Timothy J. Naughton
Analyst · ISI Group
Thanks, Jason, and welcome to our second quarter call. With me today are Kevin O'Shea, Sean Breslin and Matt Birenbaum. The format for the call today will be the same as the last 2 quarters. We posted a management letter and slide deck this morning on our website before the market opened. I'll be providing management commentary on the slides, then all of us will be available for Q&A afterward. My comments will focus on providing a high-level summary of the quarter's results, as well as our updated annual outlook. I'll also touch on some of the key economic and apartment market factors that are impacting performance and our outlook, including recent trends in portfolio performance. And lastly, I'll just touch on development activity, performance and funding. So let's go ahead and get started, starting on Slide 4 of the deck. Generally, performance remains in line with our business plan. In Q2, FFO growth was up around 10%. Core FFO growth was up around 5% after adjusting for nonroutine items. Same-store revenue growth was up 3.1% on a year-over-year basis and 150 basis points sequentially. If you would include redevelopment, it would be up about -- it would be up 3.3% and 160 basis points sequentially. And then on a year-to-date basis, on a year-over-year basis with a different basket, which is just the AvalonBay legacy assets, same-store revenue would be up -- it was up 3.7%, and 4.1% if you were to include redevelopment. Development completions this quarter totaled almost $200 million, with an initial projected yield of 7.3%. And we started another $400 million and 4 deals, all of which were in California. We were also active in the capital market this past quarter, having raised $440 million through a variety of sources, including the CEP. Now let's talk about the updated outlook for 2014, moving on to Slide 5. Our updated outlook is largely unchanged from our initial outlook that we issued at the beginning of the year. FFO growth has increased, but most of that is attributable to the projected Christie Place promote, which, once that closes, we'll be disclosing more detail around. That doesn't include all of our distribution from the Christie Place sale. The rest of the distribution is embedded in the gain on the revised EPS guidance, which is on our -- which represents gain on our $6 million equity investment and net asset. Core FFO growth is projected to increase by 40 basis points over our original outlook from 8.7% to 9.1%, and same-store revenue and NOI growth are largely in line with our original outlook, with some minor adjustments. And similarly, development starts and funding needs are largely unchanged at right around or just under $1.5 billion for the year. So now let's discuss some of the key economic assumptions that drive our performance and supporting our outlook. Starting with the consumer, the economy is improving and the consumer is definitely on the mend after a slow Q1. Consumer confidence is recovering, as shown in that upper left-hand slide, driven by a number of factors, including healthier balance sheets, as debt and financial obligations are at a generational low; an improving wage picture, with weekly earnings up quite a bit over the last few quarters; and a better opportunity set, with job openings up back to pre-downturn levels. Moving to Slide 7. Importantly, jobs are going to those with higher rental propensity profiles, specifically young adults, which account for about half of net jobs created over the last 6 quarters, which, we think, explains, in part, the modest housing recovery, where homeownership rates are still more than 400 basis points below peak but more than 700 basis points lower for young adults from peak. So really, it's a combination of demographics, living preferences and purchase behavior that's all favoring rental housing today. And the overall apartment demand is benefiting from the improved economy, growing confidence and demographics. Let's turn to the supply side of the picture for a couple of minutes. We are seeing deliveries trend up as expected, as shown on Slide 8. But it is -- but supply is being absorbed relatively easy by healthy markets, at least until this point. Moving on to Slide 9. And while deliveries are elevated over recent years, supply is projected to peak in 2014 and level off next year at just under 2% of inventory -- or of available stock. Metro D.C., as you can see, will remain challenged, with completions totaling almost 7% of stock during '14 and '15, with only modest job growth projected over this time frame. Moving to Slide 10. And looking beyond to '16 and after, completions should continue to flatten or taper as the multifamily starts have been flattening out over the last 2 to 3 quarters. The starts data on your left does include condo, seniors and student housing and other products. So it can sometimes mask what's actually happening in the multifamily rental market rate supplies trends, which we are actually projecting to taper off a bit in our markets starting in 2016. So why are deliveries leveling off? I think the answer is really on the right-hand side of this chart. We do think it's a combination of economics and capital availability. In terms of economics, construction costs are now outpacing rent growth since the trough, which is starting to squeeze yields a bit. And then, as you look at the overall capital picture and availability of equity capital, equity capital is starting to rotate to other sectors and is more or less neutral as it relates to our space. And yes, so overall, we look at this as a pretty disciplined market response to fundamentals where development is rising early