Q3 2024 Douglas Emmett Inc Earnings Call

Kevin Crummy

Thanks, Jordan, and good morning, everyone. As Jordan mentioned, taking advantage of opportunities in the office market remains a key objective for us. The few recent transactions in our markets have so far been dominated by large tenant buildings which are not our bread and butter. Larger tenants may mean fewer leasing transactions, but because of the concentration of risk and higher TIs, we prefer the stability of smaller, high-end tenants.
As a result, our median lease size across our entire portfolio is only 2,400 square feet. In fact, out of our almost 2,700 office leases, we have only 28 leases over 40,000 square feet; and only one, which was recently renewed through 2037 over 100,000 square feet.
In addition, 3% of that square footage covered by those 28 leases was signed after the start of the pandemic. While recent transactions have not fit within our disciplined strategy, we are increasingly confident that there will be attractive opportunities in multi-tenant office buildings of vacancy where we can leverage our operating platform to create value.
Our company was founded in the early ’90s, another period when office was an out-of-favor asset class. Our history, deep local knowledge, and a unique operating platform give us the confidence to lean in at times like this when others are overly cautious.
With that, I will turn the call over to Stuart.

Stuart McElhinney

Thanks, Kevin. Good morning, everyone. As Jordan mentioned, we had a terrific leasing quarter. We signed 236 office leases covering over 1 million square feet, including 353,000 square feet of new leases and 650,000 square feet of renewal leases. This strong new leasing increased our portfolio lease rate by 50 basis points to 82%.
The overall value of new leases we signed in the quarter increased by 0.4%, with cash spreads down 11.2%. Because of better leasing to tenants over 10,000 square feet, we saw a slight increase in our average leasing cost during the quarter, though they remain well below the average for other office REITs. Our residential portfolio remains essentially fully leased at 99.1%, with rents continuing to rise.
With that, I’ll turn the call over to Peter to discuss our results.

Peter Seymour

Thanks, Stuart. Good morning, everyone. Reviewing our results compared to the third quarter of 2023, revenue decreased by 1.8%, primarily due to lower office occupancy.
FFO decreased by 3.8% to $0.43 per share, primarily as a result of lower office NOI. AFFO increased slightly to $68.8 million and same-property cash NOI decreased by 5.7% due to lower office NOI, partially offset by multi-family growth. At only 4% of revenue, our G&A remains very low relative to our benchmark group.
Turning to guidance. Based on our Q3 results and higher expectations for fourth-quarter operations, we have increased guidance for our full-year FFO by $0.04 to between $1.69 and $1.73 per share. 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 property acquisitions or dispositions, common stock sales or repurchases financings, property damage insurance recoveries, impairment charges or other possible capital markets activities.
I will now turn the call over to the operator so we can take your questions.

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Blaine Heck, Wells Fargo.

Blaine Heck

You continue to carry a large cash balance despite paying $34 million to extend the maturity on one of your loans this quarter. I guess can you just talk about uses for that cash? Are you expecting any more principal paydowns on upcoming maturities? Are you considering paying off any of the maturities or potentially just earmarking the majority for investment in acquisitions or funding the spend on Barrington?

Jordan Kaplan

Well, you named a lot of the good things that it’s there for. I mean it’s — number one is, it’s obviously there to guard the company and have liquidity considering what we’ve come out of and we hopefully are moving out of. But yeah, I mean, maybe there’s some use for it with regard to debt.
There’s hope. I hope there’s some good uses for it with regard to new acquisitions. I think we’ll also have our partners involve the nose, but then we also have — and part of that is our investment. So I mean, it’s for all purposes.
We have some relatively meaningful cash flow even funneling the dividend. And so we also use that for kind of a lot of the slower pace stuff like construction, property repositioning and stuff like that.

Blaine Heck

All right. That’s helpful, Jordan. And then it looked like tenant recoveries increased pretty significantly this quarter relative to the first half of the year. I know expenses were up as well, but maybe, Peter, just wanted to ask whether there was anything onetime in nature in those recoveries past just normal seasonality.

