Douglas Emmett, Inc. (NYSE:DEI) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Jordan Kaplan: Yes. I think Kevin said it real accurate, I agreed with his. If you want to generate profit or money or capital you can still sell apartments in these markets at very low cap rates. And those trades are happening. I mean, it’s why I keep saying to you guys, we can build way cheaper in terms of cap rate than what people are selling apartments for right now.

Rich Anderson : Okay. Good enough. Okay. And then second question for me is, and you probably get a derivative of this question every other quarter about expanding your geographical horizons, but this is a different world and a different environment. And you said you’re not seeing stress, but you’re kind of waiting and looking. What would you say about nearby markets to the extent that you have some intel there like Orange County or San Diego. I mean does that ring a bell to you at all in terms of having a look at or are you sticking to your knitting where you are now.

Jordan Kaplan: We’re — I would love to get a lot like talk about the market and give you a long and real great sounding answer, but the short answer is what you said. Coming from the book from the ’80s about the 10 habits of successful companies when they go stick to your knitting. That’s what we’re doing. I think our markets are fantastic. I tried to — I don’t — we haven’t gotten any questions about like the 3 things I laid out in the prepared remarks. But I really tried to say in those prepared remarks, like here’s what’s impacting office, and this is why I’m so optimistic about our buildings and our markets and our tenant demand. And I just can’t find a better mix of drivers, supply constraints, environmental and quality of life, I mean the whole deal, then the markets that we’re focused on here.

And when we go to another market [Indiscernible], yes, but you can build a ton or whatever the case may be, and I mentioned the overbuilding is one of the issues. And then, of course, we also have a super good short commute here and the housing nearby and the supply constraints. So I just — it’s very hard to find a mix that’s that good in the other markets, although I think it’s now more people are realizing, I mean, obviously, San Francisco has a very powerful drivers in the universities they are there. And I think their prices have gone way down, probably have gone too low at this point, but I would still say our capital to do stuff here.

Operator: Our next question will come from Camille Bonnel with Bank of America.

Camille Bonnel : So bigger picture think your leasing teams deserve credit for the activity to date just given this challenging market. However, if we look at the portfolio’s occupancy trends, it really hasn’t been enough to offset the declines in — since 2019. So are you seeing this vacancy being concentrated in one or a few of your assets? And can you talk to the sort of downtime you’re seeing in some of this vacancy?

Stuart McElhinney: Yes, Camille, we’re not seeing vacancy concentrated in any particular assets. I mean if you look at the submarket stats we give you, unfortunately, we’ve seen declines kind of across markets as we face the challenges of COVID and now facing the challenges — the more recent challenges that Jordan spoke about in his prepared remarks. So it’s not a specific asset issue. It’s really a demand issue based on the kind of uncertainty in the market. And we have small tenants and when they’re feeling good about their business and they’re in growth mode, then we see incredible pickup, and we know that we can turn things around quickly here and get good positive absorption in growth cycles, but we haven’t seen that yet.