Jerry Sweeney
Analyst · Citi. Your line is now open
Chris, thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you all for participating in our second quarter 2019 earnings call. On today's call with me, as usual, are George Johnstone, our Executive Vice President of Operations; Dan Palazzo, our Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer; and Tom Wirth, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Prior to beginning, certain information discussed during our call may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities law. Although, we believe estimates reflected in these statements are based on reasonable assumptions, we cannot give assurance that the anticipated results will be achieved. For further information on factors that could impact our anticipated results, please reference our press release, as well as our most recent annual and quarterly reports that we file with the SEC. We are in great shape, and after a brief review of our second quarter results and the 2019 business plan update, Tom will provide a synopsis of our financial results. And then after that, Tom, George, Dan and I will be available to answer any questions you may have. The business plan is very straightforward. We continue to take advantage of strong market conditions to lease space at increasing net effect of rents by controlling capital costs, delivering positive mark-to-market rental spreads and meeting all of our business plan objectives. To respond to client and market demand and accelerate earnings growth, as we look forward to 2020 and '21, we do plan to place more land into active development. Sources of capital will include proceeds from appropriately timed asset sales and selective JVs on large development undertakings, like Schuylkill Yards. We anticipate being able to accomplish our development funding needs without earnings dilutive asset sales or exceeding our balance sheet targets. And looking at 2019, we're 99% done on our $32 million spec revenue target ahead of last year's pace and our leasing pipeline on existing inventory is currently 1.8 million square feet, including almost 400,000 square feet in advanced stages of negotiations. You'll notice that we have increased our 2019 projected retention rate to 65%. We have also increased our GAAP mark-to-market range from 9% to 11% the previous range to a current range of 11% to 12%. For the second quarter, we've posted positive rental rate mark-to-market of 12.1% on a GAAP basis and 8.5% cash with leasing capital remaining below our 14% target. We also posted second quarter same - cash same store growth of 1.6%. You'll notice that year-to-date, our same store growth rate is 2.7%. We are going to maintain our original business plan range of 1% to 3%, primarily because we are keeping a large redevelopment property, that 1676 International Drive in our same store pool and that will become 30% occupied at the end of the third quarter. 1676 in and of itself negatively impacts our 2019 cash same store by approximately 120 basis points. Now, looking at our same store outlook. Other than D.C., which now represents only 9% of our revenues and will have a negative 12% same store this year, our cash same store in other regions remains very strong. Austin, which now contributes 19% of our revenues, same store growth will range between 4% and 6%, fueled by 97% occupancy and a 12% cash mark-to-market. The Pennsylvania Suburbs, our same store growth will range between 3% and 5%, and in Philadelphia CBD in University City, that same store range will be between 1% and 3% this year. But based on our 97% lease percentage combined with the continued burn off of free rent, our 2020 Philadelphia same store will range between 5% and 7%, even with the known move out of Macquarie in the third quarter. Based on our excellent progress to-date, you'll notice that we raised the bottom end of our FFO range to $1.40 and now we're at the top end to $1.44. And Tom will give you more detail on that in a few moments. In Radnor, our leasing percentage is down 96%, so we've had over 167,000 square feet of net absorption this year. We are projecting Radnor to be 96% occupied by the end of 2019 and on a leasing activity to achieve these levels realized a 5% cash and a 9% GAAP mark-to-market. I guess - and looking at our markets and as outlined briefly in the sup, we expect both the Greater Philadelphia and Austin markets to remain strong. Austin continues to benefit from corporate attraction and in-market expansions. And for the second quarter of 2019, asking rents increased 6.2% year-over-year with 1.1 million square feet of absorption in the first half of this year. Austin's 6.4% rental rate growth over the past 12 months surpasses the Bay Area, Charlotte, Atlanta and other highly favored tech markets, so the market has done very, very well in terms of driving effective rent growth. That's further evidenced by the Austin Business Cycle Index, which is based on employment and payroll indicators released by the Dallas Fed, that expanded by 7.4% in the second quarter above the long-term growth average of 6% over the last five years, which signals a continued ramp up in the Austin economy for the balance of '19 