David R. Greenbaum
Analyst · Bank of America
Thank you, Steve. Good morning, everyone. Let me begin with a brief overview of what we are seeing here in the New York market. Overall, Manhattan's office market has had healthy levels of leasing activity with tenants across many industry types and different price points, including the TAMI tenants that I discussed on our last call, technology, advertising, media and information. Value and efficiency remain the overall themes of the market, and tenants seeking to save the CapEx of the move are driving renewals to higher-than-historic norms. Looking forward, economic sentiment continues to improve with the rising stock market and strong corporate profits. In fact, the New York City economy continues to be one of the healthiest in the nation, having recovered 178% of the total jobs lost in the recession, second only to Houston and its energy concentration. Office-using employment is now back to prerecession levels, having recovered all the jobs lost, some 95,000 jobs. We are finding there is good depth to the market with strong activity for our available space, everywhere within the portfolio, not just 1 submarket. We're also encouraged by the diversity of the tenants looking for space: media, technology, advertising, legal, accounting, healthcare and retail. The smaller financial firms, money managers, hedge funds, private equity groups, are also quite active. And at 280 Park, we and SL Green recently announced 100,000 square feet of leasing activity with Blue Mountain Capital and the Promontory Financial Group, both doubling in size. Our general thinking remains that we will see increased growth in the markets in the second half of the year and into 2014. The Penn Plaza Class A submarket continues to absorb many TAMI tenants from expanding Midtown South market, driving the Penn Plaza vacancy rate even lower to 5%, the lowest vacancy rate in midtown. The Penn Plaza market, which represents only 16% of the total midtown inventory, accounted for 1/3 of all midtown leases in the first quarter, led by the largest lease signed in the quarter, the 646,000-square-foot renewal we completed with Macy's at 11 Penn Plaza. With this renewal, we have solidified Macy's commitment to 11 Penn for an additional 20 years through 2035. Let me turn now to Vornado's overall office performance in the first quarter. We signed 30 leases for a total of 909,000 square feet. Our average starting rent was $56.88, we had strong positive mark to markets of 15.1% GAAP and 0.8% cash. And our office occupancy rate increased 10 basis points to a very full 96%. Our average lease term was a little over 15 years, and TIs and leasing commissions were a low 7.6% of starting rents. As we look at the balance of 2013, our office expirations are quite modest, with only 587,000 square feet expiring. In 2014, we have some 1 million square feet expiring. Of that 1 million square feet, some 25%, about 250,000 square feet, is made up of 3 large tenants we know are vacating at 1290 Avenue of the Americas. No surprises here. Morrison & Foerster, ABN AMRO and Microsoft. With the lobby renovation at 1290 now almost complete, which has received rave reviews from the tenant and brokerage community, we have prepared for these lease expirations. In fact, in the first quarter, we landed State Street Bank for 106,000 square feet, effectively filling 2/3 of the space that Microsoft will be vacating next year. On the last call, I also mentioned that AXA had placed on a sublease market about 300,000 square feet of their space in 1290. AXA now has subleases out on all of that space. Tenants are now focusing on our direct space availabilities and we have good activity. Turning now to Manhattan street retail. In the first quarter, we completed 32,000 square feet of leases with very strong mark to markets of 228% GAAP and 194% cash, reflecting the growth potential of our street retail portfolio including our Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue and Times Square properties. The highlight for the quarter was a lease of 1540 at a net rent of $2,025 per square foot net, a record for this submarket. We also completed a lease with TD Bank for the corner at 1290 Avenue of the Americas, at a starting rent of $500 per square foot, and I'm sure you all saw the recent reports that rents have crossed the $1,000 per square foot mark in SoHo on Broadway, where we also own a strong concentration of assets. As Steve said in his Chairman's letter, the Penn Plaza district where we own 6.7 million square feet of office space, plus significant street retail, and the 1,700-room Hotel Pennsylvania is anchored by Penn Station, the busiest commuter hub in North America, which is the subject of much discussion about its future appearance, as well as being anchored by Madison Square Garden and the Macy's flagship store, both of which are currently undergoing transformative renovations. Redefining the streetscape, retail and feel for the whole Penn Plaza district is an important opportunity for our company. A key element of our Penn Plaza strategy is dramatically improving the Hotel Pennsylvania. This includes renovating the hotel's 1,700 rooms and importantly, transforming the public areas at the base of the building to invigorate the entire Penn Plaza area with exciting new restaurants and retail. With record tourism in New York, 52 million visitors per annum, the Hotel Pennsylvania showed significant operating improvements in the first quarter, driving both 80 yards and occupancy, resulting in a 17% increase in RevPAR compared to the first quarter of last year. Let me spend a moment now on our company-wide sustainability efforts. Vornado here is the industry leader. This was recently recognized by the federal government, which named Vornado a 2013 ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year. As a company, we now have 30 million square feet of LEED Certified space nationwide, including 12 million square feet in New York, more than any other owner, 10 million square feet in Washington, again, more than any other owner. The 555 California complex is also LEED Certified, and the Merchandise Mart in Chicago just had its LEED-Certification upgraded to gold. As Steve mentioned in his Chairman's letter, the New York division has now taken on general oversight of the 3.5 million square foot Merchandise Mart building in Chicago. This asset is managed by Myron Maurer, a 26-year veteran of this building, who has just completed restacking the building to prepare for Google. To produce the 572,000 square foot of contiguous space, which was critical to attracting Google to the building, we relocated 102 gift-and-furnishings tenants, including managing custom build outs on over 400,000 square feet of space. This restacking was completed in record time and we have now delivered possession to Google. The occupancy of the Merchandise Mart is now over 95%. While I have general oversight of this asset, it is included for reporting purposes in the other segment. To conclude my remarks, let me summarize the entire New York division. We had a very strong quarter. Our key performance metrics are industry-leading, including 909,000 square feet of office leasing, office occupancy of 96%, office mark-to-market rent increases of 15.1% GAAP, and same-store EBITDA increases for the overall division of 9.1% cash and 4.6% GAAP. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mitchell Schear to cover Washington.