Kilroy Realty Corp (KRC) 2009 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Kilroy Realty Corporation. first quarter 2009 earnings conference call. My name is Mary and I will be your coordinator for today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. We will be facilitating a question and answer session towards the end of this conference. (Operator Instructions).

I would now like to turn the presentation over to your host for today's call, Mr. Richard Moran, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Please proceed.

Thank you very much, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. With me today are Jeff Hawken, our COO, Tyler Rose, our Treasurer, and Heidi Roth, our Controller. John Kilroy isn't able to join us today because his recovery from surgery to fix an old athletic injury is taking a bit longer than expected. He plans to be back in the office soon.

At the outset, I need to say that some of the information we'll be discussing this morning is forward-looking in nature. Please refer to our supplemental package for a statement regarding the forward-looking information in this call and in the supplemental. This call is being telecast live on our website and will be available for replay for the next 10 days, both by phone and over the Internet. Our press release and supplemental package have been filed on a Form 8-K with the SEC, and both are also available on our website. Jeff will start the call with an overview and our key markets, I'll add financial highlights and updated earnings guidance for 2009, and then we'll be happy to take your questions. Jeff?

Thanks, Dick. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us.

Let me start with a brief review of general market conditions. As you all know, the difficult credit markets and recessionary business conditions have created a challenging leasing environment. Prospective tenants continue to look, but are extremely cautious about committing to new space and lease discussions remain protracted. Existing tenants, depending on their individual business circumstances are generally standing pat, seeking to shrink their overall real estate footprint, or in some cases choosing to relocate. Everyone is negotiating very hard. We are aggressively competing for new lease opportunities and are using our high quality and well located assets to the best competitive advantage. And fortunately, we started the new year with roughly half of our 2009 expirations, about 2 million square feet, released. During the first quarter, we reduced that figure by another 250,000 square feet. And for the leases that were signed in the first quarter, rents were up 15% on a cash basis, and 24% on a GAAP basis.

Nonetheless, our occupancy rates slipped 1.5 points during the first quarter, as Sony and two industrial tenants moved out of their buildings. Looking ahead, we know that Boeing will move out of 113,000 square feet in Anaheim in the second quarter and Epicore will not renew 173,000 sweet in Sorrento Mesa that expires in the third quarter. In addition our Credit Home Lenders, which leases 182,000 square feet has expressed an interest in negotiating a reduction in the space it occupies in San Diego. We are in current discussions with them, but have no resolution at this point.

Releasing our vacant space is clearly our number one priority, with existing tenants we're using a range of incentives, including flexibility in renewal rents, lease periods, tenant improvement packages, and other terms to improve our retention rate. Our larger vacancies in newly developed properties, we're spending considerable time and effort identifying viable prospects, understanding their individual real estate needs, shaping proposals to suit them. Despite all the difficulties in today's market, we have some clear advantages in what is going to be difficult leasing competition throughout the year. They include top quality properties and amenities, highly desirable locations, a strong reputation for responsive tenant service, and financially sound and stable organization.

We are capitalized on all these assets in our marketing efforts. We also have an extensive track record in a long-term commitment in our Southern California markets that major businesses with serious plans to expand here find compelling. We represent a real estate partner with both development expertise and the available land resources to support long-term growth plans. Even in today's constrained economic circumstances, that gives us traction with respective tenants. In addition to leasing, our other key priority this year is to maintain financial strength and flexibility, both to see us through today's challenging market conditions, and to ensure we're prepared for emerging opportunities.

As an overriding business philosophy, we have always emphasized liquidity, disciplined cost control, and conservative leverage in all of our financial decisions. That will not change. This past quarter, we successfully negotiated new terms with our existing lender for the only loan in our debt structure maturing this year. Dick will give you details of the transaction, but I mention it here, because I think it'sindicative of the strong relationship we have with the financial community.

With that, let's move through a quick recap of individual submarket conditions. In Del Mar, where KRC is the dominant office landlord with approximately two-thirds of top-tier classic product, current direct vacancy is approximately 20.2% and total vacancy is 21.7%. Our stabilized properties in Del Mar are 92% occupied. Just south of Del Mar in Sorrento Mesa, KRC competes in the two and three-story office market. Direct vacancy for this product type is currently 8.2% and total vacancy is 9.7%. Our stabilized properties here total approximately 1.9 million square feet and are currently 88% occupied.

