Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Cousins Properties Inc. Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. This call is being recorded on Friday, October 31, 2025. And I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Pamela Roper, General Counsel. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to Cousins Properties' Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. With me today are Colin Connolly, our President and Chief Executive Officer; Richard Hickson, our Executive Vice President of Operations; Kennedy Hicks, our Executive Vice President and Chief Investment Officer; and Gregg Adzema, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. The press release and supplemental package were distributed yesterday afternoon as well as furnished on Form 8-K. In the supplemental package, the company has reconciled all non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures in accordance with Reg G requirements. If you did not receive a copy, these documents are available through the quarterly disclosures and supplemental SEC information links on the Investor Relations page of our website, cousins.com. Please be aware that certain matters discussed today may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws, and actual results may differ materially from these statements due to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors including the risk factors set forth in our annual report on Form 10-K and our other SEC filings. The company does not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. The full declaration regarding forward-looking statements is available in the supplemental package posted yesterday, and a detailed discussion of the potential risks is contained in our filings with the SEC. With that, I'll turn the call over to Colin Connolly.

Thank you, Pam, and good morning, everyone. We had a strong third quarter at Cousins. On the earnings front, the team delivered $0.69 a share in FFO and raised the midpoint of our guidance by $0.02 a share to $2.84 a share. The midpoint of our guidance now represents 5.6% growth compared to 2024. Importantly, leasing remained robust. We completed 551,000 square feet of leases during the quarter, which is our second highest quarterly volume over the last 3 years. And for the 46th consecutive quarter, we delivered a positive cash rent roll-up on second-generation leasing. We also acquired the Link for $218 million, which strategically expands our presence in the fast-growing market of Dallas. These are remarkable results all around. I will start with a few observations on the market. Most major companies are phasing out remote work. Office fundamentals are improving. Demand is growing. During the third quarter, net absorption reached a post-pandemic high. Vacancy declined for the first time in 7 years. And with new construction starts at de minimis levels, any meaningful increase in new supply is 4 to 5 years away. Importantly, for Cousins, corporate migration to the Sunbelt has firmly reaccelerated. As a result, our leasing pipeline is robust across all markets. We see a notable pickup in leasing interest from West Coast and New York City-based companies. Financial service and select large-cap technology companies are particularly active. While not necessarily full corporate relocations, they are significant hubs in some cases and highlight growth away from high tax in high regulation states once again. A recent rise in layoff announcements seems to be weighing on investor sentiment around the office sector. However, we have not seen any meaningful impact on demand. I'll explain why. Office using employment growth was historically high during the pandemic.…

Thanks, Colin. Good morning, everyone. Our operations team once again delivered exceptional results in the third quarter. This quarter, our total office portfolio end-of-period lease and weighted average occupancy percentages were 90% and 88.3%, respectively. As expected, both were down this quarter, almost exclusively due to the known move out of Bank of America at 201 North Tryon in Charlotte. Without Bank of America's expiration, our occupancy would have been steady this quarter. Like last quarter, I want to reiterate that our near-term occupancy expectations remain generally the same. We still see the third quarter as a bottom. And then expect occupancy to be stable or modestly increase for a couple of quarters and then build higher in the back half of 2026. I would be remiss if I didn't once again point out that a big driver of our occupancy expectations continues to be our best-in-class near-term expirations profile. As of third quarter end, we only had 6.3% of annual contractual rent expiring through the end of 2026. We continue to be laser-focused on proactively managing our expirations. During the third quarter, our team completed 40 office leases totaling an impressive 551,000 square feet with a weighted average lease term of 9.4 years. Total leasing volume was up 65% sequentially and even exceeded our strong first quarter activity. This quarter's volume was also well above our 1-, 3- and 5-year volume run rates. We are very pleased with our year-to-date leasing activity, which stands at 1.4 million square feet. Our leasing pipeline also continues to be very healthy at all stages, has grown nicely throughout the year and as a result, remains at record high levels. As Colin mentioned, our pipeline also reflects a notable increase in large user activity including new-to-market requirements looking to either relocate or build…

