Q4 2023 Centerspace Earnings Call

Participants

Joshua Klaetsch; Director of Investor Relations; Centerspace

Anne Olson; President, CEO, Secretary, & Trustee; Centerspace

Bhairav Patel; CFO & EVP; Centerspace

Grant Campbell; SVP, Investments; Centerspace

Brad Heffern; Analyst; RBC Capital Markets

Connor Mitchell; Analyst; Piper Sandler Companies

John Kim; Analyst; BMO Capital Markets

Rob Stevenson; Analyst; Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Barry Oxford; Analyst; Colliers Securities LLC

Wes Golladay; Analyst; Robert W. Baird & Co. Inc.

Presentation

Operator

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Centerspace Q4 2023 earnings call. My name is Henry, and I'll be coordinating your call today. (Operator Instructions)
Now I'd like to hand the call over to Josh Klaetsch from Centerspace.

Joshua Klaetsch

Just briefly, we anticipate this Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2023 was filed with the SEC yesterday after the market closed. Additionally, our earnings release and supplemental disclosure package have been posted to our website at CenterspaceHomes.com and filed on Form 8-K.
It's important to note that today's remarks will include statements about our business outlook and other forward-looking statements that are based on management's current views and assumptions. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties discussed in our filing under the section titled Risk Factors and in our other filings with the SEC.
We cannot guarantee that any forward-looking statement will materialize, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Please refer to our earnings release for reconciliation of any non-GAAP information which may be discussed on today's call. I'll now turn it over to Anne Olson for the company's prepared remarks.

Anne Olson

Thanks, Dash, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our call. With me this morning is Bhairav Patel, our Chief Financial Officer; and Grant Campbell, who leads our investment and capital markets activities.
Last night, we reported $4.78 of core FFO per diluted share for 2023, representing growth of 7.9% over 2022. These excellent results were driven by strong year-over-year same-store NOI growth of 9%, together with significant outperformance of our projections on G&A items. During 2023, we faced macroeconomic uncertainty, softening multifamily fundamentals and ICEO. transitions.
This was a lot of uncertainty. And so pleased with how our team has responded, our financial performance and the efficiencies that we have harvested on the G&A side of the business, we feel well-positioned as we head into 2024. It will be a difficult year given continued economic volatility and multifamily supply pressures. But we feel great about the relative position of our portfolio with attainable average rents and geographic exposures in the mid Mountain West, which we think will translate into growth in 2024 at the midpoint.
Our 2024 projections include same-store NOI growth of 2.5%, driving overall core FFO growth of 0.4%, with guidance at $4.80 per diluted share for the full year. While Bhairav will provide more detail about our 2024 guidance. I want to share some recent results and trends that give us confidence that we will be able to achieve growth in 2024 even after the sale activity and repositioning that we undertook in 2023. We ended the year with weighted average occupancy of 94.8% during the fourth quarter we realized an average decrease of 2.9% on same-store new lease trade-out and an average increase of 3.7% on same-store renewals, resulting in a 0.4% blended rate increase. January provided optimism for 2024 as we are pleased to see market rents holding with 5% of our leases expiring in January. We realized an average decrease of 1.9% on same-store new lease trade-out and an average increase of 3.2% on same-store renewals, resulting in a 0.1% blended rate increase while Q4 and January showed negative new lease spreads.
This is not uncommon historically, and it is worth noting that the percentage change in January was 100 basis points stronger on average new lease rates than December. We have prioritized physical occupancy over rent growth through much of Q4 and Q1 to date, and we'll continue to do so until we see renter demand rebound to a level sufficient to drive the necessary new lease volumes and put us in a position to implement more aggressive pricing on both new leases and renewal less so than some other parts of the U.S., we are seeing supply pressures in Denver and Minneapolis. However, to date, both of those markets have shown resiliency and absorption, particularly notable CoStar site in Minneapolis as having the second strongest absorption in the nation in 2023 through the third quarter with a ranking in the top three nationally for both 2022 and 2023. At the same time, most of our secondary Midwest markets have minimal, if any, new supply and ranged from 0% to 3% of existing stock under construction with industry experiencing challenging operating fundamentals due to elevated supply and moderating the continued expense pressures, there's a dearth of transaction activity. We focused on portfolio improvement in both operations and through dispositions, and it was a busy year on that front.
During 2023, we sold 13 communities for the aggregate price of $226.8 million. The communities sold were located in St. Cloud in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska in Minot, North Dakota. The proceeds of the sales were used to acquire community in Fort Collins, Colorado and for the repayment of debt. Additionally, during the fourth quarter, we were able to successfully close on a mezzanine loan that includes the purchase option funding, new multifamily development of 244 homes in indoor grow heights, demographically strong submarket of the Twin Cities. To date, we have funded approximately 40% of our $15.1 million commitment. This community is scheduled for delivery in summer 2025. These transactions highlight our commitment to continued refinement of our portfolio, age quality and market exposure as well as maintaining a strong balance sheet. Subsequent to year end, we entered into sale agreements for two communities in the Minneapolis market, comprising 205 homes for aggregate consideration of $18.9 million limited by size and age. These communities were not able to provide us with the NOI margin or growth we expect from our portfolio. The transaction should close in the next week. And proceeds of these sales will be used to pay down our line of credit.
Regarding share buybacks, since we reported our Q3 results, we have acquired approximately $9.5 million of our common stock at an average price of $53, with continued lack of asset transaction volume and our demonstrated execution on 2023 sales of certain of our less efficient and lower growth assets at a weighted average cap rate of 6.5% based on prior 12-month NOI, we like buying our current portfolio at an implied cap rate of 7.6%. We do have some capacity remaining in our authorized buyback program, but we'll prioritize maintaining balance sheet flexibility while calibrating market factors affecting relative asset valuations. As I mentioned earlier, this may be a tough year for the multifamily sector, but we believe we will perform well on a relative basis, given the work we have done on our portfolio composition and operating platform. Our Board shares, the belief that we will have strong results, coupled with discipline on executing our strategy and has declared a $0.02 per common share increase in our next quarterly dividend, raising it to $0.75 per common share.
Before I turn it over to Bhairav, I want to thank our team 2023 was a great year because of our organizational commitment to better every day, and I appreciate their hard work and dedication.
Now I'll ask Bhairav to discuss our overall financial results and details of our 2024 outlook.