Further south in the UTC Governor Park submarket, we also compete in the two-story product type. Our properties total 431,000 square feet of space, current direct vacancy is about 9.5% and total vacancy is 14.4%. We currently have two vacancies in this market for an aggregate occupancy of 57%. Along the I-15 corridor east of Del Mar, KRC owns approximately 1.2 million square feet of stabilized office space. The two-story product type here has a current direct vacancy of 12.2%, and total vacancy of 12.8%. Our class A product, direct vacancy is 28.5%, and total vacancy is 30.1%. Our stabilized properties are 78% occupied.

Further north in Orange County, the industrial property market has a current vacancy rate of just 5%. Our industrial portfolio totals about 3.5 million square feet here. It was 92% occupied at the end of the quarter. Moving north to Los Angeles County, the submarkets of El Segundo and Long Beach continue to hold up quite well, at Airport Center Long Beach, our Southern Building office campus immediately adjacent to the Long Beach Airport is 94% occupied. Class A direct vacancy here is 7.1% and total vacancy is 9.6%.

In El Segundo, our stabilized properties now total 1.3 square million feet and are 98% occupied. Class A direct vacancy in El Segundo is now 12.9% and total vacancy is 14.1%. Further north in West LA, direct vacancy is 11.8% and total vacancy is 17.1%. Our properties here total 680,000 square feet and are 81% occupied, as Sony moved out of 95,000 square feet in the first quarter. Finally, along the 101 corridor market, which runs through Northern Los Angeles and southern Ventura counties, direct vacancy in the Class A product is currently 20.2% and total vacancy is 22.9%. Our properties in the market are currently 77% occupied.

That's an update on market conditions. Clearly, it's going to be a very challenging year for our industry and for KRC. I have confidence in our ability to manage through it and build for the future. Now, Dick will cover the financial results. Dick?

Thanks, Jeff. FFO was $0.82 a share in the first quarter. That includes a $0.04 a share increase in bad debt expense related to a Credit At Home Lenders straight line rent receivable. As Jeff mentioned, we're in discussions with them regarding lease renegotiation.

While we don't have any resolution yet and while they are current on their rent, we've taken the conservative approach and reserved 100% of our straight line receivables from a credit. This is offset by lower G&A, which was $0.04 lower than our budget and $0.09 lower than last quarter. G&A was down primarily as a result of lower accruals for incentive compensation. In addition, we had about $0.05 a share in other income, which was primarily one-time lease termination and restoration fees. As a reminder, our results now incorporate the impact of a new convertible accounting rules that were adopted at the beginning of the year, first quarter interest expense was $0.04 higher as a result of the new accounting, although there was no cash impact. Prior quarters have been restated as well. Occupancy and our stabilized portfolio was 87.6% at the end of the first quarter. That's down from 89.2% at the end of 2008 and 94.8% a year ago.

By product type, office occupancy was 85.4% at year end and industrial occupancy was 92.7%. Same-store NOI was down 8.3% in the first quarter on a GAAP basis, and 9.7% on a cash basis. The downward pressure on same-store results largely reflects our lower occupancy. Office rents increased 11% on a GAAP basis and 10% on a cash basis for leases that commenced during the first quarter. Industrial rents were up 3% on a GAAP basis and down 9% on a cash basis.

Following leasing progress in the first quarter, we now have about 743,000 square feet of space expiring with the remainder of this year, just under two-thirds of that is office and the remainder is in industrial. From a regional perspective, we have 159,000 square expiring in Los Angeles, 364,000 feet expiring in Orange County, of which 69% or 252,000 square feet is industrial and 218,000 square feet expiring in San Diego. We have one remaining project in our committed development portfolio, Sorrento Gateway Lot One, a 51,000 square foot medical office building was completed last quarter and is in our lease-up category. Turning to the balance sheet, we ended the first quarter with $275 million outstanding in our $550 million credit line, giving us $275 million of committed available debt capacity. Our credit line runs through to April 2010 with a one-year extension option to April 2011.

