Michael F. Foust
Analyst · Bank of America
Thank you, Pamela. Welcome to the call, everyone. My comments today will focus on providing additional color around our leasing results and our recent acquisitions activity. I will also briefly discuss details of our Build-to-Suit program and its progress thus far. My concluding remarks will include a review of the current supply-demand dynamics in Santa Clara, New Jersey, as well as an overview of our construction activity. Following my remarks I'll turn the call over to Bill who will review our strong financial performance and revised 2011 guidance, we'll discuss our financial strategy, and the key role it plays in funding our growth. The market for DLR's data center solutions continues to be very strong with good demand from providers of cloud services, collocation, network peering and financial services. As reported, our leasing results for the third quarter were in line with expectations and new leases will generate approximately $22 million of annualized GAAP revenue. While not as strong as our exceptional second quarter results, we continue to see steady demand from customers for our suite of data center solutions. We're expanding existing customers in multiple markets including SoftLayer and IBM in Singapore, Net2EZ in L.A., as well as the recently announced new Build-to-Suit for Equinix in Seattle. We also signed new customers, such as the Build-to-Suit for NetApp in Hillsborough, Oregon, a suburb of Portland. We have a good funnel of prospects under negotiation and expect to meet our projections for new leasing in 2011. We believe that our strategy of offering the market a variety of flexible solutions that are truly customer-driven will continue to deliver strong results for our shareholders. Relatively long lease terms are the norm. The average lease terms for all leases signed in third quarter was 123 months over 10 years. For turnkey space the average lease term was 110 months, or a little over 9 years. These lease terms have trended toward the high end of our average target range of 7 to 10 years, and we believe this reflects the quality of our data center solutions and that customers’ confidence in our long-term commitment to them. For the Build-to-Suit transaction, initial lease terms are typically between 10 and 15 years. We have a good leasing backlog for the balance of 2011, totaling nearly 270,000 square feet and $21.8 million of annual GAAP rent. This includes the 153,000 square-foot Build-to-Suit with Equinix in Northern Virginia that's scheduled to commence in the fourth quarter. We have strong momentum heading into next year, as well. The backlog at the end of the third quarter for leases commencing in 2012 is over 226,000 square feet, representing almost $37 million of annual GAAP rent. Our acquisitions activity is picking up in all regions. As mentioned on our last call during the third quarter, we expanded our Asia-Pacific footprint, entering the Australian market with the closing of a development site with 20 megawatts of allocated power in Sydney, Australia. This site was acquired for AUD $10.1 million, approximately USD $10.9 million. We have secure planning permission to develop 2 100,000 square-foot buildings, each delivering at least 6 megawatts of IT load. Construction on the first building began this month. There is a significant lack of supply for enterprise solutions in the market and customer interest in the site is good. We followed up with a second transaction in Australia, with the acquisition of a development site in Melbourne for AUD $4.1 million, that's about USD $4.3 million. We are already in negotiations with the financial services firm for the first 60,000 square-foot building. We're confident that our commitment to the Sydney and Melbourne markets will lead to a significant presence in Australia for DLR. In terms of our plans to further expand in the Asia Pac region, we continue to explore development opportunities in Hong Kong where we see very attractive corporate demand from new and existing multinational customer of ours. While it remains a very challenging market to enter we have interesting prospects that we're working diligently to secure. In Europe, we closed on the 130,000 square-foot redevelopment property in suburban London that we acquired during the quarter and discussed in our last call. In spite of the challenges in the European Capital Markets, demand in London from international financial services firms is good and we are in discussions with interested parties already on this project. In addition, we closed this week on another development site in Dublin, Ireland for a purchase price of EUR 4.5 million. There's quite a bit of data center activity in London -- I'm sorry, in Dublin by international firms. We are virtually 100% leased in Dublin, so we want to have the ability to deliver inventory for the new requirements that we see emerging. Consistent with our strategy, these acquisitions provide DLR with future inventory enabling us to bring new products online incrementally to meet visible customer demand in our key European markets, while maintaining our investment discipline. We also completed the acquisition of a 69,000 square-foot data center facility in Sacramento for a purchase price of $30 million. The facility is fully leased on a long-term basis to a quality data center services tenant, and will contribute approximately $3.3 million of annualized GAAP rental revenue. As we mentioned on previous calls, the market for acquiring income-producing data center assets is somewhat limited, which is reflected in our revised guidance assumptions for the year. However, we do expect to close on over $200 million of income properties in 2011 that would generate attractive risk adjusted returns for our shareholders. Turning to our Build-to-Suit program, during the quarter we acquired the first of 2 development sites in the Pacific Northwest. The first site was acquired for $1.6 million in conjunction with the Build-to-Suit agreement with NetApp to lease a 58,000-foot facility. It is located in the Hillsborough Oregon enterprise zone, approximately 18 miles west of Portland. Hillsborough is the home to numerous high-tech and clean tech manufacturing companies and emerging data centers. In addition to the favorable tax treatment offered by the enterprise zones, the development will benefit from the mild Northwest Oregon climate. This is ideal for air site economization, which uses the outside air to cool the data center, resulting in lower overall power costs. All of these attributes were important considerations for NetApp as we worked with them during the site selection process. The second project in Northwest, which closed in October, is located in downtown Seattle. The redeveloped site for a 50,000 square-foot data center was acquired in a joint venture partnership with Clise Properties, our JV partner in the adjacent Westin Building. In conjunction with the acquisition, we signed a long-term lease agreement with Equinix for the entire facility. And finally, during the third quarter we signed a Build-to-Suit agreement with an existing customer at one of our Silicon Valley properties. The project expands the