SL Green Realty Corp

Good day everyone. Our conference call will be starting soon. It will be starting within approximately two minutes. Thank you for standing by. Please continue to stand by. Thank you everybody for joining us and welcome to SL Green Realty Corp's first quarter 2026 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 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 Form 10-K and other subsequent reports filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Also, during today's conference 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 first quarter 2026 earnings and in our supplemental information included in our current report on Form 8K relating to our first quarter 2026 earnings. Before turning the call over to Mark Holliday, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of SL Green Realty Court, 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.

Thank you for joining us today at the conclusion of what was an excellent quarter here at SL Green. We achieved nearly all of our objectives and then some. I know there's some misunderstanding in the analyst community about the cadence of our quarterly earnings, but internally, we were right on our numbers for Q1 and advanced many of our objectives for the year. The headline news starts with our leasing, where we had the single biggest first quarter in the 28-year history of this company. We signed 51 leases totaling 930,000 square feet with a mark-to-market that was 16% higher than the previously fully escalated rents on the same spaces. The takeaway is pretty clear and consistent with what we've been saying for some time now. There is a massive imbalance in the prime office market. At its core, we lease premium space to sophisticated users, and right now, demand far outstrips remaining supply after so many years of lease up, both in our portfolio and city at large, especially in East Midtown. The vacancy rate for trophy buildings dropped again to 3.4% at the end of the first quarter, which is essentially saying there's no space at all in that segment of the market. As a result, we are seeing continued escalation of rent levels for these buildings and significant improvement in net effective rents, which greatly benefits our portfolio, which, as you know, is mostly centered in this area. And I don't expect this situation to abate anytime soon. On the one hand, the business climate in New York remains really good. Look at some year-end 25 stats that came out in the first quarter. City tax revenues reached $80 billion in 25, 16% higher than pre-pandemic, and that's a record level. Real estate tax collections grew by almost 3% year-over-year. Personal income taxes were up nearly 12% year-over-year. Just shows you the uh enormity of the uh bonuses and compensation being paid out in the primary business sectors of new york city 65 billion dollars of record wall street securities industry profits in 2025 the prior record was just 61 billion and that was back in 2009 160 unicorn startups in new york city private startups that are valued over a billion dollars And that's the second largest startup ecosystem behind Silicon Valley. 31 billion was raised in venture capital last year, up 25% from the prior year. And New York City ranked number one as the talent hub for 2025 graduates, where one in nine graduates, college graduates, came to New York City. And so on top of a fundamentally strong local economy, we hope and expect to see macroeconomic improvement in the coming months. which will simply add to the momentum in the leasing market. After leasing more than a million square feet of space in our portfolio year to date, we still have a pipeline of approximately 900,000 square feet of space, most of which we expect to consummate. The demand continues to be there. On the other side of the equation, there is really no end in sight to the supply crunch. There are zero new space deliveries anticipated for the next three years. With recently completed projects like the Rolex building, 525th Ave, now in the rear view, and new projects like 343 Madison and 625 Madison not expected to complete until sometime around 29 or 2030, it is simply physically impossible for any other new construction to be delivered between now and the end of 2029 in Midtown Manhattan. This presents us with one of the most favorable dynamics that we've seen in quite some time. Therefore, we are proceeding at a very rapid pace on our very own project at 346 Madison, our next great office tower. We just closed on the site in the fall and already we're issuing 100% schematic design on May 1st, just six months from the acquisition and proceeding immediately into design development. We expect to be filing the project into EULER, the city's land use approval process, by the end of this year. That is a much faster pace than we achieved with One Vanderbilt. I'm also very happy with the way the design programming of the building is progressing. We've already been out talking to select potential tenants, top brokers, presenting the project, and getting extremely good feedback confirming we're heading in the right direction with this new development. I expect on the next call to be able to give you some financial details after we price the project with our construction manager and obtain some major trade feedback in the coming months. Our other big development project at 753rd Ave is also making great progress as we sit in last quarter. We now have an agreement with our final remaining tenant for full vacant possession. which enabled us to start fully mobilizing and commencing execution of contracts for work. We are now in the early stages of procurement, and so far we are tracking on or below budget by successfully navigating tariffs and inflation. Work is far advanced on interior demolition, and in the coming months we hope to finalize our arrangements for debt and equity capital. We also made progress on our disposition goals this quarter, entering into contract to sell the residential and retail components of our seven-day project, and closing on the sale of 690 Madison Avenue with our JV partner. More to come in the ensuing months as we progress our way through the $2.5 billion disposition plan. We also took advantage of compelling opportunities in the credit market via our debt fund, which is really performing well thus far. We put out $226 million in since our last call, including a transaction closing today, bringing total committed to about $567 million out of the total $1.3 billion fund. All of this positive activity is propelled by a very strong city economy, and we don't expect a summer lull this year as sometimes occurs in years past. In fact, we're expecting a big summer with FIFA World Cup and the nation's 250th birthday celebrations and bringing big crowds and lots of economic activity to the city in June and July. We are forecasting a big boost and shot in the arm, which bodes well for Summit in particular, for our restaurant venues, and for the city generally. We feel good about the city and state budget situation as well. The rating agencies did send a message to the new administration about wanting to see some efficiencies in the budget being negotiated now and the budget that will be in place at the city level by June, and I have every confidence the budget gap will be solved through revenue enhancements, expense control, and support from the state. As has been reported, one piece of that sounds like it will be a new pied-a-terre tax, which the governor announced yesterday with the support of the mayor and the city council speaker. Once you get past the notion that we need to find some revenue enhancements as part of this budget process, I give credit to the governor for taking a pragmatic and surgical approach to ensure that all New Yorkers, residents or not, are paying a fair share. This is a concept that has the support of many New Yorkers because it narrows the focus and impact to the highest earning non-New York City residents who otherwise pay no New York City income tax and benefit from New York City's exceptionally low residential real estate taxes. Last but definitely not least, Since we last met, we announced the promotion of Harrison Satomer to president and CIO. When Andrew Mathias left the presidency 25 years after 25 years of service, we didn't rush to find his permanent successor, and instead we took a measured approach to filling this important position. I wanted someone who truly represents our culture, ethos, and excellence, which is what distinguishes and defines who we are, and Harry is all of those things. So as our company turns 30 years of age in 2027, this promotion is a big step towards identifying, growing, and supporting the next generation of leaders here, and I hope to have more announcements in the years to come about the continued ascension of our rising stars. So to wrap things up, I think this was a great quarter, and we've made significant early progress on our goals, but when we get together in three months, my instinct is that we will have a lot more to talk about,

