7/16/2019

speaker
Chris
Conference Operator

Welcome to the Prologist Q2 earnings conference call. My name is Chris and I'll be your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, press the pound key. Also note, this conference is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the call over to Tracy Ward. Tracy, you may begin.

speaker
Tracy Ward
Head of Investor Relations, Prologis

Thank you, Chris. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Prologis' second quarter earnings call. If you have not yet downloaded the press release, it's available on Prologis' website at Prologis.com under Investor Relations. This morning, you'll hear from Tom Olinger, our Chief Financial Officer, and Gene Riley, Prologis' Chief Investment Officer. Also joining us today for the call is Hamid Moghadam, Gary Anderson, Chris Gayton, Mike Curliss, Ed Neckritz, and Colleen McEwen. Before we begin our prepared remarks, I'd like to state that this conference call will contain forward-looking statements under federal securities laws. These statements are based on current expectations, estimates, and projections about the market and the industry in which the companies operate, as well as the beliefs and assumptions of management. Some of these factors are referred to in Prologis' 10-Ks or SEC filings. Additional factors that could cause actual results to differ include, but are not limited to, the expected timing and likelihood of the completion of the transaction with IPT, including the ability to obtain the approval of their stockholders and the risk that the conditions of the closing of the transaction may not be satisfied. Overlooking statements are not guarantees of performance and the actual operating results may differ. Finally, this call will contain financial measures such as FFO, EBITDA, that are non-GAAP measures. And in accordance with Reg G, the company has provided a reconciliation to those measures in our earnings package. With that, I will turn the call over to Tom. Tom, will you please begin?

speaker
Tom Olinger
Chief Financial Officer, Prologis

Thanks, Tracy. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. We had another excellent quarter. Our proprietary operating metrics continue to reflect strong demands. Showings, average deal gestation, and conversion rates remain either in line or better than last quarter as our customers further build out their supply chain capabilities in the face of trackability. Market conditions in the U.S. continue to be very healthy. Demand is diverse, and overall supply is disciplined. Starts in the U.S. are concentrated in low-barrier markets, while supply in the high-barrier markets is not keeping pace with GDP growth. let alone demand for logistics facilities closer to the end point of consumption. Continental Europe remains strong, and we expect rent growth this year to be the highest in more than a decade. In Japan, despite moderating economic growth, business is quite good. Demand continues to be boosted by e-commerce, while supply is being steadily absorbed. With the improvement we are seeing in the Osaka market, we are removing it from our market watch list. We are raising our 2019 global rent growth estimate by approximately 100 basis points to over 5.5%, as low vacancies and rising replacement costs continue to push market rents higher. Looking to the quarter, we leased 37 million square feet, including 5 million square feet in our development portfolio. Period end occupancy was flat sequentially. Rent change on roll continues to be outstanding, with ours shared over 25% and led by the U.S. at 30%. We expect rent change to trend higher in the back half of the year. Our share of cash seems to run on high growth was 4.6%. Notably, Europe was 5.3%, driven by rent growth, which we have anticipated. Core FFO was $0.77 per share for the second quarter. G&A in the quarter was higher than expected, driven by stock-based compensation resulting from the increase in our share price. This impact was mostly offset by higher than forecasted from overnight. Our deployment starts for $324 million in the quarter. The pace of starts will increase meaningfully in the second half of the year. In fact, we've already started $250 million of billed suits in the first two weeks of July. We completed over $600 million of dispositions and contributions, resulting in $200 million of realized gains in the quarter. Now for 2019 guidance highlights, which are on an R-share basis. And note that our guidance does not include the impact from the IPT acquisition. We are increasing and narrowing our cash same-store and alive guidance to a range of 4.5% to 5%. We're holding the top end of our range as we continue to prioritize rent over occupancy. We're raising the midpoint for both development starts and contributions by $100 million and realized development gains by $50 million. We still expect about $400 million in net uses, which we plan to fund with free cash flow and a modest increase in leverage. Net promote income for the full year is now expected to be 16 cents per share, an increase of 2 cents from our prior guidance. Effectively, all of the remaining net promote income will be earned in the third quarter. For the full year, we are increasing our 2019 core FFO guidance midpoint by 5 cents and narrowing the range to between $3.26 and $3.30 per share. At our revised midpoint, growth in core FFO per share excluding promotes is 9.5% higher than last year. Over the past five years, our growth has clearly been exceptional, with a CAGR of almost 12%, while de-levering by 800 basis points. As I mentioned, this guidance does not include IPT. The acquisition of this high-quality portfolio, which Gene will cover in more detail, captures significant cost and revenue synergies, delivering shareholder value on day one. We plan to hold the portfolio through one or both of our U.S. private vehicles and expect the transaction to close no later than the first quarter of 2020. Depending on the ultimate allocation, our investment via the ventures is likely to range between $1 and $1.4 billion, which we will fund with cash and debt. The resulting annual core FFO accretion is expected to range between five and six cents per share on a stabilized basis. This transaction will have a minimal impact on leverage, with loan-to-value rising about 150 basis points upon the completion of the non-strategic asset sales to approximately 21%. We do not plan to add any corporate overhead in connection with this acquisition, and as a result expect G&A as a percentage of AUX to decrease by 4%. I fielded several questions lately about how we will continue to grow given our size. We think about growth in three components. The first is organic and based on the quality and strength of our portfolio. This is by far the most important and sustainable driver of growth. It also deserves the highest multiple. The second is the value creation from development and the build out of our land bank. The third component is arbitraging the pricing between public and private markets. This is episodic. out of the hands of management and not sustainable over the long term. We focus on the first two components, which have been the driver of our superior performance and will continue to be the foundation of our long-term growth. To sum up, the second quarter was a continuation of what has already been a very good year. I have never felt better about our growth outlook. And with that, I'll turn it over to Gene.

