雅虎香港財經 Douglas Emmett, Inc. (NYSE:DEI) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript
Douglas Emmett, Inc. (NYSE:DEI) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript February 8, 2023
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Douglas Emmett's quarterly earnings call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After management's prepared remarks, you will receive instructions for participating in the question-and-answer session. I will now turn the conference over to Stuart McElhinney, Vice President of Investor Relations for Douglas Emmett.
Stuart McElhinney: Thank you. Joining us today on the call are Jordan Kaplan, our President and CEO; and Kevin Crummy, our CIO; and Peter Seymour, our CFO. This call is being webcast live from our website and will be available for replay during the next 90 days. You can also find our earnings package at the Investor Relations section of our Web site. You can find reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures discussed during today's call in the earnings package. During the course of this call, we will make forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs of, assumptions made by and information currently available to us. Our actual results will be affected by known and unknown risks, trends, uncertainties and factors that are beyond our control or ability to predict.
Although we believe that our assumptions are reasonable, they are not guarantees of future performance and some will prove to be incorrect. Therefore, our actual future results can be expected to differ from our expectations, and those differences maybe material. For a more detailed description of some potential risks, please refer to our SEC filings, which can be found in the Investor Relations section of our Web site. When we reach the question-and-answer portion, in consideration of others, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. I will now turn the call over to Jordan.
Jordan Kaplan: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. For Douglas Emmett, 2022 was a year of real accomplishments in the face of notable challenges. In our markets, during the first three quarters, the impacts of COVID dissipated, we leased 3 million square feet and office utilization rates rebounded to over 80%. During the fourth quarter, as economic concerns grew, we saw a slowdown in new and renewal demand from large tenants. Fortunately, we continue to see good activity from the small tenants who dominate our markets and leased 770,000 square feet during the quarter. Overall, our absorption was slightly negative for the year. Given the macroeconomic climate, we believe it is prudent for our guidance to assume no meaningful recovery in office occupancy during this year.
Photo by Alex Mihis on Unsplash
During 2022, the value of both our residential and commercial leases increased. Our straight line office rates were up 5.8% and our residential rents increased an average of 7.8%. In addition, our two multifamily development projects added 505 units to our portfolio. The current state of the national economy is challenging for all of us, but remote work, oversupply, the reliance on large tenants and concerns about reduced urban appeal seem to pose additional obstacles for some office CBDs. Fortunately, our markets, supply constraints, smaller tenants, short commutes and low reliance on public transit have supported relatively high leasing volume and utilization during the pandemic. This recent experience, combined with our industry diversification and strong operating platform, gives us confidence in the long term prospects for our markets.
With that, I'll turn the call over to Kevin.
Kevin Crummy: Thanks, Jordan, and good morning, everyone. Our multifamily development projects continue to exceed pro forma. In April, we delivered Landmark, Los Angeles, a new 376 unit residential high-rise in Brentwood, and have already leased over 60% of the units. In addition, we have now delivered and leased over 350 of our eventual 493 units at Bishop Place in Honolulu, and we expect to substantially complete the conversion by year end. Asset sales in our markets have remained slow, but we continue to search for opportunities. Regarding our balance sheet. We have no outstanding debt maturing until December of 2024, and almost half of our office portfolio remains unencumbered. With that, I'll turn the call over to Stuart.
Stuart McElhinney: Thanks, Kevin. Good morning, everyone. We did a substantial amount of leasing this quarter, primarily driven by the small tenants that support our markets. We signed 218 office leases, covering 772,000 square feet, consisting of 244,000 square feet of new leases and 528,000 square feet of renewal leases. For all of 2022, we signed 924 office leases, covering 3.7 million square feet, including 1.3 million square feet of new leases and 2.4 million square feet of renewals. Nonetheless, during 2022, our leased rate declined by 53 basis points to 87% and our occupied rate declined 83.7%, driven mostly by the slowdown in activity during the fourth quarter and recapturing space from nonpaying commercial tenants as local moratoriums expired.
Our leasing spreads during the fourth quarter were positive 1.8% for straight line and negative 9.9% for cash. As I've been saying in recent quarters, we remain focused on occupancy at this point in the cycle and expect rent spreads to remain choppy until our lease rate climbs back near 90%. Our leasing costs this quarter of $5.80 per square foot per year in line with our recent trends and well below average for other REITs in our benchmark group. Our multifamily portfolio remains essentially full at 99.4% leased. We saw continued strength in rent growth during Q4 with average rent roll up for new tenants over 5%. We assume that extraordinary 7.8% increase in multifamily rents during 2022 will moderate somewhat in 2023. We are pleased that the residential rent moratoriums in our markets are ending, although the payback periods have been extended into 2024 for some of our residential tenants.
With that, I'll turn the call over to Peter to discuss our results.
Peter Seymour: Thanks, Stuart. Good morning, everyone. Turning to our results. Compared to the fourth quarter of 2021, revenues increased by 6.4%, FFO increased by 7.2% to $0.51 per share. AFFO decreased 11.1% to $81.2 million, reflecting more tenant improvement expenditures as a result of our robust leasing in Q2 and Q3. And same property cash NOI increased by 1.4%, primarily as a result of higher rental revenue and parking, partly offset by inflationary impacts on expenses and lower office occupancy. For all of 2022, FFO increased by 9.4% over the previous year. Our G&A remains very low relative to our benchmark group at only 4.4% of revenues. Turning to guidance. As Jordan said, our guidance assumes that office occupancy growth may not start in 2023.
We elected to allow interest on one loan to float when the related interest rate swap expired on January 1st. Our guidance also assumes we will do the same when two other swaps expire in March. Due to increasing interest rates, expiring swaps and the new residential acquisition loan, we expect interest expense in 2023 to be between $192 million and $196 million. Overall, we expect FFO to be between $1.87 and $1.93 per share with higher NOI more than offset by approximately $0.16 per share of additional interest expense in 2023. For information on assumptions underlying our guidance, please refer to the schedule in the earnings package. As usual, our guidance does not assume the impact of future acquisitions, dispositions or financings. I will now turn the call over to the operator so we can take your questions.
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