Damon Hininger
Analyst · SunTrust. Please go ahead your line is open
Thank you, Cameron and good morning, to everyone joining our call today. Also joining us today is our VP of Brian Hammonds. CCA is the nation’s leading provider of correctional, detention and community correction real estate and services. We provide federal state and local governments flexible and efficient solutions to address specific needs unique to their correctional systems. We see common theme facing correctional system that include overcrowding due to population growth or lack of funding for new capacity. The need for significant infrastructure investment resulting from government owned facilities reaching the end of their lifecycle and the need to expand community based reentry services offered to offenders reaching the end of their census and returning to their communities. We believe we’re well positioned to be the ideal partner for government that are actively working to address these issues. CCA’s existing facility portfolio is young and operationally efficient allowing our government partners the opportunity to lower their operating expenses when compared to relatively older and less efficient government owned facilities. Partnering with us allows us the opportunity to help them significant upfront capital expenditures required to develop a new facility. We currently have a number of facilities that have either all or some available capacity to meet a partner’s immediate need but we also have industry leading experience in the development of a filled options should a government partner have a specific need. In a very short period of time we’ve also significantly expanded our capabilities to provide community based corrections and reentry services per recent acquisitions which complement the reentry services provided in our correctional facility. CCA is now the second largest owner and operator of residential reentry service in the United States and we’re strategically pursuing additional investments to further grow in this area as we continue to hear from our partners that this is a area of focus for them. Submission critical nature of our facilities coupled with strong credit quality of our government customers provide a foundation for stable reoccurring cash flows and our dividend payout policy are returning to approximately 80% of our adjusted funds from operations to shareholders provides an interactive yield which as of today is approximately 7%. CCA strategy for cash flow and FFO per share growth is focused on three specific areas. Owning and operating correctional detention service, the traditional model that has driven the majority of CCA’s growth through the years. Real estate only solutions where CCA provides mission critical role state assets leased by government jurisdictions and acquiring residential reentry provider either owned and managed or owned and leased to a third-party operators. I’ll begin my discussion with the later as this is the area in which we had the most recent activity. On April 8, we closed on the $35 million acquisition of CMI or correctional Management Incorporated. A residential reentry provider in Colorado that operates seven facilities totaling 605 beds, as was also the case where the acquisition of Avlon in October 2015 and Texas and Oklahoma, CCA had significant customer overlap with CMI as we already house nearly 3,000 inmates for the Colorado partner correction at three company owned facility. We have worked with the state of Colorado for many years and we are excited to be able to provide the additional capabilities to CMI to complement our existing real estate and service offering. The state of Colorado current utilizes approximately 4,000 residential reentry beds and CMI is one of the state’s leading providers with recent occupancy rates and excessive 90% among seven facilities. The closing of this acquisition brings our total investment in the residential reentry market in the last year to over $200 million. CCA now owns and controls 24 residential facilities in six states representing nearly 5,000 beds which we believe signifies our commitment to provide a highest quality communities corrections and residential reentry services to our government partners by also contributed to our growth and diversifying our cash flows. We continue to pursue additional acquisition opportunities in this market while also competing for new contracts that are existing residential reentry facilities with available bed capacity. I cannot provide specific guidance on the timing, size or potential earnings contribution from future acquisitions or contract win. However, we see typical acquisition targets in this market evaluation between $5 million to $50 million yielding unlevered returns between 8% and 15%. The primary factors influencing evaluations are the overall size and scope of the potential target, whether there is an operating component or are we just acquiring the real estate and leasing the property to a third party provider and contract quality with government partners or quality and length of leased terms in a real estate only opportunity. We continue to identify and pursue acquisition targets in the residential reentry market that would be complementary to CCA’s existing reentry platform and are accretive to our earnings. But it is also important for our investors to know that with this new vigorous behavior on our part in pursuing acquisitions, we will always be disciplined and remain within our parameters on evaluation and with that we have not participated in any auctions for these recently acquired company. Our view on auctions is that they create a strain on resources and a distraction to the management team with our otherwise robust pipeline. Staying with initiatives to deploy capital for growth, we continue to pursue opportunities to construct own and operate facilities to address the capacity needs of our government partners. We are currently in the process of expanding our Red Rock Correctional Center in Arizona to 2024 beds. A 400 bed expansion that scheduled for completion in the fourth quarter of 2016, although we expect to begin receiving inmates under the new contract during the third quarter of 2016. CCA was successful bidder for the new 1,000 bed contracts awarded by