Peter Seymour

Yeah. Blaine, it’s mostly normal seasonality. Tenant recoveries vary from quarter to quarter based on when we bill estimates, when we put out reconciliations and so on. So it tends not to be smooth over the course of the year.

Operator

Alexander Goldfarb, Piper Sandler.

Alexander Goldfarb

First, it looks like, obviously, Warner Bros is going to fall out, I think, as you guys said, and there’s going to be an occupancy drop in the fourth quarter, yet you’re raising guidance. So can you just talk a little bit about what’s going on? Is it sounds like there’s better leasing coming and that the occupancy drop from Warner Bros is going to be quickly offset? Or just want to understand how we think about earnings going up and yet occupancy coming down.

Jordan Kaplan

Well, I mean, we’ve been planning for Warner Bros moving out for —

Peter Seymour

Jordan?

Jordan Kaplan

Oh, sorry, I lost you. I don’t know why this thing just went to mute. And I said that like the greatest thing while I was on mute, but I won’t even be able to remember it. So let me go back to answer your question.
So the Warner Bros move out is — we’ve known it’s been coming for a very long time, obviously. But we’ve also been working super hard across leasing, the leasing group has been just killing it. I’m very pleased there, and controlling expenses and getting revenue in. And so we’re really seeing improvement across everything. I mean, a little better on our G&A, better on our leasing, better on our expense controls. So it’s kind of — it’s really all the areas.

Alexander Goldfarb

Okay. And then, I guess, following that on the leasing front, for the past few quarters, national big tenants have been a weak spot. It sounds like those are coming back. So as you sit here today, looking out, do you now feel comfortable that all aspects of leasing are now in a good spot going forward? Or do you think that it’s still going to be bumpy for the next few quarters?

Jordan Kaplan

Well, I mean, I’ve been so bad at predicting the quarters that are coming up. I could tell you this, our activity is very good. And I’m really pleased to see the tenants over 10,000 square feet. That activity is good. And so that coming out of leasing, like I said, couldn’t be more pleased, all right?
Now go to the other side, which is role and rollouts. You look over the next five years starting in ’25. And it’s down. I mean it’s less roll, slower. And I think what’s going on now because we’ve been reporting the terms of these leases is that we’re going to a little bit over the more normalized pre-pandemic rates and the little bit longer leases. So all of those are tailwinds for us in terms of kind of projecting out.

Stuart McElhinney

Yeah. One other thing, Alex. I know I remind you guys a lot, but our leasing pipeline is extremely short. So we meet these small tenants, and we can kind of quickly get them through our system. So that just means that we don’t have a ton of visibility into 2025. Activity is very good right now. We still have a lot of work to do that can impact the fourth quarter.

Alexander Goldfarb

Okay. And then just one more, if you don’t mind. Jordan, just all these announcements out West, Salesforce return to office, Amazon returned to office. It reminded me that when I met you out when they came to your office earlier in the year, you guys were suit and tie versus your traditional casual Southern Cal. So I have to ask if you’re following this return to office trend and are still suited up or have you returned to the casual.

Jordan Kaplan

Well, okay. So for starters, we returned to the office in summer of ’20, 2020, right? You can remember, COVID March, summer, we’re like — I never felt that, that program could work and keep a company healthy. So we’ve been in full five days a week since that time. So that’s being in the office.
And then at the beginning of this year, we went to suit and tie across the board. Ken has always been suit and tie, and Ken’s reports have been suit and tie. I probably was more of a criminal in this, and I was more casual.
And I wanted to be really clear that there’s nothing casual about what we’re doing. I want to be clear about our culture. It’s a cultural move to make sure everyone came focused, ready to work hard, ready to work longer. I mean this is a challenging economy.
And I just wanted to be clear about that from a cultural perspective that our job here is to make money for our constituents and come dressed and ready to do that. And I think it’s made a little bit of a difference. I’m wearing a suit and tie every day, every day.

