Thomas A. Wentz
Analyst · RBC Capital Markets
Thank you, Diane. Our fourth quarter results continue the trends seen in previous quarters of overall improved operations. At the start of the year, we outlined a number of areas of focus as a continuation of our plan to grow IRET while working to minimize the expected drag from our commercial office portfolio as we worked to resolve the existing vacancy in our suburban office assets. As the recently filed financial statements confirmed, we have continued to make progress in the areas of our focus identified at the beginning of the fiscal year. Over the past year, we have materially reduced our leverage, focused capital on our multi-family and healthcare segments, where we have leading market positions, implemented an increased disposition program to sell non-core and underperforming assets, aggressively refinanced existing debt to lock in historically low interest rates and raised over $200 million of new equity capital, all with the goal of strengthening our balance sheet and improving our ability to grow through development and acquisitions in our targeted markets. Going forward, our plan for the coming fiscal year will be to continue to focus on these same areas. Of course, as we deal with the reduced -- as we deal with and reduce the impact from our legacy challenges in the commercial office segment, our current plan with this emphasis on development is not without its own set of new challenges. Our return to larger-scale development over the last several years in many of our multi-family markets, due to the lack of quality acquisition options, is expected to create a temporary drag on earnings and cash flow as we raise and deploy the equity capital necessary to complete our announced development pipeline of over $200 million, as well as prepare to develop the recently acquired land holdings over the coming 12 to 18 months at approximately the same level. Our expectation is to keep overall leverage at current levels, and accordingly, in order to grow at our historic average rate of approximately 7% over the next 24 months, would require a roughly $150 million of equity in the form of new equity capital, net sale proceeds and cash-out from debt finance -- refinancings to recapture the approximately $30 million of annual principal paydown we incur currently. Additionally, development and construction costs continue to increase in all of our markets, which we believe will require corresponding wage and job growth in order to support the higher rents necessary to justify the increased cost structure. Finally, as expected with strong economies in many of our multi-family markets, as well as the slow improvement nationally, we expect more competitive development to occur. We are carefully monitoring these challenges. And as a very experienced developer in all of our markets, we have adjusted our approach to proactively deal with these issues. With our existing strong product position, combined with being first-to-market, as well as high-quality projects, IRET is in a great position to execute on its portfolio growth strategy. Our focus is on developing assets that will be positioned as the best-in-market, avoiding the requirement to compete on price and keeping IRET as the market leader in our core communities and our strongest segments. Now turning to the recently completed fiscal quarter or end year. Over the last 12 months, most every meaningful operating and financial metric has improved, with the primary exception being commercial office gross revenue and income. The overall slower office employment trend, along with the continued focus by companies on cost-cutting through reducing rental space, continues to stubbornly drag on across virtually our entire commercial office portfolio. However, even though revenue remains under pressure in the commercial office segment, we have been making progress in the occupancy area, which we expect will translate into improved revenue going forward. Additionally, we have made positive progress in our smaller commercial segments of retail and industrial on a revenue basis. We plan to continue aggressively focusing on our commercial portfolio, including our increased sale program, as well as the careful commitment of capital to lease up vacant space. Absent to significant backtrack in the U.S. economy, our expectation is commercial operations will continue to improve modestly, so when combined with our disposition program and the growth in our multi-family and healthcare segments, debt [ph] from commercial office is expected to lessen over the coming quarters. In our multi-family segment, given current occupancy, our focus is on growth in revenue from existing customers and proactive expense control, as limited additional revenue can be captured by improving the occupancy. Material growth in our multi-family segment will be driven by development and acquisition. Finally, our healthcare portfolio continues to perform on a very consistent basis with no material change expected from the existing operations. Again, like multi-family, growth in the healthcare segment will come from acquisitions and developments. IRET's CFO provided the details on recently closed debt, so I won't spend any time reviewing individual mortgages other than [indiscernible] But even with the recent increase in interest rates, IRET has continued to reduce its overall interest expense through refinancing at lower rates as well as our program of reducing overall leverage. The rolldown in rates over the last decade has been one of the most positive aspects of the real estate industry and has allowed IRET to lock in what should be very favorable interest rates going forward. Rates still remain at historic low levels. Debt markets continue to operate very well for IRET as we have multiple options to leverage our existing portfolio as well as acquisitions and developments. Currently, most new rates remain below the rates on our maturing debt, so we anticipate that at least for the very near term, we will be able to continue to lower our debt cost. Unlikely it will match what we've accomplished over the last several years, but still we expect it to be a positive impact. The one negative to lower rates is the increased costs associated with early debt retirement or prepayment, which has and will create an obstacle to sale or accessing built-up equity in our long-term assets. The amount of maturing debt over the next several years is low compared to prior year's, but we will continuously review all loans for refinance opportunities as this provides IRET with the least expensive source of capital for acquisitions, funding of operations and capital improvements. We do not anticipate any material change to our leverage policy of fixing most debt long, but we are evaluating an increasing number of assets with maturing debt for refinance options with more flexibility on prepayment, as we expect this to be something that will afford us the opportunity to consider more options as we turn our focus to finding positive solutions for our commercial operations. Moving to dispositions, acquisitions and development. As Diane discussed, year-to-date, we have been very active with acquisitions, including our portfolio in our strongest segment of residential. We closed on all previously disclosed multi-family acquisitions and we are actively working on additional apartment acquisitions in our core markets. The development projects are all detailed in the 8-K. We are seeing a number of additional development opportunities on the residential and healthcare side, which we hope to finalize for construction during the coming fiscal year, with potential delivery in the second half of the current fiscal year of 2014 or early fiscal 2015. We expect the amount of developments and acquisitions to remain consistent with our current levels, with our minimum goal being approximately $300 million over the next 12 to 18 months, depending on the final mix of acquisitions versus developments. Our expected acquisition and development cap rates range from approximately 5.5% to 12% in the multi-family segment and 7% to 8.5% on the commercial segments. In certain cases, actual results have been higher for development in the energy-impacted markets of North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana. However, even if IRET completed all currently available opportunities, the overall amount of development IRET can actually complete in many of these communities is limited due to infrastructure constraints, contractor capacity and in many cases, the availability of suitable capital. As for dispositions, we've successfully completed the sale of a number of smaller industrial assets as well as a non-core senior housing project. And we are currently marketing a number of additional industrial assets that we expect to sell in the next several quarters. Sale proceeds will be deployed into new development and general corporate purposes. Thank you, and I will now turn the call over to the moderator for questions.