speaker
Gene Riley
Chief Investment Officer, Prologis

Thanks, Tom. I'm pleased to share the details about our merger agreement to buy IPT. The portfolio comprises 37.5 million square feet in 24 U.S. markets, 22 of which are probably the largest target markets. The assets are located in sub-markets we consider strategic and where we already have the benefit of scale and a proven operating presence. The portfolio is slightly younger than the balance of our existing U.S. assets and otherwise very similar in terms of customer profile and physical characteristics. Over the normal course of business, we anticipate a disposition program of approximately $800 million or 20% of the portfolio. The $4 billion price works out to a 4.5% stabilized cap rate and a cap rate of just under 4.9% using current market rents. And at $106 a square foot, we believe we are purchasing the portfolio at a small discount to replacement cost. We are not purchasing the IPT operating platform, and therefore our incremental hiring activity will be limited to leasing and property management personnel necessary to manage the portfolio. As IPT leases roll over time, the Prologis teams will have the benefit of deeper market knowledge and relationships, greater flexibility, access to better information, bigger market share, and ultimately the ability to provide the best service to our customers and generate more revenue. The five to six cents of accretion that Tom mentioned does not include the potential benefits of procurement, ancillary revenue sources, or our other platform initiatives currently underway. During the past eight years, we've integrated over $45 billion in very large portfolio transactions, including the AMB Prologis transaction, KTR, and DCP. In each case, we outperformed our synergy forecast, and we expect to do so here. So, in short, we're highly confident in our ability to integrate these assets into our portfolio. And with that, I'll turn the call over to the operator for questions.

speaker
Chris
Conference Operator

At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star and then 1 on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from Jeremy Metz with BMO. Your line is open.

speaker
Jeremy Metz
Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Hey, good morning, guys. Hey, Tom, you mentioned your allocation to IPT will be in the 25% to 35% range at your share. Even though in the past you had a queue of investors waiting to get into the funds, You've talked about wanting to bring your stake there down to the 15% level, give or take over time. So was there a thought to take even less of this deal initially and then sticking with that, maybe you can talk about the promote opportunity and how much of that $0.05 to $0.06 of accretion is fee-driven? Thanks.

speaker
Tom Olinger
Chief Financial Officer, Prologis

Thanks, Jeremy. A couple things. So the way to think about our incremental investment, if we split the portfolio equally between the two funds, our ownership is 41%. And USLV does not use equity. USLF does. So we would think about 50% leverage targets to fund this deal from a USLF transaction. So think about $3 billion of equity that needs to come to the table, or 40% of that is $1.2 billion. When you think about the accretion, the accretion is primarily, the vast majority of the accretion is operating efficiencies. So the five to six cents is three and a half cents of operating efficiencies between one and a half to two cents of incremental leverage and about a half a penny or less of actual purchase accounting adjustments. So the accretion is quite strong. Most of that is cash. The fee component would be baked in that three and a half cents I talked about, and that's roughly two cents.

speaker
Hamid Moghadam
Chairman and Co-CEO, Prologis

Yeah, at the beginning of that, Tom mentioned it won't require any equity. He meant it doesn't require any debt.

speaker
Chris
Conference Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Manny Corchman with Citi. Your line is open.