Thanks, Richard. Before I discuss the transaction environment, I want to touch on our mixed-use development project, Neuhoff in Nashville. We finished the quarter with the apartment component up to 86% leased and we still expect for this part of the project to be stabilized at the end of the year. On the commercial side, we signed 2 spec suite leases, both of which commenced in 2025 and brought that component up to 53% leased. We've been very encouraged by the recent uptick in tenant demand in the Nashville market with several large office prospects currently considering Neuhoff for both near-term requirements and future expansion needs. As you may recall, as part of the overall project, we have the ability to develop a 280,000 square foot office tower adjacent to the current one. Given the infrastructure that is already in place, we believe we have a competitive advantage in our ability to offer expansion space and an expedited time line upon tenant commitment. As a reminder, Neuhoff is located in the Germantown neighborhood of Nashville, directly across the Cumberland River from Oracle soon-to-be-developed state-of-the-art headquarters campus. Oracle has reportedly hired nearly 1,000 employees in the city to date and is pledged to have at least 8,500 workers in Nashville by the end of 2031. Just this month, the company released rendering showing its extensive plans for the campus. These plans include a pedestrian bridge that the company will build across the river to link its campus to Neuhoff. This multibillion-dollar investment by Oracle as well as the recent tenant activity in the market, is a testament to both Nashville's talented and growing workforce as well as company's desire for high-quality differentiated office environments. We are excited about the response from the market for Neuhoff to date and feel that the…

Thanks, Kennedy. Good morning, everyone. I'll begin my remarks by providing a brief overview of our results, spending a few minutes on our same-property performance then moving on to our capital markets transactions before closing my remarks, with an update to our 2025 earnings guidance. Overall, as Colin stated upfront, our third quarter results were outstanding. Second-generation cash leasing spreads were positive, same property year-over-year cash NOI increased and leasing velocity was very strong. Focusing on same-property performance for a moment, GAAP NOI grew 1.9% and cash NOI grew 0.3% during the third quarter compared to last year. These numbers were negatively impacted by the Bank of America departure at our 201 North Tryon property that Richard discussed earlier. Despite initiating a significant redevelopment plan at this property, we left it in our same property pool. I also want to take a moment to point out the lumpiness that can sometimes run through our quarterly same-property expense numbers, usually driven by property taxes. Property tax true-ups as we get clarity through the tax assessment and appeal process, can push the quarterly numbers around quite a bit. So it's always best to use longer time frames when looking at these numbers. For example, same-property tax expenses that ran through our P&L were up 21.9% in the fourth quarter of '24, they were down 12.1% in the first quarter of this year, down 22.4% in the second quarter and up 14.7% this quarter. That's a lot of movement, compared to the prior year. However, if you take a step back and look at all of 2025, we currently forecast our net property tax expenses to be essentially flat compared to 2024. Moving on to our capital markets activity. Our Neuhoff joint venture, of which we own 50%, proactively approached our lender and…

[Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from the line of Blaine Heck from Wells Fargo.

Colin, I appreciate your commentary on AI and layoffs, very helpful. Just a follow-up, and I know it was a very recent announcement. But given that Amazon is your largest tenant, have you spoken to them about their space within your portfolio and whether the recent announcement might change their utilization at all? And more broadly, I think there's an idea being brought up in our conversations that the Sunbelt might be a bit more susceptible to AI and displacement given the amount of corporate back-office type jobs housed in those markets. So I'm wondering how you would respond to that and how you think your portfolio is insulated from that potential trend?

Blaine, I appreciate the question. There's a lot in there. And I think in particular, there's a lot of misconceptions in there. And the first that I would highlight is kind of a narrative of kind of gateway markets are pushing that the Sunbelt is full of back-office jobs. And that is just far from the case. And as we look around the Sunbelt, the migration of technology and financial services companies has been largely driven by moving out of high-tax and high regulation states into markets where there is highly educated workforce and exciting and dynamic markets. So think Austin, think Atlanta, think Charlotte, think Nashville. And again, I could point to a lot of companies that have made those moves and intentionally made this decision to distribute their workforce more broadly around the country so as to not be overly concentrated in markets like San Francisco or Seattle or New York, where there have been some significant challenges. So I think Oracle moving their corporate headquarters to Nashville. Think of the large hubs with Amazon in Austin and Nashville, as well as D.C. Think about Goldman Sachs establishing a new hub, building an 800,000 square foot campus in Uptown Dallas for 5,000 employees, many of whom will be front-of-house bankers. So I think that is very much a misconception. I think in particular, many of those companies are highly engaged in AI. And so while the kind of the start-up AI universe is largely located in San Francisco in time that AI demand will find itself distributed again throughout the country and we are already seeing that today. Amazon, as I touched on in my prepared remarks, we have great conversations with Amazon all the time. Again, I think Andy Jassy dissuaded any fears that those risks were AI-related, it was more about rightsizing the headcount to become more efficient. But as I look at Amazon around the country, I think you're likely to see them be a net expender, not contractor. And so I want to make sure to highlight that, that certainly has been the trend with them as of late, and I don't see that changing. And then just kind of stepping back with a few statistics, the -- with the enthusiasm around San Francisco and New York over the last 12 months, if you actually drill into the data and look at actual leasing activity in growth markets, which would include all of our markets relative to gateway markets, and this is JLL Research, the growth markets are in a 104% of the leasing levels over the last 12 months compared to 2019. The gateway markets, which would include San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Boston, that's at about 65%. So that's just the last 12 months. Despite the exuberance over certain markets, the Sunbelt and growth markets continue to outperform.