building's existing footprint by approximately 40,000 square feet, with completion schedules for the end of first quarter of 2012. As reflected in our results this quarter, we are expanding our Build-to-Suit program to more broadly address the trend for corporate enterprises and IT services companies to outsource their data center facilities to DLR. This option allows companies to invest their capital in growing their businesses while leveraging our real estate and data center design and construction expertise, as well as our supply chain and financial resources. Though challenging, we believe that over time we can increase our market share by offering a robust Build-to-Suit program along with our other flexible data center solutions. As to return expectations for the Build-to-Suit program, we are targeting a return on investment range of approximately 9% to 11% on an unlevered basis, which we believe is consistent with our philosophy on risk-adjusted returns. This range falls between our target cash cap rates for more stabilized assets of between 8% and 9%, and our general spec development returns projected to be 11% to 14% upon stabilization. As stated in our leasing press release, we had good renewal activity, rolling over approximately 646,000 square feet of space resulting in a healthy 16.9% increase in GAAP rents. The majority of the renewals consisted of approximately 74,000 feet of turnkey data center renewed, which resulted in a 7.6% increase on a GAAP basis, and a small 2% decrease on a first year cash basis. And this will be made up typically in the second year with our usual rent bumps in the leases. In addition, we renewed 557,000 square feet of Powered Base Building, which renewed for a 32% increase on a GAAP basis and a 4% increase on a cash basis. Center retention was very strong, 91% on a square foot basis for turnkey leases. On a revenue basis, turnkey leases renewed at approximately 99% of GAAP or 90% of cash rents with an average lease term of over 66 months. Over 97% of expiring Powered Base Building space was renewed during the quarter at 120% of GAAP rents or over 94% of cash rental revenues with an average lease term of over 83 months. Across all of our market, we see active demand for new facilities. We're currently engaged with potential customers representing over 2.1 million square feet of new requirements, which is consistent with what we reported in our last call. This identified 2.1 million square feet compares to a much less 1.4 million square feet identified at year-end 2010, so we've seen over the last 10 months, quite a buildup of potential new requirements across our markets. Turning to a couple of individual markets. In New Jersey, on an aggregate basis, we're tracking over 42 megawatts of demand plus nearly 33 megawatts of earlier stage opportunities. We believe that the increase in demand over last quarter reflects the pent up demand from financial services as well as system integrators and managed services and cloud providers that support financials and other large corporates. This compares to approximately 24 megawatts of available built out supply. At DLR, our New Jersey financial exposure is relatively small. We currently have 2 turnkey pods built or about 2.2 megawatts currently available of fully fitted-out space. Aside from a 5,600 square-foot lease that we signed at our Piscataway property, to our knowledge no significant wholesale data center leases were signed in the third quarter. We estimate that DLR represents approximately 68% of the 16 megawatts of supply that we believe the New Jersey market has absorbed year-to-date. In Silicon Valley, the market also appears to be in equilibrium. On an aggregate basis we're tracking nearly 26 megawatts of demand compared to 27 megawatts of currently available built out supply. Year-to-date we estimate that the market has absorbed approximately 29 megawatts of supply, and that includes a 40,000 square-foot 3 megawatts Build-to-Suit requirement we signed during the quarter. As of New Jersey, our financial exposure at present is very manageable. We currently have 0.5 ton available in our Alfred Street property and are at conclusion on 2 turnkey pods for a total near-term availability of 2.8 megawatts in Santa Clara. Year-to-date, we estimate DLR represented approximately 16% or 14.5 megawatts of these Silicon Valley absorption. Portfolio occupancy was steady at 93.7% in the third quarter compared to 93.9% in the second quarter. This very small decrease was primarily due to new turnkey data center space that was delivered during the third quarter. Approximately 53,000 square feet of the turnkey space that was delivered, has been leased, but not yet commenced. It's important to note that the amount of space actually under lease in the portfolio increased by 244,000 square feet in the third quarter. Same-store occupancy remained steady at 94.2% in the third quarter. Same-store NOI was relatively unchanged from the previous quarter at $132.6 million. Same-store cash NOI, which we define as same-store NOI adjusted for straight line rents and adjusted for non-cash purchase accounting adjustments was a $119.6 million in the second quarter -- I'm sorry, in the third quarter, $119.6 million in the third quarter, up slightly from $118.6 million in the second quarter. We continue our robust construction program delivering new products to meet demand in the U.S., in Europe and in Asia Pac. During the quarter we completed over 226,000 square feet of data center space. This consists of nearly 156,000 feet of turnkey space that was over 78% leased at completion, and 15,000 square feet of PBB, Power Based Building space, that was over 86% leased. We also completed construction and delivered a 56,000 square-foot Build-to-Suit project in Amsterdam that is 100% leased with Terremark. At quarter end, we're under construction on turnkey space totaling over 350,000 square feet, including 229,000 square feet in the U.S., nearly 15,000 square feet in Europe, and approximately 106,000 square feet in Singapore, which has been a very active market for us. Approximately 16% of this space overall has been pre-leased. For Power Base space, we're under construction on just shy of 400,000 square feet in the U.S, in Europe we had about 148,000 square feet of PBB space under construction and this includes the new Chessington redevelopment property I mentioned earlier of 130,000 square feet. Combining the U.S. and Europe, approximately 3% of the PBB space is pre-leased, which is to be expected. Lastly, we have approximately 251,000 square feet of Build-to-Suit space under construction in the U.S., which is 100% leased, including preconstruction work and common building improvements, the total construction work in progress at the quarter end was $173 million. The estimated cost to complete the ongoing September 30 work in progress is $468 million. So we think we're running on all cylinders here and in a very, very good position to continue to deliver our data center solutions for our customers across multiple markets that will continue to drive good growth for our company. This concludes my prepared remarks and now, I'd like to turn the call over to our CFO, Bill Stein.