Earnings Labs

EPR Properties (EPR)

Q3 2009 Earnings Call· Thu, Dec 17, 2009

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the third quarter 2009 Entertainment Properties Trust earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. David Brain, President and CEO of Entertainment Properties Trust.

David Brain

Management

Good afternoon all and thanks for being with us today. This is David Brain. I’ll start with our usual preface and that is as we begin this afternoon let me inform you this conference call may include forward-looking statements defined by the Private Securities and Litigation Reform of 1995 and are identified by such words as may, believe, expect, hope, anticipate or other comparable terms. The company’s actual financial condition and results of operations may vary materially from those contemplated by such forward-looking statements. A discussion of factors that could cause results to differ is contained in the company’s SEC filings including the company’s report on Form 10-K for the year ending December 31, 2008. Thank you for joining us. We appreciate your investment of time and interest. As always, I hope this new timing of our quarterly turns out to be convenient and beneficial for all. As we announced on our call last quarter, we are changing the sequencing of our call to more immediately follow our press release to outside of the trading day to provide for a more informed market. To provide you with the company news and updates, with me of course are Greg Silver, our Chief Operating Officer and Mark Peterson, our Chief Financial Officer. As we get underway this afternoon, I’d like to remind all and direct you once again to a simultaneous webcast that’s available to you via our website at eprkc.com. If you can, please go there now and catch the visual as well as the audio portion of the presentation. There you’ll see a slide going over our headlines for the third quarter for EPR for 2009. The first headline is the company raised substantial equity in the quarter, $50 million, reducing leverage and increasing transaction capacity. Number two; fundamentals for…

Gregory Silver

Management

Today I’d like to begin with a discussion of our operating businesses starting with our core segment. Our primary tenant business, theater exhibition, continues to demonstrate its strength with overall box office revenues up approximately 7% year to date over the prior year. As we approach the last major segment of the box office calendar, the holiday season, the outlook appears strong with the planned release of several major titles throughout the balance of the year. Overall, we are pleased with the performance of our portfolio and the now demonstrated recession resistant characteristics of theater exhibition. Our theater portfolio continues to be 100% occupied. I am also excited to report that we’re beginning to see movement on opportunities for growth in our theater business. These opportunities are at various stages and while no transaction is complete anymore until it closes, we are very hopeful that in the near future we will once again be discussing our growth which we expect to be largely fueled by accretive theater transactions. With regard to our investment, it has been a tale of two regions; the Kansas City Park was open for a limited season this year, which combined with the cool and wet summer experienced in the area, resulted in a lower than expected operating result. However, these results were offset by the second best year ever for the Texas Parks. As a result of our restructured transaction in which we combined all of the parks, we will benefit from the Texas Park performance and have ample free cash flow to service our debt. As the ski season has yet to begin, we have little to report beyond the numbers of last season. If you recall, last year’s numbers demonstrated an overall rent coverage of approximately 1.8 times. Furthermore, as we indicated, our…

Mark Peterson

Management

Hopefully everyone listening to the call is aware of our quarterly investor supplemental which can be downloaded from our website. We received positive feedback from many of you on our initial supplemental that was published in conjunction with our second quarter results, and we are pleased to report that we have significantly expanded the third quarter supplemental to provide even more user friendly data on the company and its performance. We are firm believers that the more information you have about EPR, the more you will like the company. Before we get into the details of the various line items, I think it is first important to help you understand our results, excluding the impact of the non cash charges recorded during the third quarter. We’ll provide additional color on these charges when I go through the variance analysis, but for now I simply want to draw your attention to these non cash amounts so you can clearly see our strong operating results. As illustrated by the first slide, during our third quarter we recorded $65.8 million, or $1.86 per share in loan loss provisions and an additional $35.8 million or $1.01 per share for an impairment charge. As such, FFO for the third quarter was a loss of $71.2 million or negative $2.01 per share. When we add back the combined $2.87 of loan loss provisions and the impairment charge, we get back to $0.86 of FFO per share as adjusted for non cash charges or what David referred to as recurring FFO. A similar exercise for the year to date numbers results in $2.56 of FFO per share as adjusted for non cash charges. It is also worth noting that the equity we raised during the third quarter also reduced our per share results by $0.01. Said differently,…

David Brain

Management

Before we go to questions, I just want to add emphasis to what Mark mentioned about our supplemental reporting. We have continued to take your input on this and have significantly expanded our reporting. Just as with the extensive remarks this afternoon from all of us, transparency is our goal subject to some client confidences and guarded proprietary business practices. Please look at this supplemental. Use it. Talk to us about it if you have any comments. I think you’ll find it informative and helpful. With that, we’ll go to questions.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Anthony Paolone – J.P. Morgan. Anthony Paolone – J.P. Morgan: My first question is on full year guidance. At the low end of your range it implies $0.79 in the fourth quarter. I’m just curious what could cause your FFO sequentially to drop so much?

