Dean Shigenaga
Analyst · Citi. Please go ahead
Thanks Peter. Dean Shigenaga here. Good afternoon, everyone. I'll briefly cover six topics. Our solid third quarter results, continued strong internal growth, our balance sheet and improving credit metrics, non-real estate investments, sustainability and our updated guidance for 2018. Kicking off with the results. As we enter the fourth quarter of 2018, it's useful to look back over the past year and reflect on the strength and consistency of our execution by our entire team really quarter-to-quarter. The third quarter of 2018 also reflects continued strong execution. Total revenues for the nine months of 2018 annualized were $1.3 billion, up 19% over the nine months of 2017 annualized. Cash NOI for the third quarter annualized was $867 million, up $162 million or 23% over cash NOI for the third quarter of 2017 annualized. We reported FFO per share diluted as adjusted at $1.66, up 9.9% over the third quarter of 2017. We also reported continued and strong internal growth that reflects the strength of our real estate and life science industry fundamentals and our unique and differentiated business strategy. Occupancy remains very strong, up 20 basis points to 97.3% as of 3Q and up 50 basis points since the end of 2017. San Diego occupancy of 94.2% reflects the anticipated lease expiration of 44,000 rentable square feet related to 4110 Campus Point Court that was acquired in the fourth quarter of 2017 with an in-place lease. We are currently reviewing various renovation options for this space. In New York City, our occupancy was 97.2% and reflects the temporary vacancy as we transitioned 29,000 square feet to multiple tenants with 77% of this leased are under negotiation today. Our rental rate growth continues to remain very strong. Over the past four years, our rental rate growth on annual leasing activity has ranged from 20% to 28% on a GAAP basis and 10% to 15% on a cash basis. Rental rate growth for the third quarter was 35.4%, as Steve had mentioned and represented the highest rental rate growth in the past decade and it was 16.9% on a cash basis, and overall reflective of the unique and strong real estate and life science industry fundamentals in our submarkets today. Early lease renewals represented almost 70% of lease renewals and releasing a space for the first three months of 2018 and continue to drive growth in rental rates and cash flows. We are in excellent shape with 2019 contractual lease expirations, representing only 5.4% of annual rental revenue, 25% of which is already leased. Our same-property NOI growth for the third quarter was very strong, up 3.4% and 8.9% on a cash basis and overall in line with our guidance for the full-year of 2018. Our team has successfully completed several strategic goals this quarter and continue to strengthen our balance sheet and our credit profile. Due to the ongoing strength of the private real estate market, we remain focused on strategic and disciplined execution of important real estate dispositions, including as Peter had mentioned, the sale of Longwood generating about $70 million of proceeds, net of debt repayment, and about a 4.7 cap rate. We also are advancing a partial sale of the JV interest in a high value core property located in Cambridge. Importantly, we are expecting a lower cap rate than our prior sale in Cambridge, which was done at a 4.5 cap rate. We are still working through this transaction and we will provide our usual details once we complete the partial sale. Keep in mind that over the past four years, including the partial interest sale, it's in process. We anticipate completing $1.5 billion in dispositions, averaging a highly attractive cost to capital in the 4% cap rate range. We also raised about $196 million under our ATM program during the quarter at a sale price of $127.66 per share. As Joel had mentioned, we are very proud that we received our upgrade in our corporate credit rating from Moody's to Baa1/Stable, which really highlighted our diversified portfolio of properties with consistently high occupancy and high quality tenants, many of which are less sensitive to economic cyclicality. Also, it's important to note that S&P has a positive outlook on our BBB flat rating moving us along to our goal of continued improvement in our credit profile. We also extended a key source of liquidity for our balance sheet with important relationship lenders through the extension of the maturity date under our line of credit to 2024, increased available commitments by $550 million to $2.2 billion and improved pricing by 17.5 basis points to LIBOR plus 82.5% basis points. We also extended the maturity date under our $350 million unsecured term loan to 2024 and reduced pricing by 20 basis points to LIBOR plus 90. We repaid two LIBOR-based loans, aggregating $350 million, reducing unhedged variable-grade debt to 6% of total assets. We remain committed to continued improvement in our credit metrics each year, including our fourth quarter annualized net debt to adjusted EBITDA as our goal for 2019 and 2020 is to move closer to five times. As Warren Buffett recently stated in his most recent annual shareholder letter, new accounting rules required us to recognize significant unrealized gains resulting in unusually high net income in the third quarter, which by the way, we exclude from FFO per share diluted as adjusted. It's important to recognize that our cost basis in these investments were approximately 4.4% of total assets as of 9/30. It's also key to recognize that realized gains of about $25.8 million for the nine months ended September 30, really have been driven primarily by liquidity or M&A related events versus management deciding to sell securities. We are on track for about $35 million in realized gains based upon the run rate for the first nine months, and this is higher than prior years, but really reflective of the quality of innovation in the life science industry today. We'd like to thank Ari Frankel, our AVP of Sustainability & High Performance Buildings and our entire team for our GRESB Green Star designation and the number one ranking in GRESB’s health and wellbeing module. We also want to thank our team for hosting GRESB’s North America real estate results of that that the Alexandria Center for Life Science in New York City. We continue to execute on our goals making a positive and meaningful impact on the health, safety and wellbeing of our tenants, stockholders, employees, and communities in which we live and work. Our team also remains focused on our environmental impact reduction goals for 2025, as recently highlighted in our inaugural corporate responsibility report. We updated our 2018 guidance for net income attributable to common stockholders on a diluted basis to a range from $4.34 to $4.36 primarily reflecting unrealized gains on non-real estate investments of $117.2 million and a realized gain on the sale of Longwood of about $35.7 million. We also reaffirmed the midpoint of our range for 2018 guidance for FFO per share, diluted as adjusted of 60 at the midpoint and narrow the range from $0.06 to $0.02. The midpoint of $6.60 puts us on track for another strong year of execution by our best-in-class team with 9.6% growth over 2017. As a reminder, we will hold our Annual Investor Day event on Wednesday, November 28 at the Alexandria Center for Life Science in New York City, where among other key items we will provide an overview of our detailed guidance and assumptions for 2019. We appreciate your continued interest in Alexandria and thank you in advance for waiting until Investor Day regarding detailed guidance assumptions for 2019. Let me turn it back to Joel.