Earnings Call Transcript - ARE Q4 2012

Operator, Operator

Hello, and welcome to the Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2012 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Myesha and I will be your operator for today’s call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Rhonda Chiger. Please go ahead.

Rhonda Chiger, IR

Thank you and good afternoon. This conference call contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements is contained in the company’s Form 10-K Annual Report and other periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Joel Marcus. Please go ahead.

Joel Marcus, Chairman, President and CEO

Thanks, Rhonda, and welcome, everybody, to the Fourth Quarter and Year End Earnings Call, and Happy New Year to everybody. Sorry for the late notice, we were going to release next week, but I’ve got to fly to Basel to meet with Roche’s CEO and so we needed to kind of accelerate our earnings release, so I apologize for the inconvenience. Alexandria Real Estate is making solid progress in both the fourth quarter and in 2012, which I think positions us well for 2013. It reminds me of Lou Holtz’s quote, of football fame: Ability is what you’re capable of doing; Motivation determines what you do; But attitude determines how well you do it. And I think it’s fair to say that in each and every one of our key CBD cluster markets, we are the landlord of choice and most admired life science real estate company because of our unparalleled knowledge, expertise and experience and really a can-do attitude for our clients and world-class network. And, really, it’s a great credit to this first-in-class team and I want to thank them for all they do during this past year. We’re also very proud of our accounting and financial groups, best-in-class disclosure supplement introduced about a year ago and continually enhanced, and we hope that you appreciate the work that’s gone into that. What I want to do is really look forward to 2013. I think 2013 will be a breakout year for Alexandria. We certainly intend to increase per share value demonstrably and as a leader in life science, both on a branding and quality leadership standpoint, we expect to continue to get wider access to lower-cost capital, growing our per share earnings, solid recycling of assets, positive internal growth and increasing dividends. We expect solid revenue growth from development and redevelopment will continue, driving NOI growth by increasing occupancy and strong leasing. In fact, we believe for 2013 we’re already nicely outpacing our internal model for leasing projections. We expect to achieve our debt to adjusted EBITDA target of about 6.5x by the fourth quarter, and we expect to continue to successfully recycle assets to reinvest in high-quality, best-in-class CBD assets, as well as achieve our targeted 15% to 17% non-income producing real estate as a percentage of gross asset value. In January 2013, we began the monetization of our 75/125 Binney Street, Cambridge parcel, the second out of four key parcels in that development; the first one to Biogen Idec, which will be delivered in the fourth quarter, and they’ve had a sterling year and that, by the way, a very solid yield. ARIAD Pharmaceutical is signed to take almost a quarter million square feet. We think it’s about 63% of the project and we think there is a very high and strong likelihood they’ll take the balance. It’s a first-in-class oncology company, which received early FDA approval for their first-in-class rationally designed small molecule unique cancer drug, ponatinib. I had the privilege of serving on ARIAD’s board for many years and it is truly a first-in-class, second cohort commercial stage biotech company. As was noted in the Boston Properties Call, Cambridge – Boston is undergoing a tremendous boom in lab space development and we’re a significant beneficiary thereof with two out of the seven projects. Moving on to our project in New York, beyond Roche, we’re in LOI negotiations for seven additional floors of about 30,000 square feet each or approximately 210,000 square feet with eight different entities, all of whom are lab space users. We feel that the pace of lease-up will exceed our internal projections, and most of these are 10-year plus leases with strong rental rates and escalators. I’ll come back