SL Green Realty Corp

Thank you, everybody, for joining us. And welcome to SL Green Realty Corp's third quarter 2021 earnings results conference call. This conference call is being recorded. At this time, the company would like to remind listeners that during the call, management may make forward-looking statements. You should not rely on forward-looking statements as predictions of future events, as actual results and events may differ from any forward-looking statements that management may make today. All forward-looking statements made by management on this call are based on their assumptions and beliefs as of today. Additional information regarding the risk, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause such differences appear in the risk factors at MD&A section of the company's latest form, 10-K, and other subsequent reports filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Also during today's call, The company may discuss non-GAAP financial measures as defined by Regulation G under the Securities Act. The GAAP financial measure most directly comparable to each non-GAAP financial measure discussed and the reconciliation of the differences between each non-GAAP financial measure and the comparable GAAP financial measure can be found on both the company's website at www.slgreen.com by selecting the press release regarding the company's third quarter 2021 earnings and in our supplemental information, file with our current report on Form 8K relating to our third quarter 2021 earnings. Before turning the call over to Mark Holliday, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of SL Green Realty Corp., I ask that those of you participating in the Q&A portion of the call to please limit your questions to two per person. Thank you. I will now turn the call over to Mark Holliday. Please go ahead, Mark.

Okay, thank you, and good afternoon. Thank you all for joining us today. We have just come from the historic opening of what I consider New York's most thrilling and unique destination, Summit One Vanderbilt, open to the public earlier today. At 11 a.m., we cut the ribbon in the Transcendence Room, high above One Vanderbilt, with the most incredible and amplified views of New York City. The room is aptly named because everything we've done with this building has been about transcending limits and pushing boundaries. We're doing it again today, but this time we're taking it to a much higher level literally. At the ribbon-cutting ceremony, I spoke about how One Vanderbilt is representative of what a true 21st century office tower can be. It redefines what it means to integrate excellence in design, efficiency, sustainability, amenity, health, wellness, and commutability. By putting it all together, we've established a new category of building, a new icon on the skyline, and a new model for the workplace. As a result, we are now more than 90% leased despite COVID and despite every dire prediction of the city's demise. Several months after we opened this building, we introduced Danielle Balloud's Le Pavillon to the Midtown restaurant scene, and that too was an important milestone for New York, marking the reopening of indoor dining. Every available table has been booked every single night since it opened in May, and there were a lot of questions when we opened that restaurant about whether New York had enough of a population here in Midtown to support this restaurant, and the restaurant has hundreds and hundreds on the waiting list every evening. So now today, at 1 p.m., we welcomed our first paid visitors to see and experience this new and exciting cultural destination we call Summit. This time, we've done more than push the boundary. We've completely shattered it. We spent years in design taking the best elements of observation decks, cultural institutions, experiential art, and immersive technology, and combined it all into Summit. The result is an experience that has the potential to not only become one of the most sought-after destinations in New York City, but a true global phenomenon. The energy in New York has been palpable this past month, and now with international borders reopening, hotels preparing to welcome back millions of guests, live audiences returning to sporting venues, and Broadway reopening, New York is back. On certain days of the week, we are reaching nearly 40% physical occupancy in our portfolio, a substantial increase that's been building up over the past few weeks. As a sense of normalcy returns to the city, ambitious projects like One Vanderbilt ensure that New York remains a top global destination. People from around the world come here to shop, to be entertained, to enjoy great food, to see great architecture, and visit world-class museums. Summit now becomes an important addition to that lineup. The primary drivers of this market, finance, technology, business services, media, and healthcare, are all doing unbelievably well and beginning to make space commitments that evidence net demand in our market that will stabilize the occupancy rate and hopefully turn into meaningful positive absorption towards the end of this year in 2022. With over 450,000 square feet leased in the third quarter in our portfolio and nearly 1.4 million square feet leased annually, in SL Green portfolio to date. We are tracking well ahead of our leasing goals for the year, and we're doing that at rental levels that are ahead of expectations and almost flat with expiring escalated rents. We carried this momentum into the fourth quarter with the announcement of the seismic Chelsea Piers lease. It's a 56,000 square foot lease to one of the best operators of fitness, wellness, and health in New York City. It's only their second Manhattan location. We've been negotiating with Chelsea for quite a while, and they've selected One Madison to be their east side home, where they'll be making a substantial investment to make a fitness destination that I think is going to be second to none. It's going to be awesome. And that really bodes well for One Madison, which otherwise... is already about six to seven weeks ahead of schedule on construction and significantly under budget. Even beyond the numbers that we discussed back in December of last year, the buyouts, which now stand at close to 92% of the total project, have resulted in over $12 million of additional contingency savings, and that's above and beyond the savings we had already factored into that deal through smart bidding, smart project management, and just given the overall state of the construction market right now, we're experiencing savings while the city and I think the nation at large is experiencing cost increase as a result of supply chain issues that are driving up price. So We're managing that to the best we can, staying well within our budget, and One Madison, with that new lease now done and more conversations underway, we feel very, very good about that development. During the quarter, we also completed a couple of dispositions previously announced, but we closed them most significantly. the consummation of the sale of about a 50% interest to an institutional, overseas institutional investor in the news building. And we have more transactions teed up that we think we'll be able to complete in the fourth quarter. So we continue to have great success in monetizing our assets, our gains, and we see that continuing into Q4. That, of course, enabled us to repurchase about an additional $80 million of stock in the fourth quarter, which brings us close but not completely rounded out. I'm sorry, in the third quarter. My mistake. $80 million of stock in the third quarter. And that brings us close but not completely rounded out to our repurchase objectives for the year. So, as we sit here, end of October, with a rigorous, you know, two-month sprint to the finish line to get done all we need to do to close out this year and then embark on what we feel is going to be a solid 2022 for this company. And more importantly, this city. We're excited. I think it's great to have the call on this day that is really a historic event for the company to open this wonderful experience. And I hope everybody on this call will See it and see it often. Experience it. It's truly fun. It's exhilarating. It's thrilling. And it's everything we set out for it to be. With that, I think we'll open up to questions.

Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press star then 1 on your telephone. To withdraw your question, please press the pound key. Our first question comes from the line of Caitlin Burrows with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.