LXP Industrial Trust

Again, press star 1. Thank you. I will now turn the conference over to Heather Gentry, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Welcome to LXP Industrial Trust's second quarter 2024 earnings conference call and webcast. The earnings release was distributed this morning and both the release and quarterly supplemental are available on our website in the investor section and will be furnished to the SEC on a Form 8K. Certain statements made during this conference call regarding future events and expected results may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. LXP believes that these statements are based on reasonable assumptions. However, certain factors and risks, including those included in today's earnings press release and those described in reports that LXP files with the SEC from time to time, could cause LXP's actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. Accepted as required by law, LXP does not undertake a duty to update any forward-looking statements. In the earnings press release and quarterly supplemental disclosure package, LXP has reconciled all non-GAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAP measure. Any references in these documents to adjusted company FFL refer to adjusted company funds from operations available to all equity holders and unit holders on a fully diluted basis. Operating performance measures of an individual investment are not intended to be viewed as presenting a numerical measure of LXP's historical or future financial performance, financial positions or cash flows. On today's call, Will Eglin, Chairman and CEO, Seth Fulleris, CFO, Brendan Mullinick, CIO and Executive Vice President James Dudley will provide a recent business update and commentary on second quarter results. I will now turn the call over to Will.

Thanks, Heather. And good morning, everyone. We had excellent second quarter results highlighted by robust leasing activity with continued success in raising rents and strong same store NOI growth of 5%. Based on the leasing outcomes we've achieved to date, we're raising same store NOI growth expectations to a new range of .5% to 5.5%. We're also pleased to report we've successfully completed our portfolio transformation with the sale of our two remaining consolidated office assets during the quarter positioning LXP as a pure play industrial REIT. Leasing activity picked up considerably in the second quarter with 2.7 million square feet leased at base and cash base rental increases of .5% and 44% respectively, excluding tenant improvement reimbursements on one expiring lease. We continue to achieve strong mark to market outcomes on expiring leases which speaks to the high quality of our portfolio, 88% of which are Class A facilities. Market conditions support annual rental increases in the 3% to 4% range and on average we obtained rental escalations of .6% on leases signed in the second quarter. Post quarter end we leased an additional 96,000 square feet at attractive base and cash base rent spreads of 28% and 35% respectively. Strong leasing activity continues and we're in advanced negotiations on an additional 1.7 million square feet. Moving to the balance sheet, we ended the quarter at 6.2 times net debt to adjusted EBITDA. We remain focused on moving towards the low end of our target leverage range of five to six times and are confident we can reach this target through a combination of leasing vacancy and raising rents. In addition, we are exploring several asset sales in non-target markets that could accelerate leverage reduction or create liquidity for redeployment into new investments. Looking ahead, our focus is principally on taking advantage of the internal growth opportunities in our portfolio. We estimate that our current rents are approximately 24% below market through 2029 and we have a total of 4.1 million square feet available for lease. We also continue to explore external growth opportunities including -to-suit projects to the extent they fit within our target market strategy. Finally, we announced earlier this year that Nathan Brunner will be joining LXP as executive president of capital markets in September. He will transition into the CFO role effective March 1, 2025 when Beth shifts to an advisory role at LXP. Nathan's background speaks for itself with many successful years in investment banking, particularly in the industrial and net lease sectors and he has deep corporate finance and M&A experience. We're very excited to have him join us and look forward to his contributions. With that, I'll turn the call over to Brendan to discuss investment activity in more detail.

Thanks, Will. During the quarter, we invested $35 million in our spec and -to-suit projects. We have approximately $29 million left to fund in our remaining spec development projects, excluding any partner promotes, and $36 million in our -to-suit project. Turning to our development portfolio, we've leased approximately 60% of the square footage we've developed since adding this important growth avenue in 2019. On the remaining 3.7 million square feet left to lease, we continue to see activity with 1.3 million square feet currently in final negotiations. Our -to-suit project in Greenville-Spartanburg is well underway and we expect that project to complete near the end of the year. We continue to explore other opportunities with the best prospects currently at our land bank in Phoenix. To Will's earlier point, we are evaluating several non-core market dispositions as a source of liquidity, particularly as prices for these types of assets has become more attractive. Potential proceeds from these asset sales could be used for deleveraging or -to-suit opportunities, depending on what is the most creative at the time. With that, I'll turn the call over to James to discuss leasing.