Okay. Great. That's really helpful and all makes sense. Sense from my perspective. And then my second question is your expiration schedule, as you guys have mentioned, is relatively light in the next couple of years, which I think, should help with the occupancy build. But I was hoping you could give some color on whether the expirations in the next couple of years are kind of proportional relative to your market exposure? Or if there are any specific markets that have a high concentration of expirations in '26 or '27?

Yes. Blaine, this is Richard. So we've talked about in the past, really the only large expiration that we have through end of 2026 is Samsung in Houston at Briar Lake. There are 123,000 square feet. Nothing much has changed in terms of the status of that. A lot of that space has already been sublet. We're engaged with some of the subtenants on going direct or extensions when the subleases expire. We're actually talking with Samsung as well directly for some sort of a renewal. We'll see how that plays out, but it's going well so far, and we feel good about our ability to take care of the vast majority of that space. And so really, there's just not a lot of lumpy big activity right ahead of us. Obviously, we all know that BofA is now in the numbers and behind us. So proportionately, we feel good. I mean we obviously have a lot of wood to chop in Charlotte and feel very good about what we're doing with deploying capital to redevelop both 550 South and 201 North Tryon and we know that this play works in that when we've done these projects in the past, the most recent being Hayden Ferry, once we get these projects done and the redevelopment can be touched and felt by potential customers and existing customers that we've seen has been robust and very encouraging. So we also feel good about our position there.

Blaine, it's Colin. I'd just add back to your question, I'd say the expirations are pretty evenly distributed throughout the portfolio. There's not kind of any one market that has significantly more than the others. I'd point out Austin probably has some of the, I'd say, the more modest expirations over the next couple of years, and that would be kind of the one market that would stick out for its modest expirations.

And your next question comes from the line of Andrew Berger from Bank of America.

Great. And thank you for the thorough opening remarks. Just wanted to circle back on the comments around the balance sheet and leverage. I appreciate the current leverage levels are a bit lower than maybe some of your peers. What's sort of the upper bound of how high you would potentially be willing to take leverage at this point?

Andrew, it's Gregg. So if you go back and look over the last 12 years, our leverages remain, give or take, right around 5x net debt to EBITDA. It's kind of varied between 4.5 and 5.5 generally over that period of time. When it's been at the top of that range, it's been associated with -- as Colin stated earlier, when we've gone into kind of offensive mode. So the 2 biggest pieces, the 2 biggest instances would be the mergers with both TIER and Parkway over the last decade. In both instances, we used the low levered balance sheet. I know it was an offensive weapon to pick those transactions without having to raise any incremental equity and then subsequently brought leverage back down to 5x. We think we're in another period like that right now, we'll be able to use it on an offensive basis. In terms of kind of what the cap is, we'll always maintain an industry-leading balance sheet. But we think we have a little bit of room here. Really, the only hard number that you have out there, is we do have an investment-grade rating for both Moody's and S&P. And if you look at their write-ups, they tell you that 6 and below is consistent with what our current rating would be. So from a rating agencies perspective, there's no problem going up to 6. We haven't gone up to 6 as a company in well over a decade. So that -- I'm not taking that off the table. But that would certainly be the absolute upper bound of the range of what we would do. We've got some capacity here, though. I mean we're at [ 5.38 ] right now. That's a little higher than it's been recently because as I discussed in my opening remarks, we bought the Link, we haven't fully funded it yet. We've got lots of options to do that, whether it's asset sales or settling some of the shares that we've issued on a forward basis under the ATM. We've got some capacity to flex the balance sheet here and drive earnings and drive growth at what we think is a really opportune time to do it.

