Mark Peterson
Analyst · Janney Capital Markets
Thank you, Jerry. I'd like to remind everyone on the call that our quarterly investor supplemental can be downloaded from our website. Now, turning to the first slide, FFO for the second quarter increased to $72.2 million or $1.13 per share from $64.3 million or $1.12 per share in the prior year. FFO as adjusted for the quarter increased to $74.7 million versus $62.3 million in the prior year and was $1.17 per share for the quarter versus $1.08 per share in the prior year, an increase of 8%. Before I walk through the key variances, I want to discuss two of the adjustments to FFO to come to FFO as adjusted. First, as I previously discussed, termination fees received related to leases when an operator exercises its option to purchase the property and terminate the lease prior to lease maturity are included in the gain on sale of real estate for GAAP and thus are executed from the NAREIT definition of FFO. However, lease germination fees not associated with the sale as well as prepayment penalties received related to mortgage loan agreements are included in FFO and FFO as adjusted. Therefore, to be consistent with how other lease termination fees and mortgage loan prepayment penalties are treated and also to be consistent with the wording and intent of the lease agreements, we had the portion of gain on sale related to a termination fee back to FFO to come to FFO as adjusted. Accordingly, for the quarter, we had $2.3 million in such termination fees related to an exercise of the tenant purchase option by one of our public charter school operators and I’ve added this amount to FFO to get to FFO as adjusted. Note that this amount was contemplated in our previous annual guidance. Second, we recorded insurance recovery gains included in other income totaling $1.5 million for the second quarter and $2 million year to date. These gains relate to insurance claims primarily associated with the building that was destroyed by a fire at one of our metro ski resorts. Although these amounts are included in FFO per NAREIT's definition, due to the size and nature of these gains, we have excluded them from FFO as adjusted. Now, I’m going to walk through the key line item variances for the quarter versus the prior year. Our total revenue increased 17% compared to the prior year to a quarterly amount of $118 million. Within the revenue category, rental revenue increased by $18.2 million versus the prior year to $96.1 million and resulted primarily from new investments. Percentage rents for the quarter included in rental revenue were $422,000 versus $87,000 in the prior year. The increase was primarily due to $362,000 in percentage rents received from one of our private schools. Other income increased by $978,000 for the quarter versus last year and was primarily due to the insurance recovery gains of approximately $1.5 million I discussed previously and was partially offset by less fee income. Mortgage and other financing income was $16 million for the quarter, a decrease of approximately $2.3 million versus prior year. The decrease was primarily due to the Camelback hotel and indoor waterpark as the mortgage was rolled into the lease on the adjacent ski hill and outdoor water park in the third quarter last year at the tenant's option as well as the payoff of mortgage notes in the first half of 2016. These decreases were partially offset by additional real estate lending activities. Now on the expense side, G&A expense increased to $9 million for the quarter compared to $7.8 million in the prior year, due primarily to increases in our payroll and benefit costs and professional fees. The increase in payroll and benefit costs is due to the addition of personnel to support our growing asset base as well as increases in incentive compensation and amortization of share based awards. Our net interest expense for the quarter increased by about $2.8 million to $22.8 million. This increase resulted from an increase in average borrowings as well as a decrease in capitalized interest primarily associated with the Adelaar project. Capitalized interest related to Adelaar was $444,000 this quarter compared to $2.1 million in the prior year, as a portion of the project leased to Empire Resorts was placed in service during the first quarter. These increases were partially offset by a lower weighted average interest rate. Transaction cost decreased to $1.5 million from $4.4 million in the prior year due to a decrease in costs associated with potential and terminated transactions. Finally, income tax expense of $423,000 for the quarter primarily relates to our Canadian owned properties and taxable REIT subsidiaries. Current income tax expense for the quarter was $441,000 and as the amount included is a reduction of FFO as adjusted for the quarter. In the prior year, income tax benefit of $7.5 million was recognized based primarily on the favorable completion of an examination by the Canadian Revenue Agency on our Canadian Trust. Turning to the next slide, for the six months ended June 30, our total revenue was up 18% and our FFO as adjusted per share was up 10% to $2.33, certainly strong performance in the first half of our fiscal year. Turning to the next slide, I’ll review some of the company's key credit ratios. As you can see, our coverage ratios for the quarter continue to get stronger with fixed charge coverage of 3.2 times, debt service coverage at 3.6 times and interest coverage at 4 times. Our FFO as adjusted payout ratio was 82% and our net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio was 5.17 times at quarter end, right in line with our stated expected range of 4.6 to 5.6 times. Adjusted net debt to annualized adjusted EBITDA, which I previously discussed, which as I've previously discussed eliminates the penalty for build-to-suit projects under development and annualizes projects placed in service during the quarter was 4.89 times or about 30 basis points lower. 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 a capital markets and liquidity update. At quarter end, we had total outstanding debt of $2.1 billion; about 80% of this debt is fixed rate debt or debt that has been fixed through interest rate swaps with a blended coupon of approximately 5.3%. We had $347 million outstanding at quarter-end on our $650 million line of credit and we had $8.5 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 $38 million for the remainder of 2016 and $158 million in 2017. Turning to the next slide, during the quarter, we prepaid in full two secured mortgage notes payable for $24.5 million with an average interest rate of 6.37%. Our secured debt as a percentage of total debt continues to decrease and now stands at less than 12%. During the second quarter, we raised approximately $17 million under our direct stock repurchase plan. We also received proceeds of $43.4 million related to the issuance of revenue bonds by Sullivan County, which reimbursed us for infrastructure construction costs related to the Adelaar resort project. We anticipate receiving another $44.9 million under these bonds to reimburse us for future costs over the balance of the construction period through 2017. Remember these bonds are not on our books. Also, subsequent to quarter end, we took advantage of a strong private placement market and signed a note purchase agreement with investors for $340 million of senior unsecured notes with an attractive blended interest rate of 4.47%. As shown on our debt maturities schedule on the next slide, the notes were issued in two tranches with $148 million at 4.35% due in eight years and $192 million at 4.56% due in 10 years. Both notes fund on August 22. Importantly in this transaction we demonstrated access to another source of capital for EPR as investors new to our name strongly embraced our business model. Other benefits of this private placement transaction were the flexibility to fill in gaps in our maturity laddering and to do so at levels less than [we pared] public issuance to be bond index eligible. Before I move to the next slide, I did want to note here that we are still strongly committed to the public unsecured debt market and this private placement does not represent a shift in overall strategy for the sourcing of debt. We have $1.2 billion in public bond issuances outstanding and certainly expect to continue to access this market in the future. Turning to the next slide, we are pleased to announce that we are increasing our guidance for 2016 FFO as adjusted per share to a range of $4.72 to $4.82 from a range of $4.70 to $4.80. Also, we are increasing our guidance for investment spending to a range of $650 million to $700 million from a range of $600 million to $650 million. Guidance for 2016 is detailed on page 30 of our supplemental. Note that our guidance for termination fees related to public charter school buyouts is increased for the year by approximately $1.2 million at the midpoint due to additional schools indicating they will be exercising their purchase options in 2016. And our expectation for percentage rents is up at the midpoint by $300,000 related primarily to our private schools. In addition, our guidance for general and administrative expenses increased by approximately $2.5 million for the year, primarily due to higher expected incentive compensation and higher professional fees. Now, with that, I’ll turn it back over to Greg for his closing remarks.