SL Green Realty Corp

Thank you everybody for joining us and welcome to SL Green Realty Corp's second quarter 2025 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. Forward-looking statements made by management on this call are based on their assumptions and beliefs as of today. Additional information regarding the risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause such differences to appear are set forth in the risk factors and MD&A sections of the company's latest TORM 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 a 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 second quarter 2025 earnings and in our supplemental information included in our current report on Form 8K relating to our second quarter 2025 earnings. Before I turn 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, please limit yourself to two questions per person. Thank you. I will now turn the call over to Mark Holliday. Please go ahead, Mark.

Okay, thank you, good afternoon, and I appreciate all of you joining us. I'm very proud of what we at Usagreen accomplished this past quarter, and I'm pleased to be able to share some of the highlights with you today and some thoughts on the market, as well as field your questions coming out of these results. The achievements for the quarter were particularly impressive in my view when you put it up against a volatile economic backdrop and a higher than optimal short-term rate environment. For some firms, the confluence of these events and the current market environment presents challenges, but SL Green is adept at dealing with the volatility, and it's in these types of situations that I believe our platform truly shines the brightest. We are well adapted to threading the needle, finding the best investment opportunities when others are less certain as to where to find that value. Ultimately, it's the diversity of our platform, business lines, and skill set that keeps us well-balanced offensively and defensively and enables us to outperform expectations quarter after quarter. In this second quarter alone, we concluded over 540,000 square feet of leasing, bringing our year-to-date total to 1.3 million square feet of space leased, inclusive of last night's announcement, and we have refilled the pipeline to over 1 million square feet for near-term execution. What's notable about the deals done to date and the deals in the pipeline is that they're not really chunky in size. Rather, they are a broad cross-section of mid-size leases that are renewing, expanding, and relocating within our portfolio at a rate which is bringing down vacancy levels in Class A midtown buildings. A good stat I have on that is that the pipeline of a million square feet I referenced, 80% of those leases are 25,000 square foot and under. Half of that pipeline is financial services, but the other half is a broad range of legal, professional services, government and nonprofit, TAMI, and real estate, all of which is about equally dispersed within that remaining 50%. So very diverse, very numerous, and I think evidence of a very healthy environment, not only for our top buildings, but throughout the portfolio. In fact, half the pipeline by square footage represents non-Park Avenue properties. So this is definitely an indication that the demand has radiated out kind of from east to west within our portfolio, from Third Avenue all the way to Seventh. And we're going to start to see in the second half of this year significant occupancy gains as we get towards our projected 93.2% by the end of the year. As you also know, our ability to source and execute is really a validation of our pipeline. The investment we made in the 522 mortgage position last year is perhaps one of the best trades of this cycle, where we realized nearly $90 million of profit on a $130 million investment in well under a year's time. We also consummated a transaction with a new domestic partner by selling a 50% participation interest In the preferred equity position, we hold in 625 Madison Avenue, which carries a pick preferred rate of about 6.65%. When combined with the proceeds of the 522 transaction, the 625 interest sale yielded over $300 million of fresh cash proceeds into the company that we now intend to deploy into new and accretive opportunities. And lastly, we announced the closing of over $500 million of fund commitments, bringing the total close to date to over $1 billion, a significant milestone for the company. That's an announcement we just made. It's probably crossing your screens right now. That gives us corporate liquidity and fund availability combined of over $2 billion to fund our new opportunistic investment pipeline and solidify our position as a market maker in midtown Manhattan. But perhaps one of the most momentous events of the quarter was something that wasn't even included in the earnings release. And that is the filing of our response to the state's RFP in the casino license bid project. It represents almost four years of work, effort, planning, partnering, and listening to the community and other constituencies all of which came together in a 13,000-page document that was filed in the second quarter at the state's offices near Albany. And, you know, it was a privilege to present to the state Caesar's Palace Times Square. It's located in one of the world's most iconic destinations that will provide far and away more tax revenue for the people of the state than most other, and if not all other, proposed facilities. while bringing a new attraction to Times Square that befits its location at the center of the entertainment universe. Caesar's Palace will achieve this lofty ambition without displacing residents or utilizing land that could otherwise be developed for much needed housing. The project has been intentionally and uniquely designed and programmed to uplift surrounding businesses and residents, not displace them. And that makes this project truly unique among all the proposed projects. Caesars Palace Times Square is set precisely where a global entertainment facility should be. Times Square, the world's greatest tourist and entertainment destination at the crossroads of the world. All of, you know, wish us luck in that endeavor. It's the start of a 90-day process that with the community advisory committee that was formed, and we hope to be through that and you know, be able to make it to the next step of the bid process in Albany after, you know, we are able to get the consensus that we need at the CAC and majority vote to move on. We're very confident because we have a fantastic proposal on all merits and more to come on that on the next call. This all combined to enable us to raise our earnings guidance at the midpoint by 40 cents a share. There's a lot of ins and outs that go into that, but mostly it's reflective of substantial increased profit at the company above our earnings guidance. More on that from Matt Diliberto.

