John Kilroy
Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead
Thanks Tyler. Hello everybody. Thank you for joining us today. Conditions in our West Coast markets remain very strong. From San Diego to Seattle, our submarkets have not only developed into central hubs for innovators in technology, media and life science, but are also benefiting from broad-based economic growth. Unemployment rates are at record lows. San Francisco, Seattle, and San Diego fourth quarter unemployment rates dropped below 3% and L.A. came in at just under 4%. Public market returns for tech, health care, and biotech have surpassed other industries by roughly two times over the past decade. And just last week, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft, three of our major tenants and three of the four largest companies in the world, have all reported record earnings. These companies all unveiled extraordinary plans to develop or to continue to shape our lifestyle with their products. This growth will drive increased demand for modern work environments in our markets. Real estate capital markets remain wide open as equity investors continue to search for growth and debt investors continue to search for yield. 2019 VC funding was the second highest year over the past decade and our West Coast markets accounted for 55% of that funding. In terms of the investment market high quality well-located assets in our markets continue to command strong valuations as we have seen pricing in the $1,500 per square foot range in San Francisco $1,100 per square foot in Seattle and Los Angeles and over $700 per square foot for older product in San Diego. This backdrop has resulted in real estate conditions that are amongst the strongest we have seen with very limited supply and solid demand driving declining vacancy rates and record high rents. While we don't have a crystal ball, we see this operating environment continuing for some time absent a macro event. Now, let's get into 2019's highlights. 2019 was a terrific year for us across the company. We delivered strong and in many cases record results for our shareholders. We signed 3.5 million square feet of leases across our stabilized and development portfolio, a new all-time high for the company. We continue to expand relationships with our key customers. We executed leases in our stabilized portfolio that generated record high leasing spreads. Rents increased 30% on a cash basis and 52% on a GAAP basis compared to prior leases. We signed long-term leases with top-quality tenants for 90% of the office and life science space in our $2.2 billion under construction development program. This level of development leasing was not only a record for us, but it was also about 24 months ahead of our stabilized leasing projections on average. We made three strategic acquisitions totaling $359 million all of which provide attractive development or redevelopment opportunities. We increased our FFO per share nearly 7% year-over-year. We increased our dividend by 6.6%, a cumulative increase of 29% over the last four years. We generated $886 million in capital from our capital-recycling program and new debt and equity issuance, maintaining the strength of our balance sheet, while addressing future funding needs. And we continue to build on our leadership in ESG. We were the first North American REIT to make a commitment to be carbon neutral operations by year end 2020. This timing exceeds both California and federal standards by multiple decades. We've been recognized year-after-year by many industry groups across the world including GRESB, which has ranked us number one in the Americas across all asset classes for the past six years. We've won the EPA's highest honor of ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year Sustained Excellence Award for the past four years and NAREIT's Leader in the Light Award for the past six years. We're included in the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index and recently, Bloomberg added us to its 2020 Gender Equality Index. While we are proud of our accomplishments in these areas, we will continue to look for new and better ways to foster a diverse and inclusive work environment engage our communities and minimize our environmental impact. Now let's get into the details on activities since the end of the third quarter. In our stabilized portfolio, we signed newer renewing leases on 400,000 square feet of office space at rents that were up 30% on a cash basis and 45% on a GAAP basis. One of the bigger deals included a 10-year lease with Microsoft-owned GitHub for just under 62,000 square feet of office space at our Skyline project in Bellevue submarket of Seattle. This new lease fully backfills the January expiration along with two other leases we signed in January. Our entire Seattle portfolio is now 100% leased. We expect conditions in the Seattle to remain robust given the record low vacancy and extremely limited supply of large blocks of modern high-quality space. In our under-construction development program, we signed more than 600,000 square feet of leases during the quarter, fully leasing the remaining space at Kilroy Oyster Point Phase I to Stripe for its new headquarters and