in the cycle but begins to level off in line with structural demand mid-cycle. So let's move on. What does this all mean for our portfolio outlook? As I mentioned before, in general, our overall outlook for the year remains intact, with some regional variation. The West Coast continues to lead the way and even a bit stronger than we expected at the beginning of the year. And the Northeast, a little bit below our initial expectations. The outliers, of course, continue to be Northern California, which is still running strong in the 8% range; and Mid-Atlantic, on the other end, which is flat to slightly down for the year. But as we know, and I'm moving to Slide 12, it is a cyclical business. Market performance varies, and leadership does rotate over time. And I think Northern California and Mid-Atlantic are perhaps 2 of the best examples of markets that we've been active in for a long time. They're both strong markets, they've outperformed over -- for a long period, in this case, 15 years. But importantly, they don't move together or necessarily in the same way over the course of the cycle, which we think provides healthy diversification and helps smooth our overall growth profile. And I think this chart is a reminder, as you just looked at sort of the movement over in 5-year increments, that today's underperformers are often tomorrow's outperformers and vice versa. And while we're not sure exactly when these markets will turn, we're just pretty sure that they will. And that leadership will rotate as it has in the past. And in general, we expect most of these markets to deliver 2.5% to 3%, maybe 3.5% growth over an extended period of time. So turning to Slide 13. As it relates to what we're expecting for the balance of the year, we do expect modest improvement in the second half of the year, with Q2 representing the low-water mark for same-store revenue growth, moving from the low 3% range to mid to high 3% range in the second half, and we actually have already started to see that in June and July, where same-store revenue growth has been in the 3.5% and projected to be close to 4% and -- in July. And turning to Slide 14, I think you can see why that is, as it's really being driven by what we've been seeing in the portfolio over the last few months as same-unit rent growth has increased every month this year. And in fact, the year-to-date rent change since January has actually grown by 7% for the combined same-store portfolio. This chart is for the AVB legacy, when -- but when you look at the same -- the combined same-store portfolio since January on a sequential basis, that's grown by 7%, which is actually stronger than what we experienced last year in 2013. Turning to Slide 15. Another trend that is emerging in our markets is the outperformance of the suburban submarkets. It's something we've been projecting, given the concentration of starts and deliveries in our urban submarkets, a trend that should persist for the next couple of years as urban deliveries are expected to deliver more than 2x the rate of suburban submarkets over the next 2.5 years. This is, I think, just another example where our exposure to both urban and suburban submarkets provides just additional diversification over the course of the cycle. Shifting now to development on Slide 16. Lease-up performance remains very strong, with rents $200 above pro forma and yields up 50 basis points above original expectations. And that's on 100 -- on about $1.5 billion that's currently in lease-up across 17 communities. And performance has not come at the expense of absorption. In fact, absorption has been very strong, running at over 30 units per month per community over the last quarter. And when you look at this portfolio, along with what we've completed so far this cycle, the total is about $3 billion, which is a meaningful source of NAV and FFO accretion, as yields are averaging over 200 basis points above prevailing cap rates and over 300 basis points over initial cost of capital for capital we've sourced so far this cycle. Turning now to Slide 17. The financing environment remains very attractive to capitalize this investment. Pricing has improved since the beginning of the year, most notably for equity. Debt and asset sales, obviously, remain very attractive, and particularly relative to historical precedent. And I tell you, we believe we just have a full menu of options in front of us in terms of capitalizing very accretive investments to the development platform. Slide -- now moving to Slide 18 and the last slide of the deck. We've actually sourced all 3 of these capital markets so far this year, actually being most active in the disposition market as we continue to match-fund development commitments. Year-to-date, we've raised about $750 million, and we have about another $350 million in net proceeds pending on the disposition side, including the sale and the ultimate closing of Christie Place. That leaves remaining to fund about $300 million, and just given our current liquidity and credit metrics, we have plenty of flexibility in terms of how we choose to fund this remaining need. So in summary, 2014 is shaping up more or less as expected. There -- healthy market -- apartment market conditions continue in -- across most of our footprint. We're experiencing another year of strong growth, driven by the stabilized and lease-up portfolios. And we have the ample liquidity, balance sheet capacity and the talent to support continued value-added growth this cycle from, really, what's an incredibly attractive development pipeline of -- representing more than $6 billion in new investment. And with that, operator, we're ready to open it up for questions.