Jerry Sweeney
Analyst · Evercore ISI. Your line is open. Please check that your line is not unmute
Crystal, thank you very much. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for participating in our second quarter 2020 earnings call. On today’s call with me 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 this 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. So we begin our prepared comments, first and foremost, all of us at Brandywine sincerely hope that you and yours continue to be safe, healthy and is engaged as possible during this challenging time. This pandemic continues to disrupt all of our lives and has resulted in a new landscape for everyone, including every business. The duration of this crisis is increasingly unclear. On our April 23 earnings call, we did expect a return to the workplace environment by mid-summer. Given the events of recent weeks, however, that time line has been extended. We are continually assessing COVID-19’s impact on every element of our business. And based on this detailed review, we remain confident in our ability to execute all components of our 2020 business plan. Additional details on our approach to this crisis are outlined in our COVID-19 insert that is found on Pages 1 to 5 of our supplemental package. So during our prepared comments, as we always do, we’ll review second quarter results and an update to our 2020 business plan. We’ll also review the announced joint venture on our One and Two Commerce Square properties in the Central Business District of Philadelphia. Tom will then summarize our financial outlook and update you on our strong liquidity position. After that, Dan, Tom, George and I are certainly available to answer any of your questions. So looking at the second quarter, we continue to execute every component of our 2020 business plan. For spec revenue, we are 99% complete with only 69,000 square feet and $300,000 remaining to achieve our spec revenue target for the year. We had good second quarter leasing activity, that 400,000 square feet of both new and renewal activity, with strong rental rate mark-to-market of 19.4% on a GAAP basis and 10.3% on a cash basis. Same-store numbers had been tracking in line with our business plan, but the delayed opening of Philadelphia resulted in about a $2 million NOI decline from our parking operations for the balance of the year. Our parking operations are included in our same-store pool, and as such, this NOI decline has reduced our cash and GAAP ranges by about 100 basis points each. Office operations are progressing in accordance with our business plan. Cash collection rates continue to be extremely good, and we have collected over 99% of our second quarter billings, and our July collection rate tracks very well also with about 98% collected as of yesterday. Capital costs were at the low end of our targeted range. And we have lowered our estimated full year 2020 capital ratio by 100 basis points down to 11% to 12%, really reflecting the experience we’re having with generating short-term extensions that require minimal capital outlays and I’ll touch on that in a moment. Retention was only 37%, which was mainly driven by the known move-out of SHI in our Austin portfolio as they began occupying their newly owned building that we built for them at our Garza Ranch project. As noted previously, we have backfilled 80% of their space, which will commence later this year, at 19% cash mark-to-market. And look, while SHI was the primary driver in our occupancy decline, we had several other tenants’ expirations. All of those move-outs were known and part of our plan. And of the known move-outs, 183,000 or 51% has already been relet and will recommence in 2020. I should also note that about 70 basis points of our occupancy decline were due to removing Commerce Square from our same-store pool. Most importantly, though, we do expect occupancy returning to our targeted range of 92% to 93% by the end of this year. We did post FFO of $0.34, which is in line with consensus, and Tom will amplify that during his comments. And then looking at our 2020 business plan, as we talked about on our last call, this crisis really embodies both danger and opportunity for our company. Our clear priority has been to assess all elements of risk and institute plans to effectively mitigate and anticipate any adverse impact. We do remain focused forward on opportunities to enhance our business plan execution, whether that be by lease – early lease renewals, margin improving rebidding programs or working with institutional partners to seek investments where we can create growth opportunities. And just a quick recap of our COVID-19 key components. We have maintained, in accordance with all local state and CDC guidelines, a doors-open-and-lights-on approach to our building operations. While it’s a little bit difficult to quantify in some of our buildings, we estimate the current occupancy range of our buildings is around 5% to 10% in CBD, Philadelphia; up to about 20% our D.C. assets; Austin is around 10% with some pullback in that given the situation down there; and the Pennsylvania suburban operations seem to be around 15%. Secondly, the stability of our operating platform remains a top priority, with particular attention on rent collections and rent deferrals, all of