Prologis Inc (PLD) — Q3 2019 Earnings Call Transcript

Thank you, Michelle. Good morning everyone. Welcome to the Prologis third quarter earnings call. If you have not yet downloaded the press release, it's available on our website at prologis.com under Investor Relations. This morning, you will hear from Tom Olinger, our Chief Financial Officer and also joining us for the call is Hamid Moghadam, Gary Anderson, Chris Caton, Mike Curless, Ed Nekritz, Colleen McKeown and Gene Reilly. Before we begin our prepared remarks, I'd like to state that this conference call will contain forward-looking statements under Federal Securities laws. These statements are based on current expectations, estimates and projections about the market and the industry in which the Company operates as well as the beliefs and assumptions of management. Both of these factors are referred to in Prologis' 10-K or SEC filings. Additional factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include but are not limited to the expected timing and likelihood of the completion of the transaction with IPT, including their ability to obtain the requisite approvals of their stockholders and the risk that the conditions to the closing of the transaction may not be satisfied. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of performance and actual operating results may differ. Finally, this call will contain financial measures such as FFO, EBITDA that are non-GAAP measures and in accordance with Reg-G, we have provided a reconciliation to those measures in our earnings package. With that, I'll turn the call over to Tom. And, Tom will you please begin.

Thanks, Tracy. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining our call today. We had another outstanding quarter. Customer sentiment remains positive and we see no meaningful impact on our business from uncertainties surrounding trade. Our proprietary operating metrics reflect healthy demand, showing deal gestation and conversion rates are positive and in line with last quarter as our customers improve their supply chains and respond to consumer demand for ever faster delivery times. U.S. market fundamentals are strong. I'd like to share our assessment of third quarter market statistics as we've seen more divergent viewpoints than normal. We see historically low vacancy in the mid 4s, with supply and demand balanced at 75 million square feet each. Rents have outperformed and as a result, we are raising our 2019 U.S. rent growth forecast from 6% to 7%, leading to an 80 basis point increase in our global rent forecast to 6.5%. Activity across Europe remains healthy. In the UK, while overall demand is solid and our build-to-suit pipeline is very active, we are highlighting the Midlands as a supplier risk. We continue to forecast 2019 rent growth on the continent to be the highest in more than a decade. Fundamentals in Japan are improving with vacancy in Tokyo at less than 3% and Osaka at less than 6%, the lowest points in five years. From an operating standpoint, you will see that our quarterly results reflect our strategy of prioritizing rents over occupancy to maximize long-term lease economics. We leased 38 million square feet, including nearly 6 million square feet in our development portfolio. Quarter end occupancy was 96.5%, down 30 basis points sequentially and remains above our five-year average. Rent change on roll for the quarter hit an all-time high of 37%, led by the U.S. at 41.7%. Our share of cash same-store NOI growth was 4.3% for the quarter, which was impacted by a 60-basis point reduction in average occupancy, again consistent with our strategy to push rents. Globally our in-place to market rent spread widened by 40 basis points in the quarter and is now almost 15.5% or over $400 million in nominal terms. Core FFO was $0.97 per share for the third quarter, which included $0.18 of net promote income from our Co-In venture. The promote came in above our forecast as European valuations increased more than 2% in the third quarter. For deployment, starts in the quarter were $577 million with an estimated margin of 22% and included about two-thirds build-to-suits. The pace of starts will increase significantly in the fourth quarter. Stabilizations were $658 million with an estimated margin of 37% and value creation of over $242 million. We continue to access capital globally at very attractive terms. During the quarter, we issued $2.8 billion of debt primarily in euro at a weighted average fixed interest rate of under 1% and a weighted average term of more than 14 years. It's worth pointing out that we have an annual need for an incremental $600 million of non-dollar debt to naturally hedge our growing international assets. These issuances lowered our total weighted average interest rate by 10 basis points to 2.4% and lengthened our weighted average maturity by about two years to just under eight years. We continue to maintain significant investment capacity on the balance sheet with $11.7 billion of liquidity and potential fund sell downs. In addition, there is an incremental $5.4 billion of existing third-party investment capacity in our ventures today. Guidance for 2020, which I know many of you are looking for will be provided at our upcoming Investor Forum on November 5th. For 2019 guidance, I'll cover the highlights, and then I'll share basis and note this guidance does not include the positive impact of the IPT acquisition. We are increasing the bottom end of our cash same-store NOI guidance by 25 basis points and now expect a range of 4.75% to 5%. We are raising the midpoint for development starts by $250 million and now expect starts to range between $2.2 billion and $2.5 billion. Build-to-suits will comprise more than 40% of total starts which is above our initial expectations. We are projecting $650 million of net deployment uses which we plan to fund with free cash flow and debt. Net promote income for the full year is now expected to be $0.18 per share, an increase of $0.02 from our prior guidance. For the full year, we are increasing our 2019 core FFO guidance midpoint by $0.03 and narrowing the range to between $3.30 and $3.32 per share. And our revised midpoint growth in core FFO per share excluding promotes is 10% higher than last year. Over the past five years, our growth has clearly been exceptional with a CAGR of almost 12%, while de-leveraging from 27% to 18%. As I mentioned, this guidance excludes the acquisition of IPT, which we expect to close in January of 2020. We plan to split the $4 billion portfolio equally between our two U.S. vehicles. Private capital investor interest continues to be robust as evidenced by the record fundraising in our ventures in the third quarter. Our pro-rata investment will be approximately $1.3 billion, which we will fund with cash and debt. We continue to expect the annual core FFO accretion from IPT to range between $0.05 and $0.06 per share or roughly 2% on a stabilized basis. The acquisition of this high-quality portfolio will capture significant revenue and cost synergies and deliver shareholder value on day one. To sum up, the third quarter was a continuation of what has already been an excellent year. I feel great about our outlook for the rest of the year and beyond. And with that, I'll turn it to Michelle for your questions.

