Earnings Labs

Rexford Industrial Realty, Inc. (REXR)

Q4 2013 Earnings Call· Thu, Mar 13, 2014

$35.80

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings and welcome to the Rexford Industrial Realty Inc. Fourth Quarter 2013 Earnings Conference Call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. (Operator Instructions). I’ll now like to turn the conference over to your host, Steve Swett of ICR. Thank you, you may now begin.

Steve Swett

Management

Good afternoon. We would like to thank you for joining us for Rexford Industrial’s fourth quarter 2013 earnings conference call. In addition to the Press Release distributed today, we have posted a quarterly supplemental package with additional details on our results in the Investor Relations section on our website at www.rexfordindustrial.com. On today’s call, management’s remarks and answers to your questions may contain forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are usually identified by the use of words such as anticipates, believes, estimates, expects, intends, made, plans, projects, seeks, should, will and variations of such words or similar expressions. Forward-looking statements address matters that are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ from those discussed today. Examples of forward-looking statements include those related to revenue, operating income or financial guidance. As a reminder, forward-looking statements represent management’s current estimates. Rexford Industrial assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements in the future. We encourage listeners to review the more detailed discussions related to these forward-looking statements contained in the company’s filings with the SEC. In addition, certain of the financial information presented on this call represents non-GAAP financial measures. The company’s earnings release and supplemental information package which were released this afternoon are available on the company’s website present reconciliations to the appropriate GAAP measures and explain why the company believes such non-GAAP financial measures are useful to investors. This afternoon’s conference call is hosted by Rexford Industrial’s Co-Chief Executive Officers, Michael Frankel and Howard Schwimmer together with Chief Financial Officer Adeel Khan. They will make some prepared remarks and then we will open up the call to your questions. Now I will turn the call over to Michael.

Michael Frankel

Management

Thank you and welcome to Rexford Industrial’s fourth quarter 2013 earnings conference call. I will begin with a brief summary of our operating and financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2013. Howard will then provide an overview of our markets and recent investment activity. And Adeel will then follow with more details on our fourth quarter financial results and an update on our balance sheet and some color on our outlook for 2014. Let me begin by stating that 2013 was a very productive year for Rexford. We recorded strong results within our portfolio with substantial leasing volumes, significant gains in lease percentage and occupancy and double-digit growth in our same-store NOI. We acquired approximately 1.7 million square feet of properties for $157.5 million representing a 37% increase in our portfolio by square footage. We also completed our IPO and formation transactions in July, which provides Rexford with an enhanced capital structure to support the execution of our growth initiative. While we have spoken to many of you over the past year, it’s worthwhile to provide a quick overview of Rexford and what makes us so excited about our unique opportunities. Rexford Industrial is the only pure play publicly traded industrial REIT focused solely on Southern California, the largest most diverse industrial market in the nation. In addition, Southern California combines a unique blend of strong underlying long-term drivers of increasing industrial tenant demand. These drivers include the nation’s largest and growing regional population and consumption base with the nation’s largest and most diverse base of distribution and manufacturing driven businesses, the nation’s two busiest ports of LA and Long Beach, and the increasing movement of goods locally driven by an increasing share of consumer and business transactions taking place via eCommerce. Our target infill fed markets…

Howard Schwimmer

Management

Thank you, Michael, and thank you everyone for joining us today. I will update you on our markets and review our recent transactions which continue to run at an active pace into 2014. Beginning with an update on markets. Fundamentals of our core Southern California infill industrial markets continue to improve. We’re seeing strength in virtually every sub market in which we operate, growing demand for space and increasing pricing power for well located and functional industrial properties like Rexford. In the Los Angeles County, overall vacancy remained extremely tight for the fourth quarter at 2.1% accordingly to CBRE. Absorption remains solid and asking rents were up 10% year-over-year. In Orange County, net absorption was very strong for the full year 2013 at 1.8 million square feet. Asking rents were up 5% in the past 12 months and with further declines in availability, CBRE is forecasting an acceleration in asking rents in Orange County in 2014. San Diego County also continues to show rapid improvement with more than 600,000 square feet of net absorption in the fourth quarter which was the 10th straight quarter of positive net absorption. As availability has trended lower, CBRE estimated that San Diego asking rents were up 16% in the past year. As a reminder, Rexford’s primary focus is the 1.6 billion square-foot Southern California infill market, which is distinguished from the Eastern Inland Empire, non-infill big box market. The broadcast is generally more tempered going forward for the big box, non-infill markets that are not Rexford’s focus, while rental rates have largely recovered to near peak levels and where increases in development have occurred and are expected to continue. Our results confirm many of these trends, and we believe we are particularly well positioned within our infill portfolio to capture the benefits of this…

