Victor J. Coleman
Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets
Thank you, Kay, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We're off to a solid start in 2013. The first quarter was highlighted by a very successful common stock offering and a healthy leasing activity. Overall, the underlying fundamentals in our key California markets remain very strong and set the stage for another very productive year for the company. From the financing front, during the quarter, we completed a public offering of 8 million shares of common stock and the exercise of the underwriters' overall option to purchase an additional 1.2 million shares at the public offering price of $21.50 per share. Total net proceeds from the offering were approximately $189,900,000, which will help support our growth initiatives in 2013. Suffice to say, I was extremely pleased with the level of investor interest in this offering and appreciate the vote of confidence in our investment decisions. Turning to our first quarter leasing activity. Conditions in our key California markets continue to push up the lease rate of our portfolio to rental rates well above expiring and underwritten rents. As we and others have observed for some time now, trends towards open and more collaborative work environments continue to fuel the demand by technology, media, entertainment and social media tenants for office space, which caters to these sectors. Higher density and amenities tailored to a dynamic workforce have been the hallmark of tenancy by these industries. This trend is not confined to these sectors as more traditional industries are increasingly adjusting work environments to the changing needs of today's emerging workforce. It is more than just work environment, it's both -- companies in both new and traditional sectors recognize that workers want to work close to where they prefer to live, typically in locations with access to public transportation and benefit the improvement in work surroundings. Our portfolio has been assembled with this very trend at the forefront of the investment strategy. In San Francisco, the trend of tightening vacancies and rising rents continue during the first quarter of 2013. San Francisco counties unemployment rate of 6.3% was among the lowest in the state in the month of February, which is down 150 basis points from 1 year ago and compares with 9.7% unemployment rate statewide for the same period. This gain is largely due to growth within the technology sector, which has experienced 60% of job growth over the past 2 years, adding 15,000 jobs. Strong growth continues to fuel leasing momentum. The market [indiscernible] percent during the first quarter, with the lowest vacancy rate in the city currently in the South of Market submarket at 4.5%. Similarly, rental rates continue to improve during the first quarter. Market-wide asking rates climbed to $50.79, a 4% increase over the fourth quarter and an 18% increase over the first quarter of last year. In Los Angeles, market fundamentals are projected to continue to rebound as the economy improves. During the past few months, jobless claims have decreased, consumer confidence has strengthened and overall employment has grown. The general consensus is that commercial real estate industry has rebounded past its low point and is growing consistently within the new economy. The overall vacancy rate in Greater Los Angeles was 17.4% at the end of the first quarter of '13. This rate was relatively flat compared to last quarter but has decreased by 40 basis points compared to the first quarter 2012 rate, which was 17.8%. Overall, the market is continuing to recover at a measured pace. Importantly, our West Los Angeles submarket continues to be the bright spot for the region, capitalizing on high demand for creative office space. West L.A. has lodged a positive net absorption for the past 4 quarters, recording the highest positive net absorption in any submarket at 213,405 square feet. Vacancy in the first quarter was at 14.8%, a drop of 70 basis points over the past 5 quarters. The proven track record of positive net absorption and decreased vacancy in the market has moved to tighten concession packages and increase asking rental rates. These trends continue to support our goals for Element LA project at the corner of Olympic and Bundy in West Los Angeles and underscore the strength of our growth strategy of targeting assets in Santa Monica through West Los Angeles and in Hollywood and, more recently, in Burbank's Media District. A couple of recent sale transactions further underscore the strength of creative office assets in West Los Angeles and Santa Monica. The recently completed sale of The Clock Tower building in Santa Monica for $655 per square foot and recently announced sale of a campus at Playa Vista for $671 per square foot demonstrate that well-located assets catering to media, entertainment and technology tenants similar to our Element LA and 604 Arizona projects continue to lead the market in terms of valuation. We expect this trend to continue as employment growth in those key sectors outpaces other sectors in the economy. The Orange County office market has also been a steady amount of activity in the past, with absorption -- with net absorption continuing the positive trend experienced across the county since the middle of 2010. The first quarter ended with nearly 750,000 square feet of net absorption. This represents an increase of nearly 93,000 square feet in the previous quarter. Class-A space generated the majority of absorption contributed roughly 480,000 square feet of the total. Orange County continues to hold one of the lowest employment rates within the state of California following 6.5% in February from a January rate of 7.1%. Over the past 4 quarters, Orange County's employment has grown at an average annual rate of 1.1%, and industry analysts predict that employment will grow 2.1% in Orange County