As Jeff mentioned earlier, we negotiated a one-year extension with our existing lender on the only loan that was maturing this year, $75 million secured mortgage. It was set to mature on April 1. While we originally prompted we would pay this loan off with our credit line, we decided to extend the maturity by a year with a $10 million principal pay down and the interest rate stayed the same at 7.2%. Since we originally projected a repayment of this loan at the LIBOR based interest rate under our credit line, our 2009 interest expense is projected to be about $0.05 a share higher than originally forecast. G&A costs fell in the first quarter to $7.1 million from $9.2 million last year. The decrease is principally the result of lower incentive compensation costs, which are currently projected to be down this year by more than 90% from 2008. Our current projections are that G&A costs this year will be $28 million, down from $38 million last year and down from the $34 million projection we made on last quarter's earnings call. That $28 million projected level of G&A for this year includes $10 million of amortization of stock-based compensation costs from prior year programs, similarly next year's G&A costs will include $4 million of projected amortization of stock-based compensation costs from 2008 and prior years.

Now let me finish with our thinking on 2009 earnings guidance. As we have mentioned on prior calls, we're not assuming any rebound in our markets this year. It also remains important to preface any discussion of projected earnings with the caveat that our internal forecasting and guidance reflect information and market intelligence as we know it today. There is significant uncertainties in today's economy and our markets going forward that could affect our results in ways not currently reflected in our analysis.

With that caveat, let me update some of our key assumptions. We're now assuming average occupancy of 86% for the year. As I mentioned earlier, the one-year loan extension will impact 2009 FFO by about $0.05 a share. As I mentioned, our projected G&A costs have fallen from $34 million to $28 million this year, which is a reduction of $0.18 a share. Taking all of those assumptions together, our updated 2009 FFO guidance is $2.95 to $3.15 per share.

That's the latest news from here, and we would be happy to take your questions. Operator?

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of Dave AuBuchon , RW

Thank you. Can you provide any more perspective about how much base the credit is willing to give back, any sort of framework there?

Dave, this is Jeff. They currently occupy three buildings, 182,000 square feet. And our understanding is if they had a clean sheet of paper, they could reduce into one building, approximately 40,000 square feet.

Okay. And your desire is to help them work out a new deal going forward?

Well, we're in negotiations right now and more to come. I think it's a little premature at this point to make further comments, but we are talking with them and reviewing their financial position, et cetera, and based on those negotiations discussions, we'll have a game plan from there.

And Dick, your guidance doesn't assume any sort of lease termination, I'm assuming, from Accredited?

Beg your pardon?

Your guidance for this year does not include any sort of lease termination from Accredited Home Lenders?

Yeah, we, again, don't want to get into the details of what our assumptions are in terms of that negotiation, but we've made some conservative assumptions on that lease.

Can you break out -- I mean in your supplemental you have a top 15 tenant list. What is the nearest maturity outside of Epicore? Maybe while you look that up, did the Boeing lease, Jeff, that was leaving in Q2, is that the industrial or office space?

That's the industrial property in Anaheim.

Okay, industrial.

I think the nearest maturity is the Boeing space in El Segundo next year.

And the total amount -- what's the square footage, Tyler?

It's like 290,000 square feet.

Okay. Can you talk about the weakness in the industrial portfolio? It looks like that's where the most of the occupancy decline came from, at least over the last couple quarters. Do you anticipate any sort of quicker than average turnaround if you assume that economic activity starts to rebound and inventories start to rebuild in the industrial world?

Dave, I think if you look at the overall industrial vacancy, it's 5%. So that's obviously very strong. While we just got back 113,000 square feet from Boeing that's industrial, we actually have activity on it already. We did have another building that a tenant moved out, moved into its own space. So, we have a little bit of space obviously that's come back. We are seeing tours, again, the overall market strength is still pretty good. It's still a little too early to tell how quickly it's going to take to convert tours to LOI to leases. But I think we're in a pretty good part of the market.