Mark Peterson

Management

We tend to focus on kind of the mid point of that, and really if you look at our run rate coming out of the third quarter and take into account the common stock issuance which will be outstanding for the whole quarter and slightly lower contribution on notes receivable, I think you kind of get to the mid point of around $0.82 to $0.83 for the fourth quarter. Anthony Paolone – J.P. Morgan: On the White Plains project, can you refresh my memory and do a quick sketch on how much you paid, what the implied total price was when you bought it, the yield then, the yield now and what FFO is actually coming off the asset at the moment?

Gregory Silver

Management

The purchase price of the asset was $165 million. I think that was a little over a six to seven cap but remember we had a preferred interest.

David Brain

Management

I think it’s hard to say a straight cap rate because of the preferred nature of where we were when you take into total consideration, just our consideration.

Mark Peterson

Management

What I can tell you with the vacancies in the project, our FFO for the third quarter was actually a negative about $200,000. So on a run rate basis, on an FFO annualized basis, it would be something like negative $800,000. Of course there are two big vacancies that make a big difference with Circuit City and [Philene], but that’s where we find ourselves today. Anthony Paolone – J.P. Morgan: How much original cash did you put into the deal?

Mark Peterson

Management

$35 million. Anthony Paolone – J.P. Morgan: So then if you gave the keys back it sounds like you actually get an FFO pick up, is that right?

Mark Peterson

Management

From where we are, with the leasing where it is, we would have an FFO pick up. Interesting, we would not only have an FFO pick up, we’d also have quite a big leverage decrease. It’s a fairly highly levered asset. That’s why I mentioned our leverage would go down something like 200 basis points just by handing back the keys.

David Brain

Management

This is one of the higher levered assets in the portfolio and as Mark points out, it’s only an FFO pick up but it would improve our debt ratios. Anthony Paolone – J.P. Morgan: Who holds the note? Is it a bank or is it securitized?

Mark Peterson

Management

A union labor life insurance company. Anthony Paolone – J.P. Morgan: On the capital spending, you outlined $70 million for the year. I appreciate you detailing the line items in the packet. Which ones of those don’t have explicit returns attached to them?

Mark Peterson

Management

The bottom two, capitalized building improvements and other capital acquisition. Anthony Paolone – J.P. Morgan: So all the other ones roll into a bigger lease or note or whatever it is.

Mark Peterson

Management

Exactly. Anthony Paolone – J.P. Morgan: On your four expirations for 2010, can you give us an early read on what might happen there?

Mark Peterson

Management

As we talked about, we’re talking with AMC right now. We have maybe one or two of those that are probably too big that we’re going to downsize on, and we’re in discussions with them. We have to kind of moderate it and see are they willing to pay the most rent for a downsized facility or do we have other parties and we’re out there talking with other people as well trying to create some tension regarding that to get the best transaction for our shareholders.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Jordan Sadler – Keybanc Capital Markets. Jordan Sadler – Keybanc Capital Markets: Regarding the transaction opportunities you alluded to, I know nothing in guidance but maybe if you could frame it up for us.

Gregory Silver

Management

It’s difficult to talk about any specific ones just because we don’t do that. But what we can say in general is, there are transactions out there. It’s something that we’re spending a lot of time on here lately. We think they’re highly accretive. They’re in the 11 to 12 cap zone that we talked about. We think there are, it’s in our core area, the two areas that we’ve talked about. We’ve said with theaters and Charter Public Schools. We think there are opportunities in both of those and I think we’re positioning ourselves to take advantage of those. Jordan Sadler – Keybanc Capital Markets: And the opportunities, the sellers are generally, is this paper or is this just a distressed sellers?

Gregory Silver

Management

Generally these are distressed sellers, not necessarily properties, but distressed sellers.

David Brain

Management

It’s not distressed properties as Greg points out, but sellers needing liquidity overall and this is actually assets that they can realize that. Jordan Sadler – Keybanc Capital Markets: Any one offs or portfolios?

David Brain

Management

Generally they’re portfolios. Jordan Sadler – Keybanc Capital Markets: Coming back to the Coppelli write downs, you said you evaluated the collateral before making the assessment and taking the reserve. I know and this is a measure of conservatism in terms of your write down, I’m just interested in the fact that you evaluated the collateral and then went ahead and actually wrote it down to zero because I had thought on previous calls you said that this stuff was personally guaranteed and there was substantial net worth. Maybe just speak to that a little bit.

David Brain

Management

I think as clearly as we’re involved in negotiations on these projects or the Concord project, we’re getting more and more information about the level and breadth of that individual’s contingent liabilities and a conservative nature as we gain more information we believe that was the wise thing to do, to take those to that level. Jordan Sadler – Keybanc Capital Markets: Why wouldn’t the Concord fall under the same level of analysis I guess at this point.

David Brain

Management

It would. It’s just backed by a collateral for which there’s an appraisal that indicates it has a value in excess of the balance of the loan. Jordan Sadler – Keybanc Capital Markets: When was that last appraisal completed?