Thanks, Mark. Clearly been an extremely busy six months for this team. Because we're a very active company across multiple business lines, There are dozens of items that can affect our results each quarter, as well as the trajectory of earnings over the course of a year. And yes, some of those income streams are unpredictable, or as a lot of people use the word, lumpy. This is why we set guidance on an annual, not a quarterly basis, and use a relatively wide guidance range. When we give guidance, we are confident in it. Needless to say, we are very pleased that our successes so far this year allow us to not only increase our FFO guidance range only six months into the year, but by a meaningful 40 cents or 7.4% at the midpoint. The drivers of this upward revision are most easily summarized into two basic categories. First, in our debt and preferred equity portfolio, the repayment of our mortgage investment at 522 fifth for $200 million, which was substantially more than what we purchased the position for, generated about 69 cents a share of incremental FFO. I say incremental because our original guidance included various forms of income, from holding this investment over the course of 2025, as well as income from other debt and preferred equity investments. This incremental income is offset by 19 cents a share of reserves that we booked in the second quarter on our preferred equity investment in 625 Madison Avenue. This is pursuant to the sale that Mark alluded to of 50% of that investment, which closed earlier this week to generate incremental liquidity. While this transaction closed in the third quarter, because the deal was largely known at June 30th, Accounting rules require us to not only take a reserve on the portion that we sold, but an equivalent reserve on the piece that we retained. All told, that's 50 cents a share of uplift just from the debt and preferred equity book. Offsetting this incremental income, interest expense is trending a bit above original expectations by about 10 cents a share. This is not necessarily the result of higher rates because our debt is 95% hedged and the current SOFR curve is not that far off from the curve we used for initial guidance. It's primarily related to decisions we have made around potential asset sales that change the size or timing of them. As a result, we carry the debt on these assets for longer if they have debt and don't realize the benefit of the proceeds from the sales to pay down corporate debt. Across the rest of the business, we are largely performing in line with original expectations, with NOI trending slightly better, as you can see in our second quarter results. Offset by summit, where second quarter results were slightly below our expectations due primarily to taking the ascent experience offline during the quarter. which is a premium ticket that generates incremental revenue. We expect to bring that back online before the end of summer. From an attendance perspective, overall attendance at Summit was actually higher than our projections in the second quarter, and we are right on top of our projections for the first six months of the year. As it relates to discounted debt extinguishment gains, we have maintained our original assumption of $20 million or 26 cents a share of discounted debt gains in our updated guidance range, but we see a potential path to more than that. As noted in the earnings release, an affiliate of the company and a partner have purchased the debt at 1552-1560 Broadway for just $63 million, as against a total debt claim of $219.5 million, $193 million of which is principal. However, the debt is still outstanding for very specific reasons. Accounting rules don't allow us to record a debt gain until the debt is extinguished. When that debt is extinguished, which could potentially be this year, we would recognize a debt gain substantially larger than the $20 million we currently have in guidance. Aside from 50-52 Broadway, we're also evaluating other opportunities to take out existing debt at less than par. In closing, I read and hear a lot about the complexity of modeling the company. We sympathize with all of you on that because we have to model it too. I also see a lot of analysts or investors that want to discount the unique ways that we generate real cash gains that generate real FFO that pay a real cash dividend. And I'll admit, I'm a bit perplexed by that. I'm sure there are plenty of other REITs out there that you can model in your sleep and run right every quarter in perpetuity with laser precision. But those are not the companies with a team like ours that will work like animals to evaluate every opportunity presented to them with an eye towards generating profits and creating shareholder value. Being unique and creative in the ways we make money for our shareholders is in our DNA and that won't change. And if the price of that profitability is more complexity, We can't be apologetic for that. Now I'd like to open it up to questions.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you need to press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for a name to be announced to withdraw your question. Please press star 1-1 again. Please stand by. We'll compile the Q&A roster. One moment for our first question. Our first question will come from Steve Sakwa from Evacor ISI. Your line is open.