Operator

Michael Griffin, Citi.

Michael Griffin

Maybe just some more color around sort of net absorption in the quarter. You’ve obviously talked positively about the leasing trends in demand, but was this due to maybe some of those larger leases you had been working on finally getting executed in this quarter?
And then, Jordan, maybe you can kind of give some insight into whether or not these large releases these signers have been more confident in signing leases and maybe what your expectations are in the quarters ahead.

Stuart McElhinney

Michael, it’s Stuart. Yeah. So really good volume, 236 leases. That’s a lot of leasing. So we had good activity from our core smaller tenants.
And then also, as Jordan said and we’ve said that over 10,000 category, which has been slower for us for the last couple of years, came back and was better than it’s been in a while. So pleased to see that. Honolulu was up, West LA was up. Valley was basically flat on the leasing. So we had good activity across the board.
Jordan, if you want to speak to the pipeline of the larger tenants, I think we’re still feeling good that that activity is there and better than it’s been the last couple of years.

Jordan Kaplan

Yeah. I mean I’ve already said it. I can’t say it enough. For better or worse, operations, that whole area that can oversee leasing operations, I mean this is — Ken’s in my fourth recession running this place, and that is what pulls us out of these things.
I mean I can play every game in the world on the capital markets and then loans and this and that. But that is what pulls us out. And that — and it’s doing it. I mean, it’s just a ton of detailed work, and that’s what’s going on here.

Michael Griffin

I appreciate all the color there. And then maybe just going back to sort of opportunities you’re seeing in the transaction market. It seems like been bigger deals that have mostly been out there now, but maybe nothing exactly in your wheelhouse. Can you give us a sense when you’re underwriting prospective transactions maybe from an IRR or return hurdle perspective, what are you getting to in order to make the math work on transactions?

Kevin Crummy

It’s Kevin. We’re not really in an IRR world right now. And the reason I say that is if there were anything we were gauging by right now, it’s probably about the price per square foot and the basis that you’re getting into.
And then where we think we’re going to stabilize those buildings on a return basis, we’re targeting properties that have vacancy in them because we want to take advantage of our operating platform, vacancy doesn’t scare us. And we’re not good at buying buildings that are stabilized because we can’t add that value.

Operator

Jeff Spector, Bank of America.

Jeffrey Spector

Great. Appreciate the comments. And Jordan, I guess my first question is on your comment around the leasing volume, new tenants over 10,000 square feet. I know when we saw you in March at your office, that was a big emphasis. What’s happened there? And what gives you the confidence that that will continue into ’25?

Jordan Kaplan

Well, I can’t say that I have confidence that it will continue into ’25. I can say that the kind of the short vision that we have around our pipeline today, that looks good. But what I can say about ’25 and forward is what I said earlier, which is that our role is more forgiving.
We are going back to a more typical kind of role that was before the pandemic, where it’s a little longer leases and less that we have to as we approach each year, less that we have to deal with. And that makes a big difference in terms of getting positive absorption. So that’s something we can see, right?
Now all we can do is feel the fact that at the moment, the pipeline is stronger. But as I said, that is a lot of people working extremely hard, and it’s the kind of — part of it is a reflection of the incredible dominance of our operating platform.

Jeffrey Spector

And what industries are driving this leasing? I know you have a lot of exposure to legal financial services and that’s been a big boost to New York City. What’s happening in your key markets?

Stuart McElhinney

Yeah. It was really broad-based. We have that great pie chart that shows the diversity of our industries with legal and financial services, entertainment, healthcare, and we saw good leasing across the board from all our industries.

Operator

Steve Sakwa, Evercore.

Steve Sakwa

I’ll probably be a dead horse here on the leasing front, Jordan. But it’s great to see the 350,000 feet in the quarter. And I realized that there were a handful of large deals.
I mean do you feel like that level is sustainable? Or do you feel like that kind of just clicked on all cylinders this quarter, and things might revert back a little bit? Because it seems like in order to really move occupancy higher, you probably need north of 300,000 feet per quarter of new deals to really sustainably move occupancy up. And so I’m just curious how many of those larger deals do you have in the pipeline to kind of pull forward each quarter.