next time on the leasing front the transaction front and the company performance front so thank you and we're now ready to open the line for questions to ask a question please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced to withdraw your question please press star one one again please stand by while we compile the q a roster And our first question comes from Steve Sakwa with Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks. Maybe Steve or Mark, could you just comment on the pipeline activity that you quoted, Mark? I think you said it was 900,000 feet. You know, how much of that is kind of new or expansion tenant? How much of that's just maybe pull forward renewals and And, you know, maybe just talk a little bit about kind of tenant expectations on expansions and space and how they're thinking about space usage.

Well, look, you know, I've got the pipeline in front of me. It's predominantly consistent with last quarter, mostly, you know, a large number of medium-sized tenants, which is really good and what you'd expect because we don't have a lot of big blocks of space left now that one Madison's fully leased. So, you know, you've got to remember, the nature of our pipeline doesn't necessarily tie into the nature of the pipeline generally for tenants in the market. What it relates to is what's available in our portfolio. And what's available in our portfolio right now, where I think two-thirds of our buildings are projected to be at 95% or better on average by… 98%, 98%. 98 or better 98 or better two-thirds 98 or better by the end of this year we're really just doing new leasing in some of the projects that still have you know more than that kind of vacancy 420 lex 1185 avenue americas um you know those are the two most prevalent buildings i see on this pipeline along with a little bit of 1350 uh sixth avenue a little bit at 100 park And then everything else is a deal here or there at 45 Lux, 500 Park, et cetera. So, you know, it's I wouldn't extrapolate that that's the market because there are a lot of big tenants in the market. And Steve can, you know, can talk about that. There's there's tenants in that 150 to 250 to half a million square foot users and million square foot users. But you've got to have the inventory, A, which is why we're leasing up the portfolio so rapidly and B, why we, you know, launched so quickly. on 346, where we'll have 850,000 square feet of brand new state-of-the-art space to deliver right across the street from 1 Vanderbilt. Anything you want to add, Tessie?

Well, of the pipeline, of the 900,000 square feet, 30% of the pipeline is leases out. So we're on a path to wrap those up in short order. As we've seen throughout the year, still financial services, professional services, And tech tenants are predominantly driving the market. And I think Mark makes a strong point, which is our pipeline is not dominated by the best of the best buildings. Versus a year or two ago, we're seeing real velocity in the mid-price point buildings where we're seeing exceptional rent growth as well. Graybar, by way of example, And I've been involved with that building for longer than I want to admit is that the high water mark in the building's history, as far as rents that are being achieved. Um, and I guess lastly, I would say on the concession side where clearly we've seen rents rise, but TI's have flattened. And in some cases, particularly where we have a lot of, uh, a lot of leverage, they're coming down modestly, but free rent is clearly starting to come down. And in particular, on our renewals, we're having a great deal of success in controlling our concessions.

Great. Thanks. That's good color. Maybe, Mark, just on the transaction front, I'm just curious what feedback or data points you're getting from some of the overseas investors. I don't know to what extent any of the Middle Eastern investors either are distracted or have other you know, uses of capital that, you know, may not want to come to the U S at this point, just, you know, any thoughts or things you can share about overseas investors looking at the U S market in New York in particular?

Well, you know, our, uh, counterparties, um, for the most part, whether it be partners, you know, co-lenders, um, you know, groups that are giving us special servicing assignments, groups we had some management, uh, managed for the predominant, uh, uh, you know, uh, country of origins tend to be Asia, um, you know, Europe, Canada, and domestic, uh, just, just, you know, you, you know, by the nature of our partners, we don't have a lot of partnerships or counterparties in the middle East. So I can't really give you any direct feedback. Their own only anecdotal feedback, which is, uh, as you would expect countries like, uh, and sovereigns from Saudi Arabia, and, you know, Qatar and, you know, UAE, maybe not to the same extent, but you throw UAE in there as well, are definitely, I think, you know, pulling in their horns at the moment while they assess that which they're committed for versus, you know, how they look at, you know, deployment of new capital. But that's really just there. I'm not seeing that and we're not seeing that in the other markets. If anything, we're still seeing what we see talked about three months ago on the phone, where I think Harry gave you good color on the feedback we were getting, particularly on the heels of the last trip we did out to, you know, to Asia and Japan, Korea and elsewhere. That's still to this day, I would say strong appetite in both, you know, for credit and for equity. But again, equity for well located assets, of the highest quality and generally relationships we have, so factoring in our sponsorship and relationship there. So I think we feel very good about being able to execute the joint ventures and the financings that we have scheduled for this year with counterparties from those parts of the region. And I don't think we've seen any material shift in those folks. albeit, you know, if you're dependent on Middle East capital, I'm sure it's a different story. Harry?