shortly to talk about yields and costs. Moving on to our sales and asset recycling program, really headed by Peter Moglia. In January, you’ll note from the Supplement we did close the 1124 Columbia Street project, a project we actually bought pre-public, together with two land parcels for about $42.6 million carry-backs on paper. This is being converted to medical office and almost all the tenants are rolling out. The strategy was to exit the First Hill submarket; it’s no longer a lab market. It really is a hospital and medical office market, to rid vacancy coming in a non-lab market and also to recycle to core CBD assets, so that met all of our goals there. So this month in February we closed on 25, 35, and 45 West Watkins. This was, again, a pre-IPO asset, together with 1201 Clopper, which was a build-to-suit we did a number of years ago for Digene, which has been acquired by QIAGEN. That lease rolls in a couple of years and that property will have to be multi-tenanted. There’s quite a bit of office vacancy in the West Watkins property, together with a land parcel that’s adjacent, totaling $41.4 million. Again, the strategy was to lighten our exposure to the Gaithersburg submarket, as we’ve spoken about on a number of occasions, rid coming vacancy in a suburban market and recycle to core CBD, and we’re very proud of Peter’s team for executing this in an excellent fashion. I want to address, and Steve will speak a little bit about this when it comes to San Francisco, the important issue of yields. Investors should take great comfort that Alexandria is really outperforming most others on the yield front. Let me walk you through examples. If you look at others' build-to-suit yields, assuming you can find them, and acquisition cap rates in this low cap rate market, it’s clear that tech, either developments or acquisitions, are not beating our yields. Neither are our New York City or Cambridge CBD office developments or acquisitions. We feel very comfortable about what we’ve been doing. In fact, our patented lab space niche, which we invented, is now actually a mainstream product. If you go to Page 3 of the Supplement at the front end of the press release, and you look at the development and redevelopment of the 75/125 Binney Street project, we see yields north of 8%. We feel very good about those yields and we’re proud to say that they likely exceed most other yields in the Boston or Cambridge market. We know of some assets that may be coming to market at either 6% or sub-6% cap rates. This applies similarly in the Longwood asset, where we are also achieving north of an 8% yield; other commercial buildings in that market have been over $1,000 a foot, which likely yield 5% or 6%. Our other developments in San Diego, Seattle, and other regions have demonstrated a strong yield production; we feel very good about this compared to the competition. Moving on to the life science industry, we must note that many real estate analysts and investors still fundamentally don’t understand this industry. By all indications, 2012 was very positive for both the bio and pharma sectors. According to Patel and R&D Magazine, U.S. life science real estate is expected to increase by 1.5% to a healthy $82.7 billion of R&D spend this year. The performance of biotech and pharmaceutical companies are strong, with notable capital markets performances and they are sitting on $197 billion in cash for funding R&D, M&A, and partnerships essential for pipeline filling. Clearly, open innovation and external research is crucial, and Alexandria is positioned well in key CBD life science clusters. We own class A assets in Cambridge, New York City, San Francisco, and San Diego, which are desired locations. We have the knowledge and expertise they are seeking, and we have the innovative and collaborative environments they require. A robust set of second cohort commercial stage biotech companies are driving demand and space needs in these markets, including ARIAD and Onyx, with positive requirements from Roche and Biogen Idec as highlights. This along with positive headlines emerging for the industry is indeed promising. Additionally, we expect to support an increasing dividend in 2013 to share our increasing cash flows with shareholders. With that said, let me turn it over to Steve for additional details on leasing.

