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spk09: Thank you all for joining. I would like to welcome you to Centre Space Q1 2023 Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise and after the speaker's remarks we will conduct a question and answer session. To ask a question at this time please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind at any time and would like to remove your request to speak please press star 2. And for operator assistance anytime, it's star zero key. Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Joe McCommish.
spk08: So please go ahead, Joe.
spk03: Center Spaces Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2023 was filed with the SEC yesterday after the market closed. Additionally, our earnings release and supplemental disclosure package have been posted to our website at centerspacehomes.com and filed on form 8K. It's important to note that today's remarks will include statements about our business outlook and other forward-looking statements that are based on management's current views and assumptions. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties discussed in our filing under the section titled Risk Factors and in our other filings with the FCC. We cannot guarantee that any forward-looking statement will materialize and your caution not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Please refer to our earnings release for reconciliations of any non-GAAP information which may be discussed on today's call. I'll now turn it over to Ann Olson for the company's prepared remarks.
spk00: Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call. With me this morning is Bharat Patel, our Chief Financial Officer. Notably missing this morning is Mark Decker, who led CenterSpace for the last six years and transitioned out of the CEO role at the end of March. Mark is a tremendous leader who is key in building the foundation of our culture and drove a strategy that provided our team opportunities to learn and grow. Mark's accomplishments over the last six years are many, and I know Mark and the board have confidence in the opportunity ahead for CSR. I share that confidence and am both humbled and excited to lead the company into its next chapter. We will miss Mark and wish him the best. Today, I have great results to share for our company. The first quarter was very strong. The stability of our markets and operations resulted in core FFO growth of 9% over the same period last year. Revenue growth is still the highlight as we capture the loss to lease from large rental increases throughout 2022. Same-store revenue growth was 10.5% driven by increases in scheduled rent, leading to NOI growth of 11% over the prior comparable quarter. The expense pressure we experienced in 2022 is leveling off. The first quarter same-store expenses were flat over Q4 of 2022, a sign of easing inflation and efficacy of our cost control measures. Our positive operational results, coupled with the impact of the CEO transition and associated reduction of G&A, give us confidence that we can reiterate our guidance for this year. Bharad will provide more detail in his remarks. With respect to our revenue trends, in the first quarter, we achieved 2.5% increases on same-store new lease tradeouts, and 5.8% increases on same store renewals. This leads us to a 3.9% blended rent increase in Q1. These trends continued in April with 4.5% increases on same store new lease tradeouts, 5.1% increases on same store renewals, which results in a 4.7% blended rent increase in April. We are experiencing broad strength across our markets, which are differentiated by our mid and Mountain West presence. As positive leasing in 2020 demonstrated, our market exposure provides good stability and consistency in times of uncertainty, and we are seeing that play out again today. Hallmarks of our portfolio are lower supply, low unemployment, and the affordability of rent, with our average monthly rental rate in the first quarter of 1450, and the portfolio rent to income of our resident households is just under 25%. With respect to supply, Weighted average units under construction is 8.2% of inventory in our institutional markets of Denver and Minneapolis, and 4.9% of inventory in our other markets. In Minneapolis and Denver, we achieved revenue growth of 9.5% and 10.5% respectively in Q1 compared to Q1 2022, even in light of elevated supply. As we look for external growth opportunities, we continue to like Denver and believe that the fundamentals of the Mountain West are holding up. Transaction volume in Metro Denver was down significantly at 69% in Q1 compared to Q1 2022, and though velocity has tapered, we continue seeing deep competition on well-located opportunities. We have been quiet on the acquisitions front since Q3 of 2022, but we are very pleased with the disposition of nine communities that closed during the first quarter. In keeping with our strategies to improve our portfolio construction and exposure, and thus our earnings quality, We disposed of communities in the St. Cloud, Omaha, and Minneapolis markets that have lower rent and growth profiles and higher cost of operations. The nine communities had an average monthly revenue per unit of $944 in Q1 2023 compared to our post-sale portfolio average monthly revenue per unit of $1,378. And the pricing we achieved was a 6% cap rate based on 2022 NOI for those communities. Given the dearth of acquisition opportunities and our stock price trading at an implied cap rate around 7.5%, we also use 6.7 million of those proceeds to buy back our stock at an average of approximately $54.17, a price we feel confident about given our ability to execute sales of our less desirable assets at a cap rate inside of where we are trading. We believe in our portfolio, its diversity and stability, and our internal opportunity to enhance our portfolio quality. For these reasons, our stock is a good investment for us at this time. Now, I'll turn it over to Barav to discuss our overall financial results in 2023 outlook.