Yeah, the only thing I would add there is just, you know, in moments of macroeconomic uncertainty, proven hard assets and proven locations, you know, continue to demonstrate resiliency. You know, we saw that obviously with the one Madison Avenue financing that we got done That was sort of, I think, met with some of you down at Citi as we were pricing that deal in the early days of the Middle East conflict. That deal ended up having 44 investors across all of the classes. Certain classes in that deal were seven times oversubscribed. I think one piece that our business specifically is going to benefit from is over the past few years, we have not been heavily reliant on private credit. This industry was, you know, what we invest in has not been boosted up. We have not seen big valuations coming out of big private credit loans. And as a result of that, I think we're far more resilient for what's going on right now than probably most, if not all, other industries.

Great. Thanks for the call.

Thank you. Our next question comes from John Kim with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Thanks. So you're at 94.4% lease occupancy. Your target for the year is 94.8, and you have a 900,000 square foot pipeline. So I'm just wondering if there's upside to that target that you have for the year. And same question on leasing spreads. Again, you're at 16% for the quarter, and your target for the year is around 10%.

It's Matt. So we increased in our press release last night our year-end same-store occupancy target from 94.8 to 95%. So we've, you know, gotten the upside there. Mark to market, you know, we had a healthy objective. It was clearly a very healthy number in the first quarter. We still have nine months to go, but well on track for our objective there. You know, we typically don't revisit, you know, leasing objectives after just three months. You kind of want to get at least six months in before we do that. But obviously, you know, the momentum we have coming out of first quarter puts us on great track to meet or exceed even the objectives we laid out back in December.

Okay. And then your economic occupancy went up sequentially this quarter to 85.9, which is positive, but it's still below your, I think your guidance or target for the year, which is around 89%. So I'm just wondering if you could talk about how the cadence of economic occupancy goes for the remainder of the year and the impact that will have on same store NOI?

Sure. I'll give you a flippant answer, but it's the truth. It's obviously going up sequentially over the course of the next three quarters to get to that 89% objective that we set out for the end of the year. And we're on the path for that, which then sets up to our 10% same store cash NOI growth objective for 2027. All in all, the first quarter on every metric we look at was on or ahead of our expectations. Clearly the leasing metrics were, you know, speak for themselves a record quarter, not just on volume, but on, you know, starting rents. But the trajectory from earnings to, you know, spend all as good or better than what we expected. So great cadence into the back half of the back three quarters of the year. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Alexander Goldfarb with Piper Sandler. Your line is open.

Hey, good afternoon. Harrison, just first, congrats. I have a question for you just following up on your comments to Steve on private credit. Just as you talk to the various lenders, capital providers, and everyone, do you feel pretty comfortable that private credit is not going to infect real estate, meaning private credit has its own little issues and, you know, whether it's software or whatever, but this is not like the second coming of the GFC. Like it doesn't seem to be rippling anywhere else. Or do you feel in talking to people that there's some concern that maybe it could broaden?

The simple answer is we're just not seeing it. I mean, it's, you know, if anything, I would say the inverse is, you know, some of these private credit investors have been, you know, have felt their pain through the, let's call it software cycle right now, and they're looking for hard assets. And this is one of the first places they're going to look is, as I said earlier, proven locations and proven assets. Right now, I see no sign of any direct impact to our industry or our capital markets environment. And again, we're the beneficiary of having gone through the past few years of not We didn't get to see that run up and big private credit demand into our space. And so now there's not a lag, you know, hangover effect of those groups pulling out of certain markets. So I don't see any direct impact in our business. Again, I think you have to look to One Madison, which we priced probably in the toughest week you could have imagined between a conflict in the Middle East and all the redemptions that you saw on the news in private credit. And As I said, 44 distinct investors, certain classes seven times oversubscribed. We didn't feel one ripple effect of any private credit lender in the market.

Okay. And the second question is, Steve, you mentioned the strength of the more value proposition. We've had to focus this cycle on Premier, Amenity, et cetera. But do you see an opportunity for you guys to acquire B buildings, especially right around your core, Park Avenue, Grand Central, where maybe now is the chance to buy the B assets and sort of, you know, create more density of your portfolio in your target submarkets?

Well, Alice, I mean, it depends how you, you know, when you say B assets, you know, we're buying assets to convert. We're buying assets to develop. we're not buying B assets to hold and operate if B is defined as kind of, you know, real commodity space, even though there's probably on a relative basis, a lot of upside in those assets. So I would expect, you know, you're not wrong. There will be a tail effect here and you will see quote your B asset rents go up, but we're trying very hard and intentionally to, to deal not just in a sector where we think rents are going up, but where we think net effective rents can be maximized. And for that, you're really looking mostly for the highest nominal head rents, whether they be $100, $150, $200 foot or more for new development, even rents in the 90s, $100. If you're dealing with assets where rent points might be in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, even though you may experience some pretty good nominal rent growth, 5%, 10%, you could see rent spikes of 10% or more, you still have concessions for those leases that are relatively the same in terms of number of free rent and amount of TI per foot construction costs as for the much higher nominal rents. So we just think there's more margin by a lot in dealing in the 90 and up, 100 and up dollar square foot rents. And that drives us for, you know, hold assets or let's call them redevelopment candidates into that sector. So unless we feel we can ultimately execute a program and drive rents into those upper categories, then I don't think you'll see us participate there, even though I do think rents and prices are moving in the B assets and it's not a bad play.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Nicholas Ulicope with Scotiabank. Your line is open.

