Will Eglin
Analyst · Evercore
Thanks, Pat and hello and good morning to everyone, welcome to our fourth quarter 2016 earnings call and webcast. Our fourth quarter results rounded out a year of continued progress and success for Lexington. Over the past 12 months we enhanced and simplified our portfolio through focusing our investment activities on industrial properties, and successfully completing our 2016 dispositions program. Our leasing activity was strong and renewals rents increased on both a GAAP and cash basis. We strengthened our balance sheet flexibility by reducing our leverage to its lowest level in recent years and our outstanding debt is currently all at fixed rates. We took advantage of our share buyback plan earlier in the year and our ATM later in the year at what we believe to be opportune times in the market. And finally, we raised our common share dividends for the first time since 2014. We are very proud of our team and their hard work and we continue to move towards what we believe is the best version of our company. So let's take a closer look at certain key areas of our business for the quarter and 2016 as well as our 2017 expectations. Dispositions for the quarter, which consisted of 9 office properties totaled $87.1 million. This brought 2016 consolidated asset dispositions to $663 million at GAAP and cash cap rates of 10.2% and 5.1% respectively. We approached the high end of our 2016 dispositions guidance of $600 million to $700 million with pricing coming in better than our initial estimated cash cap rate range of 5.75% to 6.5%. Subsequent to the end of the fourth quarter we have sold $89 million of assets at average GAAP and cash cap rates of 10% and 10.2%. These sales were a mix of non-core assets consisting of one retail property, one industrial property, one vacant building and three office assets. Where we were able to obtain favorable pricing on a per square foot basis in spite of their short-term leases. In addition, we sold our position in a non-consolidated property and collected approximately $15 million. Including the subsequent property dispositions I just mentioned, we expect to sell approximately $250 million to $300 million of properties in 2017 at average GAAP and cash cap rates in the range of 7.8% to 8.3% and 8.4% to 8.9% respectively. While cap rate ranges will be higher for dispositions in 2017 compared to 2016, we view our 2016 and 2017 dispositions plan as a combined plan within our overall business strategy. And if we look at the two years together the average GAAP and cash cap rates are expected to be approximately 9.5% and 6% respectively. Dispositions will include a mix of multi-tenant and vacant office buildings office buildings with short-term leases and other single tenant assets. Where we believe we can extract significant value. Our goal is to continue reworking our office footprint, so that our office leasing opportunities are concentrated in fewer markets and to ultimately have a better revenue balance between office and industrial assets. In an effort to further simplify the portfolio we also sold our Kennewick loan subsequent to the quarter for $80.4 million. While the major focus for 2016 was on our disposition plan, we experienced healthy activity on the investment front and favorable pricing on the sales side, which allowed us to capture attractive reinvestment spreads. During the quarter, we acquired two industrial properties for $98 million, which includes the 770,000 square foot Amazon Distribution facility and a 188,000 square foot Freezer facility leased to Aryzta. The largest manufacturer of frozen pizzas in North America. We also completed the majority of our Dow Chemical office build-to-suit in the fourth quarter for $78 million. And subsequently completed the remaining building in early 2017. Lastly, we committed the two long-term leased industrial forward purchases for $72 million, both of which we expect to be completed in 2017. Total investment activity for 2016 was $390 million at GAAP and cash cap rates of 7.6% and 6.8% respectively, with an approximate weighted average leased term of 18 years. Subsequent to the end of the quarter, we closed on two industrial assets for approximately $51 million. This included a 742,000 square foot facility in the sub-market of Indianapolis leased for seven years to Continental Tire and a 447,000 square foot facility leased to Amazon for 10 years in the sub-market of Kansas City, Kansas. Current 2017 investment commitments combined with the most recent acquisitions and properties under contract are approximately $300 million at average GAAP and cash cap rates of 8.6% and 7.3% respectively. We are optimistic moving into 2017, as we believe economic prospects are likely to improve. And our underwriting is slightly less defensive than it has been in recent years. Accordingly, as we build our investment pipeline, we expect there will be a mix of 15 to 20 year leases, coupled with some shorter term leases typically of 7 to 10 years in duration in warehouse and distribution properties. Investment activity has been and we expect will continue to be more focused on the industrial sector. While these assets tend to generate less current yields in build-to-suite office, we believe fundamentals are solid and we are very interested in adding high quality properties in