Douglas T. Linde
Analyst · Green Street Advisors
Thanks, Owen. Good morning, everybody. I'm going to start just with one brief comment on asset sales because I think it's important to reiterate. So last year, we sold about $1 billion of assets. And I would say, we had some pretty robust discussions about the near-term dilutive impact on our earnings and the accretive impact on our NAV of those decisions. And from the notes that I saw this morning, I think there's clearly attention in our earnings, in our short-term FFO numbers per share and the value that we are creating through the asset sale monetization perspective. As we move forward with these additional sales, I just want to reiterate why we're doing what we're doing. So we believe that targeted sales today provide a greater asset level of value creation opportunity in holding the asset, collecting the cash flow and then timing and executing on evaluation at a later date, which again is subject to both risk [indiscernible] of interest rate as well as future sales valuation. It's an opportune time to create asset level value. That's what we're doing, even though it's going to come with some short-term earnings dilution. And we obviously have a timing issue because most of our new investment opportunities, as Owen just described, involve development not immediate property acquisitions. So we will find ourselves, in all likelihood, with an inability to quickly redeploy that cash and, therefore, we create another special dividend opportunity. But that's really the rationale that we're using for what we're doing on a global basis. So let me talk a little bit about the markets now. It was an extraordinary 3 months in San Francisco. Year-to-date, there have been over 6.5 million square feet of leasing compared to about 9 million for all of 2013, which was a banner year. And it's been driven by large blocks from technology tenants that have really been forced to transition from what I would refer to as sort of a just-in-time real estate mentality to a long-term planning and decision-making mode of operation. The top 10 tech deals totaled 1.2 million square feet in 2010. The top 10 deals to date this year totaled 3.2 million square feet. So clearly, the tickets are much, much larger. A few weeks ago, Google joined LinkedIn as a Valley headquarters firm that's made the decision to expand in the city with its lease at One Market place and a purchase of 188 Embarcadero Center, 2 traditional downtown financial office buildings. Yelp, Splunk, Uber and, of course, Salesforce all made major expansion commitments during the quarter. We saw the law firm, Perkins Coie, who's a tenant in some subleased space at Embarcadero Center commit to Foundry III and with Google's lease at One Market, I think the stereotyping of where tenants want to locate becomes more and more difficult to predict, and the lines between what I refer to as tech buildings in tech locations and the traditional financial district assets really has begun to blend in a much more significant way. Activity at 535 Mission continues to be robust. We anticipate completion of the building in the fourth quarter, and we will have physical occupancy before the end of the year. We have leased another 2 floors, we're at 100,000 square feet, and we have active proposals with 3 additional multi-floor tenants, all with 2015 occupancy, way above our expectations. We didn't have any additional leasing to report at Salesforce Tower, but I think the 700,000 square feet we do with Salesforce was a pretty good start. Construction is progressing. Our marketing center overlooking the site is now open and we're making lots of presentations. The competing new construction pipeline has speculatively been fully committed, with the exception of the 420,000 square feet at 181 Fremont, which again is a small floor place building, 13,000 square feet of floor. And now the activity has switched to landfill in the next wave of development. The purchase of Salesforce Tower's land 1.5 years ago was $140 in FAR foot. The current bidding on the 2 entitled Mission Bay sites, so these are entitled sites, sold by Salesforce, bidding sold by Salesforce, are rumored to be in excess of $250 per rentable space. We are now focused on a number of next cycle developments with the increase in land prices, new construction costs are probably pushing towards $900 a square foot. And the one important factor that everyone now is going to start to consider and is being written about in all the periodicals and, I'm sure, it's being talked about on all the calls for people who have California interest, particularly in San Francisco, is that, lo and behold, the voter 875,000 square foot prop and limit on new commercial office development is suddenly going to be a governor on additional supply. While there's a deep prospective pipeline of additional projects that have been conceived, once the prop and allocation bank is depleted, which everyone, I think, projects will happen within the next 12 or so months, future approvals are going to be severely limited. So depending upon growth in demand, this may create a scarcity premium in the market for office rents. Activity in Embarcadero Center is pretty restrained because we're at 95% occupancy. We completed 10 more deals this quarter totaling about 73,000 square feet. We continue to market the 3 great floors on EC4. And while we're in discussions with a few tenants, probably doesn't have a 2014 revenue impact. I think the sweet spot in the market right now for all transactions, Financial Center buildings, South of Market buildings is really in with a starting rent between $70 and $75 gross. But with the lack of inventory, landlords, including us, are really seeking to try and push rents. And we're asking in excess of $80 a square foot for our best space. We'll see if we get it. Incoming tenants have adjusted to the market given the inability of them to have to spend money and move if they make a capital decision to relocate. So we're feeling