Jerry Sweeney
Analyst · Citi. Your line is open
Michelle, thank you very much. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for participating in our fourth quarter 2021 earnings call. On today's call with me are, George Johnstone, our Executive Vice President of Operations; Dan Palazzo, Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer; Tom Wirth, 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 these estimates are based on -- reflected in the statements are based on reasonable assumptions, we cannot give assurance that the anticipated results will be achieved. For further information on facts that could impact our anticipated results, please reference our press release, as well as our most recent annual and quarterly reports that we filed with the SEC. So first and foremost, we hope that you and yours had a wonderful holiday season and are looking forward to a very successful 2022. And in our world, certainly after some reopening delays related to the latest variants, we have stronger tenant interest in high-quality office space, as tour activity, lease negotiations and deal executions remain on a very positive trend line. A definitive trend and one that we believe will accelerate is that tenants are requiring very high-quality workspaces and we believe this trend positions our existing portfolio and our development portfolio extremely well. During our prepared comments, we'll briefly review fourth quarter results, outline our 2022 business plan and provide color on recent activities, both on the development and transactional side. Tom will then review our 2021 results and frame out the key assumptions driving our 2022 guidance. After that Tom, George, Dan and I are available to answer any questions you may have. So looking past -- back to 2021, we closed the year on a very strong note with many business plan objectives achieved. We exceeded our speculative revenue target by $1 million, raising guidance twice during the year. We execute -- our executed lease volumes remained in line with last quarter and our operating portfolio leasing pipeline increased by 120,000 square feet. For the fourth quarter we posted rental rate mark-to-market of 8.1% on a GAAP basis and 2.6% on a cash basis, with our full year mark-to-market being very strong at 16.2% on a GAAP basis and 10.3% on a cash basis. In addition, we had 116,000 square feet of positive absorption during the quarter. Our full year 2021 cash same store numbers came in below our revised business plan, primarily due to lower parking revenue, bad debt related to one retail tenant and free rent for a backfill tenancy. Full year capital costs, however, were in line with our business plan range. Tenant retention was 53%, which was at the top end of our full year forecast and core occupancy and lease targets were also within our forecasted range, where we ended 2021 93% leased and -- actually 93.9% leased within our core markets. We posted fourth quarter FFO of $0.35 per share, which is in line with consensus estimates and full year 2021 FFO of $1.37 per share, which was $0.01 above consensus. For 2022, we're providing guidance with an FFO range of $1.37 to $1.45 per share for a midpoint of $1.41 per share. Our early renewal efforts, expense control programs, forward near-term pipeline visibility and our recently executed transactions, established a clear pathway for growth. Our 2022 plan is headlined by two operating metrics that demonstrate the underlying strength of our core markets and for it's excellent growth potential. Our cash mark-to-market range is between 8% and 10%. Our GAAP mark-to-market range is between 16% and 18%. Our GAAP same store NOI growth for both cash and GAAP is between 0% and 2% and we expect all of our regions will post positive mark-to-market results on both a cash and GAAP basis. In looking at a moment at our cash same store NOI range of 0% to 2%, it's impacted by the timing of rollover and the subsequent backfill from leases already executed. So for example, in Philadelphia, we renewed a 120,000 square foot tenant commencing February one of '22. The free rent in that 16-year deal will last the balance of '22. In addition, we had 110,000 square foot tenant vacate Cira Centre in 2021. We've already leased 75% of that square footage with a commencement in July. And those lease structures on those replacement tenants are 10 years in term and incorporate free rent for the balance of '22. Just those two transactions represented 3.1% cash same store impact. We believe based on leases we already have executed and visibility into our near-term pipeline, that portfolio is well positioned to deliver much better same store growth in '23. Our spec revenue range is between $34 million and $36 million, with $25.6 million or 73% at the midpoint achieved. That speculative revenue range represents approximately two million square feet of leasing velocity which compares to leasing velocity of 1.2 million square feet in '20 and 1.4 million in 2019. Other key highlights. Occupancy levels will remain between 91% and 93%, lease levels between 92% and 94%. We expect a retention rate between 58% and 60%. And the capital for 2022 will run about 14% of revenue and that's above 2021, primarily due to several of those very large long-term leases commencing during the course of the year. Based on our 2022 leasing activity and higher development and redevelopment spend, we project our net debt to EBITDA to be in a range on a combined basis between 6.6 to 6.9 times. We view this leverage increase is purely transitional, while we are in a period of investing significant capital into construction, without recognizing any NOI. As income recognition occurs, this leverage will decrease significantly. To amplify this point, we have segmented our EBITDA metrics between core and combined. On page three of the SIP, if you look at that, we've included another leverage metric, that focuses just on our core portfolio by eliminating our joint venture nonrecourse debt and our active development and redevelopment spend. We believe that our projected core leverage range between 6.0 and 6.3 provides a more accurate measurement of how we're managing our core operations, as it eliminates our more highly leveraged joint ventures and eliminates the volatility associated with the timing of spending project capital, which increases leverage and the subsequent delay in income recognition. Over the last couple of years, we've reduced our forward rollover through 2024 to an average below 8%. Further – looking further out, our rollover exposure is below 10% annually through 2026. So value creation and earnings growth remain a top priority. Senior earning drivers for us as we have key vacancies that many of you are familiar with that will generate between $0.07 and $0.10 a share upon lease-up. We continue to make progress on leasing up those spaces but our 2022 plan only includes approximately $0.02 per