Trevor P. Bond
Analyst · Ladenburg Thalmann
Thanks, Kristin, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today. It was a strong quarter with some important highlights that I'll discuss before turning the floor over to our CFO, Katy Rice. Most significantly, as many of you know, we announced last week that the Boards of Directors for W. P. Carey and for one of our funds, the CPA:16, have agreed to merge the 2 companies. This transaction, which of course, is still subject to approval by the shareholders of W. P. Carey and CPA:16, would have significant advantages to both companies. On July 26, we presented the details of the merger in a webcast, and hopefully, many of you were able to participate in that. And if you weren't, then you can review the PowerPoint presentation, which we placed on our website. So I'll just briefly summarize it today. It would have 4 primary benefits. First, it would improve the quality and stability of our earnings. We've made a conscious effort over the past 3 years to increase the percentage of revenue that we earn from our diversified portfolio of net lease assets. And to reduce on a relative, not an absolute basis, the percentage earned from the more cyclical investment management platform. The second benefit of the merger is that it would provide a liquidity opportunity for CPA:16's shareholders and would represent the 15th time that W. P. Carey, as a sponsor, had brought a fund full cycle. Third, the merger would facilitate the continued growth of our dividend as this acquisition is expected to be accretive to our AFFO per share. Finally, the merger would increase W. P. Carey's size, scale and liquidity. This would enhance our future access to diverse, efficiently priced capital and also it would strengthen our currency value, which we expect to become useful as we continue to grow both internally and externally. As I said, there's much more detail about the transaction in that presentation, which I'd urge you to review. For example, there is a go-shop provision within the merger agreement, and of course, it's subject to approval by shareholders of both companies, as I mentioned. But we're very excited about it and think it would be a very positive outcome for all our shareholders. And now looking at our results for the quarter. Let me briefly review some of the highlights there. First, our adjusted funds from operations rose to $1.05 per share for the quarter, most of which was earned through our real estate segment. Later, Katy will break down that number into more detail. Second, we raised our annualized dividend to $3.36 per share, which represented our 49th consecutive quarterly increase. Third, investment volume has been brisk. We structured $305 million of investments on behalf of the managed REITs during the second quarter. And subsequent to the quarter close, we structured an additional $196 million bringing our total growth in assets under management for the year to date through August 6 to about $694 million, with $193 million of that in the first quarter and the balance from April 1 through August 6. Also we acquired 3 properties on behalf of W. P. Carey Inc. for approximately $113 million bringing our total for the year for the public REIT to about $185 million, and a combined $879 million for the entire W. P. Carey group including all the managed REITs. Other highlights included our launch of CPA:18 and the unsecured term loan for $300 million that we used to pay off the balance of our revolver, and Katy will go into more details about that. To return for a moment to investment activity, it's worthwhile, I think, to now break down for you our growth in assets under management in more detail so you can get a sense for where the investment activity has occurred so far this year. First, of the $694 million in assets under management growth, about $310 million has been through CPA:17, and that includes about $90 million of investments in self-storage facilities, most of which were purchased in a portfolio transaction, a single transaction, that is. The balance of CPA:17's activity came from 8 different transactions including 2 large ones in Europe that occurred subsequent to the quarter's close. Those included a logistics facility in Poznan, Poland, which is leased to H&M, one of the world's largest clothing retailers. And also a new R&D facility in the Netherlands for Royal Friesland, which is one of the world's largest dairy companies. The remaining $384 million of AUM growth stemmed from the investment activity of Carey Watermark Investors, which is a separate nonlisted REIT that is wholly dedicated to the hotel industry with a distinct subadvisor and Board of Directors, all of whom have extensive industry experience and all of whom serve on the independent investment committee. Briefly, CWI's investment volume included 3 purchases. First, the 247-room Hutton Hotel, which is perhaps the top luxury hotel in Nashville, Tennessee. Second, the 226-room Holiday Inn Manhattan 6th Avenue, and third, a 75% joint-venture interest in the Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa, which is an iconic property in Napa Valley, California. I want to emphasize here that the activity in