Jordan Kaplan
President and CEO
So, we feel comfortable with our same store NOI guidance right now, as we sit here. We knew what was coming on energy. So, so when you say when oil was at a 100, so when you say same store, you’re talking about comparison over prior periods, so that’s change in price. So, for instance, if oil stayed at a 100 for the next 10 years, it would play no role in impacting our same store. What actually happened was we got for many years and we’re still getting it, I think we did 2.5% last year, but for many years we got huge gains out of reduction in the amount of energy we used through programs across the portfolio. Now, for a bit of time during then we saw run-up in oil prices, particularly in Hawaii, because after the reactor accident in Japan, it turned out that Hawaii and Japan to run their oil generated energy -- energy generators, they happen to use this same type of oil, that’s a special type of oil, rare type. So, all of a sudden, they were trying to buy the same oil that they were buying in Hawaii and it ramped prices up a lot because it’s not a very -- it’s not made a lot, and there’s a narrow market for it. Now, then, things kind of stabilized, we stabilized at actually a pretty good number for energy costs. Now, energy costs are running up again. So, you’re seeing a change in the cost of running our business. I would say overall, we’re still probably paying less for energy than we did some time ago, but -- and they are in Hawaii, they are also starting to look at making modifications to their equipment and you would say oh that’s good, the modifications are bringing down the costs, instead they’re passing through those capital costs and raising the rates to us. But all that’s a matter of change. It just stayed 100, then wouldn’t be talking about it; if stayed at 50, we wouldn’t be talking it. The fact that it went -- went down and now it’s moving up is why we’re talking about it. Now, we’ve been able to not have been impacted by the rise, because we’ve been lowering our usage, but it rose faster than we reduced our usage last year and that’s why we’re being impacted by it this year. Next year, it can go down. Therefore, it’d be a plus. Now, in terms of payroll, payroll is pretty predictable. We -- there’s a kind of move across the country in terms of minimum wage, there’s a stronger move in California about minimum wage, and there’s even a stronger move in the county of Los Angeles about minimum wage. So, we’re right in the hottest spot for minimum wage to move up the fastest. When minimum wage moves up, the people above move up to a certain point, and that’s impacting us and a lot of those people since we directly employ, do almost all of our services ourselves, are on our payroll . So, you don’t see it netted in our revenue number. Those people are being paid for by us or by us through a vendor which we have control of our vendor relationships. And so you’re seeing those costs pass through to us, it’s being -- it’s statutory; there is nothing we can do about it. But, that doesn’t mean, we don’t have good visibility, we have great visibility because we know what the legislation is and we know how those numbers are going to move. So that’s why we have a lot of confidence in how it’s going to impact our numbers this year.