Earnings Call Transcript - PDM Q3 2025

Operator, Operator

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today for Piedmont's third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Last night, we filed our 10-Q and an 8-K that includes our earnings release and unaudited supplemental information for the third quarter of 2025 that is available for your review on our website at piedmontreit.com under the Investor Relations section. During this call, you will hear from senior officers at Piedmont. Their prepared remarks, followed by answers to your questions will contain forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements address matters which are subject to risks and uncertainties, and therefore, actual results may differ from those we anticipate and discuss today. The risks and uncertainties of these forward-looking statements are discussed in our supplemental information as well as our SEC filings. We encourage everyone to review the more detailed discussion related to risks associated with forward-looking statements in our SEC filings. Examples of forward-looking statements include those related to Piedmont's future revenue and operating income, dividends and financial guidance, future financing, leasing and investment activity and the impacts of this activity on the company's financial and operational results. You should not place any undue reliance on any of these forward-looking statements, and these statements are based upon the information and estimates we have reviewed as of the date the statements are made. Also on today's call, representatives of the company may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures such as FFO, core FFO, AFFO and same-store NOI. The definitions and reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures are contained in the earnings release and supplemental financial information, which were filed last night. At this time, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Brent Smith, will provide some opening comments regarding third quarter 2025 operating results. Brent?