Yeah, thanks. Good afternoon. Mark, look, I'm sympathetic about you focusing on the annual and not really focusing on quarterly trends, but I think the market might have been a little bit surprised at the slight dip in occupancy in the second quarter. And I don't know if maybe a couple of deals slipped from a timing perspective, but maybe can you just, you or Steve, kind of walk us through

know the pipeline the timing and then just any known move outs that you know could affect your ability to hit that 93.2 least occupancy by the end of the year thank you i i think it's uh i think it's a silly overreaction i mean you know if to measure 30 million square feet on quarter to quarter um you know variations you know go with go with management guidance if we feel confident that we're going to be at you know at the levels that's the reiterated guidance we're not going to do quarter to quarter. If a lease signs three days after June 30, that pops it up. I mean, we just announced, I think, you know, how big was the deal last night? 64,000. 64,000. Now, so if that's two weeks earlier, you know, it might drive oxygen. It's something really that I think is not a productive use of time for this call. You know, the leasing volume that we do is, is the best and the most in the business. We have a million square feet of pipeline. We reiterated our guidance for the year. We generally hit our reiterated guidance. You guys, it's only been 27 years together as a public company. We set these outperformance goals. We don't hit all of them. We try. My commentary was meant to convey that we see a very... know strong and diverse uh you know leasing market out there which is increasing occupancy market wide and in the portfolio if we had a couple of roll-offs see who rolled off in the second quarter uh well it was the the blip is really driven by there was an unbudgeted tenant default to 711 third avenue so nobody could have predicted it space went dark so there we go um the other thing worth noting is you know

Where we have the occupancy in same store, of course, is only half the story. The rest of the story is where we're doing a lot of leasing and redevelopment properties like One Madison Avenue. So, you know, the pipeline is full. The leasing velocity is strong. And the focus on one narrow part of the portfolio is, you know, I don't think giving a true justice to the accomplishments.

Let me give you a stat that's interesting, Steve, on... you know, sort of expanding on what Steve Durell just said. The AI and tech demand in Midtown South is just starting to get revved up. We had two deals done in the quarter, one with Sigma, one with Pinterest, and we've got two more pending in pipeline, one at Madison, one at 11 Madison. In total, that's 287,000 square feet of net new demand in those two properties, both Dunn and know part of pipeline um in size that are all driven by ai and tech and that's only that's only increasing you know uh in our opinion and you know financial services is still half the market and the money being made in financial services as a result of the profitability uh i'm sorry as a result of the volatility that you saw in the first half of the year people look at that volatility and say oh my god what's that doing to the economy well look at the trading profits of the big five banks. And look at the trading profits of the Wall Street member banks, which was, I think, 15 billion in the first quarter alone. You know, I've got stats here. You know, the investment banking, the M&A and equity issuances is down, but far more offset by the trading profits. So volatility yields opportunity, volatility yields profit. no city in the country benefits more from that than New York City does. And, you know, that's why the city budget passed a few weeks ago unanimously, fully funded, you know, credit ratings affirmed, tax receipts at like all-time highs, private and public sector employment at all-time highs, tourism trending towards all-time high. You know, I don't, you know, there's no narrative of weakness that we see, and if we did, we'd be the first to tell you.

Next question, please. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of John Kim from BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Thank you. Congratulations on the gain that you had at 522 . I guess my question is, when you made the investment, did you expect it to be monetized so quickly? And also, the disclosure on the investment was a little bit murky. We couldn't find it on your balance sheet. It's not in your DPE investment disclosure. Wondering why that was the case. And then finally, should the gain be larger than the amount that you raised guidance? What did you say?

It was last night? Oh, okay. Those are for Matt. So the answer is... I mean, when we take these kind of positions, which are on the more opportunistic range of the scale, we have a range of outcomes, some of which are expedited, some of which are long and protracted. So I don't think we had a singular resolution in mind when we made the investment. We had a range of outcomes that we projected anywhere from DPO to restructuring to you know, sort of ultimate enforcement of remedies. That's typically the full gamut in any non-performing loan acquisition. This one, you know, happened to be, you know, a relatively rapid resolution, which I think, you know, also plays into the strength of the kind of collateral that we identify. It's collateral that is, you know, capable of being, you know, refinanced, sold, or recapitalized and not looking at deals that you have to hang in for long periods of time for market improvement to get to ultimate resolution. So probably a little faster than expected, but certainly within the range of expectation. Matt, on the accounting?

Yeah. Disclosure-wise, this is a CMBS investment, which we make a lot of. And we don't put the disclosure that we do for CMBS investments that we do for the Debt and Preferred Equity Portfolio. And that's that. We do a lot of investments that don't get that disclosure. And by the way, the disclosure is going the other direction with the fund where we're not going to go to the level that we did on the DPE book. Your last question was, is the gain larger than the guidance increase? Is that what it was? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, definitely. But remember, we had some income off this investment for the balance of the year. So it's not all, my point in my commentary was, Not everything we got off 522 is incremental. Right. We expected to get income off of the investment. We got repaid on it. So that generates a big gain. But there was income expected to receive off the off the investment over the course of the year.