which are amplified on Page 1 of our supplemental package. One of our real top priorities has been a strategic outreach to all of our tenants. So we are in extremely close touch with all of our tenants, understanding their concerns, listening to their transition plans and providing help wherever we can, so we fully understand their objectives. As such, as part of that program, while we reached out to our entire tenant base, our particular focus has been on those tenants whose spaces roll in the next two years. The results of those efforts are framed out on Page 3 of our supplemental and have resulted in 73 active tenant discussions totaling about 950,000 square feet, that to date, have resulted in 28 tenants totaling about 216,000 square feet executing leases since March 15. These leases have an average term of 24 months with a 4.2% cash mark-to-market and a 5% capital ratio. On the construction front, all of our markets are allowing construction activities, and we’ve not programmed any additional pullback in construction activity delays this year. On a positive front, we are beginning to see downward pressure in select circumstances on construction cost, hard construction costs as well as some soft costs as the overall forward construction pipeline continues to shrink. Our leasing pipeline stands at 1.5 million square feet, and we’ve actually had better-than-expected progression in that pipeline during the quarter. Once again, our team has been in extensive touch with every prospect. And the breakdown of the 1.5 million square feet is as follows: deals progressing but execution uncertain – timing of that uncertain, and we’re targeting the next 90 days, about 24% or 254,000 square feet; deals progressing, but too early to tell when they would actually could execute it, about 900,000 square feet or over 60% of the pipeline. And that’s really the noticeable change. Since April’s call, many more deals have advanced from the on hold due to COVID, which right now comprises about 14% of that current pipeline into the deal progressing, but too early to call. So tenants are slowly beginning to refocus their attention on their office space requirements. On the capital front, we’re really delighted to announce a joint venture on our One and Two Commerce Square buildings in Philadelphia. The joint venture is with an extremely high-quality global institutional investor who’s making their first office investment in Philadelphia, which, from our perspective, further demonstrates the attractiveness of our Philadelphia market to institutional investors and really validates investors’ perception on Brandywine’s ability to create value. Our investor has requested that we do not disclose their name in certain terms of the agreement at this point in time. But the general framework of a venture meets many, many of our key objectives. It’s $115 million preferred equity investment which represents 30% of the venture’s capitalization at a total value of $600 million or $316 per square foot, which we believe is an exceptionally strong pricing. The going-in cap rate is 5.1%. That cap rate improves based upon the rollover, but we really view that as simply a data point due to the pending level of vacancy and the value-creation opportunity. So right now, over 97%, that does drop to 70% over the next 18 months. After providing for payments for transitional leases and closing costs, Brandywine received over $100 million of net proceeds, which, as Tom will amplify, added to our excellent liquidity position. The transaction is a 70-30 joint venture with shared control on decisions. And while we can’t close some of the specific terms, we can share that our partner’s targeted rate of return on an all-in basis is in the very low double digits. So we view it as very effectively price capital. It provides for the same level of returns on preferred equity with a liquidation preference upon a capital event to our partner. And in return for that preference, Brandywine receives a significant promote structure upon a capital event. Both Brandywine and our partner have each committed $20 million of incremental capital to reposition the properties and re-tenant known vacancies. We will continue to manage and lease the property. Frankly, due to the leasing status and the price, the transaction will have minimal dilution, less than $0.01 a share on 2020 earnings and will improve our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio by approximately between three and four turns between now and the end of the year. The transaction does reduce our forward rollover exposure by 1.8 million square feet in our wholly-owned portfolio. And Brandywine will also recognize a gain of about $270 million on this transaction. Very important point to note in the structure. Given the state of the debt markets and the near-term rollover profile this property, we closed the venture with the existing $221 million mortgage in place at selling at 37% loan-to-value. As leasing progresses and the debt markets continue their recovery, we plan to refinance at a higher LTV, thereby affording both Brandywine and our partner another opportunity to generate liquidity. And speaking of liquidity, the company is in excellent shape, as outlined on Page 4 of our supplemental package. We are projecting to have a $500 