Jarrett Appleby
Analyst · RBC
Thanks, Tom, and hello, everyone. I'd like to start by discussing our sales activity during the quarter. In the second quarter, we executed new and expansion turnkey data center leases representing $5.8 million of annualized GAAP rent with an average rent of $180 per net rentable square foot. The $5.8 million in leasing volume is 14% above our trailing 4-quarter average. The annualized GAAP rent of $188 per square foot was in line with our trailing 4-quarter average when adjusted to account for power density and geographic mix. Regarding renewals, we renewed 44,702 Net Rentable Square Feet at a weighted average GAAP rental rate of $166 per NRSF, reflecting a 5.4% increase in rent on a cash basis and an 11.7% increase on a GAAP basis. Rental churn was 2% for the quarter and 3.2% on a year-to-date basis, in line with our guidance. Lastly, we commenced 42,672 Net Rentable Square Feet of new and expansion leases at an annualized GAAP rent of $147 per square foot, which represents $6.3 million of annualized GAAP rent. We believe our Q2 2013 sales demonstrate the value inherent in our strategy to focus on building customer communities in network-dense, cloud-enabled data centers supporting performance-sensitive applications. We continue to expand the CoreSite Mesh, which is our community of customers and partners that do business in our facilities. During the second quarter, we executed 115 deals across our portfolio, 33 of which were with new customers. Each lease, expansion, customer logo and partner enhances the ecosystem's value and makes the community even more attractive to potential customers. The 115 new and expansion leases executed in Q2 represents a 20% increase over the trailing 12-month average. Further, the 40 multi-site agreements Tom referenced represents a 35% increase in multi-site executions over the last 4-quarter average. Over the same period, the average lease size, based upon the annualized GAAP rent of turnkey data center leases signed in Q2, decreased 3% from the prior 4-quarter average as we continue to add performance-oriented applications across our portfolio. Over time, many of the applications we target will generate accelerating interconnection revenue per net rentable square foot and continued strong growth in revenue from our breakered-amp power product line, increasing our return on invested capital. At the vertical level, the value of our network-dense cloud-enabled data center strategy can be seen in the success we have realized in the network and cloud verticals. The second quarter included a record 56 leases from network customers and 18 from our cloud customer base, which establishes the foundation of our Mesh strategy. Networks represented approximately 50% of new and expansion leases signed in the quarter. These new customers not only further strengthen the network density of our data centers, but they also demonstrate the robust network capability inherent across our platform necessary to support performance-sensitive application. One of the key network wins in the quarter was Hibernia Networks, a European provider of global capacity solutions providing submarine and terrestrial networks throughout North America, Europe and Asia. The expansion will include a subsea cable connection into CoreSite's Boston facility, as well as an ethernet deployment in CoreSite's New York facility. We also saw broad demand among the leading Asia Pac-based carriers, such as SK broadband, one of the largest providers of broadband internet access in South Korea, leveraging our platform to enter and expand into the North American market. Today, we announced that the global IP network business unit of NTT Communications expanded into 3 additional locations with us to support its North America growth. NTT Communications is a wholly owned subsidiary of NTT, the largest telecommunications company the world, and its expansion with us, along with the other carrier expansions, further increases the value of our platform. In the mobile network vertical, we won a significant new deployment in Chicago from a leading global mobility provider and an expansion from a leading U.S. mobile services provider in the Silicon Valley. We also won a deployment for our mobile ad insertion platform in Los Angeles. And we believe we are capturing strong, solid growth in the mobility sector, as we see mobile applications as a key future growth opportunity for us. To support our growing cloud vertical, last quarter, we announced a new product called the Open Cloud Exchange to enhance the value of our platform to enterprises seeking private and public cloud solution. The Open Cloud Exchange enables customers to take advantage of secure, performance-optimized connections to cloud service providers of their choice and leverage various networks across the country as on-ramps to the cloud. This quarter, we closed key network