strong industrial markets to the portfolio. We are currently evaluating approximately $300 million of new industrial investments and continue to look at new opportunities to add to our pipeline. We haven’t seen much of a reprising in the market at this point, but we continually monitor pricing and remain mindful of asset valuations. In an effort to add current yield to the portfolio, we will continue to participate in office built-to-suite opportunities with long-term leases. Moving on to leases. We leased approximately 700,000 square feet during the quarter, for a total of 4.7 million square feet for the year. Renewals on GAAP and cash rents increased approximately 5% and 4% respectively for the quarter and 3% and 2% respectively for the year. Occupancy was at 96% at year end and in the range we anticipated it would be the same time last year. Major lease extensions signed during the quarter included United Healthcare for 142,500 square feet in San Antonio Texas and Bay Valley Foods for 300,500 square feet in Plymouth Indiana. Negotiations with Arrow Electronics and New Cingular continue to progress and we are optimistic that they will be completed soon. That would leave us with four meaningful move outs in 2017, which we have discussed on previous calls. Two office properties, Roche Diagnostics and Fishers, Indiana and Transocean in Houston Texas had leases which expired at the end of January. We are pleased to report that subsequent to the quarter we leased approximately 54,000 square feet or about 35% of the Houston property. We continue to actively market these properties along with our two industrial properties in Des Moines Iowa leased to HP and at High Point North Carolina leased to Steelcase, whose leases expire at the end of April and at the end of September respectively. We have already done a great deal of work on 2017 expirations and currently have eight single tenant properties left to lease or sell. Vacant square footage to lease or sell represented approximately 4% of the overall portfolio at quarter-end. Our asset management team continues to work through these vacancies in addition to managing our shorter duration lease portfolio. With particular emphasis on 2018 and 2019 lease expirations. Our weighted average lease term at the end of the fourth quarter was 8.6 years. We expect this number to grow as we sell shorter term lease properties and add longer lease build-to-suit properties and purchases to our existing portfolio. Currently 76% of our lease revenue has some type of built-in escalations and we believe our expirations are fairly well balanced. I want to quickly touch you on balance sheet and capital markets. We work hard this past year on improving the balance sheet ending the year at 5.2 times net debt to adjusted EBITDA our lowest level in recent years. We have great balance sheet flexibility moving into 2017 and continue to be mindful of the value of operating with low leverage. Our ATM was reinstated in late November and under the program we sold approximately 1 million shares in the fourth quarter at an average price of $10.75 per share. We sold an additional 1.6 million shares at an average price of $10.89 per share subsequent to the end of the quarter. If you remember we bought approximately 1.2 million shares earlier in 2016 through our share buyback plan at an average price of $7.56 per share. For the fourth quarter net income was $0.06 per diluted common share and adjusted company FFO was $0.24 per diluted common share. Bringing our 2016 net income to $0.37 per diluted common share and adjusted company FFO to $1.14 per diluted common share. This higher than anticipated adjusted company FFO is primarily the result of the treatment of the lease termination payment Pat discussed earlier, which contributed an additional $0.03 per diluted common share to adjusted company FFO. 2017 adjusted company FFO will come down from the prior year, which Pat will discuss in more detail shortly. In summary, a fair amount of heavy lifting was accomplished in 2016. We entered 2017 with an improved and simpler portfolio, a strong balance sheet with low leverage and ample liquidity and a good portion of scheduled 2017 lease expirations behind us. To-date we have committed to approximately $300 million of new investments and our focus is on sourcing industrial assets and office build-to-suit opportunity. We intend to sell approximately $250 million to $300 million of non-core and other properties. As we move closer to becoming a pure play single tenant office and industrial REIT. As always we remain highly focused on managing our shorter lease term office portfolio and leasing up vacant properties. 2017 occupancy will fluctuate depending on the timing of sales and acquisitions and the re-leasing of vacant space, but we anticipate it should remain at or about 96% by year-end. From a balance sheet perspective we expect leverage to stay under 6 times net debt to adjusted EBITDA. And while we would like to be a net acquirer of property this year, this will largely depend on markets conditions and pricing. Dispositions could also increase this year to the extent match funding makes more sense than raising capital from a pricing standpoint. With that I will now turn the call back over to Pat who will review our financial results and 2017 guidance in more detail.