share of revenue from those vacancies, of which 20% has already been executed. In looking at our activity levels, our overall leasing pipeline stands at 3.8 million square feet, broken down between 1.4 million square feet on our operating portfolio and 2.4 million square feet on our development projects. The 1.4 million square feet leasing pipeline on the existing portfolio increased by 120,000 square feet during the quarter and is 14% higher than our pre-pandemic levels from the fourth quarter of 2019. The leasing pipeline on our development projects of 2.4 million square feet also increased during the quarter by 100,000 square feet. In looking at our liquidity and dividend, we have excellent liquidity. And even with our anticipated development spend and absent any other financing sources, we anticipate having $383 million on our line of credit available by year-end 2022. We also do anticipate renewing both our line of credit and our $250 million term loan during the first half of the year on – at similar terms to the existing instruments. The dividend is very well covered with a 54% FFO payout ratio at the midpoint. Our CAD ratio has migrated to about 90% and above recent years, primarily due to our elevated leasing activity, which is that 2 million square feet we plan on leasing. And in addition for 2022, we did include all JV capital spend in our CAD calculation, regards to whether those dollars are financed through good news funding at our JV level secured mortgages and that did have an impact of $0.05 a share about 5.5% of our CAD ratio. We do anticipate that coverage improving significantly as leases commence and we recognize revenue. From a capital allocation standpoint, we made progress on many fronts. We liquidated our final property in our Allstate joint venture and recognized the gain of $3 million. We also continued selling non-core land parcels during the course of the year. And in fact in January, we sold one parcel for $1.4 million, generating a $900,000 gain. In looking at our development opportunity set, 250 King of Prussia Road, in our Radnor sub-market is scheduled for delivery in the second quarter of 2022. The project will be the first delivery in our Radnor Life Science Center, which consists of more than 300,000 square feet of Life Science space, in what we consider to be the region's best performing submarket. The current pipeline on that project is north of 260,000 square feet, including 86,000 square feet in lease negotiations. 405 Colorado in Downtown Austin that project is now complete and is 48.3% leased with a growing and very active pipeline. We have a leasing pipeline right now of 144,000 square feet of which 31,000 square feet are in lease negotiations and we are working through a 26,000 square foot expansion. Our B.Labs incubator at Cira Centre it consists of 240 seats. That opened in January and is 95% leased to 12 companies. Well ahead of our plan and based on that success, we're planning to add another floor totaling approximately 27,000 square feet by year end 2022. And we additionally have plans underway to add another 78,000 square feet of life science capability through Floor 9. Just taking a look at an update on Schuylkill Yards and Uptown ATX. In Schuylkill Yards West, our life science office residential tower is on time and on budget for Q3 2023 delivery. We currently have an active pipeline totaling 410,000 square feet for the life science and office space component. That pipeline is up 70,000 square feet from last quarter and we do expect it to continue to grow as construction progresses. Our $56.8 million equity commitment is fully funded and our partner's equity investment is currently being made and the first funding of our construction loan will occur in the second quarter of 2022. 3151 market, our 424,000 square foot life science building is fully designed and priced. We have a leasing pipeline totaling about 270,000 square feet, which is up from 150,000 square feet in the third quarter and our goal remains to being able to start that project this year. At Uptown ATX, we've had a very productive 90 days at the 66-acre community which has the development capacity approaching seven million square feet. We rebranded the project from Broadmoor to Uptown ATX recognizing it can create a new center of gravity within the city of Austin. We broke ground on Block A, which consists of 348000 square feet of office, 341 residential units and 15000 square feet of ground floor retail. As part of this we are delighted with our 50-50 venture with Canyon Partners. That structure is similar to our 3025 Schuylkill Yards West project with Canyon providing 50% of the equity on a preferred basis. We are currently in the process of obtaining a 65% construction loan which we expect to close before the close of Q1. As we discussed in the past these preferred structures enable Brandywine to retain a significant portion of value creation upon stabilization. Under our preferred structures once the partners in Brandywine received the accrued return, a significant value accretion comes to Brandywine after that. So based on our stabilized underwriting that creates an incremental 400 basis points to 500 basis points lower cost of third-party equity capital than a traditional joint venture. We also anticipate the completion of that office component in 3Q 2023 and the residential component in 3Q 2024. We have a pipeline on the office component right now about 300,000 square feet. But since announcing the project we received inquiries aggregating just shy of 1.3 million square feet. So a lot of activity on that project now that it's finally coming out of the ground. We also had our groundbreaking for the train station that we'll be building through a 50-50 public-private partnership with CapMetro which is the regional rail authority in Austin. That station as we've outlined before, will provide Uptown ATX direct access to downtown Austin and the northern suburbs and we expect it to open for service during 2024. We further anticipate that we will be starting the first phase of Block F which is 272 apartment units under the same format with Canyon in the second quarter of '22. One final note. While our 2022 business plan did not incorporate any dispositions or acquisitions, we do anticipate being active on the capital recycling front. We do anticipate to continue to sell select non-core land parcels. Also with the office recovery underway and premium pricing being paid for well-leased assets, we believe we have several opportunities to harvest profits with low cap rate sales. We also anticipate sales of select properties out of our existing joint ventures. So the dollars generated from these activities will be used to certainly fund our development pipeline, continue to reduce leverage and then certainly redeploy dollars into higher growth opportunities. With that Tom will now provide an overview of our financial results.