expansion into multiple sites with TW Telecom, which was the first network to join our Open Cloud Exchange. In addition, iland, a global VMware vCloud-powered Infrastructure-as-a-Service provider that delivers enterprise-class cloud services, was a notable addition to the Open Cloud Exchange in Q2. We are focused upon adding additional participants in the exchange, and we expect this service to drive value for new and existing customers who leverage leading network providers to connect to the cloud. In the second quarter, we announced additional key wins connected to our cloud vertical, including 3 key expansions from one of the largest global cloud service providers and an expansion supported a SaaS operating for a large financial software provider. From a market perspective, Los Angeles continues to perform very well as our #1 market from the perspectives of both transaction volume and GAAP rent signed in new and expansion leases. Our L.A. campus is comprised of our high-powered, cloud-enabled LA2 facility, which is connected by high-count dark fibers to our space at the One Wilshire building. In the first half of the year, we drove record sales of our fiber capacity between the 2 sites, with fiber absorption in this first half of 2013 increasing 400% sequentially over that in the last half of 2012. Additionally, leases signed at LA2 in the first half of 2013 represent 78% of the annualized GAAP rent signed across our L.A. campus during the period. Roughly tied with Los Angeles as our strongest market in Q2 in terms of GAAP rent signed was our Silicon Valley market, which delivered solid financial growth as well as new and expansion deployments from 3 network providers and 2 leading cloud service providers. Our Northern Virginia market, consisting of VA1 in Reston and DC1 in Washington, D.C., was our next-strongest marketing Q2. In this market, we have delivered consistent quarterly growth over last year among the network cloud and financial service provider verticals that we believe have meaningfully advanced the value of our data centers in this market. Regarding NY2, we are pleased with the progress we are making towards opening in Q4. Following upon a successful tethering model in L.A. and Northern Virginia, in New York, we have secured fiber connectivity connecting NY2 to NY1, as well as other key points of interconnection, such as 60 Hudson and 111 8th. Importantly, beyond tethering to existing points of interconnection to support the early adoption at NY2, we are working purposefully to establish NY2 as a new point of interconnection in cloud-enablement to support performance-sensitive applications. To this end, we have already secured commitments from 5 network and submarine cable providers, and we have a growing pipeline of potential additional network partners as we get closer to our opening date. In Q2, we added Tenesis and Cross River Fiber to previously announced Light Tower, Zayo and Seaborn Networks, which is a new subsea cable system built to Brazil. Inherent in our cloud-enabled data center strategy is the value of interconnection. Supported by the strength of the more than 275 networks accessing customers across our platform, our installed base of fiber cross-connects increased by 17% over Q2 2012. And interconnection revenue grew over 7% since last quarter and now represents $7.1 million in quarterly revenue. In summary, our view is that the number of new and expansion leases signed with strategic customers across key verticals and across our platform illustrates that our vertical go-to-market strategy is working. We believe that CoreSite is well positioned to capture market share in the performance-sensitive segment of the market with our attractive mix of available capacity, expansive network connectivity options, active and growing customer communities and a differentiated customer experience. Regarding sales and marketing staffing, we are approximately 90% staffed for the vertical sales organization and 80% for the marketing organization, as planned. The strong lease volume this quarter was driven in part by the increase tenure of our sales team. We expect to continue to see sales momentum from these teams going forward. Turning to operations, we continue to deliver reliable operational performance across our portfolio, achieving six nines (99.9999%) of uptime in the year to date. We also remain committed to providing the highest standards of IP systems and anticipate completing our upgrade project by the second half of 2014. We expect that this investment will enhance the CoreSite customer experience, enable further scale and increase internal efficiency to facilitate a best-in-class solution to customers with high-performance, low-latency applications. Looking ahead to Q3 and the remainder of 2013, our pipeline remains strong, and we are encouraged by this quarter's progress. I'll now turn the call over to Jeff.