Earnings Labs

Gladstone Commercial Corporation (GOOD)

Q3 2013 Earnings Call· Tue, Nov 5, 2013

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Gladstone Commercial Corporation Third Quarter Ended September 30, 2013, Shareholders' Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this event is being recorded. Now I would like to turn the conference over to David Gladstone. Mr. Gladstone, please go ahead.

David J. Gladstone

Analyst · that existing vacancy you have there

All right. Thank you, Keith, for that nice introduction, and thank you all for calling in. We always enjoy this time we have with you and wish we could figure out another way to have some more calls, but, right now, it's just once a quarter. Here in the Washington, D.C. area, please come by and visit us. You're always welcome to come by and say hello. We're located in a suburb of Washington, D.C. called McLean, Virginia. Again, you have an open invitation to come by. You'll see a great team at work, or at least some of them, and you can find many of them on the road. There are about 60 members of the team now, so we're no longer a small business. And even a couple of people, we're dog friendly, who will bring their dogs to work, so we have a lot of fun with those puppies. Let me read this statement for looking forward, this report that we're about to give may include statements that may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, including statements with regard to the future performance of the company. These forward-looking statements involve certain risks and uncertainties that -- and we believe those plans to be reasonable. There are many factors that may cause the actual results to be materially different from any future results expressed or implied in these forward-looking statements, including all those factors that are listed under the caption Risk Factors of our company’s 10-Ks and 10-Qs and filings with the SEC. Those 10-Ks and 10-Qs can be found on our website at www.gladstonecommercial.com and also on the SEC's website. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any of the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. In our talks today, we plan to talk about funds from operation or, as we call it, FFO. And since FFO is a non-GAAP accounting term, I'll define it here. FFO is net income, excluding any gains or losses from the sale of real estate and any impaired losses from the property, plus depreciation and amortization of the real estate assets. The National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts has endorsed the FFO as one of those non-accounting standards that we can use in discussing our REIT, as well as all the other REITs out there. Please see our 10-Q filed yesterday with the SEC and our financial statements for a much more detailed description of how our FFO was arrived at. As always we'll begin today from hearing from our President, Bob Cutlip, and so, Bob, go ahead, please.

Robert G. Cutlip

Analyst · that existing vacancy you have there

Thanks, David. Good morning, everyone. During the quarter, we acquired 2 properties and simultaneously closed long-term financing on both of these properties, closed on 1 additional long-term financing on an existing property we acquired in the second quarter, closed on a new unsecured line of credit, extended leases on 3 of our properties that were set to expire in 2014, released one of our previously vacant properties, issued common equity under our ATM program and hired a Managing Director to lead our Western region acquisition program, a fairly active quarter for our team. We're having a great good year. So far during this fiscal year ending December 31, we have acquired a total of $109 million in new properties, exceeding our 2012 annual performance with 2 months remaining. Our pipeline is robust, and we hope to announce additional acquisitions in the near future. Now for some details. During the quarter ended September 30, we acquired 2 additional properties. The first property acquired was a 320,000-square-foot multi-story office building in Austin, Texas. The property serves as 1 of 4 national Innovation Centers for General Motors Company. The purchase price was $57 million which equates to an average cap rate of 8.3% over the life of the lease. We funded this acquisition with proceeds received from our common equity raise in June and the issuance of $35.3 million of mortgage debt on the property. GM has 7 years remaining on the lease and has several renewal options. We really like the building's location in Austin's technology corridor, which is also home to the likes of Apple, Samsung, Oracle and Dell, among others. The second property acquired was a 115,200-square-foot office building purchased for $15.2 million, with an average cap rate of 9.3% over the life of the lease. The property is located…

David J. Gladstone

Analyst · that existing vacancy you have there

All right. Good presentation. Now let's turn to our Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, Danielle Jones, for a report on the financial results. Danielle?