Great. And as my follow-up, the parking income has been an area where you've frequently been able to beat over the last several quarters. Can you just talk about how much more upside there is from here, -- what are at a high level, I guess the physical utilization of your buildings and of the parking lots and then also the pricing relative to pre-COVID and also how you forecast this?

Sure. So -- if you go back at kind of pre-COVID times 2018, 2019, total parking revenues generally represented about 8% of our total revenues. Now the portfolio has changed quite a bit since 2019. But using that as a kind of as a starting point, our current parking revenues as a percentage of total revenues are at just under 7%. So below where they were pre-COVID as a percentage of total revenues, by the way, they bottomed at around 5%. So they've come up significantly since kind of '21, which represented the bottom. But using that prior baseline of 8%, we still think we probably have a little bit of room to push. In terms of kind of what we've seen in that increases and we keep surprising ourselves every quarter, it's about 75% utilization and 25% price, right? You can drive revenues either by using it more or by increasing the price. It's been a 75% to 25% balance as we move forward through this. So yes, we think there's still a little bit of room there. We do a ground-up analysis of this every quarter as we reforecast, and we continue to surprise ourselves every quarter. It's a good surprise though because it really is an indication of better utilization of our decks which is exactly what we want to see. It plays into what Colin had talked about at the top of the call, which is the return to office continues and if anything, is accelerating. And then finally, in terms of a breakdown of parking revenues, our parking revenues are about 75% contractual and about 25% transient or noncontractual. And that relationship, that 75-25 relationship, is that incredibly consistent over the years, it doesn't move much.

And your next question comes from the line of Brendan Lynch from Barclays.

It sounds like you're still on track for your previous expectations for occupancy to trough in the third quarter and improve from here kind of be steady and then improve. How should we expect that to kind of flow through to the trajectory for same-store cash NOI growth going forward?

I'll talk about just the trajectory and Colin can probably add a little granularity. But the increase in occupancy that we've referred to in this call, getting to 90% or better by year-end '26s highly likely to be back-end loaded not completely back-end loaded, but more back-end loaded than front-end loaded. In terms of how that plays through to our same property performance. The one thing that we've got to deal with is this big Bank of America move-out that we just had in July. I mean as you do year-over-year comps, which is how we report these numbers, however we reports these numbers, that's going to sit in the numbers as a prior year comp until we get to July of 2026. So you're going to see kind of lower numbers this next quarter, still positive, we think, but lower this next quarter and probably lower in the first half of next year. But once you get that out of the machine out of the system and you don't get the bad prior year comps, you're going to see some significant acceleration in our same-property performance in the second half of '26.

Great. That's helpful. And maybe sticking with Bank of America and the 201 North Tryon asset, it sounds like you're already making progress backfilling some of that space, I understand there's some redevelopment still going on. Maybe talk about the prospect of leasing up the rest of the space that has become available.

This is Richard. Again, we feel really good. Again, we just started in the past quarter, the redevelopment of 201 North Tryon, but we're well underway. The market can see it. 550 South, I would notice it's further along, but the activity that we're seeing, I'd say, broadly in Charlotte is very encouraging. There are plenty of large users that are looking in Uptown and South End whether kind of figuring out that there's really no space left in South End to lease. And so they're all starting to concentrate almost exclusively on Uptown and big blocks that are available. There's new-to-market activity, as Colin alluded to, that we're seeing that's extremely encouraging. So we feel good about our position relative to supply and demand in the market and think we're going to have success here in the next 12 months or so.

Yes. And Brendan, it's Colin. I'd just add on. Consistent with my earlier comments about the reacceleration of Sunbelt migration, I think Charlotte, in particular, you're seeing quite a bit of activity at large New York City-based financial services firms looking to do growth and establish large hubs in Charlotte. I can't speak to the specifics of what's driving that, but it's been a noticeable acceleration over the last 3 to 6 months.

And your next question comes from the line of Nick Thillman from Baird.

Maybe, Colin, you mentioned sort of the New York West Coast sort of migration into Sunbelt markets. As you look at the vacancy within the portfolio and these larger requirements, do you think you have the vacancy in the right spots and sell markets to kind of attract these tenants? I guess how are you feeling about the pockets where you do have some vacancy on leasing that space up? Obviously, the new North Park AT&T stuff kind of pending here, but just some other stuff.

