Bruce Duncan
Analyst · KeyBanc
Thanks, Arthur and thanks to everyone for joining us on our call today. 2015 was another very successful year for First Industrial throughout our organization. We ended the year with occupancy at 96.1%, an increase of 60 basis points in the fourth quarter and 180 basis points for the year. This is really a testament to the hard work of the entire First Industrial team, including the enhancements we have made to our portfolio, so many thanks to all my teammates around the country. Our strong performance was also exhibited in our other metrics. Fourth quarter same-store cash NOI was up 5.1% and up 5.2% for the year. Cash rental rates were up 5% in the fourth quarter, marking the eighth consecutive positive quarter for this metric. On a GAAP basis, rental rates were up 17.2% and we have now been positive on that basis for 16 consecutive quarters. While we are happy with our 2015 portfolio performance, there is always work to be done. As you know, in the first quarter, we typically expect to see a seasonal occupancy dip of 30 to 50 basis points. This year, we have a no move-out of a 400,000 square foot tenant at our lone asset in the Memphis market. As a result, our first quarter occupancy dip could be 100 to 125 basis points. Industrial sector fundamentals remain healthy, with demand continuing to outpace supply aided by tailwinds from the growth in e-commerce. While overall economic data has been mixed, our regional teams continue to see broad-based tenant activity. Against this backdrop, we expect overall cash rental rates to be positive once again in 2016. Turning now to our investments, we had an active fourth quarter. We acquired 5 buildings in three transactions totaling $93.9 million. Our largest acquisition was a 2-building 1 million square foot portfolio in the I-95 North Corridor of Baltimore/Washington for $61.9 million. As discussed on our last call in an Investor Day last November, this transaction included a stabilized building and a value-add component. Upon lease up of the 349 square foot vacant building, our expected combined stabilized yield is 6.3%. As we also noted at Investor Day, we acquired 100% leased 80,000 square foot asset in the DFW airport submarket of Dallas for $6.9 million, at a 6.4% in place cap rate. Lastly, we acquired Energy Commerce Center, a newly completed two-building development totaling 288,000 square feet for $25.1 million. The center is located along Beltway 8 in the Southeast submarket of Houston. This submarket has seen solid levels of tenant activity led by the downstream petrochemical industry, which is benefiting from lower feedstock and energy prices. The buildings are now 41% leased and this projected stabilized GAAP yield is 6.6%. As a reminder, when we take GAAP yield, we are referring to our first year stabilized cash yield over our GAAP investment basis. Like our developments, our underwriting for this and other acquisitions with vacancy assume one year of downtime. For the full year 2015, acquisitions totaled $169.2 million. They were comprised of $143.1 million of buildings at an expected weighted average stabilized cap rate of 5.9%. Approximately one-third of those acquisitions were in Los Angeles and the Inland Empire. We also acquired 26.1 million of key land sites in 2015, including parcels in Chicago, Dallas, Phoenix and Atlanta, where construction is already underway. Buying sites like these that we can fairly quickly move into production is central to our development strategy. So now, let me take some time to recap our development activity for you. In the fourth quarter, we had one new development start that we talked about at our Investor Day. This is our build-to-suit in Atlanta in the I-75 South Corridor to serve the needs of an existing customer. There we are expanding our tenants from its current 133,000 square foot space to a 400,000 square foot facility slated for completion in the fourth quarter. Total estimated investment is $23.3 million at a GAAP yield of 8%. We also placed in service four new developments in the fourth quarter. The first two are our First Interstate North II building in Minneapolis and our First Northwest Commerce Center in Houston. These developments total 494,000 square feet and were 80% occupied at year end. While we are disappointed that we didn’t achieve 100% occupancy on these buildings within 12 months of construction completion, we have confidence in our team to get them leased. The other two were at our First Park at Ocean Ranch development in Southern California that we completed in the fourth quarter. Totaling 172,000 square feet, they are 100% leased. So, we are very pleased to be our typical 1 year lease-up assumption. In total, in 2015, we placed in service 7 buildings, comprised of 1.8 million square feet, with an estimated investment of $109.2 million. As a group, they were 95% leased at year end, with an average expected GAAP yield of 7.3%. Moving now to our completed developments that are not yet in service, at December 31, this group included projects in Dallas, the Lehigh Valley, Phoenix and Southern California. They total 1.2 million square feet, with a total estimated investment of $82.4 million. They were 35% leased at quarter end and have a targeted weighted average GAAP yield of 7%. We also had four developments under construction at year end, including the aforementioned build-to-suit in Atlanta, plus projects in the Inland Empire, Chicago and Dallas. These totaled 1.4 million square feet and were 28% leased as of December 31 with an estimated investment of $78.9 million and a targeted weighted average GAAP yield of 7.5%. I refer you to Page 20 of our supplemental for details on all of our developments. We also have been busy since year end on the investment front. We recently started a redevelopment project in the South Bay submarket of Los Angeles. There, we are demolishing a 162,000 square foot building that we own, to make way for a modern 63,000 square foot trans-load facility that we have pre-leased to a third-party logistics provider for 7 years. The initial GAAP yield on our cumulative investment of $17.6 million is 5.2%, while yield on an economic basis is in the low-4s. This redevelopment will give us a state-of-the-art scarce asset in a very tight submarket. We also acquired a high quality 126,000 square foot distribution building in an infill submarket of Orlando that was 100% leased. We like the fundamental of the Orlando market, with overall vacancy below 7%. The purchase price was $9.3 million and the in-place yield was 7.8%, reflecting above market rental rates. This is our second building in the market and we will look to add to our holdings over time. Lastly, we added an 11-acre land parcel in the Inland Empire near our other developments in this market. The purchase price of $1.7 million and we expect to be able to build up to 236,000 square feet after we complete some entitlement work. Moving on to dispositions, we are very active in the fourth quarter. As we continued our disciplined program of selling the assets that have lower expected cash flow growth to fund our new investments. In total, fourth quarter sales were $108 million, comprised of 51 buildings, totaling 2.8 million square feet, plus two land parcels. The weighted in-place cap rate for these transactions was 7.6%. Portfolio sales in Chicago, Minneapolis and Detroit accounted more than half of our fourth quarter volume. For all of 2015, sales totaled $158.4 million, comprised of 66 buildings, totaling 3.8 million square feet, plus four land parcels. The average weighted in-place cap rate for these buildings is 6.7%, with an expected stabilized NOI yield of 7.5%. In the first quarter to-date, we sold 154,000 square foot building in Chicago for $5.1 million. The transaction market continues to be active and we expect to sell $150 million to $200 million of properties in 2016, as we continue our active portfolio management strategy. As we have discussed in the past, we may suffer some near-term dilution from these sales, as we expect to use most of the proceeds to self fund incremental investments, primarily through development. Now, on to the dividend, as we outlined to you at our November Investor Day, all of our efforts are aligned with driving cash flow for investors and along with it the dividend. As a result of our projected 2016 cash flow growth and potential cash flow gains related to asset sales, our Board of Directors increased our quarterly dividend per share to $0.19, a 49% increase from our prior dividend, representing an AFFO payout ratio of approximately 70%. Scott will discuss this in more detail in a minute. So for our whole team at First Industrial, it is business as usual. We are focused on delivering value for our shareholders by realizing the long-term cash flow growth opportunity we outlined at Investor Day and continuing to demonstrate the quality of our portfolio and the strength of our platform. With that, Scott?