Steve Richardson, COO and Regional Market Director

Thank you, Joel. I’ll focus on two key areas, the first being the Q4 and 2012 leasing results, and then we’ll look forward a little bit at the status of the 2013 roles for each region. The company delivered strong operating results during 2012, leasing a total of 3,281,000 square feet in 187 leases, and finished with a solid Q4 2012, leasing a total of 678,000 square feet in 47 leases. I’ll provide more color on this consistent performance in each region, but will note that these statistics really highlight the company’s ability to engage its clients and tenants in a unique way that differentiates us in the real estate industry. We bring our entire operating platform, including our proprietary life sciences underwriting teams, to fully engage with these clients, not only on an operational level to provide class A service for mission-critical facilities and enhance amenities to support an intrinsically collaborative culture, but also on a business development level to connect with a best-in-class network of industry leaders. In Cambridge, we leased a total of 924,000 square feet during 2012, including 92,000 square feet during Q4. We had a nice occupancy increase this past year of 70 basis points from 93.9% to 94.6%, and rents for Class-A products have solid support in the mid-to-high $50 triple net range, significantly higher for new build-to-suit products. We had a notable lease renewal with Novartis in Tech Square for 47,000 square feet, demonstrating no downtime and a nice 3% increase. The overall Cambridge market is healthy, with the vacancy rate decreasing a full 670 basis points from 17% to 10.3% during the past year, driven by the highest absorption rate since 2000. In Maryland, we leased a total of 547,000 square feet throughout 2012, including 171,000 square feet during Q4, improving occupancy from 89.4% to 90.9%. Significant lease completions included a mission-critical facility for a local government agency, which leased 73,000 square feet for nine years at a slight increase on a cash basis. This cluster’s trending at a vacancy rate of 7% and if we continue to experience reasonable demand during 2013, we believe we can incrementally improve occupancy and rental metrics. In San Diego, we leased a total of 354,933 square feet during 2012, including more than 76,000 square feet in Q4. Our operating asset base has grown considerably from a little over 2 million square feet to 2.7 million square feet, representing a remarkable 34% year-over-year increase. Occupancy remains solid at 95.1%. We partnered with Genomatica, a rising star in the industrial biotechnology sector on a long-term lease of 68,000 square feet during Q4. Conversely, in the Bay Area, we leased 592,000 square feet during 2012, with 78,000 square feet in Q4, also showcasing a strong occupancy increase from 96.7% to 97.8% throughout the year. The Stanford cluster remains very healthy with a vacancy rate of sub 5% and lease rates within the $30 to $36 triple net range. Lastly, we anticipate a manageable set of rollovers during 2013, strategically positioned for meaningful progress throughout the year and maintaining momentum on the build-to-suit front in our key markets. I’ll now hand it off to Dean for further commentary.

Dean Shigenaga, CFO, SVP and Treasurer

Thanks, Steve. We reported FFO of $1.16 per share diluted, as adjusted for the fourth quarter. Our FFO per share results align with our guidance range provided on Investor Day in December of 2011. Concerning our core operating metrics, we achieved significant success with the execution of substantial growth in NOI from development and redevelopment deliveries. For Q4, NOI from continuing operations reached $107.5 million, representing a 6.6% increase over the third quarter and a 10.1% increase over Q4 2011. In 2012, we completed approximately 1.1 million rentable square feet of value-added development and redevelopment projects, aggregating almost $700 million, achieving an average GAAP yield around 8%. Approximately 60% of this delivered at the very beginning of Q4. The same-property performance for the fourth quarter represents the third consecutive quarter of positive cash same-property performance, with Q4 cash NOI growth of 6.3%, building upon solid growth of 4.3% in Q3 2012. We did experience some offsetting increases resulting in a small decrease in certain cash rents, primarily in Greater Boston. We took some temporary downtime to transition spaces at 300 Technology Square and 790 Memorial Drive during 2012. These spaces were delivered just a few months after rollover in the year and are expected to contribute positively to cash same-property performance in 2013. Moving to balance sheet milestones, in 2012, we executed our capital strategy, showcasing our access to diverse sources of capital essential for our long-term capital structure. These sources included real estate asset sales, secured construction project financing, and unsecured lines of credit, along with joint venture capital, preferred stock, and common stock issued through our at-the-market common stock offering program. It’s also critical to note that we completed around $577 million in construction in 2012, limited our issuance of equity capital to $98 million and ended the year relatively leverage neutral at 7.3 times on a debt to EBITDA basis. Our balance sheet goals for 2013 include executing our capital recycling program towards investing in high-value Class-A urban assets, while minimizing the use of common equity capital and lowering our debt-to-EBITDA to roughly 6.5 times. Moving on to asset sales, our 2013 target remains $300 million, with about $77 million rollover from December 2012 deferred into 2013, aggregating $377 million targeted for this year. We have made progress since Investor Day in December: $84 million in sales have been completed to-date in 2013, with another $55 million under contract. We have about $140 million in various stages, which includes letters of intent and early negotiations. Regarding our joint venture for the Binney development, Peter Moglia can elaborate further as we are still in discussions and negotiations, and general terms are not set yet. With that, I will turn it back to Joel.