Brent Smith, CEO

Thanks, Laura. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today as we review our third quarter 2025 results. In addition to Laura, on the line with me this morning are George Wells, our Chief Operating Officer; Chris Kollme, our EVP of Investments; and Sherry Rexroad, our Chief Financial Officer. We also have the usual full complement of our management team available to answer your questions. After nearly four years of steady losses, U.S. office demand turned around in the third quarter. According to CoStar's data, about 12 million more square feet of office space was occupied than returned to landlords in the third quarter, the first positive figure since late 2021. More impressive was that it was also the largest total since the second quarter of 2019. The broader leasing data continues to validate what Piedmont has been experiencing on the ground. Pent-up demand is resulting in record levels of leasing across the Piedmont portfolio. In fact, five of our operating markets experienced positive absorption with Washington, D.C. and Boston being the exceptions. In addition, new tenant leasing velocity has materially strengthened in 2025. The third quarter's total square footage leased on new agreements in the United States, excluding renewals, is estimated to have reached about 105 million square feet and is now within 10% of the 2015 to 2019 national quarterly average of about 115 million square feet. No doubt, after a challenging four years, the office sector is turning the corner. One explanation for this sector shift is a surge in large tenant leasing. The limited availability of large blocks of premium space typically sought by major occupiers and corporate tenants is accelerating the decision-making process. Despite generally slow hiring and an uncertain economic outlook, the upward trend in leasing volume signals that tenants still have a strong appetite for office space. With the supply pipeline contracting and prime availability becoming scarce, more demand continues to chase a rapidly reducing supply landscape. According to JLL, the cycle of footprint reductions is tapering off as today's users of over 25,000 square feet are cutting just 2.2% of their footprint at renewal. Inventory for high-quality space, either new or renovated, is increasingly scarce and office construction has been reduced by an additional 20% from the second quarter, with new supply not a factor in most of our markets. These market dynamics have limited high-quality supply and growing demand are allowing Piedmont to materially increase rental rates across its portfolio. And with asking rents still ranging from 25% to 40% below the rates required for new construction, we believe existing high-quality office has a long, long runway for rental rate growth. Within the Piedmont portfolio, which comprises newly renovated, highly amenitized buildings paired with our hospitality-driven service model, we are experiencing multiple tenants competing for full floor spaces, providing the backdrop for Piedmont to increase rental rates at our projects by as much as 20% during the year. By way of example, at our Galleria on the Park project in Atlanta, we executed our first $40 per square foot gross rental rate at the end of 2024. In this quarter, we completed numerous transactions in the mid-40s and have increased rents now to $48 per square foot. Across our portfolio, our hospitality-driven environments have allowed us to increase rental rates to such an extent that we now estimate that more than half the portfolio's in-place rents are at least 20% below market. Our strategy to strengthen the Piedmont brand within the tenant community as the landlord of choice is driving more than our fair share of leasing demand, and it's been reflected in our transaction volumes. Having now leased over 10% of the portfolio over the last two quarters, more than one third of the portfolio in the last two years and an astounding 80% of the portfolio since the beginning of 2020, equating to almost 12 million square feet since the pandemic. Delving into the numbers, we are thrilled with our third quarter results, exceeding consensus FFO by 3% and achieving record levels of leasing. Most exciting is that all the leasing the team has accomplished this year is positioning Piedmont for sustainable earnings growth. Our backlog of uncommenced leases has reached almost $40 million on an annualized basis and substantially all of those leases will commence by the end of 2026. Piedmont executed approximately 724,000 square feet of total leasing during the quarter, including over 0.5 million square feet of new tenant leases. This new tenant leasing represents the largest amount of new tenant leasing we've completed in a single quarter in over a decade and brings our total year-to-date leasing to approximately 1.8 million square feet. Importantly, over 900,000 square feet of our 2025 new leasing relates to currently vacant space, and it's likely this number will reach over 1 million square feet by the end of the year. That level of absorption equates to $0.10 to $0.15 per share of incremental annualized earnings, an indication of the growth we believe our portfolio is poised to experience. Of note, the three largest leases completed during the third quarter related to our out-of-service Minneapolis portfolio, where we're experiencing incredible demand, as George will talk more about in a moment. Our leasing success during the third quarter pushed our in-service lease percentage up another 50 basis points quarter-over-quarter now to 89.2%, bolstering our confidence in achieving our year-end goal of 89% to 90% leased. While not reflected in our lease percentage, our out-of-service portfolio, again, comprised of two projects in Minneapolis and one in Orlando, has experienced astounding market receptivity as differentiated amenitized workplaces continue to garner the majority of leasing in the market. At the end of the third quarter, Piedmont's out-of-service portfolio stood at over 50% leased and is approaching 70% leased, including those that are in the legal stage today. We couldn't be more excited that the leasing pipeline and continued tenant demand for our buildings positions both the in-service and out-of-service portfolios to achieve 90% leased next year. Furthermore, we anticipate the out-of-service assets will reach stabilization by the end of 2026. In addition to the overall volume, third quarter leasing, as expected, resulted in favorable economics with rental rates for space vacant less than a year, reflecting almost 9% and just over 20% roll-ups on a cash and accrual basis, respectively. In fact, as a result of the repositioning of the portfolio, in the past two years, Piedmont leased over 5 million square feet with rental rate roll-ups of approximately 9% and 17% on a cash and accrual basis, respectively. Finally, cash basis same-store NOI also turned positive this quarter as some previously executed leases began to reach the end of their abatement period. With over $35 million of annualized revenue currently in abatement and due to start paying cash in 2026, we expect same-store cash metrics to continue to improve. As George will touch on, leasing momentum remains strong, including over 150,000 square feet of leases signed during the month of October and a robust pipeline with approximately 400,000 square feet currently in the legal stage. I cannot emphasize enough that the broader macro factors, along with our successful portfolio repositioning and elevated service model have and should continue to drive Piedmont's ability to grow FFO organically. We're still on track to meet or exceed our 2025 financial and operational goals with confidence in our ability to deliver mid-single-digit FFO growth or better in 2026 and 2027. Before I hand the call over to George, I want to mention that we have once again achieved a 5-star rating and Green Star recognition from GRESB, placing us in the top decile of all participating listed U.S. companies for this prestigious recognition. I hope that you'll take a moment to review our recently published corporate responsibility report, highlighting the team's hard work and many accomplishments that went to achieving this record. The report is available on our website under the Corporate Responsibility section. With that, I will now hand the call over to George, who will go into more details on the leasing pipeline and third quarter operational results.

