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

Michael Griffin: That’s great, Tony. Appreciate the additional color. That’s it for me.

Christina Chiu: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Blaine Heck with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your questions.

Blaine Heck: Okay. Thanks. Good afternoon. First question, just to follow-up on the leasing environment, are you seeing signs that tenants are any more likely to look at hoteling or hot desking as a way to kind of efficiently use their office space in a more hybrid environment?

Tom Durels: No. Short answer is no, Blaine. The — there are examples of tenants that were doing hoteling pre-COVID, and there are examples of tenants that are doing hoteling post-COVID. But in an environment where employers are looking to attract and retain talent and all just about everybody speaks about the need to get folks together for things like collaboration creative — creativity, team building, mentoring, train all of these things, the desire by employees is to have their individual workspace. And that’s what drives the demand for office space. But I think that the concept that tenants are moving towards hoteling because of change of work habits is we’re just not seeing that.

Tony Malkin: Yes. I’ll just add, I attended a conference back in 2019, in which I was asked with two other prominent execs in real estate to comment on the future of short-term office space use WeWork Convene, Industrious, Knotel. And one person cited a statistic from an economist at Jones Lang LaSalle that by within five years, 30% of all office space would be occupied on short-term users — by short-term users for short-term flex space. Well, clearly that hasn’t happened and it won’t happen. I would also comment on the irony of articles of how difficult it is to be fired when you’re remote and you don’t have an office environment within which to work and to relate to your peers. We feel very confident that ultimately the office plays the central role in businesses going forward. And as per comments we’ve made in the past, it’s probably 2024 before that settles down completely.

Blaine Heck: All right. That’s helpful. Thanks, Tom and Tony. For my second question, I want to switch gears to same-same NOI. Recently as last quarter you guys had guidance for negative 10% to negative 12% same-store NOI in 2022. You significantly beat that number at negative 4.1% for the year. Just using that as context, I guess, how should we think about the negative 4% to negative 6% same-store guidance for 2023, and ultimately, how much conservative is built into that forecast? I guess, is there a scenario in which you could beat that forecast to the degree that you did here in 2022?

Christina Chiu: Yes. So clarification, so last quarter in our remarks, we did say it was closer to about 8% down. We still beat it, but it was about 8% down. So the print didn’t reflect that. And it did reflect conservatism. So a couple of things. OpEx we wanted to make sure it came in and the result was OpEx came in in line — relatively in line with our expectations. And on the revenue side, we had higher reimbursement revenue, higher rental revenue and a few other income items and that resulted in a better outcome. There is conservatism in 2023, and as much as we can, we hope to outperform what we promise, but we do try to be conservative reflecting the uncertainties in the market and we hope to deliver the results as we increase guidance over any given period.

Operator: Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of John Kim with BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your questions.