Vornado Realty Trust (NYSE:VNO) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Michael Franco: I’ll just add one other thing. The senior team has kept their comp flat for generally in the last four years or five years. We obviously – Joe and Dave are tied up, I think we’ve taken a lot of steps. And I think we’re all major shareholders. It’s a big part of our net worth and not the largest, and we act like owners. We run the business that way.

Steven Roth: Alex, you know that overhead does not go down in proportion with a business which is reducing. So it’s much more efficient to grow than it is to reduce. So we acknowledge that our G&A has not gone down the proportion to the top line of our business. We keep looking at it – it but there are, we believe we have a fairly efficient operation, but you’re correct about the ratios.

Operator: Thank you. And our next question today comes from Dylan Burzinski with Green Street. Please go ahead.

Dylan Burzinski: Hi guys. Thanks for taking the question. I guess, and I appreciate your comments on sort of the challenging capital markets environment, especially for office. But I guess just as you think about the portfolio and the capital allocation game plan moving forward, is it your sense that you’ll continue to try and take advantage of potential disposition opportunities in the near future?

Michael Franco: Morning, Dylan. The answer is, yes. We are – we’ve obviously sold some things over the course of the year. We’re working on some other things right now. They’re not, I would say, they’re more bilateral than broadly marketed opportunities, because I think that’s a smarter way to try to execute in this environment. So we have a handful of things that we’re working on. I’m not going to sit here and promise that any of them will get done, but there’s a likelihood that a portion of those could get done. So the answer is we’re going to be opportunistic in terms of either selling or recapitalizing some assets. We’re going to do it if we think the pricing is accretive. I sort of come back to what I said a few moments ago, which is we’re in a good position from a cash standpoint.

We’re sitting on over $1 billion. We don’t have to do anything, but we’d like to do some things. And so our goal is to generate some meaningful proceeds both delevering to attack the stock and so we’re working on some things, and we’ll just have to see how it plays out.

Dylan Burzinski: And just to point on sort of there being a lack of overall debt financing for the sector today, is there any appetite to offer seller financing for a small portion of any future dispositions? Or I guess just how do you guys think about that?

Michael Franco: Sure. I think if you followed our company, we don’t like creativity. So if seller financing can help facilitate a transaction, and we think that the overall transaction makes sense, we absolutely consider that.

Dylan Burzinski: Appreciate the details. Thanks.

Operator: Thank you. And our next question today comes from John Kim at BMO Capital Markets.

John Kim: Thank you. Can I ask about leasing activity. It was a little bit light compared to your 508,000 [ph] square feet in negotiations last quarter. I was wondering how much of that is timing related versus deals that fell apart?

Glen Weiss: Hi John, it’s Glen. It’s all timing related. So as we said earlier, based on the timing of some leases at 11 to 4Q versus 3Q, we expect to be at 2 million feet by the end of the year based on the activity we have and based on where those leases are currently in documentation. So it was all timing related, you’re correct.

John Kim: Okay. Any more color you could provide on that 750,000 square feet of leases that you expect to close in the fourth quarter? I think you mentioned 280 Park and 1290 Ave of Americas, but – is THE MART included in this as well? And any color on the types of tenants that you’re signing?