good about the prospects for -- in rental rate increases [indiscernible] California South of Market, California North of Market, California Financial District buildings over the next couple of quarters. Net rents in Embarcadero Center in the second quarter generate some statistics for the supplemental show a 24% increase on leases that commence during the quarter, which is in line with what we've been talking about, which is basically a 15% to 25% markup over the next number of quarters and years. Shifting to D.C. Our investment capital continues to be focused on new development. Construction at 601 Mass Ave is on schedule. We'll be delivering that building for -- to Arnold & Porter in October of 2015. We are moving forward with the design and permitting of 501 K Street in the district, as well as a 276,000 square foot office retail building and 2 additional residential buildings, with about 25,000 square feet of space, in the urban core of Reston. The earliest construction commencement for the Reston development, probably the third quarter of '15, and the K Street building is really going to be tenant-[indiscernible]. Now the greater D.C. market is probably the softest in our portfolio. Although as Mort said, Reston Town Center, which makes up 40% of our D.C. NOI, is outperforming the rest of the region in a big way. When you think about our markets, Boston and San Francisco and New York City really have a more diversified tenant demand, while D.C. continues to roll [ph] in the legal industry and government and federal contractors the bulk of its activity. The sequestration and the budget deals from last year are actually still being felt in the contracting community and the GSA through both the nonrenewal of expiring contracts and the densification mandated by the GSA. And if you read the various market reports that are coming out from the brokers, I think it's pretty consistent with this. We completed about 75,000 square feet of early renewals in Reston and about 75,000 square feet of leasing in D.C., but our critical D.C. activity right now, particularly in the CBD, is focused on retaining 3 major law firms that currently occupy about 800,000 square feet of space in our CBD portfolio, with 2017 to 2019 lease expirations. Now 70% of this portfolio was in JVs on a square foot and weighted basis. We've actually signed a Letter of Intent with the largest of these 3 tenants, and we believe we have an excellent chance of retaining the others. In total, they're going to be reducing their footprint by about 100,000 square feet or 13%. The good news is that the current in-service rents for the 3 leases is about $61 of square foot growth and we expect that the future rents are going to be 10% to 15% higher, each with their traditional D.C. 2% to 3% annual escalations built in. Now in each case, the tenants are going to be rebuilding their space and we're going to be providing swing space at reduced economics until the build-out's complete. So as we mentioned in our previous call, these transactions will result in some transitional downtime that's going to impact our 2015 and 2016 revenues from these spaces. In Reston, where we have no direct vacancy, no real inventory, there are a few tenants within the portfolio that for various reasons have put some sublet space on the market. So our leasing associates are spending most of their time replying to inquiries on how we can accommodate new tenants with direct or sub-deals on these spaces. We're actually in the midst of a 40,000 square foot take-back lease termination to accommodate a growing tenant in Reston Town Center today. Turning to New York. There are a lot of large transactions announced in New York City during the last quarter, with Time and Bonnie downtown, Stony in Midtown South, and Neuberger Berman at 6th Avenue and Blackstone's renewal at 345 Park. But I think the takeaway is that Blackstone was the only expansion. There's been considerable velocity, but the overall availability coupled with the activity, which is still driven by lease expirations has really not resulted in any real changes in lease economics in Midtown, with a possible exception of the very small high end market where availability is much more limited. At 510 Madison, we did 4 more leases, including 2 floor deals at over $120 a square foot. And we're now over 91% leased with 1 floor and 3 of other prebuilt suites available. We haven't increased our asking rents, but negotiating room has narrowed dramatically. Through the end of the second quarter, the level of leasing for space above $90 a square foot, which we referred to as the premium market in Midtown, is 40% higher than it was in 2013 at this time, with a dramatic pickup in the number of new leases versus renewals, which is a big change. Our primary focus in New York, like D.C., is on our tenant expirations between 2016 and beyond. We're actively involved with 6 law firms, leasing over 1.8 million square feet, on their possible renewals. While 2 of these firms are looking at possible expansion, the most are going to be looking for some kind of an occupancy reduction over the next 4 to 5 years. So we have 2 transactions that are sort of in the documentation stage right now, and they encompass about 350,000 square feet. And the result is going to be a net giveback of about 40,000 square feet in 2015. The space we're taking back again is going to be used as non-revenue producing swing space for about 12 months as the tenants rebuild. But on a combined basis, these first 2 renewals are going to result in a 15% roll-down on a cash basis and a 2% roll-down on a GAAP basis in '15. Now we actually expect these other transactions will all result in positive cash and GAAP roll-ups and that, in the aggregate, the total portfolio of 1.8 million square feet will see a significant positive mark-to-market as we get to the other 3 transactions. At 250 West 55th Street, we completed 131,000 square feet of leasing, including the lease with Al Jazeera. So at 750,000 square feet, we're