Adeel Khan

Management

Thank you, Howard. In my comments today, I will first review our operating results then I will review our balance sheet and recent financing transactions. And finally I will provide some comments on our outlook for 2014. Starting with our operating results. With the three months ending December 31, 2013, Rexford Industrial reported company shared FFO of $4.3 million or $0.17 per fully diluted share. This was our first full quarter as a public company and per share earnings and FFO comparison to any period prior to July 2013, includes results from predecessor entities and may not be comparable to the current quarter’s result. For the fourth quarter 2013, our results include the impact of increases in portfolio occupancy and positive re-leasing spreads. In addition, there is the impact of acquisitions completed during the fourth quarter, combined with the full quarter effect of acquisitions completed during the third quarter of 2013. On a same property basis, we generated a 10% increase in fourth quarter revenue as compared to the prior year period. Same property operating expenses increased 17% primarily driven by higher organized allocations and higher repair and maintenance costs associated with the substantial growth of our portfolio, as well as relative increase in property taxes due to refunds booked in the comparable quarter. Same property portfolio NOI increased 7% year-over-year and on a cash basis, on our same property portfolio NOI was up 15% year-over-year. Turning now to our balance sheet and financing activities. At December 31, Rexford Industrial had total consolidated debts outstanding of approximately $192.6 million. Our consolidated debt includes approximately $111.2 million of secured property debt. Most of this debt is variable rate financing with an average current interest rate of 2.2%. In order to fix a portion of this variable rate debt, the recently executed…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from Michael Mueller from JPMorgan. Michael Mueller – JPMorgan: Hi, few questions. First of all, what was the same-store sequential increase from Q3 for occupancy?

Michael Frankel

Management

3%. Michael Mueller – JPMorgan: Well, that’s for your year right, so, looking from September 30 to 12/31?

Michael Frankel

Management

Just give us a second here. The same-store at the end of Q3 was 87.3%. Michael Mueller – JPMorgan: Okay.

Michael Frankel

Management

So, we’re going to roll for you on the supplemental that shows you how the transfer mix change from September 30, to December 31. Michael Mueller – JPMorgan: Got it, okay. For – what are you expecting in terms of 2014 rent spreads, looks like you ended the year with cash spreads up at around 3% to 4%, what’s the outlook for ‘14?

Howard Schwimmer

Management

Hi, Michael, it’s Howard. I think going forward, we’re very confident that this is not a one-time occurrence in terms of those rent spreads. We think it’s going to continue on to the future. When you look at our markets today, we have very vacancy as we pointed out. And we’re very supply constraint so things are really shifting over to the landlord side. And we find that we’re really able to push on rents. I’ll give you a great example, we have a project in city of industry, we have a tenant there occupying two spaces therein like a total of about 26,000 square feet, and they’re paying us about $0.55 a square foot. They want to stay but they want us to extend the lease at the current rates. We just leased the space next door to it, it’s over $0.70 a square foot. You do a math on that it’s not a 3% or 4% increase in the cash we anticipated, it’s very significant. So, our portfolio as you recall also we were doing some shorter term leases through the recession. So we have the opportunity to capture increasing rents fairly rapidly. And so we’re in a great runway over the next couple of years to really move up rents in existing portfolio. Michael Mueller – JPMorgan: Okay. Over the near term for this year though, do you think it’s substantially more than that 3% to 4% number?

Howard Schwimmer

Management

I think that we’re pretty comfortable in that range. It’s a little early in the year, start telling you that it’s going to be significantly greater, yeah, probably in the 6% or 7% range I would expect for the year. Michael Mueller – JPMorgan: Okay. And last question, I guess, with the acquisition target or goal of about $200 million, $200 million plus, can you talk a little bit about the financing plan for that, what do you envision?

