Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. (ARE) Q1 2021 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good day, and welcome to the Alexandria Real Estate Equities First Quarter 2021 Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Paula Schwartz with Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. This conference call contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. The Company’s actual results might differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements is contained in the Company’s periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. And now, I would like to turn the call over to Joel Marcus, Executive Chairman and Founder. Please go ahead, Joel.

Thank you, Paula, and welcome, everybody to our first quarter call. And with me today are Dean Shigenaga, Steve Richardson and Peter Moglia. And we want to wish everybody a safe and a healthy go forward year. We want to welcome all to this first quarter call as well and recognize and thank the entire Alexandria family team for the operationally excellent and truly stellar first quarter earnings report by all metrics and measures. We collectively continue to operate at an outstandingly high level into this second year of the COVID-19 pandemic. And as I’m often fond of quoting Jim Collins of “Good to Great” theme, commented on Alexandria’s feature in our Annual Report. Alexandria has achieved the three outputs that define a great company: Superior results, and we believe the first quarter is emblematic of that; distinctive impact, and we believe that our social responsibility programs have truly made a difference; and lasting endurance. And with respect to lasting endurance, we sit here at literally several decades after we were founded in 1994. And I’ll talk more about that in a moment. We’re particularly proud of the six pillars of our highly impactful and longstanding social responsibility efforts, accelerating groundbreaking medical research to advance lifesaving treatments and cures; harnessing the entire agrifood ecosystem to combat hunger, improve nutrition, and support human health at its most fundamental level; thirdly, bolstering the resilience of our military, our veterans and their families; fourth, conquering the opioid epidemic and revolutionizing addiction treatment; the fifth pillar that we’ve spent a tremendous amount of time in over the last year and for a good part of the last decade, educationally empowering underserved students to achieve long-term success, and reach their potential as important principled leaders in the community; and then, finally, building a model for comprehensive sustainable solution to address homelessness. Alexandria is also proud to be the focus cover story of the January-February 2021 NAREIT magazine, showcasing that we have pioneered a novel data-driven comprehensive care model to overcome the opioid epidemic launched in Dayton, Ohio. We’re now focused on adopting a similar model but in different respects to the homeless problem, which has really become pretty out of control in many urban cities. And it is fraught with a lot of complex stratified issues and actually is more of an issue of healthcare than it is simply of one of housing. We’ve been recognized as a leader and continuing, and we continue to enhance our leadership in the area of sustainability. And we’re on pace to achieve our first net zero energy building in South San Francisco, one of our important sub markets, and only one of 70 of such buildings in the entire world. So, we’re very proud of that achievement when we finally get the designation. I always try to think about a theme on each quarter, and they are so different given macro and micro circumstances. And I would say, the theme for the first quarter has to be exceptional core and internal growth, and really stellar value creation and external growth, both of which have driven our continued outstanding earnings results. And as the absolute go to landlord and life science real estate. Leasing demand for Alexandria’s owned and operated first-in-class assets is at a historical high. And as I alluded to a moment ago, first quarter of 1994, 27 years ago, this quarter, we completed our Series A financing led by Jacobs Engineering for $19 million. And here, we sit 27 years later to the quarter, with a total market cap of $32.5 billion and among the top 10 of all REITs. I remember attending the first REAT conference, I think it was in New Orleans in 1994, and I didn’t know a single soul. So, we’ve come a long way. And we still are in our fourth consecutive quarter of COVID-19, something we -- none of us will ever forget. The stellar results by any measure or metric is we’re very proud and we thank each and every one of our great team members. Dean will speak to the outstanding core and internal growth results, driven in part by strong rental rate growth, and particularly featured this quarter in the San Francisco Bay region among others, one of our highest leasing quarters ever. And Steve and Peter will also speak to our stellar value-creation growth in part driven by our collaborative Fenway blockbuster transaction, and we greatly appreciate and recognize the team that put that together, a very highly leased valuation creation pipeline which will provide continuing growth for Alexandria. And so, we’re very proud of that. Also important to note, and I think Steve, Peter and Dean will also allude to this. Our partial interest sale this quarter, I think set a true benchmark valuation for Alexandria owned and operated first-in-class lab space in the South San Francisco submarket, led by both Steve and Peter. And Peter in particular, who we brought here in 1998, who had special and unique joint venture talent and a stellar network, and we’ve been added under his guidance there for 20-years. So, we thank those two very much for that execution and the teams that supported them. We completed our first quarter with a very strong balance sheet, Dean will talk about that with no debt maturities until 2024. And as some of you are aware, we filed an S-1 with the SEC to raise $250 million for an Alexandria sponsored SPAC, importantly, because we believe there was a real need for this in our core agrifoodtech industry. And as we are in a quiet period, we won’t be discussing this at all. Moving on to life science industry for a moment, the velocity and continuing demand for Alexandria lab space across our cluster markets is as strong as we’ve ever experienced. The pace of FDA approvals during the first quarter remained very strong with FDA approving 14 new drugs, 36% of those were Alexandria client tenants. We also note strong bipartisan support, and a proposed whopping 20% increase for the budgets of NIH, CDC and HHS. We don’t know about FDA at this moment, and hopefully, the administration will select, in the not too distant future, a true great leader there, and we’re hoping for that. Public markets continued their strong pace with $4.5 billion raised in 29 IPOs this past quarter and 100 -- I’m sorry, $12.6 billion raised in follow-on offerings, truly kind of a stellar capital markets quarter. Biopharma continues to invest heavily in its own R&D, likely north of $225 billion for all of 2021. Let me comment a moment about some proposed corporate tax changes that were announced by the current administration, which if enacted in the law would foolishly and directly hurt U.S. manufacturing, U.S. R&D and the repatriation of crucial supply chains that became evident in the pandemic that we were really woefully unprepared and relied on 70% of our supply chain efforts outside of the United States. I would say mission-critical sectors, including biopharma certainly will not be will not be helped. In essence, the threat to the American competitiveness is way bigger and way more important than the everyday life of Americans, and higher rates -- than higher rates and a sad commentary and poor public policy. It’s interesting to note, the paradox of this pandemic moment, large corporations have oftentimes been politically villainized derided by the left and the right, yet the main and perhaps only reason COVID-19 scourge is easing is the vaccines that were developed by biopharma and some in connection with the government in a groundbreaking effort with the warp speed effort. And we’re very, very thankful for that. I think to quote, Alex Gorsky, CEO of J&J, he made a pretty important quote recently and said, “We fundamentally believe that having a market-based, innovation-based biopharmaceutical industry, as well as a medical-technology environment is critical long term to produce the best overall outcomes for healthcare.” And I think that absolutely reigns true. So, as I do each quarter, let me finish with a -- or I did last quarter and will each quarter, a quote, kind of a timely quote. I quoted Confucius last quarter. Let me quote this quarter, Steve Prefontaine, one of the world-class runners of his time. “To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.” And with that, let me turn it over to Steve Richardson.