spk01: Thanks, Anne, and good morning, everyone. In my comments today, I will review results for the first quarter of 2023, highlight actions we have recently taken to optimize our balance sheet and liquidity, and discuss our outlook for 2023. Last night, we reported core FFO for the quarter ending March 31, 2023 of $1.07 per diluted share, which was in line with our expectations and driven by another strong quarter of operating performance with same-store NOI increasing 11% year-over-year. As Anne mentioned in her remarks, leasing trends remain positive across our portfolio, showcasing the stability of our markets. Please note that G&A expenses during the quarter included one-time expenses and charges totaling $3.2 million related to the CEO transition which we have excluded from core FFO. Turning to our balance sheet, we took several steps during and subsequent to the first quarter of 2023 to enhance our balance sheet strength and maximize financial flexibility. First, we used the initial proceeds from the asset sales to fully repay the $100 million term loan we put in place at the end of last year. We received approximately $48 million of of proceeds from the sales subsequent to quarter-end, which we promptly used to pay down the outstanding balance on our line of credit. Second, we further reduced our floating rate exposure by repaying another $90 million of our line of credit balance with proceeds from fixed-rate secure financing we closed last week. The financing has a term of 12 years at a fixed rate of 5.04%, which represented a spread of under 140 basis points on the then-existing 10-year Treasury rate. We are extremely pleased with the execution as we were able to close it ahead of schedule despite the disruption in the capital markets caused by the onset of the banking crisis. Pro forma for the impact of those actions, our floating rate exposure has been reduced to approximately 20 million or less than 2% of our total current debt outstanding of approximately 875 million. It also lowered our weighted average interest rate to 3.5% and increased our weighted average maturity to 7.2 years. We have total liquidity as of today of approximately 230 million, most of which is driven by the available amount on our line of credit, which, as I mentioned earlier, has been almost fully repaid with proceeds from the asset sales and refinancing. With less than $25 million of our total debt outstanding coming during the next 24 months and pro forma leverage of less than seven times net debt to adjusted EBITDA, we believe we are in one of the strongest positions we have ever been from a balance sheet perspective. and we are able to immediately leverage the strength of our balance sheet by repurchasing $6.7 million of our own stock at an average price of $54.17 per share, which we believe is a significant discount to the underlying value of our portfolio, as Ann previously discussed. Now I will discuss our financial outlook for 2023, which is presented on page S15 of the supplemental. We are maintaining our guidance ranges for same-store NOI and core FFO as our first quarter results have been in line with our expectations, barring the incremental G&A impact as a result of the CEO transition. As I mentioned earlier, we have excluded the incremental G&A from core FFO, leaving our expectations for core FFO relatively unchanged. Excluding the one-time charge, the impact of the transition is G&A savings of approximately $1 million for 2023, and we are currently determining how much of the potential savings may need to be reallocated as the reorganizer support functions. Our strong first quarter results and potential G&A savings give us confidence that we will be above the midpoint of our current guidance range for Core FFO. We will provide an updated outlook next quarter which comprehensively incorporates the impact of operating activity during the first half of the year and any G&A savings we expect to realize. To conclude, I would like to congratulate Mark for his many accomplishments as CEO of CenterSpace and wish him all the very best in his future endeavors. I'm thankful for the opportunity to work with him over the past year and a half and have greatly benefited from his leadership and guidance during my time at CenterSpace. As Anne said, we do have a tremendous opportunity ahead of us and I believe we are very well positioned to capitalize on the opportunity under her leadership. I look forward to assisting her in shaping the next chapter in the evolution of CenterSpace. And with that, I will turn it over to the operator to open it up for questions.
spk09: Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind, please press star 2. We have the first question from Brad Hatham of RBC Capital Markets.
spk07: Yeah, thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. And first of all, congratulations on your first call as CEO. I'm wondering if you can talk about your vision for the company and call out any potential differences in either focus or strategy versus how things were done under Mark's leadership.
spk00: Good morning, Brad. Thank you. I've been here for six years and really worked closely with Mark on the strategy of the company and how we execute. We're not expecting a lot of huge changes. I do think that as we moved into 2023 as a team, we refocused our execution standards and accountability systems in line with some of the transformation we had done to our back office. with respect to technology enhancements and investments that we had made over the past couple of years. So I do think it feels a little bit different. That was planned as part of both our 2023 goals when Mark was here and as part of the transition that we would really accelerate our focus on our internal opportunity to better the company and better the results and then also strategically, you know, really think about incremental improvements to continue to enhance both the platform and our portfolio construction. So it might feel a little bit different, but it's all kind of part of the same plan and vision.
spk07: Okay, thank you for that. And then on the repurchase, obviously you did a little bit in the first quarter. I'm curious how you think about doing more in the context of it, either increasing leverage if you do it on the balance sheet or potentially reducing scale if you did it through dispositions.
