Victor J. Coleman
Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets
Thank you, Kay, and welcome everyone to our third quarter 2013 conference call. This past quarter was another important chapter in the growth of our company. I'm very pleased that during the third quarter we successfully closed our previously announced acquisition of the approximate 836,000 square foot office portfolio in Seattle. As I mentioned on our last call, this high-quality portfolio gives us meaningful presence in the region, with a significant foothold in the top submarkets in Downtown Seattle. Also during the quarter, we completed the previously announced disposition of our City Plaza property and used the proceeds from the disposition towards the acquisition of the Seattle portfolio pursuant to a like-kind exchange under the Internal Revenue Code Section 1031. Third quarter leasing activity remained active. In addition to the 43,122 square feet of new and renewal leases that we executed at our office properties during the quarter, we also successfully negotiated a 12-year lease with Deluxe Entertainment Services Inc., a leading provider of services and technology for the global digital media and entertainment industry, for our entire 63,400 square foot 3401 Exposition Boulevard property in Santa Monica, California. This lease was executed on October 22, 2013, a mere 5 months following our acquisition of this exceptional renovation property. As you may recall, we completed the acquisition of 3401 Exposition Boulevard during the second quarter for $24.7 million. Situated at the corner of Exposition Boulevard and Centinela Avenue in the heart of the Olympic Media Corridor, 3401 Exposition is currently undergoing a full base-building redevelopment. The structure has been stripped to its core framing and has been structurally reinforced. Significant upgrades include, new exterior facades, a new roof, and new mechanical and electrical systems. The renovation process is on schedule and on budget and is expected to be complete by the first quarter of '14. The Watt is expected to commence the tenant improvements within the next 60 to 90 days in time for an early third quarter 2014 lease commencement. In addition to our efforts at 3401 Exposition, the redevelopment of our Element LA project in West Los Angeles is on track to deliver one of Southern California's premier creative office campuses. Toward the end of the quarter, we successfully purchased a building immediately adjacent to our Element LA project, and with the addition of this fifth building, the 12-acre campus will now include approximately 285,000 square feet of creative office space, along with a 5-story, 830 stall parking garage. The building is located on Bundy Avenue, along with the parking structure, remaining on schedule to be completed during the second quarter of 2014, with the Olympic building scheduled to be completed during the third quarter of 2014. To date, we've had over 1 million square feet of tours from prospective tenants, which primarily consist of entertainment, media, technology and social media companies, the same industries that have been driving growth in the Los Angeles office market. Turning to our Sunset Bronson Studio development project, I'm pleased to report that we've achieved an important milestone during the quarter with the receipt of Planning Commission approval, without appeal, of our 14-story, 315,000 square foot office tower; a 5-story, 9,000 square foot production facility and a 9-level, 1,635 stall parking structure. We've commenced design drawings and other preconstruction efforts subject to pre-leasing, expected to be in position to commence construction as early as the fourth quarter of 2014. In terms of leasing trends in Los Angeles, we remain encouraged by improving conditions, particularly in West Los Angeles. Overall, the West LA office market saw stronger levels of activity compared to the rest of the market. In fact, the 2 largest leasing transactions were recorded in West Los Angeles and Santa Monica, with the third largest transaction in Burbank, all submarkets where Hudson has been focused its energy and investment strategies. Third quarter net absorption levels in Greater Los Angeles were strong, with 570,000 square feet of positive net absorption during the quarter, more than 75% of which was recorded in West Los Angeles. Overall asking rates in Greater LA also showed growth, improving 2.4% over the last 12 months, led by West Los Angeles, which improved by 4.8% over the same period. Although many submarkets are fairly segmented in the recovery cycle, the areas with higher concentration of technology, entertainment and media companies continue to fuel the submarkets that have led the recovery. These companies tend to prefer a more creative style of building. As West Los Angeles continues to see large demand from users requesting creative office environment, we expect that landlords such as Hudson will continue to have the ability to tighten concession packages and continue to increase asking rental rates. Turning now to San Francisco, the office market fundamentals remain very