Douglas T. Linde
Analyst · Ross Nussbaum
Thanks, Mort. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the third quarter. I hope that -- I hope Mort's comments on the macro side didn't put people down too much because I think that the reality is that the business economy, which is what we all are dealing with, while it's not doing as well as anybody would like and it's probably doing less well right now than it was 2 or 3 quarters ago, it's still in pretty good shape and I think it'll -- well, as we talk this morning, you'll get a sense of how it's reverberating through our portfolio both from the positive as well as sort of some of the things that are slowing down a little bit. You probably wouldn't be surprised to hear that our perspective on the overall leasing markets are that -- they're pretty flat. There's not a lot of urgency with regards to lease decisions right now. Leases expire every year, but the tenants that have those leases in front of them are really exercising an abundance of caution as they think about expanding and/or making long-term decisions. I think the thing, though, that has struck us is that nobody has canceled any plans. We have not seen anything like what we were seeing in 2008, in 2009, with sort of an existential perspective with regards to the businesses that we consider our customers. It's really more of a pause, a wait and a -- wait-and-see. I've spoken to you before about sort of one of the things that we track, which is venture capital investing. And way back when, in 2000, the D.C. commitments were running at about $22 billion per quarter. For the last year or so, they've been running between $6 billion and $8 billion per quarter, and this again was a quarter where they were closer to $6 billion than to the $8 billion and slightly down from where they were in the second quarter. But surprise, surprise, where are people investing money in new business formations? The Silicon Valley and San Francisco, the Boston-Cambridge market and New York City. So 3 of the most important markets for us are where the new businesses are going to be formed. It's clear, as Mort said, that the growth in our markets, in -- certainly in the short and medium term is going to be driven by demand from technology and life sciences companies. And there is going to be this offset from employment reductions and productivity enhancements with regards to the space that's being used by the traditional financial services and professional service firms. And really what that's doing is it's really creating a sort of secondary organic supply in our markets. And it's important to sort of think about what the impact of that are over time particularly because it's going to be granular and sort of spread out through many buildings and the markets are going to have to deal with that. We are, in fact, as Mort suggested, spending an awful lot of time thinking about how people are using space, the types of tenants that are going to be the winners and the growers on a going-forward basis, and thinking about how we spend our capital to both position our existing assets as well as change our portfolio so that we can be successful in a changing market. Now I do not want to suggest that we are in any way turning our backs on the traditional office user because, quite frankly, they still are the dominant user of office space, but we have to start thinking long and hard about how things are changing as we move forward. And with this in mind, this is really I think the reason that our acquisition on -- at Folsom Street sort of makes a lot of sense hopefully to you and certainly to us. 680 Folsom is a 14-story glass structure. It's an old AT&T/PacBell building with 15-foot floor-to-floor heights, but it's being totally gutted and brought back with 10-foot-6 brand-new windows. It's a 35,000-square-foot floor and it's exactly the kind of building that a mature technology company would be looking for if they could find that type of product in San Francisco. It is located in the heart of where the tech demand is and it's a very unique product because it's a grown-up building for a mature tenant. It's leased to -- 85% of the building has been leased to Macys.com and Riverbed and it's going to be delivered in the first quarter of 2014, with a yield-on cost of around 6%. We are asking in the low 60s for the remaining space in the building, which effectively means that there is a pretty significant positive mark-to-market today on the leases that are in place. And as part of it, we're also acquiring a small site called 690 Folsom, which has a 22,000-square-foot structure. That's going to be redeveloped either into some retail space and/or office space. We haven't quite figured that out. This is the quarter where we talk about our 2013 estimates and our projections for the year, and Mike is going to be laying that out in a few minutes. So I thought, as I talk about the markets in our portfolio today, I would try and do it with a perspective on giving you a sense of the current activities that we are undergoing and how that's going to influence or is influencing our near-term projections. Leasing across the portfolio for the quarter was just over 1 million square feet, which was quite frankly a drop from the second quarter. The second-generation numbers that you see in the portfolio statistics are pretty good from the perspective of sort of where the mark-to-markets are overall. But there are some pretty interesting things that I just wanted to explain within the individual markets. So the first is that the San Francisco numbers, once again, have this -- a little impact of $90 rents. So there's about 11,000 square feet in that number where the rents are rolling off over $90-plus. And so if you eliminate that, then it -- the San Francisco numbers are actually positive 2.5% growth and 3.25% on a net basis. In D.C., the numbers are a little bit skewed. There's about 16,000 square feet of space that we had to let at below market as part of a requirement to relocate about 