speaker
Michael Billerman
Analyst, Citi

Hey, it's Michael Billerman here with Manny. I guess if you step back from it, if there's such a strong amount of NOI potential within this portfolio, Why not own the whole thing? And clearly you have the ability to finance at lower rates, whether it's in Europe or in Asia, which would provide you even more accretion buying a U.S. portfolio and owning $4 billion of assets and getting all of the 40 basis points of upside in the market rents would all flow to the bottom line versus a tradeoff of the incremental fees you're getting. And your equity top certainly is there to be able to do it too, right? At north of $80, you certainly could issue equity and arm that a little bit as well.

speaker
Hamid Moghadam
Chairman and Co-CEO, Prologis

Sure. This is Hemad, Michael. We don't really view our strategic capital business as where we put our bad deals or the ones that are not accretive. It is an integral part of our business, and it is a part of our – strategy going forward, and those are the vehicles that we've established exactly for doing this sort of thing. So we're sticking to that business plan, and it's not like the good ones go to the balance sheet and the bad ones go to the funds. We all do it the same way. Also, the return on equity in the funds is obviously greater because of the leverage through the asset management fees and the like. So that's the strategy. It's been the strategy, and it will remain the strategy. Michael, on your debt question about U.S.

speaker
Tom Olinger
Chief Financial Officer, Prologis

versus non-U.S. debt, we only would do that to the extent we're matching foreign assets with foreign debt. About 79% of our debt stack today is non-dollar. We have not assumed in our accretion that we would use any non-dollar financing here. It's all U.S. dollar financing. Do we have the ability to do a little more non-dollar financing? but none of that's baked into these numbers.

speaker
Chris
Conference Operator

Your next question comes from Derek Johnson with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

speaker
Derek Johnson
Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Hi, everyone. I guess switching to Europe, certainly a strong contributor in 2Q, and this is while EU and global consensus growth estimates were falling. Is there a lag that we should be concerned about filtering through to the back half of 19 leasing metrics? And is there any further update on the outlook for rent growth or the healthy absorption rates that we've seen in the EU post 2Q?

speaker
Gene Riley
Chief Investment Officer, Prologis

Yeah, this is Gene. I'll start with the answer and I think Chris Caden will pile on as well. So we just don't see headwinds in the operating environment in Europe. You've got basically 3% vacancy rates across the continent. You've got steady demand. You've got demand in excess of very low economic growth. But you have steady demand, and we just don't see trade concerns. We don't see Brexit coming up in any customer dialogue. So things look pretty good right now, and we also don't see excess of supply other than in some very isolated individual markets.

speaker
Chris Gayton
Executive Vice President, International, Prologis

Yeah, Gene's spot on. The market is – this is Chris. The market's unfolding a lot like we anticipated at the beginning of the year. That's low 3% vacancy rates. That's rental rates on a net effective basis that are on pace to rise. You know, more than 6% on the continent. Rents are up – call it more than 3% in the first half of the year. So there's really good momentum, and we feel confident looking forward.

speaker
Hamid Moghadam
Chairman and Co-CEO, Prologis

Yeah, but on the other side of that, the U.K. has slowed down a bit, and the continent is stronger than we thought. So I don't think Brexit not having any effect is right. I think definitely the U.K. has slowed down some, particularly individuals.

speaker
Chris
Conference Operator

Your next question comes from Caitlin Burrows with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

speaker
Caitlin Burrows
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Hi, good morning. Maybe back to the IPT acquisition. I was just wondering if you could comment on what the interest level was like or the competition from other potential acquirers, and what do you think differentiated Prologis, either in your assumptions, financing, or something else allowing you to ultimately win this deal?

speaker
Gene Riley
Chief Investment Officer, Prologis

Well, ultimately, I can't tell you who did on the portfolio. I can tell you it was a competitive process, and as I think everybody knows on this call there is plenty of capital interested in this kind of real estate. As for our competitive advantage, I don't think it's any of the items you've listed, but I do think certainty of close, particularly for a vehicle like this, a publicly held vehicle, was critical. And so I think their confidence and our ability to negotiate and complete this transaction smoothly was important.

speaker
Hamid Moghadam
Chairman and Co-CEO, Prologis

Yeah, also the proxy will have plenty of the details from what they looked at on the other side. So we'll both find out.

speaker
Chris
Conference Operator

Your next question is from Steve Isakwa with Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

speaker
Steve Isakw​a
Analyst, Evercore ISI

Thanks. Good morning. I just wanted to see if you could comment a little bit on the NOI guidance, Tom. You know, you did about 5% in the first half of the year The high end you kind of kept unchanged at five, so that sort of assumes kind of flattish growth in the back half. But the low end, you know, kind of assumes 4%. I realize you're facing some tougher occupancy comps in the back half of the year, but just kind of can you help us think through kind of the low and the high end, given where we sit here today and kind of, you know, what drives you to kind of both of those two points?