Thank you, Joel, and welcome everybody as well. As we presented during the last quarterly call, 2020 represented an exceptional year of high-quality growth for Alexandria, as we increased the asset base by 27% to nearly 50 million square feet. Now, the first quarter of 2021, a truly blowout quarter by all metrics, has clearly signaled the continuation of this exceptional growth trajectory and definitively affirms Alexandria’s leadership role in the now core life science asset class, and it’s highly valued status within the broad life science ecosystem. The Company’s 27-year commitment to operational excellence at every level fuels the following outperformance highlights for Q1. Accounts receivable, we’ve collected 99.4% of our April AR billings as of today. And again, Alexandria’s labs are essential infrastructure and have been operational from day one of the pandemic. Some detail on leasing outperformance. During Q1, we leased approximately 1,677,000 square feet, which notably represents the second highest quarterly leasing activity during the past five years, an amazing statistic considering the broader turmoil in the office market. Peter will touch on this in more detail, but the current and near-term development pipeline continues to deliver value in a de-risked manner as we are at 76% leased and negotiating, even while adding 1 million square feet of new starts during this quarter. The core in particular is exceptionally strong. We continue to highlight and bring everyone’s attention to the embedded growth and value within the core operating platform, comprised now of nearly 34 million square feet with cash increases this quarter of 17.4% and GAAP increases of 36.2%. On occupancy, also very, very solid with 94.5% which has grown in excess of 2 million square feet this quarter, compared to Q4 through our strategic acquisition activity. And we want to continue to bring to everyone’s attention the near-term opportunity for increasing cash flows through the lease-up of 1.2 million square feet of existing inventory provided by these recent acquisitions. Overall, on market health, demand continues to be robust in our core clusters, and our mega campus offerings provide a significant competitive advantage to the Company. Importantly, subleases are in tight check as since the start of 2021, just two subleases have been brought to market in one of our clusters, and both of those subleases have already been put under LOI. Supply more broadly is constrained for 2021 across all of our markets. And in the two largest markets for 2022, we’ve seen nearly 50% of the supply is pre-leased in Greater Boston, and in the San Francisco Bay Area, we’re monitoring just two projects for potential vertical activity in 2022. And as we’ve stated before, Alexandria’s mega campus, high-quality Class A product offerings continue to outperform any inferior one-off Class B office conversions in isolated locations. The year 2020 was truly an amazing year for Alexandria at the vanguard and heart of the life science ecosystem. And now, the first quarter of 2021 has exceeded those accomplishments with stellar performance. And in conclusion, I’d like to add to Joel, shout out to the entire Alexandria team for this quarter’s achievements. With that, I’ll hand it off to Peter.

