Trevor Bond
Management
[Starts Abruptly] Starting with some financial highlights, for the 2014 fourth quarter we generated adjusted funds from operations or AFFO of $125.6 million or $1.19 per share, which brought AFFO for 2014 to $480.5 million or $4.81 per diluted share. Looking ahead, we are maintaining our prior guidance for 2015 AFFO, which we continue to expect to fall between $4.76 and $5.02 per diluted share. During the 2014 fourth quarter, we declared a dividend of $0.95 which was a 1.1% increase over our third quarter dividend, marking our 55th consecutive quarterly dividend increase. Compared to the regular quarterly dividend we declared in the 2013 fourth quarter, it represented a 9.2% increase, driven primarily by our accretive merger with CPA 16. Our annualized dividend rate stands at $3.80 per share and based on yesterday’s closing stock price, our annualized dividend yield was 5.3%. Turning to our owned real estate portfolio, this is our core business representing over 80% of 2014 total net revenue. Investment volume for our owned portfolio was particularly strong during the fourth quarter, completing a strong year for acquisitions overall. Specifically during the fourth quarter, we completed six investments totaling $653 million, bringing on balance sheet investment volume for 2014 to ten acquisitions totaling $907 million. The largest acquisition we completed during the fourth quarter was approximately $380 million sale-leaseback transaction with the State of Andalusia in Spain for a portfolio of 70 office properties. This portfolio is highly diverse with limited exposure to any single property or location and occupied by a range of state government departments and agencies that provide critical services, including the ministries of health, labor and taxation. The lease is for a 20-year term with embedded rent growth based on Spanish CPI with a floor of 1.5%. This transaction provided the opportunity to acquire a significant portfolio of assets that what we believe was a bulk discount rather than the more typical premium prevalent in the United States. We therefore have the option of obtaining liquidity by selling individual assets should the need arise. Overall acquisitions for our owned real estate portfolio during 2014 had a weighted average cap rate of approximately 7% and a weighted average lease term of approximately 18 years. And all of the acquisitions we completed for our owned portfolio in 2014 included either fixed or inflation linked rent escalations. Furthermore, approximately half of the annualized base rent from real estate acquired during 2014 is from investment grade tenants raising overall investment grade annualized base revenues to 26.4% of the total portfolio as of year-end. Turning now to 2015, we have completed two acquisitions so far this year, including approximately $350 million acquisition of a portfolio of 73 automotive retail sites net leased to Pendragon, which is the UK’s largest automotive retailer. The portfolio has a long lease term with weighted average remaining term of 15 years and includes built in rent growth based on a UK inflation index for about two thirds of the sites and fixed at 2.25% for the remaining one-third. It’s a well-diversified portfolio of properties in terms of the geographic locations, as well as the range of brands carried across various price points and the onsite services provided. It’s also strategically important real estate, representing almost one-third of Pendragon’s dealership footprint in the UK in key locations. Furthermore, it is notoriously difficult to obtain permits for automotive sites in the UK. So once established they become critical real estate for both automotive retailers and the manufacturers they represent. Originally marketed as several smaller portfolios, we were able to negotiate the acquisition of the entire portfolio in an off market transaction and an attractive purchase price, which as I mentioned, we believe provided us with a bulk discount. Turning back to the key portfolio metrics for our owned real estate portfolio, we remained active capital recyclers in 2014 with dispositions totaling $304 million. The majority of which took place in the first half of the year. Consequently, at year-end, the company’s owned real estate portfolio consisted of 783 net leased properties with 87.3 million square feet leased to 219 tenants and for operating properties. Portfolio occupancy remained high at 98.6%, up from 98.1% at the end of the third quarter. The weighted average lease term for our owned real estate portfolio ended the year at 9.1 years, up from 8.5 years at the end of the third quarter. And it’s our current expectation that our average lease term will further increase in 2015 as a result of the two deals we closed in January, in addition to potential future acquisitions and capital recycling. Acquisitions during 2014 included single tenant office, industrial and warehouse or distribution facilities and at year-end, our overall diversification by property type remained high. At year end, approximately 65% of annualized base rent was generated by properties located in the United States. The remaining 35% was generated by our international properties, up moderately from 32% of annualized base rent at the end of the 2014 third quarter. Our portfolio remains widely diversified within the US by region and internationally with non-US properties located primarily in western and northern European countries. At year-end, approximately 95% of annualized base rent came from leases with built-in contractual rent escalations, either linked to CPI or through fixed rent increases and being net leases, tenants are generally responsible for substantially all of the costs associated with operating and maintaining the properties. So we have virtually no exposure to rising operating expenses. We have 15 leases expiring in 2015, representing approximately 3.2% of total annualized base rent, which is factored into our 2015 guidance. Turning to our investment management business, the 2014 fourth quarter was another strong quarter for investor capital inflows with gross offering proceeds totaling approximately $416 million, driven primarily by $363 million into Carey Watermark Investors, our non-traded lodging REIT, which is now closed. Also included is $53 million of inflows to CPA 18, which at year-end was approximately 91% subscribed and we expect to close at the end of the first quarter of 2015. Fourth quarter inflows brought total inflows for the managed REITs to approximately $1.5 billion for 2014, which was a record for a full-year period and which demonstrates the continued strong appetite for W. P. Carey products with income oriented retail investors and the strength of the W. P. Carey brand. Earlier this month, the registration statement for our second non-traded lodging REIT, Carey Watermark Investors Incorporated 2 was declared effective by the SEC and commenced a capital rise of up to $1.4 billion. Looking ahead, our view of the investment outlook remains much the same as it was on last quarter’s call. We believe investment conditions remained favorable in Europe where the continued slow growth environment has generally kept cap rates higher and debt costs lower than here in the US. In contrast, the environment in the US remains competitive and attractively priced transactions are more scarce. However, we do feel that conditions may improve in 2015 as we expect capital flows into non-traded net leased funds to abate somewhat, reducing competition for acquisitions and therefore pricing pressure from the non-traded REIT sector. On the supply side, if US economic growth continues, we would expect more companies to explore sale-lease back transactions as an attractive alternative to debt which would increase the opportunities available to us. Lastly I would like to outline our key priorities for 2015 and beyond. Our primary goal is to continue to make accretive acquisitions for our owned real estate portfolio. As we did in 2014, we expect to fund our net investment volume by accessing the public capital markets and continuing to move towards becoming a predominantly unsecured borrower. We will also seek to lower our overall cost of capital using an appropriate mix of debt and equity that maintains our conservative investment grade balance sheet. We will continually - we will continue to actively recycle capital with a focus on extending lease term, improving credit quality and increasing asset criticality within our owned real estate portfolio. And lastly over time we expect to further diversify the products offered through our investment management platform away from net leased products, which have several benefits for our shareholders. First and foremost, all the income we generate from that business flows to W. P. Carey shareholders. There are no outside vehicles unlike certain of our competitors. Adding new products like our recently registered BDC therefore, provides additional avenues for AFFO growth. Over time such products should also provide greater consistency and predictability to our investment management revenues with a growing proportion coming from stable asset management fees and a lower proportion from one-time structuring fee. And importantly, once CPA 18 is fully invested, which we currently expect to happen in 2016, our allocation strategy will pivot such that all net leased acquisitions will first be considered for our owned real estate portfolio, which will expand the accretive acquisition opportunities available to us. And with that, I’ll hand over to Katy.