But where could we find this on your balance sheet? And are there other CMBS investments like this?

There are there are there are two lines and you're not going to get any more detail than this. Two lines called consolidated CMBS vehicles or securitization vehicles. There's an asset line, a liability line. The net of those is our investment. And we can't disclose more than that.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of Alexander Goldfarb from Piper Sandler. Your line is open.

Hey, good afternoon. Good afternoon. Congrats, Mazel Tov, on closing the first billion on the fund. Two questions here. Mark, you know the city well, you know Albany well, and obviously good pulse on the city. Have you noticed any change in tenant discussions since the primary, the mayoral primary? Just obviously it's impacting the stocks as people think about New York. And just curious if tenants are talking about it and if it's impacting their leasing decisions or thoughts of expansion.

Question about whether it's impacting any of our ongoing tenant negotiations. Answer, no, we've not seen a single instance of that being an issue, or I'll even say a discussion point. Steve, I mean, a discussion point?

No, nothing. I mean, maybe it's too early to tell, but it doesn't seem to be a driver of any kind of decision.

Yeah, no. You know, look, New Yorkers love their politics, so there's no shortage of discussion about, you know, mayoral race and other races, but nothing that we've seen that's impacting leasing.

Okay. And the second question is, Matt, in sort of your response to Steve's question on, you know, the guidance and the cadence and just look at the full year, you guys have spoken for some time about all the aggressive leasing and the capital spend you're doing now. which will then show up over the next few years in increased occupancy and obviously increased NOI. And that's what definitely we are focused on. My question is, is that sort of that trajectory remains on track that we should think about next year being where we'll start to see a lot of this aggressive leasing start to take hold with meaningful upticks of occupancy or the time it takes for these leases to take effect and show up in the P&L and earnings may take longer than that.

Well, generally speaking, you would expect to see the economics of a new lease, renewal lease or faster, new lease in 12 months. That's just rough average how long it takes for tenants to build that space. And at that point, we can recognize revenue, which shows up in gap NOI. So if you take all the leasing we did in 24, which was a lot, and we increased same-store occupancy by a lot, you would expect that to materialize over the course of 25 and then be more fully apparent in 2026. And if you look at where our economic occupancy trend, which is based on commenced leasing, is headed between now and the end of the year, that holds. I'll reserve any other commentary on 2026 until we get to putting out our 2026 guidance in December.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Nick Ulico from Scotiabank. Your line is open.

Hello, this is Victor Fedevon with Nick Ulico. On your other income line item, what drove the 15 million quarter reported decline and what is your expectation for the second half of 2025 for this line item?

We have not changed our other income expectations for the full year on that line item. Quarter over quarter, I think we just had less fee income this quarter than we did last.

Got it. And then quick question on your $1 billion disposition target. Is it still intact? And are there any assets on later stages of negotiations as of now?

Harrison, I'll touch it. I'll touch it. It's Harry. We're still working through the disposition plan this year, as you've seen us accomplish the past four to five years. Through this market, we set out a lofty goal, and we usually try to get every single one of those opportunities done. You may see a shift one or two of those opportunities to something else that's more suited for this market or a specific buyer, but the investment team here is working tirelessly to get done our business plan and no specific changes at this point.

Thank you.

One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of Vikram Malhotra from Mizuho. Your line is open.

Thanks for taking the question. I guess I was wondering if you could build and give us a bit more color on what this, I guess you said, strengthening and widening out of demand into 6th, 3rd Avenue, et cetera, what this could mean for sort of your investment opportunities and how you see that sort of filtering into ultimately effective rent codes.

Well, you know, I think, first of all, what are the drivers of that? One, tenant demand. There were a lot of mid-market tenants that had delayed rents. their decision making or had been you know later on the curve in uh return to office but now um you know seems to be uh a proliferation of these type of deals and you know the core park avenue spine has just gotten just too damn expensive i mean you know for uh you know for many of these tenants so they're looking where they traditionally to for uh you know for good value relative to you know great well-located real estate but somewhat off the run in a price point they can afford. And now those deals are getting done. And there's also a little bit of a concern with the diminishing supply because in some of those peripheral corridors, there's a lot of conversions of office to resi that are happening. And space is rapidly being taken off the market. So tenants in those buildings, no different than 753rd, have to relocate and they typically wrote relocate you know on those same corridors so there's more deals getting done as uh inventory is kind of coming off the rolls as buildings are being converted compounded by the fact that mid you know core core midtown has gotten very expensive and compounded by the fact that there's just more tenants looking for space and there's no new supply really forecasted for the next four years of delivery So some of it is immediate demand. Some of it are people accelerating their decision timelines because they don't want to be left out in the cold come 26 and 27 when the market could be much tighter than it is today.