16,000 square feet of tenants when we did the Bechtel transaction at the Overlook buildings of -- late last year. And if you -- and those rents rolled out to about $32 a square foot, which is probably about $8 or $9 below market. But that's where those tenants were currently paying and our obligation was to find space so they may continue them at the same overall rent. So if you pull that out of the equation, the D.C. numbers are actually positive 7.5% growth and 8.1% on a net basis. And then in Boston, all the gains are really from Cambridge where we are now leasing space in the high 50s on a gross basis. If you sort of look at the whole portfolio on an entirety basis in terms of our mark-to-mark, it's pretty flat in '13, so that will talk to sort of Mike's same-store numbers as we move forward. And the whole portfolio is up, between 2% and 3%, as of today. San Francisco and the Silicon Valley clearly are the strongest overall markets in the portfolio. The Silicon Valley, last quarter, had a little bit of a dip, but this quarter, the big-ticket transactions have come -- started coming back again. LinkedIn and Lab 126 both committed to 530,000 and 350,000 square feet of space. Samsung signed a lease for a new 365,000-square-foot development, which is pending approvals. Dell and Arista both took 150,000-square feet on some specular buildings that are being built by Irvine right now. And EMT took another 100,000 square feet of space. Now the activity is really standard around Mountain View and Sunnyvale, Sta. Clara. So if you think about our portfolio and when it sort of gets to sort of what's going on with us, this year, we leased 2 of the 4 floors that we had available at 611 Gateway, which is in the North Peninsula, which is not strong a market. And while we are seeing some activity on that space, things are slow up there and we probably are not anticipating much in the way of revenue until the very end of 2013. On the Zanker Road project in North San Jose, really, activity there has not really hit the same pace of acceleration that it has in the rest of the Silicon Valley. And we are studying those buildings and deciding whether or not it makes sense to basically re-skin those buildings, take them out of the services and/or try and lease them at a -- as a discounted product. But one way or the another, there's probably not going to be much revenue from those buildings in 2013. Our JV assets in Mountain View are actually doing very well. We've seen significant growth in rents there, as we've talked before. But those buildings are now being marketed for sale as the fund that those buildings are in with our 2 outside investors is coming to an end and it was the appropriate course of action to take. So we anticipate some sort of a decision as to whether those buildings are going to get sold before the end of the year. In CBD. At Embarcadero Center, we're sitting about 96% occupied or leased. Again, we've done about 15 transactions a quarter and it's only totaled about 89,000 square feet this quarter. It was about 80,000 last quarter largely because we just don't have much in the way of space to lease. Our near-term opportunities are pretty limited. There are 2 full floors in EC 1 which are actually under lease negotiation, and those numbers will hit our 2013 commencements. And then we have 3 floors at the -- in the upper portion of EC 4. And there, it's interesting, demand is actually pretty limited. We are marketing that space in the high 70s and low 80s, and frankly that's the one segment of the San Francisco market, the high, high-end segment that is pretty slow right now. So all in all, we are anticipating a pretty modest increase in occupancy towards the end of 2013 from Embarcadero Center, but again, we're starting on a basis of about 96%. Turning to Boston. Cambridge is obviously the strongest market we have seen. As I talked before, there are actually 6 buildings that are being built right now in Cambridge, totaling almost 1.8 million square feet in there, effectively 100% leased. And our problem, quite frankly, in Cambridge is that we are now 100% occupied. We've got 9,000 square feet of space that we have a transaction on in One Cambridge Center. And after that, the next expiration we're going to see is not until 2014 or 2015. So there's not, unfortunately, much we can do to improve our position in Cambridge, given how well we're doing, but that doesn't mean we haven't stopped thinking about it. We are starting to talk to tenants about 2015 and 2016 lease expirations. And remember that, during the later half of 2013, we're going to be bringing on the building that's connecting the 2 buildings that Google took a lease on, that's about 43,000 square feet, and as well as the 195,000-square-feet development that we are doing for Biogen at 17 Cambridge Center. In the CBD of Boston, we did 3 more deals at Atlantic Wharf this quarter, about 51,000 square feet, and again have limited our ability to do much more because now that building is 100% occupied, literally 100%. We also signed our first lease at 100 Federal Street for the top -- one of the floors towards the top of that building where we are asking rents in low 60s. So we have 2 other floors in that building that are available. There's reasonable activity on both of them given that the size of those floors are about 30,000 square feet. If assuming we do a deal in the first quarter or the second quarter of 2013, rent commencement probably won't be towards the end -- until the end of '13 or early '14. In the Back Bay, I think the big news of the quarter was that we signed a 330,000-square-foot lease at 101 Huntington Avenue. The good news is that we've covered all of our lease expirations for 2013 and 2014 there. The bad news is that the lease doesn't commence until 2015 because we have to build a space out for Blue Cross Blue Shield. We continue to negotiate extensions for tenants that are expiring in the Pru Tower. We have 2 of those going on right now, so there won't be much in the way