Thanks. First question is just going back to the idea that there's really not much new supply coming to market in the city for four years or so. Can you just talk a little bit more about how you think that actually plays out in the market relative to your portfolio, sub-markets? It sounds like it should be a benefit, but in some cases, too, I imagine the new supply is being looked at by tenants that have lease expirations four years out, so there's no real benefit. sort of today to buildings from that. So maybe you could just unpack that dynamic a little bit more. Thanks.

Well, I think there's two things to take away from that. One is, you know, tenants are getting smart to the market and they're seeing that rents are rising and that's driving those that are paying attention to do early renewals. In some cases, we're in front of tenants that have expirations three, four years out in time. which is great. It's a smart landlord play to be able to do early renewals, take the risk of downtime or vacancies off the table. But then there's also the spillover effect where you're seeing, you know, tenants needing to go farther afield or going to one avenue over from where they want it to be. And, you know, that's giving lift to some of the other buildings. And within our portfolio, probably the best example of that is 1185-6. I mean, we're seeing some some pretty heady rents by comparison to historical rents in that building with a tremendous amount of leasing velocity. It's a building that had a lot of tenants vacate over the last several years, and we're on a path to that building being fully stabilized this year with rents into the mid-80s to mid-90s a square foot.

All right. That's helpful. Thanks, Steve. Second question, I guess Matt is going back to sort of quarterly FFO and I know it's, you know, I plan to give guidance and there's often a lot of, you know, moving parts in a quarter and create some volatility when you guys report. But I guess if we just think about the first quarter number and then getting back to the full year guidance range, maybe you just talk at a high level about some of the components that, you know, will sort of accelerate FFO throughout the year. Thanks.

Yeah, no problem. Yeah, you know, our quarterly, the reason we don't provide one of the many reasons we don't provide quarterly guidance, and I'm a big advocate for eliminating quarterly reporting is, you know, quarters are can be choppy, and people tend to read too much into whatever a quarterly result is. The reality of our first quarter numbers is that we were not even a penny off from our internal expectations, not a penny above, not a penny below. Property NOI was better than we expected. As offset by Summit, it was a tough weather quarter, and so Summit underperformed our expectations. But net-net, right on top of what we expected. As we look out over the balance of the year, we are headed right to the midpoint of our guidance range as well. The FFO results quarter-to-quarter might be choppy. It's driven by not NOI, which doesn't move that substantially in the direction, but by fee income. We have businesses that are growing, third-party fee businesses that are growing. And a lot of those fees come in, you know, big chunks as opposed to radically over time. Success fees out of special servicing, fees from transactions. We didn't close, you know, big transactions in the quarter. To say nothing for DPOs that, you know, we still have in our projections for the balance of the year. So definitely feel comfortable about where we are in the guidance range, you know, bias to the higher end versus the lower end of our range. And, you know, that will be a cadence that will bounce around quarter to quarter, no doubt.

Yeah, I would add to that just, you know, Matt's comment about Summit. Just, you know, Summit is an enormous success. You know, every year we're pushing ahead the envelope on the earnings capacity of Summit. So for 26 over 25, we had yet another big increase. baked in in terms of our expected financial performance. It was off a bit, you know, just a small bit in the first quarter, but was far and away the leading OBDEC in the first quarter amongst all the, you know, OBDEC demand in the city. And, you know, I think where other decks, you know, might have been down 10% or more, Summit really held its own. And I am completely confident, just based on what I've seen in April alone as the weather's improved, heading into what's going to be an extraordinarily good summer for the reasons I mentioned in my opening commentary, I think we're actually going to end up the year at Summit ahead of our ambitious targets that we set back in December. And we are actually now extending our hours even more than what we originally had budgeted in response to excess demand that we're now seeing for May and June because we're pre-selling those tickets. And, you know, how that translates into, you know, your point about, Nick, you know, future ramp in FFO, you know, for the company, I think Summit will be a contributor.

All right. Thanks, guys. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Anthony Pallone with JP Morgan. Your line is open.

Yeah, thanks. Good afternoon. First question is on your 95% targeted least rate for year end versus kind of where your economic occupancy is. I know the gap's pretty wide and it's assumed to be narrowing, but can you give us some sense as to maybe where a normal spread between those two should be over time for the portfolio?

You know, that's a question that's come up a bit. You know, we only started reporting economic occupancy, you know, last quarter. So we don't have a perfect vision in reverse. Clearly, it's at the wides right now. It'll be narrowing substantially over the course of the year to probably half as wide as it was at the end of last year by the end of 2026. Whereas on a stabilized, normalized basis, it's always going to lag behind least. But if you're in a, you know, what I'll call fully leased portfolio, 95 plus percent with limited role, which is the period of time that we're headed into, you know, I could see that being, you know, 200 basis points of difference on kind of a recurring basis as space, you know, rolls and you re-tenant space. That seems like a comfortable place to be. Maybe it's tighter, you know, than that, but 200 feels about right.

Okay, got it. And then second, on the capital market side, you touched on, I guess, some key assets maybe and some foreign investments, but maybe can you give us a sense as to just how you characterize liquidity broadly in the market right now, whether there's a lot of buyers that are back, a lot of product for sale, the cap rates for the best versus more commodity product, just a more broad sense of liquidity in capital markets at the moment?

