David Greenbaum
Analyst · Evercore ISI. Your line is open
Steve, thank you and good morning to all. We continue to be very constructive on the New York marketplace. Manhattan closed the third quarter once again with positive absorption, higher asking rents and declining availability rates. At 9.7% Manhattan availability is now at the lowest level since the third quarter of 2008 more than 300 basis points below the great recession high of 12.8%. Importantly in New York we continue to experience strong employment growth for office using tenants with the U.S.-Euro of labor statistics projecting 33,400 new office using jobs for 2015 and a similar number of jobs for 2016. As I said on last quarter's call, in addition to the continuing employment growth in the TAMI, Technology, Advertising, Media and Information sector, which has been driving economic growth for several use now. The FIRE tenant’s financial services, Insurance and Real Estate recently have become very active in the leasing market. We now have dual engines driving the strong job growth in the city. Turning now to our own portfolio. In the third quarter we completed 43 office leasing transactions totaling 509,000 square feet at an average starting rent of $79.80. This continues our strong leasing trends year-to-date. 1,666,000 square feet of total leasing activity year-to-date at very robust average starting rents of $80.09. Our mark-to-markets for the third quarter with 25.4% GAAP and 24.7% cash. As expected, and as I have discussed on our last two calls, our third quarter occupancy dipped slightly by 40 basis points to 96.2% reflecting space that we got back at Eighth Seventh Avenue as well as the exploration of the STWB space at 90 Park Avenue. At 90 Park Avenue, our redevelopment program is near in completion and in the third quarter we've completed two leases in the mid-rise of the building with the rent starting in the mid-80s. Taking account of both our redevelopment program at 90 Park as well as the strength in the current marketplace, these rents are sum $25 a foot higher than just two years ago. At Eighth Seventh Avenue, we got back five floors in the tower, a total of 100,000 square feet and we have already leased two of the floors at rents over $100 per square foot with mark-to-markets of 35%. With the world of wash and liquidity, business for the New York based boutique financial service firms is booming. In the third quarter, we signed a total of seven leases aggregating 69,000 square feet and starting rents over $100 per square foot. In fact year-to-date 24% of our total leasing activity 400,000 square feet out of the 1.7 million square foot leased has been in average starting rents of $108 per square foot, a total of 19 leases in six of our Trophy buildings. 650 Madison Avenue, Eighth Seventh Avenue, 350 Park Avenue, 280 Park Avenue, 640 Fifth Avenue and 770 Broadway. Turning now to our street retail business. In the third quarter, we completed four retail leases, at 640 Fifth Avenue we elected not to renew H&M when their lease expired in January of this year and to maintain the cash flow at the property we immediately broaden a TAMI tenant for the space. We searched for the right tenant for this iconic location on Fifth Avenue at 61st Street and in September we signed a 16 year lease with Victoria's Secret for 64,000 square foot flagship at 640 Fifth Avenue. The store which is expected to open in November 2016 will have 78 Feet joint Fifth Avenue and 9,350 square feet on the grade with three selling levels and additional storage and support space. The mark-to-market on a lease is a 196% GAAP a 3 multiple and 130% cash a 2.3 multiple. Importantly we also retained the stores on 3200 square feet with 25 feet frontage which we current are in the market to lease. With the additional lease up this store the combined GAAP mark-to-market on the entire space will be over a 3.5 multiple. On our last call I discussed the two record breaking leases we completed with the Swatch Group for its luxury brand including Harry Winston at our premier St. Regis retail property on Fifth Avenue at 55th Street. The in place with Bottega Veneta and the bears were schedule to expire in 2016 and 2019. Since the last call we have accelerated the timing of Swatch delivery by moving Bottega Veneta to a temporary store at 650 Madison Avenue and entering into an early termination agreement with the bears. Think about it between the two Swatch Group lease at the St. Regis and now our flagship deal with Victoria's Secret at 640 Fifth Avenue. We have completed all three major leases on prime upper Fifth Avenue this year truly a testament to be extraordinary quality of our Street retail assets and our leasing team. Excluding the Hotel Pennsylvania, our same store numbers