Thanks, Steve. I’m going to update you all on our development pipeline, comment on construction cost escalations and discuss a couple of life science sales. We continue to work at a very productive pace, delivering 376,645 square feet during the quarter, including the full delivery of 9804 Medical Center Drive in Rockville, Maryland to a high-quality cell therapy company at an 8% cash yield, which was 80 basis points above our initial disclosure. The project’s outperformance was the direct result of our best-in-class team who were able to drive down overall cost savings through a combination of adept schedule management, alternative construction techniques, and highly effective coordination with the tenants. In addition, we fully delivered the 100,086 square-foot, 1165 Eastlake Avenue East building in Seattle to Adaptive Biotechnologies, a cutting-edge public immune medicine company on the front lines of fighting COVID-19. This building is highly unique as it sits on the edge of Lake Union offering expansive views of the lake’s clean end in downtown Seattle. Leasing activity on our pipeline continues to be robust with approximately 789,000 square feet leased during the quarter and another approximately 450,000 square feet in executed LOIs. Highlights include completing the lease-up of 3115 Merryfield Row, well in advance of its 2022 delivery date. Incremental progress at Alexandria Center for Life Long Island City, which is approaching being half leased and committed and a surge of activity in both, SD Tech and our newly acquired 201 Brookline asset in the Fenway area of Boston. At SD Tech, we executed LOIs increasing its lease negotiating status by 37% as tenants affirm the attractiveness of our transformation of this historical midsized tech campus into a highly amenitized science and technology mega campus. As impressive as that is, the response by the market to our Fenway transaction and 201 Brookline has been even more remarkable. When we closed on that transaction in late January, the asset was 17% leased. As we sit today, we have letters of intent that when converted to leases, will bring that percentage up to 84%. This is a testament to the trust life science companies have in our best-in-class brand as these opportunities came to 201 Brookline in large part because of Alexandria. Overall, with the addition of five new projects and the full delivery of 9804 Medical Center Drive, we now have approximately 4 million square feet under construction that is 66% pre-leased and 76% committed when including signed LOIs. That is only 2% below the committed leasing percentage from last year’s -- or from last quarter, and as Steve alluded to, despite the fact that we’ve also added 1 million square feet of new projects. Given the recent news on anticipated inflation, we wanted to give you guys an update on construction cost escalations as it relates to our pipeline. Before we get into what is happening in the construction market, we want to note that the projects listed on page 42 that make up the 4 million square feet under construction, are largely subject to guaranteed maximum price contracts, which protect us from any escalations not already negotiated into the pricing. Under construction projects that are still in negotiations, those that -- well, the ones that are still in negotiations have been conservatively underwritten with a conservative escalation range applied in our underwriting. The 80 basis-point yield at 9804 Medical Center Drive that I spoke about earlier is a testament to our conservative underwriting and outstanding budget management. As we all know, coming into 2020, we all expected growth in the real estate sector to continue. And we were all taken by surprise when the global pandemic created disruption in our personal and professional lives. As reported in our 1Q call last year, Alexandria was required to temporarily suspend seven projects during the quarter due to COVID-19. But with life science being deemed an essential business, we were able to restart relatively quickly. That wasn’t so for many other developers and a large number of projects were put on hold or cancelled altogether. That caused general and subcontractor backlogs to shrink. And for a moment, in the middle of the year, most major contractors assumed the worst and laid off workers. Demand for materials also diminished and for a brief period of time, overall construction costs trended lower than pre-COVID levels. We know in California that costs dropped as much as 2% during that time. However, as news of the effectiveness of vaccines came to light towards the end of the year, the construction industry experienced a V-shaped recovery led by residential and advanced technology, with life science and healthcare contributing to the sudden increase as well. One of our major contractors had to pivot quickly and today is still spending 10 hours a week on hiring as backlogs grow. In addition to the shortage of labor, costs are being materially influenced by a shortage of subcontractor shop capacity. The makers of glazing, duct work and other prefabricated materials have more work than they can handle, so many are increasing pricing to control their backlog. On top of that, the demand for raw materials is putting pressure on steel, copper, lumber and plywood. Steel is up 20% from April 2020 to February of this year. Copper is up 37% and lumber and plywood are up 62% over the same period. Although these percentages are high, materials are only 30% to 35% of the total cost stack. So, we’ve been advised to plan for 5% to 6% annual escalations in the aggregate over the next 12 months. Rest assured, Alexandria constantly stays in front of this data, factors it into our underwriting and employee strategies to mitigate its impact. As a major developer with a number of significant major contractor and subcontractor relationships, we are able to leverage preferred pricing and priority in the queue. We have a great reputation among our vendors as we treat them like partners, and that enables us to continue to deliver on time and on budget in any market condition. I’ll conclude my commentary by talking about some private cap rates that you should factor into your NAV models. Our own partial interest sale of the 300,930 square-foot 213 East Grand building in South San Francisco was executed at a record 4% cap rate and translates to a value of $1,429 per square foot. This should be very impactful to our overall valuation as South San Francisco is one of our largest submarkets as we hold 3.3 million square feet in operation or under development. Despite the fact that the rent is approximately 20% to 25% below market on that asset, the lease goes for another 12 years. So, we believe the yield is very reflective of what investors are willing to pay today for first-in-class Alexandria owned and stabilized assets. We’d also like to report that Blackstone sold 454,000 square-foot, 96% lease Science Technology Park at Johns Hopkins to Ventas for $272 million or $600 per square foot, which is a 4.8% cap rate. Although the asset has strong tenancy, the neighborhood is tough. So, this was a positive outcome for Blackstone and another testament to the high demand for life science assets today. With that, I’ll pass it over to Dean.

