James Sebra
Analyst · Austin Wurschmidt with KeyBanc
Thanks, Farrell, and good morning, everyone. Today, I'd like to review earnings and operating performance for 2018, followed by a brief review of our balance sheet, capital structure and end with our 2019 guidance. Starting with our 2018 performance. For the fourth quarter, net income allocable to common shares was $14.6 million compared to $6.3 million for the three months ended December 31, 2017. For the full year, income allocable to common shares was $26.3 million compared to $30.2 million for the full year 2017. Core FFO per share was $0.19 for the quarter ended December 31, up $0.01 year-over-year, which demonstrates our continued ability to produce consistent bottom line results amidst reinvestment in our portfolio. Full year core FFO of $0.74 per share was up from $0.73 per share in 2017. Fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA increased 18% year-over-year to $25.7 million while full year adjusted EBITDA grew 20% to $97.1 million. Fourth quarter same-store NOI growth was 3.9%, lifting our full year same-store NOI growth to 2.6%. Same-store revenue grew 1.7% in the fourth quarter, consistent with growth for the full year. Same-store operating expenses decreased 1.5% in the fourth quarter, driving down the full year increase to just 1.1%, demonstrating our focus on managing our property level expenses. We saw continued expansion in our same-store NOI margin, which increased 30 basis points in the full year 2018 to 60.1%. We also continue to make progress on reducing G&A as compared to our historical run rate with G&A, excluding stock-based compensation, coming in at 46 basis points of our total gross assets. Turning to our balance sheet. We finished 2018 with 58 properties aggregating total gross assets of $1.8 billion, up from $1.6 billion at year-end 2017. While our gross assets have increased approximately 15% in 2018, we made progress in exiting markets where we did not like the long-term fundamentals, such as Greenville, South Carolina and Jackson, Mississippi. We invested further in markets where we do like the long-term fundamentals, like Tampa, Florida and Columbus, Ohio. During 2018, we used our line of credit to acquire net two communities ahead of dispositions. At year-end, as Farrell mentioned, we had three assets held for sale. Upon completion of these dispositions, we would expect our leverage to drop by approximately $70 million. With respect to leverage, we ended 2018 with a pro forma net debt-to-EBITDA of 9.2x. That said, we remain on track to achieve our long-term goal of a net debt-to-adjusted EBITDA ratio in the mid-7s range by the end of 2021. We will begin to see further progress on our deleveraging in 2019 as our property NOI growth from the value-add program and organic rent increases. Based upon the guidance that we provided, we would expect our net debt-to-adjusted EBITDA ratio to be 8.8x at the year-end 2019. As announced on our third quarter call, we completed a $200 million unsecured five year term loan with the interest rate equal to LIBOR plus the spread based on our leverage. As a reminder, we effectively fixed the interest rate on this floating rate term loan by using an interest rate collar for the entire five year term. At closing, we drew $150 million of the $200 million available, leaving $50 million undrawn and providing flexibility during our capital recycling efforts. The initial $150 million in proceeds were used to reduce borrowings outstanding on our revolving unsecured line of credit, freeing up liquidity and extending maturities to 2024. We drew the final $50 million in January 2019 using those proceeds to repay borrowings on our line of credit. Additionally, we continue to improve the composition of our total portfolio by increasing our percentage of unencumbered assets. As of December 31, our unencumbered assets represented 44% of our portfolio while as a percentage of our total NOI, unencumbered assets improved to 43% of the portfolio. This represents a sequential 170 basis point and 70 basis point increase, respectively. During 2018, we opportunistically issued 2.2 million shares of our common stock under our ATM program at an average price per share of $10.32, generating net proceeds of approximately $22.2 million. These proceeds were used to fund the capital expenditures under our value-add program and reduce indebtedness on our line of credit. For the fourth quarter, recurring CapEx for the total portfolio was $1.9 million or $120 per unit. For the full year, recurring CapEx for the total portfolio was $7.3 million or $463 per unit. Looking ahead to 2019. Our guidance for core FFO is a range of $0.74 to $0.78 per share. We expect NOI at our same-store communities to grow between 3.5% and 5.5%. This reflects expected revenue growth between 4% and 6% and operating expense growth between 4% and 6% as well. Our projected growth in operating expenses is a result of our expectation that real estate tax will continue to pressure our expense levels with an expected increase between 6% to 12% in 2019 in our same-store portfolio. Just over half of this increase in real estate taxes is associated with communities that are entering our same-store portfolio for the first time in 2019. As you can imagine, it's difficult to predict when and by how much real estate taxes will increase, if at all. Our guidance reflects two possibilities: first, inflationary increases at our new same-store properties at the low end of our guidance range; and second, inflationary increases plus tax reassessments to our purchase price for newly acquired assets at the top end of our guidance range. As we always do, we will continue to work with tax assessors or tax consultants to appeal significant real estate tax increases. I'll offer one point of clarity though. We always underwrite expecting a tax increase when acquiring assets. As a result, these tax increases are underwritten in our individual property returns and the respective cap rates we quote. From an NOI perspective, while we are expecting large real estate tax increases, our value-add program is clearly benefiting the portfolio. For 2019, we are forecasting occupancy in our value-add communities to be 91% and at our non-value-add same-store properties, our occupancy to be 95%. Altogether, we are forecasting occupancy to be flat from 2018 into 2019 at 93%. This means that most of our revenue growth is coming from rental rate increases with a small portion coming from increases in other income opportunities in the portfolio. After all is said and done, we are estimating same-store NOI growth to be within a range of 3.5% to 5.5% or 4.5% at the midpoint. Lastly, we will continue our capital recycling activity into 2019 as we look to further refresh and transform our portfolio. We are projecting an acquisition volume between $30 million and $110 million for the full year of 2019 as well as a disposition volume of $100 million to $180 million in the year. As Farrell mentioned, the low end of our acquisition and disposition guidance includes the completion of our 2018 capital recycling activity with the high end including additional 2019 potential capital recycling activities. Lastly, I'd like to address the topic of our dividend coverage in 2019. As Scott mentioned on our Q3 call, we've experienced some delays in our value-add initiatives leading into 2019. These delays, along with a potential for a large increase in our real estate taxes, could push our quarterly dividend coverage into the back half of 2019. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Scott.