spk00: Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, our approach has been to be very judicious. We really want to keep an eye on the balance sheet and be very careful with how we use that balance sheet and what the best investment for us is at the time. I do think, as we guided at the beginning of the year and reiterated, we do have a couple more dispositions that we would like to undertake this year, and that will have an impact both on our ability, you know, some additional pay down of debt and potentially, you know, make sure we have enough dry powder to take advantage of any external opportunities that come our way.
spk07: Okay. Okay. And then finally, on the rent growth side of things, what's been the change in market rent in your market so far this year? And can you talk about where that sits relative to what the expectation was in guidance?
spk00: So I think we're running a little bit ahead on market rent of where our expectations were. But with only one quarter behind us, that's not a lot of our lease expirations. I think the first quarter is actually our smallest lease expiration profile at 16%. And so we really want to get into the meat of the leasing season. We feel good about the April results, as you probably noted in our remarks. April was a little bit ahead on new lease tradeouts than the first quarter. So that bodes well. It remains to be seen. The big chunk of leasing comes in the middle of the year for us, and that's when we're really going to see You know, the projections that we have in our guidance are full year projections, so running a little bit ahead of them at the beginning of the year, it doesn't tell us too much about how the rest of the year is going to go.
spk08: Okay. Thank you. Thank you. We now have Barry Oxford of Colliers.
spk02: Great. Thanks, guys. Just to build on that question regarding debt pay down. clearly have taken care of any short-term maturities, but what type of debt would you be going after in your capital stack when you guys do this position, should you choose to pay down more debt?
spk01: Yeah, I mean, Barry, this is Rav. So we, I mean, I think as we look at Dispositions, Ann mentioned we have a couple more dispositions included in our guidance. We do expect that as we go through the year, we will have a little more floating rate debt on the line of credit that we would be able to pay down. So that is really the only debt that we are looking to pay down because the fixed rate debt is fixed, and it doesn't really give you a lot of flexibility in terms of paydowns. So we would be looking to pay down more floating rate debt, which we expect will kind of ramp up a little bit. as we go through the year. So with the plan dispositions, that would be the goal.
spk02: Right, okay, great, great. And then, Ann, question for you. With the seven and a half implied cap rate, when you look at acquisitions, are acquisitions kind of bumping up or at least relatively close to that to make acquisitions look opportunity, or make them look opportunistic, or are you gonna be kind of viewing your stock as probably the best place to, I guess, you know, to buy your own portfolio?
spk00: Yeah, I think we are not seeing acquisitions at that level right now that would be accretive. I mean, we're still seeing in our targeted markets, you know, sub-four cap transactions, or sub-five cap transactions, sorry. I do think you're right that the best use of our capital right now is to look internally, not just our stock, but also our value add program where we are really getting the returns that we envisioned. And so as the year progresses, we're hopeful that the transaction market picks up and there's some leveling off of price. There's a pretty big disparity right now between the bid and ask. And as that maybe works itself out, we think that acquisitions hopefully will become a little bit more accretive And also that, you know, that that stock price can move as well to help us out.
spk02: Great. Great. Thanks for the call, guys.
spk09: Your next question comes from Rob Stevenson of JANU.
spk04: Good morning, guys. And just to pick up on Barry's question there, how many units are there left in the portfolio that you have targeted for redevelopment today and where the numbers make sense? And what's the aggregate dollar value of those investments? I think you guys have 25, 26 million at the midpoint in guidance for 23. What's behind that?
spk00: Yeah, so, you know, we have quite a few projects in the pipeline now, and with respect to the pipeline, it's always growing because, you know, four years ago, we buy an asset that was built in 2010 that looks clearly stable. That right now is becoming, you know, coming into the value add pipeline. So, and you're right on, we have about 25 million scheduled for this year. Our value-add pipeline is not only unit renovations, it's also things like additions of smart home technology, which that can affect the entire portfolio. So, all 14,000 units are, you know, kind of ripe for that, those kind of investments. So, I feel good if I look at both the pipeline now, which I think we have about a little over 1,000 units kind of under renovation or being touched. You know, that will continue to change and grow. you know, over time, it kind of, it's never-ending, never-ending pipeline as product gets older or, you know, new enhancements come out that we're able to implement into the communities.
spk04: And what's the likelihood that that $25 million or so for this year increases dramatically if you don't see any material upward expansion in cap rates and that becomes your best source of deployment other than stock repurchases? I mean, how big could that be in any given year, given your staffing, given your subcontractors, et cetera? I mean, how much more can you do than a thousand units in a year?
spk00: Yeah. I mean, we would really have to ramp up on the, on the staffing side and that, that really increases the execution risk. So we feel really good about 25 million. To the extent that might get increased, it would have to be, you know, a large kind of portfolio-wide implementation, such as a portion of smart home technology. And that's not, we're taking that kind of rolling through the portfolio rather than doing it all at once. So we feel really good about the $25 million. I think we feel great about where that puts us with respect to the dispositions this year and how we fund those. So I don't expect that there's going to be a big ramp up past that amount.