David Brain

Management

Spring of ’09. April ’09 is when our last appraisal was, so it was during, well into the whole crisis period and as Greg indicated, we have an appraisal on that asset, on those that you just referenced. They’re backed by a personal guarantee. There’s not such reference point on those and so we’re taking a conservative position. But I want to reiterate that I said and Mark said, we touched on we are pursuing full collection of these items. It is an expectation. We’re just going to put them at a carrying value of zero. Jordan Sadler – Keybanc Capital Markets: Just clarifying one of Tony’s questions on the City Center, is the book value now zero?

Mark Peterson

Management

Essentially it was written down to the debt amount so on a fair value basis, it’s essentially zero.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Greg Schwartz – Citigroup. Greg Schwartz – Citigroup: Just on the impairment, looking at the mortgage receivable on Page 7 of the supplemental, the Toronto receivable, it looks like it went down by $22 million versus the reported on the release of $5 million. Why is there that discrepancy?

Mark Peterson

Management

We have additional costs that will be necessary related to acquisition. We had acquisition costs and everything that tied together with that. Greg Schwartz – Citigroup: The impairment on the notes receivable, could you provide more detail on the status of individual notes?

Mark Peterson

Management

The Cappelli ones? Greg Schwartz – Citigroup: No, the $3 million you took on notes receivable.

Mark Peterson

Management

We had previously disclosed $11 million of impaired notes which is made up of three notes receivable and we have previously impaired those such that we’re recognizing interest income on those on a cash basis. Again, we do each quarter for impaired notes. We look at the underlying collateral, the high notes, and determined that a $3 million reserve was appropriate on that $11.8 million. Greg Schwartz – Citigroup: Do you still have around $5 million of loans out to executives?

Mark Peterson

Management

Of the company, yes. Greg Schwartz – Citigroup: Just to clarify, Page 18 where you list out the EBITDA for each segment, the $8.3 million for retail, is there any White Plains in there?

Mark Peterson

Management

Effectively what you’re going to have in that number EBITDA that would be before interest expense, so I mentioned that it has about a negative $200,000 impact on FFO. I’d have to add back interest expense to that to see what it would be on an EBITDA basis. It’s about $1.7 of interest expense per quarter, so it would be $200,000 you add back. So there’s about $1.4 million, $1.5 million impact from White Plains on EBITDA. Greg Schwartz – Citigroup: So around 20% of the retail exposure?

Mark Peterson

Management

About 17%. Greg Schwartz – Citigroup: On releasing progress, you have the two vineyards you took back. Any update there?

Gregory Silver

Management

We’re running as we talked about the Cozintino property. We don’t expect anything going on that due to the seasonality that we’re in. We are engaging in a process on the Havens property. We’ve always thought that property would be easy to release or resell and that’s going through a process right now that we hope to culminate before the end of the year. [Gregory Switzer – Citi]: And on the retail vacancies?

Gregory Silver

Management

As we talked about, other than in White Plains, it’s been kind of steady. We’re at 94% to 95% occupied across the portfolio and no real significant vacancy. Its drips and drabs that make that up.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Andrew Dizio – Janney Montgomery Scott. Andrew Dizio – Janney Montgomery Scott: In relation to the theatre role that you have coming up next year where do you see rental rates in relation to where they are now within those properties?

Gregory Silver

Management

I think what we’re going to see is that the properties on a per square foot basis, the rental rate on a per square foot basis will not change that much. I think what we’re really going to see is, is it going to be a 30 screen or a 24 screen theater, so that if it operates as a 17 or a 20 screen instead of a 30, the rental rate on that will still be basically the same rental rate. We just may have to reposition some of that excess space. Andrew Dizio – Janney Montgomery Scott: Turning to the Dundas square, you’ve mentioned a couple of times your expectation that you may become the owner of that but am I correct that it is not in your 2010 guidance?

Gregory Silver

Management

No. I actually think those numbers, it is in our guidance. The receiver had it closing right towards the end of the year so we have assumed that we’d own it January 1. So everyone appreciates, due to certain confidentiality agreements with the receiver, we can’t make bold statements about where we’re at in the process, so we’re not trying to be obtuse about this. It’s just they’ve advised us not to make too many bold statements about us being the owner. They rescheduled the process to be closing more towards the end of the quarter rather than more actually getting it in the quarter, and thus our reference to that was not under our control and it did change what we had incorporated in. But we’re not under the control of their determination, the closing timing.

David Brain

Management

The other thing that I’d mention on that is obviously the timing of it impacts our reported FFO but I think it’s important to note that the cash flow that’s being generated by the property in excess of the first mortgage requirement, loan requirement is being retained by the estate such that will ultimately be available to settle our note. So we benefit by excess cash flow that’s being retained in the estate. We’re just not reporting it. We’re not able to report it obviously until we own it.

Operator

Operator

We have no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the cal back over to Mr. David Brain.

David Brain

Management

Well, as I said at the outset, I appreciate everybody joining us. I hope this timing works out well. We’re under the impression that it does. Look at the supplemental and call us with questions. We always enjoy talking to you. Thank you very much.