Joel Marcus, Chairman, President and CEO

Thank you, Dean. We now open the floor for questions. Operator, please proceed.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions) Our first question is from Jamie Feldman with Bank of America. Please go ahead with your question.

Jamie Feldman, Analyst

Great. Thank you. I know you spent a good deal of time talking about yields and comparing yields to office on the call. Where I think investors are trying to understand is the portion of your total investment that goes to the lab space build-out. How do you underwrite that, and how do you think about underwriting that in relation to your core and shell office buildings? If you could provide insight on how you consider the relative investment across those two pieces of your cost structure.

Joel Marcus, Chairman, President and CEO

If the question presumes that above-standard improvements from office are not valuable for the long-term, could you expand upon your question? The overall return of the project is what matters, not segmented core and shell versus improvements. For build-to-suit facilities, these tend to come with 10, 15, or even 20-year leases. These yields are for initial stabilized deals, so they don’t include all the increases over time that investors often overlook.

Peter Moglia, Chief Investment Officer

To add, when we evaluate prices for build-to-suits, we set a lower expected return for the core and shell than for the tenant improvements that may not recycle well or for as long, thus blending into a total we believe exceeds projected exit cap rates.

Jamie Feldman, Analyst

Can you give us a sense of market rents across your major markets and whether you’re seeing any material growth at this point?

Steve Richardson, COO and Regional Market Director

In the Cambridge market, we’re supporting solid rents in the mid-$50s triple net for existing products. For non-build to suit, this is existing product; our build-to-suits are significantly higher. Companies are driven to build-to-suit products, willing to pay for the step-up in rent from existing products.

Peter Moglia, Chief Investment Officer

In Seattle, market rents remain high even though activity has stabilized, at about $45 to $52 for Class-A space. Maryland is seeing some traction with quotes in the mid-to-high $20s. In Research Triangle Park, first-class space is around the $25 to $30 range. New York is high-cost, but we project mid-to-high $70s to low $80s for the West Tower.

Joel Marcus, Chairman, President and CEO

In terms of sequestration, my personal view is it’s likely to happen but may not last for a prolonged period. There's broad consensus against cuts to the NIH budget, so I expect a deal will be made post-sequestration as part of another budget deal. The primary impact may be on institutional leases tied to NIH grants, while the pharma side should see zero impact. Some projects focusing on institutions may pause until resolved, but we see a resolution by June 30 or sooner.

Jamie Feldman, Analyst

Given your expiration schedule, will any of these leases be slow to renew?

Joel Marcus, Chairman, President and CEO

We have one roll of about 60,000 with a GSA lease that we expect to renew due to its critical nature. The only significant lease that depends on NIH is one that rolls in 2016 with Scripps Research Institute, which is the largest non-profit in the U.S. No other substantial leases are rolling in 2013.

Quentin Velleley, Analyst

Regarding the income-producing assets recently sold, if these were GAAP yields of more than 15%, how many of these properties in the portfolio are in suburban markets where lab space may not be viable long-term?

Joel Marcus, Chairman, President and CEO

First, let me correct the view. When sold, we shouldn’t characterize those yields on sale; it’s based on previous ramps that were generated and current market conditions relative to the buyer's view on repurposing. The properties have been diminishing in value; Peter can provide further color.

Peter Moglia, Chief Investment Officer

The GAAP yield may appear high, but once key tenants leave, their per-square-foot value changes, dropping yield significantly on an exiting basis. We have a few identified assets in San Diego and suburban areas that we’re evaluating monetizing due to market shifts.

Sheila McGrath, Analyst

On the joint venture, is the pricing there extrapolated based on a land value in Cambridge?

Joel Marcus, Chairman, President and CEO

We haven’t concluded any handshake or agreement yet for a joint venture; we are focused on securing construction financing first. Thank you very much for your engagement today; we will look forward to discussing our first-quarter results and engaging with you again. Happy New Year to all.

Operator, Operator

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s conference. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.