Macerich Company's CEO Discusses Q2 2012 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

The Macerich Company (MAC)

Q2 2012 Earnings Call

August 1, 2012 1:30 p.m. ET

Executives

Jean Wood – Director of Investor Relations

Thomas O’Hern – Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Arthur Coppola – Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Analysts

Chris Schmidt – Bank of America

Quentin Velleley - Citi

Jeffrey Donnelly - Wells Fargo

Steve Sakwa – ISI Group

Michael Mueller – JPMorgan

Rich Moore - RBC Capital Markets

Christy McElroy – UBS

Paul Morgan - Morgan Stanley

Presentation

Operator

Good day and welcome to the Macerich Company Second Quarter 2012 Earnings Conference Call. Today’s call is being recorded. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a Question-and-Answer Session. Instructions will be provided at that time for you to queue up for questions.

I would like to remind everyone that this conference is being recorded and would now like to turn conference over to Miss Jean Wood, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead Miss Wood.

Jean Wood

Hi. Thank you everyone for joining us today on our Second Quarter 2012 Earnings Call. During the course of this call management will be making forward-looking statements which are subject to uncertainty and risks which are associated with our business and industry.

For a more detailed description of these risks, please refer to the Company’s press release and SEC filing.

As this call will be webcast for some time to come, we believe it is important to note that the passage of time can render information stale and you should not rely on the continued accuracy of this material.

During this call we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures that defined by the SEC Regulation G. The reconciliation of each non-GAAP financial measure to the most directly comparable GAAP measure is included in the press release and a supplemental 8-K filing for the quarter, which are posted in the Investor section of the Company’s website at www.macerich.com.

Joining us today are Art Coppola, CEO and Chairman of the Board and Tom O’Hern, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

With that, I would like to turn the call over to Tom.

Thomas O’Hern

Thank you, Jean. Today we are going to be discussing the second quarter results, our capital activity and our outlook for the rest of the year.

We continue to see strong improving fundamentals in our business. Retail sales had another strong increase and same –center ROI was positive for the tenth quarter in a row.

The re-leasing spread showed double digit increases again, in addition, occupancy was up 30 basis points compared to a year ago, at a very healthy level of 92.7%.

During the quarter we signed leases for 266,000 square feet, average starting run of 45.64 and a positive re-leasing spread on a trailing 12-month basis of 165.

The occupancy of 92.7% was up 60 basis points sequentially compared to the March 31 st occupancy level, a strong gain for the quarter.

Occupancy cost as a percentage sales came in at 12.7 for the trailing 12-months. That’s down compared to 13.2 at June 30 th of last year.

FFO adjusted which excludes the impact Valley View and Prescott was $0.74 a share. The operating results for the quarter included same-center NOI excluding termination revenue and SFAS 141 was up 2.9%.

Management company expenses were up for the quarter at $23.7 million. However, that has to be looked at on a year-to-date basis due to timing differences. Year-to-date, management company expenses are $46.3 million compared $46.7 million for the same period of last year.

Valley View Center had been in receivership since mid-2010, it was sold in April and concurrent with that sale the debt and all accrued interest was forgiven. We booked an extinguishment of debt mean of $104 million.

In May, Prescott Gateway was conveyed to the lender in a deed in lieu transaction and a $16 million gain on extinguishment of debt was recognized.

Those gains on debt extinguishment on Valley View and Prescott are not included in AFFO.

Looking at our balance sheet, our debt-to-market-Cap at quarter end was 40%. Net-debt-to-EBITDA was 7.3 times and our interest coverage ratio in the quarter was 2.6 times.

It continues to be a great financing market but extremely low rates and a significant amount of capacity. We are taking advantage of this market. We began 2012 with an average debt maturity of 3.2 years. As a result of the refinancing and debt reduction year-to-date, as of June 30 th we have extended the debt maturities schedule to almost four years.

By year-end we are expecting the average debt maturity schedule to closer to five years, the average debt maturity. In addition, since the loans we’re putting in place are long-term fixed rate loans, the excess proceeds are being used to pay down our line of credit. And by year-end, our floating rate debt will only be about 20% of our total debt.

And I would expect that to continue to go down in 2012 as we move forward with our 2013 debt maturities.

Some of the recent activity includes a $200 million loan on Chandler. That was a seven year deal at a fixed rate of 3.77%. That replaces the prior loan which had a coupon of $5.48%.

We also closed on a $220 million loan on the Oaks. That had been a floating rate loan before, the new loan is a fixed rate 10-year deal at 4.1% interest rate.

We are also getting fixed rate quotes on Chester Field and Rimrock, two currently unencumbered assets. The proceeds from those two deals were estimated to be between $160 million and $180 million and that will be used to pay down floating rate debt on our line of credit.

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