now 77% leased. We have only 4 prebuilt suites remaining. So in addition to focusing on the 1- and 2-floor prospects, we fully expect to break some more floors and continue our prebuilt program in the high rise. At Carnegie Center in the New York suburban market, we continue to gain both occupancy and extended leases. During the quarter, we executed 4 more leases for 75,000 square feet and we've got about 300,000 square feet of expansions and new demand under discussion. We expect to be under construction with our new development for NRG towards the end of the third quarter. Turning to Boston. Overall, the Boston office market continues to improve, our development activities are continuing to advance and we have included 3 new projects in our development section of our supplemental, which I'll give you a little bit of color on. At the Prudential Center, we signed lease with Natixis for 130,000 square feet and they have the right to go up to 150,000 square feet at the base of 888 Boylston Street, so that's floors 4 through 8 or 9. This is our new 365,000 square foot office development, which is on top of 60,000 square feet of new retail, which will be integral to The Shops at the Prudential Center. In addition, we're planning a complete renovation of our quick serve food operation and potentially a 17,000 square foot second story addition to the portion of the Boylston Arcade. These 2 retail projects will have a cost of somewhere between $30 million and $40 million, and that's not included in our construction of progress just yet, probably comes on into the program next quarter. We have begun the temporary closing of a portion of the retail, which will eventually impact about 22,000 square feet in our food court and reduce our overall revenue in '14 and '15 before we reopen with an additional 17,000 square feet. Now current inline rents at the Prudential retail are in excess of $150 a square foot. At the Hancock Tower, we're 5 months away from the expiration of our State Street lease, which is going to result in 2 blocks of availability at the building. We'll have a 170,000 square foot block at the base, which we're rebranding as 120 St. James, where we are creating a second lobby and entrance dedicated to the low rise and designed to attract technology and other creative tenants with its larger floors and floor-to-ceiling glass. Now the tight conditions in Cambridge and the influx of startups in the Boston area have really led to a rising new demand for office space from a nontraditional user in Boston. Wayfair, which is an online home shopping retailer, has expanded at Copley Place. Sonus has relocated from Cambridge to the Financial District. Autodesk is moving from the suburbs to the Seaport. World Winter, which is the parent company of the Game Show Network and Rapid7, which is a security company, have expanded and moved to 100 Summer Street. The Cambridge Innovation Center, note the name, opened a second location in downtown Boston and WeWork has now 2 sites with over 100,000 square feet and is looking for additional locations. Lots of untraditional demand in the Boston market at this point. The other major block of the Hancock is at the top of the tower, 145,000 square feet, which we will get back once we move in E&Y down into 4 of the State Street floors in the lower third of the building. And that's going to occur in the middle of 2015. So a little bit of extended downtime. While we have a big pickup in vacancy, the average in-place rent for those 2 blocks is about $40 gross and our expected starting rent is over $60 gross. This quarter, we leased 140,000 square feet of Hancock Tower at an average starting rent of over $65 gross. The suburban market in Boston continues to be very active, led by expansion of the life sciences and the tech businesses. Large blocks of space have disappeared, forcing larger tenants to consider new construction. Rents in Waltham continue to rise, an average to mid-'40s for new construction. We completed just over 100,000 square feet of leases in Waltham and Lexington this quarter. And in addition, we signed a lease with Wolverine, parent company for a number of shoe brands, for 155,000 square feet at 10 CityPoint, which will kick off our 230,000 square-foot office building and 16,000 square feet of retail space. And just down the Street, we're starting a 16,000 square-foot stand-alone retail building with a future of residential/hotel pad site. We've signed 2 full service restaurant leases, totaling about 13,000 square feet, and while it's a small investment, it enhances the amenity base for CityPoint, where we have 516,000 square feet of existing office space; 1.2 million square feet of additional office density, including 10 and 20; as well as 1.3 million square feet of other space at this interchange. In total, our new developments added this quarter are about $425 million, not just the Boston stuff, and are anticipated to yield in excess of 8% on a cash NOI basis. In Cambridge, where we're 100% leased, we anticipate making our formal permanent submittal over the next few months for our new residential building, which we hope to start in the first half of '15. In addition to the residential development, we're working in concert with the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority in the city of Cambridge on a 600,000 square-foot office and 400,000 square-foot residential density increase at our Cambridge Center project. In the meantime, there are 3 major tenants looking for blocks in excess of 150,000 square feet of office and lab space in Kendall Square as we speak. Office rents, as exemplified by our recent early renewals, are in the mid 60s to low 70s on a gross basis, which is an increase of over 50% since 2012. To sum up, it's been one of the busiest summers we can remember, and we are really encouraged by both the level of activity we're seeing across the portfolio and the development opportunities that sit before us. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Mike.