Peter, thanks. Dean Shigenaga here. And good afternoon, everyone. I just want to kick off with a huge congratulations to our entire team for just a spectacular quarter of exceptional execution. The first quarter of 2021, when you compare it to the fourth quarter, reflects one of the strongest operating and financial results in the Company’s history, with our unique and differentiated life science real estate platform really at the core of this very strong growth. Our highly experienced team, trusted partnership to the life science industry and high-quality campuses and key centers of innovation continues to generate significant growth and value. Now, I want to kick off with allocation and sources of capital. We continue to remain very-disciplined with the allocation of capital in the projects that have and will generate significant long-term cash flows and tremendous value for our company and shareholders. Now, let me take a moment to highlight again the exceptional execution by our team. During the first quarter, we strategically increased our current and future pipeline of development and redevelopment opportunities with $1.9 billion in acquisitions. These value creation-related acquisitions also included in-place cash flows that contributed to a very strong NOI growth in the quarter. Importantly, though, through these acquisitions, we added a number of very high-quality current and future development and redevelopment projects to our pipeline. Another key driver of strong NOI growth in the first quarter was the delivery and completion of development and redevelopment projects, aggregating 376,000 rentable square feet that were 100% leased. And on average, these were delivered mid-quarter. As of March 31st, we had 4 million rentable square feet of some of the best laboratory space under construction that was highly leased negotiating at 76%. And this included 1 million rentable square feet of projects that were added in the first quarter. Now importantly, over the last four quarters, our team executed leases aggregating almost 1.8 million rentable square feet related to the development and redevelopment projects. And this included 789,000 rentable square feet of leases that we executed in the current quarter. Now, these are truly spectacular stats, highlighting that we are the trusted partner to the life science industry. Now, we are very pleased with our allocation of capital to these value-creation projects as these projects are on track to generate significant value, as highlighted by the partial interest sale we completed in the first quarter at a spectacular cap rate of 4%. We have a great pipeline of near-term and intermediate-term projects aggregating 9.2 million rentable square feet, and we’re in a strong position to meet the demand from our broad and diverse network of life science and agtech relationships. We have also been very strategic and disciplined with sources of capital and have for many years been taking advantage of the continued exceptional growth in private market valuation for our properties. As Peter highlighted, we completed a 70% partial interest sale at $301 million in a Class A property located in South San Francisco that is leased long term to Merck. Now this transaction, as Peter highlighted, sold at a record cap rate of 4% at $1,429 per square foot and really generated a spectacular profit margin of 53%. Now, this transaction highlights continued tightening of cap rates and growth in price per square foot for our high-quality life science properties. Proceeds from real estate dispositions remain an important low-cost component of our sources of capital each year. And we have completed real estate dispositions aggregating $324 million to date and have several transactions moving along that will allow us to hit our real estate disposition forecast range from $1.25 billion to $1.5 billion, and we expect to provide more details on real estate dispositions next quarter. Now additionally, we expect to generate capital for reinvestment from our venture investment program and more on this topic in a moment. Next, I wanted to really turn to real estate, which is at the core of our strong growth. We reported total revenues in the first quarter of $480 million or $1.9 billion annualized, up 9.1% over the first quarter of ‘20 and over double total revenues reported five years ago in the first quarter of 2016. Now, we continue to report exceptional real estate financial and operating results, resulting in solid growth in our outlook for 2021. We delivered the following outstanding results in the quarter. Very strong cash net operating income growth of 10.3%. And again, congratulations to our leasing team for truly awesome execution of leasing. We hit the second highest quarter of leases executed in the history of the company at 1.7 million rentable square feet, continued strong rental rate growth on lease renewals and re-leasing the space at 36.2% and 17.4% on a cash basis. And we’re in a great position today and updated our outlook for rental rate growth for 2021 by 100 basis points to a range from 30% to 33%, and from 17% to 20% on a cash basis, and again, record leasing on the development and redevelopment projects over the last four quarters at 1.8 million rentable square feet. That includes the 789,000 square feet that we executed on in the first quarter. Now, we’re off to a great start, and we’re on track for strong same-property NOI growth for 2021. First quarter same-property NOI growth was strong and up 4.4% and 6.1% on a cash basis. And the strength of our real estate vertical drove improvement in our outlook for same-property NOI growth for 2021. We increased our outlook by 50 basis points to a range from 1.5% to 3.5% and 30 basis points on a cash basis to a range from 4.3% to 6.3%. Our EBITDA margin was very strong at 69%, one of the best in the REIT industry. And our occupancy remains very strong at 94.5% and represents a key area that will drive growth in cash flows in 2021 and 2022. And please refer to page 25 of our supplemental package for details on the recently acquired vacancy aggregating 1.2 million rentable square feet. 26% of this 1.2 million rentable square feet -- a vacancy is leased with most of this 26% taking occupancy over the next two quarters. And we’re forecasting solid occupancy growth in 2021 of 100 basis points, with half of this increase forecasted in the third quarter and the remaining growth in the fourth quarter. We’re also forecasting stronger occupancy growth into 2022. Now, briefly on venture investments. Our venture investment portfolio continues to perform exceptionally well. And as of March 31st had unrealized gains of $729 million on an adjusted cost basis of $912 million. Now, our adjusted cost base has represented only 3.2% of gross assets as of March 31st. Realized gains on our venture investments included an FFO per share were $24.3 million, up only $2.7 million over the fourth quarter of ‘20. Now looking forward to the rest of 2021. Realized gains from our venture investments should be in the $25 million to $27 million range per quarter. Now, importantly, we also realized an additional gain of $22.9 million that related to an investment in a privately-held clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused in the oncology area that was acquired by a large equity cap biopharma company. Now, this significant gain related to 1 transaction and was excluded from FFO per share as adjusted. We have significant unrealized gains of $725 million in our venture investment holdings, and we hope to have additional opportunities to generate capital and reduce the portion of our future equity capital needs by approximately $100 million in 2021. Now, turning to our very strong and flexible balance sheet, which really supports our strategic growth initiatives. We’re very proud of what our team has accomplished over recent years. Our overall corporate credit ratings from Moody’s and S&P ranks within the top 10% of all equity REITs. Over the past nine quarters, our team has issued $6.2 billion of unsecured senior notes payable, representing 72% of our total outstanding debt at a weighted average effective rate of 3.26% and a term of almost 16 years. Now, the debt capital consisted of both, growth capital and refinancing capital that significantly extended our weighted average remaining term of outstanding debt to 13 years and locked in very attractive long-term fixed rate debt. The February 2021 bond offering was a key example. We took advantage of very attractive interest rate environment and opportunistically issued $1.75 billion in unsecured notes, with a portion of the proceeds used to refinance $650 million of notes that were due in 2024. Now, these new notes were issued at an amazingly low rate of 2% for 11-year notes, 3% for 30-year notes. Also, we just wanted to highlight other balance sheet statistics for the quarter and the year. We remain on track for continued improvement in net debt to adjusted EBITDA to 5.2 times by year-end. Our fixed charge coverage ratio is very strong and has increased to 4.7 times for the first quarter annualized. And we continue to maintain significant liquidity of $4.3 billion. And as Joel had touched on earlier, no debt maturities until 2024 and only $184 million coming due in 2024. Touching on guidance here, as we wrap up, as a reminder, just want to refer you to pages 11 and 12 of our supplemental package for detailed and updated guidance assumptions for 2021. Our improved outlook for 2021 over the prior guidance captures the strength of our real estate performance, including an improvement in rental rate growth and growth in both same-property and overall net operating income. Now, EPS diluted was updated to a range from $1.58 to $1.68, and FFO per share as adjusted was updated to a range from $7.68 to $7.78. And the midpoint of that range for FFO per share of $7.73 is up $0.03 over the prior guidance and represents projected growth of about 5.9% over our strong FFO per share results for 2020 of $7.30. With that, let me turn it back over to Joel. Thank you.