George Wells, COO

Thanks, Brent. Strong demand for Piedmont's well-located hospitality-inspired workplace environments generated exceptional operating results for the third quarter. A record 75 transactions were completed for over 700,000 square feet, well above our historical average for the second quarter in a row. New deal activity surged, accounting for 75% of total volume and topping last quarter's record amount. Like last quarter, large users are driving new deal activity to record-breaking levels with nine full floor or larger leases executed this quarter with another six large deals in late stage. Around 15% of new leases signed this quarter will begin recognizing GAAP revenue this year with the remaining 85% throughout 2026. Our weighted average lease term for new deal activity stayed consistent at approximately 10 years. As we've experienced now for five straight quarters, expansions exceeded contractions largely to accommodate customers' organic growth. Atlanta and Dallas were the driving forces behind strong economics. As Brent mentioned, we posted a 9% and 20% roll-up for the quarter on a cash and accrual basis, respectively. Our overall weighted average starting cash rent of nearly $42 per square foot was essentially unchanged from the previous quarter, though we do anticipate more rental growth as our portfolio crosses into the low 90s lease percentage. Leasing capital spend was $6.76 per square foot, up slightly when compared to our trailing 12 months as this quarter's leasing volume was dominated by new tenant activity where leasing concessions are generally higher than renewals. Net effective rents came in at $21.26 per square foot, reflecting a 2.5% increase from the previous quarter. Sublease availability held steady at 5% with a modest amount expiring over the next four quarters. Atlanta was our most productive market during the third quarter, closing on 27 deals for 250,000 square feet or one-third of the company's overall volume with new lease transactions accounting for 75% of that amount. Most notable, our local team mitigated a large fourth quarter 2025 expiration at Medici with a 35,000 square foot headquarter requirement and achieved the highest cash roll-up for the quarter at 30%. Medici is uniquely located within a luxury mixed-use development catering to wealth managers and ultra-high net worth family offices. We anticipate additional cash roll-ups there, 20% or more as another 40,000 square feet is expiring soon, and our pipeline remains strong. At 999 Peachtree in Midtown, we continue to experience encouraging activity to backfill Eversheds's remaining 150,000 square foot expiration in May of 2026. We currently have four proposals outstanding, which total 125,000 square feet at significantly higher rental rates. 999 Peachtree has set a new standard for repositioning assets in Midtown Atlanta, and we remain confident in our ability to backfill this known vacancy at very favorable economic terms. Minneapolis once again was our second most active market, capturing eight deals totaling almost 200,000 square feet, the vast majority of which was new deal flow into our redevelopment portfolio. The Piedmont redevelopment strategy underway at Meridian and Excelsior is generating tremendous interest with another 125,000 square feet in the proposal stage. Our team has moved asking rental rates up another 5% from last quarter with rates now in the low 40s, up 15% from pre-redevelopment phase at the beginning of the year and the highest within its submarkets. We continue to be the clear landlord of choice in the Minneapolis suburbs as many once competitors surrounding projects are now either dated, uninspiring or financially impaired. Meanwhile, downtown is experiencing noticeably more foot traffic as two of Minneapolis' top 10 employers, Target and RBC Wealth Management recently increased their mandates to four days a week. Deal flow at our U.S. Bancorp is growing, and we're close to signing a new deal that would backfill one of the three floors being vacated next quarter. Dallas is quite active for us as well with 16 transactions for 156,000 square feet. Most notable was a 56,000 square foot deal with a global data center service provider in one of our 1.5 million square feet Las Colinas portfolio, which has experienced a surge of leasing activity for the year, moving up from 82% at the beginning of the year to 91% at the end of the third quarter with another 35,000 square feet of deals close to being signed. Additionally, we're exchanging proposals to renew Epsilon and the subtenants for roughly 50% of its footprint. Our local team has pushed asking rates there up 15% to 20% over the last six months. Overall market conditions in Las Colinas are improving rapidly and led all Dallas submarkets in net absorption for the quarter and year-to-date. With Wells Fargo's 850,000 square foot new campus in Las Colinas being delivered this quarter and no other development underway, Piedmont is poised to see additional rental growth here over the next several quarters. At 60 Broad, we continue to work with the Department of Citywide Administrative Services regarding New York City's long-term extension for substantially all of its space. Unfortunately, additional delays during the planning process will result in the execution of a potential lease to spill over into early 2026. Coming back to the overall portfolio, we remain bullish about our near-term leasing prospects. Our leasing pipeline remains robust even after two straight quarters of record new leasing activity. And as Brent mentioned earlier, now has over 400,000 square feet in the late-stage phase with insurance, legal, accounting and financial services driving demand for new deals. Outstanding proposals remain steady as well, sitting at 2.4 million square feet for both our operating and out-of-service portfolios and comparable to last quarter's volume. As I noted on our last call, we have seen a large uptick in full floor users ranging from 25,000 to 50,000 square feet across a wide range of industries and throughout most of our markets. Considering our leasing momentum and a modest number of expirations in the fourth quarter, we remain comfortable in achieving our lease percentage guidance of 89% to 90% for our operating portfolio. Our redevelopment portfolio, which is on track to meaningfully contribute towards 2026 and 2027 FFO growth, saw its lease percentage spike for the second quarter in a row from 31% to 54%. Based on early and late-stage activity, we project this portfolio to reach 60% to 70% by year-end. I'll now turn the call over to Chris Kollme for his comments on investment activity.