Thanks, Brendan. The industrial leasing market showed signs of improvement in the second quarter, with net absorption up as demand accelerated and construction starts continue to decelerate. This was evident in our portfolio as well, as we saw a pickup in leasing activity across our markets in the second quarter. Leasing was strong during the quarter and included lease extensions for four 2024 expirations, one 2025 expiration, one 2026 expiration, and a vacancy. To date, we've marked 2024 expirations at 29%, excluding fixed-rate renewals. We anticipate raising rents on the 600,000 square feet of remaining 2024 expirations, on average 20 to 30%. On last quarter's call, we discussed two leases in the Memphis market with 2024 expirations. Both were renewed in the second quarter, totaling approximately 1.6 million square feet. These are strong leasing outcomes, resulting in five-year lease renewals, at cash rental spreads of 29 and 25%, with average lease bumps of 3.25%. We executed an early lease renewal on our 2025 expiration with Mars in Atlanta during the quarter, signing a 32-month extension with 4% annual bumps. The expiring rent had $4.68 per square foot in tenant improvement amortization. When excluding this amount, the renewal rent reflects a 63% increase in rent from $4.50 to $7.35 per square foot. Including the loss of these TI reimbursements in the second quarter leasing numbers, base and cash base rents still increased approximately 12 and 13%, respectively. The TI reimbursement burn-off for this lease expiration has always been accounted for in our -to-market estimates. We don't have any similar leases in the portfolio where TI amortization has such a significant impact. Also, during the quarter, we signed a 10-year lease extension with 3% annual bumps at our 242,000 square foot industrial facility in the Philadelphia market. This was an early renewal on a 2026 expiration that resulted in an 85% cash rental increase over the prior rent. Finally, we executed a new two-year lease with .75% annual bumps at our vacant 118,000 square foot facility in the Memphis market. There was minimal downtime in getting the property leased up with a new rent per square foot representing a 22% rental increase over the prior rent. With that, I'll turn the call over to Beth to discuss financial results.

Thanks, James. Revenue in the second quarter was approximately $86 million with property operating expenses of about $15 million, of which 90% was attributable to tenant reimbursements. Adjusted company FFO in the second quarter was $0.16 per diluted common share, or approximately $47 million. G&A was $9.2 million in the second quarter. As we mentioned on last quarter's call, we have been focused on operating efficiencies, which included shrinking our office footprint in New York as we transitioned some overhead costs to our Florida and Dallas offices. As part of our efforts to operate more efficiently, and made possible by the successful completion of our portfolio repositioning, 2024 G&A will now include one-time charges of approximately $1.7 million associated with employee severance costs. These employee changes will result in annual cost savings of approximately $1.2 million moving forward. Further in 2024, we will have approximately $1 million in expenses related to the CFO transition. As a result, our 2024 G&A is now expected to be within a range of $39 to $41 million. Our same-store portfolio was .4% leased at quarter end, and same-store NOI increased 5% in the second quarter when compared to the same period in 2023. At quarter end, approximately 99% of our portfolio leases had escalations with an average annual rate of 2.7%. During the quarter, we fully repaid the $198.9 million of .4% 2024 senior notes at maturity with proceeds from the issuance of the .75% 2028 senior notes we completed last November. Our fixed rate debt percentage was approximately 92% at quarter end. As we've indicated previously, we expect 2025 interest expense to increase when the swaps on the term loan expire in January. We are considering other long-term fixed rate options or swapping some of this exposure later this year or early next year. We anticipate this additional interest expense to impact 2025 adjusted company FFO by approximately $0.02 per diluted common share based on the current SOFR forward curve. At quarter end, our total consolidated debt outstanding was approximately $1.6 billion, with a weighted average interest rate of .81% and a weighted average term to maturity of six years. Finally, we enter the second quarter with our $600 million unsecured revolving credit facility fully available. With that, I'll turn the call back over to the operator who will conduct the question and answer portion of this call.

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. And if you'd like to withdraw that question, again, press star one. Your first question comes from the line of Anthony Pellone with the JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning. First question, I just wanted to get into the development leasing pipeline a bit more. I think you mentioned 1.7 million square feet of leasing in the pipeline. Can you go over again how much of that you think relates to some of the developments that have been delivered already and just prospect of leasing up some of these large million square footers?