speaker
Tom Olinger
Chief Financial Officer, Prologis

Yep, Steve, you nailed it on the – it's really the occupancy impact. We are continuing to push rents. We are seeing occupancies dip a little bit. I think we certainly have room to push rents more. If you just look at our retention, you look at our occupancy, you look at our rent growth. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, I think we're going to see – we will see rent change on a roll accelerate in the second half. We talked about rents growth increasing. Now, why aren't we taking the top end up? is because of occupancy. We're going to push rents, and we don't have a lot of roll in the second half. But this is really setting up for just a longer, durable runway for same-store growth. Our mark-to-market's holding at over 15%, even with rolling 25% in the quarter. And if you really look at same-store, think about, you know, as we said in the last couple of calls, 2019 is a transitional year for same-store in that, you know, we have lower occupancy. So that's been a... a headwind this year. But if you think about the drill driver of your same store, rent change on roll, it's been accelerating. Our trailing four-quarter rent change on roll is up over 300 basis points in the last four quarters. It is going to go higher going forward. So the fundamental driver of same store is intact and it is growing and it will grow. The one thing on retention, we're seeing retention is very high on the larger spaces. and we're pushing rents across the board. I think we have an opportunity to push rents across all of our space sizes.

speaker
Chris
Conference Operator

Your next question comes from Jamie Feldman with Bank of America, Merrill Lynch. Your line is open.

speaker
Jamie Feldman
Analyst, Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Great. Thank you. I know you had said that you expect your development starts to ramp up in the back half of the year. Can you just talk about what the both build-a-suit and spec pipeline looks like today and as we think ahead to next year? Do you think that we're hearing across a lot of markets that there's an expectation that pipelines may actually shrink given less available land and even maybe less capital to put to work? I just want to get your thoughts on how you think things are shaping up over the next 12 months or so in terms of the supply and demand story and your ability to keep putting capital to work.

speaker
Tom Olinger
Chief Financial Officer, Prologis

Jamie, it's Mike Curliss. I'll hit the build-a-suit and then I'll flip it to Gene on the spec. Certainly seen a lot of – you've seen some public announcements from some of our larger customers with major plans for significant rollout. So I'd say there's definitely an up arrow on the requirements and the demand. It is more challenging to deliver Build-A-Suit these days with zoning and land availability in some of the more global markets, but we're certainly working through that. Our Build-A-Suit percentage was in the 27% range. This quarter, that's very lumpy, as you know, Jamie. I think you've got to look at it across four quarters, and I fully expect a very robust quarter coming up as we speak right now. As Tom mentioned, with $250 million, the Build-A-Sue starts already underway, and I'd look towards our Build-A-Sue percentage being the range in the high 30s, largely driven by some significant national rollouts. Jamie, do you want to add to that?

speaker
Gene Riley
Chief Investment Officer, Prologis

Yeah, sure. So, Jamie, we've, as you can see, taken up the – Midpoint, 100 million. Some of that's captured by the, you know, increased build-a-suit activity Mike talked about. So I'd say there's a very modest increase in spec, but I don't – we see opportunities. As you know, we have a, you know, robust land bank, so we have the ability to start buildings. We're not going to do it unless we see market opportunity, and we do. So basically the answer to your question is we're going to have a modest increase based on our prior guidance throughout the rest of this year.

speaker
Chris
Conference Operator

Your next question comes from Vikram Malhotra with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

speaker
Vikram Malhotra
Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Thanks for taking the question. So just wanted to clarify, I think you said mark-to-market across the whole portfolio was holding at 15. Can you break that between the U.S. and Europe and also just clarify what the mark-to-market is in IPT?

speaker
Tom Olinger
Chief Financial Officer, Prologis

Yeah, I'll take the first piece. So in our portfolio today for LIZES, U.S. is around 17%, and Europe is around 11%. So our blended is about 15%.

speaker
Gene Riley
Chief Investment Officer, Prologis

Right. IPT is pretty much in line with the rest of our U.S. assets.

speaker
Chris
Conference Operator

Your next question comes from Craig Mailman with Keychain Capital Markets. Your line is open.

speaker
Michael Billerman
Analyst, Citi

Hey, guys. Quick question for you, just looking, I know you guys didn't buy the whole IPT portfolio relative to kind of the numbers that they had in their financials, but it looked like in 17 and 18, they were kind of trending below 2% same store growth. And I'm just curious, I know you guys have some operational efficiencies kind of baked in, but as you guys look at your legacy PLD portfolio growth profile versus what you're ultimately going to bring into the portfolio, will this ultimately be accretive to your growth portfolio? or kind of inline or dilutive from your perspective?

