Mark Theine
Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question
All right. Thanks, Jeff. We're proud to announce another very successful quarter of growth, driven by our long term strategy of partnering directly with high quality health systems and physician groups to meet their real estate needs. At the heart of this strategy, is an acute focus on improving the overall quality of our real estate portfolio, operating results and relationships. We successfully made progress on all three of these initiatives this quarter as demonstrated by one; the profitable sale of the Great Falls clinic facilities, two, achievement of record releasing spreads and three, excellent Kingsley Tenant satisfaction survey results. Starting with the Great Falls disposition; since our first investment in 2013, we have watched the Great Falls clinic grow as an essential provider of care to the people of Great Falls, the State of Montana, and even patients from Canada. Over time, we ultimately acquired three facilities on this campus for a blended 7.9% cap rate, consisting of inpatient surgical hospital, an ambulatory surgery center and a medical office building. The facilities were 100% occupied and leased to the Great Falls clinic, now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Surgery Partners. In 2019 Doc began discussions with the Great Falls clinic leadership team about a potential expansion to the hospital and surgery center facilities. Under the leadership of Dave Domres, our VP of Construction and Project Management, Doc assisted in the design, coordination and financing arrangements of these expansions in exchange for new long-term leases covering the entire campus. These lease extensions executed in September and October of 2021 increased the overall annual rental revenue, increased the existing annual rent escalator by 50 basis points and extended the term to 20 years at each facility. Through the value created with these new leases, Doc ultimately was able to opportunistically sell the existing facilities and future development expansion last month for approximately $116.3 million in net proceeds representing a gain on sale of $53.9 million, a 4.7% disposition cap rate, and a 16% unlevered IRR. As Jeff mentioned, the proceeds from this sale provides capital to recycle into accretive future acquisitions. It also improves the quality of our portfolio and the security of our cash flows by increasing our investment grade tendency to 66%. The life cycle of this investment is an outstanding example of the value created by the Doc team through its active asset management and trusted healthcare relationships. Our leasing team also continues to leverage trusted healthcare relationships and market knowledge to unlock the value of the Doc portfolio through strong tenant retention and lease renewal spreads. During the second quarter, our leasing team completed 256,000 square feet of lease renewals on the consolidated portfolio at an aggregate releasing spread of 8.0%, the highest quarterly mark in the company's history. Importantly, we achieve these results without sacrificing retention or leasing costs. In total tenant improvements and incentive packages total just $2.19 per square foot per year on renewals, well below industry averages, as we continue to focus on net effective rent as the most important measure of total leasing performance while tenant retention of 76% is in line with long-term medical office averages. Given the strong demand for outpatient real estate, both on and off campus, we remain committed to unlocking the full value of our real estate through leasing. When appropriate, this strategy includes the selective vacating of suites that have higher rental potential with different tenants even if that impacts same-store metrics on a short term basis. Looking forward to the second half of 2022, we expect lease renewal spreads to continue to be between 5% and 7% as the cost of new construction continues to outpace the benefit of renewing leases in place. Simply stated, we believe this is the strongest leasing market in the company's history, and we are optimistic about our pricing power in the years ahead. At the portfolio level MOB same-store NOI growth was 1.9% in the second quarter. The NOI was driven primarily by a year-over-year 2.1% increase in base rental revenue. Operating expenses were up 8.0% slightly below the 9.1% year-over-year CPI change as of June 30. As expected, increased operating expenses were largely offset by an 8.7% increase in expense recovery revenue due to the high occupancy and triple net structure of our portfolio. In the nine years since our IPO, we have not only built one of the highest quality healthcare real estate portfolios in the industry, but we have also assembled an award-winning healthcare real estate team. Our efforts directly translate into care for tenants, evident in our 2022 Kingsley Associates tenant satisfaction survey results. This year we surveyed nearly 320 tenants representing approximately 5.5 million square feet. Physicians Realty Trust received an impressive 74% response rate compared to the industry average of approximately 55% this year. In addition, we beat the Kingsley index in every property management category, including overall management satisfaction with a score of 4.48 out of 5.0. While we sincerely appreciate the positive feedback from our healthcare partners, the surveys that we actually value the most offer opportunities for improvements and where we can invest in better in order to earn our tenant's trust and secure their renewal before the lease expiration. At Doc, we believe that great customer service does not happen by accident. It happens by design and it all starts with the great team dedicated to our mission to help medical providers, developers and shareholders realize better healthcare, better communities and better returns. With that, I'll turn the call back to John.