Adeel Khan

Management

Sure, Mike, this is Adeel. I think the key thing to keep in mind here on the balance sheet continues to be our strong audacity. It’s really well positioned for us and I think we’re going to use the line of credit to the best resource – that’s the best resource that we have available right now and we’re going to continue to use that as we need in future. And as we move further into our acquisition spread, we’ll continue to entertain other capital strategies and other ideas as we move further keeping in mind the balance sheet is being so strong right, now, we’re going to keep that all within the background. And to make sure that stays significant expense for us as a company. Michael Mueller – JPMorgan: Okay, thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jamie Feldman from Bank of America.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Hi guys, this is actually Steven with Jamie Feldman. I have a couple of questions. I guess, the first, I missed the capacity you guys talked about. Adeel, could you repeat that?

Adeel Khan

Management

Sure. The capacity currently is, we’re at pro forma basis, $101 million. So, I just talked at the $200 million its $99 million available. But you got to keep in mind we have another $200 million recording. So that’s another level that you need to consider into the equation.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay, thank you. And then the other question I had, in terms of the acquisition outlook for $200 million, what are you envisioning in terms of the mix of value add versus core in your acquisition. Can you get any closer to what you guys have been doing so far in 2014 and then in terms of competition, on those acquisitions, are you starting to see any sort of creep like from any other players or anything like that? Thank you.

Howard Schwimmer

Management

Sure. Hi, Steven, it’s Howard. And that’s a great question on the acquisitions. And I think this quarter we’re reporting on a significant volume in transactions and I try to get into more detail to give you a flavor of really the – the way we looked at those deals. And for the most part you see they were predominantly had some former value-add occurring in them. In terms of our modeling, we model about 50% of our acquisition to be what we’d call core plus which does involve a lot of time, some light amount of value add, 25% of the acquisitions would be true value-add and then 25% being core type acquisitions. And as far as our competition, it’s still the one-off individual buyer, the family office. And typically there are other smaller companies that just – they don’t have the same capitalization and market penetration as Rexford does. But I think what you’re really asking is do we see our public peers in these deals. And we – if we go after something that’s actively marketed – sure we’ll see some of them. But it’s important to point out that over half the deals that we buy are out-market transactions where we really see our peers competing on with us.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Blaine Heck from Wells Fargo Securities. Blaine Heck – Wells Fargo Securities: Thanks, good afternoon. Adeel, just following up on the balance sheet questions. On my numbers including the $29.1 million of acquisitions, you guys have done thus far put leverage at about 36% on our debt to gross asset value basis. What are the kinds of target leverage levels you guys are looking at, at this point? And how much capacity do you think it gives you before getting to kind of the upper end of the range?

Michael Frankel

Management

That’s a great question. And I think the one thing that we have to keep in mind here again as a small company, our leverage ratio is naturally going to bounce around a little bit. And I think over the course of the next year or so, I think line of credit is again, it’s a great resource for us. And I think we have significant runway within that. And I think so that leverage ratio will fluctuate but over the course of a long-term, if you trade across section, we’d like to be at about 40% but just 40% or lower. But the key thing in mind is, based on our size that can bounce around from quarter to quarter. Blaine Heck – Wells Fargo Securities: Sure, okay. And then, sure, after considering some of the swaps you have in place or coming end to the place pretty soon here, the company still lands around 65% of its debt floating. Is that a percentage you guys are going to look to decrease overtime or you comfortable with that at this point?

Adeel Khan

Management

No, absolutely. I think just on a pro forma basis, if you take the current swaps that what would be about 34% fixed when the swaps kick-in next year. And we’ll continue to monitor that percentage, fixed versus variable as we go further and look for opportunities to move that percentage to more on the fixed side, as the opportunity presents itself. Blaine Heck – Wells Fargo Securities: Okay. I mean, acquisition side, have you guys been able to fund any deals using OP units and does that seem like it will be kind of a viable source of funding going forward?

Howard Schwimmer

Management

We look at it as a tremendous opportunity. And we’ve engaged with many, many parties in those discussions already. I think that’s more of a long-term conversation. Keep in mind, many of these people are families that have only – these buildings for decades and are now starting to think about their state planning and transitions. But we think it’s going to be something that proves out to be very accretive for us.

