Bill Crooker
Analyst · Cantor Fitzgerald. Please proceed with your question
Thank you, Ben. And good morning, everyone. As Ben mentioned we had another solid quarter from an acquisition, disposition and operation standpoint. We acquired 14 properties for a purchase price of $138 million and weighted average cap rate of 8.8%. For the year, we acquired 49 properties for $427 million representing an 8.4% cap rate. These acquisitions are consistent with our prior acquisition in terms of tenant and asset quality as well as deal parameters. For 2016, we expect the relative value acquisition opportunity to continue, and we expect to acquire between $300 million and $400 million. During the fourth quarter, we executed on two types of dispositions. Opportunistic and non-core. This resulted in four dispositions for gross proceeds of $12.8 million. For the year we disposed of six properties for gross proceeds of $22 million. In 2016, we plan to significantly increase our opportunistic and non-core disposition activity. The opportunistic dispositions include both small and medium size portfolios. We consider all of our flex office to be non-core and intend to divest ourselves with this property type over time and in an orderly fashion consistent with maximizing our economic realization from individual properties. At quarter end, we owned 291 buildings in 38 states with a total of 55 million square feet. Occupancy stands at 95.6% for the portfolio with an average lease term of four years. We continue to see robust activity in our leasing markets as evidenced by cash and GAAP rent growth of approximately 1% and 12% respectively, another strong quarter. On a retention front, we had a retention rate of 49.2% on the 8,000 of square feet expiring in the fourth quarter. This low retention rate was driven entirely by one non-renewal of 400,000 square feet, 200,000 square feet of which the company relet with no downtime. In total, over the last 12 months, our retention rate has been 70% and we expect retention for 2016 to be in the 70% range. From an operation standpoint, cash NOI for the quarter grew by 18% from the prior year. Same store cash NOI grew approximately 2% quarter-over-quarter and up approximately 1% for the full year compared to 2014. Core FFO grew by 18% compared to the fourth quarter of 2014. On a per share basis, core FFO was $0.40, up 8% compared to last year and up 3% to the previous quarter. This is the second consecutive quarter of record core FFO per share results. Our AFFO for the quarter increased 27% compared to the fourth quarter 2014. This resulted in an AFFO payout ratio of 86% for the fourth quarter. Our balance sheet continues to be strong and in line with our BBB investment grade rating. At quarter end, our debt to run rate EBITDA was 5.6x and our fixed charge coverage ratio was 3.1x. We continue to operate in our promulgated leverage ranges of 5x to 6x debt to run rate EBITDA and greater than 2.5x on our fixed charged covered ratio. As of the fourth quarter, we have $56 million outstanding on our revolver and $422 million of immediately available liquidity, which includes cash in hand of $12 million and an unfunded $150 million term loan. During the quarter, the company closed a seven year unsecured private placement offering for $100 million of proceeds bearing a fix rate of 3.98%. The company also funded the previously committed $150 million term loan B. At quarter end, we had approximately $987 million of debt outstanding with an average maturity of 6.5 years and a weighted average interest rate of 4.1%. All of our debt is either fixed rate or has been swapped to a fixed rate with the exception of our revolver. In 2016, we will continue to maintain a flexible balance sheet, and be prudent allocators of capital. I'll now turn it back over to Ben.