Okay, that's helpful. And then just, I guess, assuming the casino process goes your way, You know, what does that mean? Or would you think then that sub-market becomes sort of a broader opportunity set for SL Green?

I think the casino would be absolutely transformational for Times Square. Times Square is the beating heart of New York. You know, it's one of the greatest entertainment assets in the world. You know, and it certainly has great attraction of tourism, people coming through the square, which is not really a square, to sightsee and to sort of be in the moment, those Instagram moments. But Times Square can be much more than that. And that's really what we hope to achieve with this project is making Times Square, again, a place where people stay, shop, eat, you know, continue to go to Broadway, but also, you know, other forms of live entertainment, music, comedy, non-Broadway live performance. I mean, you know, the potential is so great and the halo effect of what it means for small businesses, for the community, for, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars, which we've committed in and around the area to, you daycare centers and safety and security enhancements, decongestion strategies, mental health awareness. It just goes on and on. I think the way in which one Vanderbilt helped to transform Grand Central into the experience it is today, partly because of development, partly because of the enabling zoning, I think you're going to see that exponentially exhibited in, you know, the surrounding areas, Times Square, Health Kitchen, West Side Manhattan, New York City. You know, it's, there's no limit to, I think, the benefits that will come from a very high-end, world-class, destination-oriented casino. And, you know, we're very hopeful to make that happen. And we have you know lots of properties uh in and around that area that will benefit uh but that's a tangential benefit the you know number one you know goal is to really uh make caesar's palace times square one of the greatest localized economic development projects uh of you know this decade thank you one moment for our next question

Our next question comes from Blaine Heck from Wells Fargo.

Your line is open. Great, thanks. Good afternoon. Mark, you talked about a large portion of the leasing pipeline that's smaller or mid-sized leases, which I agree seems healthy, but I'm wondering if that implies you're seeing any slowdown in demand or hesitation from larger tenants given the macro and rate uncertainty that you referenced at the top of the call.

No, not in the lease. I mean, Steve can expand on it, but I think what you're seeing is there's a lack of availability. I mean, that's the issue. Again, I don't know how to hammer it home. There's only like a million square feet in change of net new contribution to inventory over the next four years. This is a big market, 400 million square feet space. The market grew by 1% a year. That would mean you need 4 million square feet a year of new space. It was half a percent, 2 million square feet a year. You know, if you only look at Midtown, one million square feet a year, you know, four years, four million square feet. We're talking about, you know, just somewhere over a million square feet in the next four years of delivery. So, you know, part of what I think you're seeing is there's not a lot of space to do deals. There were a couple of big deals. Deloitte did a big deal over in Hudson Yards. I think that was what, 800,000 feet or something. And Steve, was there another big one?

There are a couple, but to Mark's point, I mean, I think the real way to look at it is what's overall tenant demand in the market. And there's a known 28 million square feet of active tenant searches right now, as compared to a year ago, it was only 22 million square feet. I mean, that's a big stack to say it's 6 million square feet of known active tenant searches. And to, you know, what he was really trying to hit on, okay, the big blocks, there's plenty of big tenants floating out on the market. I've got proposals on my desk. They're not in my pipeline because they haven't matured to a point of a conversation where I would add them yet, but they're indicative of big tenants searching the market for several hundred thousand square feet. I've got three of them on proposal stage at 245 by itself. I don't have the space to satisfy all those. So those tenants will land somewhere, but a lot of these guys will end up renewing because there's a dearth of Quality big blocks, you know just to put a pin in it if you looked at the you know Best building category in our foreigner square foot marketplace There's only a two hundred thousand to one hundred thousand square foot contiguous direct Availabilities in that category it shows you how tight the market is that'll drive more renewals and in place Expansions by a lot of these tenants that will then drive the other tenants to to be overflow into the rest of the market, which is really what Mark was driving home earlier when he said, that's why we're seeing this proliferation of small to medium-sized deals. There's no room left at the end for these guys.

Yeah, another example on the investment side is going back to 522, was Amazon buying 522 Fifth Avenue. It's just another example of when blocks of space come available, which they rarely do, tenants are trying to gobble them up and even buy them in many instances. About 525,000 square feet. Yeah.

No, that's great, Tyler. It all makes sense. Thank you. Second question, can you talk about any progress you've made on securing the development site you alluded to at the investor day, you know, whether you still think that that's a priority for the company this year and, you know, whether you're seeing any increased competition for those potential development sites?