Danielle Jones

Analyst

Thanks, David, and good morning, everybody. Our quarterly results were strong and reflect our growth from our recent acquisitions. This is evidenced by our total assets increasing to $666 million from our new acquisitions during the quarter, which is a 12% increase from last quarter and a 27% increase in assets over the past 12 months. The amounts outstanding under long-term mortgages and our line of credit also increased to $438 million as a result of the funding of our new acquisitions. Reviewing our upcoming long-term debt maturities, we have mortgage debt in the aggregate principal amount of $10.5 million payable during the remainder of 2013 and $25.3 million payable during 2014. The 2013 and 2014 principal amounts payable include balloon principal payments due in December of this year and June of 2014. We have signed a term sheet with a lender to refinance the debt that matures in December of this year and anticipate closing on this mortgage by the end of this month. We intend to pay the additional debt amortization payments from operating cash flow and borrowings under our line of credit. The weighted average interest rate in our existing mortgages dropped 10 basis points this quarter to 5.5% from low rates we achieved on new mortgages this year. Now let's turn to equity. These -- $49 million of common equity raised in the second quarter to fund our second and third quarter acquisitions. We were also able to utilize our at-the-market program, or the ATM program, during the quarter. We raised about $1.5 million in net proceeds until we elected to halt the program with the increased volatility in the equity market. The ATM continues to be a great way for us to raise additional equity in a cost-effective manner. We may use the ATM program…

David J. Gladstone

Analyst · that existing vacancy you have there

All right. Thank you, Danielle. That's a good report. Again, we encourage all the listeners to read our press release and our quarterly reports that are filed yesterday with the SEC, called Form 10-Q. There's just a lot of good information in that material and those documents. And you can find them on our website www.gladstonecommercial.com and also on the SEC website. I encourage you also to stay up to date with the latest news involving this company and our other public companies. Please follow us on Twitter using GladstoneComps, C-O-M-P-S at the end, and on Facebook under the keywords The Gladstone Companies. And you can go to our general website to find out more information about all the Gladstone entities at www.gladstone.com. The main news to report this quarter is that we were able to acquire 2 additional properties and simultaneously closed financing on these properties. We've got a new unsecured line of credit in place and renewed several leases that were set to come due next year. So we are also able to release one of our previous vacant buildings, and I think you'll see a couple more of those as time goes on. This is very positive news for all the shareholders that we have added quality real estate to our portfolio, we shored up the existing investments and grown our assets in excess of $100 million during 2013. As we continue to grow and our market capitalization increases, we hope to see higher trading volumes in our stock and hope to see a corresponding uptick in the stock price. Even though we recently acquired a large amount of properties, we continue to have a very nice pipeline of properties that we're looking at, and we're certainly interested in acquiring a lot more properties, so stay tuned…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And the first question comes from Daniel Donlan with Ladenburg Thalmann. Daniel P. Donlan - Ladenburg Thalmann & Co. Inc., Research Division: David or, actually, Bob, I'm sorry if I missed this, did you give any update on the Roseville property and kind of what you're seeing there from a prospect as -- on the prospect side and what's the determination on what to do with that existing vacancy you have there?

Robert G. Cutlip

Analyst · that existing vacancy you have there

Sure, Dan. We have now 3 prospects for that building. As I think you know and as we've reported before, this building is a B Class office building in a B submarket. And so the only types of users that really make sense for this property are the call center types. And we have a collection agency interested in it. We have a 100,000-square-foot prospect, which is a state agency, and then we have an undisclosed for 25,000 to 30,000-square-feet. The building, it has large floor plates, so it is attractive to those types of users but not for the typical office user that is in the 10,000- to 15,000-square-foot range because of the depths of the building. With that said, I mean, I think our team is doing as best they can to try to uncover opportunities for the property. Daniel P. Donlan - Ladenburg Thalmann & Co. Inc., Research Division: Okay. I think there was a chatter of you guys maybe thinking about doing some type of -- a data center type of tenant. Is that off the table now?

