Robin McBride Zeigler
Analyst · Robert W. Baird. Please proceed with your question
Thanks Bruce. Good evening. Our central mission has been and continues to be value creation for our shareholders. We have been methodically and steadily working towards that goal, through a combination of thoughtful leasing, employing a disciplined operational strategy, and aggressively advancing both our large scale and smaller scale value add redevelopment projects. On the leasing front, we had a strong leasing volume this quarter, with 48 leases executed, totaling 578,700 square feet, of which 10 were new deals comprising 46,900 square feet. The average new lease spread was 3%, with an ABR of $14.22 per square foot, excluding one 2,000 square foot cell phone tenant at Oakland mills, that was leased in a difficult space with a challenging configuration. More generally, during my tenure, we have been highly focused on cultivating stability, by reducing turnover and net frictional costs associated with it. Rather, our focus has been to keep our strong tenants in place, as a stable core off of which to grow occupancy and drive positive rent spreads. Accordingly, under Tim's leadership, the leasing team has emphasized maintaining current occupancy, by reducing the number of tenants that simply returned possession at the end of their term, rather than renew. This quarter's result is a good example of those efforts, with 38 executed renewals, totaling 531,800 square feet. Beyond the five anchor renewals Bruce referenced in his comments, there were 33 renewals for both small shop and anchor tenants executed, totaling 228,700 square feet. The renewal lease spread for those 33 deals was 3.5%, with an average ABR of $15.59 per square foot. The other five anchors were executed at a flat or reduced rents, in order to assure their continued tenancy, and with it, the vitality of their respective centers. These renewals were key anchor tenants in the grocery, fitness and home improvements categories, that demanded a flat or reduced rent. As Bruce described earlier, in agreeing to these renewal rents, we made the strategic determination that accepting the reduced rental rate, to achieve the renewal was a better option than the potential vacancy. The ABR for the 48 total comparable leases for the quarter, totaled $13.06 per square foot, representing a negative 7% spread, which adjusts to a positive 2.8% spread upon removal of the five strategic anchor renewals. Notwithstanding the volatility in the macro retail market, we have nonetheless, maintained solid leasing traction, achieving a portfolio that was 91.6% occupied and 92.6% leased as of the end of the first quarter. We had a 50 basis point decline of physical occupancy and a 100 basis point drop in leased occupancy quarter-over-quarter, which was primarily due to the closing of tops at Timpany Plaza in Gardner, Massachusetts on the heels of their bankruptcy filing. We are actively pursuing backfill options for this tenant, and have already identified some attractive prospects. We have been employing a proactive strategy for backfilling vacancies created by tenant bankruptcies. For example, even prior to the Bon-Ton bankruptcy filing, this will result in two of our stores closures in second quarter 2018, we have begun to negotiate leases with two tenants to backfill the 62,000 square foot Bon-Ton box at Trexler Mall, which are in a mature phase of discussions, and with one tenant to take the entire 54,500 square foot Bon-Ton box in DuBois, Pennsylvania. NOI growth for the quarter was flat year-over-year, which is consistent with guidance. Beyond the basic blocking and tackling of leasing our core portfolio today, the other area of focus related to value creation, is of course, our redevelopment pipeline. We continue to be excited about the momentum we have on both our large scale and smaller value add redevelopment projects. East River, Port Richmond and South Quarter crossing are moving forward favorably. The political support and community enthusiasm for these projects is palpable. The strong tenant interest in our signature mixed use project has been overwhelmingly positive, with multiple high quality anchor and junior anchor LOIs and lease negotiations underway. This phenomenon has demonstrated the importance of migrating our capital into higher quality markets and assets, in order for our portfolio to have leverage relative to tenants, given today's choppy retail environment. Upon completion of the execution of our leasing deals, we will commence the first phase of construction. We anticipate the timing to be end of 2018 or beginning of 2019. The value-add renovation at Carmen's Plaza is still underway, with the second phase currently under construction, and last phase expected to be completed in September 2018. Team Cedar has been very busy. The groundwork is laid for strong strategic growth for this company. I am very proud of the team we have to work with from Tim Havener, heading up our leasing efforts to Charles Burkert and Ehud Kupperman heading up our development and construction. We take our company's values to heart, and truly strive for everyday excellence, with a disciplined strategic focus. I will now turn the call over to Phil.