Federal Realty Investment Trust (NYSE:FRT) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Jeff Berkes : Yes. Paulina, it’s Jeff. And I think I understand your question. I think you’re talking about the number of people that come to work every day, Monday through Friday, at the office buildings at Santana Row. I’ll tell you two things about that. One, that’s a small part of the traffic at Santana Row. Santana Row generates a ton of traffic over the year. And the primary reason people are coming there is to shop, eat and enjoy the property. The weekday traffic is building as well as return to office is ramping up in Silicon Valley. So, we do see that coming back and coming back strongly. But overall, that’s a relatively small component. And like Dan said in his prepared remarks, traffic today at Santana Row is above what it was in 2019. So, we’re in pretty good shape there, and I appreciate the question.

Operator: And our next question is from Mike Mueller with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.

Michael Mueller: Hi. I guess looking at the future phases at Assembly, Pike & Rose and Santana, whenever you think the time is right, how — I guess, what’s the time frame to reactivate those various phases in the project?

Don Wood : That’s a great question, Mike. And there’s an important underlying assumption here. We love the development component of our business. And there are certainly times like now where we turn down that spigot and aren’t comfortable to be able to start construction. But don’t let that misinform you to believe that, capacity and the work that we do with our team, which stays together during down cycles here. Making its shovel ready to be able to activate quicker — the idea is to be able to activate quicker than any of the competition. That’s what we try to do. So, the ability to stay very tight on not only with our contractor, with pricing, with entitlements for future phases at places like Assembly, it’s front of mind all the time.

So, whatever is going on in the market, Mike, and I don’t have a crystal ball with respect to ’23 or ’24 or ’25, but I know we’ll be back at it faster than most. And that’s the key competitive standpoint in terms of the way we look at it.

Operator: And our next question is from Ki Bin Kim with Truist. Please proceed with your question.

Ki Bin Kim: Thanks. Something I believe we’re at a point on Santana West. But from a business standpoint, I’m actually curious if you go multi-tenant. And I would guess that maybe prolongs the lease-up time frame. So even though you’re capitalizing cost for longer, shouldn’t the all-in cost expectation go up, therefore, the yield come down incrementally? I’m not sure if there’s probably other variables to consider, but I was just curious if you can provide some color around that.

Don Wood : Yes. No, it’s a very fair question. I’m not sure it will take longer. And the reason is because we are building out the individual floors. So that work, effectively a year’s worth of work here, is being done ahead of time. And so, on timing, I think feeling pretty good. In terms of the extra carry and potentially on cost, yes, I would expect those to be incrementally higher, but we also have benefits in terms of our base building and lots of other things that are reducing the cost of Santana West. And I guess the last point to really make just make sure you’re not overemphasizing this one building that makes up 1.5 points — 1.5% of the asset base of the company. And when you kind of sit back and you take like our entire office portfolio, they back out just Santana West, just alone, even our ongoing other buildings, which are under construction, in total, 92% leased.