Bhairav Patel

Thanks and good morning, everyone. Last night, we reported core FFO of $1.22 per diluted share for the fourth quarter of 2023, which was driven by another strong quarter of operating results, with same-store NOI increasing by 7.6% over the same quarter last year. Our operating results for the quarter were in line with our expectations while core FFO exceeded expectations. The outperformance in core FFO during the quarter was driven by lower than projected G&A, primarily due to lower IT-related spend and higher interest income, including approximately 150,000 and origination fee received upon the close of the mezzanine loan that and discussed in our remarks earlier, This capped off another strong year of earnings growth for the Company with same-store NOI growth of 9% for the year and core FFO of $4.78 per diluted share, an increase of almost 8% compared to the previous year. Other notable activity during the quarter included an impairment charge of $5.2 million related to the two communities, Minneapolis that Ed mentioned. We expect to sell next week and an additional charge of $1 million for prejudgment interest related to the litigation settlement earlier in the year. Both charges are excluded from core FFO.
On the capital front, we are well-positioned with a strong and flexible balance sheet. We ended the year with $235 million of liquidity and leverage of 7.1 times net debt to EBITDA, which is half a turn lower than at the beginning of 2023 because of our capital repositioning activities during the year. In addition, we have a well-laddered debt maturity schedule with no debt maturities until the middle of 2025 weighted average term to maturity of 6.3 years and weighted average cost of 3.54%. This balance sheet strength allowed us to opportunistically repurchase shares, which we believe are currently trading significantly below the true value of our assets in the portfolio. During the quarter, we repurchased nearly 92,000 shares, bringing our 2023 repurchases to 216,000 shares at an average price of $53.44 per share. After year end, we repurchased an additional 88,000 shares at $53.62 per share.
Turning to guidance, we introduced our 2024 expectations in last night's press release. For 2024, we expect same store NOI growth of 1.5% to 3.5%. That's relatively healthy top line growth of 4% at the midpoint. That projected revenue growth is driven by an earn-in of 1.7% at year end and projected blended lease growth of 2.5% at the midpoint. It is further fueled by incremental revenue following the completion of our RUBS rollout and continued investment in our value-add program, we spent almost $30 million in 2023 and expect to invest an additional $25 million to $27 million on value add initiatives in 2024.
Although expense pressures have moderated, we still expect expense growth of 6.25% at the midpoint to exceed our revenue growth in 2024. The growth is primarily driven by onsite compensation as the labor market remains remarkably resilient and insurance expenses driven by premium increases of over 25% year over year. We expect core FFO of $4.68 to $4.92 per diluted share, with a midpoint of $4.80 per diluted share, a slight increase year over year, despite the impact of approximately $130 million of net dispositions during 2023. Please note that although our guidance equates to core FFO of $1.20 per share per quarter. Our core FFO during the first quarter is expected to be below that average and projected to increase in each subsequent quarter. This is primarily a result of sequential revenue growth from lease expirations during peak leasing season in Q2 and Q3. The guidance range incorporates all the buyback activity since the end of 2023 that I highlighted earlier, and approximately $19 million of proceeds from the sale of two communities in Minneapolis, but also assumes that the mezzanine loan of $13.1 million will be fully funded by early Q3. No further investment or disposition activity is assumed in the guidance.