Hey, guys. Maybe just wanted to hit here on demand and kind of where you guys have the availability in the portfolio. Could you guys just kind of talk through what you're seeing in the demand profiles between kind of larger and smaller tenants, and your ability to push rents there and maybe improve credit quality? And then kind of talk a little bit about what you guys see as your ability to push the occupancy in under 100,000 or under 250,000 square foot space where you have more opportunity? And maybe talk about is there any more frictional vacancy in those types of spaces than in your bigger boxes? Or could we see those kind of spaces kind of narrow to where your average occupancy could be?

That's some question…

Did everybody write that down? Well, let me take a stab at this, first maybe talking about the smaller spaces. So these are spaces where we can push rents, and we're seeing pretty broad-based demand frankly across all sectors. But I think those with the smaller segment is where we can reach rent growth, and I think if you look inside rent change numbers which are obviously at all-time highs that would be the highest. In terms of the composition of the demand from an industry perspective, again, that's pretty broad-based. Obviously auto is weak, almost no matter where you are in the globe. But otherwise, we're still seeing pretty broad-based growth. We're seeing continued growth from the e-commerce sector, and that's probably a combination of reconfiguration of the supply chain as well as net demand. So that's a start on it.

Craig, this is Tom. So two of your questions, one on credit quality our credit quality continues to be exceptional. Our bad debt experience has been below 20 basis points of rent for the last six years continues this quarter. So I feel great about our credit quality. And then just regarding your question on small spaces and frictional vacancy. We do have many more units in our smaller spaces. So naturally there is going to be more churn in that particularly as Gene pointed out, we are pushing rents. So you could see a little higher frictional vacancy, but the pay-off is much higher rents. So the economics are clear to keep pushing rents.

Hey, good morning. Hamid, FedEx on its earnings call last month, they added they were citing more challenges ahead in 2020. They talked about the typical global trade disputes and concerns over economic slowing having created significant uncertainties. In your opening remarks, Tom did mention that you hadn't started that you hadn't started to see that in your customer behavior yet, but clearly those risks are out there. So just wondering, has that surprised you at all that you really haven't seen it in the customer behavior yet? And then maybe just any broader thoughts on how this all impacts your outlook for development starts beyond call it $2.3 billion you have underway in terms of cadence or desire to take on spec etc.? Thanks.