Yeah, I think I'll try to break it into equity and debt. On the equity side, I think first and foremost, we always have our head down focused on our business plan ahead of us, and the plan is on track, and we feel good about executing that plan this year. Just as a data point for you, we have 11 transactions in the business plan for this year. Just to give you a couple of segmented data points, on the last earnings call, I said we had four dispositions that we were working on When I went to Citi, I said that we had five dispositions that we were working on, and now where we sit today, that number is six. Two of those six were the already announced deals at 690 and 7-day, and the other four transactions are progressing very well. I would expect all four of those to close or be in contract in the second quarter. So those were the six that we had identified for the first half of the year. And those six are on plan, on target, and expected to get done in the first half of the year. With respect to the credit markets, I would say the market is very strong right now, especially because of the CMBS market and the SASB market that we just experienced at One Madison. I'll give you two data points there. One Madison was the largest office deal done in the U.S. since January of 2025. And the bottom of that deal, again, just to reiterate one last time, priced at a very complicated and difficult week. That was the tightest new issuance office spreads at the bottom of the deal since when we did one Vanderbilt in 2021. So we continue to see new capital coming into the credit markets. We're not feeling any of the lag effects of any of the private credit pullback. And liquidity continues to get stronger in the credit markets as we're seeing it.

Thanks.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Seth Berge with Citi. Your line is open.

Hey, thanks for taking my question. I guess my first one is just going back to kind of some of the summit commentary and some of the demand you're seeing there. Are you seeing, you know, with the strong demand, you know, an opportunity for kind of premium experience upsells or just, you know, how is the pricing side coming along there?

Well, again, I don't think Q1 is necessarily a good representation of what the next nine months or eight and a half months are going to look like. So there's a question about what it was and what it's going to be. You know, the tourism in the city, you know, is off a bit. So, you know, whether that directly translates into a slightly higher or lower percentage of domestic versus foreign visitation, I don't have that right in front of me at the moment. I do know domestic, you know, accounts for about 30%, which is quite high. It's a very popular... you know, local attraction as much as it is a tourist attraction, which, you know, we worked hard to transcend both markets from both, you know, observatory in nature and sort of, you know, culturally intriguing in nature, as well as, you know, thrill features and great place to hang out at night. So we, we sort of pull from all of the above, but clearly when I look at the, you know, the advanced sales that we're starting to book now, you know, it would indicate that tourism is picking up a bit and that, you know, we will be, you know, hopefully able to recoup whatever slight diminution that there was in visitation in the first quarter over the next nine months. And I think by the end of the year, it's going to be fairly typical and profile to last year, except we're going to see these summer months with a lot of international travel. I think there's, expected to be over a million people coming in for the FIFA World Cup games that are going to be held eight games over in New Jersey at MetLife Stadium. And then there's supposed to be something like 8 million people plus, 8 to 10 million people that are coming in for Sale 250 to celebrate around the Independence Day, the birthday of the country. And We are strategically situated to sell out hopefully every day of those months of events. So I can't give you much more on that. Ascent, which is the only upsell we have. You mentioned upsells. There's only one. It's the Ascent elevator rides. When the weather is very cold as it was and the winds are blowing, We don't run that as often as we do periods like now. So, you know, on the margins, those ticket sales were down a bit, but they've completely bounced right back and more. So nothing, you know, nothing there to assess other than summits hitting on all fours and we're opening summit next summer in Paris. And it's going to be an extraordinary, you know, great day for summit and for this company. when we have our first global location accepting visitors with hopefully an additional announcement pending in the coming months.

Great. Thanks. And maybe just a follow-up to some of Harrison's comments on the capital markets side. You know, specifically with the kind of equity markets and the dispositions, can you talk about a little bit about the profiles of who those buyers are for, you know, office and residential? Is there a core bid for office? Is it people looking for value or ad or opportunistic? And then just, you know, any impact on willingness to kind of buy or sell office from, you know, thinking about long-term about the impact of AI on employment?

Yeah, sure. In terms of the, you know, buyer composition pool, I think Mark hit it in his earlier commentary about who some of our investors have been. And I would say that composition of investor groups have not changed. We spent a lot of time in the beginning of the year on our first roadshow in Asia. We're in the process of closing out a handful of transactions that I mentioned earlier. And I would say those buyers are looking at a range. Again, if you look at our disposition plan for the year, includes everything from ground up office buildings to core office buildings to value add office buildings. And that market continues to be there for all of those different types of products. In terms of the, I think you also asked about the residential side. I mean, you can look very clearly at the latest comp in the market, which is the sale that we did at a seven day to a buyer that is a core residential buyer. that is continuing to accumulate more product through a public listing that they have in Canada. In terms of your final question about AI and impact, the investors that we speak to and do business with, they're looking at the same stats that we listed to you at the beginning of this call that we announced yesterday. Best first quarter of the year for us New York City, I looked right before this call, it's the best first quarter for New York City office leasing since 2014. Some of that leasing is driven by AI tenants, some of which we've announced. And investors are actually very optimistic about what they're seeing on that front.

Thanks. Thank you. Our next question comes from Ronald Camden with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Hey, great. Just two quick ones. First, just starting on the postmortem on the dividend cut, just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about just what went into the thinking on cutting it to that level, whether it's taxes or cash flow, and sort of why not cut more, right? Because I think you guys have talked about NOI coming online. But with the high interest costs, the investors are not getting a lot of that flow through. Why not cut the dividend even more to sort of offset that? Thanks.