Lastly, as noted in our press release, our Board of Trustees announced an increase of $0.02 per share in our quarterly common dividend to $0.75 per share. The common dividend will be paid on April 8, 2024 to shareholders and unitholders of record at the close of business on March 28th.
To conclude, we are proud of the results we achieved in 2023, not just on the earnings growth front, but even more so in advancing our key strategic priorities of improving our balance sheet, portfolio quality and market position. This is only possible because of a concerted effort, commitment and discipline across the organization. And I would like to thank our entire team for their hard work and focus throughout the year, and we look forward to building upon these results in 2024. And with that, I will turn the line back to the operator to open it up for questions.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Bhairav Heffern, RBC Capital.

Brad Heffern

Yes, thank you. Good morning, everybody. Bhairav, you gave a couple of pieces of the revenue guide in the prepared remarks, but I was wondering if you could also give occupancy loss to lease and market rent growth as well.

Bhairav Patel

Sure. Good morning, Brett. Yes. So with respect to occupancy, we are projecting about 95%, which is roughly in line with what we had for the year. With respect to last, the lease at the end of January, we were sitting at about 3.5%. This is roughly in line with where we were about 12 months ago or so. We do expect rents to grow from here. However, we don't really expect them at this point in time to reach the same peak that they did last year. So market rent growth will be a little bit muted, but also grow from here as we enter the leasing.

Brad Heffern

Okay, got it. And then on the repurchase, I guess, how do you think about weighing the attractiveness of that versus some of the downsides, like obviously shrinking the Company and increasing leverage, et cetera?

Anne Olson

That's a great question, Bhairav. And one, we spend a lot of time on. So we really are looking to balance what the best use of our capital is. And you know, particularly paired with a year where we had a lot of dispositions. And so a lot of proceeds and and how we want to effectuate a strategy of external growth and maintain real balance sheet strength. So we felt like this was a good time. We have the proceeds from the sales. We have two more sales this year scheduled. But as I stated and in the prepared remarks, we really are trying to balance that maintaining balance sheet flexibility and I think you'll see us really pull back on the buybacks going going forward here into the into 2021.

Brad Heffern

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Connor Mitchell, Piper Sandler O'Neill.

Connor Mitchell

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. First, maybe just following that line of questioning and your index statement there as you guys are going to slow down on the buybacks, could you just give us a better idea maybe you'll allocate that more towards acquisitions or paid out subordinate debt, whatever you guys see the best use capital to that kit?

Anne Olson

Yes, we really are looking to have very strong capital allocation. And so as we look into 2024, we would really be prioritizing opportunities for external growth. It's not a lot of transaction volume and still a pretty big disconnect in the market on pricing. And that may be difficult, but we want to make sure that we fund our value add program sufficiently. We have $25 million to $27 million this year slated for that and with no maturities until mid 2025. It's a little bit difficult for us to get at any debt paydown. So that is one of the considerations that we had when we looked at doing the buyback was that opportunity wasn't as available to us as it might be into the future. But, you know, external growth is really a priority of ours. Value add as well and keep, you know, strategically repositioning the portfolio, getting better market exposures, increasing the quality of the portfolio, I think is high on our priority list.