Chris Kollme, EVP of Investments

Thanks, George. As we have said for several quarters, we remain focused on pruning certain noncore assets throughout our portfolio. We are under contract on two of our land parcels. Both are contingent on time-consuming rezonings. So if these are approved, neither will close in 2025. We are actively marketing another small noncore asset that could potentially close around the end of the year. The rationale for this disposition is entirely consistent with recent sales. There are no assurances that any of these will close, and as is our custom, acquisitions and dispositions are not included in any of our projections. On the acquisitions front, we are certainly seeing elevated interest in the sector among more traditional institutional investors. The debt markets continue to improve and differentiated office environments have proven their resilience and durability over the past few years. High-quality office is no longer redlined, and liquidity is growing in the sector. Dallas, in particular, has seen a handful of sizable fully priced transactions over the past six months. We remain active in reviewing opportunities in Dallas and elsewhere. We will be disciplined and patient. Rest assured, our team is thinking creatively around compelling opportunities, including evaluating potential transactions alongside institutional capital partners. We do intend to put ourselves in a position to be more active on the transaction front in 2026. With that, I'll pass it over to Sherry to cover our financial results.

Sherry Rexroad, CFO

Thank you, Chris. While we will be discussing some of this quarter's financial highlights today, please review the earnings release and accompanying supplemental financial information, which were filed yesterday for more complete details. Core FFO per diluted share for the third quarter of 2025 was $0.35 versus $0.36 per diluted share for the third quarter of 2024, with a $0.01 decrease attributable to the sale of three projects during the 12 months ended September 30, 2025, and higher net interest expense as a result of refinancing activity completed over the past 12 months. This was offset by growth in operations due to higher economic occupancy and rental rate growth. As I have mentioned on the last several calls, our lease with Travel and Leisure in Orlando commenced in September and will contribute meaningfully to our fourth quarter results. AFFO generated during the third quarter of 2025 was approximately $26.5 million. It was a relatively quiet quarter from a financing perspective. However, as previously announced, we did amend our revolving credit facility and term loan during the quarter to remove the credit spread adjustment from the SOFR-based interest rates applicable to those two facilities, thereby lowering the all-in rate on each facility by 10 basis points. As we've highlighted before, we currently have no final debt maturities until 2028 and approximately $435 million of availability under our revolving line of credit. We continue to evaluate balance sheet management options, including traditional bonds and hybrid instruments to smooth our maturity ladder and reduce our interest costs. Based on the current forward yield curve, we expect all of our unsecured debt maturing for the remainder of this decade could be refinanced at lower interest rates and thus be a tailwind to FFO per share growth. To illustrate how powerful this tailwind could be, I'll use the example, if we were to refinance the remaining $532 million of our outstanding 9.25% bonds at current rates, we would generate approximately $21 million of interest savings and be $0.17 accretive to FFO per share. At this time, I'd like to narrow our 2025 annual core FFO guidance from a range of $1.38 to $1.44 to $1.40 to $1.42 per diluted share with no material changes to our previously published assumptions. Please refer to Page 26 of the supplemental information filed last night for details of major leases that have not yet commenced or currently in abatement. As of September 30, 2025, the company had just under 1 million square feet of executed leases yet to commence and an additional 1.1 million square feet of leases under abatement that combined represent approximately $75 million of future additional annual cash rent, which will fuel the mid-single-digit future earnings growth that Brent mentioned earlier, although it does demand additional capital spend in the short term. With that, I will turn the call over to Brent for closing comments.

Brent Smith, CEO

Thank you, George, Chris, and Sherry. Our portfolio of recently renovated, well-located hospitality-inspired Piedmont places continue to set the standard for the office market, helping us to drive leasing volumes to all-time highs. On that point, you may recall that we started 2025 with an operational goal to lease a total of 1.4 million to 1.6 million square feet, which was inclusive of approximately 300,000 square foot renewal by the New York City agencies. Today, we reiterated our revised guidance of 2.2 million to 2.4 million square feet, but note that this does not anticipate the completion of the New York City lease this year. In effect, we're on pace to lease 1 million more square feet than we anticipated at the start of the year, and much of that leasing was for currently vacant space, an astounding accomplishment I want to commend the Piedmont team for. With office vacancy declining for the first time in years, quality space is becoming harder to find and new developments are becoming more expensive for occupiers. We believe that the recent investments that we've made in our portfolio, combined with our customer-centric place-making mindset will continue to set us apart in the office sector, enabling us to push rents to all-time highs across the portfolio and generate consistent earnings growth. We will continue to concentrate our resources on driving lease percentage above 90% and increasing rental rates while opportunistically refinancing above-market rate debt to further drive FFO and cash flow growth. With that, I will now ask the operator to provide our listeners the instructions on how they can submit their questions. Operator?