for the New York business for the third quarter are tapped positive 2.2% GAAP and 0.5% cash and not reflective of the real growth in our operating results. Last quarter there was some negative comments on the same store results. So let us spend a minute and talk about it. This year’s same store results reflect both a dip in occupancy in our New York office port to 96.2% as well as the retail space at 640 Fifth Avenue which we will not be delivering to Victoria's Secret until next year and the space we recently took back from Crate & Barrel at 650 Madison Avenue. This year’s real growth has come from placing a redevelopment properties 7 West 34 Street, 330 West 34th Street, 280 Park Avenue and 1535 Broadway back into service. However, that real growth is not a component of our same store results for reporting purposes. Historically we have been an industry leader in same store results and we fully expect to be back there next year with high single-digit same store numbers. Let me just say all is good in our New York business. Comparable EBITDA of our New York business is up $37.7 million, up 15.4% this year over last year’s third quarter. Let me now turn the Mart at the epicenter of the River North market in Chicago where we had a tremendous quarter leasing 398,000 square feet of office space with mark-to-markets of 47.4% GAAP and 34.8% cash. The highlights for the quarter include a 15 year lease with ConAgra Foods for 168,000 square feet which will be relocating its corporate headquarters to the Mart from Omaha, Nebraska. Other significant leasing in the quarter included a 45,000 square foot lease with another Fortune 100 company moving to downtown Chicago from the Suburbs. A 72,000 square foot expansion with Yelp bringing at total occupancy in the building to over 130,000 square feet and a 41,000 square feet expansion with the prominent technology incubator 1871 bringing its occupancy to a total of 118,000 square feet. I want to pause from moment here and focus on the Mart. Just a few years ago, we embarked upon a program to re-imagine this iconic asset. At the time, the 3.5 million square foot building was predominantly an industry building with showrooms and trade shows occupying over 70% of the building. What makes the building so attractive to office users is its unique and huge footprint of 200,000 square feet per floor. To give you some perspective here, each floor is over 4.5 acres. In July, 2012 we signed the Motorola mobility Google lease for 600,000 square feet which required us to downsize or relocate over 140 showroom tenants to produce the contiguous space. We have since added PayPal, Yelp, Matter, a bioscience incubator two expansions with 1871 and now this quarter ConAgra and another Fortune 100 company. Today, the building measures 3.65 million square feet and the showroom industry which originally occupied 70% of the building has been downsized to just over 40% of the space. The remaining four showroom industries are healthy and high performing. The contract furnishings industry with the Acon trade show, the home furnishing industry, casual and outdoor furniture and Lux Home the Kitchen and Bath industry. We have taken the EBITDA of this iconic asset from just over $50 million a few years ago to $80 million next year with plenty of room to grow. Our internal budget takes the EBITDA of the asset to triple digits over the next couple of years. If you’re in Chicago, our team would love to take you on the tour to building to showcase both our innovative tenant spaces as well as the next step in the reinvention of the Mart which is now in construction. A grand stair with stadium tenants to congregate including a presentation venue which brings new life to the first two floors of the building as well as trend setting food options and a re-imagine food hall. The state-of-the-art amenities add to the Mart’s attraction to all class of tenants, the tech guys as well as corporate America. In San Francisco at our 1.8 million square foot 555 California Street property, we completed three leases in the third quarter for a total of 45,000 square feet including two market leading leases at approximately $100 per square foot starting rents and 18,000 square foot relocation with the financial services tenant and a 23,000 square foot renewal and expansion with the mobile video game company for the entire 52nd floor. I will conclude my remarks where I began. We are very, very constructive on the New York marketplace. Our pipeline of office and retail leases is robust, we continue to realize very strong mark-to-markets and the acceptance of our redevelopment projects by both the brokerage and the tenant community has been nothing short of spectacular. Thank you. And with that I’ll turn the call over to Mitchell.