Yes. No, we do feel like -- we said differently, where we do have large blocks of space. Again, you mentioned North Park, Kennedy mentioned Neuhoff, the 201 North Tryon, Hayden Ferry. I mean we -- in each of those instances, we are seeing some interest and larger users taking a look at that space. So that's very much encouraging. The other thing I'd mention in certain areas of our footprint where we don't have space, we're actually starting to have some very preliminary conversations with large users coming out of New York and the West Coast who have potential interest in building -- in new buildings. And so that's been a very encouraging sign and we hope to address some of those needs.

That's helpful. And then, Kennedy, you mentioned some potential dispositions with the capital markets improving. I know you're in the market with 1 asset in Tampa, but are those the type of assets we should be thinking about as disposition targets here near term?

Yes. I mean, as we've said, we will only look to dispositions when we have exciting acquisition opportunities. So we are -- we're monitoring the market, monitoring our portfolio and assets where we think that match up well with the depth of the buyer pool today, we'll look to transact. So yes, I would say, generally smaller and maybe less tied in to the rest of our portfolio in specific markets.

And your next question comes from the line of Steve Sakwa from Evercore ISI.

Richard, I was just wondering if you could provide maybe a little more granularity on that pipeline. It sounds obviously impressive. Can you give us maybe a sense of number and kind of size? I guess I'm just thinking if tenants are somewhat larger getting them into occupancy by end of the year becomes a little bit more of a challenge, if they're smaller in that 25,000, 50,000, 75,000 foot range, they can get in quickly. So I'm just trying to get a sense of number and ultimate size of that pipeline.

Sure. The pipeline overall is definitely partly being driven by larger activity. And again, new-to-market activity that we're seeing. But to your point, the larger users tend to be slower moving just by the sheer nature of the size and the lift of getting that much space built out and occupied. I think right now, we have roughly 100 total prospects within the pipeline overall. But we've actually had some interesting cases just in the last couple of months. I alluded to one in Phoenix where we had a 50,000 square foot new customer that we signed a lease with a very fast-moving lease negotiation, and they're going to occupy the space that they leased literally within 60 days. So that's unusual, but there are little pockets of activity where we're seeing actually a little faster occupancy. And for a 50,000 square foot customer to do that, that's pretty impressive. So again, it takes time for the bigger users to filter through the system. End of the day, we welcome large user activity. I think it's wonderful to have that engine beginning to fire again on all cylinders and are happy to waive those into our portfolio if we have the opportunity.

And Steve, it's Colin. And you're right, again, larger users take larger or longer periods of time to lease up and timing of commencements and build-outs are always -- that's a big variable and ultimately being able to meet our goals. But I would, I guess, characterize that 90% plus goal at year-end 2026 is largely being driven by the leases that we have already signed and not yet commenced or perhaps leases that we think we're going to do over the fourth quarter. But again, those won't have that large of an impact. And so the timing of the commencement in that pipeline, all of those dates are factored into our projections, and we're optimistic about achieving our goal.

Great. That's good color. And then I don't know if Kennedy or Richard, maybe just on the Neuhoff project. Obviously, that's been a little bit slower to lease. But I guess I'm just curious with Oracle making a bigger push. One, have they kind of looked at the project as maybe temporary space for the employees that are coming into the market? And if not, are there maybe companies that are feeding off of Oracle's move into the market and trying to be adjacent to their new campus. Is that a source of demand that's looking at the project?

Yes. I think certainly, the Oracle being across the river and just their plans in a variety of industries and for the campus and growth is all great for the follow-on demand. So we are starting to see some of that and are excited about the larger users that are showing up again just recently here.

And Steve, to kind of directly answer your question, all of those are possibilities. And again, I think Oracle, a company of that size is obviously heavily involved. Again, in AI not just in San Francisco but here in Nashville, in the derivatives off of that and companies that work with Oracle, it's going to be fantastic for Neuhoff. And we've certainly seen an acceleration of interest in our space since Oracle has made in their grand reveal recently of their project in a specific time line. But it's all very positive.

And your next question comes from the line of Upal Rana from KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Richard, I appreciate the details on the leasing pipeline. Given the stronger pipeline, are you seeing any shift in lease economics as it related to rents or concessions or TIs in there?