over the next 2 years, with the professional and business services employment sector expected to post the best job growth. Occupancy and gains have helped stabilize rental rates throughout the county. The overall full-service gross average asking lease rate has held steady at $1.91 per square foot, consistent with the $1.91 to $1.93 per square foot range in asking range since the beginning of 2010. Turning to our portfolio. We continue to enjoy healthy leasing activity during the first quarter, with significant leases in each of our key markets. In the first quarter, we executed 16 new in rental leases in our office properties totaling 212,178 square feet. And as a result, our stabilized office portfolio reached 94.5% leased at the end of the first quarter. Highlights of the first quarter leasing includes Square, Inc.'s exercise of its option to lease an additional 81,354 square feet of space in our 1455 Market Street property in San Francisco. In connection with the exercise of the option, Square also increased its square footage under its lease by an additional 5,060 square feet. Recall that in November of last year, Square signed a leasing encompassing 246,078 square feet of initial occupancy at 1455, with the 81,354-square-feet expansion option. The exercise of this option and expansion that brings Square lease at 1455 to a total of 332,492 square feet of occupancy. 181,805 square feet commenced in March of '13, 20,801 square feet commenced in April of this past year and the remaining 129,886 square feet is scheduled for commencement in early '14. Another first quarter leasing highlight was a new 45,496 square-foot-lease with Nordstrom, Inc. at our 901 Market Street property. Encompassing a portion of the ground floor and the entire second floor, the new lease will furnish 2 stories of prominent retail scheduled to commence with the opening of a new Nordstrom rack store in February of 2014. In Orange County, we signed an expansion at our City Plaza property with CashCall, Inc. for an additional 38,391 square feet scheduled to commence in June of this year. This expansion brings CashCall's total leased square footage to City Plaza to 163,329 square feet and entirely backfills the lease to Kondaur Capital scheduled to expire this month with little downtime. Turning to our first quarter results for our media and entertainment properties. As of the conclusion of the first quarter, the trailing 12-month occupancy for our media entertainment properties increased to 74.1% from 69.2% for the trailing 12-month period ended March 31, 2012. As suggested, the significant improvement in trailing 12-month occupancy demand for television production in Los Angeles remains very strong. That demand accounts for some of or more than 30% increase in year-over-year revenue at our media and entertainment properties. Of greater significance to the year-over-year improvement is the increase in property-related revenue, which increased by more than 70% and accounts for more than 3/4 of the year-over-year increase in total revenue. Increase in other property-related revenue largely reflects the unseasonably high level of production activity at our Sunset Gower property, with the accelerated production schedule for the Showtime series Dexter, which is scheduled to end its successful run later this year. Production activity for Dexter is expected to curtail during the second and third quarters. As a result, we anticipate that the revenue we have been generating from this tenant, including the other property-related revenue principally generated in the second and third quarters will decrease, resulting in a corresponding temporary decrease in the net income from operations from our media and entertainment segment on the account of the expiration. Allow me to briefly update you on the status of our acquisition pipeline. We're currently looking at more than 4 million square feet of properties in both Northern and Southern California, as well as Seattle, with the gross value in excess of $1 billion. The pipeline consists of a combination of stabilized and value-add opportunities in target markets which would complement our existing portfolio. We're encouraged by this transactional activity and potential acquisitions we're seeing, and we hope to be in position to announce our acquisition in the near future. Before I turn the call over to Mark to discuss our first quarter results, I want to mention something that we're pooling together for purposes of our investor presentation materials for the upcoming NAREIT Conference. We expect to make those materials available on our website in connection with the conference. As you know, we completed more than 700,000 square feet of new and renewal leases in the fourth quarter of 2012 and another 212,000 square feet in the most recently completed quarter for a combined 912,000 square feet or more than 20% of our current office portfolio. In many cases, this leasing activity involves substantial increases in the base rents compared to expiring rents. These leases are typically signed several months in advance of their anticipated lease commencement dates and often entail a period of rental abatement. This high level of leasing activity has resulted in an increase in our lease percentage without an immediate corresponding increase in our economic lease percentage. However, the executed leases commence as they commence and the rental abatement period expires, we expect that the increases in the economic lease percentage will result in substantial increases in the net operating income generated by the effective properties. We anticipate providing further information regarding the embedded and/or operating income growth stemming from this extraordinary leasing activity in our investor presentation materials at the upcoming NAREIT Conference, which will simultaneously be on our website for complete access to all. Now I'm going to turn over the call to Mark, our CFO.