David deVilliers, Jr.
Analyst · Rhizome Partners
Thank you, John, and good day to those on the call this morning. Today, I'd like to offer a bit of a slant on our financial results for this past quarter. So, our business segments are important silos in which to report and analyze the company. Operationally, we have some overlap and synergies that can be difficult to follow using the reportable business segments that John referenced in his opening remarks. So, allow me to shine a light on the day to day at FRP using a more operational perspective versus GAAP. Basically, we employ a four-pronged approach to our business since 2018 when we liquidated our legacy warehouse portfolio. In-house, which includes our industrial, commercial and land development platform, these properties are developed, managed and owned 100% by FRP. Then we have the mining and royalties. We have third-party joint ventures, which as the name implies, are projects developed in conjunction with third parties, where FRP is the major owner, but relies on third-party platforms to perform the lion's share of the entitlements, construction and the day to day operations. And fourth, lending ventures where we are the principal capital source for residential land development activities and sales. Relative to our in-house industrial platform, or Asset Management, increased occupancies and rental rates combined to produce a substantial increase in net operating income for these operations from a negative $268,000 in Q4 of 2021 to a positive of $902,000 for Q4 2022. Cranberry Run Business Park in Aberdeen, Maryland became fully occupied in the first quarter of 2022 and remains 100% occupied. The two spec buildings at Hollander Business Park, totaling some 145,000 square feet, completed in late December of 2021, along with our final warehouse of Hollander Business Park totaling 101,750 square feet, should all become fully occupied in the second quarter. On the pre-development front, we have three projects in the queue. The permitting process is currently underway for an approximate 259,000 square foot warehouse building on our 17 acre parcel in the Perryman industrial section of Harford County, Maryland. Not too different from our other assets in Aberdeen. Depending on market conditions and local government posture, construction on this project could begin as early as Q2 2023. In the fall of 2022, we purchased 170 acres of industrial land in Northeast Cecil County, Maryland. This plot of land will hold a 900,000 square foot distribution warehouse. Initial predevelopment activities have commenced. And assuming favorable market conditions, we expect to construct this warehouse in 2024 or 2025. Finally, in Q3 of 2022, we completed the annexation process of the 55 acres we own in Harford County, Maryland that was purchased in 2020. Entitlements and building design to create up to two 675,000 square feet of warehouse product will follow in 2024, with construction to follow in 2025 or 2026. Existing land leases for the storage of trailers onsite helped to offset our carrying entitlement costs on this process. Finally, completion of these three aforementioned land development projects, plus the final warehouse at Hollander will add just shy of 2 million square feet of additional warehouse product to our industrial platform that, when added to the other assets in operation at Hollander Business Park and Cranberry, will total nearly 2.4 million square feet. With the increased occupancy at the new buildings at Hollander and the fully occupied Cranberry Run Business Park, NOI in this segment should trend positively throughout the remainder of the year. Mining and royalty, as John mentioned in his opening remarks, our mining and royalty division saw total revenues for the quarter of $2.9 million versus $2,267,000 in the same period last year. This is the most revenue any quarter ever for this segment. Operating profit was $2.452 million, an increase of $485,000 over the same period last year. NOI in this segment was $2.779 million, up 30% over Q4 2021. Moving on to our third party joint ventures. Currently, we maintain both stabilized and projects under development with three distinct partners – MRP Realty, Woodfield Development and St. John Properties. Projects that reached 90% occupancy for a period of 90 days are considered stabilized, otherwise they remain in development. As of the end of the year 2022, our JV program included seven mixed use projects, six apartment retail and one office retail project in various stages of development and operation. Concentrating on the apartment retail projects, I offer the following highlights. Four apartment retail projects are located in Washington DC, where MRP is our joint venture partner. These projects are Dock 79. Maren, Bryant Street phase one, and Verge. Dock 79 and Maren remain better than 93% occupied on average for the quarter. And with the last retail suite of Dock 79 being leased prior to the end of the year, the retail component of both buildings is now fully leased. Bryant Street's phase one, our transit oriented mixed use project just north of Union Station in DC, saw its total residential occupancy increased to 89.5% and retail occupancy remained at 71.4% as of year-end. Several small retail tenants that will make up our food hall concepts are due to open for business at Bryant Street over the next several weeks, helping to bolster the retail component which has been severely curtailed by an elongated permitting timeframe and supply chain issues. Our newest project in DC, Verge, welcomed its first tenant just before Thanksgiving, and at quarter's end was 13.7% leased