Jordan Kaplan

As we sit right now, putting Studio Plaza to the side because that’s going to go out in the fourth quarter, so that would be hard to get positive option. As we sit right now, I’ve already told you what the role going forward looks good to us in terms of being able to achieve positive absorption. And I’m also telling you that I like to look at the pipeline right now.
But I really — to extrapolate that into a prediction of leasing next year or the next year, I mean, that would be extreme. I mean right now, we had a good quarter, which I think we actually foreshadow for you guys a little bit on our last call. And then right now, I’m saying, I like to look at the pipeline right now. That’s the amount I can say. I mean, we’ll see. We’ll have more information on the next call, and then you’ll hear some more.

Steve Sakwa

Okay. And then follow-up, just anything on Barrington Plaza at this point that you can sort of talk about whether it’s the kind of insurance claim or just the overall redevelopment process and kind of where are you in starting that whole project and the time line would be helpful.

Jordan Kaplan

So we’re down to — I don’t — I think that maybe it’s like 10% occupied. We went through a battle in the courts that Judge gave us a very clear path for achieving this, which the city wants and everybody wants. So now we’re following the path given to us by the judge.
I hope that we’re kind of drill almost everything with regard to plants and all the rest of that and ready to — we’re on the 5-yard line of pulling permits. So we need to get through this last bit of moving a couple of these last few people. And then I hope to start construction, and I think we will in 2025. But it’s been a very long road.
And with respect to the insurance, I mean we have an extremely significant claim. And I think it’s very honest to say that two sides are in extreme disagreement right now, but I guess that will also get resolved eventually over the next year.

Operator

Rich Anderson, Wedbush.

Richard Anderson

So on the idea of sort of feeling confident in executing on external growth in the office space, you said this is your fourth recession. What gives you confidence that actual opportunities will materialize that fit? I mean do you see a pipeline growing that is the small tenant variety? Or are you confident that you’ll you’re comfortable to act when that comments, but you don’t necessarily see much on the horizon at the moment?

Jordan Kaplan

I think we see a pipeline growing of the type of buildings that we would like to buy.

Richard Anderson

Okay. Is there any reason why they’re perhaps taking longer to come to market than those that you described that are of larger lease variety? Or is it just happen to stand?

Jordan Kaplan

Well, the larger tenant deals, people brought to market because they it was the only thing they could bring to market, and they were getting very good price per foot. I mean look, those larger tenant deals are trading for like $800, over $1,000 a foot. So they’re kind of looking around the country, and they’re going — we can trade out of these things and stable cash flow for a long time, and they got very solid prices.
I mean you would go say they got prices that could have been a good price even before the pandemic. And so the people that had sort of leasing challenges and all those things, I think, have been hanging out for a long time waiting to see if there’s some kind of recovery if they get saved, and it just takes time for them to get worn out.
Remember, when you trade out of one of those buildings, it’s not like stock. You trade out, you’re unlikely to get back in. I mean we’re a very dominant player in these markets. But there are a couple of other players that are also have much less than us, but they also have portfolios that they’re unlikely to do any significant trading on.
So it takes a long time to make a decision to sell something like that because it’s not — you don’t say to yourself, let’s get out of this now and we’ll get back in later. You’re probably not getting back in.

Richard Anderson

Okay, okay. And then second question is just in terms of the year-over-year growth, obviously. With Studio Plaza coming down or coming out of the system, that creates an earnings growth year-over-year headwind for you next year? Do you see any path to being able to produce positive FFO growth next year and was that vacancy?
If you moved quickly on it, could it potentially create enough cash flow for you to sort of breakeven from a growth perspective in 2025? Or is that too much to ask at this point?