Yeah, so I think the goal was development and or large-scale redevelopment site. The good thing is we're working on both, and it's among the highest priorities of things we're working on right now. It's not, I would say, one. I'd say we're working on multiple opportunities. These deals take time, but we're sticking to our guns, and there's still a lot of runway in the second. We're just July, what, 16th, guys, something like that? You know, and we've got some time and we've got opportunities well within our sights and we're going to work hard in Q3 and Q4 to put them under contract.

Great.

Thanks, guys. One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from Ronald Camden from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Hey, just two quick ones from me. Just one on capital markets, if you could just Comment on what you're seeing in the transaction markets and cap rates and specifically sort of post-liberation day and the tariffs. Just any signs that foreign buyers are maybe pausing or are not participating in the market?

Thanks. Yeah, sure. The markets on the equity side still feel healthy. The most obvious example to point to would be 590 Madison. That was a very competitive process. Three buyers were really there at the end, all with contracts, all negotiating right down to the finish line. The deal ended up getting done at about $1.1 billion, which was about $1,050 a foot and in the mid 5% cap range. Another example to just point to, which was another entrant back into the market, Blackstone at $1,345 AOA, which closed in May of this year. Both really good examples of trophy assets that are seeing assets that for a little while you weren't seeing clearing or trading now trading again and getting big capital demand. The capital behind those deals in the case of Blackstone is obviously Blackstone. In the case of RXR, mostly private equity capital is our understanding.

Great. Thanks so much. And then my second question was just going back to the same store. um noi sort of targets for the year and uh you know obviously we're not talking about 2026 but if if you're if we're following your logic in terms of occupancy building in the second half of the year and into sort of 26 is that should the same store sort of follow the same trajectory in terms of the build in the second half of the year and into 2026 just why is that why does that logic not make sense thanks that logic makes sense

That's, you know, the trend into the end of the year from economic occupancy, as I talked about earlier, is upward such that the, you know, the spread between leased occupancy and economic occupancy is, you know, a few hundred basis points tighter than it was at the end of 2024. That sets and a lot of the NOI off 2024 is leasing, therefore not in 2025. That is the setup for same store NOI occupancy. increases along with the leasing we're expected to do this year because you know same store occupancy is going up another 100 plus basis points this year uh that is the setup for um same store noi increase in 2026 yes great thanks so much one moment for our next question our next question on comfort line of omotayo teslamade okusanya from deutsche bank your line is open

Good afternoon, everyone. I just wanted to go back to Goldfarb's question a little bit about Albany in general and the New York City mayoral kind of election race. Just kind of curious, just kind of given how New York City really seems to have reacted to the idea of Mamdani becoming the next mayor, just curious how you guys are thinking through that scenario or thinking through any other kind of mayoral a scenario when we eventually get a new mayor.

So, question is, what are we doing here at the company? Is that what you thought if Mandani went?

What's the company doing? And again, and how do you kind of think through that scenario? Like if a lot of like the Mandani type, you know, socialist bent policies become reality for New York City if he becomes mayor, like, How do you kind of think about operating in that environment?

Well, I don't, I mean, we already operate in an environment that's, you know, one in which we have to be very adaptable to, you know, a city council that's very progressive, you know, very, you know, has a high level of representation of, you know, democratic, liberal and progressive people. counsel people that, you know, make the laws. We've had, we've been through five administrations, I think, as a public company, five different mayoral administrations. And, you know, we flourished under all of them. So, I mean, you know, we've been supportive of Mayor Adams, you know, from his time before he was a mayor. You know, we think he's done a very good job with taking uh situation in new york city in 2022 and uh bringing it to a place today that's you know much better on almost all metrics uh including you know supply of affordable housing and and safety and crime etc um you know but the voters are going to determine the outcome and i'm very confident in our ability and given our relationships uh across the board spectrum of the political ideology to continue to operate and succeed in whatever political environment that we're facing. But we've been pretty clear in what we look for in a mayor in terms of being both pro-business, but also active in social causes and affordability. And we think Mayor Adams has has achieved that, but the voters will have their day in November.

That's helpful. Then one other quick one on Summit and any update on additional locations, what progress is being made there?

Rob Schiffer is not here at the moment. Rob and Mike Williams and the team are the ones who and kenzo of course are i would say on the road almost every other day um our target cities are tokyo london um seoul and others and uh i think we're you know very optimistic that we'll have uh something hopefully to announce by end of year um you know with respect to a uh a new location. Obviously, Paris, you guys already know about. That's proceeding along well. We're still on track for a Q127 open. The plans are absolutely spectacular. For those of you that have seen Summit 1 Vanderbilt, I think Summit Paris is just yet a whole new level, and I can't wait to unveil it. We should be in construction by Q126. We're finishing up our plans and CDs right now. Great.