healthy, largely fueled by strong high-tech demand. Office gains in the third quarter outpaced the entire first half of the year, largely driven by pre-leasing on recent completed projects, which accounted for 420,000 of the 737,000 square feet of net absorption for the quarter. Year-to-date absorption through the third quarter totaled 1 million square feet. While much of this growth has been organic as tech companies citywide add jobs and expand their space requirements, there is also evidence that growth is increasingly being fueled by outside tenants moving into the marketplace. In the third quarter alone, over 400,000 square feet of space was leased by tenants from outside the market. As a result, even with 151,000 square feet of unreleased vacant space added to the market by the recently completed projects, the vacancy rate declined 30 basis points to 8.2% from last quarter's 8.5% vacancy rate. Rent growth over the third quarter also continued its upward march, growing at 3.5% rate over the last quarter, and year-to-date, rents have increased market-wide by more than 10% or $5.01 per square foot. With 500,000 square foot-plus tenants expected to lease in the fourth quarter, net absorption for '13 appears to be on pace for 1.3 million feet, comparable to that of last year. Allow me to briefly update you on the new construction in San Francisco's 7 projects totaling 2.3 million square feet that are currently under construction. Nearly 60% of the new construction has already been pre-leased. Approximately 1.5 million feet of this new construction is scheduled to be delivered in the first half of 2014, at which time, a significant slowdown in new deliveries is expected until at least the middle of 2015. Assuming demand remains healthy over this period, we expect that the lull in new deliveries will continue to support market conditions characterized by tightening availability and market-wide pressure on rents. Turning now to Seattle, boasting a 5.2% unemployment rate, 210 basis points below the national average, Seattle's diverse economy continues to outperform nearly every other major metropolitan marketplace. The most recent employment forecast from the Puget Sound Economic Forecaster calls for an employment growth of 2.8% in 2013, substantially outpacing the 1.6% national average. Employment growth is expected to continue an impressive 2.3% in 2014. In terms of trends in our submarkets, Class-A vacancy in the Pioneer Square/Waterfront submarket, where our First & King property is located, dropped by an astounding 45%, from 17.1% as of the end of the second quarter to 9.6% at the end of last quarter. Rents, likewise, improved nearly 6%, from $30.22 to $32.01. Similarly, the already tight Class-A vacancy in our the Lake Union market, where our Met Park North project is located, also witnessed an exceptional quarter, dropping 60% from 5% as of the end of the second quarter to 1.9% as of the end of the last quarter. Rent likewise improved 1.2%. Our supplemental report filed this afternoon includes a schedule of annual lease expirations as of the end of the quarter. As indicated in that schedule, 253,950 square feet or approximately 4.8% of our total office portfolio square footage is scheduled to expire by yearend. Nearly 70% of that space has been backfilled or renewed and another 10% is under a letter of intent or in negotiation, leaving less than 60,000 square feet or 1.1% of our total office portfolio square footage left to backfill or renew. If you recall, that heading into 2013, nearly 18% of our total office portfolio square footage was scheduled to expire this year, the vast majority of which we have now successfully backfilled or renewed. And looking ahead to '14, you'll note that only 131,374 square feet or approximately 2.5% of our total office portfolio square footage is scheduled to expire over the next calendar year and of that, we've already backfilled or renewed 25%. In short, our leasing efforts have either backfilled, renewed or result in a lease negotiations with respect to nearly 80% of the remaining 2013 expirations, with inroads on 2014 expirations already underway and in most instances, at considerably higher starting rates than corresponding expiring rents for the same space. Now let's turn to briefly update you on the status of our media and entertainment properties. And last quarter, we reported that our Sunset Gower property had 4 vacant stages, largely stemming from the conclusion of the Showtime series, Dexter, toward the end of the second quarter. We were cautiously optimistic at the end of -- at that time about quickly backfilling the available stages, but anticipated a temporary decrease in the net income from operations on account of that vacancy and related lull in the production activity. As expected, production activity over the third quarter slowed compared to the prior year. And that said, we also successfully backfilled most of our stages available over the quarter. And at present, we have 1 vacant stage at our Sunset Gower property with promising prospects for that stage currently. With that, I'm going to turn the call over to Mark our CFO.