speaker
Gene Riley
Chief Investment Officer, Prologis

I think slightly accretive. And, you know, I mean, to be frank, we have not studied their historical operating performance. What we have studied is the location and quality of the assets, which we like. We've pulled them onto our platform. I'd say it's marginally increased.

speaker
Chris
Conference Operator

Your next question comes from Kevin Kim with SunTrust. Your line is open.

speaker
Kevin Kim
Analyst, SunTrust Robinson Humphrey

Thanks. Just a couple of questions on the IAPT portfolio. First, can you just talk a little bit about what prompted this deal? What was the thinking behind it? I don't think it's scale. You have enough of it. And even the financial accretion of five to six cents, it seems like that by and itself wouldn't prompt a deal of this size. So can you maybe talk about the other points that we haven't covered?

speaker
Hamid Moghadam
Chairman and Co-CEO, Prologis

Yeah, Kevin, this is Hamid. I think that level and the availability of high-quality portfolios is dwindling, and these portfolios are going into capital sources that are permanent. And I think there's a limited supply of this stuff in the really good markets. So whenever there is an opportunity to pick up some of those assets in scale, you'll see us competing for those opportunities. And because of the clustering effect around our own portfolio, which is also focused on the same markets, we can really squeeze a lot more juice out of those oranges.

speaker
Chris
Conference Operator

Your next question comes from Nick Ulico with Scotiabank. Your line is open. Nick Ulico, if you're on mute, your line is open.

speaker
Nick Ulico
Analyst, Scotiabank

Hi. Can you hear me? Sorry. For IPT, I think you said 20% of the portfolio is a sale candidate, non-strategic assets. Can you just talk about why they're non-strategic and how you underwrote those assets from a – how we should think about a cap rate on a sale of those assets?

speaker
Gene Riley
Chief Investment Officer, Prologis

Could you repeat the first part of your question? Excuse me.

speaker
Hamid Moghadam
Chairman and Co-CEO, Prologis

I think you said this. Since I heard it. For a sale portfolio, which is 20%, A small portion of it is two markets, Memphis and Salt Lake City, which we're not present in. So that's about 5% of it. And the balance of it is the pruning of the markets where we have a presence, but we don't really see a fit between that portion and our assets, that portion of the portfolio and our existing assets. So it's a combination of market exits in those two cases and pruning in the case of the rest.

speaker
Gene Riley
Chief Investment Officer, Prologis

And I just want to These disposition assets are good assets. They're not assets that are consistent with our strategy, but I think these assets will be relatively easy to dispose of as compared to some of the, you know, prior activities.

speaker
Hamid Moghadam
Chairman and Co-CEO, Prologis

Yeah, one other data point for you. This is not the first time we've gone through cleanup of assets. We've sold about $14 billion of assets in the last five or six years, and you might be interested that on average we've exceeded our expectations by about 6% on the sales prices. So we're pretty comfortable that we can exit these assets at the premium.

speaker
Chris
Conference Operator

Your next question is from Dave Rogers with Baird. Your line is open.

speaker
Dave Rogers

Maybe talk about the construction pipeline just nationally or maybe even internationally. You said you took Osaka off the watch list as kind of a market. Have you added any, and where do you see the most competition today? I think, Tom, you referenced the supply in your comments.

speaker
Gene Riley
Chief Investment Officer, Prologis

Yeah, I'll pitch Gene. I'll start, and I think Chris will finish the answer. But, you know, if we look at the globe as compared to last quarter, there really aren't very many differences. As you heard us say over the past four or five years, frankly, certain markets in South Dallas and certain markets in Atlanta, IAEA in Chicago, Central Pennsylvania, once in a while, Inland Empire East, in the U.S., come on and come off the list. And what's interesting is that in prior cycles, markets never came off the list. They just kept, you know... overbuilding them until you're in a crisis. So that picture really hasn't changed, you know, internationally. The one note that we had was Osaka. Osaka's vacancy was very elevated. It's now, I think, 9 or 10 percent. So it may come back on the list. But at this point, we're pretty comfortable. A lot of reduction in that vacancy rate recently, Chris.

speaker
Chris Gayton
Executive Vice President, International, Prologis

Yeah, Gene, you're spot on. I'd add, in fact, there have been no additions this year. And you have to look back to last year for the additions to this list. And as we mentioned, in the Midlands is the market, and then also Houston were additions late last year. So no additions this year and one subtraction.