Yeah, you know, we did spend a lot of time discussing the dividend. There are a lot of factors that go into it. I think Mark laid out a bunch of them when we did our call back in January. You know, ultimately, taxable income is what, above all else, drives the dividend. And our business plan for this year was consistent with the dividend level that we had established. We can maneuver within taxable income to some extent. But if we're going to execute on the business plan that we laid out, and we are on a path to do that, as we've been talking about so far on this call, then you have to pay the dividend at a certain level. And that dividend is where we established it at 247. At the same time, it does allow us to retain almost $50 million of incremental capital that we can put to, you know, other uses, creative uses, DPOs, maybe buybacks. And then, you know, we will, you know, continue to see capital spend go down such that, you know, when you get to the back half of 27 into 2028, there's a big shift in cash flow to the positive. And then, you know, we'll continue to revalue the dividend every year based on taxable income.

Great. That's really helpful. My second question is just I know FAD is obviously not cash flow, and it was a little bit down sort of in the quarter. Maybe as you think about this ramp on NOI that is anticipating as you get sort of commence occupancy, like any sense of the magnitude of dollars that are coming through that are going to flow through FAD would be helpful. Thanks.

I might be having a flashback, Ron, but I feel like you asked this question last quarter as well, so I'll probably give you a similar answer. The spend in 2026, like in 2025, is the funding of a lot of leasing, 9 million square feet of leasing we did over a three-year period. That assuages back half of 27 into 28, like I just said, and will drive NOI growth north of 10% on a same-store cash basis this next year and, you know, enhance earnings and enhance FAD. Magnitudes, you know, we'll talk about as time progresses.

I would just say either you look, you know, there's two ways to look at it. I only see one way, which is we are leasing the hell out of this portfolio. And I don't see any other way to look at it. With that does come leasing capital. that we will, you know, muscle through in 25, six and seven. Um, but we're going to try and get this portfolio to like, you know, in its entirety, 96, seven, 8% leased, which, um, which, you know, it would be unprecedented in this market for 31 million square feet, unprecedented because no one owns 31 million square feet of real estate. And certainly, If anyone can appreciate what it would take to get that beyond what I would call the frictional vacancy point of 97%, we are vastly out competing and getting more than our fair market share when it comes to these tenancies. We'll pay for that tenancy because there was a lot of out-migration which was for what I would call unnatural reasons in 2020 through 2024. But when we get back, you know, by this time, let's say next year to, you know, the kind of levels I think we're going to get, forget about this year and we're already going to work on 2027. And I'm looking, I'm looking beyond 95%. That's, you know, we're sitting here in April. I'm, I'm, I'm working on stuff in 27, 28 and 29. I want to get this portfolio to full occupancy. And there will be a cost to that. But when you attain that, and then you're living in a world mostly of renewal, there will be an enormous right sizing of the capital like we experienced in the past, like we'll experience in the future. That's our business plan. And I think we're not just on track, I think we're ahead of track. And so, you know, when I look at these increases in rents look at our average rents right now you know our expenses are going up by about two percent a year thereabouts uh you know the rents are going up significantly higher than that steve is starting to rein in the capital first on those all-important renewal tenants uh and then you know we'll see about um new tenants um you know i just uh i think this is what shareholders want us to be doing uh redeveloping our buildings having a premium Class A portfolio, leasing it to its absolute fullest, and investing in a portfolio that's going to have an unparalleled residual value in 2027-28. And we're on track for that. So there's a lot of minutiae and nuance to getting there, but I'd say step back and look at the big picture of what we're doing here. It's pretty positive from my vantage point of 36 years in the business, I've never seen a market as good as this one.

That's really helpful. And I think, Matt, you're right. I did ask about FAB and cash flow last quarter. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Blaine Heck with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks. Good afternoon. Maybe just following up on dispositions. Harrison, you mentioned thinking you'd have closed or be under contract on six of the 11 targeted sales by mid-year. I guess in rough terms, would those proceeds put you at about half or a little bit more than half of the targeted 2.5 billion of sales this year? Or do those six kind of skew smaller or larger than the remaining five?

The answer is approximately half.

Okay. Great. And then, Mark, you know, we're now several months into the new mayor's time in office. I appreciate your commentary on the budget. But past that, can you just talk about anything that's been a positive or negative surprise relative to your initial expectations when he was elected and whether you see any risks or opportunities in your business arising from any of his policy changes?

You know, look, I think it's still very early on. And it's too early to assess any mayoralty in the first 100, 115 days, whatever it's been, probably not even 100 days. This is something that's going to be measured over years, not months. I think right now, as I mentioned earlier, when you look at, forget about my opinion, the opinions of the stakeholders in the city, people buying condos, Q1 was a record of $10 million and up condo sales from January through March. I think it was up like 47%. I don't have the baseline number, but I know the percentage was up like 47% or thereabouts on condo sales. Wall Street profits, expansion of tenants. I take my rhythm to... How are tenants reacting to the first 100 days, let's call it? And I'm seeing tenants who are, you know, on a scale of five or six to one expanding rather than contracting. I see a lot of economic activity, not just in financial services, but tech is back. So, you know, I said this, I was on a, you know, I did a piece on CNBC a couple of weeks ago. And, you know, the issue is affordability, right? I mean, that is... The key issue, and there's different ways to tackle it. Different mayors are going to tackle in different ways, but we're all sort of in agreement. It's best for the city to make the city more affordable. And, you know, we'll just may differ about the means of getting there. But I do think the current administration's focus to me seems to be on how do we get more production and housing in order to, you know, help stabilize or even bring down rents if that's possible. in a market like this. And, you know, some of those things are, you know, you see the cutting through the red tape, uh, on city of yes, outside the city, you know, there's, there's secret revisions, land use revisions that are meant to make it better, easier to, to make this happen. There's the conversion, which I know the current administration supports for 67 amp and wants to see more buildings, you know, uh, delivered under that program. A day or two ago, you read something about a program coming out to try and reduce insurance premiums with the city's direct assistance to help reduce insurance premiums for affordable and rent-controlled housing. Having that kind of focus on that area, I think, is productive as long as there's an appreciation that what makes all this work are the tax collections. And what makes the tax collection work is our industry. And our industry right now is firing on all cylinders. So if that is left unimpeded and we can hopefully not only equal but exceed tax receipts this year on top of record receipts last year, then there'll be money in the system to take care of some of this administration's priorities, whether it comes to trying to reduce the cost of mass transportation or trying to reduce, you know, increase affordability or bring down cost of goods for groceries. Again, different means of getting there. But the objectives, I think, align. And right now, I see, you know, a city that's poised for, you know, a very good year.