million line of credit availability at year-end 2020. And if we refinance rather than pay off an $80 million mortgage later this year, that liquidity increases to $580 million. We have only one $10 million mortgage that matures in 2021, we have no unsecured bond maturities until 2023. We anticipate generating $55 million of free cash flow after debt service and dividend payments for the second half of 2020. And our dividend remains extraordinarily well covered with a 56% FFO and 75% CAD payout ratio. So if those items addressed, let me just spend a few moments on our development set. First of all, all of our production assets, that’s Garza and Four Points in Austin, 650 Park Avenue in King of Prussia and 155 in Radnor, are all fully approved, fully documented, fully ready to go, subject to identifying pre-leasing. And as we’ve noted previously, these are near-term completions that we can complete within four to six quarters and their individual costs range between $40 million and $70 million. As you might expect, we didn’t really make any significant advancement in our deal pipeline of almost 600,000 square feet during the quarter. And frankly, don’t really anticipate any significant advancement of some of these major discussions until the crisis begins to abate and there’s more focus on return to the workplace. In looking at our existing development projects on 405 Colorado, look, this exciting addition to Austin’s skyline remains on track for completion in the first quarter of 2021 at a very attractive 8.5% cash-on-cash yield. We have a pipeline of 125,000 square feet. But frankly, as I noted on the production assets, we don’t expect any significant decision-making to occur until after the crisis begins to abate. On the Bulletin Building, the latest report that’s now been placed in service at 94% occupancy and 98% leased. The property will stabilize on schedule in the fourth quarter of 2020. 3000 Market Street is a 64,000 square foot life science renovation that we undertook in -- within Schuylkill Yards. As noted last quarter, we did sign a lease with one of our existing life science tenants, Spark Therapeutics, who has taken the entire building on a 12-year lease. We expect that lease will commence in the third quarter of next year and deliver a development yield slightly north of 9%. Quickly looking at Broadmoor and Schuylkill Yards. At Broadmoor, we continue fully advancing our development plans on Block A, which is 360,000 square feet of office and 340 apartment units, and we’ve gotten through final design in pricing. And we’ll be in a position to have all that ready to go by the end of Q3 this year, subject to financing and pre-leasing. Schuylkill Yards -- within Schuylkill Yards, we really continue a very, very strong life science push. The overall master plan for Schuylkill Yards provides at least 2.8 million square feet can be life science space. So we really do view that we have a tremendous opportunity to establish a full ecosystem. 3000 Market and the Bulletin Building conversions I just mentioned to life science really evidences the first part of that pivot to create a life science hub. We are also well into the design, development and marketing process for a 400,000 square foot life science building with the goal of being able to start that by Q2 2021, assuming market conditions permit. Finally, we are converting several floors within our Cira Centre project to accommodate life science use. The aggregate square footage for that converted space is 56,000 square feet, and we have a current pipeline of 137,000 square feet for that space. Schuylkill Yards West, our residential office tower, is fully approved to go and ready, subject to finalizing our debt and equity structure. We have also modified the design of the office component to accommodate some level of life science use. As I mentioned last quarter, and we’ll mention again this quarter, the COVID-19 crisis has clearly had a big impact upon the timing of moving forward this project and getting the financing in place. We continue to work with our preferred equity partner, but the crisis has clearly slowed the place of procuring and finalizing both the equity piece, as well as the debt piece. We do remain optimistic that we’ll get this across the finish line as soon as the situation returns to some level of normalcy. In general, we do continue to maintain a very active dialogue with a broad cross section of institutional investors and private equity firms. In addition to our Commerce Square announcement, we continue to explore other asset level joint ventures that will both improve our return on invested capital and continue to enhance our liquidity and provide growth capital for development pipeline. These discussions are active and ongoing and they certainly encompass both our Broadmoor and Schuylkill Yards projects. One final note is – that we noted in our press release, is we normally provide – we would normally have provided 2021 earnings forecast during our third quarter earnings cycle. Based on the current uncertain business climate, we will not provide that 2020 guidance as part of our third quarter call, but we do plan on issuing guidance no later than our fourth quarter earnings cycle. Now turning the mic over to Tom, who will provide an overview of our financial results.