Empire State Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:ESRT) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Michael Griffin with Citi. Please proceed with your questions.

Michael Griffin: Great. Thanks. Just maybe on expectations for 2023 guidance, assuming the mid-point with the run rate of $0.22 in the fourth quarter, is this the way that we should be thinking about it? I mean, I’m calculating kind of back in the envelope map. You’re getting a 6% benefit for increased NOI in the observatory call an $0.08 impact from higher OpEx and real estate taxes, maybe a $0.01 increase from occupancy. Did those numbers sort of give me toward that, that higher end, maybe a little bit above? Anything else I might be missing there that gets us sort of closer to that mid-point?

Christina Chiu: Hey, Griff, I think you have it. Those are the key ingredients. So we do try to be very transparent in terms of the building blocks showing exactly what drives the same-store NOI, so you have those components, right? The other thing I would mention is, when you think about whether you can annualize the last quarter I’m just be a little bit cautious with that. There is some seasonality element to the observatory results. You want to careful not to just take the fourth quarter and annualize that in any given year. The second component is you got the NOI decline, but the other component is on the capital recycling. Just to do the quick map for people it’s about $0.027 in terms of hit on the FFO offset by $0.017 from the contribution of 298 Mulberry that gets you to another $0.01. But you have the right component.

Michael Griffin: Great. Thanks. And then maybe we can shift over to multi-family for a second. I mean, it seems like this has been a growth avenue recently. Tony talked about it a bit in his prepared remarks. Looking at the investor deck, the pro forma, including Mulberry, makes up about 5% of the portfolio. You’ve talked about being more of a New York City focused REIT. I’m just curious how big a piece of the pie you think this could grow to be in sort of the near to medium-term?

Christina Chiu: Yes. So we’ve definitely mentioned our interest in any asset class, it makes a ton of sense for us as a New York City focused player to have quality office drivers, to have the everyday retail, to have the observatory business, and having residential demand makes a ton of sense. As we’ve previously responded to this line of questioning, we don’t think it’s prudent to put a target out there and say, we’ll achieve it, no matter what. Because the reality is multi-family is very thought after, the fundamentals are very healthy. And so we want to balance and say we are interested. We have strong liquidity positioning, but we want to be prudent in the way we source deals and go after transactions.

Michael Griffin: Great.

Tony Malkin: I’d just like to add if I may, Griff two things. One — three actually. One, we really got dumped on when we announced our first multi-family transaction. We thought it was the right time to do it. Everybody thought it was the wrong thing to do. We — number two, we are omnivorous opportunivores, so we will go where we see opportunity to develop shareholder value. Three, when we note our occupancy of 96% that, that, that Tom noted, we actually have units under renovation in our portfolio. So that is not an adjusted for units, not in circulation. That’s the gross number. So there’s a little bit of play there. And I just might add again, our focus is on cash, cash delivery, we focus less on FFO and we focus more on cash. So we’re really pleased with what we’ve done and we’ll continue to look at that opportunity as we go forward on acquisitions.