Great. That's very helpful context. Thanks. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Peter Abramowitz with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Hi, thank you for taking the question. Matt, I just want to go back to your comments. I think you said you'd sort of be biased toward the high end of your guidance range. I know you talked earlier about some of the items, particularly fee income, that kind of impacts the ramp throughout the year from first quarter to the rest of the year. But in terms of your expectation potentially to get to the high end, could you talk about some of the specific items that kind of possibly get you there? Is it NOI or is it other items? And just any other commentary on kind of underlying guidance assumptions and whether those have changed?

Yeah, sure. You know, I did mention that in the first quarter, NOI was, you know, running ahead of our projections. That also flowed through not just earnings, but through same store cash NOI. That 2.6% positive was 300 basis points higher than what we expected for the first quarter. So NOI will be a contributor to Mark discussed Summit and the momentum we're seeing already in April and expect over the balance of the year to make up whatever small shortfall there was in the first quarter. Fee income, our third-party business, which Harrison spoke about earlier, our third-party fee business is growing. If we can exceed our initial projections, that's very, very high margin, high multiple business. We have a DPO in our guidance. If we can source more of that, then that's even beyond what I'm talking about. I think the momentum coming out of the first quarter on our numbers was certainly biased to the midpoint or higher.

Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. And then maybe a question for Mark on the new administration. You mentioned the pied-a-terre tax. That was kind of first reported yesterday. I believe the estimate for how much revenue incrementally you can raise for the city is around $500 million. So that still leaves a pretty big budget shortfall. Just kind of curious, from the first 100 days or so of the new administration, they've We've also talked about taxes on high-earning households as well as higher property taxes, and those have not gotten a lot of support. So with still a gap to fill in the budget, I guess just curious what other things you think are possible from a legislative perspective that might fill that and how that potentially could impact your business.

I think you're going to, I mean, you know, the city council and the new city council speaker, Julie Menon, I thought came out very thoughtfully with their own budget. Remember, the mayor has a budget, council has a budget. And their emphasis is going to be on cost cutting. I think the budget last year was like $115 billion. This year is projected $127 billion. So you're not going to get all $12 billion of increase. That's called an initial stab at it. And they'll be... um, efficiencies, uh, reductions from that, uh, that'll be achievable. Uh, you know, with, I think it was about a $5 billion budget. So if you assume the state is going to solve 500 to a billion of it, uh, you're talking about three to 4%, uh, of a gap that needs to be closed with revenue projections that I think will be reassessed higher. just based on the first quarter's tax receipt recognition that will be expected to ripple through for some portion of the remainder of this year, plus new pied-a-terre tax, plus the council had some proposals on modifying PTET, which is state and federal tax. you know, revenue enhancement for the city, not something we're particularly, you know, want to see as New Yorkers, but, you know, there was a modification of UBT, and they're going to close that gap. I would say certainly when you get to June, there will be a balanced budget through, you know, this incremental tax, some revenue reforecasts, and some expense reductions. And the city has gotten there every year since the 70s. We'll get there again.

All right. That's all for me. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Vikram Malhotra with Mizuho.

Your line is open.

Good afternoon. Thanks for the question. I guess just maybe Mark and Matt, I just want to push maybe a bit more on sort of you've done a lot of good work getting up the occupancy. You're saying TI is coming in. You have less to leave. You just said you're dealing with 27 expirations. So I just want to figure out, like, can you give us a bit more guardrails on how this ultimately translates to any measure of cash flow you think prudent? FAD, cash flow from operations. You said 10% same store next year. But really at this point, given you have so much done, it would be nice to get like some broad guardrails rather than wait like nine, 12 months to get that. So like, how does this translate, whether it's 27, 28, and maybe you can just clarify your comment on TI spend in 26 and 27. Do we just wait till 28 before the growth picks up? Thanks so much.

Well, I, you know, I mean, I don't know when you say guardrails, I'm not exactly sure what you mean by guardrails, but I meant like, is it at least 2%, at least 4% is it at least 6% that 10% we've given, we've given all of that in December. our projections aren't changed with respect to, you know, you can, it's very, there is, there's plenty in the supplemental and our other disclosures to, you know, get a handle on the amount of capital that's going to be necessary for our leasing. I mean, that's pretty arithmetic and you see every quarter how much we spend on TI, spend on commission, spend on free rent, you know, based on a quantum of leasing. And, you know, we're going to be, as we approach 96, 78% occupancy in this portfolio, I hope we get to 98%. Uh, they're going to be spend years for the balance of this year and next, but we said, I thought we were pretty clear that by the time we get to, uh, two 28, we expect our fad to be in line with our dividend that we just recently, um, you know, recalibrated to, and then, and then, and then hopefully, and more, but you know, We'll get there probably with that kind of guidance in 27, but not today.