Sure. I think both statements can be true at the same time. FedEx is focused on managing flows, which can be very unpredictable due to trade tensions. They operate with a fixed cost structure involving planes and trucks, so fluctuating volumes can present challenges. They may miss peak demands or have excess capacity during lower demand periods. In our sector, the climate of uncertainty in the short term translates into increased demand for our spaces. When businesses are uncertain about when goods will arrive due to tariffs and costs, they tend to hold more inventory closer to customers. Therefore, I believe FedEx's perspectives on their business metrics are accurate, while our metrics differ.

Can you discuss the leasing process for the multistory facility in Seattle where Amazon and Target ultimately signed, and how competitive was this bidding process? How many interested parties did you have? And where did rents shake out versus underwriting? And what type of future demand do you anticipate? Thank you.

I would say the rents and the economics turned out better than we expected. It took a bit longer to lease up, but we achieved higher rents. The reason for the longer leasing period was that no one had seen a multistory building like this before, so they wanted to explore different configurations and ensure they could maximize efficiencies. We couldn't be more pleased with the quality of the tenants or the financial performance of the asset. Regarding its implications, this building has garnered significant attention, leading people to believe there is a multistory strategy in place. However, there is no specific multistory strategy. Our approach is to provide space where our customers need it, which often means being closer to their end consumers. In some cases, that solution is multistory, while in others, it is single story. We are not focused on constructing many multistory buildings; instead, we aim to enhance our infill position.

Thanks for taking the question. So Blackstone just sold part of their original GLP acquisition. Wondering if you looked at that portfolio and if you can just more broadly give us any sense of any portfolios across regions and sort of how pricing or cap rates are shaking out?

Vikram, you can assume that we look at everything. People know our phone number, and they know what business we're in. So we absolutely, positively have never thought of a material transaction that we haven't seen. So you can assume we look at everything. I think the implications are you're going to have to ask Blackstone, but obviously they bought that portfolio and presumably, they paid a pretty good price to get it and presumably, they sold it to these guys two months that presumably paid a really good price to get it. That was attractive enough for Blackstone to sell it. So I can't be any more specific than that, because I'm not in Blackstone's decision making rooms, but those assumptions would be probably pretty fair.

Thank you. I would like to hear your thoughts on the supply outlook. We have historically high supply coming online, yet you mentioned that your development starts were 63% pre-leased in the quarter, and you are planning to start more. You anticipate an increase in activity in the fourth quarter. Could you provide an overview of how we should consider the supply risk as we head into '20? Additionally, as you evaluate your development opportunities, how does the pre-leased percentage influence your confidence at this level of volume?

Hey, Jamie, Hamid here, I think there is a lot of confusion about supply numbers. People mix supply which is an annual concept with what's under construction, which is a snapshot that they've given a point in time. So let me have Chris take you through those numbers because they are materially different as construction duration has lengthened.

Yes, absolutely. Jamie, let's talk about three concepts. First, completion. Completion is actually on pace to be down this year by about 8%. When we look at a more real-time indicator like starts, starts are flat this year. Now as Hamid mentioned, duration to build projects has gone up and so we've seen under construction rise, that time to deliver product has gone up by about a third in this cycle for all the challenges around supply that we've previously discussed. And so deliveries out of that pipeline now are much less than kind of 100% in a given following four quarters. So you've got to look at the time to deliver product to understand what deliveries will be in the following four quarters.

So basically, if you had the same level of supply, the same level of property under construction, you would have two-thirds the annual supply if the trends of the recent past continue. So those two concepts need to be really kept apart.

Thanks. Hamid in the press release you pointed out the exceptional interest that you're seeing for your strategic capital ventures and you guys have obviously done a great job raising money on that side of the business. Can you just talk about whether there are any specific groups that you're seeing incremental interest from? And then on the flip side, what do you think could cause that investor interest to decrease? I guess is there anything that kind of sticks out to you as a threat to that capital source in particular?