So, operator, if we could go to question-and-answer, please?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from Manny Korchman with Citi.

Hey. Good afternoon, everyone. Maybe this is for Steve or -- maybe this one will go to Steve. As you speak to your tenants about the markets that they’re looking at, it looks like you’re going out of your sort of core cluster markets, spending close to buy but out of those core clusters. Is that tenant-driven or is that just where the opportunity for this Company now lies?

Yes. Well, this is Joel. So, maybe let me address that in a macro way. I don’t think you could say we’re going after our core cluster markets. The core cluster market you’re referring to, maybe Fenway, is really, if you look at the Greater Boston market, Cambridge has been the hallmark, but there have been a set of inner suburbs, if you will, that are somewhat -- have somewhat adjacency to the Cambridge area that have been attractive. Seaport’s been there for quite a while and many others have had life science activities. So, I think, it’s part of just growth overall. And we’re very selective about where we go and how we do it. And Fenway was a natural. I think I said last quarter, we’ve been eyeing Fenway for more than a decade as it is kind of a connection from -- to Longwood, where we’ve had activity and certainly one of the core markets, core cluster markets at Cambridge. But, I don’t think -- I wouldn’t characterize it out of the core market by any means. I don’t know, Steve, if you want to comment on that.

Yes. I would add to that. Manny, it’s Steve here. It is an expansion, incremental expansion of the core clusters. So, it’s not new markets or new clusters. I would absolutely characterize it as expansion of existing core clusters.

And Dean, I know you mentioned that you can give more detail on dispositions in the coming quarters. But, should we expect those to be similar to what you’ve done this quarter with a large JV sale, or do you think you’ll actually exit some assets outright?

Manny, it’s Dean here. The bulk of the dispositions that are targeted for the remainder of ‘21 are focused on -- bulk of the dollars are focused on partial interest sales. So, these will be high-value, low-cap rate, extremely attractive cost of capital transactions. It’s possible we have some amount over the next year or two of outright sales as well. But, stay tuned on that.

Yes. And I would say, let me add a footnote to what Dean said. I think, Manny, you saw us make a move to sale of the Stripe and Pinterest buildings, which we developed early on in -- starting in 2014 circa in San Francisco opportunistically and made a sale of those entire buildings. And there are some assets that we are eyeing for that. So, it could well be a combination.

Our next question will come from James Feldman with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

I guess, my first question, can you just talk about market rent growth? I mean, I know the condition is very tight. You guys are talking about very strong fundamentals. But, what have you seen across the markets year-to-date?

Yes. I think, I’ll ask Steve to comment. But I think it's fair to say that across almost all the markets, maybe New York City would be the exception. We've seen, as I say, exceptional demand for Alexandria owned and operated first in class assets and I think that's really cut across all markets. But Steve, you could give some macro color?

Yes, I do want to underline that it has been across all the markets, certainly, Research Triangle in Maryland, we've seen nice growth there as well as Seattle, San Diego, Cambridge, San Francisco. And I guess, Jamie, when you look at our re-leasing and renewal stats, this quarter, it's 17% plus cash and 36% GAAP. In the last four quarters, 2020 in entirety, was in that range as well. I think that really speaks for itself as you see rent growth overtime here on these Class A assets.

So can you quantify how much you think rents are up today over a year ago? I know you have lease spreads with the actual market rents? I guess I'm curious based on the rising construction costs and pricing power, just how it's holding up?

I would broadly say that lease rates are exceeding the anticipated construction costs increases. So it's all positive.

I can just give anecdotally our analysis showed that just quarter-over-quarter, so 4Q to 1Q, market rents were up over 3.5% just for the quarter. So you can annualize that you know double digits.

And then can you talk about the business plan at Watertown mall and why focus on that sub-market versus some of the other Boston sub-markets?

So the answer is we won't talk about that specifically. But we've been in Watertown for maybe as much as 20 years. We've felt that was an attractive adjacent sub-market to the Cambridge market. Life Science has always enjoyed going there. We clearly made a big move with the Arsenal on the Charles and that campus and what we're doing to redevelop and develop that. The Watertown mall is kind of an adjacency. And what you're looking at is kind of a mega campus in Watertown. We're seeing some great R&D continuing to favor that market. I think if you look at that versus some of the sub-markets in and around the Greater Boston Market where transport is really, really difficult, I think Watertown is one which is, I think, easier to both ingress and egress and that's been a real attractive thing as well. But as far as this specific asset, I don't think we want to comment.

And then finally, you guys have commented on constrained supply in '21 and '22. I think you were talking mostly about new construction. Can you just talk about conversions and what you think will be competitive in '21, '22 and even into '23 as you look across the major markets?