Okay, so sorry, just to clarify, you said by 2028, you think your FAD will be similar to the dividend?

Well, yeah, but I think if you look at my commentary previously on the dividend and what Matt had said in the release we did when we came out with new dividend level after our last board meeting, We had said that the new dividend level was set to a level where we expected to be able to cover that dividend and more by 2028. So I'm reiterating that. But yes, that's our feeling. That's our belief. That's our that's how we got to that very specific number. You know, it wasn't I mean, it's not a you know, it's not a gut instinct. It's it's based on our models and calculations and you know, there's lots of scenarios that can play out. And I hope it'll be far in excess of that, because as you know, or I think, you know, we try to be very conservative when it comes to our estimations of NAV and growth and projections. But, you know, yeah, I mean, I think we're headed to a great spot, both in earnings and cash flow.

Okay. No, that's great. Yeah. I mean, as I said, you've done a lot of great work. So we're all hoping this is like translating into very solid 27-28 growth. I just, just maybe going back to the summit question, makes sense that the World Cup should drive like a nice uptick. I guess I just wanted to clarify, you said 1Q was a bit depressed, so you're expecting a pickup and then the boost in, boost hopefully with the World Cup. But is there anything else like, I guess the other projects in other regions, can you give us an update where we are? When could we see the next summit really driving NOI?

We expect to open Paris in summer of 27, so it's a little more than a year off. I'll come out in December with some monetary guidance on that for 27. It'll only be open half a year, so you have to adjust for that, but I expect it's going to be, you know, like a seismic, you know, popular, well-attended, hot new opening. What we've designed is kind of like, you know, Summit 2.0 with lots of new features, and it's very exciting. It's very, you know, very thrilling for me, you know, to work with Kenzo and Rob Schiffer on these projects that are, you know, now starting to come to life, and we have more But the next locations would not be 27. They'll be announced this year with future earnings. So the first one up would be Paris next year.

Well, thanks so much. I actually live next to Summit. I've been there five times the last year, and it's great.

Thank you.

And book your ticket for the ribbon-cutting in June of next year. We'll watch some World Cup matches from the 90th floor.

Perfect. You'll have a good bird's eye view from there. All right. Is that it? We'll take one last question.

Thank you. We have a question from Brendan Lynch with Barclays. Your line is open.

Great. Thank you for fitting me in. Matt, you got a nice reduction in your spread to SOFR with the new revolving line of credit. And you've been bringing down your cost of debt for the past year. obviously quite macro dependent, but do you see other opportunities within your control to reduce your weighted average cost of debt further?

I mean, yeah, the, the great execution on the credit facility and, you know, appreciate the work of our team and certainly the banks that participated in that, you know, we had the, a strong financing market backdrop there, but the support from the institutions was really extraordinary. You know, Harrison spoke earlier and I'll let him expand on where the, the, broader financing market stands. You know, the reality is we have about three billion or so left of our seven billion dollar financing plan for the for the balance of this year and then not a lot thereafter. So we talked in December about increasing some floating rate exposure because we do expect the curve to not at the pace we would like, but eventually come come down. So we'll let some of our fixed rate derivatives, things like that, burn off and take advantage of a lower so for a curve overall. I'll let Harrison to speak to the financings that we have in our pipe and what we're seeing in the market there.

Yeah, we have three financings left in the business plan for this year, the largest of which is 245 Park Avenue. We just started on that process as of yesterday. So we'll see that play out through the second and third quarter of this year. More on that to come on the next call. And I would say just in terms of pricing, obviously the base rate, we have no influence over, so we'll continue to monitor both SOFR and the Treasury indexes. But as we turn to spreads, we continue to be optimistic about the tightening in spreads, especially in the CMBS market. Gave you a few stats earlier, but especially at the bottom of the deals, we're seeing spreads that are tightening even from where we saw one Vanderbilt price. So Each deal will be dependent on the quality of the real estate and the execution, but I would definitely expect to see a strong execution at 245 Park.

Great. Thanks. That's helpful. And the press release alluded to using some maybe turning more active on share purchases. Matt, I think you mentioned that earlier in the call as well. Could you just talk about what type of conditions or what you would incentivize you to continue be more active on executing on the existing authorization going forward?

Well, this also I thought I'd been pretty clear on, you know, in the past. I think the stock is, you know, terribly mispriced. And I don't even think you got to look that hard, you know, to sort of appreciate the magnitude of the discounted valuation relative to a fairly liquid and active market where it's not that hard to get price discovery and value discovery of assets we own, especially the kind of assets we have, which are well leased and the debt and equity cost of capital is kind of well known for these assets. So I look at it as a significant opportunity that I mentioned we would take a very, very hard look at with incremental liquidity to the business plan. I forget where exactly we had said that, but I know we've talked about that in the past, in the recent past. And You know, we've got our plan. Our plan includes, you know, investment in new development projects. Our plan includes reduction in indebtedness, both secured and unsecured. And then, you know, with incremental liquidity above and beyond that plan, share repurchases are going to get the first and hardest look.

Great. Thank you very much.

Okay. Okay, operator, we're all set.

Thank you. This concludes the question and answer session. I would now like to turn it back to Mark Holliday for closing remarks.

Thank you, everyone. We kind of ran a little longer than usual, so thank you for all the questions for those still on, and I look forward to speaking in three months' time.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.