Robert G. Cutlip

Analyst · that existing vacancy you have there

We have a prospect who has gone quiet on us to -- who is a data center user, it's a 15,000-square-foot user, but that has been quiet for the last 30 to 45 days. Daniel P. Donlan - Ladenburg Thalmann & Co. Inc., Research Division: Understood. And then I appreciate the commentary on the lease expirations in '14, how much progress you've made. Could we maybe talk about the leasing commissions and the capital improvements and how that may trend in 2014? Have you pulled a lot of that forward into '13 because -- in renegotiating these leases? Or what can we kind of expect? If I look at your leasing commissions paid, you're on a $340,000-per-quarter type of run rate, and your capital improvements is about $1.7 million per quarter. What can we expect on that in 2014?

Robert G. Cutlip

Analyst · that existing vacancy you have there

I'll probably have to get back to you with the specifics on that because of the expected lease up. I can tell you that we're expecting lease up of the 12,000-square-foot facility and the 42,000-square-foot facility in the first half of next year, and those are probably going to run anywhere from $10 to $12 a square foot, so that would probably be during the first half of next year. Commissions are going to be higher than you would like them to be, but they're probably going to be around 6%. And the rents for those buildings are going to be $18 to $20 for the medical facility and about $8 to $10 for the other facility. So that's about as good as I can give you on a generic basis, but we do have those plan to be leased to be leased up at the part of next -- the first half of next year. Daniel P. Donlan - Ladenburg Thalmann & Co. Inc., Research Division: Right. But it sounds like both, in my eye, should be down a decent amount in 2014 versus '13. Is that right?

Robert G. Cutlip

Analyst · that existing vacancy you have there

That is correct. That's what we're thinking right now, yes. One of the things to think about, though, also, Dan, and maybe we can get some of that information for you, is that we are working on our 2015 leases. Because the team is out there doing, I think, a great job of getting out in front with our clients 18 to 24 months before expiration, so we will probably have a -- since we have 10 that are expiring in 2015, and we're talking to 8 of them at this time, I would anticipate that we would be expending some of those dollars for sure in the 2014 time frame, depending upon what the tenant really wants to do, because if they want to wait, then they could be delayed until 2015. But to encourage them to extend and to extend for a much longer term, we may willing -- be willing to spend a little bit of CapEx to get them lease signed earlier. Daniel P. Donlan - Ladenburg Thalmann & Co. Inc., Research Division: Okay. And then, David, just I went back and looked through my model, and you guys have done an excellent job of maintaining the dividend, but it hasn't seen any growth since, I think, 2007. And it looks like the credit that you're giving back to the investment advisor is kind of keeping a dent on your ability to grow the dividend. Have you given any thoughts of potentially restructuring your incentive fee agreement to maybe lower that in order to allow dividend growth to flow through to the company?

David J. Gladstone

Analyst · that existing vacancy you have there

It's an interesting discussion, but what I look at is what we're able to do in terms of moving the earnings up faster. And so as we look at it, we're up $0.38, $.385 really, in that range, over $0.37 last quarter. So you're seeing a movement up, and that movement is the earnings moved up by about 19.2%, but the number of shareholders only moved up by about 14.7%. So you're starting to gain on what you're talking about, that is having the ability to bring in more income and raise less money in terms of that same number. So our goal is keep that going. And as the earnings grow -- or FFO grows faster than the number of shares that we have to put out, you'll see that being able to jack up the dividend at some point in time. It's just -- what happens with us is, because we raise such small amounts when we do the equity offerings, it takes us a little while to get that raise and get that invested in. So as a result, there's that lag. And as we get bigger, we'll be able to master that gulf between the time we raise the money on the one hand and the time we are able to get it to work. That's always the problem. When there is a raise and don't have closing shortly thereafter, there is a dilution to the existing shareholders because we're still so small. I mean, you're talking about a company that's $164 million in total equity, and you raise $20 million, that's -- that can be a big dilutive effect. And if we raise $30 or $40 million, it is a big one. So our goal is, again, to raise smaller amounts, get it to work faster, and just have to come to market more frequently, unfortunately. We're in good shape right now. The last one we have, the building that we think we're going to close on, we have money to do that. So sometime in the not-too-distant future, we'll have to do some kind of offering, perhaps, but right now we're in great shape. Daniel P. Donlan - Ladenburg Thalmann & Co. Inc., Research Division: Okay. And then just lastly, I'm looking at your implied cap rate, and it's roughly north -- barely north of 8%. It's one of the highest implied cap rates in the net lease sector. You're seeing lots of net lease portfolios trade sub-7% cap. Would you ever consider, looking at exploring a liquidity event with somebody that's larger, given there's so much chatter about consolidation in net lease space?

