Bruce Schanzer
Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead
Thanks, Nick. Good evening and thank you for joining us on the third quarter 2018 earnings call for Cedar Realty Trust. As always, on tonight’s call, I am joined by my senior executive colleagues, whom I refer to as my kitchen cabinet, as well as the balance of Team Cedar who are listening to the call. Our achievements to-date and going forward are to their credit, as is their collective commitment to everyday excellence. Although we can't dictate the day-to-day fluctuations in our share price, nor resolve the tribulations many of our retail tenants are facing, we can control the energy and enthusiasm with which we attack the challenge of transforming Cedar into a leading retail REIT. As Robin, Phil and I will discuss in greater detail, we have a strategy for achieving this objective and with the members of Team Cedar all pulling together, I'm confident we will be successful. The third quarter call is always special. As some of you will recall, on our third quarter 2011 call, we announced our new corporate strategy which contemplated our divesting approximately half our assets by number and focusing on our remaining portfolio of grocery-anchored shopping centers, straddling the D.C. to Boston corridor. With crisp execution, we completed the divestiture program on time and ahead of budget. In the course of executing our divestiture plan, we began laying the foundation for the current phase in our strategic evolution as we started investing substantially into the highest population density urban submarkets within our D.C. to Boston footprint. This involved acquiring a number of additional centers and related properties funded with further shopping center divestitures, while progressing the mixed-use redevelopment projects we had discussed at South Quarter Crossing in Philadelphia and East River Park in Washington D.C. Since we last spoke, we have made a number of key advances. Most notably, we’ve now pulled back the curtain on our third major redevelopment project Riverview Plaza, which sits along Columbus Boulevard in Philadelphia and looks out on the Delaware River. Although we have been hard at work on it, we had held off on discussing Riverview publicly until we completed a couple of transactions that were resolved this quarter, most notably the acquisition of a strategically significant parcel that is adjacent to the property. This mixed-use project made up of apartments sitting over street retail will feature some of the finest river views in all of Philadelphia. Notably, although we are just starting to discuss it publicly now, we currently anticipate launching this project in the first half of 2019. In addition, as previously disclosed, we gained control of Senator Square, directly across the street from East River Park shopping center in D.C., allowing us to dramatically grow the scale and positive neighborhood impact we anticipate for this project. With the addition of Senator Square, we rebranded the project Downtown Benning representing the combination of two adjacent centers that sit in the heart of Washington D.C., downtown Ward 7 at the intersection of Minnesota Avenue and Benning Road. You will of course recall, we did the same thing last year when we rebranded the combination of South Philadelphia shopping center and Quartermaster Plaza into South Quarter Crossing. The Senator Square acquisition is instructed in as much as it is a transaction that Cedar as a relatively small and strategically focused retail REIT is uniquely situated to execute. We started pursuing Senator Square shortly after we put East River under contract back in the summer of 2015. It took many weeks of working our local network just to find out who actually controlled it. A little bit more time to convince them to meet with us and eventually to convey it to us, followed by many months of negotiating price, structure, terms and alike before we finally had the framework of the deal. And then took more months of hard work and intricate negotiations to consummate the transaction. After over three years of tireless effort, we finally got control of this strategically significant parcel that will dramatically impact the success of our redevelopment efforts in Washington D.C. I imagine a much larger company would not commit as much in the way its human capital to a single acquisition, but for Cedar it is highly consequential and we expect it will drive an even better outcome for the project and ultimately for our shareholders. On a more substantive note, because the Downtown Benning project sits within an opportunity zone, with the recent dissemination of the much awaited guidelines for opportunity zones that came out a few weeks ago, we were seeing interest from private investors regarding this project in particular. There's no question that the fact our largest mixed-use redevelopment project in terms of size and investment sits within an opportunity zone is something we will continue to explore and hopefully exploit. If nothing else, it highlights to us the significant embedded value in this project and neighborhood. As we look ahead to 2019, we plan to break ground on the first phases of both South Quarter Crossing and Riverview. We anticipate finalizing the anchor leases at both projects as well as at Downtown Benning in the coming months and once these leases are fully executed disclosing our anchor lineup and adding disclosure to our supplemental around capital spend, timing and returns for these and a number of our other projects. However, it is worth noting as we look ahead to 2019 that the need to begin funding these projects will start during the second half of the year. Accordingly, coupled with the excitement of finally breaking ground on these projects regarding which we have been speaking for a number of years now, we will begin the process of selling assets to fund the associated capital spend. These asset sales will be dilutive to FFO in the near term as we sell cash flowing assets to fund capital spend that will not immediately generate income. We will of course put more specifics reminisce on our fourth quarter call when we provide forward guidance. Keep in mind, this is the funding strategy we've been discussing for many quarters now and we expect will result in a quantum improvement to our portfolio metrics and long-term earning power. However, as we’ve done in the past, we will continue exploring all avenues to drive down our cost of capital, carefully manage leverage, closely monitor the capital markets and minimize FFO dilution to the extent possible. I will conclude my comments with how I started them by discussing Team Cedar. At Cedar, we have a community of professionals that are committed to being good corporate citizens. It starts within these walls where we do our work with a spirit of collegiality and collaboration. At Cedar, more than half of our executives at the level of manager and higher are women and half of our Executive Vice Presidents are women. More generally, our workforce is highly diverse in many respects. This is a central value of our company. This spirit of good corporate citizenship starts within our offices but it extends to the communities we serve. Specifically, we believe passionately that we can do well by our shareholders while doing good for the communities in which we are investing. As we look to 2019 and beyond, we see our relatively small company attacking some of the biggest issues facing our urban communities. Our redevelopments are intended to help bringing fresh food to areas that are now food deserts and taper streets in neighborhoods that have experienced challenges in inadequate capital investments and improvements. In thinking about Cedar, remember that an investment in Cedar is an investment in the welfare of the urban communities that will benefit from our collective commitment to exemplary corporate citizenship. With that, I will give you Robin to more fully discuss our leasing results and our redevelopment. Robin?