spk04: Okay. And then what's your exposure these days looking forward to utility costs? I know that you guys have put a bunch of stuff in place over the last year or so, but how much, you know, when you look forward into, you know, the fall of 23 and into 24, should your exposure there be reduced as a result of all those programs?
spk00: Great question. As you probably recall, last year we started rolling out in our ratio utility billing system rubs the gas portion, which will decrease our, you know, the volatility of our own expenses with the offsetting revenue. And at the end of the first quarter, we're 26% of the way through the portfolio on rolling that out. And so we really feel like as the year goes on, and particularly as we get to the fall, we should be about 75% of the way through the fall, maybe even 80% given the larger lease exposure. And that's really going to help us generate that offsetting revenue to mitigate the volatility and utility costs that we saw, particularly in 2022.
spk04: And how much is your exposure to...
spk00: water and electric or is it all basically just natural gas for the most part yeah the majority of our exposure was in natural gas water sewer trash those things had already been part of our uh rubs program across the portfolio okay thanks guys appreciate the time thank you we now have my figure of bed
spk05: Hey, good morning, everyone, and congrats, Anne. Could you talk a little bit more about your revenue management strategy over the next few months, and is the plan to continue pushing rate, or will you focus more on maintaining occupancy?
spk00: That's always a balance and an argument that we have internally here just about every day on revenue management. I think we would like to run a little bit more occupied during this time where we have heavy lease expirations. It's typical that our occupancy dips slightly because we really are trying to maximize revenue overall, which means that you have to watch closely pushing rate versus occupied. And we really have to take into account this year more so than years past the experience we had with turnover costs. As an industry, those costs have increased significantly, which really makes keeping our residents in place and the resident experience to drive retention particularly important as we balance those two factors.
spk05: Awesome. Thank you for your time.
spk08: We now have that call of Raymond James.
spk06: Hey, good morning. Thanks, everyone. Wanted to get some extra color on bad debt trends. you know, if there's been any changes recently in delinquency patterns or skips and evicts, and was there any benefit, you know, in the quarter from lower bad debt?
spk01: Buck, this is Bharad. Yes, I mean, we do see stabilization in those trends. So, with respect to the first quarter, Bad debt was about 25 basis points, which is in line with historical averages, and that did benefit us from a year-over-year perspective because last year it was higher than the 25 basis points. So, yeah, we do see some return to pre-COVID trends from a bad debt perspective. And, you know, at 25 basis points, it's slightly ahead of where we had kind of projected it. But, again, bad debt tends to be volatile, so we feel pretty good about what we've kind of factored into the numbers at this point. All right. Appreciate that. Very helpful.
spk06: And post the portfolio disposition here of those nine properties, how is the CapEx profile of the remaining portfolio change? What would be a good run rate, would you say, for kind of annualized recurring CapEx for the remaining portfolio?
spk00: Well, when we guided and gave our per door number at the beginning of the year, we had estimated in those dispositions. So I think that guidance remains unchanged about 1,100, 1,150 a door. We had already factored that in when we made our projections. Got it. It is helping. Appreciate that. It is helping getting some of those older properties off of the books.
spk06: Understood. Understood. And is the elevated level of turn costs, is that just a function of kind of a legacy effect of COVID trends or just very extended tenant stays? And when will turn costs kind of normalize as those units come back available?
spk00: Yeah, I think that the driver of high turn costs is really the increasing inflation services in particular, and also cost of goods. So we really saw that last year. And then also, Rob, did you have a comment on that?
spk01: Yeah. I mean, last year was also elevated because we had some units from overall turnover costs were elevated because we had units from the KMS portfolio that were turning for the first time. A lot of those units were occupied for a long, long time by the residents. we spent a decent amount of turnover capital and expense just to kind of bring it up to, you know, CSR standards. Now, you know, some of that has already rolled into the existing portfolio, so we do expect the impact of that to kind of moderate over time. So at this point, you know, if you've, in our guidance, we have factored turn costs being lower this year versus last year, and a lot of it is a result of some of the cost control measures that we've put in place, and a lot of that is a reflection of some of these units that we've already turned last year.
spk06: Very helpful. Thanks for all that, Carl. I appreciate it.
spk09: Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask any more questions, please press star, then 1 on your telephone keypads now.
spk08: I can confirm we have had no further questions registered, so I'd like to hand it back to the management team.
spk00: Well, thank you all for joining us today, and special thanks to our team who are helping us get these great results. And we'll see you hopefully all at NAREAD.
spk09: Thank you all for joining. I can confirm this does conclude today's call. Please have a lovely rest of your day, and you may now disconnect your lines.
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