Timothy Naughton
Analyst · Stifel. Hi sir, please check your mute button. And I'm hearing no response from that line. And we'll go next to Vincent Chao at Deutsche Bank
Great. Thanks, Jason, and welcome to our fourth quarter call. With me today are Kevin O'Shea, Sean Breslin, and Matt Birenbaum. Sean, Kevin and I will provide management commentary in the slides we've posted last evening and then all of us will be available for Q&A afterwards. Our comments will focus on providing summary of the fourth quarter as well as full year results, and then a discussion of our outlook for 2018. Now let’s start now on the slide 4. Highlights for the quarter and the year include the core FFO growth of just over 6% in Q4 and 5.3% for the full year. Same-store revenue growth came in at 2.2% in the fourth quarter or 2.3% when you include redevelopment. And for the full year came in at 2.5% or 2.6%, much to include redevelopment. We completed a record $1.9 billion in new developments this year and started another $800 million. And lastly we raised about $2.6 billion in an external capital, principally through debt and asset sales at an average initial cost of 3.6%. Turning to slide 5, the $1.9 billion of development completed this past year, created roughly $600 million in value. The average projected yield, which is based upon current rent roles and estimated 2018 expenses at 6.1%, well above prevailing cap rates for this basket of assets, many of which are located in low cap rate urban and infill submarkets. Turning to the slide 6, in terms of portfolio management, we acquired three communities and sold six others this past year. The acquisitions were focused on expansion and under allocated markets including the purchase of our first asset in the Southeast Florida market in Boca Raton. 2017 dispositions were focused in the Northeast and we will continue to recycle capital into new development opportunities. Turning now to slide 7, we made progress in other important parts of the business this past year as well, including customer satisfaction where we ranked number one nationally among apartment REITs for online reputation for the third consecutive year, associate engagement, where we're named to Glassdoor's top 100 places to work, and number one among all real estate investment companies in the U.S. And in the area of corporate responsibility where our multiyear focus on environmental, social and governance issues has earned this recognition in the U.S. and globally as leaders in this area. Let’s now turn to slide 8. Our previous development platform has contributed to healthy outperformance in cash flow growth this cycle. Over the last seven years on an annual compounded basis, we’ve outperformed the sector in core FFO growth per share by 300 basis points which equates or translates into 4,000 basis points on a cumulative basis during that time. Similarly over the last nine years, dividend growth per share has outperformed the sector by 320 basis points on an annual compounded basis, which also equates into about 4,000 basis points cumulatively during that nine year period. Let’s turn to slide nine, and our outlook for 2018. Some of the highlights for outlook include core FFO growth of 3.6%, driven part by same-store NOI growth of 2% and development starts of $900 million and completions of $700 million at share. NOI of development communities is expected to be roughly $52 million at the midpoint, down from $59 million in 2017, as unit deliveries will be down significantly this year. Turn to slide 10, which summarizes the major components of our core FFO growth. At 3.6%, core FFO growth is expected to be down about 170 basis points from 2017 with internal growth from the stabilized portfolio contributing about 50 basis points or roughly one third of that decline and external growth from stabilizing investment in lease-up activity, net of capital cost contributing the other 120 basis points or roughly two thirds of that decline. Again a drop off in unit deliveries in ’18 is driving much of that reduction. I want to turn now to some of the key assumptions and drivers for outlook this year. Starting on slide 11, and I won’t go into a lot of details here, but as we do, as we enter 2018, it's with good momentum and the expectation of stronger economic growth. We expect to see stronger GDP growth this year with the economy is benefitting from synchronized global expansion and simulative affects of tax reform. In the corporate sector, higher profits, the repatriation of cash and accelerated cost recovery schedules should translate into healthy increases in capital investment. For the consumer, rising confidence combined with better wage growth and record wealth should stimulate consumption in 2018. So U.S. economic growth is expected to be driven by both the business community and the consumer this year. The biggest risk, perhaps to the economic outlook may come from any unintended consequences related to Fed tightening another policy. Slides 12 to 14 drilldown on these economic themes in a bit more detail, I'll skip over them to slide 15 to briefly address demographics in the housing market. So on slide 15, you can see the demographic trends should continue to support apartment demand for the next several years. The key target age cohort, those aged 25 to 34, it doesn’t peak until 2024, another six years. And delays in family formation, subcutaneous report rental demand, these trends maybe offset apart by stronger consumer confidence, and the fact that the leading edge of the millennials are now entering some of their prime home buying years. As a result, we do expect housing demand need more balance after several years of strongly favoring rental, and perhaps even favor for sale in single family at the margin in 2018. These trends can be seen on the next slide, slide 16 where it's clear that the per sale expansion has momentum without the increases in demand, production and pricing. Meanwhile, multi-family has seen rent growth decelerated recently to 2%, 2.5%, 3%, and starts flatten or actually fall over the last few quarters. As the few charts on the bottom indicate, it does appear that capital to some extent is imposing some discipline on the market as financing new construction to become challenging or more challenging over the last few quarters. This should translate into fewer deliveries in ’19 providing the apartment sector with some relief on the supply side next year. I’m now going to hand it over to Sean who will discuss demand and supply fundamentals and our markets and our portfolio outlook for ’18. Sean?