Edward Fritsch
Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us today. On our last call, we talked about how the U.S. economy had seemingly settled into a slow growth pattern, the so called 2% economy. Most U.S. economic factors such as GDP, treasury rates, job growth and inflation were plodding along at approximately 2%. Everything still seems to be plodding along at the same tepid pace, although some of those metrics now need a generous dose of rounding to get the 2%.
There is still a lot of uncertainty ruining the U.S. in this 2% economy. In other words, what’s going to happen with government spending the elections, taxes, the debt ceiling, healthcare implementation and all that before mentioning the problems outside of our boarders?
With the collective magnitude of these issues, it is difficult for anyone to predict what the ultimate impact will be on the now rounded 2% economy. As we’ve said, our focus at Highwoods is to continue to stick to the core aspects of our strategic plan, while employing tactics to capitalize on anticipated and real-time opportunities.
Our second quarter financial results were solid. For the quarter, FFO was $0.70 per share excluding $0.01 and debt extinguishment and acquisition costs. On a year-over-year basis, FFO per share increased 11% and occupancy grew by 80 bps. The performance of our same property portfolio results a positive on a year-over-year basis with cash net operating income growing 1.8% and average occupancy increasing 150 bps. Given our sound performance thus far this year, we now expect 2012 FFO to be $2.66 to $2.74 per share. At the midpoint, this equates to a 4.7% year-over-year increase.
Turning to our balance sheet, we have a stated strategy to grow our company on a leverage neutral basis over the long run. Last September, when we announced our $300 million investment in PPG Place and Riverwood 100, our leverage increased from 43.8% to 47.5%. Today, taking into account our ATM issuances, dispositions and acquisitions, our leverage is now 43.7% and we have zero drawn on our $475 million credit facility. And we’ve delivered on our commitment to return to our pre-acquisition leverage.
To give some context to all this, on the ATM front, year-to-date, we’ve raised net proceeds of $101.3 million including 1.98 million shares for net proceeds of $65.9 million since our May 2012 call. On the disposition front, year-to-date we sold $148 million of non-core properties including $128 million announced this month in 2 separate transactions. Last week, we sold five office properties in Nashville’s airport submarket which has consistently been one of the markets weakest for $41 million garnering us a $6.8 million gain.
We remain very bullish on Nashville’s core submarkets. Our remaining 2.6 million square feet Nashville are 96.1% leased and we’re developing a 100% 203,000 square foot office building on top of that. This week, we sold 3 non-core properties leased to the federal government for $86.5 million generating a $14 million gain. These assets were relative outliers for us. One was by far, our largest industrial warehouse in Atlanta, one is located in Downtown at a core market -- submarket for us and one was our only investment in the entire State of Mississippi.
Before discussing recent buys, here is a brief update on Pittsburgh mark entry. At PPG Place, occupancy is now 83.6%, up from 81.2% at the time when we purchased a property and it’s projected to grow to 86.5% by year-end. Also, Andy Wisniewski recently joined us as our Pittsburgh Division Head. Andy has 24 years of commercial real estate experience in Pittsburgh and will oversee all aspects of that market for us. Andy came from CB Richard Ellis where he served as Executive Vice President. Andy in Highwoods are a terrific fit and we were thrilled to attract yet another skilled and highly respected real estate veteran to our team.
So earlier this month, we announced the acquisition of 3 medical properties in Greensboro for a total investment of $29.8 million in an off market transaction very nicely sourced by Rick Dehnert, our Greensboro Division Head. Two of the 3 buildings have closed and the third will close upon obtaining letter of consent which is expected by the end of this quarter.
These properties encompassing 149,000 square feet are strategically located across the street from the largest hospital in the metro area and are on average only 7 years old. As we’ve said previously, we continue to pursue development projects across our markets. However, built-to-suit decisions remain painfully protracted. There is still a wide cost delta to go from second gen to first gen but as larger blocks of institutional quality space are consumed, we are hopeful a number of prospects will eventually give us the green light.
Mike will address operations in more detail. However, I want to note that occupancy at the end of the second quarter was 90.7%, a 50 BP sequential increase and an 80 BP increase from second quarter of last year. We do anticipate occupancy dropping in the third quarter largely as a result of our GSA sale and the 2 move outs discussed on previous calls.
In closing my remarks, I applaud our dedicated team for all of their collective efforts from leasing, capital recycling, balance sheet stewardship and for their outstanding service to our customers.
And I’ll turn the call over to Mike.