David J. Gladstone

Analyst · that existing vacancy you have there

I don't think so. I think our niche is so different from most of the net lease people. They're all doing leases that are -- get at least a double-B or a triple-B. None of our smaller transactions are rated. We've got about 50% of our tenants are rated, and so we're very different from just about anybody out there. I'm not sure any of the larger REITs would want to buy somebody like us, nor do we really want to sell. It's a good fit with what we do on our entire group. The entire group is fixed dramatically on small and mid-sized businesses, and so this just goes along with our abilities over there as well. So our goal is, at this point in time, to continue to grow and continue to pay good, strong dividends to our shareholders.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And our next question comes from Jeff Rudner with UBS.

Jeffrey Rudner

Analyst · UBS

I'd like to follow up, though, a little bit on the questions raised by the previous caller, specifically regarding the dividend. You pointed out that the investment income has gone up steadily, and you anticipate that the NII will go up over the next number of quarters, if not years. Could you possibly give us some kind of guidance as to when you think the NII would be sufficient that you could raise the dividend to any -- on any meaningful level?

David J. Gladstone

Analyst · UBS

I don't know what you mean by meaningful level, but I'll...

Jeffrey Rudner

Analyst · UBS

Well, even like $0.13 a month as opposed to the current $0.125.

David J. Gladstone

Analyst · UBS

Yes, that's probably a year off, I would guess. At the rate we're going now, if we can do quarters like we just did, which was a very strong quarter, then it would be sooner. But at our current pace, I think you're looking at ways off yet. As you know, one of my hallmarks of running these companies is never cut the dividend. And so our goal is to make sure we never put ourselves in a position of having to cut the dividend, so we like to be very strong in terms of earnings before we phase the dividend.

Jeffrey Rudner

Analyst · UBS

Okay. Also you mentioned that a number of leases are coming up in 2015, and you're already working with the tenants on potential new leases. Would you anticipate the new leases to be at higher rates than they currently are at?

David J. Gladstone

Analyst · UBS

Depends on, obviously, the market where you are, the tenant and those kind of things. But generally speaking, we do raise our rents when we have new leases now. In this last round, trying to remember, there were a couple that were not -- that were less because the marketplace had changed. It's all dependent on the market that they're in. And so I think the goal is always to increase the rate, but you can only increase it if the marketplace is there for you. And that's why we're working right now very hard on 2015, simply because we don't know what 2015 is going to look like. And if we wait until 2015 to try to work it, it may be higher, it may be lower, but we would be really nice to lock up during this year all of the 2015 leases and start working on 2016 next year, staying way ahead of the curve rather than waiting for it to come or come in real quick.

Operator

Operator

There are no more questions at the present time. Do you have any closing comments?

David J. Gladstone

Analyst · that existing vacancy you have there

No. We appreciate the opportunity to give out some information, and we'll try to do a better job and give a little more detailed information on our leases next time. But thanks again to everybody, and that's the end of this call.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect. Have a nice day.