of occupancy gains there because those tenants will stay. And at -- over at Hancock Tower, we have about 40,000 square feet of uncovered rollover, but we're doing 2 more 2015 leased extensions. The first one was done this week for a full floor and there's a second one involving 4 more floors in the tower that should be done before the end of the year. The real major opportunity for us in the CBD of Boston now is at the low rise of the Hancock where the State Street lease is expiring in -- at the end of 2014. And we've actually begun to market that space both through traditional use as well as a bunch of technology tenants. And we think we found some ways to really change the image and the layout of those floors, given the configuration of the floor plan that would be very effective for an open user of a technology ilk, and we're pretty excited about what the prospects might be for either type of tenancy in that building. The Boston suburban market is probably the market with our most exposure/opportunity in the region. This is again an area where there is significant tenant demand in the form of tech and life sciences tenants but where, again, the decision making process just keeps being elongated and prolonged. We have about 700,000 square feet of availability in our Waltham/Lexington portfolio and that includes the 100,000-square-foot lease that we have at A21 -- A123 on a company that was part of the energy department's opportunity to create a manufacturing for the Ferrari business for cars that hasn't gone so well. And we anticipate that we may be seeing some of that space back. But again, in this market, everybody is just being very cautious, from a tenant perspective. We are in negotiations and have been in negotiations for a pretty long period of time with a 150,000-square-foot tenant in one of our buildings that's going to expand by 100,000 square feet. That expansion will occur in '13, '14 and '15, but the lease isn't done yet. We're in discussions with a life science company that wants to take an 80,000-square-foot building and take 50,000 square feet of that building and put an office and lab installation in it. That lease isn't done yet. We have 400,000 square feet of other proposals from tenants for between -- of sizes of between 40,000 and 80,000 square feet that we've -- that have sort of been out there since the early part of the summer, and those tenants just haven't made decisions. And we also have an RFP for a build-to-suit for a 220,000-square-foot technology company that has been looking for a new facility for the better part of 2 years, and we continue to work through that RFP portfolio. So given the realities of the timing of these decisions, it's just -- it's a struggle to think that any of the leasing that we're going to do in Waltham is going to do much, other than for the very back end of 2013. And so it's just not going to have much in the way of an impact on our 2013 results, but we certainly expect it'll have lots of impact on our 2014 and 2015 results. Looking at New York City. There, again, I think the leasing markets are sort of stuck in neutral. Availability overall in Midtown is about 12%, and there's just no visibility on large users. And I define large users as 300,000, 400,000 square feet or more. They really have much in the way of any growth objectives. There are certainly tenants that are looking around: Microsoft and Coach and L'Oreal are the ones that have been in the paper recently, with 2015 and 2016 lease expirations, but effectively it's really musical chairs for those companies. I think the one company that is growing and where there is an impact is Google, as they are certainly clearing out all the other tenants in 111 8th Avenue as those leases roll over. And that's clearly impacting the market in Midtown South, which as everyone knows is probably the strongest market right now in New York City. We continue to make progress with our second law firm lease, which is 266,000 square feet at 250 West 55th, as well as the retail space. And we really expect that before the year is over, we will be 50% officially leased. As we move into '13, we're really going to be focusing our efforts on the remainder of the building, which are Floors 25 through 38, and those are really going to be geared towards single-floor and multi-floor tenants, tenants that are under 100,000 square feet. And we are now just starting to approach their leasing decision window. So the building's going to be opening some time in first or second quarter of '14, which is sort of right in the heart of where the leasing strategy should take us. So we're sort of gearing up to that. At 399 Park, we had 150,000-square foot block, and we have now leased 134,000 square feet of that. And those were rents were in the mid-to-upper 90s, which is why you'll see a slight rolldown in the rents to add at in the New York portfolio, where the rents on the existing lease were just over $100 per square foot. But our real exposure and our real opportunity is in the small space market, at 540 Madison and the new building at 510. We continue to slug it out and do leases. We did another 7 leases of under 5,000 square feet in the pre-built suites that are in the portfolio. But this is a segment of the market that, again, it's all about business confidence and it's slow and steady. And I just wanted to give you a perspective on the high end of the market. So back in 2007, there were 106 transactions totaling 2.2 million square feet of deals that were over $100 a square foot. In 2011, there were 45 deals totaling 750,000 square feet under that same $100-square foot starting ramp. Through October 1 of this year, there have been 28, totaling 442,000 square feet. Now the other thing to realize is that lots of those tenants are renewing or expanding in their existing premises. Of the deals that were involved a relocation, every single one of them was under 11,500 square feet, which is the reason that as we've thought about 510 Madison, we determined that the best