Tom Olinger
Analyst · BMO. Your line is open
Thanks Tracy. Good morning. And thank you for joining us today. We had another excellent quarter. Our proprietary operating metrics continue to reflect strong demand. Showings, average deal gestation and conversion rates remain either in line or better than last quarter as our customers further build out their supply chain capabilities in the face of strength. Market conditions in the U.S. continue to be very healthy. Demand is diverse and overall supply is disciplined. Starts in the U.S. are concentrated in low barrier markets, while supply in the high barrier markets is not keeping pace with GDP growth, let alone demand for logistics facilities closer to the endpoint of consumption. Continental Europe remained strong and we expect rent growth this year to be the highest in more than a decade. In Japan, despite moderating economic growth, business is quite good. Demand continues to be boosted by ecommerce, while supply is being steadily absorbed. With the improvement we are seeing in the Osaka market, we are removing it from our market watch list. We are raising our 2019 global rent growth estimates by approximately 100 basis points to over 5.5% as low vacancies and rising replacement costs continue to push market rents higher. Looking to the quarter. We leased 37 million square feet, including 5 million square feet in our development portfolio. Period-end occupancy was flat sequentially. Rent change on a role continues to be outstanding, but are shared over 25% and led by U.S. at 30%. We expect rent change to trend higher in the back half of the year. Our share of cash same-store NOI growth was 4.6%. Notably, Europe was 5.3%, driven by rent growth which we have anticipated. Core FFO was $0.77 per share for the second quarter. G&A in the quarter was higher than expected, driven by stock-based compensation, resulting from the increase in our share price. This impact was mostly offset by higher than forecasted promo to them. For deployment, starts were $324 million in the quarter. The pace of starts will increase meaningfully in the second half of the year. In fact, we've already started 250 million of build-to-suits in the first two weeks of July. We completed over $600 million in dispositions and contributions, resulting in $200 million of realized gains in the quarter. Now, for 2019 guidance highlights which are on an our-share basis. And note that our guidance does not include the impacts from the IPT acquisition. We are increasing and narrowing our cash same-store NOI guidance to a range of 4.5% to 5%. We're holding the top end of our range as we continue to prioritize the rents over occupancy. We're raising the midpoint for both development starts and contributions by $100 million, and realized development gains by $50 million. We still expect about $400 million net usage, which we plan to fund with free cash flow and a modest increase in leverage. Net promote income for the full year is now expected to be $0.16 per share, an increase of $0.02 from our prior guidance. Effectively, all of the remaining net promote income will be earned in the third quarter. For the full year, we are increasing our 2019 core FFO guidance midpoint by $0.05, and narrowing the range between $3.26 and $3.30 per share. And our revised midpoint growth and core FFO per share, excluding promotes, is 9.5% higher than last year. Over the past five years, our growth has clearly been exceptional with a CAGR of almost 12%, while de-levering by 800 basis points. As I mentioned, this guidance does not include IPT. The acquisition of this high-quality portfolio, which Gene will cover in more detail, captures significant costs and revenue synergies, delivering shareholder value on day-one. We planned a whole new portfolio through one or both of our U.S. private vehicles, and expect the transaction to close no later than the first quarter of 2020. Depending on the ultimate allocation, our investment via the ventures is likely the range between $1 billion and $1.4 billion, which we will fund with cash and debt. The resulting annual core FFO accretion is expected to range between $0.05 and $0.06 per share on a stabilized basis. This transaction will have a minimal impact on leverage with loan to value rising about 150 basis points upon the completion of the non-strategic asset sales to approximately 21%. We do not plan to add any corporate overhead in connection with this acquisition and as a result expect G&A as a percentage of [AUM] decreased by 4%. I feel that several questions lately about how we will continue to grow given our size, we think about growth and three components. The first is organic and based on the quality and strength of our portfolio. This is by far the most important and sustainable driver of growth that also deserves the highest multiple. The second is the value creation from development and to build out of our land bank. The third component is arbitraging the pricing between public and private markets. This is episodic, out of the hands of management and not sustainable over the long-term. We focus on the first two components, which have been the driver of our superior performance, and will continue to be the foundation of our long term growth. To sum up, the second quarter was a continuation of what has already been a very good year. I have never felt better about our growth outlook. And with that, I'll turn it over to Gene.