speaker
Chris
Conference Operator

Your next question is from John Peterson with Jefferies. Your line is open.

speaker
John Peterson
Analyst, Jefferies

Oh, great. Thanks. Probably a question for Gene or maybe Chris Caton. I think with the DCT transaction, you talked about how, you know, when you get a certain concentration in submarkets, you're able to push rents a bit harder. I forget exactly how you framed that. But I'm curious with the IPT transaction, if you call out any submarkets that you now have a dominant market position that you didn't have before. And then second one, probably for Tom, just to clarify, this transaction won't require any new common equity for Prologis, right?

speaker
Tom Olinger
Chief Financial Officer, Prologis

I'll take the second one. Absolutely not. No equity.

speaker
Gene Riley
Chief Investment Officer, Prologis

Got it. So the way we look at asset clusters, and that's one way we describe this, is if we're adding assets in a market that, let's say, we have 20 buildings, 25 buildings, and call that 3 or 4 million square feet, there is a clustering effect that we have tracked and we have tested And there is no question you get incremental NOI. I'm not going to go into any specific details on that. But you have a situation where you're adding to a cluster or you're adding enough to a smaller concentration that we already own that you've then created a cluster. And in this case, we have one market that you for sure have created a cluster. That would be Portland. There's a pretty good concentration here in Portland. PA and Baltimore also sort of fall in that category. And otherwise, we're just adding on to very, very big concentrations. And, you know, Chris, I don't know if you'd add anything to that.

speaker
Chris Gayton
Executive Vice President, International, Prologis

I guess.

speaker
Hamid Moghadam
Chairman and Co-CEO, Prologis

Perfect. Well, the only thing I would add is that the benefit doesn't just accrue to the newly acquired portfolio. It also accrues to the existing portfolio, which is by far the more important of the two pieces.

speaker
Chris
Conference Operator

Your next question is from John Guiney with Stifel. Your line is open.

speaker
John Guiney
Analyst, Stifel

Great, great. Amit, first, congratulations. As I recall, you acquired DCT at about a – $118 a float and a 4.2 in-place cap rate. Talk a little bit about the quality difference between IPT and DCT, which obviously had the same initial investment and strategy in the initial routes.

speaker
Hamid Moghadam
Chairman and Co-CEO, Prologis

Yeah, so we bought DCT at the 4.6 cap rate, and it was a stock-for-stock deal. So, you know, it was more of a relative valuation exercise than an absolute valuation exercise. So I don't think you can conclude much about market cap rates based on looking at that. But this one, in terms of quality, I would say if you look at the hold portion, DCT was 95% hold. This is 80% hold, 20% sell. So in that sense, I would mark the DCT portfolio as better because it had less to dispose. But if you look at the 80% and the 95%, I would say they were comparable.

speaker
Chris
Conference Operator

Your next question is from Eric Frankel with Green Street Advisor. Your line is open.

speaker
Eric Frankel
Analyst, Green Street Advisors

Thank you. Just to go back to the pricing, the IPT deal, the 4.5% cap rate you quoted, that's based on your definition of stabilization. So maybe the cap rate would be a little bit higher if you based it on current influx occupancy. And then second, do you guys believe that you paid some sort of maybe aggregation premium rather than if you bought this entire portfolio on a one-off basis? And then finally... you know, based on where interest rates have gone the last few months, do you think cap rates in general have declined for good quality industrial assets? Thank you.

speaker
Hamid Moghadam
Chairman and Co-CEO, Prologis

So, Eric, a couple comments on the cap rate. I mean, cap rates are really difficult things to talk about because all kinds of people use different approaches to them. Just to be clear, the way we call something a cap rate is that it's the purchase price plus all the closing costs plus the CapEx required. to get it to stabilize occupancy if necessary and includes a vacancy allowance which is critical because if the portfolio is over at least 95%, you know, we adjust it back down to 95%. So, our cap rates, oftentimes, we shake our heads to the reported cap rates that we see in the marketplace because that's certainly not the cap rates that we on the road and you can You can imagine that we look at pretty much every deal. So that's one commentary on methodology. With respect to the direction of cap rates, I will tell you that this was, since DCT, the third significant portfolio that we looked at and competed for. And obviously, in the other two cases, we were not successful. Our pricing did not change as to the whole portion of those portfolios at all. Pretty consistent. I'm not smart enough to tell you whether there was a portfolio or not, but we did not attribute one to the portfolio on this one or any of the other ones. But on the other ones, we weren't successful, and on this one, we were successful. So who knows?