chance for us to be successful at achieving rents well in excess of $100 a square foot is to do this pre-built suite program. The velocity has been frustrating. But we continue to move forward, we continue to seek tenants each and every week, each and every day. And we are convinced that the building will lease up at the rents that we pro form it. And that there is demand for those small tenants, it's just we're having to get an outside percentage of what is available in the market today. Mort mentioned the lease that we did at 1301 New York Avenue. And it's sort of interesting because, even with the all the federal budgetary issues in D.C., it actually appears that our perseverance with the GSA is actually making progress. The lease that Mort described is a 15-year 200,000-square foot extension with the Department of Justice. And that's the deal we've been working on for the better part of a year. And additionally, out of Patriots Park, we believe we're going to receive a document from the GSA committing them to a 180,000 square-foot building in Reston for another 20 -- for a 20-year term beginning in the second quarter of 2013. This is a lease that is a relocation of another defense group that is sharing services with the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is the other tenant in the other 2 buildings in Reston. So that should improve our occupancy in Reston by 5% and bring it to 98% by the end of the second quarter of 2013. Reston continues to be the outlier in terms of overall activity and premium rents in the northern Virginia and the Montgomery County suburbs. We continue to rent space in the mid-to-high $40s. In fact, we've actually done some deals that are in excess of $50 a square foot. And our availability there is really limited to some smaller blocks of space. Not much in the way of lease expirations in 2013 in Reston, so what do we do? We start to begin to work on our 2014 and our 2015 lease expirations. And we have one large one, it's about 250,000 square feet. It's a defense contract, so that is in Two Freedom Square. So We're working on that as we speak. Reston, while Northern Virginia may have a concentration of defense-related government contractors, the Town Center really has a lot of technology and engineering, professional services and educational users. And those tenants are actually expanding as we speak. So we have 2 tenants right now that are looking at taking additional space from existing tenants that would like to get out of space in Reston to accommodate their growth. We did complete the acquisition of the other Fountain Square buildings on October 4. So remember, we purchased a 50% interest in those 2 office buildings, totaling about 522,000 square feet as well as 242,000 square feet of retail space. We are in control, on a day-to-day basis, of all operations, as well as leasing. And we anticipate purchasing the remaining interest in 2016. So in the district itself, we are 96% leased. And what we have left over in the portfolio are some smaller suites or a floor here and there in 2210 Market Square North and 500 North Capitol, which actually just opened up about 2 weeks ago. There continues to obviously be an abundance of options for all kinds of users in the district and things are pretty slow. So what we've decided to do is sort of follow our course of success in New York City, and start to do some pre-built suites. And we are now building pre-builts, and a modest amount of them in both 2200 Pen, Market Square North and 500 North Capital. And we really hope that's going to increase the velocity of our leasing and our revenue generation in those buildings. Not much is going to probably happen to improve overall velocity in D.C. largely because there just aren't any lease expirations in a big scale until 2015 and 2016. However, we happen to have one of those opportunities in one of those tenants. We are negotiating a lease of about 368,000 square feet, which is actually a little bit more than I said it was last quarter, because the tenant has gotten a little bit bigger. For our 478,000-square foot development at 601 Mad Avenue. And if we have a pre-lease commitment, we will start this building towards the end of '13 or early '14. And we anticipate also commencing on another 120,000-square foot building up in Annapolis Junction. That's our 50-50 JV with the Gould family. It's a very small asset, $32 million in total. So our share is about $16 million. And that will be delivered in the fourth quarter of '13. And again, that's really focused on the demand from the NSA from Cyber Command and their private contractors in Fort Meade. And there's a pretty consistent flow of activity out there. Just to sort of to come back and sum up. So in 2012, we acquired 100 Federal Street and Fountain Square and 680 Folsom. That's for a total of about $1.4 billion of committed capital. Mort described our investment in San Francisco in the Transbay Tower, and that's probably a 2017 revenue event. That's when rent will actually commence on that building. In 2013, we're bringing online 17 Cambridge Center and the Google expansion and the third building at Patriots Park. In 2014, we have $137 million 359-unit apartment building in Reston Town Center, as well as the first revenue from the tenant leasing that we are doing at 250 West 55th Street. And if we, knock on wood, sign a lease on 601 Mad that building will be delivered in 2015 or early 2016. So I think it's fair to say that we, as a company, continue to find ways to attractively deploy capital even in the conditions and the challenges that Mort described from a macro perspective. So we are thinking real hard about how we do that. At the same time, we are also reviewing the portfolio. And probably we will see some selective dispositions in 2013 as we rejigger and consider what the right profile of our assets and our capital should be on a going-forward basis. And we will continue to provide updates on that as we go forward. And with that, I will turn it over to Mike.