George Wells, COO

Thank you, Brent. It's amazing. It's been five quarters in a row we've had expansions. I mean this past quarter, we had 16 expansions versus two contractions for a net positive of 40,000 square feet. But if you look at the totality of the past five quarters, looking at 55 expansions versus 15 for a net of about 120,000, 130,000 square feet. So the dynamics in our portfolio have been quite positive. And in terms of where new leasing activity is coming from, the second part of your question, Nick, I would say that it's mostly intra-market moves in terms of those users wanting to upgrade to higher quality space.

Christopher Smith, CEO

The exception to that might be Dallas, where we continue to see robust inbound activity. Atlanta, a little less so, still up from where we were pre-pandemic, but Texas does seem to have a little bit more inbound and particularly Dallas.

George Wells, COO

Absolutely. Well, let me first hit this. Last quarter, we had 15 deals that were 25,000 square feet or larger for aggregately about 800,000 square feet. And this quarter, we have in terms of proposals outstanding 18 that fit that size. So it continues to grow within our overall portfolio. I would say it's mixed. I mean in a couple of instances, we're hearing about some consolidations.

Christopher Smith, CEO

I think that's one thing we continue to see within the marketplace is the desire to upgrade the quality of your space to bring your people back. And that means having an environment and an offering that is compelling. And that's where our renovations and what we've implemented across the portfolio in terms of our service model, while we're garnering our more than fair share of that leasing.

Anthony Paolone, Analyst

Brent, just following up on just the conviction level that earnings will grow next year. I know you'll give more specifics when you actually provide guidance. But just wondering, do you think that comes by way of some of the debt refinancing that Sherry talked about potentially existing? Or do you think the core in and of itself can move higher?

Christopher Smith, CEO

Great question, Tony. And I want to clarify that is organic growth only within a static portfolio. It assumes no acquisitions, dispositions or refinancings. As you know, we don't have any debt maturities really for several years until 2028. But as Sherry noted on the call, we do have a pretty large embedded mark-to-market benefit if we were to refinance those bonds, which she outlined in her prepared remarks. And we will capture that at some point between now and when those mature in '28. But rest assured, from a risk management perspective, the team is very focused on optimizing that transition from high-cost debt to lower-cost debt.

Sherry Rexroad, CFO

Well, as we've discussed before, there are a variety of ways in which you can refinance the 9.25% bonds that are outstanding. You can purchase them in the market, you can do a tender or you can do a make-whole. There's no gating factors related to that, but there are processes in place and there are periods of time where you can or cannot be in the market.

Christopher Smith, CEO

As we continue to canvass the market, not only the existing markets we're in, but as we've talked about in the past, select other Sunbelt markets where we would consider growing if we took a dot off the map elsewhere. We really see two buckets of opportunities within those markets.

Michael Lewis, Analyst

I'm sorry if I missed this, but did you say why New York City was pushed back again? And with that lease expiration now kind of almost right on top of us, is there any reason for concern there that they might do something surprising, give back space or anything else?

Christopher Smith, CEO

Michael, it's Brent. Thanks for joining us today. Great question. We hadn't touched on it in specifics. And given it's a live transaction, I don't like to get into a lot of detail. But as we've noted on prior calls, we are still very highly engaged with both DCAS, the Department of Citywide Administrative Services who runs the leasing process for the city. They're working with OMB. And of course, there's also three different agencies within that block. So there are a lot of moving pieces and groups that need to weigh in.

Brent Smith, CEO

Thank you. I appreciate everyone joining us this morning. I do want to remind you of two important dates. First, this Friday, Happy Halloween to all those. And then the second is in December, we are going to be at the NAREIT event in Dallas on the 8th. We're going to hold an office tour where we'll be sharing and showing off all the success we've had in our Dallas Galleria project.