Yes. The sources are pretty much from everywhere. I would say the U.S. pension funds are probably flat to down compared to their call it 10-year type numbers, but Japan is up significantly. Generally, Asia is up significantly as these large institutions, sort of the pension system gets active on alternative investments. So it's everywhere. On the margin, I would say U.S. is a little less and Asia a little bit more. With respect to the threats to that, it's the same old threat that we've seen in every cycle. It's the denominator effect. If these guys are generally at today's investment levels under allocated to real estate and alternatives generally, and really under allocated to industrial because it's a tough property type to access. But if the stock market goes down and the bond market goes down and the rest of the portfolio goes down, the same percentage allocation to real estate will have to go down and that's usually been the cause of reductions in the capital flows.

Just two questions, Hamid. What's your view on the potential impact from growth for e-commerce on the warehouse business and how PLD would potentially play a part? And second, just on lease spreads, obviously it's some really good numbers and interesting about the mix of what roll this quarter that might be different going forward?

Yes. I'll let Tom address the second part. There are three main factors driving the growth of e-commerce in our portfolio. First, the increasing penetration of e-commerce as a percentage of total retail sales, which continues to rise each year and is expected to increase further as more categories become suitable for online shopping. With millennials and younger generations who have grown up with smartphones entering their prime shopping years, the adoption of e-commerce will likely accelerate. As these consumers, who have never known a world without smartphones and e-commerce, begin to spend, the overall percentage will rise. Additionally, there's the factor of space required for e-commerce, which is growing as it gains market share alongside underlying retail growth, though the latter is probably only around 2%. Together, these elements create a favorable environment for e-commerce demand over time. However, a key strategic question remains regarding how automation will influence the need for space. It's unclear whether automation will decrease or increase this requirement. In some cases, it may lead to a greater need for real estate while, in others, it could lessen it. One area we anticipate will become more efficient over time is the returns process, which is driven by free shipping and returns. As issues related to fit improve, we expect the demand for warehouse space related to returns will decrease. Ultimately, the key long-term driver in this sector is the demand for speed and choice. The greater the demand for choices and the faster they are needed, the more inventory must be positioned close to customers, which bodes well for our business.

Ki Bin, this is Tom. Regarding your question about rent changes for the quarter, we experienced a higher mix this quarter in the West and East regions, specifically in the coastal markets of the U.S. However, nearly every region reached or came close to its all-time high in rent changes. Overall, we're observing very positive rent changes across the board, almost without exception. You inquired about a trend, and our trailing average rent change over the last four quarters is currently at 28%. For this quarter, I believe that's a favorable outlook for the near term regarding rent changes. It's important to remember that our current rents are 15.5% below market, which indicates that rents need to increase by 18.3% to reach market levels. Therefore, if rents are 15.5% under, they need to grow by 18.3%, which is just a mathematical reality to reach market rents. So consider our built-in rent change of 18.3% and keep in mind that the rents rolling in the near term were signed previously, leading to higher rent changes now. Lastly, I want to highlight that the rent change on our four-quarter average has now reached 28%, reflecting an increase of 600 basis points over the past year. We have seen a significant upward trend in this number, and I believe we can maintain this level based on our current situation relative to the market.

Thank you. Just two quick questions. One is related to portfolio sales is based on the Blackstone activity, do you see any meaningful differences between portfolio sale prices versus smaller transactions you guys might pursue? And then second, just on the demand front, you know, obviously there's a lot of press kind of given to smaller buildings in multi-tenant leasing. My conclusion is that that kind of leasing and the rent growth you can get is really more dependent on location than property size, can you affirm whether that's true or not, or is a smaller building in some Midwest market getting record rent growth as well? Thank you.

Eric, let me jump in the middle of that before Gene starts on the first part. The most important thing with respect to rent growth is location in terms of macro market and the micro sub-market. By far, more important than tenant size and all the stuff we talked about before, so you're spot on that one. And those were the scarcest properties. Gene, do you want to answer it?

Yes, Eric. With respect to the portfolios, I mean, as Hamid mentioned, of course, we look at all these things we price them and for sure lately portfolios are selling at a what we consider a premium to the sum of the parts. So I think that that is true. Having said that, there is also plenty of one-off transactions and very, very good market pretty stunning metrics associated with it.

I was just wondering maybe on the development side, the total development portfolio declined slightly since last quarter, but 2019 starts were actually up. So is this just a function of pulling forward previously expected activity and what's your confidence in being able to sustain that level of starts going forward as Prologis grows? And then just on the yield side, those have come in a little I think from about 6.5% to 6.1%. So what's driving this and could that increase back up?