Thank you.

Thank you. A moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of Peter Abramowitz from Jefferies. Your line is open.

Yeah, thanks for taking the question. I think earlier in the call, Mark mentioned that there were some sort of mid-market tenants that were coming back to the market because they had sort of overcorrected in space reductions post-pandemic. It seems that because New York has had a stronger recovery and utilization is much higher than a lot of the rest of the country that maybe we're kind of in sort of the late innings of the tailwinds from return to office. But just based on your comments, I guess I'm curious on, you know, how much incremental absorption or demand is still out there that you think you can capture kind of as companies – come back to the market and possibly correct some of their prior over-corrections for space reductions?

Well, I don't think you can quantify it because it's an ever-changing dynamic as far as tenants coming into the market and where their businesses are going. But the trends that we see are all of our major industries are active in the market as opposed to us being relied upon just one industry like financial services. Right now we're seeing tenant demand from financial services, from tech, from general business services, like whether that's accounting or engineering or something like that, healthcare, government, education, all are active in the marketplace right now. And the biggest change from a year ago was clearly the tech demand. And in that world, we're seeing tenants of size. Mark laid out some of the activity that we're seeing just in our portfolio in Midtown South Market, where we've got two deals that were signed, two deals in the pipeline, all 50 to 100,000 square foot type deals. And we couldn't have said that a year ago. I mean, that is a game changer for the overall Manhattan market and certainly for businesses Where we think we're headed with our portfolio and some of our big big buildings The other thing I'll say is, you know with the return to office Initiative, you know this idea of hybrid work environment and stuff like that is really out of the narrative it's and I say that not to promote our Our industry but more to just as an observation. We're not hearing that from our tenant base it's all about bringing the employees back to the office and And I think it's trending more that it's more square footage per employee than it was four or five years ago. Sure, densification and going to open plan layouts is still there, but the introduction of more amenities and giving people more space at their workstation is resulting in more square footage per employee. So I think there's several different trend lines that are all positive, and that combined with supply coming off the market because of the 13.5 million square feet of resi conversions that are either actively in construction or announced, and the lack of new construction, you know, those are dynamics that create a very healthy leasing market.

Okay, that's helpful. Thanks, Steve. And then just wondering if you could comment on concessions, specifically sort of class a or a minus assets kind of below that, that trophy space, but, uh, the kind of group of assets across the market that are, um, benefiting from, from the trickle down of, of lack of trophy availability. Um, just how, how concessions are sort of trending in that space.

I still think, uh, you know, the concessions have, have been flat and have been flat for the past year and a half or so. Um, I think what you're really seeing, you know, I've said is the last couple of calls is, uh, face rents are going up and that's true not just for the best buildings but you're seeing it in some of the tighter sub markets so if you look at uh grand central right or you look at park avenue or sixth avenue uh you're starting to see you know rent appreciation so face rents are going up before the concessions come down i think ultimately we will see some tightening in the concessions Hard to say whether that's this quarter, next quarter, or whatever, but first thing that happens is rents will go up in a material way before the concessions come down.

See, he's giving you that perspective for the market generally. I'm just looking right now at the supplemental page. I guess this is your new supplemental table, Matt, right?

Yes.

And I find it very useful, so good job on this. You're welcome. uh for the quarter it's 6.3 months average free rent per i guess per lease you know done and that's the lowest it's been in the last uh five quarters the ti was 78 uh close to 79 a foot uh which is the lowest it's been in the last four quarters um and equal to what it was five quarters ago and you know the mark to market over the past five quarters have been positive in four of those five quarters so you know there's The trend in the market, and then there's the trend in the portfolio, and the trend in the portfolio at this moment seems like it's decidedly in the nature of what Steve said, leveling, or in our case, possibly tightening and improving concessions combined with increases in rent. So you get sort of a double compounder on the net effectives. Now, next quarter might be different, and there might be a blip up, a blip down, but you know, looking at it over four or five quarters, I think you start to really see the trend. And so, you know, we hope and expect to see that trend continue.

All right. That's all for me. Thanks.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of Seth Berge from Citi. Your line is open.

Thanks for taking my question. I guess just given your comments on, you know, the strong demand environment and the 1.3 million square feet of leasing activity to date, you know, just kind of how comfortable are you with the 2 million square foot leasing goal? And is that something you could look to kind of, you know, do better than expected on?

Well, I think we're, I think we're feel very confident that we'll, we'll hit that goal. And there's a lot of reason to believe that we'll exceed it.

Okay, great.

