Bob Cutlip
Analyst · Janney. Your line is open
Thanks, Michael. Good morning, everyone. During the first quarter, we acquired two properties, by issuing new debt on one and funding the other property with equity, raised $15.1 million of common equity under the ATM program with Cantor Fitzgerald, extended three leases that were set to expire in 2015 and 2016 and selected three national property management firms as strategic partners for asset management execution. Subsequent to the end of the quarter we also issued a $300,000 interim financing loan, signed a financing term sheet to refinance debt totaling $22 million on three of our properties which have loan maturities this year, and in a recently acquired anchored multi-tenant building the larger tenant agreed to expand into the balance of the building and the smaller tenant’s lease expires in 2016. So as you can see our acquisitions, capital and asset management teams all contributed to our first quarter success. We had an excellent quarter to start 2015 as we continue to increase our asset base by acquiring new properties. This was our 14th consecutive quarter of closing at least one new acquisition. We're extremely pleased with our activity and the consistency over the last several years and we continue to have a strong pipeline of acquisitions. We expect to close more properties prior to the end of the second quarter. Now for some details, during the quarter ended March 31st we acquired two additional properties. The first property is 156,000 square foot office building located in Richardson, Texas in North Dallas suburb. The purchase price $24.7 million with an average cap rate of 8.3% over the life of the 10 year lease. We funded this acquisition with cash on-hand and issuance of $14.6 million of mortgage debt. The tenant operates the nation's largest private Medicare exchange and is wholly-owned by a leading global professional services firm. The second acquisition is a 30,850 square foot office property located in Birmingham, Alabama. The purchase price was $3.7 million with an average cap rate of 9.1% over the life of the 8.5 year lease. The property is fully leased to TekLinks a leading and growing provider of IT consulting and technology-related services to businesses located in the Gulf South. We funded this acquisition with cash on-hand. Our acquisitions team has been placing significant focus on acquiring properties in secondary growth markets. Now the hallmark of our continuing high occupancy remains thorough tenant credit underwriting and the mission critical nature of the facility. However, acquiring properties in growth locations leads to ownership and what we believe will be land constrained locations overtime, which will lead to subsequent increases in property values and ultimately will benefit our shareholders. Over the past 18 to 24 months we've invested in Phoenix, Denver three times, Dallas four times, Austin, Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio to promote this strategy. Shifting to our overall portfolio as of today all the three of our buildings continue to be fully occupied and all of the occupied buildings continue to pay as agreed. One of our vacant properties is located in Houston Texas. This is a 12,000 square foot medical facility in close proximity to our hospital. We have three active prospects for this building, two are for the entire building and one is for two-thirds of the building. We have another vacant property located in Newburyport, Massachusetts where the tenant just vacated last week and relocated to Rhode Island. This is an 86,000 square foot food processing facility and at this time we have one prospect for the entire building. Our other partially vacant property is located in the Southwest suburb of Chicago. The tenant in this property moved out in December and we executed the lease with a new tenant for 38% of the building. At this time we have four active prospects each for the balance of the building or 35,000 square feet. This increased activity seems to validate what market researchers are stating and that is that small and middle market companies are finally seeing improving conditions and are making real estate decisions. Turning to our tenants, we continue to improve the value of our existing portfolio of properties by reviewing and re-negotiating existing leases and performing improvements at our properties. We continue to work diligently on the remainder of our leases that come due in 2016 and we've begun discussions with tenants who have leases expiring in 2016 as well. We originally have 12 leases expiring in 2015 we have successfully extended the lease for seven of these tenants, one is in negotiation with the tenant and one in which we have signed a sale agreement to sell the property to a sub-tenant in the fourth quarter. We have been notified however the three tenants were in fact leased and we're aggressively pursuing new tenants for these properties at this time. The three leases where we know the tenants are vacating comprise less than 3% of our projected 2015 rental income and one half of this income does not expire until December of 2015. So while we originally had 12 leases rolling in 2015 we only have three leases expiring in 2016, six in 2017 and four in 2018. The expiring rents for these years represent less than 2% of the annualized projected rent for each respected year. So after this year our lease rollover will slow down dramatically and our existing portfolios will have stable and growing rental income. As I noted earlier, we have selected three national firms CBRE, Christina Lake Field and JLL to serve as regional partners, as we continue to improve the all important asset management function of our business. Each will perform on the ground property management services at an assigned portfolio. The properties will not incur any expenses that we are not already obligated to incur today. This local expertise will enhance the service to our tenants and will ensure that properties are maintained at a high quality. And in addition we get another benefit is that we're going to be receiving the local market intelligence from our teams which is going to be a significant benefit in our removal, re-leasing and acquisition activities. Locating new tenants and signing leases as I have indicated in the past usually requires some capital outlaid to return improvements and leasing commissions. So in summary at year-end, all of our existing tenants are paying as agreed and our portfolio was over 99% leased. We acquired two properties during the quarter and continue to have a very active pipeline. Our asset management team was also very busy, renewing tenants and leasing our properties. We've consistently increased our acquisition volume over the past three years and we currently have two properties totaling $30 million in due diligence. We have four properties totaling $41 million that are in the letter of intent stage and then we have just over $245 million of properties under initial review. Our objective is to have as I have indicated in the past at least $250 million or $300 million in the pipeline of possible acquisitions, with properties in each phase including the initial review, letter of intent stage and property due diligence. Our team continues to exceed this objective and has prospects at each phase of the acquisition process which we hope is going to lead to continuing and consistent closings in the months ahead. Now let's turn to our Chief Financial Officer, Danielle Jones, who’ll report on the financial results.