Hey, Tony. It's James. I'll just run through the portfolio and kind of where we stand. So I think we've talked about Ocala for a while. We continue to be close on Ocala with a prospective tenant that would take the entire facility. We also have another identified tenant for our 250 in Edna, and we think we're close on getting a deal done there. We've responded to a couple of full building RFPs on our Indianapolis facility, and then we have a partial building user that's looking at our South Shore Tampa facility, and then a couple of partial building users that have inquired about Greenville Spartanburg. So I would say we're in a good spot on Ocala and Columbus right now and a little further away from having certainty on the others.

Okay. And just any comments on just where you think yields will end up on those given what you're seeing and where the rents being discussed are?

Yeah, we're maintaining the prior guidance of 6 to .5% that we've previously got it to.

Okay. And then just one other question, maybe Beth. I think your same store NOI guidance was 4 to 5% previously. Just wondering if that's still kind of the number, if there's any changes there for the year?

Yeah, we've upped the guidance, Tony, to 4.5 to 5.5%.

Okay, great. Thank you. Thanks, Tony.

Your next question comes from the line of Todd Thomas with Key Bank Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks. First question, Beth, you mentioned the 39 to $41 million G&A guidance for 24. That's higher by $3 million, I believe, from the prior G&A guidance. I just wanted to clarify, is that all included in Adjusted Company FFO? It sounded like a portion was one time in nature. I just wasn't sure I heard the comments there. Can you clarify?

Yeah, so the severance charges of 1.7 are going to be a one time, so they won't be in Adjusted Company FFO.

Okay, but the balance of it will also be… And the range I had

last time, the range we said last time was 36.5 to 38.5. So now we're saying 39 to 41. So it's not quite 3 million, but less than that.

Okay. Okay, but the offset then, so you took up the same store by 50 basis points. What else sort of changed? What other assumptions should we think about as it pertains to the updated guidance and the low end coming up a penny?

It's really due to all of our leasing that we've done and the great outcomes that we've had on our spreads and being able to capture that gap rent was really the motivator for that.

Okay, and then I just wanted to ask also about… There were a handful of, I think, known move outs that were included in the guidance and the budget for the year in the balance of 24. I think there was also some discussion around 25. You talked about a 3PL in South Carolina, around a 75,000 square foot warehouse, also a 58,000 square foot warehouse in Carrollton, Texas. Are those both still move outs and is there anything else in 24 or 25 that you're aware of at this time?

So those are the two that are in 24 and we have promising activity on both of them, I'm hoping that they'll be short-lived vacancies and the 58 maybe doesn't even become one because we replaced the tenant. And then we have one other 124 that's in… It's a March 2025 lease expiration that we know the tenant's moving out. Fortunately, it's a multi-tenant building and the tenant that's next door wants to expand, so also hopeful that we can minimize downtime there. Okay, and

just last one for me, the Cleveland asset that was sold subsequent to June 30, can you just share some details on that sale, the disposition proceeds or any other details on that asset sale?

Sure, that was an asset that we had a known move out coming and we ended up selling it to a user for what we thought was a really good price. It's a cap rate of a little bit above 7, which sounds high, but for a 1996 facility with 24 foot clear height, it was a really, you know, a very good sale for us.

Okay, all right, thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Mitch Germain with Citizens JMP. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking my question. Can you provide me some perspective on the math between a -a-suit versus what you're seeing in the acquisition markets today?

Sure. -a-suit, we're targeting a range of six and a half to seven, just depending upon what the escalation structure is and term. And, you know, I would say in the existing market, something with, you know, of term is going to be in the high fives to six kind of range.

Okay, that's super helpful. And in thinking about dispositions, is it markets where you don't have as much scale, or is it assets where either there's some capital or some no move out? What's kind of added in that bucket?

It's really focused on markets where we don't have scale and don't plan to scale. And so we're being opportunistic about harvesting value where we can. We think that this position market's probably improved in our favor about 50 basis points from a cap rate perspective since fourth quarter last year. So we're in the market doing some price discovery on a handful of buildings, and we're getting good response. That's super helpful.

And last one for me, Beth, I apologize. You're getting a lot of questions on G&A. I think you were just talking a little too quick for me. So just from your prepared remarks, can you just kind of, I recognize the severance, and then you talked about some savings of 1.2 million. And then I missed it. I think there's some additional fees for the CFO change. Just kind of go over that one more time, please.

