Prologis, Inc.

Greetings. Welcome to ProLogic's second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. The question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone today should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero from your telephone keypad. Please note, this conference is being recorded. I'll now turn the conference over to Jill R. Sawyer, Vice President of Investor Relations. Ms. Sawyer, you may now begin.

Thanks, Rob, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. The supplemental document is available on our website at Prologis.com under investor relations. 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 Prologis operates, as well as management's beliefs and assumptions. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of performance, and actual operating results may be affected by a variety of factors. For a list of those factors, please refer to the forward-looking statement notice in our 10-K or other SEC filings. Additionally, our second quarter results, press release, and supplemental due contain financial measures such as FFO and EBITDA that are non-GAAP measures. In accordance with Reg G, we have provided a reconciliation to those measures. On July 13th, we announced the merger between Prologis and Do Realty. This call will focus on our second quarter results. The company will not provide comments related to this transaction beyond what is included in our prepared remarks. I'd like to welcome Tim Arndt, our CFO, who will cover results, real-time market conditions, and guidance. Hamid Moghadam, our CEO, and our entire executive team are also with us today. With that, I'll hand the call over to Tim.

Thanks, Jill. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining our call. This morning, we reported our second quarter results, which were strong and ahead of our expectations, occupancy, leasing, and rent change, all at record highs. Duke also released their operating results this morning, which tell a similarly strong story. That said, the macroeconomic environment is making it difficult for investors to fully assess the state of our industry. There's frankly a stark difference between what one reads in headlines versus what is actually happening in our business. Accordingly, we find ourselves focusing more on our own proprietary metrics and real-time feedback from our customers to build a forward-looking view of our markets and demand. Before going through that view, let me first step through our results. Core FFO with and without promotes was $1.11 per share, slightly ahead of our forecast. Rent change on rollover was 46%, led by the U.S. at 54%. Retention in the quarter was 79%, driving occupancy higher by 30 basis points over the quarter to 97.7%. All of this led to net effective same-store NOI growth of 7.6% and cash same-store of 8.2%. We started 1.7 billion in new development projects, bringing our year-to-date starts to 2.7 billion. On the balance sheet, we closed on a refinancing of our lines of credit, expanding the total commitment to 5.4 billion, ending the quarter with 5.2 billion of liquidity. We are very pleased to have not only increased our line capacity, but also to have done so while maintaining our spread and staggering maturities. In strategic capital, our net equity Q, which combines the committed Q plus outstanding redemptions and deployment, it was $2.8 billion at the end of the quarter. While performance in the second quarter was strong, we recognize that with the current backdrop, markets do have the potential to soften. Instead of repeating macroeconomic statistics from media headlines, which you all know well, I'll instead share observations from our unique data and insights. At quarter end, we have proposals on 52% of our remaining availabilities versus an average of 38% prior to COVID, reflective of the very active dialogue we've had and the fact that little space remains available to lease in our portfolio. 71% of leases expiring in the next 12 months are either pre-leased or in negotiations ahead of the pre-COVID average of 56%. Lease negotiation periods have lengthened by a few days to an average of 60, while up from the more rapid pace of 50 days across 2021, it has essentially returned to the normalized levels we saw pre-COVID. And as it relates to pricing, our SPIR data which measures normalized effective rents against forecast reflects that markets remain strong and rent growth stays ahead of our expectations. Our field teams report market activity which is totally consistent with all of this data. While the number of customers competing for available space has decreased from unprecedented levels, tempering urgency, our teams report still healthy demand and limited downtime. This is also reflected in our monthly customer survey data, which report high historical utilization at 86% and an IBI index that reflects growth in activity. In the end, we believe we're seeing a normalization in the volume and pace of demand, which we expected as the world reopened from COVID and consumers seek more in-person experiences. But given exceptionally tight markets and