Jordan Kaplan

Well, it’s definitely too much to ask me to give guidance on next year’s FFO. That’s for sure. But I will say this. While we’re doing leasing and we’re getting some positive absorption in the lease rate, I mean, especially a building like Studio Plaza, which I feel good about where we’re headed and leasing there. We have to still like build out their space, have them start paying rent.
So for that, in particular, even with very good news around leasing to have it flow all the way through to FFO, that takes some time. But putting that aside, I’m not giving any guidance about where we’re headed next year, but we will on our next call, be giving exact guidance.

Operator

Nick Yulico, Scotiabank.

Nicholas Yulico

Just going back to Studio Plaza. Can you just explain how this is going to work in terms of the treatment of the building from a if you’re taking out of service, I don’t know if you’re capitalizing pieces of it now going forward, just how we should think about kind of the earnings impact there?

Jordan Kaplan

Okay. So I’m going to leave the real technical stuff that Peter and maybe you can talk to them after this Here’s what I — or you could talk now, Peter. But I will say that we are really repositioning that building. And I’m talking about across the board, approach, common areas, lobbies, everything to be a multi-tenant building. So that’s a very big move vis-a-vis that building.
And then at the same time, we’re leasing. And we’re trying to fit — we’re showing them what we’re doing. We’re actually doing it, trying to fit the leasing in. So there’s just a lot going on there that’s in process. I don’t know if you want to talk about that —

Peter Seymour

No. I mean, probably — obviously, the biggest impact is you lose the NOI from Warner Bros and then you have to build it back up as you move tenants in and as Jordan said earlier. That process is going to take some time. I mean obviously, we’re going to try to keep the day-to-day expenses as low as possible, and we’ll probably capitalize some of the ongoing costs as we — until we lease it up fully.

Nicholas Yulico

Okay. Great. And then second question is just on the swaps, latest thinking there on — for the maturities this year and next year, whether you’re going to replace those or just deal with some floating rate debt exposure.

Jordan Kaplan

Well, we need — the stuff that’s coming up in this year and in the next two years, there’s no reason to swap it. It doesn’t do anything. You need some longer-term debt to be in a position to swap. And so we’re working on that and getting into that position.

Operator

Was there a follow-up, sir?

Nicholas Yulico

No, that’s good.

Operator

John Kim, BMO Capital Markets.

John Kim

I actually have questions on disclosure. So this quarter was very unusual. You had the large Warner Bros discovery exploration at the quarter end. It didn’t show up in your occupancy. It does show up in your short-term lease leases.
But assuming that’s consistent with how you’ve done it in the past, how should we think about that short-term lease bucket? Like how much of that short-term lease bucket are actual vacancies that have occurred at quarter end?

Stuart McElhinney

John, it’s Stuart. Yeah. Sorry, there’s been a confusion around the Warner Bros. Their lease went through 9/30. So there’s still an occupancy as of 9/30. And we could have been maybe more clear that their vacancy started on 10/1.
But our long-term policy in regards to that short-term bucket is that leases that expire on the last day of the quarter like that move into that short-term bucket kind of signaling that they’re almost over. So they are in the occupancy number as of 9/30, and we moved them into that short-term bucket.

John Kim

And do you have an estimate like on the short-term lease bucket, what percentage of those are actual vacancies?

Dave Rodgers

No, I don’t have an estimate. I can look at that after the call of what’s — I mean this happens every quarter. You guys just don’t notice it because typically, our leases are small, but any leases that expire on that last day of the quarter would be in that bucket. I can go back and look and see what kind of percentage that is.

John Kim

Okay. And then we noticed on page 13 of your supplement, you eliminated the submarket occupancy and rents. It’s now kind of consolidated into regions. But I’m wondering why you made a decision. Was it for competitive purposes or just too much of a distraction for investors?

Stuart McElhinney

The latter. I mean, we felt for some time and have been saying for some time that because our individual submarkets, that data can be impacted even by a single lease and those markets are pretty small that the confusion and the kind of the time spent focusing on small changes kind of outweighed the benefits of disclosing those markets. So we think about it internally along those three region lines, and we thought that was a better way to present it.