speaker
Gene Riley
Chief Investment Officer, Prologis

Hey, Eric, just one more thing. On the cost side of that equation, we also mark any debt to market. And I think, you know, often people weave that out of the equation. Yeah. And you have to. You have to factor it.

speaker
Hamid Moghadam
Chairman and Co-CEO, Prologis

And in this one, there wasn't any of that, but on others, there have actually been significant market markets.

speaker
Chris
Conference Operator

Your next question is from Michael Carroll with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

speaker
Michael Carroll
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Yeah, can you provide a quick macro update? I know you included some conservatism in your prior guidance ranges. Did you remove that conservatism in the updated range? And has the logistic real estate market remained largely insulated from the headline trade fears that we continue to hear about?

speaker
Tom Olinger
Chief Financial Officer, Prologis

So I'll start. No, no more conservatism in our guidance. And I would just tell you from what we see from a customer perspective, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, we're seeing – very consistent sequential quarter activity as it relates to shellings, gestation, conversion rates, all that's holding or slightly better. So from what we see in our pipeline, it continues to be quite good. And this is Mike from a customer perspective, no meaningful impact other than perhaps a little blip of some increased inventories and spot examples, but nothing significant.

speaker
Hamid Moghadam
Chairman and Co-CEO, Prologis

Yeah, I think you may be referring to the commentary on the fourth quarter call where we were just coming off of a significant stock market sell-off and things were a little wobbly generally with the overall economy in January, and we talked about having in the most recent two weeks reduced our internal planning. That's all gone. We're back on track. So if you're referring to that, you can ignore all that.

speaker
Chris
Conference Operator

Your next question is from Michael Mueller with J.P. Morgan. Your line is open.

speaker
Michael Mueller
Analyst, J.P. Morgan

Yeah, hi. Excuse me. What's the timeframe to dispose of the remaining IPT sale assets? Will it all be done in 2020?

speaker
Gene Riley
Chief Investment Officer, Prologis

Yeah, Michael, this is Gene. You know, we tend not to put high deadlines on that. In the current environment, I would say I think we can do it fairly quickly in that timeframe, but We do it on the normal course of business. It has to be consistent with everything else we're doing. And then we have to see where the demand patterns are. You know, sometimes you can aggregate a portfolio and move quickly. Other cases, maximizing value means a one-off. So, but that time frame, you know, within 2020 is probably reasonable.

speaker
Chris
Conference Operator

Got it. Okay. Thanks. And our last question comes from Manny Corchman with Citi. Your line is open.

speaker
Michael Billerman
Analyst, Citi

Hey, it's Michael Billerman. I had a few more. I don't know if I can address them one at a time, but just in terms of... No, Michael, you can go continuously because you're the last one. How much time do you have? Don't get carried away. So just in terms of the upside potential, you know, squeezing more juice out of these oranges in this portfolio, You talked about, I think Gene mentioned, the 4.5% stabilized and 4.9% cap rate, assuming current market rents. But then when another analyst asked about the mark-to-market, you mentioned the Prologis portfolio was 17%, but these assets were similar. But the difference in cap rate 4.5 to 4.9 is only about 8% upside on market rent. So I didn't know what the difference was or what may be dragging down the yield. The numbers didn't match up.

speaker
Gene Riley
Chief Investment Officer, Prologis

It's cash versus... Effective cap.

speaker
Michael Billerman
Analyst, Citi

So the 4.5 to 4.9 is a cash. So your mark to market on a cash basis in the Prologis portfolio would be 8, 9% also? That 17% exact number?

speaker
Hamid Moghadam
Chairman and Co-CEO, Prologis

It's about 10%.

speaker
Gene Riley
Chief Investment Officer, Prologis

Yeah, so the 4, 5 and the 4, 9 are not, you know, precise numbers either, obviously. So we were going to take it out four decimals and then Amit didn't like that.

speaker
Hamid Moghadam
Chairman and Co-CEO, Prologis

Michael, the other thing is that there's a difference between the hold portfolio and the sell portfolio. So the whole portfolio has a bigger mark-to-market because those are stronger markets by and large, and they've had more rent appreciations. But the primary difference is the cash versus gap number, which is about five points.

speaker
Michael Billerman
Analyst, Citi

And then just to go through actually on the whole portfolio, is the plan to warehouse that $800 million of assets on Prologis' balance sheet, or is the entirety of the $4 billion – going into one or the two funds and those assets will be sold out of the funds. I'm just trying to understand the dynamics going on.

speaker
Tom Olinger
Chief Financial Officer, Prologis

It's the latter, Michael. It's the latter. The assets will be going to the funds. Any sale assets will be sold by the funds. By the funds.