the state of Arizona in December of 2015 and the Red Rock facility is being expanded to accommodate this new contract along with the existing 1,000 bed contract that the state awarded to CCA in 2012. Upon completion of this $35 million to $38 million expansion CCA will be under contract for a total of 2,000 beds within [oxi] guarantee of 90%. Additionally, we are in the process of ramping up operations at our Trousdale Correctional Center, a 2,552 bed facility in Tennessee which opened in January. The ramp up of inmate population is scheduled to be completed around the end of the second quarter and today we are housing over 1,700 offenders at the facility. While these two contract awards are examples of growth opportunities coming from our traditional model of owning and operating correctional or detention facilities in many situations we are seeing an increased interest in partnering with CCA for real estate assets for which the government entity would lease. Many government owned facilities from the federal level down to local municipalities are reaching the end of their life cycle and are in need of replacement. Additionally, due to budget constraint throughout and following the economic recession even more government facilities have had a significant backlog of deferred maintenance that requires significant capital investment. Not only do these facilities require significant maintenance capital expenditures, but in most cases there are significant operational inefficiency inherent to the design of the facility which results in higher operational cost. We have spoken about aging and inefficient facilities for many years but recently many states have acknowledged this step for the need for additional infrastructure investment. For example, California identified over $1 billion in deferred maintenance required for their facilities in their updated blue print which was issued in January. The legislature in the state of New Mexico introduced the bill in February requesting $200 million for repairs and rehabilitation of state owned prison which ultimately didn't pass. In March the governor of Alabama introduced legislation to approve $800 million of the construction of four new prisons in order to replace 14 outdated facilities. Large infrastructure investments and facility design expertise are required to meet these types of needs for mission critical facilities. CCA provide the compelling and flexible value proposition to government faced in these challenges and no other entity public or private has designed in-built more [indiscernible] facilities over the last decades than CCA whether it's a full service solution or a designed build and least opportunity we are the ideal partner for governments with our expertise and strong balance sheet. Finally, we continue to pursue opportunities to utilize the facilities with the available capacity and our portfolio. Our history has shown there is a competitive advantage to having a certain amount of available beds in order to quickly respond to customer need our current available capacity of just over 9,000 beds is higher than we ideally carry. However, we have seen increased interest in a number of these facilities some of which you have seen is playing out in the somewhat public manner. Several states have expressed their need for additional bed capacity to either elevate overcrowding in their system or replace unacquainted government owned facilities that for safety concerns and budgetary pressures. Our available beds will offer appropriate cost effective solutions should these states choose to pursue the opportunity. These opportunities are real estate only where the states department of corrections would assume operations. Additionally, we continue to have a number of private discussions with potential partners that are looking for additional bed capacity both in state and out of state. But we have yet to enter into contract agreements with these potential customers and no incremental contribution is contemplated in our forward looking financial guidance they represent opportunity to increase our cash flows without requiring meaningful capital investment. Now, before I turn the call over to Dave, I would like to provide a brief update on developments related to the operations at our South Texas family residential center. As you will recall the government and attorney representing a class of minors in ice custody including minors at our facility in South Texas have been engaged in litigation regarding the interpretation of the 1997 settlement agreement. That litigation which concerns the care of [I-cell] minors is now in the ninth circuit of court of appeals. Both parties have completed briefings in this matter and oral arguments are scheduled for June 7, 2016. However, the timing of the court's decisions on this matter is currently unknown. Additionally earlier this year the state of Texas completed the rules obligation process with respect to licensing of family residential centers like our South Texas family residential center. The standards established by the state of Texas are in addition to federal family residential standard that already apply at our facility. We submitted our license application to the state during the first quarter of 2016 and state is responsible for the license -- process conducted in their review. As part of that review process, we hosted a public hearing regarding our facilities operations and mission last week. We have been responsive to all inquiries from the state and stand ready provide additional information as we await completion of the license review process. And like last fall the state has again encountered legal challenges this week to their authority to license family residential centers with the state receiving a 14 day restraining order yesterday which prevents any issuance of the license during that period of time. Finally, we believe successful license to the facilities fully consistent with this mission for this South Texas facility and will enhance the facility ability to address the diverse needs of migrates apprehended at the southern border. Now I would like to turn the call over to David to cover our first quarter financial performance and review the primary drivers of our updated financial guidance for 2016.