Mark Peterson
Analyst · Craig Mailman from KeyBanc Capital. Your line is open
Thank you, Jerry. I'd like to remind everyone on the call that our quarterly investor supplemental can be downloaded from our Web site. We called our last quarter we introduced new schedules in our supplemental to facilitate calculations of net asset value. Note that this quarter as part of the schedule found on page 26, we added a bit more detail related to other NAV components from our balance sheet. We hope you find this additional information useful. Now, turning to the first slide. FFO for the first quarter increased to $73.8 million from $32.1 million in the prior year. FFO per share was $1.17 this quarter compared to $0.56 in the prior quarter. FFO as adjusted for the quarter increased to $74.2 million versus $59 million in the prior year and was $1.18 per share for the quarter versus $1.03 per share in the prior year, an increase of 15%. Now, let me walk through the key line item variances for the quarter versus the prior year. Our total revenue increased 19% compared to the prior year to another record quarterly amount of $118.8 million. Within the revenue category, rental revenue increased by $17 million versus the prior year to $93.4 million and resulted primarily from new investments. Percentage rents for the quarter included in rental revenue were $610,000 million versus $270,000 in the prior year. The increase was primarily due to $368,000 in percentage rents received related to one of our private schools. Tenant reimbursements decreased by $438,000 for the quarter due primarily to the impact of a weaker Canadian dollar exchange rate versus the prior year. Other income increased by $660,000 for the quarter versus last year and was due to favorable settlements of foreign currency swap contracts as well as an insurance recovery gain of approximately $500,000. Mortgage and other financing income was $19.9 million for the quarter, an increase of approximately $2.1 million versus prior year. The increase was primarily due to the anticipated $3.6 million prepayment fee we received in conjunction with the full prepayment of a $19.3 million mortgage note receivable related to a public charter school. Partially offsetting this increase was a drop in mortgage financing income related to camelback hotel and indoor waterpark, as the mortgage was rolled into the lease on the adjacent ski hill and outdoor waterpark in the third quarter last year at the tenant’s option. Therefore, rental revenue increased and mortgage financing income decreased related to camelback versus the prior year. Now on the expense side, our property operating expense decreased by $876,000 versus the prior year due to lower bad debt expense and the impact of a weaker Canadian dollar exchange rate versus the prior year. G&A expense increased to $9.2 million for the quarter compared to $7.7 million in the prior year due primarily to an increase in our payroll and benefit costs, including additional personnel to support our growing asset base, and an increase in amortization of share based awards. Cost associated with loan refinancing or payoffs was $552,000 for the quarter and primarily related to the fees associated with the repayment of a secured fixed rate mortgage loan payables during the quarter with annual interest rate of 7.37%. Our net interest expense for the quarter increased by about $4.7 million to $23.3 million. This increase resulted from an increase in average borrowings as well as a decrease in interest cost capitalized primarily in connection with the Adelaar project. Capitalized interest related to Adelaar was $430,000 this quarter compared to $2.1 million in the prior year, as the portion of the project leased to Empire Resorts was placed in service during the first quarter. Additionally, the hedge rate on $300 million of our $350 million unsecured term loan increased to an average of 3.61% from an average of 2.6%. Note that the hedge rate will decrease back down to an average of 2.94% in July 2017. These increases were partially offset by a lower weighted average interest rate. Transaction costs decreased to $444,000 from $1.6 million in the prior year due a decrease in cost associated with potential and terminated transactions. Finally, income tax benefit of $144,000 for the quarter relates primarily to our Canadian owned properties and taxable REIT subsidiaries. Current income tax expense for the quarter was $458,000 and is the amount included is a reduction of FFO as adjusted for the quarter. In the prior year, income tax expense of $8.4 million was recognized based primarily on an open examination by the Canadian Revenue Agency on our Canadian Trust. This examination was completed favorably during the second quarter of 2015 and the expense related to the examination was reversed at that time. Now, turning to the next slide, I will review some of our – the company’s key credit ratios. As you can see, our coverage ratios for the quarter continue to get stronger with fixed charge coverage at 3.3 times, debt service coverage at 3.7 times, and interest coverage was 4 times. We increased our monthly common dividend by nearly 6% in the first quarter to an annualized dividend of $384 million in 2016 on our FFO as adjusted payout ratio was 81%. I would also like to point out that we are moving to using net debt to adjusted EBITDA as the primary metric we monitor to manage leverage, as we feel this is more relevant for this purpose than debt to grow these assets. As defined in our supplemental, net debt to adjusted EBITDA was 4.81 times at quarter end and we expect to maintain this ratio within a range of 4.6 times to 5.6 times going forward. Now because adjusted EBITDA in this calculation is not fully include the current run rate for projects put in service during the quarter in other items, and net debt includes the debt provided for build-to-suit projects under development that do not contribute any current EBITDA. We also monitor our ratio adjusted for these items entitled adjusted net debt to annualize adjusted EBITDA. This ratio eliminates the penalty that build-to-suit projects inherently caused due to the timing in the net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio. While this ratio was not much lower than net debt to adjusted EBITDA this quarter at 4.76 times, we will continue provide this ratio on a supplemental in the future as this difference is averaged around 30 basis points lower over the last couple of years. The level of this additional ratio along with the timing and size of our equity and debt offerings may cause us to temporarily operate outside of our stated range for net debt to adjusted EBITDA of 4.6 to 5.6 times. As you can tell by these metrics our balance sheet continues to be in great shape. Now let’s turn to the next slide for capital markets and liquidity update. At quarter-end, we had total outstanding debt of $2 billion. About 85% of this debt is either fixed rate debt or debt that has been fixed through interest rate swaps with a blended coupon of approximately 5.3%. We had $217 million outstanding at quarter-end on our $650 million line of credit and we had $11 million of unrestricted cash on hand. We are in excellent shape with respect to debt maturities. As of today, we have scheduled balloon maturities of only $62 million for the remainder of 2016 and $158 million in 2017. Turning to the next slide, during the quarter, we prepaid in full one secured mortgage notes payable for $4.6 million with an annual interest rate of 7.37% as I mentioned earlier. A secured debt as a percentage of total debt continues to decrease and now stands at less than 14%. During the first quarter, we took advantage of the timing of our inclusion in the S&P Midcap 400 index and issued 2.25 million common shares and registered public offering for net proceeds of a $125 million. The proceeds from this offering we used to pay down a lot of credit. Additionally, subsequent to quarter-end, we issued 258,000 common shares under our Direct Stock Purchase Plan or DSPP for net proceeds of $16.9 million. Also as Jerry indicated, last week we received prepayment in full of the $44.4 million mortgage note receivable related to the North Carolina Music Factory. Accordingly, we continue to be well positioned to fund our strong investment pipeline. Turning to the next slide, we are confirming our guidance for 2016 FFO as adjusted per share of $4.70 to $4.80, and our guidance for investment spending of $600 million to $650 million. Guidance for 2016 is detailed on page 28 of the supplemental. Note that our guidance for termination fees related to public charter school buyouts is unchanged for the year, but as far as timing, I did want to point out that for the second quarter we expect this number to total $2.2 million. This amount relates to a public charter school sale for net proceeds of $12 million that is already occurred in April. I would also like to point out that in our guidance this quarter we broke out the effect of the conversion of the 5.75% Series C convertible preferred shares to get to FFO from net income as the conversion is dilutive to the per share results for FFO and FFO adjusted for 2016. Now, with that, I’ll turn it back over to Greg for his closing remarks.