Yes. The second point is primarily about the mix. Nevertheless, cap rates have generally been declining over the past 20 years, and more notably over the last couple of years, which will also impact the returns on costs. Regarding development volumes, we anticipate a strong fourth quarter amounting to approximately $1.2 billion, which aligns closely with what we achieved in the fourth quarter of last year. We are very confident about this, and we will provide further insights into future guidance at a later date.

Yes, and this reminds me of a previous question that something I answered which is what's our attitude toward spec development, and I would say the bar on spec development has been high and continues to be pretty high, and you can see the results of that in the build-to-suit percentage being a lot higher.

Tom, just thinking about your year-end occupancy guidance, your retention in the quarter was actually higher than the trailing Q and yet you commented in the press release that you're focusing on rent growth versus occupancy. So does that mean that new leases aren't happening as fast as you thought? And is that because of the rent levels or is there something else that does not connect between retention rates and occupancy?

So, this is not Tom, but I'll answer your question. The retention ratio you're dealing with tenants that are already in this space. And today, labor is a huge issue for people. And every time they move, they have to go hire a bunch of people, because now the workers have choice and they're not going to change their commuting patterns, etc. So customers that are in existing space have a much higher propensity to stay regardless of almost rent, which is an afterthought for a lot of them. So where you see the effect, the primary effect of pushing rents is on capture of new leasing in the developments, that's where you're likely to see at the most. And that, of course, doesn't affect the retention numbers that we report.

Thanks. I have a question about the leasing spreads. Tom, you mentioned some insights on what increased them this quarter. I want to confirm if the transition to clearer leases over the past year has influenced how you measure the releasing spread.

No impact at all.

Yes. I wanted to follow up on how PLD prioritizes increasing rents over occupancy. Hasn't that been your approach for the past two years, or are you being more aggressive now? Is it fair to say that this is reflected in the lease spreads, which have essentially doubled compared to the previous four quarters?

It's been our stated objective to do this for previous quarters, but these messy things called human beings and people feel that there have been need to change their mindset, and that took a couple of years to really get that going. We track why we lose tenants, when we don't renew somebody and we track them for a long, long time. And I'm not kidding you. But there were years that we had literally zero tenants leaving because of rent on renewals, literally. So that number is no longer zero, but it's a lot lower than I think it should be or I would have expected it to be.

Thanks, Hamid. I wanted to clarify what you and Chris mentioned about the construction pipeline or the time it takes to build. Is it moving from 9 to 12 months, or is it more in the range of 12 to 16 months? I’m trying to get a better understanding of that. Additionally, are there specific markets in the U.S. that you're particularly concerned about, or are you observing much less rent growth in certain areas?

Yes. By the way, on the duration of construction, it depends on where. In Japan, they were 16 months. And I don't know what they are today, but it takes longer to build the multistory building. But let's focus just on a single-story U.S.-style warehouse, and Chris has the numbers for you.

Yes. Hey, Steve, the timeline is extending from eight to nine months to over a year, roughly 13 to 14 months. We anticipate that deliveries in the next four quarters will align with about 75% of the projects currently under construction. Regarding the market, we mentioned on the last call that we hadn’t added any new markets to our supply risk list, and that remains unchanged. In fact, Chicago has been removed from that list this quarter.

I would say the one that I would point out as being more at risk today than last quarter, even though it was on the list is Houston. There is a lot of space under construction in Houston. And I think some people are going to get surprised. Now and some of it is not in the best sub-markets. So some of the outlying sub-markets in Houston you need to watch. Fortunately, we are not exposed to the sub-markets.

Great. I think Mike Curless is in the room. I was just looking at Page 24, and I noticed an increase in a significant land acquisition year-to-date, as well as acquisitions and other investments in real estate. Can you explain, Mike, where you're acquiring the land? Also, what other investments in real estate are you considering?

Probably, Gene should answer that question since Mike has a new job, but Gene, go ahead.

