John Kite
Analyst · Citi. Please proceed
Thanks Maggie. And good afternoon everyone. Welcome to our fourth quarter earnings call. We appreciate you spending the time with us today as we are excited about the performance of our business during 2014 and the milestones that we have accomplished. We are very positive about our prospects for 2015 which is reflected in the nearly 5% dividend increase we are announcing today in conjunction with the earnings. This March, the second event increase we have made in the last year and underscores how energized and bullish we are about the future of our company. We said it before 2014 was an incredibly productive and transformative year for Kite. We successfully executed on a number of strategic and balance sheet initiatives. We closed and fully integrated the $2.1 billion merger we then diversified and achieved the $17 million synergies we estimated at the time of the transaction. We exceeded the midpoint of our initial FFO guidance of decreasing the net debt to EBITDA by nearly a full term to 6.5 times. Over the last 12 months we have increased the dividend by over 13%. We grew AFFO per share year-over-year by nearly 19% to $1.77 per share. While expanding the portfolio and growing FFO, AFFO and free cash flow, we continue to strengthen our balance sheet which was recognized this fall when both Moody's and Standard & Poor's awarded us investment grade ratings. We regionalized our leasing and asset management efforts by adding five regional offices across the country as we further enhanced our market intelligence in key markets and hired several talented employees to help maximize this effort. We acted swiftly and efficiently when we announced plans to shed 15 non-core assets of which the second tranche is on track to close near the end of the first quarter. Most recently in December, we announced the $32 million off-market acquisition of Rampart Commons, an extremely well located asset in the Summerlin area of Las Vegas. Portfolio has dramatically increased and elevated not only in size but in asset quality and future growth opportunities. In addition to the southeast in our home-base in the Midwest, we have gained scale and meaningful footprint in last Vegas, in the North Carolina, Texas and the tri-state area. As a result of our entry into these new markets and the enhanced quality of our assets, we have grown our portfolios ABR by 15% to $15.15. The scale of our shopping centers has grown over the last year as well. The average size of our portfolio centers is now over 200,000 sqft which is more than a 12% increase over the prior year. From an operational standpoint, the fourth-quarter rounds out to be a very strong year for Kite and the results are consistent with our target range finishing 2014 with FFO per share of $2.02 which is above the midpoint of our original from last February. For the fourth quarter FFO as adjusted was $0.50 per share which is nearly 9% increase over the same period last year. Our retail recovery ratio hit an all-time high of 89.6% as we continue to squeeze efficiencies from tenant reimbursement revenue and achieved broader expense control. Leasing momentum maintained pace during 2014 as our team executed 229 new leases and renewal leases for approximately 1.2 million sqft. During the fourth quarter and on a comparable basis, we executed 55 leases with a blended cash rent spread of 7.5%. Our same property net operating income grew another 4.8% for the quarter and 4.7% for the full-year. Same property NOI benefited from our continued focus on maximizing recoveries which contribute at 1.2% of the overall 4.8% for the quarter. Turning to development, we continue to make progress on our outstanding projects in the Raleigh, North Carolina area. Phase 1 of Parkside Town Commons is fully operational and is over 90% leased. In the second phase of the project, Golf Galaxy in Field & Stream opened in September of this year. Both Frank theaters and small shops will begin opening in the second quarter with stabilization of the center expected in 2016. Phase II of Holly Springs remains on track with Bed Bath & Beyond, DSW to open in the third quarter of this year and construction to commence on Carmike Cinemas in the second quarter. We moved Tamiami Crossing from land held for development to our active development pipeline. Tamiami Crossing is a well-positioned 25 acre parcel in Naples Florida, and we expect the project to contain approximately 120,000 sqft with construction commencing on second quarter. We are excited about the leasing momentum on this development, as in addition to Stein Mart, we are in the late stages of lease negotiation with four other junior boxes and expect to announce specific lease transactions later in the second quarter. We are confident to the actions taken to date greatly enhanced the quality of our portfolio. Our top 10 properties which represent about 25% of revenue are great example of that and include assets like City Center and White Plains New York, Centennial in Las Vegas, and Portofino in the Woodlands area of Houston. Combined our top 10 assets have an ABR of over $20 per square foot. These properties also have a strong demographic profile, with the average population north of 200,000 people and household incomes averaging $93,000 in the trade area. The merger was a big factor in the portfolio transformation. A seven of these top 10 properties come from the transaction. In December, we closed on the first tranche of the $318 million sale we announced last fall and we remain on track to close the second tranche at the end of the first quarter. As discussed on our last call we intend on using the remaining $116 million in net proceeds from both tranches to first reduce net debt and then prudently redeploy back into high quality asset. We’re focussed on further enhancing our portfolio’s quality which is why we sees the opportunity to shed what we deem to be non-core assets at the same cap rate as the overall merger. The acquisition market remains extremely competitive and we intend to further enhance the quality