signing a transaction in December for our entire 160,000 square foot Towne Centre Drive project in San Diego to a Fortune 50 technology company. We commenced construction on both projects in the first quarter of 2019 and both leased up roughly seven months after construction commencement. That's a strong indicator of the strength of our markets and the quality of our development. We also made good progress at our One Paseo mixed-use project in Del Mar. The office space is now 80% leased and commands the highest rental rates in the region. Also two-thirds of the 237 residential units that we delivered in September are leased. With these fourth quarter transactions, we have effectively derisked 90% of the office and life science components of the $2.2 billion development projects under construction with strong credit and long leases. To recap this program includes One Paseo, a one of a kind mixed-use office residential and retail development in San Diego's most sought-after coastal community; Netflix On Vine, a mixed-use office and residential project in the heart of Hollywood; 333 Dexter, a two-tower state-of-the-art office project in Seattle's tech-centric South Lake Union neighborhood; Kilroy Oyster Point Phase 1, the first of a multi-phase 11 building office and life science development in the West Coast leading life science market; 9455 Towne Center drive in office and life science capable project in San Diego's University Towne Center area. And finally, our recently commenced 2100 Kettner in office and retail complex in Little Italy, one of San Diego's most popular downtown neighborhoods. All these six projects -- as of these six projects are completed and stabilized over the next couple of years, we estimate they will generate total cash NOI of approximately $150 million roughly 85% from office and life science and 15% from residential. Further, at today's cap rates this translates into value creation of approximately $1.7 billion. Now let's turn to recent updates on our future development pipeline. First, in January, San Francisco's Board of Supervisors unanimously approved our Flower Mart project and we now have a fully executed development agreement that protects our entitlements into perpetuity. We also acquired a land site that will become the Flower Mart vendor's new permanent location. With these pieces in place, we anticipate late 2021 start date on the first phase of the project. Second, we acquired a site in the heart of Seattle Central business district commonly referred to as the website. The site encompasses five parcels situated on 1.37 acres and includes the 47,000 square foot historic Lloyd building, a second 31,000 square foot office building and several parking lots. The location is Main & Main of Downtown Seattle and one of the reasons we are so excited about this project, it is immediately adjacent to Seattle's most used light rail station and offers multiple transportation options including the South Lake Union Trolley, the bus and convenient freeway access. It's just blocks from Amazon's headquarters, Seattle's iconic Pike Place Market, the city's newly renovated retail core. And finally, it lies at the center of a triangle connecting Seattle's core downtown amenities with two of its most important innovation clusters Denny Triangle and South Lake Union. These neighborhood sport tenant names like Facebook, HBO, Zillow, Google amongst others. We paid $133 million to the site and plan to seek entitlements for an urban mixed-use development anchored by a fully restored Lloyd building. The project will include two office buildings totaling approximately 900,000 square feet 25,000 square feet of street-level retail and a residential development currently zoned for 575,000 square feet, which equates to somewhere between 400 and 500 units. This is the third acquisition with excellent development potential that we've completed in the past six months. It follows the purchases of our two block East village site in downtown San Diego and the Blackwelder Creative Campus in Culver City. With these three development opportunities, we have backfilled our pipeline with tremendous infill opportunities in some of the West Coast most vibrant submarkets. These projects lay the groundwork for continued growth in both earnings and NAV. In our capital recycling program, we completed the disposition of 2211 Michelson Drive our last operating property in Orange County. The proceeds of approximately $116 million, puts our total 2019 dispositions at just under $134 million. For 2020 we are evaluating a handful of assets for potential disposition ranging between $150 million to $300 million of proceeds. Wrapping up, we'll be focused on five key objectives in 2020. First, delivering our $2.2 billion of under construction projects; second, maximizing value in our stabilized portfolio. This includes leasing up our vacancies, driving rents and proactively addressing expirations. Third, driving earnings and dividend growth; fourth, maintaining balance sheet strength and flexibility. And fifth, continuing to advance our strong relationships with some of the world's best and fastest growing companies. That completes my remarks and now I'll turn the call over to Tyler.