Don Wood
Analyst · your question
Thanks, Leah. Good afternoon, everybody. Good morning. What a difference a couple of months makes. The natural positive annual sentiment of spring, fall and winter, coupled with the productive team rolled out, stimulus money and end-in-sight mentality, it's really got a long way in validating our optimism for a strong 2022 and 2023. First quarter FFO per share of $1.17 was sequentially better than the 2020 fourth quarter of $1.14, a positive surprise for us and the result of far fewer tenant failure than anticipated during the quarter and far better cash recoveries than anticipated. As a result, we're confident enough to update our 2022 earnings guidance and provide some clarity on the next three quarters of 2021. Dan will cover that in a few minutes. Pent-up consumer demand is real. We see it in virtually all of our properties in all of our markets despite government-imposed restrictions that still persist in our market. And when coupled with government stimulus cash, it's really powerful. PPP and other COVID-related programs that many of our tenants have taken advantage of has served an important role in buying time and getting both current and deferred rent paid. The $29 billion Restaurant Revitalization Fund, earmarked specifically for restaurants and similar places of business, as part of the massive COVID relief build will undoubtedly also create a strong tailwind for that retail category. So with the GYMS Act that, if authorized, will allow the Small Business Administration to make COVID-related grants to privately owned fitness facilities. These programs, among others, are particularly good news for Federal's lifestyle-oriented properties, which are recovering very nicely. It's quickly become a very optimistic time in our business. Now as you would expect from me, a warning about over exuberance this year is in order as many retailers, particularly small owners, along with theaters and gyms are in a weakened state. And while buoyed by temporary stimulus, need more growth in their sales than they're currently generating to be viable long-term businesses. Having said that, they'll certainly get the opportunity to succeed because traffic is back in large numbers across the board. Perhaps the greatest indication of a bright future is the continuation of exceptionally strong leasing volumes, including first quarter deals for over 0.5 million square feet of comparable space, 35% more deals than last year's largely pre-COVID first quarter for 9% more GLA, actually 24% more GLA than the average of our first quarter production over the last five years. By any measure, we're doing a lot of leases. The fact that it was also done at 9% higher rents than the previous tenants were paying for the same space bodes extremely well for 2022 and beyond when those deals are earnings contributors. The rate and volume of new deals as opposed to renewals was particularly impressive. 54 new deals for more than 220,000 square feet at 18% more rent than the previous tenant would pay. What's particularly encouraging to me is how broad-based our leasing continues to be. In the first quarter, we did grocery and drugstore deals with Giant, Whole Foods and CVS. We did box deals with Dick's and Bed, Bath. We did fitness deals with Crunch and Planet Fitness. We did lifestyle deals with CB2, American Eagle, Madewell, Athleta, Blue Bottle Cafe Coffee and a couple of dozen restaurant specialty service-oriented retailers. Strong demand all across the board, particularly in California. In fact, let me take some time today to focus in on California because it really is a microcosm of our portfolio, particularly our nonessential lifestyle product and, in my opinion, a leading indicator into the future of the Bethesda Rows, the Pike & Roses, the Assembly Rows in our portfolio. Whether good or bad, things always seem to come first to this huge and complex market. First, the governor there has previously announced that all COVID restrictions will be removed next month. This is great news. We did 50% more new deals in California in the first quarter than we did in the fourth quarter, which itself was strong. As you know, we're heavily invested in and around Silicon Valley in the north and in the Greater Los Angeles area in the south and are fully committed to investing in California in the future. Tenant demand and consumer traffic are among the highest anywhere in our portfolio, and 2021 should be an all-time record for us in terms of the number of new retail leases we expect to do there. It's really hard to short great real estate in California despite the headwinds. Let me start with San Jose and Silicon Valley, which has become a beneficiary of urban and suburban migration in San Francisco to the north. Santana Row car traffic, as measured by our parking systems, rose 69% in April compared with January and is fast approaching pre-COVID levels. Residential occupancy is back up over 95% after dipping to a COVID low point of 91% in the middle of last year. And as you may have seen late last month, Santana Row was the recipient of the first large Silicon Valley COVID era office lease site as Fortune 500 cloud-led software company, NetApp, decided to relocate their headquarters to Santana Row in 700 Santana Row, the 300,000 square foot building