Connor Mitchell

Okay. Appreciate the color there. And then maybe just thinking about the Colorado deal you guys executed back in the fourth quarter. Just want to make sure we understand the GAAP implications on earnings. It seems the amortization of the assumed debt has become an add-back to core. So just curious if you guys can give us any more details and what we may have missed regarding the GAAP implications or any bigger picture is on the impact from an earnings perspective in Q3?

Bhairav Patel

Good morning. On page 16 of our supplement, we kind of break down the components of our guidance in the adjustments to Norton to non-core, you will see the amortization of assumed debt. That's about $1.1 million, and that's the amount that will be added back to report with respect to the debt amortization. Does that answer question?

Connor Mitchell

Yes, I guess just to make sure fully understand that is primarily related to that Colorado deal in the fourth quarter that was executed?

Bhairav Patel

That's correct. That's most of that amortization relates to the deal that we are talking about.

Connor Mitchell

Okay. Thanks very much.

Operator

John Kim, BMO Capital Markets.

John Kim

I have a question on the mez loan on the rate of the loan. I think Bhairav mentioned that origination fee, I'm assuming that's paid by the borrower and if it's your intention to exercise the purchase option on the asset.

Anne Olson

Good morning, Dan. I'll have Grant take that one.

Grant Campbell

Very good morning, John. We're earning a 10% interest rate with accrued or excuse me, with interest accrued and compounded monthly on that transaction on the back end related to the purchase option that option to acquire the stabilized community comes with pre-negotiated terms that include a 7% discount, but then market value of the community at stabilization of our intent to exercise the purchase option. We enter entities with a desire you acquire the completed stabilized community on the back end. We will continue to sit in the lender CHAIR monitor funding monitor asset performance and make that decision in mid 2025.

John Kim

Are there opportunities for mez investments in some of your other markets? And I realize in the past, you looked at Nashville as a potential entry market, but it seems like you're overweight Twin Cities exposure already. So I was just wondering if you saw similar investment opportunities in some of the other markets that you're interested in?

Grant Campbell

Yes, we are talking to folks in other market about this execution. Broadly speaking, it's harder to make development underwriting pencil in this environment. We will continue to seek opportunities with the book of business that do make sense. We do view it as a complement to our other capital allocation strategies. These opportunities provide good returns and direct visibility on asset performance and potential future acquisition time line via that purchase option that we reference. This direct visibility is beneficial when we think about portfolio recomposition initiative. So yes, we are having conversations in other geographies, very hard to make these pencil in today's environment, but we'll continue to seek them.

Anne Olson

And John, from a purely financial standpoint, and we like to have a certain portion of our capital allocated to the mezzanine fund. These are difficult deals for us to get done at our size. And so you have seen us do them in Minneapolis because this is a place where we have very deep connection in our headquarters are here. We have a large team. And so we probably just see more opportunities here and have more relationships with developers that have longer standing. But but it definitely doesn't preclude precludes grant from spending a lot of time trying to find those deals in other target markets.

John Kim

And you mentioned Minneapolis has the second-highest net absorption or had second highest net absorption last year, which I didn't fully appreciate until you mentioned it. What's driving that demand. I realize there's a lot of supply in that market as well. But what is it what's driving this?

Anne Olson

I mean, there's probably a lot of answers to what's driving it but I'd say a couple of things and then Greg can jump in here, too. But I think, you know, really strong economy, low unemployment we have of Minneapolis has a very good job base, lots of Fortune 500 companies. So the market itself is a little bit more stable. So while we are seeing good a good amount of supply here, we have the fundamentals to fill that space and drive absorption. I think we've also seen less single-family home starts than we have in the past. So there's been a little bit of shift in permitting from if you look at the total multis or housing universe, we have less, you know, single-family home communities and a shift into the apartment communities, which is you know, driving some of lack of availability of single-family home options granted?

