Andy Richardson
Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open
Thank you, Jay, and good morning, everyone. Let me continue with Slide 6. For the quarter, net income was $0.24 per share versus a loss of $0.07 for the fourth quarter last year. FFO was $0.36 per share versus $0.05 in the prior year period and AFFO was $0.09 per share versus $0.06 in the prior year period. For the year, this brought net income to $0.64 per share, FFO to a $1.15 per share and AFFO to $0.63 per share. Because we formed the Company midway through 2017, the full year-over-year comparison is not meaningful. Our quarter was highlighted by strong quarter-over-quarter investment volume, and an investment of new equity capital from our manager received after year -end, that provides us with runway for growth. Let's turn to Slide 7, to discuss this quarter's investment activity. For the quarter, we closed $178 million of new investments, growing our aggregate portfolio to $948 million, a 23% increase from the third quarter and almost tripling in size since our IPO. You can see the key investment metrics on the Safehold's we originated in Q4 toward the bottom half of the slide. We are earning a 5.6% effective yield with AAA like credit metrics of 3.2x coverage and the cost basis of 41% of the combined property value. These investments also included periodic CPI look back to provide additional potential upside to our effective return. Slide 8, describes this quarter's investments in some additional detail. Most noteworthy, we originated a Safehold on 1111 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC, a trophy office building that is fully occupied by global law firm, Morgan Lewis & Bockius. This $150 million investment represents the largest single asset in the portfolio and further demonstrates that Safehold can provide better capital to its customers on any scale. Washington DC continues to be a strong MSA for us with approximately $300 million of deals closed in the market to-date. Our second investment for the quarter expanded Safehold's geographic footprint with our first deal in Nashville. We created a Safehold underlying at 275 unit Class A multi-family building located in Novel Music Row, a vibrant sub-market of Nashville, marking the second deal we have completed with this customer. We remain enthusiastic about our continued ability to penetrate the multi-family segment while continuing to expand into new core markets. Moving to Slide 9. Along with announcing Safe's rebrand, we're also introducing the Safe-Star, one stop capital program that is a direct result of Safehold's aligned relationship with iStar. This platform combines iStar's 25 years of financing expertise and innovative thinking along with Safehold's unique product in order to provide our customers with a one-stop capital solution. With both companies operating in tandem, this powerful program delivers an efficient capital structure to customers seeking flexibility and simplicity. An excellent example of the Safe-Star program is the deal we recently closed in Washington DC shown on the Slide. Safehold provided the capital to create a new ground lease on the property and iStar provided the first mortgage lease hold loan. With this structure, we can deliver to customers an efficient capital solution with certainty and ease of having the whole envelope structured in one place, significantly expediting the pathway to closing. Turning to Slide 10. As previously announced on January 2nd, iStar made an additional $250 million equity investment in Safehold valued at a price equivalent to $20 per share, an attractive premium to the market price of our stock. This investment provides Safehold with fresh capital to pursue approximately $750 million of new deals assuming our targeted 2:1 debt-to-equity ratio. The investment was structured as a purchase of $12.5 million limited partnership units that will be exchanged for common stock on a one-for-one basis subject to shareholder approval. iStar's ownership now represents approximately 65% of our total equity. However, it should be noted that iStar discretionary voting power will be capped at 41.9%. In conjunction with this investment, our Independent Directors approved an amendment to the Management agreement with iStar. The key changes to the agreement which we believe creates increased alignment with our manager are summarized on the slide. Lastly, Safe's Board approved iStar's request to increase its common stock ownership limitation to 43.9% from 41.9% allowing it to make additional open market purchases of up to 366,000 shares. Slides 12 and 13 show the diversification in our portfolio. Washington DC has now become our largest MSA and the map includes Safehold's expansion into Nashville. In Slide 14, we have highlighted the portfolio of properties for which we own the ground lease. Our ground lease is underlying nearly 7.2 million square feet of real estate including over 2,800 hotel rooms and 2,600 multi-family units. Slide 15 details key metrics of our portfolio. Annualized GAAP revenue which takes into account straight line rent totaled $70.6 million at the end of the fourth quarter. Net of depreciation and amortization our portfolio yield 6.9% on a GAAP basis. Annual cash flow of the building sitting on top of our land covers our annual cash rent by 4.5x and our total cost basis represents about 35% of the combined property value which we believe to be compelling measures of safety in our investments. Imperatively the average AAA loan to value in commercial mortgage backed securities is approximately 38% to 42%. Slide 16 delivers an update on Value Bank. During the fourth quarter, Value Bank grew to 1.8 billion representing a 15% increase from the third quarter and 65% from a year ago. As a reminder, Value Bank represents today's estimated market value of the buildings that we may receive in the future because typically embedded in our investments are reversionary rights of the buildings and improvements at the lease expiration. Moving to Slide 18, I will review our debt and leverage. During the fourth quarter, we closed at 10 year $79 million non-recourse senior secured loan that was tailored to meet the unique attributes of our assets. The loan has an initial effective rate of 3.91% which increases 2% annually in line with the rent bumps of the investment that collateralized. The all in effective rate is 4.25% and is interest only for the entire 10 year term. It was collateralized by seven assets and represents a 60% advance rate against base investment basis in the collateral. In addition it provides for asset addition and substitution flexibility. In addition, we continue to have 227 million of long term fixed rate debt in 2027 secured by our initial $340 million portfolio and 71 million of assets specific debt against our Hollywood investments. We drew 96 million on a revolver during the quarter to fund investment activity bringing the outstanding balance on our revolver to $170 million at December 31. The revolver was fully repaid after year end using the proceeds from iStar's equity investment. Slide 19 continues to outline the interest rate hedges sufficient to allow protected two times leverage on the existing portfolio. Finally on Slide 20, I would like to discuss how we will be reporting our metrics going forward. We expect that after the adoption of new lease accounting standards beginning January 1 of this year, nearly all of our newly originated Safehold's will be classified as sales type leases rather than operating leases. These leases will be recorded on our balance sheet as a net investment in lease rather than as a land. We will recognize income from these leases in a revenue line item called interest income from sales type leases. This amount will be computed similar to how an effective interest or effective yield is computed on a bond using contractual future cash flows and residual value equal to our cost of the land. The difference between the effective yield or what GAAP refers to as the rate implicit in the lease and current period cash received is recorded as amortization which increases or decreases the net investment in lease balance sheet account. We believe that the GAAP treatment of these leases under the new accounting standards captures many of the fixed income like aspects of our business such as AFFO and FFO will be of less utility as supplemental measures going forward. Already under GAAP we use a similar method to record interest expense on our debt. Consequently, we believe the new GAAP yields recorded on our assets and debt obligations will be more comparable and that GAAP net income will be more indicative of our operating performance as a high grade fixed income investment business. In conclusion, we are encouraged and confident based on the progress we've made to-date but as we rollout the new grant, we're even more excited about the possibilities ahead. And with that I'll turn it back to Jay.