Yes. I mean, Steve can comment on a macro way. We just haven't -- there's a lot of smoke but not a lot of fire and we have some anecdotal evidence of even some that have been attempted that have really kind of totally failed. And they're not an attractive alternative for first in class companies that are looking for high quality space. We just haven't seen this tsunami of conversions that people are talking about. But Steve, you could comment broadly.

Look, you can put a flyer out. You can send out blast e-mails and say your office building is going to accommodate lab users. But until you go ahead and actually start making investments in the base building infrastructure and advancing that, tenants are not going to be attracted to that type of offering and that type of entity with a one-off building. Again, they're in kind of isolated locations. They're not always in the core life science clusters. So as Joel said, I think there's a lot of talk out there but we don't see a lot of action. Inevitably, there will be a handful of 50,000 to 100,000 square foot offerings but nothing that really competes with the million plus square foot mega campus that's fully amenitized with brand new or newly redeveloped Class A product that we're offering. We monitor every market very closely.

I'd like to add, purpose-built, which is what we have trumps a conversion every day of the week. When conversions generally are going to require compromise to the tenant's plans, there are areas in the building where the structure is not going to work for heavy equipment, the plumbing or the shafts won't be available because there's another tenant in the way. I mean, it is just a very challenging thing. We've done it ourselves a number of times. We know the challenges we've been able to overcome them and provide great product. But at the end of the day, purpose built will always be much more attractive than an office conversion.

Our next question will come from Sheila McGrath with Evercore ISI.

I was wondering if you could give us a little bit more detail on the One Investors Way transaction in the Route 128 submarket. Just what kind of yield that should be since you brought the tenant with you and just the plans for that expansion as well.

So I think the -- Dean, correct me if I'm wrong, I think yields will likely come out in future subs. I'm not sure we want to quote anything at this point. But I think, Sheila, Moderna has turned out to be one of those monumental companies, and vaccines were really almost nonexistent or a sideshow in their business plan for the last decade. But it's pretty clear that we own the adjacent location where it is mission critical manufacturing for the vaccine. And as you can imagine, they're looking at lots of opportunities to expand that because the vaccine is not a one or two and done. This is likely to be like the flu, where you're going to have to get boosters on a fairly regular basis. So this is really part of their strategic plan to be able to supply both the United States and part of the world with much needed vaccines now and into the future. And it's going to be iterating, because the variants are going to cause changes in what the vaccine needs to do. And so we felt that as the go to landlord for Moderna, this was in both of our interests to make happen. So I hope that's helpful as just kind of a framework. But you can expect yields to come out, I guess, either next quarter or shortly thereafter.

And I was wondering if you could comment on two markets. Research Triangle Park following Apple's announcement. Just remind us what your holdings are there and how proximate you will be to Apple's expansion, number one. And then number two, just you haven't touched on New York City in a while. Just wondering if you could update us on life science demand and that third building that you have.

So let me maybe take those in reverse and maybe speak to New York City. So as everybody knows, many on this call either live or work in New York and have seen, over the last year, what's happened there, still a somewhat tough place to be. Security is still an issue. Unfortunately, crime rates and shootings have gone up, really skyrocketed in enormous fashion. So we're very focused on the security of our campus. Our campuses is almost full, although, we're creating some additional space in the existing two buildings and moving a number of tenants around to accommodate growth. And we're also filling up Long Island City, which is kind of a nice relief valve. We're in discussions with the city on the North Tower. We are going to break ground here over the past many months. But clearly, because of what's going on there and the change in the macro environment, we didn't go forward instantly. We had to rejigger kind of what we're thinking about but we're in discussions with the city to see how best we can move that forward. I think you have to remember, New York, growing a cluster is like having a baby for 25 years, and it's painful, right? And we're just finishing the first decade. And literally, New York, when we came and launched our first building there in 2010 and then into 2011 and beyond, literally no life science research was done there, world class academic work, world class clinical work, one incubator up on the Columbia campus. Pfizer had a headquarters there. But by enlarge, no research. Since then, we've made enormous strides. We've gotten venture capital off the ground there. A lot of companies have started. But we don't see big companies. They're reluctant and haven't really been successful in moving any big companies there. The recent tax efforts by the state certainly are aggressive to, I think, growth in New York, adding on to the tax burden in New York City, New York State, et cetera, and then a federal is kind of hurtful. So New York has a range of issues. It's great substrate, great NIH money, venture is formed. But it's going to take another decade or part of a decade and a half to really grow that into a real life secondary market like some of the others that you know much better. So it's a work in process. We see some company formation. There's certainly institutional demand and so forth, but it's different than the other markets. So maybe moving to Research Triangle, and I might have either Peter or Steve give any macro comments as well. But we made a move last summer. We felt that Research Triangle was an important part of the life science landscape, it has been for many years. We have both several mega campuses, both on the life science side and now the first one of its kind here in the US, maybe in the world, on the agri-food side, agri-food tech. And so we think it's a very, very good location. It's attracted a lot of brains from many places around the country, anchored by the three great universities, UNC, Duke and NC State. And it's been just a really, really good place to be. It used to be looked at as kind of a manufacturing or kind of a tertiary kind of location. I think today, it's moved up and become one of the hot and truly important places. And people like to live there, I think that's going to be important going into the future. Is it a good place to live? And if you compare walking around in the Triangle versus New York City, New York City is tough these days. You see what's going on in the subways. And hopefully, governance will get better, security will get better and improve and hopefully, COVID will recede. But walking around in the Triangle is like being in heaven. So I think that's why a lot of companies have been moving there and we've increased our footprint pretty dramatically. But Steve, you really started a lot of our efforts down there. So maybe a comment or two for you.

