Diane Bryantt
Analyst · Baird. Please go ahead with your question
Thank you, Ted and good morning everyone. I will be addressing key areas of operations and the transactions to the balance sheet, including developments, acquisitions, dispositions, same-store results and our overall investment strategy, starting with our development, acquisition and disposition activity in the quarter. As we have discussed over the past couple of years, we determined that we had opportunity to provide growth and create value by delving into our market. We are very pleased with the events in the third quarter of fully delivering five projects to the market, placing a $103 million of assets to work. More of these projects are multi-family, consisting of 592 units and one 5,000 square foot single tenant retail facility. Year-to-date total development placed in service is a $113 million. These multi-family assets placed in service in the quarter are in various phases of lease-up given the timing of delivery in the quarter. Currently occupancy rates are ranging from 30% at our Arcata Apartments that just opened in January to 85% at the Commons that was completed in December 2014. Market rents are at or are exceeding pro forma and we are looking forward to the positive contribution to revenue in the fourth quarter. Still in the pipeline to be delivered is 269 million of property within the next three quarters, which represents an additional 955 units of multi-family, a 130,000 square feet of healthcare, and 203,000 square feet of industrial space. Underwriting cap rates on these projects are ranging from 6% to 13%. Although we did not acquire any income producing assets in the quarter, we do have under contract to purchase 24.3 million of multi-family assets with underwriting cap rates estimated to be at 6.5%, this bringing a total of 293 million of new income producing assets to the balance sheet within the next three quarters. Regarding our pending dispositions and our disposition strategy overall, on January 23rd we did announce the expiration of disposition of our office and retail segments. The proceeds from sales of these segments will help meet the objectives of growth into our multi-family, healthcare and industrial segments. We have signed with CBRE a listing agreement that covers approximately 2.5 million square feet of office properties and 1 million square feet of retail properties. The offering was announced by CBRE in mid February and offering materials have been released. More detailed information is being finalized and will be released to qualified bidders as the marketing process continues. Subsequent to quarter end, we did close on the disposition of three commercial properties totaling 86,000 square feet and outside of those properties listed with CBRE, we currently have under contract for sales approximately 500,000 square feet of office properties for total sales price of $34.5 million and estimated cash out of $20.7 million. Again, proceeds from these sales will be used to support the strategic objectives of continued additional investment in multi-family, healthcare, and industrial, as well as paydown outstanding debt, including our line of credit and evaluating the call of a preferred stock. Moving to operating results. Details can be found in our same and non-same-store results starting on page 36 to 42 in Form 10-Q that was filed yesterday, so I will touch briefly only on the highlights of each segments to provide a bit more color. First, let’s cover non-same-store results by all segments, as this is primarily driven by new developments and acquisitions placed into service over the past two comparative periods. For the three and nine months ending January 31st, non-same-store revenue increased by 85% to 89% over the comparative prior periods. NOI for non-same-store will be more predictable once these properties operate in a stabilized mode. However, we are very pleased with the performance of these new assets in making an immediate impact once delivered to the market. Let’s move on to multi-family. We continue with high occupancy at 94% in our same-store properties and this is allowing for opportunity to continue to increase rental rates. For the comparative three and nine months periods, same-store revenue was $862,000 and $2.3 million higher, as compared to the prior periods. It is not typical to see much activity in our markets for lease-up in the months of November to January, but occupancy increased by 2% as compared to the prior period year. We are pleased to see that the growth in occupancy and the cold this month in our markets. As expected, we did see growth in same-store expenses as compared to periods. If you recall in the third quarter of last year, we highlighted the effect of the real estate tax credit in the State of North Dakota that have a favorable impact of $877,000. And particular for same-store multifamily this credit was $615,000. Although, the tax credit was still in place for calendar 2014, tax in municipalities provided for substantial increased assessed valuations in fiscal ’15 on these same properties and accordingly real estate taxes increased. Going forward, we’ll monitor what will be going on in our legislature regarding tax credits for calendar 2015. However, if we’re able to continue to increase rents and maintain our acceptable property expense ratio of revenue in the range of 30% to -- 35% to 40% range, we will still meet desired levels of return. Regarding office, with the announcement to sell and a desire to sell the statement, we are still continuing to operate business as usual. Occupancy in this segment stayed consistent for both comparative periods at 84%. Not a lot of change in same-store results due to operations. However, quarter results were impacted by reduction to revenue related to the non-cash item of straight line rent. Without a lot of new leasing activity and less concessions in free rents that associated with new leases, the burn-off of this non-cash receivable will have the effect of lowering revenue. Overall, for the Office segment, we will continue to lease and operate in a manner to create additional value as we go down to sales path. Our Healthcare segment continued to operate at high levels occupancy at 96%, with no significant change in results of operations in our same-store property. Notable to the quarter is a recognition of percentage rents related to the senior housing facility. This amount was $1.2 million, which is $238,000 higher than received in fiscal 2014. Our Retail and Industrial segments are our two smallest segments whose same-store results provided for no material change from prior comparable periods for me to comment on. The asset from Retail segment had been announced in prior years and like Office, we will continue to lease and operate in a manner to create value. The current Industrial portfolio consists of seven assets with a total square footage of 1.2 million with one project underdevelopment with the total square footage of 203,000. Lastly, I’m going to discuss our limited exposure to the energy impacted in markets and revisit our overall investment strategy. As Tim stated, we are all reading about the potential impact to IRET relative to the drop in oil prices. But, we are all aware and cannot predict a future in this volatile market we want to reiterate that management and the Board at IRET do understand a risk, but also in the reward to investing into a boom. Our investment in the heart of the Bakken is in Williston, North Dakota. The company over the past two years has participated with a joint venture partner to build 433 units and IRET on its own built a 44 unit complex for a total in that market of 477 units. This only represents 4.9% of our total multifamily units of 11,575 units. In particular to these projects in development, we are not seeing any material change in occupancy, rents or concessions being applied over the past quarter for these properties that are fully developed. These fully developed properties are still operating at occupancy levels at 96% to 100%. Lease-up on the most recently delivered units are meeting our pro forma projection. Our commercial leasing related to the oil industry is in Minot, North Dakota at three facilities and are on long-term triple net leases with tenants such as Hess, IPS and Enbridge. It is true that we have seen positive impact in our stronger markets for the Bakken due to the energy boom. We still believe there is opportunity and demand for our products. Our disciplined underwriting approach, our understanding and presence in these markets gives us ability to continue to meet or exceed our initial investment objectives. Overall, we are going to remain true to our investment strategy when choosing our markets in our geographic footprint. These markets have the following characteristics. They have regional healthcare systems, they have university and colleges, direct access to major transportation, and they have regional retail and entertainment facilities. These all would be intend to have a viable path to market leadership in these markets. In closing, we are very pleased with our efforts to bring our developments to markets. We are executing on our property sales and we will continue to stay disciplined in our investment approach going forward, as we redeploy proceeds and continue with the effort to deliver and timely deliver our pipeline of 293 million of new assets. With that, I will now turn the call over to Tim Mihalick.