Okay. And then one last question. Dick, can you kind of outline what your financing strategy is over the next couple of years? Obviously you have the ability to push out a couple mortgages this year. I think you did that, but as you look out over the next couple years and looking at Kilroy's balance sheet, where do you think you're going to be able to replace capital that may be expiring?

Well, I think we've obviously kept our debt levels pre-recession down relatively low compared with the sector at least and we've also as a corollary to that had a relatively, or quite low percentage of our assets secured, both of those meaning to give us the flexibility to enter into more secured debt if the financing cycle and the credit cycle warranted doing so. At the same time, we're obviously not unaware of what's going on in the capital markets and the rest of the REIT sector broadly and we're watching all that carefully. I think you should expect us to continue to see -- have a relatively conservative strategy going forward.

Are you actively looking at putting new mortgage debt on your unencumbered asset pool, Dick, today?

We're looking at it carefully, but basically what happens, it's still early in the cycle for secured lenders to come out in force. Obviously there was a remarkable dislocation in the fourth quarter last year and availability of secured financing like much in the financial markets, tends at times to be a lagging indicator. So I think what we've seen is a fair amount of sentiment that suggests that people are waiting a bit for the employment losses to begin to subside as a sign, on a macro basis, as a sign that the economy might be hitting its trough and at least out here, the news has tended to be on a macro level. Employment losses are declining in the last couple of announcements. So we've started to see more interest and discussions from secured lenders, but they are not by any means active at this point yet.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Your next question comes from the line of Irwin Guzman from Citi.

Hi, this is Mark Montana on behalf of Irwin. First off, I have a rather general question on your markets. It appears that the rate of decline in the office occupancy is slowing sequentially. Just want to get your thoughts on how far along you believe the Southern California market is in the bottoming process, especially since it turned down a lot, and lost a lot of occupancy earlier than most other major markets.

If I'm -- I'm sorry, your voice didn't come through crystal clear, but if I understand the gist of your question, it's a question about the prospects for the near-term office market here in Southern California.

Exactly.

And I think that's just a function of where employment is. Obviously employment losses have to subside and have to largely stop before employers will in scale start to expand again. So we're very much in an employment-sensitive business. As I just mentioned in the prior question, I think we've started to see some evidence that employment losses are slowing. We have not yet seen part of the cycle where employment stabilizes and starts to build again. We're not there yet and so I think we would expect to have, as Jeff remarked, some more tough going for most of the balance of the year would be I think our guess.

Okay. At similar rates to this past quarter, or do you believe that, the trend, over the last three quarters has been moderation in the deceleration, or in the decline of your occupancy levels? Is that a trend you expect to continue, or is it sort of a one-off this quarter?

I'm sorry, is the question -- are we continuing to see decline in our occupancy?

No, the office occupancy, the rate of decline has been moderating over the last few quarters. I was just trying to get your thoughts on whether you believe that this is a trend that could continue or whether you believe it's a one-off.

This is Dick speaking again. Assuming what the local economic prognosticators have been offering as thoughts about the economy, I think we would generally expect to see a continuing moderation in the deterioration of the office market generally. I think that would certainly be consistent with what the economists or employment agencies are projecting for the balance of the year, purely and simply that most of the big job losses have already occurred. If you look at the study sector by sector, most of the sectors that would be most sensitive to a recession have already shed almost all the jobs that they could. So in that sense, I think the answer to your question would be yes.

All right, great. That's very beneficial. And then secondly, I know the unencumbered asset pool occupancy for covenant purposes is calculating on a trailing 12-month basis. But just wondering if you could provide the occupancy for this pool for 1Q 2009.

89%.

89?

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Your next question comes from the line of Dave Rodgers of RBC Capital Markets.

Hello. This is Mike Carroll here with Dave. My first question is, is your convertible debt, was that a private placement? And then have you had any discussions to repurchase that back?

It was a 144A for life, so effectively it was a private placement. And we have had a lot of interest, but we've had no serious discussions.

Okay, and then can you give us some more color with regards to the bad debt in 1Q 2009 and your outlook for the rest of the year for that?

