Ben Butcher
Analyst · Manny Korchman with Citi. Please proceed with your question
Thank you, Matts. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the second quarter earnings call for STAG Industrial. We're pleased to have you join us and look forward to telling you about our second quarter results. Presenting today in addition to myself will be Bill Crooker, our Chief Financial Officer, who will discuss the bulk of the financial and operational data. On with me today are Steve Mackey, our Chief Operating Officer; and Dave King, our Director of Real Estate Operations. They will be available to answer questions specific to their areas of focus. As we enter the month of August, there continue to be more questions than concrete answers around important items that impact all of our daily lives. Will there be a second wave of COVID-19? If so, how will this impact reopening of our economy? Will students return to the classroom or be educated virtually? Will employees return to the office or continue to work-from-home? On top of these unanswered questions, we have the upcoming presidential election in November amid excessive levels of polarization. However, we do know the consumer behavior has been changed by necessity and the acceleration of already in place trends. Many of these changes are likely permanent as we settle into the post-COVID new normal. The issue of whether an e-commerce presence and associated supply chain are required is no longer a question for most businesses of size and e-commerce presence is required to compete effectively. Not surprisingly, in this environment, Amazon continues to be our largest tenant. This dominant e-commerce company now accounts for 2.5% of our annualized base revenue. This includes the recent leasing activity we have specifically discussed in conference calls and on conferences -- and at conferences. Across our platform, we continue to see the build out of e-commerce supply chain as a large and growing demand driver for industrial real estate. Let me now over the leasing status for the four buildings that have been highlighted in our recent communications. Our building in Hampstead, Maryland, a 1 million square foot building to be vacated by Solo Cup in July, has seen a healthy amount of leasing activity over the past two months. Our initial expectation was that it would take 12 to 18 months to accomplish the release of this building. Based on current information, we expect to outperform that estimate. Our value-add projects in Taunton, Massachusetts, a 350,000 square-foot building was acquired last year subject to a short-term lease to a known vacate tenant. The building received strongest units from a variety of tenants mostly for e-commerce use. We are happy to report that we have started 11 year lease to a dominant e-commerce tenant for the full building. In addition, we see a termination fee of over half a million dollars from the vacating tenant. The resulting zero downtime and the achieved rent significantly outperformed our budget and expectations for these metrics. Our speculative development in Burlington, New Jersey, a 250,000 square foot building that sits in one of the strongest strategic distribution markets on East Coast, access to say of the New Jersey Turnpike. We're happy to confirm that we've executed a full billion lease to a dominant e-commerce tenant, again, outperforming our expectations on both rent and lease uptime. Finally, we've determined the optimal path forward for other buildings in Burlington, New Jersey, the 1 million square foot building in the GSA will vacate in December. You may recall this asset also includes 40 acres of land adjacent to the building with development potential of over 500,000 square feet. After evaluating multiple potential paths, we'll be moving forward to release the existing building and to separately continue to pursue permanent of the development parcel. This decision was driven by the continued strong leasing velocity in the Exit 6A submarket. This strength has been evidenced by the multiple discussions we're having with potential full building users. We look forward to updating everybody with details on both components in the near future, in short, on these assets and across the portfolio, some very solid performance by our experienced and capable asset management team. With that, I'll turn it over to Bill, who will discuss our second quarter operational results and updates for 2020 guidance.