Jeff Finnin
Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please proceed with your question
Thanks, Paul. Today I will review our fourth quarter and full year financial performance, discuss our balance sheet, including our liquidity and leverage expectations and review our financial outlook and guidance for 2020.Looking at our financial results, for the full year, operating revenues grew 5.2% year-over-year, reflecting increases in new and expansion lease commencements of 46.8%, growth in interconnection revenue in line with our expectations, offset by elevated churn we experienced in 2019.General and administrative costs were $43.8 million reflecting 7.6% of revenue in 2019 compared to 7.4% in 2018. Net income was $2.05 per diluted share, a decrease of 7.7%. FFO per share was $5.10, an increase of $0.04 over 2018 and adjusted EBITDA margin was 53.8%, a decrease of 60 basis points year-over-year.For the quarter, operating revenues grew 5% year-over-year and approximately 1% sequentially. We commenced new and expansion leases of 86,000 square feet during the quarter, reflecting $16.6 million of annualized GAAP rent. Our sales backlog as of December 31, included $15.6 million of annualized GAAP rent for signed, but not yet commenced to leases or $19.8 million on a cash basis.We expect about 40% of the GAAP backlog to commence in the first half of 2020 with the remaining 60% in the second half of the year, weighted to the fourth quarter with completion of LA3 phase one. Adjusted EBITDA was $79 million for the quarter and increased 6% year-over-year and 1.4% sequentially.Moving to our balance sheet, in November, we amended our credit agreement, extending our near term maturities. We also extended the maturity date of our revolving credit facility to November 2023, with a one year extension option, and we added an additional $100 million of liquidity.We ended the year with $386 million of total liquidity, providing plenty of liquidity to fund our 2020 estimated data centre expansion plans, which includes $179 million of remaining construction costs for properties currently under development.Our debt to annualized adjusted EBITDA was 4.7 times at year end. Inclusive of the current GAAP backlog mentioned earlier, our leverage ratio is 4.5 times. As previously stated, we are comfortable with increasing leverage to five times.Based on our current development pipeline, and the related timing of capital deployment and commencements, we may temporarily trend higher than five times leverage in 2020, with the expectation of moderating leverage based on our backlog, and timing of commencements.I would now like to address our 2020 guidance. Let me start with some perspective on our outlook for 2020. Our mission for the last couple of years has been to increase our development pipeline to provide more capacity in our markets. We invested significant amounts of capital and we made substantial progress in 2019 on that objective.As a follow on, we've had a record leasing year which was enabled by our new capacity, and supports our view that we continue to benefit from secular tailwinds for our strategic edge markets. At the same time, we experienced elevated churn in the last half of the year, which we attribute to customer business models that were not as strong as they were historically. And we estimate that there's a minimal churn exposure in our remaining customer base of annualized GAAP rent for these types of customer use cases.We will be delivering additional capacity in 2020 to provide greater contiguous space allowing us to further meet market demand. We expect the benefits from this new capacity will be mostly back end loaded to Q3 and Q4 2020 given construction timing, and we will be focused on achieving pre-leasing of this capacity, including LA3 phase one, which was 74% leased at year end.That brings me to our 2020 guidance, which reflects our view of supply and demand dynamics in our markets, as well as the health of the broader economy. I will cover the key highlights of our 2020 guidance, but point you to our complete guidance on page 23 of our fourth quarter supplemental information for further details.Operating revenue is estimated to be $600 million to $610 million. Based on the midpoint of guidance, this represents a 5.6% year-over-year revenue growth, which reflects the timing of our development pipeline. Our guidance also reflects the impacts of elevated churn, which we've estimated to be 9% to 11% for the year, based on our current expectations related to customer timing. About 250 basis points of this expected churn is from one customer in the Santa Clara market. And given the current market dynamics we are optimistic and actively working to backfill this capacity.In terms of timing, we anticipate elevated churn in the first and fourth quarters related to customer relocations. Additionally, we expect cash rent growth on data centre renewals will be fairly consistent with 2019 at 0% to 2% growth for the full year.Interconnection revenue is estimated to be $80 million to $86 million, representing 9.6% growth at the midpoint. Adjusted EBITDA is estimated to be $318 million to $324 million, and at the midpoint represents a 53.1% adjusted EBITDA margin, and 4.2% year-over-year growth.FFO is estimated to be $5.10 to $5. 20 per diluted share in operating unit, at the midpoint, this reflects growth consistent with 2019 or approximately 1%. And capital expenditures are estimated to decline to $225 million to $275 5 million, decreasing as expected from the approximate $400 million of capital spent in 2019. This includes $215 million to $250 million for data centre expansions, primarily including the completion of the ground up development at CH2 and LA3.With our investments in 2018 and 2019 and the initial phases of ground up development at VA3, SV8 and the anticipated 2020 completions of CH2 and LA3, it provides us the flexibility to bring on data centre expansions quickly and at higher returns in the future as we build out new computer rooms as needed within the existing buildings.In closing, we remain optimistic related to business drivers and secular tailwinds for our services remains strong. We're executing on our priorities to bring on capacity and translating it into increased sales opportunities. We also now have the capacity to accommodate additional growth should demand exceed what is assumed in our guidance. Our balance sheet is strong and we continue to stay in tune to the markets, opportunistically pushing out maturities and improving our borrowing position. And we believe we are well positioned for the long-term.With that, I will turn the call over to Steve.