availability, the fundamentals remain excellent. E-commerce represented 14% of new leasing, down from approximately 25% in 2021, a shift we've long telegraphed. As noted, overall occupancy and leasing have continued to grow, with take-up coming from a broad set of users, most notably transportation, healthcare, and auto. E-commerce remains a positive long-term trend for our business. Clearly, COVID accelerated its adoption from a 15% share of retail sales pre-pandemic to and running at 23% during. At 21% today, it is roughly 150 basis points ahead of our pre-COVID expectations. We are also seeing the emergence of supply chain resiliency as a secular and incremental demand driver for our business. We hear it from our customers both in daily dialogue as well as our advisory boards, including three events held this quarter. We expect that this need for safety stock will lift demand for years to come although economic uncertainty could cause some delay this year. In light of very low vacancy and healthy demand, we are increasing our overall market rent growth forecast for the year to 23% on a global basis and 25% in the U.S. This is due to a very strong first half where we see rents having increased 14% globally and 16% in the U.S. We continue to see increases in construction costs which provide a pricing umbrella for continued rent growth given the need to uphold expected yields before new spec development can be started. The increase in rents over the second quarter has expanded our lease mark to market to nearly 56%, translating to over $2 billion of embedded annual NOI as these leases roll. Applying this mark to market to our lease expiration schedule will show that net effective same-store NOI growth through 2025 should exceed 8% without any further increases in market rent, an incredible amount of built-in organic growth and resiliency in our earnings. Before turning to guidance, we expect to imminently file the S-4 related to our acquisition of Duke Realty, which will guide the timing of our shareholder votes and the close date of the transaction. The following guidance excludes the deal's expected accretion. Beginning with operating guidance, we expect average occupancy to range between 97.25 to 97.75%, an increase of nearly 40 basis points from our prior guidance. We are increasing our net effective same-store guidance to a range of 7.25 to 7.75%, and cash same-store to a range of 8.25 to 8.75%, each an increase of roughly 90 basis points. Rent change on rollover is expected to grow from our first half levels, increasing spreads to over 50% in each the third and fourth quarters. Given our view of market rent growth, we expect our portfolio's lease mark to market will expand to over 60% by the end of the year. We are holding our guidance for net promotes at 60 cents for the year. Our current appraised values would generate net promote income above this level, but given market uncertainty, we're holding our prior guidance. Our overall deployment guidance is unchanged from last quarter, with the exception of acquisitions, which we have increased to $1.2 to $1.7 billion at our share, based on our belief that opportunities are likely to emerge in the back half, which we'll be well positioned to pursue. I'm also pleased to note that despite extraordinary moves in both interest rates and effects, our forecast remains unimpacted due to our proactive approach to managing both risks through limited maturities and robust effects hedging programs. In total, we are increasing our full-year earnings guidance to $5.14 to $5.18 per share, including promotes, and $4.54 to $4.58 per share, excluding promotes, representing 11.5% growth from 2021. Before closing, I'd like to spend just a few minutes highlighting one of the more important announcements we've made in recent years. Last month, we announced a new commitment to achieving net zero emissions by 2040, a full decade ahead of the targets established in the Paris Climate Agreement. Our plan includes key milestones along the way, such as a dramatic increase in our solar energy production and storage goal to one gigawatt by 2025, more than doubling our previous goal. We will also conduct carbon neutral operations and construction by 2025. Ultimately, we plan to get to net zero without reliance on carbon offsets and our scope one and two emissions by 2030 and net zero in our entire value chain by 2040. It's noteworthy that we are one of very few REITs to commit to science-based targets for our net zero goal. Prologis has long been a leader in ESG, both inside and outside of our industry. We're extremely pleased to have once again raised the bar and hold ourselves accountable to real, measurable, and reportable progress for our investors, our customers, and our planet. We truly feel great about our business and how we've positioned our teams, our portfolio, and our balance sheet to thrive across the cycle, even in uncertain times as we see today. With that, I'll now turn the call over to our operator to take your questions. As a reminder, we won't be addressing questions related to the Duke transaction on this morning's call.