of our portfolio even if that means acquiring less today for a longer term benefit going forward. We’re analyzing several other opportunities but we will be prudent in the acquisition market if it stays as intentionally competitive as it is today. That said we’re excited about the $32 million acquisition of Rampart Commons in the Summerlin area of Las Vegas, which we announced at the end of the year. We found a right opportunity in the right market and we executed the deal in an attractive price. Rampart Commons is a great addition to our portfolio and has expanded our footprint in Las Vegas to now include seventh properties and over 2.5 million sqft. of GLA. On to the balance sheet; we continued to improve our financial flexibility by extending our debt maturities to five years reducing our average interest rate on our debt to less than 4%, while executing on our strategic objective of maintaining liquidity to cover the next two years of maturities. We achieved our short-term leverage target of 6.5 times net debt to EBITDA and we are planning in near term to further reduce this metric to approximately six times. A portion of the reduction will happen organically, as substantially completed development projects are finalized and stabilized NOI comes online. The investment grade ratings are important because they provide access to the public debt markets. With the low rate environment the public market provides another attractive funding source that allows us to unencumber assets and extend debt maturities, an equivalent or lower interest expense over the next two years. Looking forward to 2015, we expect another highly productive year. We’ve instituted multiple cost-cutting initiatives as we aggressively manage and operate our newer assets. Our roadmap is designed to identity, manage and monitor opportunities that help us further grow re-occurring cash flow. We do this primarily through managing expenses to the lowest prudent level at each property and maximizing recoveries from tenants. We have recently brought in an in-house real estate tax expert along with some internal software upgrades. This has allowed us to further increase our control and focus on the tax appeal process and we’re already seeing significant benefits from this. We’re establishing our initial 2015 FFO guidance to be within a range of a $1.90 to $2.00 per diluted common share. As mentioned in our press release the guidance range is impacted by a couple of strategic initiatives including the dilution of approximately $0.15 relating to the sale of non-core assets between last quarter and the first quarter of 2015. That said our increasing cash flow and anticipated decreasing CapEx is expected to result in a neutral impact to our AFFO year-over-year. Our initial guidance range also includes acquisition assumptions that are comprised of only $80 million which are the opportunities that we have identified today. That said, we’re very prepared to spend additional capital to acquire assets if the right opportunities arise at the right prices. The guidance range is also inclusive of opportunistic capital market’s activity. To continue on a strategic plan to enhance the flexibility of our balance sheet. Our investment grade ratings provide opportunities to further decrease our average incidence rates, extend debt maturities and unencumbered additional assets. A potential bond issuance would be substantially additive and accretive to earnings over the long-term, but our guidance range assumes a $0.04-$0.05 diluted impact in 2015. Our 8.25% present preferred note is callable at the end of 2015. And we have approximately a $132 million of secured debt expiring on six assets in 2016 with a blended rate of 5.9%. So the benefits of our funding plan will begin to positively impact earnings in 2016. While we’ve enjoyed two consecutive years of same property NOI growth averaging 4.75%., we expect this trend to moderate to a more stable range of 2.5% to 3.5% in 2015, primarily due to the spread between leased and occupied returning to normal levels. In addition to the occupancy gains, we are taking advantage of several re-tenanting opportunities in the OXIF portfolio which enters the same property pool in the first quarter. As an example, we have replaced the former Conns Electronic Store in our Portofino asset with T.J. Maxx at a very attractive rent spread. This re-tenanting opportunity marks the initial step of a substantial amount of redevelopment we plan to start over the next couple of years at this exceptionally well located property. As we look beyond the next 12 months, we have multiple strategic growth initiatives in place that excite us about the future of Kite. These include stabilizing our current development projects throughout 2015 and 2016, reducing our overall cost of capital and increasing our balance sheet flexibility as opportunities arise, utilizing our vast development expertise to drive returns via redevelopment, repositioning and repurposing of assets and acquiring assets both opportunistically and efficiently to further grow our NOI. As we move into 2015, we are in a completely different place than we were when we started 2014. Then, we had a $1.8 billion enterprise value, now over $4 billion. We had a net debt to EBITDA ratio in the mid 7’s, now in the mid 6’s. We had free cash flow of roughly $10 million, now $15 million. We had $200 million in liquidity, now we have comfortably $0.5 billion in liquidity. We were a small strip center REAT with a concentrated geographic presence; now, we’re a midcap REAT with an expanded footprint, a greatly improved asset base and a very strong balance sheet. In summary, we’re very pleased with our fourth quarter and year-end results. The team has worked incredibly hard throughout 2014 and we’re very optimistic about the initiatives we have set-forth for 2015 and beyond. The growth opportunities look right in front of us and we look forward to taking advantage of it. Thank you for your time and this concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, we’re ready for questions please.