Yes, the Apple footprint, I think, will be transformative for the park for sure. And we do have one of our campuses in the Kit Creek area with a number of buildings that are in close proximity there. So we think that will help continue to really invigorate the campus going forward, as Joel has been outlining, and in particular, really help these specific assets. So we're very enthusiastic about their presence there.

Our next question will come from Richard Anderson with SMBC.

Joel, you mentioned your frustration with the corporate tax sort of narrative going on and impact on repatriation. Were you seeing any tangible evidence of kind of the onshoring of the supply chain and impacts positively to your tenants that could actually reverse course if this were to happen? I'm wondering if it's more of a storyline as opposed to something concretely underway at this point.

Well, no, I think it's been dramatic and not just in the biopharma industry and the medical technology industry. There was pretty dramatic tax reform in 2017 where multinationals previously charged with full US corporate tax rates and they kept much of the cash overseas, it's called the GILTI tax. They kind of opened that up, lowered that dramatically. And you saw a lot of companies, including a lot of big pharma and companies like Apple, Facebook, Google, others, Microsoft, other big techs bringing back large amounts of capital to invest in this country. So we had a couple of years of really positive repatriation not only of capital but reinvestment in the United States, which was really positive. I think COVID then shone a very bright, or shined a very bright light on the medical supply chains where, as I said, 70% of medical supply chain, many of it intermediates to create pharmaceutical products, et cetera, even just normal plastic gloves and all the stuff that we call PPE, 70% of that was sourced overseas, and we were seeing dramatic movement of that back to the United States. It's not just pills and stuff like that, it was very broad. And I think to reverse that or even to put out the word that you're going to start to shift that, I think, is one of the worst things you could do in the middle of a -- or midway in the pandemic. I'm not sure what inning we're in. We'd have to ask Fauci or some of those folks based on what they see. But I think it's fair to say I was in a Zoom call with a company just getting off the ground here in the United States. And the first thing they did was set up operations and IP in Ireland, which has a 12.5% tax rate where we're going to be going to, I don't know whether it will be 28% or something like that. China is at 25% and most of the world is sub-28%. There's only a handful that are above that. So that's not a good place to be if you want to create jobs and want to really jolt this economy forward, given the damage that we've suffered over the past year from the pandemic. So I don't know. I have pretty strong feelings. And I think many people who are in corporate America believe that there are better ways to do that than become anti competitive. And I think the administration's comments about, well, they're going to try to arrange a kind of a global tax kind of arrangement where everybody is charging the same rate, it's done through what's called the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a global minimum tax. Well, okay, that's a total joke. There's no one that's going to sign on to that. So yes, bad news.

So it sounds like it was having a tangible impact on your business, clearly, it was happening. But you were seeing…

Yes, it's way broader than biopharma, I mean…

Second question I have is absent from today's presentation was Jenna and which, no offense to her, kind of makes me feel like things are getting better because she wasn't giving her [up team]. But I do have a question for the team there and maybe she's around. The vaccine success is wonderful. You mentioned this is not -- there's more to come, treating it more like a flu. But I wonder if the shift will turn maybe more to therapies as opposed to vaccines in a sense that if we feel like we can be treated for it, and even if we -- if it is an annual event, we know there's a thorough flu out there to take care of it beyond remdesivir. I'm just wondering if you can comment on that at all.

So if by popular opinion, we'll bring Jenna back next quarter maybe, but we decided not to do that just because vaccines are kind of at the forefront, the country is making, I think, good progress. We'll see how that goes. But you are seeing India has hit an all time high. And if you look at pictures of what's going on there, it literally breaks your heart. We've got some severe outbreaks throughout the United States. Michigan, which has been one of the toughest shutdown states, so go figure that out, is having some tough time. So we're still, I don't know, we may be in the fifth inning, something like that. I don't want to be Dr. Fauci here, but we got a long way to go here and it's going to be with us. This just doesn't go away. It comes back in various forms. But I think when it comes to your question on therapies, I think if people rely on therapies like flu therapies or other kinds of therapies for COVID, I think that's a huge mistake. And we'll, next quarter, address that. I'll ask Jenna to specifically address it. But what I think is the challenge is if you get COVID, there is a cohort of patients. Right now, people, if you ask Scott Gottlieb and others, right now, it's maybe 10%, 15%, don't know if that number is too low or too high, but my guess is it could be right about right and could be higher, who are experiencing the long haul symptoms. If you ever look at some of the articles on COVID, COVID attacks almost every system in the body. And it's something that you would not want to get and just get over because you don't know what the long haul results are to the brain, to the immune system, to all the systems of the body. So I don't think the therapy is the answer. I think it's immunization and hopefully, herd immunity, although, there's a cohort of people here in the United States who simply won't take the vaccine, which there maybe medical reasons, there maybe religious reasons. But I think it is hard to understand the assumption of the risk for one's self and others if you don't have those issues, not to take the vaccine. So long winded answer. I hope that's helpful.

Our next question will come from Michael Carroll with RBC Capital Markets.

I wanted to touch on the repatriation of the drug supply chain real quick again. I know it's important, I guess, for the industry and the country. I mean, does that drive the demand in cluster markets at all? I mean, does it impact your business materially one way or another?