Operator

Peter Abramowitz, Jefferies.

Peter Abramowitz

Yes. Just wondering if we can get your latest thoughts on sort of how things feel on the ground in terms of leasing from the entertainment industry. Just curious if things are picking up anymore given the challenges will last 1.5 years or 2 years or so.

Stuart McElhinney

When we looked at the Q3 stats, entertainment was kind of there in a typical pace of represented kind of as they normally be in our portfolio. I know there — if you go back a ways that entertainment got a little slow there, but I think it’s been more normalized recently.

Nicholas Yulico

Okay. And then I noticed there’s nothing particularly chunky next year, but you do have about 120,000 square feet in total with UCLA, I believe, next year. So just curious from your early conversations, sort of where they stand on those renewals and your thoughts on kind of the chance of keeping them in the same space?

Stuart McElhinney

Yeah. UCLA has a number of leases with us. So if you look at that 120,000 feet, it’s a lot of smaller leases. And they don’t act like a large tenant. They act like a bunch of different small tenants. So they can be making different decisions on all those spaces. They can — literally, they’ve expanded with us in the same quarter they’ve given back space in other buildings.
So you said it right. There’s nothing chunky coming up. We have a pretty normal role. And actually, as Jordan has mentioned, lower roll going forward but we don’t have any — no prediction yet from UCLA on how that’s all going to shake out.

Operator

Dylan Burzinski, Green Street.

Dylan Burzinski

I guess just — good to hear the comments on leasing picking up and then the pipeline potentially being strong. I mean, I guess is there certain submarkets where you’re seeing outside strength in activity? Or is it pretty broad-based across the portfolio today?

Stuart McElhinney

Yeah. It was good broad-based activity across the three regions. Nothing that stood out as unusual, but we were happy to see good tenant mix and good region mix in the leasing this quarter.

Dylan Burzinski

And then maybe just one on — in terms of acquisition opportunities. Obviously, things are still out there in order to put capital work today. But I guess just looking at your guys’ JV fund platform, I mean, is there any appetite for your current partners to sell interest to you guys? Or is that sort of a non-starter today?

Peter Seymour

They’re buyers. They’re full-on buyers.

Operator

Upal Rana, KeyBanc.

This is Gaby on for Upal. It appears multi-family is performing better than anticipated. So are you able to provide some color on what’s driving that? And then you’ve touched on this in past quarters, but do you see any potential opportunities for any more office to residential conversions where it would make sense to pursue?

Jordan Kaplan

Well, I don’t know what to say about the multifamily. Our multi-family has been such a strong performer all the time, and it’s continued to be a strong performer. So nothing about its performance has surprised me. We have incredible long-term CAGR on that portfolio in terms of growth.
In terms of the conversions, Dave, you really need a proper mix of very high residential rates, low office rates, low value for the buildings. And it worked in Hawaii. No doubt about it. That worked in Hawaii. But it is — the markets we’re in, we’re in pretty strong office.
I mean, I know right now, people aren’t happy about what’s going on in the office world, but we’re in pretty strong office markets. They don’t really get any new competition from new supply.
We have a lot of really strong industries driving demand. So values hold up quite well and rents hold up quite well, making it extremely difficult to justify spending the whatever it is $500 a foot or $600 a foot on top of whatever you think the value of the building is today to convert it, you have to get extraordinary residential rates. I mean there are circumstances that could occur to try and make that happen, but it’s just really rare. We have that circumstance in Hawaii.
We had very, very strong residential and very weak office. And then once we took that building out, even office rents went way up, and they’re still moving out of good clip because another lady is doing it with two other — and other developers doing it with two other buildings. But I think that’s going to be more rare here in the markets that we’re in here in LA.

Operator

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Jordan Kaplan for any closing remarks.

Jordan Kaplan

Well, thank you all for joining us, and we look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. Goodbye.

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.