and 9.6% occupied. Nearly half of the 8,400 square feet of retail space at Verge is leased with design under way. Our two apartment retail projects in Greenville, South Carolina with Woodfield as our development partner are faring quite well. Riverside's 200 departments were 18 months old in February, joining Dock and Maren as our third stabilized asset in Q3 of 2022. Riverside was 92.5% occupied and 98% leased as of the end of the fourth quarter. .408 Jackson's 227 apartments were placed in service just before the end of the year. And its 100 apartments went under lease on March 1. .408's 4,500 square feet of retail is 100% preleased with interior construction now underway. Greenville is an exciting secondary market in the southern Sunbelt. The city is seeing accelerating growth and we continue to look out for additional opportunities in this part of the country. So, to summarize, as year's end, the six apartment retail projects, including Dock 79, Maren, Bryant Street, Verge, Riverside and .408 Jackson totaled 1,827 apartments in operation, which represents a 67% increase over the fourth quarter last year. Strong renewals and rental rate increases along with lease up of the placed in service projects helped to increase FRP's share of the NOI for these six projects to 2.6 million in the fourth quarter 2022, a 29% increase over the same period last year. Finally, as a postscript to our third party joint venture program, I have two items to mention. Our Hickory Creek project, a 294 DST investment in Richmond, Virginia was sold in the fourth quarter of 2022, with sale proceeds to the company amounting to $8.83 billion on an initial investment of $6 million. Total distributions for the year prior to the sale total an additional $332,000. Also in November, we entered into a new partnership with Steuart Investment Company and our existing partners of over a decade, MRP Realty, for the development of up to 10 mixed use projects in the Anacostia and Buzzard Point submarkets of southeast Washington DC. These projects will come from four parcels owned by Steuart, phases three and four of our Riverfront development, our site currently leased to Vulcan Materials, and the existing mixed use apartment retail properties, Dock, Maren and Verge owned by MRP and FRP. Upon completion, these 10 projects will comprise over 3 million square feet of mixed use development, including approximately 3,000 residential units and 150,000 square feet of retail. This partnership will solidify a generational opportunity to create and exclusively control a unique waterfront destination among multiple projects with the freedom to pursue development opportunities that are unavailable to individual parcels. Together, these parcels represent over a quarter mile of uninterrupted waterfront along the Anacostia River at the southern entrance to our nation's capital. As part of the newly formed partnership, we along with our partner MRP sold a 20% tenant and common interest in both Dock 79 and Maren to Steuart Investment Company. The gross sale amounted to $65.3 million, or the equivalent of over $570,000 per apartment unit, $44.5 million of which represented FRP's share the sale. Free development activities on phase one conceptionally planned for 500 plus apartments in 10,000 square feet retail, located on one of the four parcels that Steuart brings to the venture, has commenced and we anticipate a shovel ready project sometime in late 2023 or early 2024. Looking on to our last operational enterprise, lending ventures. The first of our two current lending venture projects, Amber Ridge in PG County, Maryland, is coming to a close. The total commitment to this project was $18.5 million. The investment includes a charged 10% interest rate and a minimum preferred return of 20%, above which a profit induced waterfall determines the final split of proceeds. As of year-end, the horizontal development was complete and 135 of the total 187 lots, all of which are under contract to sale, have been taken down with $16.6 million inclusive of interest having been returned to FRP as of 12/31/2022. Our current lending venture, now known as Aberdeen Overlook, is a 110-acre residential development project in Aberdeen, Maryland, consisting of 344 lots. Subsequent to year-end, entitlements were complete, which was a condition precedent to the purchase of the land, which occurred in January. We've committed $31.1 million in funding under similar terms to Amber Ridge through this program. We have a contract of sale for all 344 lots from a national homebuilder, inclusive of 222 townhouse and 122 single family lots that included a deposit of $3.3 million. Needless to say, we're watching this project closely as homebuilding throughout the country has slipped dramatically, but we do have certain safeguards in place. And demand in the fourth quarter in this particular submarket far outweighed the supply. In March of 2020, when the world shut down, FRP maintained a portfolio of 510,000 square feet of operating industrial office and retail space and 599 apartments. Today, FRP has over 760,000 square feet of operating industrial office and retail space and 1,827 operating apartment units. We also have over 435 acres of land in our development pipeline to support over 3 million square feet of additional development. FRP is at the dawn of an era of growth, all made possible by the breadth of opportunity we've been able to cultivate through the leveraging of our financial foundation, which uniquely enables us to capitalize on great projects and sometimes make hard decisions not to. Thank you. And I'll now turn the call back to John.