No, not at this point. I think it's actually been relatively stable. I mean our concessions came down a little bit this quarter. I'm really pleased with the fact that our net effective rents, though are hanging in there and been very steady. I think we're right on top of the second quarter for net effective rents. So if anything, I'd say, we're feeling while TIs continue to be large, we're feeling like we're able to hold the line on rate and get net effective rents and produce stability there, yes.

It's Colin. I would just add. We do think we're relatively close to an inflection point where it is likely to become a landlord's market. With no new construction having started really over the last couple of years and not expected to have any meaningful uptick there and now demand accelerating a shortage of what I would characterize as lifestyle office in some of our markets is absolutely coming and in some cases, almost here. And if you talk to the major tenant reps across our markets, whether it's in Atlanta or Austin or Charlotte, those large tenant reps are looking out to their '27, '28, '29 expirations and starting to have some real concern that they won't have the options to accommodate growth for their customers. And so hopefully, that ultimately translate into us driving net effective rents, whether it's face rents or ultimately bringing concessions down.

Okay. Great. That was helpful. And then with the Ovintiv termination, could you provide any lease economics or rent changes that you may have had with the new subtenants relative to what Ovintiv was paying? If there were none, where is market rent today relative to what Ovintiv was historically paying?

Sure. So there are some changes that will happen as Ovintiv rolls out of the stack in mid-'26. It's not material, it won't move the needle from an NOI perspective. And we're definitely going to be able to push and roll up rents to the extent we backfill or renew any of that space. We're in the market, if you will, with kind of mid-40s net right now for the building, which is meaningfully higher than where employee rents are.

And your next question comes from the line of Ray Zhong from JPMorgan.

Thanks for the color on looking out in -- on the occupancy guidance. Just curious, it sounds like 201 North Tryon is part of that 90% occupancy comment as well. Just want to confirm that. That's number one. And number 2 is, can you remind us the redevelopment timing? And how much you're going to spend there -- and when can we expect the backfilling to take place in terms of commencing.

Ray, just to clarify your question, you -- as it relates to 201 North Tryon, your question is, will it be 90%? Or is it in the 90% guidance. Is that your question?

Yes, the second one. Yes, you mentioned the 90% comment towards year-end '26. Curious if that includes 201 North Tryon in the occupancy pool? And I'm guessing is yes, but I just want to confirm.

It absolutely does. And again, as we've just gotten that space back and we're that are under construction on our redevelopment, that forecast does not include a significant amount of commencements new leasing at 201 North Tryon by year-end 2026. We certainly hope to outperform that, but I'd say largely the re-leasing and the commencement of those leases at 201 North Tryon are more geared towards 2027.

Got it. Yes, that's what I was trying to get to. And the second part of that question would be, can you remind us the spending amount on there. And I think you guys also mentioned it's not going to be capitalized like on the Golden dark space, right?

I'll tackle the gap of it and then Colin to put the total number in there. Yes, since we're not taking this out of the portfolio, we were not capitalizing interest against the basis of the existing building. We'll just capital interest on the new spend. So not a big movement there in terms of capitalized interest. And then in terms of total spending.

It's approximately $40 million with an anticipated completion in the first quarter of 2027. It's very much consistent with the spending and the type of redevelopment we did at the Promenade tower, Promenade central building here in Atlanta or the Hayden Ferry project out in Phoenix that have all been really well received. And so I'd say it's a very similar project, slightly higher nominal dollars because it's just a larger tower.

And your next question comes from the line of John Kim from BMO Capital Markets.

This quarter other than the Neuhoff loan, you didn't make any investments either on the assets or debt mezz side. I was wondering if you could talk about cap rate or yield compression you've seen just given the increased competition. And if I could focus on Dallas, there was recently a hardware portfolio sale, which included Saint Ann Court that recently traded. I was wondering if you could discuss how close you were to acquiring that portfolio? And any commentary you have on pricing?

John, on Harwood we were kind of [ 6.7% ] on it. We appreciate it -- I'll go back to the beginning in terms of cap rates. As Kennedy alluded to, you're certainly seeing more investors focus and become interested in office and debt certainly readily available. So I would say cap rates, we think, are likely to compress. We haven't seen a lot of that compression just yet, but as more equity investors got to make the decision to pull the trigger in office, we think that, that will -- that is likely to come specifically to Harwood. Obviously, we had some involvement in the Saint Ann's asset, and they now have subsequently brought the entirety of the portfolio out to the market. I think you've seen some recent announcements as to how that is playing out. Certainly something that we looked at, and we're obviously strategically very focused on growing our presence in Dallas. But I think ultimately, we've made a decision to focus our efforts elsewhere.