Grant Campbell

Yes, I would echo Anne's comments on incomes in this market, depending on how you cut it. We consistently rank top 10 in terms of income profile, that income relative to the affordability of renting apartments is very attractive, high presence of medtech banking, finance, et cetera. Jobs are very prevalent in our market.
And then just to touch on the supply comments, the supply pipeline in Minneapolis has we've seen a taper over recent quarters. So currently, we're sitting on about 4.5% of existing stock under construction. That is down from 6% here over the last couple of quarters. So a measured supply sorry, that again has been tapering.

John Kim

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Rob Stevenson, Janney.

Rob Stevenson

Thanks. Good morning. Can you talk about how much of the 3% to 5% same-store revenue growth guidance for 24 is from marketing to market rents versus the continued uplift from some of the operational technology and other improvements that you've been I'm instituting within the portfolio.

Bhairav Patel

Good morning, Rob, I'll give you the components and then what you know and may chime in on some of the other components. But overall from yes, 4% at the midpoint, 3% is really what's being driven by mark-to-market rents. About half of it's being driven by the U.S. dollar, which is now fully complete. So we have about 80% build back the RUBS and then the remainder is being driven by some of the value add initiatives. We obviously expect to invest about $25 million this year, but we invested over the course of the year. So the impact on revenue for the year is going to be about 0.5%.

Rob Stevenson

That was very helpful. Thank you.

Anne Olson

Yes. And just on the technology front, we did then in 2023, I think we really saw some great strides on gaining efficiencies and making sure that we're fully executing on the platform. That work is going to continue. But in our projections, we're not projecting that it's going to materially move anything. We do have a couple of initiatives that may provide and some cushion and or outperformance for us, but we're very early on very early on in some of those. So I would say really where we feel stabilized than the platform that we implemented over the past two to three years and feel like we're in good shape and use.

Rob Stevenson

Okay. That's helpful. And then can you jus give a quick review of the your markets. I mean, other than Denver, are there not a lot of markets that you guys have that, you know, there's other public peers and so less data there. I mean, which of these markets are you expecting same-store revenue growth to be above the 3% to 5% guidance for the company overall and which below, um, can you just talk a little bit about that as to how we should be thinking about the market individually?

Anne Olson

Yes, that's a good question. One of the we are a good data provider and some of those markets. We're the largest owner in a couple of them. As we look to 2024. I think we're going to continue to see some outperformance in Omaha. Nebraska at North Dakota has been performing really well. And then I'd say Minneapolis and Denver kind of coming in the middle of the pack. There is a place where we're seeing some softness in what we call the other Mountain West that the Rapid City and billings they had, if you recall this massive run-up in rents in 21 into 22. We really started to see that cool last year and and we are seeing that continue to cool off and believe that'll hold through 2024. So I'd say, you know, Omaha at the top and then probably billings Rapid City at the back.

Rob Stevenson

Okay. And then just Rochester and St. Cloud are the middle bottom? How should we be thinking about those?

Anne Olson

Yes, I'd say they're for they're right in the middle of Rochester has had some supply a little bit of supply there. Nothing that has concerned us and we have come off some great value add projects there that really raised our rents, renter profile and our customer experience there. So I think that that'll continue to perform well and same cloud that portfolio. As you know, we sold some of the assets out of that this year. So we feel really well-positioned there to kind of be right, right on the average.

Rob Stevenson

Okay. That's extremely helpful. And then for us, when you take a look where was bad debt for you guys in 23, what do you have baked into the 24 guidance?

Bhairav Patel

Your with respect to 2023, we were about 25 to 30 basis points, which we consider normalized pre-COVID. And with respect to 2024, we are at the midpoint projecting about 35 basis points of kind of sticking around what we experienced in 2023 as we haven't really seen anything that makes us thinks otherwise.

Rob Stevenson

Okay. And then I guess a similar vein, would you guys do this year or 23 in terms of unit turnover? And are you expecting any real upticks or downticks in that given what you're seeing today in terms of the renter profile?