Yeah, sure, Mitch. No problem. Yeah, so there's one time of 1.7 for severance costs that are one time, so they won't be impacting our FFO, adjusted company FFO for 2024. But going into 2025, we anticipate that we're going to be saving about 1.2 million based on those changes. But also, and also for 2024, we are anticipating about a million dollars for the CFO transition that will impact 2024.

Great. That's super helpful. Thank you so much, everyone. Thanks.

Your next question comes from the line of Kamil Bonnell with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. So the team's done a lot to term out and manage the floating rate exposure, but as you highlighted in your opening remarks, interest expense will still be a drag to the bottom line earnings growth. And when you look at the pace of stabilizing your development assets, it seems like we're still a few quarters away, which implies further drag on 2025. So I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that and what you can do to improve this outlook while balancing potential dilution from your asset sales. Thank you.

Well, we're exploring different opportunities for the term loan. Right now, it's at 2.72 percent with the swaps that are in place right now. We're looking at potentially some fixed rate, maybe a potential bond offering or swapping today for some of that exposure. We're also potentially we may pay down a portion of it as well. And so going forward, you're right. Interest expense is going to be higher by about two cents, as I mentioned in our remarks.

And as you explored those considerations, in light of where your stock's trading today, which does seem much closer to NAB relative to peers, just wondering how you're thinking about potential equity raises as a source of capital, maybe to address capital requirement needs or investment opportunity?

Well, we are very pleased that the shares have performed well recently, but we're focused on what things that we can achieve that can improve the share value even more. And obviously, making more progress on stabilizing the development pipeline would be top of the list. So things are certainly better from a cost of capital standpoint, but our focus is on, as I said, working the portfolio, producing better leasing outcomes and improving our valuation further.

Okay, so it doesn't sound like it ranks very high at this point. And finally, I just wanted to pick up on your point about LXP being positioned as a pure play industrial company. I believe you still have a small stake in a few office properties. So are you planning to also wind that down? And are those assets included in the disposition strategy you outlined?

Yeah, that office joint venture has been basically in a liquidating mode since it was formed. So it shrunk a lot and still has a handful of buildings in it. And we are winding that down as quickly as the market supports.

Okay, thank you. Again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Jim Kemmert with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning. I know, Will, did I miss it? Did you quantify maybe the potential sales that you would consider in terms of dollars? And maybe you don't want to tilt your hand about a range of cap rates? Is it the non-corrosive?

I mean, I would think that what we have in the market right now is sort of more than $100 billion, but less than $150 million.

Okay.

And as Brendan was saying, cap rates for this sort of asset are arguably in the five and six area, that sort of space, which is better than it has been. And those cap rates are certainly lower than our floating rate borrowing costs right now, although over time it's certainly possible that so far we go down.

That's helpful. And the second question I saw for counting, but Beth, how much lease up is assumed on the recently completed deals where I presume you are no longer capitalizing interest, but how much drag is in the remaining 2024 guidance for those assets? Are you assuming any leasing?

The low end assumes no leasing at all. And the high end assumes a little bit in the fourth quarter. Okay. So marginal.

Okay. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of John Peterson with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Great. Good morning. On Ocala and Columbus, are you guys able to, can you give us like the annual like run rate FFO upside from leasing those two properties? Like how should we think about quantifying that since that seems to be the most likely upside in the near term?

It's about three cents.

Okay. And then on Ocala, because I think that's the one we've been talking about the longest here. Can you characterize how the negotiations have evolved there? Is it just waiting for the potential tenant to sign the dotted line or is there a lot of back and forth on terms and that's what's holding it up?

It's just waiting on the tenant at this point. Their internal process is incredibly long and we're working through it and we're trying to be patient, but hopefully we're going to have something done soon. I know we've been saying that for a couple of months now, but it continues to move in the right direction just at a very slow pace. All right. That's

helpful. Thank you.

And that concludes our question and answer session. And I will now turn the conference back over to Will Eglinton for closing comments.

Well, thank you everyone for joining our call this morning. I hope you'll take the time to visit our website or contact Heather Gentry if you'd like to receive our quarterly materials. And in addition, as always, you may contact me or the other members of senior management with any questions. Thanks again.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation and you may now disconnect.