Okay. And then on the leasing success that you had at Hayden Ferry 1, can you just provide some commentary on either the tenant or industry that signed there? You can give on redevelopment yields or return on invested capital on the redevelopments? And maybe for Gregg, can you remind us when you plan to place that asset back into the same-store pool?

Sure. I'll start. The leasing has been pretty broad-based, the 50,000-ish square foot customer that we signed subsequent to quarter end was a regional engineering firm that actually has a very nice high-growth data center component to their business. We have previously signed a regional headquarters lease with a financial -- regional bank financial services company. The company that is in lease negotiations right now is a corporate headquarters. It's not new to market. And I'd characterize it as a health care/consumer goods-focused company. So it's very diverse. Actually, the new tenants that we're bringing into the project. And again, we've been very pleased with the profile of all of these customers, their headquarters, their high-end uses, not back office. So very excited about the new tenancy at Hayden Ferry 1 and elsewhere in the project.

And then in terms of when we bring it back in our same-property pool, likely Jan 1, '28. We only changed our same-property pool one time a year, January 1 of each year. And so in Jan 1, '27, which would be the next logical time to do it, we won't have a good year-over-year comp because it's not going to stabilize to later in '26. So to be Jan 1, '28.

And your last question comes from the line of Dylan Burzinski from Green Street.

I guess maybe following up on one of John's questions. Given that bidding tenant are growing, and I think in the past, you guys have focused most of your acquisition efforts towards what you could describe as sort of mispriced core assets. given it seems like cap rates are compressing in the subset of investment opportunities, is it your expectation that most of what you guys are going to be looking at going forward will sort of be more closer to the risk profile, say, Proscenium versus Sail Tower Vantage in the Link?

No, it's Colin. I think, as I said, we expect them to likely compress, but we still have not seen that compression yet. And so I do think that there is more opportunity consistent with what we have been doing. And certainly, those type of assets fit our quality profile. We're not opposed to looking at high-quality assets that have vacancy and taking lease-up risk. But I would just kind of point out that in our Sunbelt and urban markets where Cousins operates, just given how robust the leasing has been, there are not that many high-quality buildings that have significant vacancy. And so those like Prosenium can arise from time to time, and we would absolutely look to capitalize on those opportunities. But I do think there's more of the recently developed, stabilized, immediately accretive to earnings type opportunities that we're pursuing. And then lastly, as I mentioned before, we are starting to see some large users who are migrating from the West Coast to New York City, very much open to got a new development with deliveries out, call it in 2029. And so we are also spending time on those type of situations as well that I think would come with a significant amount of pre-leasing and very, very attractive return on cost.

That's helpful. I appreciate that color. And then I guess just 1 more. You mentioned RTO was outweighing sort of the weak job growth prospects. But at a certain point in time, this tailwind should naturally wear off and the important driver of office demand will once again be job growth. So just curious to give any thoughts on sort of how long or how much use is left related specifically to some of this RTO demand that we're seeing?

Yes, I think there's still some runway there, again, highlighting Amazon who grew their headcount over the last 5 years by 750,000 people and had not signed a significant amount of leasing along the way. And that's representative of what we're seeing from a lot of different companies. So I do think that there's some runway there. At some point, as you indicated, that will run off. But nothing else is static either, and we would anticipate over time while, we're in a bit of a softer patch now at some point, hopefully, the economy begins to grow and job reductions become job growth once again. And so again, that has us very bullish on what's in front of us. I think it's important to continue to highlight the lack of new supply that gives us really positive runway over the next 4 to 5 years. And the economy will cycle, but without new supply, the market will tighten, and I think it's a good time to be an owner of existing lifestyle office buildings in the Sunbelt.

And that ends our question-and-answer session. I will now hand the call back to Mr. Colin Connolly for any closing remarks.

We appreciate your time and interest in Cousins Properties. I want to wish everybody a happy Halloween. If you have any follow-up questions, please feel free to reach out to Gregg Adzema or Roni Imbeaux and we hope to see many of you at the NAREIT Conference in Dallas in December. Have a good weekend.

And this concludes today's call. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.