both the storage and hotel sectors demonstrates our ability to continue developing new product silos for our investment management platform. Before we launched a more assertive effort into each of these sectors, W. P. Carey not only had obtained direct experience in each through net lease investors to industry leaders as well as through an institutional fund that we manage, but also we'd spent 5 to 6 years thinking about how to mitigate and navigate the different risks involved in these new product types. And so far we've been pleased that the results of those efforts are coming to fruition and enhancing our ability to grow assets under management, and also enhancing the value of the investment management platform itself by broadening the types of products we can offer to financial advisors and their customers. It's worth noting that it is not our goal or intention to someday bring these storage and hotel portfolios onto W. P. Carey Inc.'s balance sheet. Now turning briefly to the investments made on behalf of W. P. Carey Inc. during the quarter. In April, we purchased the main European distribution center of the Tommy Hilfiger Group in Venlo in The Netherlands. In June, we acquired critical R&D and class-A office facilities from Cargotec Corporation in Tampere, Finland. Cargotec is a Finnish public company that develops and manufactures cargo handling machinery for ships, ports and terminals around the world. And finally, in June, we also purchased the corporate headquarters of the Arbella Insurance Group in Quincy, Massachusetts. The cap rates for all these transactions, including for the managed REITs, varied widely, as you might expect, given the diversity of product type, industry and geography. The range of initial cap rates for the net leased purchases for the year is 6.92% to 10.7%. But if you exclude the extreme ends of the spectrum, most of the transactions cluster in the low- to mid-sevens in terms of initial cap rates. Turning now to what we're seeing in the investment climate. We all know that the tone of the markets has changed since Ben Bernanke first raised the subject of tapering of quantitative easing back in May. And despite the fact that the Fed had stated that it's determined to keep interest rates low until growth improved significantly, events have proven that it's not ultimately the Fed that gets to decide where interest rates land. That power rests with the bond markets, obviously. And concerns about valuations have caused bond prices to decline and yields to rise and that, of course, has spilled over for now into our markets, into the REIT markets. It will take some time for general investors to realize that bond math doesn't apply to equity REITs that have built-in contractual rent increases as 99% of our leases do including many that are tied to the CPI Index. Also we do not receive part maturity, but instead a residual value that in many cases will rise along with the improved economic environment. So again, bond math doesn't apply. Yet we obviously can't ignore the impact of a rise in interest rates in our core business. We're conservatively leveraged, and we've anticipated refinancing risk for each of our recent investments by assuming increases of maturity, and stress testing different scenarios and the end of tapering signals and improved economic environment that should provide some positive offsets. As for new investments, the correction has caused us to reprice everything that we're looking at. In some cases, sellers have accepted our effective pass-through of the increased interest expense in the form of price reductions. And in some cases, they haven't. From the point of view of a CFO contemplating a sale leaseback, his or her alternative has always been to access the debt markets. And so the rise in interest rates has reduced competition from that front. That said, we do expect that eventually, if cap rates widen in order to accommodate higher cost of debt, then we may see transaction volumes slow down because sellers can sometimes be slow to adjust their expectations downward. That hasn't happened yet. Meanwhile, Europe has been experiencing the same -- has not been experiencing the same phenomenon because it has not experienced a comparable spike in the benchmark rate, the 5-year euro swap. So our ability to source transaction there will mitigate possible declines that we might begin to see here while uncertainty over the rates continues. But I think that notwithstanding all the concern over the rising rates, there are still positive spreads between the cap rates and available debt, so we continue to see sufficient volume in our pipeline to meet our goals. Also, I wouldn't be the first to point out that the primary reason the Fed would taper QE is because the economy would be recovering and inflation would be picking up. This implies an environment that's generally positive for real estate owners especially in light of the limited construction that's occurred over the past 5 years. And we expect that this sort of scenario will have a positive impact on our lease rollover outcomes as well as the internal growth within our own portfolio. And now, with that, I'll turn the microphone over to Katy Rice.