speaker
Michael Billerman
Analyst, Citi

And that will just reduce your effective ownership or your contribution in those funds.

speaker
Hamid Moghadam
Chairman and Co-CEO, Prologis

Not really, Michael, because we have a revolve line of credit that we pull up and down So we're probably not going to pull capital out of the fund. We'll just leave it in there for future growth.

speaker
Michael Billerman
Analyst, Citi

Okay. And then just I wanted to come back to my original question about doing this wholly owned versus in the funds. And I recognize DCT was a stock-for-stock transaction, but that didn't alleviate you from having the ability to sell DCT assets to the funds if you chose to. So I'm just really trying to understand these two larger-scale M&A transactions and One, yes, it was stock for stock. This one is a cash deal with a non-traded public REIT that you're doing for all cash. I guess why was DCT all balance sheet and why was, you know, IPT a fund asset?

speaker
Hamid Moghadam
Chairman and Co-CEO, Prologis

Good question. First of all, the choice of currency is not always ours. Sometimes the seller demands different kinds of currencies. But... Yes, stock deals we do on balance sheet. And to then buy a deal and then sell it to the fund, there's just too much frictional cost associated with that. And oftentimes the structuring of the transaction prevents that for some period of time. So it gets complicated to do that. In terms of cash transactions or cash portion of certain transactions, We're committed to do those deals, as I mentioned to you, in the funds. I mean, that's our business model, and we'll continue to do that. These are, by the way, now very, very significant funds. I mean, you look at where USLF will be at the end of this deal. It's going to be north of $12 billion. You look at where our European fund, PELF, is. It's about an $11 billion vehicle. I mean, these, on a standalone basis, could be some of the largest REITs out there. So... So they have ongoing needs. They're very successful vehicles. And we like the fact that we have the ability to use cash and currency to address a range of opportunities.

speaker
Michael Billerman
Analyst, Citi

To plus one, just in terms of Asia and the macro environment, It was coming out of cities earnings yesterday. There was a slowdown in loan activity out of our, you know, Asia client base. In particular, everything that's happening with China and the U.S. is the Chinese corporates, you know, borrowing less money given the uncertainty going on between the two countries. Is there anything that you're finding locally in Asia? You know, I know what's happening in the U.S., but anything in Asia that you've seen that would indicate any sort of slowdown on the industrial side?

speaker
Hamid Moghadam
Chairman and Co-CEO, Prologis

Okay, this is going to be your last question because somebody jumped in. But, look, China is definitely slower, but the overall slower than it has been for some time, and we see that on the ground. But the dynamics of the industrial real estate market in China are much more driven by availability of land from the one seller that has land, the government. And they've been always reluctant to supply the market with what it needs in terms of industrial land. And the reason for that is that industrial users don't generate taxes. And there is no property tax system in China, so they get their tax revenue based on registered capital, and people don't usually register their capital where their warehouses are. So there is always a shortage of land in the key markets in China. So even with a more modest economic growth, there's just not enough supplier product in a lot of these markets. So the strength of the industrial market is driven by domestic consumption and a shortage of industrial land. Consumption for the first time slowed from the mid-teens to the high single digits. So So that's really important to keep in mind. And by the way, my commentary about the shortage of land applies to the Tier 1, 1 1⁄2 type markets in which we operate. Some of the outlying areas you can get more land, but that's not relevant to our business. And remember, the tailwind of e-commerce in all these different places where the consumption takes more space than normal consumption would have a decade ago.

speaker
Chris
Conference Operator

Our last question comes from Vikram Malhotra with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

speaker
Vikram Malhotra
Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Thanks for taking the follow-up. Sorry for the background noise. Just one quick question. Sorry if I missed it. Did you change the disclosure of the same-store and OI calculation? I believe you used to provide same-store revenue and expense separately. Could you give us those two components?

speaker
Tom Olinger
Chief Financial Officer, Prologis

Yes, we'll be giving those components. If you look in the back of our sub, you can see the – in order for you to calculate savings to our owned and managed. The FCC did their annual review of our K. We had one comment, and their one comment was that they asked us to modify our owned and managed NOI disclosure. They had actually approved our disclosure quite a few years back, but in light of their view around pro rata financial information, they asked us to modify the disclosure because they took a view that this was pro rata and they just ask us to modify it so we can't show you the percentage but if you look at our footnote and back this up you can calculate the percentage.

speaker
Hamid Moghadam
Chairman and Co-CEO, Prologis

Great. Thank you everybody. Look forward to seeing you next quarter if not soon.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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