Well, I think it's incrementally. I was talking more macro because to bring back supply chains for intermediates for pharmaceutical products so we don't have to rely on India or China or Ireland or other places, that's critical. That's national security, it seems to me. And yes, there's been certainly impact to the demand, especially in the manufacturing, in the next gen manufacturing. I think people are not going to put cell therapy, gene therapy and a range of next gen manufacturing, which are so tied to R&D in the biopharma industry overseas unless tax rates absolutely force them to do that, which would be stupidest policy I ever heard. So yes, the impact has been clearly in a positive fashion and we hope that doesn't get reversed.

And then just, I guess, last question for me. Can you talk a little bit about, I guess, the mentioned in the earlier prepared remarks about the model to help combat homelessness in Seattle. I mean, how far along is this process? And I guess, what type of time line do you have in mind or when you'll be able to provide us more details on what that plan is and how it's going?

So it's still in the early feasibility stage. I think understanding homelessness, much like drug addiction, is hard. If you imagine the homeless population, it's highly stratified. There are those that are down on their luck, have financial issues. There's a large cohort that have serious addiction issues. There's a large cohort that have serious mental illness, et cetera. So it's not just saying, okay, let's just find housing. That's a solution that many jurisdictions are pursuing but it doesn't help. It's like detoxing somebody who's addicted to opioids and then putting them back on the street, that doesn't work more than 28 days. So we're trying to adopt this or adapt, I should say, not adopt, the [115] model, the continuum of care, the complete care, data driven but with deep research, and so we're in the feasibility stage. So I'm not sure I can give you yet. Maybe over the next quarter or so, I'll be able to give you more details. But we think it's an imperative that we attack this problem, and I think we may have a model that will help a lot of people here. But it's no easy thing. It isn't like putting up a few simple apartments. It's way, way more complicated than that.

Our next question will come from Dave Rogers with Baird.

On the leasing front, I wanted to ask a question about, you had two really good quarters of leasing and a number of quarters come together. Curious if you're seeing any slowdown, like there was some backlog maybe that had built up through COVID and that may get metering out a little bit more. Is that more a function of what you're offering in development? Just curious on kind of the pace of leasing into the second quarter? And then maybe the flip side, what's missing from the leasing pipeline, if anything, in terms of kind of your core tenant base?

I'm not sure I fully understand the first part of the question.

I think earlier, you made the comment about demand and some of the slowdown that was related to just not being able to build, for a little while, and there was a little…

I don't think we said that. Are you -- who said that?

Just in terms of new -- anyway. I guess, the question was, it seemed in leasing going from kind of the first quarter into the second quarter. Any evidence of a slowdown or any evidence that there had been a backlog from COVID that might be dissipating at any point?

No. I think our comments should address that pretty directly, Dave. No, we don't see any of that.

And then not essentially related to SPAC, but is there anything in your own guidance at Alexandria that would be dependent upon that getting done?

No.

Our next question will come from Daniel Ismail with Green Street Advisors.

Joel, I appreciate all the comments relating to ESG. There are a variety of taxes or fines on greenhouse gas emissions proposed or in discussions across your markets. It seems like lab buildings are generally lumped in with office buildings in these proposed or enacted regulations despite the difference in use and potential energy intensity. Is that a fair characterization? And then does this come up in tenant discussions about the potential for, say, higher taxes or fines on building greenhouse gas emissions?

I think it has not, at the moment, doesn't seem to be a significant issue for tenants at this moment, although, they're looking for obviously very green and environmentally positive sustainable buildings, both inside and outside. And I think we've kind of been a leader here in the US and maybe even worldwide in the whole fit well or healthy environments inside. But Dean, do you want to comment because you're closest to that?

So Danny, I agree with what Joel highlighted. Our tenants haven't focused on your specific question but they have focused on really environmentally friendly, sustainable real estate solutions. If you look across their business, if you take just a sample of our top 20 tenants as an example and look at their ESG initiatives, sustainability is a high priority across their entire business, real estate being a very small component. They actually touch on real estate a little bit on a few of the top 20 tenants. And as Joel highlighted, carbon neutral, energy neutral buildings, et cetera, just beyond lead today is super important. Most of these biopharma companies today have set carbon neutrality goals that are well inside the broad 2050 type of target dates that some have put out there. And so I think overall, it's super important. I think for us, when we think about building green and sustainable buildings, it plays not only strategically important to our business but plays right into the strategies of our tenants as well. So I think it works well. And I think you pointed the obvious challenge that all companies are facing today is how do you read carbon neutrality today at a pace that needs to be faster than maybe possible at the moment, given technologies and solutions that are available. But if we don't put our best foot forward to be impactful here, we won't get anywhere close to some of the deadlines in different jurisdictions. But they're all different so it's hard to comment on broadly across the portfolio.

And then just last one for Peter, on the cap rate on the South San Francisco trade. How would you compare that cap rate across market cap rates, or how would you compare market cap rates across San Diego, south San Francisco and Cambridge? Are cap rates heading to parity in these markets or are there still decent spreads across these markets?

Actually, I think your comment on heading to parity, that's actually -- when you started asking your question, I was like the geographic differences that used to be obvious are being blurred. Once you get down to 4% caps, I would not be surprised -- obviously, 4% cap is being achieved in Cambridge. I would not be surprised to see it go below 4% in Cambridge at some point soon. A high quality asset in San Diego was probably at 5%, low 5% cap two years ago, and I would expect that to be a low 4% cap today. So things are starting to -- or the difference, the geographic difference that cap rates had before are really starting to narrow. And it's probably obvious that there's so many people out there looking for exposure to Life Science that the geography doesn't matter as much as it does to get the exposure to Life Science.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Joel Marcus for any closing remarks.

I'd just say thank you, everybody, and please stay safe. We'll talk to you next quarter. Thanks, everybody.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.