Yes, and Mike can maybe offer customer color where they want the dirt. But John, where we generally need to replace dirt is in the coastal markets where we've got a lot of development absorbed a lot of land bank. So there is a piece in LA included in that, but as we look out going forward, replacing land is very, very expensive these days. As you know, we've done a lot of work to work this land back down to what we considered a manageable level. As we replace land going forward, we're trying to do it creatively, we're trying to tie up land through options, but it's going to be more expensive. And we will see the land bank pick up a little bit, but we're going to remain very disciplined on that front as we have been.

Our biggest needs for land are in Southern California, where we need more land. We're good in Seattle and the Bay Area. In Chicago, we also need more land, and in New Jersey, we definitely need more land. Those are the top three areas I would highlight.

And with respect to the customers and where they want to be, two, three years ago, 80% of our land that we're doing build-to-suits were in global markets, those numbers are closer to 95% these days.

And John, your question about the other investments, just think about those being covered land place, not land but will become land soon.

Yes. Those are actually yielding, probably pretty close to the local market cap rate maybe a tad below, maybe 20-25 basis points below, but they're basically current land place.

Yes. Hi. I was wondering, do you expect the elevated mix of build-to-suits to be a little bit more of the norm over the next year or so?

This is Mike Curless. We did have a robust quarter at almost two-thirds build-to-suits. If you look across the year, that's blending in the high '30s, and I would expect our numbers to be in the low '40s as we look forward. I think this was an unusually high quarter but directionally indicative of how important the build-to-suit part of the business is to us these days.

You know, I'll compare to five or 10 years ago or 15 years ago, I mean, that number would have been 20%-25%. So I think the tightness of the markets is forcing the build-to-suit percentage up.

Hey guys. Just wanted to kind of hit on some of your liquidity here in the funds and on the balance sheet, your cost of capital is clearly advantageous. But you have a lot of well-heeled competitors as well. I'm just kind of curious you guys look at the acquisition landscape, you've been successful in some, missed some others, but just kind of how you look at return requirements for on-balance sheet acquisitions here versus the in-funds. And just talk a little about what you're seeing on the quality spectrum of portfolios that you have traded or may be out there and kind of interest level?

Let me start that and Gene jump in if you'd like. I think the quality, the pricing for quality differences is getting compressed, in other words, cap rates for lower quality, lower growth assets are compressing high-quality assets and location. And that always happens in this part of the cycle. People are really anxious to get into this asset class. And if it's industrial, it's industrial and they become less discriminating over time. Also if you're a leveraged buyer to the end, you're really looking at locking in the cost of capital, debt capital today and you employ a lot of it. Obviously, this is a really good environment for you're buying things and financing them. With respect to the way we look at our unleveraged cost of capital, I would say we look at that every quarter or so, and we occasionally and only in a very limited way have dropped our requirements. I would say for a U.S. high-quality portfolio probably a 6 IRR would be the right number today, very high-quality portfolio for us. And, you know, take it up from there but unfortunately some stuff in the marketplace, even for low-quality assets is getting priced to tighter than that. Now a 6 IRR in a 1.6% or 1.7% 10-year environment is pretty attractive. I mean those are some of the wider spreads I've seen in my career. And so, yes, then our absolute numbers sound low but in relation to cost of capital or debt capital they are actually pretty attractive.

Thank you. I wanted to ask a couple of follow-up questions. First for Chris, you mentioned some rent growth, and I know it varies by sub-markets. Are you noticing any differences from recent trends within sub-markets in the MSAs? And for Tom, regarding the clear leases, could you explain if there's any impact on expenses and whether it might affect NOI growth positively or negatively?

Yes. Hey, as it relates to rent growth. A couple of ways to look at that, one is we continue to see that divergence between in-fill and non-infill as Hamid was discussing earlier in terms of sub-market strategy. As it relates to markets, we've seen better outperformance in the East in New York and in Toronto for example, and we continue to see really good growth in Europe, much like we telegraphed last year and the year before. And what you see there is some of the early recovery markets continuing to outperform whether that's Germany or the Netherlands or Czech Republic, and some late recovery markets really starting to pop rents come to mind. So that's how the rents are trending.