Michael Frankel

Management

And hi Blaine, it’s Michael. I’ll just add one thing to that that it’s the powerful aspect of having that OP unit contribution structure, now we have a public currency in our stock. It’s very powerful because it’s a huge catalyst to initiate dialog with a lot of these owners, own a substantial amount of product in our markets. And frankly many of those may not end up being OP transactions in the contribution basis the ones are being cash failed purchases. But it will have been the OP transaction opportunity that initiated the dialog. So, it’s a great opener and we have numerous of those discussions ongoing. Blaine Heck – Wells Fargo Securities: Okay, great. And then last one from me. It looks like you guys have the office building on Madera Road up for sale. Can you comment on how prolonged that process and maybe possible pricing? And then, are there any other targeted dispositions at this point?

Michael Frankel

Management

I was hoping someone would ask that question. We closed escrow now (inaudible) this morning. Blaine Heck – Wells Fargo Securities: Okay.

Michael Frankel

Management

So that was our plan on that asset, we really wanted to get to this very high quality industrial business with a 10-year sale lease back. But in order to accomplish that we had to take on this office building. And we were able to underwrite the office building at a very low price so that we knew it would be easy to sell it. And we proved ourselves right, we sold that literally what was it, 45 days or not even that since we closed that transaction. And I’m sorry, what was the other part of your question? Blaine Heck – Wells Fargo Securities: Just, is there any other kind of targeted dispositions at this point?

Michael Frankel

Management

We don’t really have anything that we’re targeting, that’s not to say that something could come along or made an offer on a building that we can’t refuse to sell at present time we’re not actively targeting anything else. Blaine Heck – Wells Fargo Securities: Okay, great. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions). Our next question comes from Nikhil Bhalla from FBR. Nikhil Bhalla – FBR: Hi, good afternoon everyone. Just a question on San Diego, so if I look at the occupancy trends in your supplement as your – looks like every one of your market saw a pretty robust sort of improvement over the third quarter with the exception of San Diego, that was down about 100 basis points. Any color on why that maybe the case?

Howard Schwimmer

Management

Yes, sure, Nikhil, it’s Howard. Really that decline in San Diego is attributed to one property. We had a shorter term tenant, sort of someone else put in place in a property on Yorba Drive that exhibits 46,000 square feet. And what’s interesting is we have them in there, this is a classic case we had a recessionary rent-in. And it’s a very good space. And we have multiple parties looking at it, so we expect to be able to achieve a very positive spirit in terms of the GAAP and as well as the cash spread on terms of the leasing. And overall, we are seeing some pretty significant improvement in San Diego. We have another building there that was in a business park about 17,000 square feet. We had a shorter term tenant in that. We actually leased the building and had to exit that tenant. And I think we have moved the rent from like $0.30 well into the $0.50 range on that space. So, we are seeing those improvements and just as we pointed out in our earlier comments, activity is grade of improving that. Nikhil Bhalla – FBR: Got it. And just on some expenses here, Adeel, this question is for you. The SG&A expenses, I mean, if you were to think about a run-rate, what you had in the fourth quarter, is that a good run-rate to use or do you think it would be a little bit higher going forward?

Adeel Khan

Management

Well, I think as we stated in the – in our comments earlier, on the low end it’s about $10 million, on a high end it’s about $11 million. Again, the only thing that I add into that is that with the increased cost related to growth in our portfolio and some four-year cost, the answer is somewhere in the middle. But I think what you saw in the quarter is essentially what you’re going to see from the low-end of our range. But the range is $10 million to $11 million for the year. Nikhil Bhalla – FBR: Okay, and one other question on, just other expenses below the DNA line. Could you just explain what all is included in that?

Adeel Khan

Management

Right, I can explain that, this is Adeel again. Essentially, it’s the allocation for the management of those properties, overhead allocations and things of that nature. And we have separated it out. We might combine that in the future but that’s essentially what goes through that line item. Nikhil Bhalla – FBR: And is that the good run-rate to use for future quarters?

Adeel Khan

Management

Yes, that’s correct. Nikhil Bhalla – FBR: Okay, great. Thank you so much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. At this time we have no further questions. And we’d like to turn the call back over to our speakers for closing comments.

Michael Frankel

Management

Well, thank you operator. And thank everybody again for joining us today. We appreciate your interest in Rexford Industrial. And we look forward to speaking with you again after the first quarter.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This does conclude today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.