and certainly heading into 2020. Philadelphia, with 2 million square feet of absorption over the last year, has lowered the trophy-class vacancy rate down to 5% from 5.3% at the end of 2018, placing Philadelphia among the lowest vacancy rates of the top 25 largest MSAs in the country. Philadelphia has also grown jobs at 2.1% over the last year and is experiencing strong demand for the second quarter of '19 with asking rents increasing 4.4% year-over-year. Philadelphia continues to benefit from its emerging life science sector, supported by close to $1 billion in NIH funding, which ranks third nationally behind only Boston and New York. With University City in Philadelphia receiving 42% of all NIH funds allocated to the entire state of Pennsylvania, we believe our Schuylkill Yards development is well positioned to take advantage of this funding and growth acceleration. And looking at managing risk, we remain very focused on our forward rollover exposure. The redevelopment of 1676 International Drive in Tysons is both on time and on budget. Construction will be substantially completed by the end of September, which is when KPMG is targeted to move out. Our current pipeline exceeds 600,000 square feet and we're pleased to report that we're finalizing an LOI and moving to lease negotiations with a prospect for approximately 110,000 square feet in the lower back of the building that's targeting mid 2020 occupancy. Rent levels are in our targeted mid 40s range, representing about a 15% increase over expiring rents. This project will generate in excess of 20% plus return on incremental capital and we are still projecting a stabilization at 9% yield on fully loaded basis. Excellent progress on both design and pre-leasing funds is also being made on our development pipeline. Our pipeline on development and redevelopment projects stands at 3.7 million square feet. And looking at some properties specifically, 405 continues on schedule and on budget. Since commencing construction, the leasing pipeline now stands at just shy of 300,000 square feet. With this project will cost approximately $114 million, generating 8.5% yield on cost and we're scheduling to bring it on line by the end of 2020. The Bulletin Building renovation work has commenced and will be completed the first half of next year. As you know, the entire office component is leased to Spark Therapeutics and will remain in the 9.3% free and clear yield on cost upon full stabilization. We did provide a brief update in itself on Schuylkill Yards and Broadmoor, but to amplify a couple of points, we officially opened our public park on June 10th. Also, during June, we received final approval for the remaining portions of Schuylkill Yards, which will enable us now to proceed on the entire 5.1 million square feet of a mixed use development. So that was a great accomplishment, we're very pleased with that. Current design efforts, as we've outlined in this sup, really focus on our West Tower, which consists of retail parking, about 200,000 square feet of office and 326 apartment units, which is being done in conjunction with our residential partner, Gotham. Work on a primarily office-based East Tower is also progressing. And notably, planning is underway on a 300,000 to 400,000 dedicated life science tower that we're doing in conjunction with our life science partner, Longfellow. Our leasing pipeline is extremely healthy, including almost 500,000 square feet of life science uses. Given our read of the residential market and partnership with Gotham, we could be in a position to go on the West Tower by year-end 2019. Equity sourcing discussions also remain on track and we're currently evaluating several financing proposals. When we look at our financing strategy, we currently have over $80 million currently invested in Schuylkill Yards, which we believe should meet our equity requirement for our targeted 35% hold level in a development joint venture. As we've mentioned before, Schuylkill Yards is also in a state and federal Qualified Opportunity Zone. Looking at Broadmoor briefly, planning efforts and marketing is underway for 300,000 square foot office project, which will include retail and two residential sites, where planning is also well underway. We plan again, subject to real estate and capital market conditions, to be in a position to start at least one project at Broadmoor in the first half of 2020. As you'll note on our Business Plan page, we still do not have any sales or acquisitions built into the remaining 2019 plan. We are, however, exploring some asset sales to both harvest profit, generate liquidity for other uses and to accelerate our cash flow growth trajectory. We're also evaluating several values add opportunities, as well as keeping an eye on our current share price. As we did last year, we would not expect - we would expect that any deployment to be relatively earnings-neutral and accelerate our bottom line cash flow growth. So, to close, the '19 business plan is essentially wrapped up. We are focused very much on our 2020 business plan, which we'll share on our third quarter '19 call. And with that, I'll turn over to Tom, who will provide an overview of our financial results.