Natural Gas office building for $8.9 million, which represents a cap rate of 6.25%. The funds from this transaction were used to pay down debt. Early this year, we closed on a previously announced sale of the Sentara Williamsburg office building for $15.4 million, representing a cap rate of 6.3%,. We expect to use the proceeds from the sale in a 1031 tax free exchange. To this end, we have entered to definitive agreements to acquire two grocery anchored retail centers located in Maryland. These acquisitions will add over 185,000 square feet to our portfolio with a combined occupancy of approximately 90%. We will purchase these centers with a combination of common stock and cash including the net proceeds from the sale of Sentara. The combined cap rate of these two properties is approximately 7% on a cash basis and the asset should ultimately yield a cap rate in excess of 7.5% from the value-added lease up opportunity. By virtue of trading 6.3% cap asset for a 7.5% cap asset, the combined transaction results in an accretive exchange. Additionally, the issuance of common stock results in a transaction with expected leverage consistent with our overall corporate metrics thus not impacting our capital plan. These properties will be outstanding additions to our portfolio and continue to provide diversification throughout the Mid-Atlantic region. As always, both transactions are subject to customary closing conditions. In 2014, we set out to execute contracts for third party construction work consistent with historic segment profit. In the spring, we announced that we entered into a contract to build the first building in the Harbor Point project, a 20 story mixed-use tower for Exelon Corporation. Work on this project, located on Baltimore's waterfront adjacent to Harbor East, is underway with completion expected in the spring of 2016. We believe the size and scope of this project will help to drive our construction division's annual growth profit contribution in the coming year. In 2014, we set out to manage the balance sheet to ensure appropriate leverage metrics and position the company for continued FFO growth. In addition to dispositions, acquisitions with OP units and an equity raise in the fall of 2014, in the coming weeks, we plan to close on a new, expanded and most importantly unsecured credit facility, which Mike will discuss in greater detail. Finally I am excited that the Board of Directors have declared a cash dividend of $0.17 per share for the first quarter of 2015. This represents a 6.3% increase over the prior quarter's dividend. We believe this reflects the Board's confidence in our long-term strategy, the successful execution and delivery of our development pipeline and the Board's commitment to enhancing value and returning it to shareholders. To reiterate, our long-term strategy remains unchanged and it is simple, continue to grow NOI trough our development pipeline projects, through organic growth in our stable portfolio, through our third-party construction gross profits and through strategic acquisitions. As it relates to our development pipeline, we continue to execute at our targeted pace of commencing a $150 million to $175 million of development projects every 18 to 24 months. We expect all current development activities, those announced and those in pre-development, to result in an aggregate of approximately $25 million of incremental annualized NOI. As for the return on cost metrics of our development projects, we reiterate our corporate targets of 150 to 200 basis point spreads between development cost and retail value. Because of this discipline, our spreads have continued to widen as we are maintaining our return on cost targets in our pipeline regardless of the continued aggressiveness in market cap rate. We are focused on ensuring that our future NOI growth from development activities will translate into increased FFO and free cash flow on a per-share basis. With that I turn the call over to Mike and then we will take your questions.