Pipeline right now is a million feet. But, you know, do remember there's going to be more addition to pipeline in July, August, September, October. So, and Steve's going to be under enormous pressure to get all of that signed by D31. So, you know, I wouldn't look at the million as finite. You know, we will be adding to pipeline as time goes on.

Thanks. That's helpful. And just a second one, kind of going back to the mayoral primaries, you know, and just thinking about the office supply picture, but how does, you know, the plan to kind of freeze rent impact the underwriting for office to resi conversions for projects such as, you know, the 753rd Avenue and, you know, does that kind of change how people are thinking about those opportunities overall?

Yeah. You know, the, the, The proposal, I think, is out there as a concept. It requires, for the most part, state involvement when you get to things like the rent stabilization board, et cetera, and is, as I understand it, refers only to the stabilized pool of assets and is completely inapplicable to free market and new affordable housing that was passed by the governor back in her last budget. I think there's a conflation. I think there's a misunderstanding. I'm not going to go through it on this call. There'll be time in the future. And I think step one is to figure out first, see where things shake out. I think it's going to be a tight race. We'll see. And when we have better visibility into where things are in the fourth quarter of this year, certainly in December, we'd be able to address that much more head on and specifically. But know we are not in the rent stabilized business i'm going to hazard to say we have no rent stay i mean we don't i don't think we have a single rent stabilizer rent controlled unit in the portfolio so you know if you're asking specifically about the impact on us i would say negligible to none but it will have an impact on other building owners and rents they was i don't think it's a healthy thing for the market in general. I think that rent freezes are only going to cause landlords to warehouse more units than they're already warehousing, which puts further pressure on the availability of units. I don't think it helps the affordability issue as attractive as it may sound to some. I think in the long term, we've seen that If there's no fundamental economic basis for improving and, you know, re-delivering stabilized units into the market, then landlords, you know, won't do it, and there'll be pressure on those landlords. But we don't have investment in that sector.

Great. Thanks. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Brendan Lynch from Barclays. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. I want to ask about trends with the special servicing designation. Are most of the distress situations known at this point, or do you still think there's some more to come?

You know, I think as we noted in the earnings release, we grew our special servicing quarter over quarter. I think that's been a consistent trend the past six or seven quarters. We now have about 17 billion of current assignments, 6.1 billion of which are active $10.5 billion are not active, but could be at any time, or we get called upon for specific assignments. I would expect to continue to see those numbers grow over the next few quarters. And there are a handful of deals that we're working on now where resolutions are imminent, and that will lead to additional fees paid to the company.

Great. Thank you. And then also on office to resi conversions, Have you identified any additional opportunities within your portfolio or has the tightness in the office market made that a less attractive opportunity than it might have appeared a couple of years ago?

Well, it's not. I mean, our buildings are almost entirely leased. So those are not the most attractive candidates. We do have some that may have some near term role or forget about the words near term role coming up in the portfolio where we could consider. such a move uh but i would say that you know beyond 750 we would expect uh most of our participation either as a converter or a financier of conversions to be for a new pipeline and new property not necessarily coming out of a portfolio that's close to 92 percent least uh for reasons i think are you know mostly obvious uh you know successful office buildings uh, don't make great conversion candidates. It's, you know, uh, you know, either, um, you know, uh, antiquated or, um, you know, obsolete or where there's full building or significant role. Those are the, those are the best candidates. And, you know, we don't, we don't really, uh, have a deep inventory of that.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Caitlin Burrows from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Hi, maybe just two quick ones. Following up on the discussion about pricing and strong demand limited supply, as you look across your portfolio, what are the in-place lease escalators that you guys have? And as you're signing new leases, I guess, have you seen any shift in that over the last five plus years?

Well, the majority of leases have a pass-through in increases of operating in real estate taxes. So the tenants pay their proportionate share of any increase in the building's operating expenses or real estate taxes. Then typically there's anywhere between a $5 and $10 a foot base rent increase in addition to those pass-throughs every five years of lease term. Some of our leases we've gotten away from a pass-through of operating, and we've used a CPI escalator, but that's a small percentage and typically smaller-sized deals. But when we do that, that's a profit center for the firm.

Got it. And then just on the casino bid, do you guys have any idea how many bids are still being reviewed and whether you're one of five or one of 20 at this point?

Well, we've got a pretty good handle. We're either... One of eight or one of seven, because one of the bids is, I think, in question as to whether the land use will enable it to continue on. But I think of filed applications, I believe we are one of eight for three licenses.

Got it. OK, thanks.

Thank you. That's all the time we have for Q&A. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mark Holliday for any closing remarks.

Thank you, and it's great catching up. Have a good rest of your summer, everyone. We'll be back to you in October.

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Everyone have a great day.