Bill McMorrow
Analyst · JMP Securities. Please go ahead
Daven, thanks very much and good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us today. I’m very pleased to have reported the best fourth quarter and full year results in our company’s history. I’d like to start off by discussing our financial highlights, along with our increased divided and stock repurchase program. Next, I’d like to review our liquidity profile and the strength of our balance sheet. Third, I’ll review our strong recurring cash flow and solid operating performance at our properties and fourth, I’ll update you on a record year of investment transactions. And finally, I’ll discuss our current market outlook before opening up to your questions. So starting off with the financial highlights, we had the best fourth quarter in our company’s history from a revenue, adjusted EBITDA, net income and EPS perspective. For the quarter, adjusted EBITDA grew 115% to $122 million compared to $57 million for the same period in 2014. Adjusted net income for the quarter was $68 million, the highest quarterly adjusted net income in our history, up from $5 million in the fourth quarter of 2014. Our full year 2015 adjusted EBITDA was a record $371 million, a 17% increase from 2014. Adjusted net income for the year was also a record at $208 million, a 56% increase from last year. Importantly, through a combination of increase in NOI at our wired properties and growing our base fee income, the recurring cash flow of the Company has increased substantially over the over the last several years with the biggest improvement showing in the last 12 months. In fact, in the last year alone, we've added over $100 million of recurring revenue to KW. As a result of this strong growth in our cash flow, we have increased our quarterly dividend by 17% to $0.14 per quarter or $0.56 on an annual basis. This is our fifth consecutive annual dividend increase. During which time, our dividend has grown by 250%. Yesterday, we also announced an authorization to buy back up to $100 million offer own stock through share purchase program. I will like to now to review our liquidity position and balance sheet strength. As we have been discussing on our conference calls from many quarters, we continue to live in an extremely volatile world. With that backdrop, for several years we've been keeping our – keeping high levels of liquidity at the holding company, while extending our debt maturities and growing the recurring cash flows across the business. In addition, we sold a number of non-core investments in 2015 including our Japanese apartment business, several office buildings and a handful of US apartment buildings in which we had small ownership positions. With that being said, we’ve ended 2015 in the best financial position in our history. With $1.5 billion of liquidity between KW and our consolidated subsidiaries, including over $700 million of cash and $800 million of unused unsecured lines of credit. Just as important, we have no corporate debt maturities until 2024. Additionally, as announced earlier this week, we recently closed our fifth US value add fund at $500 million which with modest average allows for $1 billion of untapped buying power to be redeployed solely in the US. And as of today, between KW and KWE, we have approximately $2 billion of unencumbered assets including KW stock position in KWE. In addition to our existing liquidity, we expect to generate significant cash over the next 18 months through planned asset sales at both KW and KWE, which in the last two months of 2016 already we sold over $200 million with the properties and more to come. These asset sales will enable us to recycle capital and our growth platforms and provide additional liquidity for new acquisitions and other opportunities. Let's now discuss the performance of our property portfolio on a same-store basis. Our multi-family business continues its streak of impressive quarterly growth, where we have now seen ten consecutive quarters of 8% or higher NOI growth on a same-store property basis. For the quarter, our multi-family revenues were up 8% and our NOI was up 12%. And our stabilized commercial portfolio for the quarter, revenues grew 2% leading to an NOI growth of 2%. Additionally, during the fourth quarter, our US commercial office business continued to make great progress in its leasing efforts. For example, we had a credit tenant in one of our stabilized buildings here in Los Angeles whose lease was coming due during the year. They occupied 54,000 square feet in that building. To meet their expansion needs, we leveraged a nearby building which we own with a partner at 50%, the building was also 50% leased. We re-signed the tenant for 11 years for their existing 54,000 square feet and did an additional 84,000 square foot lease in the neighboring building. They’re both right across the street from each other. All-in-all, the lease spans two separate Kennedy-Wilson buildings with a gross lease value of those about leased over $70 million and absorb nearly all of the vacancy in the 50% leased building. Separately, we recently completed the full renovation of a 60,000 square foot building in the heart of Beverly Hills. This building was vacant at the end of Q3 of 2015 and by the end of the year, it was 52% leased. We expect that building to be fully leased by the end of this year. It’s important to note that as a new disclosure this quarter we show our all store income-producing portfolio both as a whole and broken down by ownership. This portfolio which includes our multi-family commercial and hotel investments, excluding KWE generates $350 million in NOI, up 13% from last year. The biggest component our income-producing portfolio is a 7,500 multi-family units which we have an over 99% ownership interest in. That group of apartments generates $78 million in NOI annually. That part of our apartment portfolio has grown by 1,700 units and added $26 million of NOI from year earlier. The majority of these units are located in our core Western US markets including the Pacific Northwest, the Bay Area and Los Angeles. Moving on to the transactional side of our business, in Q4, we and our partners completed $500 million of acquisitions and $700 million of dispositions for a total of $1.2 billion in investment transactions. During 2015, yet another record year, we and our partners completed over $5 billion of investment transactions including a record year both acquisitions at $3.2 billion, 75% of which were sourced off market at an average cap rate of 7% and dispositions of $2.1 billion at an average exit cap rate of 5%. Additionally, during 2015, we and our partners, including KWE, completed $2.3 billion of financings at an average interest rate of 3.2% with an average maturity of seven years. Roughly 80% of these financings we completed in 2015 were fixed rate loans. To highlight some of the major transactions in the quarter, on the buy side, we had our first acquisition in Italy via KWE which acquired a portfolio of nine office buildings fully leased to the Italian government for purchase price of $205 million. The unexpired lease term is seven years at cap rate of 6.3% which compares with seven year Italian government bond rate which today yields 1%. On the disposition side of the quarter, we along with our partners solid four US multi-family properties, which we had a small ownership position. These sales produced an IRR of 38% and an equity multiple of 2.7 times to KWE over the life of the investments. Now I'd like to take a moment to discuss KWE which is celebrating its two-year, underline, two year anniversary since going public. During those two years, the company has experienced outstanding results. And remember too to keep it in perspective, we started in Europe in 2011 primarily in Ireland and the United Kingdom. This morning KWE increased its full-year – announced its full-year results for 2015. Some of the highlights include total NAV, net asset value, growth of 15% of the total portfolio value in KWE of $4.1 billion. Additionally, the run rate annual NOI in KWE’s portfolio as of December stands at approximately GBP161 million or about to $240 million annually. I am exceedingly proud of what Mary and our team in Europe have been able to accomplish over the last two years, converting cash at the February 2014 IPO into an outstanding portfolio. And just as important, in 2011, we started with a team of 14 people in Europe. Today, we have almost 100 professionals in our business in Europe. Earlier this morning, KWE also announced an increase in its dividend from 10 pence to 12 pence per quarter, which represents a 4.5% annual dividend yield based on yesterday’s closing price. It’s important to note that KW's $400 million investment in KWE represents our largest single investment and in 2015, the total amount of fees and dividends received by KW from KWE totaled $79 million. Throughout the company, we continue to remain focused on growing our recurring income through a variety of value-add initiatives within our existing portfolio. We are making great progress on the initiatives. And I would like to highlight a few projects in particular that are close to completion. At Clancy Quay, a 423 unit multifamily project in Dublin, in which KW has a 50% ownership, we expect to deliver an additional 78 completed units during 2016 as we continue toward making progress to complete an additional 200 units on that property in the next 18 months. Also in Ireland, through KWE, we are completing the construction of Block K Vantage at Central Park, which will deliver an additional 166 units and 15,000 square feet of commercial space this summer, in addition to the 276 units at Central Park, which are already completed. Additionally, through KWE, we expect later this year to complete the redevelopment of the Baggot Street office complex, which is 130,000 square foot office building in Dublin that was vacant in 2014 and will be completed in the third quarter of this year. The entire building has been prelapsed [ph] on a 25-yeasr lease to the Bank of Ireland with occupancy expected as I said in the third quarter. This was the largest lease done in Dublin in 2015. Additionally, in our US multifamily business, we currently have over 750 units under construction in the Seattle area that we expect to complete in the next 18 months. I mentioned all of these examples just to let you know that we are bringing on-stream a large amount recurring income through these value-add initiatives. Looking into 2016, while there has been a strong volatility in the global markets during the first two months, I am proud of what we have been able to accomplish thus far this year. We have been able to, as I said earlier, close our $500 million US fund with premier institutional investors, increase our quarterly dividend and announce $100 million share buyback program. All of this is being done while we continue to maintain significant dry powder to continue the growth of our business. Our portfolio of 500 properties, in which we have a significant ownership interest is well diversified geographically including the Western US, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain and Italy and across all product types. More than ever, we are focused on making the best strategic capital decisions for the company. I feel that the combination of our outstanding team of people, our balance sheet strength and liquidity profile, combined with the global relationships and networks, which we have built over the last 25 years in the US, Europe and Japan position us for great growth and success in 2016. With that, I would like to open it up for any questions.