Bhairav Patel

Sure. With respect to unit turnover, we had seen a lot of costs escalating at the end of 2022. With respect to 2023, we were slightly down versus 2022 with respect to 2024. What we are seeing is materials close to it kind of, I would say, normalized in the sense that we can expect some inflationary increases there, Tom and then labor go is running a little bit higher than we would like. So we would still expect a slight increase over 2023. Then 2023 itself was a reduction over 2022.

Anne Olson

And with respect to whatever sort of, yes, we did see a little bit of an uptick during 2023 and resident retention. So just overall had fewer turns in 23 to 22. But our projections do include kind of our the standard that fit about 50% of the units will turn during the course of the year.

Rob Stevenson

But what do you know, given material labor costs these days, what does a turn typically cost you ex the downtime?

Bhairav Patel

And I would say roughly about the costs will be about $1,000 of churn thereabout again, you know, from a portfolio perspective that you know, can differ as you look at different markets. But roughly that's that that's what we kind of see on an average.

Rob Stevenson

Okay. That's incredibly helpful. Thanks, guys. Appreciate the time.

Grant Campbell

Thank you.

Anne Olson

Thank you.

Operator

Barry Oxford, Colliers.

Barry Oxford

Great, thanks, guys. One thing I was looking at was same-store expenses being down in 4Q. What can I'd be looking for as it relates to same-store expenses in 24.

Bhairav Patel

Good morning, Barry. So with respect to 2024, there's two major line items that will be driving our expenses in 2024. One is on-site compensation. And as I said, the labor market is still pretty strong. We I mean, although we are in a much better place in 2023 compared to 2022, it's still hard to fill some of those positions. So we do expect that to run slightly above what you would consider normalized or inflationary.
And then the other line item that is really driving up cost is insurance premiums year over year increase by 25% to 30%. That's two thirds of the insurance line. So those are the two major categories driving year-over-year expense growth.

Barry Oxford

Okay, great. And what was causing some of those numbers to be negative in some of the cities like Alma and 40 of some of the negative?

Bhairav Patel

Yes, sure. Some of the negative numbers related to some real estate tax related accrual adjustments in uncertain years. We have upticks in certain years. We have some credit from some credits from from appeals. So that's really what's driving some of the credits that you see on a year-over-year basis in Omaha.
The other line item that is also compare comparing favorably is the nonreimbursable losses where we really had an uptick in those losses in the fourth quarter of 2022, and they kind of normalize in 2023. So that's what is driving the Q4 23 versus Q4 22 comparison.

Barry Oxford

Okay, great. Thanks so much, guys.

Anne Olson

Thank you.

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Wes Golladay, Baird.

Wes Golladay

Yes, good morning, everyone. Just a quick question on the Denver market, we're starting to see some slowing out there, the job growth. But then you did make the comment that multifamily this fear maybe taking share with the the fewer single-family starts in one of your markets. Is that happening there as well? Just overall, what are you seeing from the demand side in Denver?

Anne Olson

We'll have we'll have Grant help you out on that one yet.

Grant Campbell

So I agree with your your job growth comment have seen some slowing and that market here recently. We do think long term, the demand fundamentals in Denver and Colorado more broadly are very robust and continue to believe that over time, what we've seen in the past decade will continue to play out. When I think about Denver a couple of ways from a fundamentals perspective that we think about it. On the supply side, it is our market with the highest levels of existing supply and existing new construction. So I referenced 4.5% in Minneapolis earlier, that would be about 9.5% today in Denver.
And it may be the case in this environment that all of that supply. That pipeline does not complete given capital markets and fundamentals headwinds. Concessions is another way that we really focus on. What are we seeing in all of our markets, including Denver. And I would say our concession profile and concession story on the ground in Denver today is very favorable. We've been using concessions and very targeted and specific instances today in Denver, that one community in our portfolio, which is a function of new supply at submarket, so have seen slowdown in job growth and fundamentals are are tapering, but that isn't unique to Denver that is happening nationwide and long term believe that the demand profile.

Wes Golladay

Thanks for the time, everyone.

Anne Olson

Thank you.

Operator

And we have no further questions in the queue at this time. So I would like to hand back over to Anne Olson for any further remarks.

Anne Olson

Thanks, everyone, for joining, and have a great day.

Operator

This concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining and you may now disconnect your lines.