Paul Adkins
Analyst · KeyBanc Capital. Your line is open
Thanks, Steve. Last year's leasing momentum continues, as demonstrated by the depth and breadth of leasing opportunities in our operating portfolio and new developments. Within our operating portfolio, we completed 126,000 square feet of vacancy leasing in the quarter, which is 77% above first quarter 2018's vacancy leasing volume. In April, we completed another 110,000 square feet bringing our four-month total to 236,000 square feet which is 26% higher than the vacancy leasing we completed in the first half of last year. Nearly 75% of the vacancy leasing was in the Fort Meade/BW corridor subsegment, where we are currently tracking 640,000 square feet of activity against 725,000 square feet of vacancy. Both the leasing and demand are primarily with defense, cyber security and technology users. In Northern Virginia, our NoVA Defense/IT subsegment was 92.1% leased at the end of the first quarter. We are tracking 327,000 square feet of demand against the approximate 250,000 square feet of current and pending vacancy in that subsegment. In our four Northern Virginia Regional Office Buildings, we leased 20,000 square feet of vacancy in the first quarter. We are working 72,000 square feet of activity against 85,000 square feet of vacancy. Roughly, three-fourth of this demand is looking at our Pinnacle buildings which continued to benefit from their metro access and from the mixed use developments being constructed around them. Our Navy Support sub-segment is 91.3% leased and we are working 132,000 square feet of demand against the 108,000 square feet of vacancy. In Huntsville and in Texas, we have 1.6 million square feet of operating properties and we have zero vacancy. Our pre-lease development projects continue to support cash flow growth and value creation. During the first quarter, we placed 181,000 square feet into service that were 100% leased. We will place another 715,000 square feet into service during the remainder of this year that today is already 99% leased for a total of 896,000 square feet of fully leased buildings that will boost future results. Demand for new development in 2019 has exceeded our expectations. And as Steve mentioned, we've already completed 900,000 square feet of development leasing, 52% of which has been with cyber and defense industry tenants in Huntsville and the Fort Meade B/W corridor and 48% of which was in two datacenter shells. Our Yulista deal at Redstone Gateway best illustrates the demand we are experiencing for new facilities that are precipitated by DoD awards. Yulista is an aerospace defense contractor headquartered in Huntsville. Last December they won a $4.7 billion contract from one of the major commands at Redstone Gate Arsenal. This new award triggered their need for a modern efficient campus that is closer to the government customer and resulted in the transaction we announced yesterday, a four-building build-to-suit campus at Redstone Gateway. Yulista's campus will exceed 300,000 square feet and will be operational by the end of 2020. Demand for newly developed facilities has been strong and we expect it to remain so. On our last call, our shadow development pipeline contained up to 2.5 million square feet of potential transactions. Today, notwithstanding the 900,000 square feet of transactions we have executed to date, our shadow development pipeline contains up to another 2.8 million square feet of possible deals serving government users, defense contractors, and including additional data centers shells. Accordingly, we are raising our development leasing target for the year to 1.4 million square feet which would make 2019 a record year in our 21-year history for development leasing. As demonstrated by the 1.1 million square feet of vacancy and development leasing executed to date, the healthy defense spending environment continues to support a growing number of methodical and deliberate procurement decisions amongst government users and defense contractors. We expect our ongoing discussions with these customers to lead to additional investment opportunities and look forward to updating you. With that I'll hand the call over to Anthony.