Well, as we say, the increase was a function of the reserve we took for the straight line rent receivable from Accredited Home Lenders. That's a one-off and unique circumstance related to a tenant. I'm not sure whether that will set a pattern for beyond the first quarter or not. It just depends on other significant, whether or not we have other difficulties with significant tenants.

Okay, and then could you give us some sequential color on the same-store property pool, where did cash NOI go, and what happened to occupancy? I believe if you look at the fourth quarter supplement, the basket changed from fourth quarter 2008 to the first quarter 2009, so it was hard to tell what happened sequentially.

Yeah, I'm not sure I'm following completely, but we added in a couple development properties in the fourth quarter, so that's what you're probably seeing in terms of the basket. And the change, the negative same-store results were, as I think Dick mentioned, were primarily related to lower occupancy.

Could you quantify what did the same-property pool did sequentially from 4Q 2008 to 1Q 2009?

I don't have that. I can -- I can get back to you on that.

Okay, great. And then also, could you remind us which properties or group of properties were secured?

Well, we, we have over 100 properties in the portion that are secured. I don't think we want to spend time right now going through each property that's secured.

Okay. How about the market exposure or property type. Generally, was it a mix of everything or was it particularly one property type or one market?

We have a mix. We've done portfolio -- our typical secured mortgage is a portfolio of properties and we have an office portfolio. We have an industrial portfolio. We have a mix portfolio. And also it ranges in region as well. So there's no -- it's not as if we just secure one type of our property.

Okay, and great. And then have you had any discussions with your secured lenders about extending any loans or have you had any serious discussions? I know you mentioned before that you weren't looking into it, but have you thought about where the rate would be at or how many proceeds you would think about going after?

This is Dick speaking. The only extension discussion that we've had with our secured lenders was the one related to the loan that we extended for a year at the end of the first quarter.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Michael Knott, Green Street Advisors.

Hi, guys. This is Mickey Torrez sitting in for Michael. I had a question about your unencumbered asset pool occupancy covenant. How restrictive is that going to be in terms of securing new financing and maybe using those secured financings to pay down some of the unsecured maturities that are coming due?

Well, the -- as I think we reported, we ended the quarter at a 91% level for the overall pool on a 12-month trailing average. So at this point, we still have a fair amount of room and therefore, it will be a discussion with any lender. They obviously won't understand that, but at this point we feel relatively comfortable with that, but we'll just have to see how the occupancy goes for the rest of the year.

Okay, and then in terms of -- where does your dividend policy right now stack up in the hierarchy of sources for meeting your debt maturities? Is that something that's still on the table? Is it high on the list, or is it something that you're not really considering and you're looking at other alternatives?

I don't think we want to comment on our dividend policy beyond what we've said, that the board will continue to look at our dividend each quarter and in terms of our overall corporate finance strategy.

Okay. So it's just something that's on a quarter by quarter basis. And then just finally, for your line of credit renewal, I know you mentioned that you were going to try to pay off the secured loan that you extended with the line, but now you decided obviously to extend that loan. Any idea or feeling, have you talked to lenders on what you think the renewal rate will be when the line comes due in terms of overall capacity?

I'm sorry, this is Dick speaking. Are you getting at pricing or availability? I'm not sure I followed.

More on the availability side. Do you think you -- like there's a potential to renew it for the full amount when it comes due, or are you expecting that there may be some higher limitations on what the line is allowed?

Well, I think that generally, since we haven't had any of those discussions yet, since it's premature, but I think that what we've generally heard and would agree with, just as a general judgment, is that to the order of magnitude REITs might expect that unsecured credit line sizes will come down by somewhere on the order of magnitude of between 25 and 50%. And I think our -- that fits what we generally expect, although I would emphasize we haven't had specific discussions yet since, as we say, our line doesn't come due for a year and we have a year's extension beyond that.

All right, great. Thanks for that--

What we've gotten from our lead banks is that it's early yet to have those discussions, that we should wait and have those later.

Sure. All right, thank you.

Thank you. And there are no other questions at this time. I would like to hand the call to Mr. Moran for closing remarks.

Thank you all for your interest in KRC. We appreciate it. Have a good day.

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes the presentation and you may now disconnect. Have a great day.