not yet populated but previously leased to Splunk. The stated reason: to better facilitate a winning employee experience in a more connected space. In other words, state-of-the-art facilities in a fully amenitized environment that makes retaining employees and hiring great talent easier. No lost economics to us versus the Splunk deal, but two more years of term and a better diversified tenant base. And by the way, another candidate for additional office space at Santana as their Silicon Valley footprint grows. Splunk, of course, remains fully committed to Santana Row at 500 Santana Row. Now across the street at Santana West, our 375,000 square foot spec office building under construction, remains unleased -- leased and has certainly been set back in terms of timing of lease-up with the pause in overall office leasing during COVID. But we remain, and in fact, are more optimistic about its leasing prospects than we've been since COVID hit and are encouraged by the office-centric back-to-work comments made by the Silicon Valley tone setters like Google, Amazon, Apple, Netflix there. These and others are all hiring in the South Bay and are showing a heightened desire for newly constructed office space with walkable amenities and ample park. In Southern California, our Primestor portfolio, which caters to a largely Latino population in Los Angeles, remains among the top-performing group of shopping centers among all Federal centers nationwide in terms of rent collection and property operating income compared with pre-COVID levels. Big assets like Plaza El Segundo and The Point are recovering nicely and serve the beach cities of Manhattan, Formosa and Redondo Beaches, places which are even more attractive to live in than they were pre-COVID. So I guess a somewhat obvious conclusion here is that California is as big and complex an economy as any region can be, actually bigger and more complex than most countries. And as with every major market, varies greatly within the submarkets where the supply and demand characteristics of the specific real estate dictate performance. We've got some great real estate sale there. All right. A few other proactive comments before turning it over to Dan. While always a key part of our business plan, we've turned up the heat on the number and the scope of shopping center redevelopments and repositionings that are or about to be underway. A combined capital budget in excess of $75 million over 17 projects aimed at ensuring relevant best-in-class community-centric centers in a post-COVID environment. More gathering areas, more outdoor seating, more designated curbside pickup spots, better landscaping, covered walkways, you get the idea. Everything aimed at ensuring our properties are the consolidators in their given submarket. In terms of our developments, we're really looking forward to showing off the new CocoWalk when investors are back to traveling regularly. Today, tenants continue to open where the retail space is 98% and office space 82%, underleased or executed LOI. The initial market acceptance of this revitalized center at Coconut Grove has been phenomenal and should only get better over the next 12 months as more and more retailers open their doors. Heading north to Darien, Connecticut, we're very bullish about our mixed-use neighborhood that's well under construction here, especially given its perfect location for a hybrid New York City work model. For those of you who live near or are familiar with our project, you should start to be able to get a sense of what that mixed-use development is going to feel like as construction and leasing move forward as anticipated. Office leasing activity has picked up markedly this past quarter at 909 Rose -- Pike & Rose, where 75% of both POI and GLA at a 219,000 square foot office building is either under lease or executed LOI. Not only activity, but deal-making feels so much more productive than it did just a few weeks ago. In Assembly Row, PUMA is just a couple of months away from opening their new U.S. headquarters and welcoming employees back to work. And we'll begin to market our -- and separately, we'll begin to market our residential project there in earnest this month. Like the CocoWalk Pike & Rose, office leasing activity has picked up here, too, but not to the same extent. The Boston Metropolitan area is poised for recovery, but clearly lagged behind the others by what feels like several weeks or a month. Okay. From developments and redevelopments to acquisitions. We closed on our first acquisition in 2021 last week in the form of Chesterbrook Shopping Center in the affluent first ring DC suburb of McLean, Virginia. We paid $26 million in initial five cap for an 80% controlling interest in this 83% leased Safeway-anchored center and with a market repositioning plan and up under market in-place rents, we expect strong short-term growth and significant value add. We're also under contract and in our due diligence period for several other acquisitions that, absent negative surprises, will close later in the year. I'm not ready to talk further about them at this point, but more to come here over the next few months. Okay. That's about all I have for my prepared remarks today. Let me turn it over to Dan, and we'll be happy to entertain your questions after that.