Great. Vikram on your question around the clear lease and expenses, those leases are set up where we fix all the cost for real estate taxes, the tenant bears that. And we are collecting slightly more on the expense reimbursements right now. But essentially, call it even. So we set it up that way to be expense neutral. So no impact on NOI and to go back to the next question, just on the clear lease and did that have any impact on how we're calculating rent change? It does not. That clearly, just think about it simply having a rent component and an expense reimbursement component and the rent change is calculated on the revenue, the rent component, not the expense component. So no impact.

Yes. I just want to clarify something Tom said. We actually don't collect reimbursements, that's why it's a clear lease. But we do track what it would have been under a triple net lease. And actually, for the last 1.5 year or two years that we've been implementing this, the numbers have been remarkably on top of one another, and that's the advantage of having an 800-million square foot portfolio to spread this stuff around.

Yes. Hamid, I have a follow-up to my previous question as well as a new one for you. You mentioned leasing as developments, which I assume won't affect your occupancy guidance. However, focusing on retention, you're expecting it to be at 81%, and you've reduced your occupancy guidance. Does that indicate that your pace of leasing up in already vacated space or space set to be vacated will slow down? Am I interpreting that incorrectly?

We are making progress, but it's worth noting that while we previously had zero people leaving during the renewal discussions, that number has now increased, though it's not as high as I would prefer. Additionally, we have seen a decline in occupancy from 98%. In my 37 years of experience, we've only been in the 98% range once, and I advised the team not to get accustomed to that level. We anticipated a decrease in that figure. I believe we communicated our strategy clearly, and I would assert that it has been implemented exactly as we outlined.

Thanks. Can you explain why developments are taking significantly longer to complete? Additionally, regarding the TI number this quarter and the trends we've observed this year, are you spending more on tenant improvements for leases? If so, could you clarify the reasons behind this increase and whether it is affecting your ability to raise rents?

Jamie, I'll take the first one. It's Gene. It's basically a combination of construction time frame and there is some entitlement timeframe in that as well, and which by the way can affect the projects through its construction. And as you pull secondary permits as you go forward. So it's really those two items. And of course depending on where you are geographically, there is a pretty wide range of outcomes.

We've also had kind of weird weather patterns that I think most of you have noticed that definitely methods quick construction schedules.

Jamie, regarding your second question about turnover costs, they are slightly higher this quarter. This increase is likely due to a combination of mix and timing. However, if we look at the trailing four quarters, that gives us a clearer picture. Over the past three years, we've seen a noticeable decline on a trailing four-quarter basis, which aligns with the overall decrease in concessions. Additionally, free rent as a percentage of lease value is consistently decreasing. So, I believe the mix and timing this quarter are not significantly affecting us, and we are not attempting to alter rent changes if that's your concern.

Thanks. Hamid, I was just wondering if you could provide an update on sort of the big data initiatives and the procurement and sort of where you stand? And is that something we're likely to get a lot more detail on for 2020?

On the big data we are, as I mentioned to tackling one very specific project which is yield management. And I would say that's going really well. We're piloting in four markets, and we'll be expanding that to the portfolio, and we are encouraged by the early results. I don't know, Chris may have more to say about that. Gary, you want to talk about the other initiatives?

Yes. On the procurement initiatives, we stood at procurement organizations, we talked about in the past and things are going well there I'd say both in terms of procuring construction-related items and CapEx and G&A. So that is often running. And with respect to the revenue side of the equation, I'd say that we're off to a good start. We're starting to build that business. We're probably getting into the tens of millions of dollars in terms of revenue. So it is becoming more meaningful and we're seeing roughly double-digit growth.

Yes. I would say that that business today, if you isolate it would be pennies a share of incremental earnings. I think in two to three years, it will be dimes, and we're hoping that its potential is more than $1. So, but that is going to take us a while to get to. So don't put in the dollar, don't put in the something. Put in a couple of pennies that we're talking about right now, we're doing better than that actually. But it's a slow ramp, nobody has done this before. So we need to educate ourselves and our customers and a lot of other people to get this done.

I think Steve you were the last person. So thank you all for your interest in the Company and I want to put in a big plug for our Analyst Day, which is coming up and that's why we saved all the good guidance for that date and encourage you to come. Take care.