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Text: As always, we appreciate your interest.
Brent Wood, our CFO, is also participating on the call.
We refer to certain of these risks in our SEC filings.
We hope everyone and their families remain well and out of harm's way.
They've done a great job transitioning our operating strategy quickly and doing so while working remotely.
Our second quarter results were strong and demonstrate the resiliency of our portfolio and of the industrial market.
The team had a solid quarter, producing such stats as funds from operations came in above guidance, up 9% compared to second quarter last year.
This marks 29 consecutive quarters of higher FFO per share as compared to the prior year quarter, truly a long-term trend.
And for the year, FFO per share is up 9.5%.
Our quarterly occupancy was high, averaging 96.6%, leaving us 97.5% leased and 97% occupied at quarter end, ahead of our projections.
Our occupancy is benefiting from a healthy market with accelerating e-commerce and last-mile delivery trends, also benefiting our occupancy as a high year-to-date retention rate of 84%.
Re-leasing spreads were strong for the quarter at 13.8% GAAP and 7.9% cash.
Year-to-date leasing spreads are higher at 20.1% GAAP and 11.5% cash.
Finally, same-store NOI was up 4.1% for the quarter and 3.9% year-to-date.
In sum, during an extremely choppy environment, I'm proud of our team's results.
Our strategy remains one of maintaining occupancy and cash flow with an eye on liquidity.
I'm hopeful our strategy will shift again later in 2020 to focus on growth.
Brent will give you color or commentary about our upcoming debt placement, further improves our liquidity while lowering our cost of capital.
I'm grateful we ended the quarter generally full at 97.5% leased, while Houston, our largest market at 13.8% of rents, is 97.9% leased, has roughly a 4% square footage roll through year-end and a five-month average collection rate on rents of over 99%.
My five months used being the length of this pandemic to date.
Company level rent collections remain resilient.
For July thus far, we've collected 95% of rents.
The unknown is when the economy truly reopens, how fast it will reopen, in which cities and are there any shutdowns remaining.
We and everyone else simply have less clarity than normal even several months into this.
Brent will speak to our budget assumptions, but I'm pleased that with our second quarter results and a realistic plan, we can reach $5.28 per share in FFO.
We are only $0.02 shy of our original pre-pandemic expectations.
As we've stated before, our development starts are pulled by market demand.
With the shutdown, we reduced projected 2020 starts to reflect first quarter actual starts as well as some level of pre-lease conversations under way.
In other words, we're not forecasting new spec developments at this time.
We're also looking at acquisitions and value-add investments in the same light.
Given the positive long-term distribution trends we foresee, we're working on several land sites which we view as valuable development parcels when the economy stabilizes.
And in the meantime, we view operations, working with our tenants and maximizing liquidity as the key goals until we reach the next market phase.
And now Brent will review a variety of financial topics, including our updated 2020 guidance.
Our second quarter results reflect the resiliency of our team and strong overall performance of our portfolio amid unprecedented conditions.
FFO per share for the second quarter exceeded our guidance range at $1.33 per share and, compared to second quarter 2019 of $1.22, represented an increase of 9%.
The outperformance was primarily driven by our operating portfolio, maintaining occupancy and collections better than we had estimated in April, which was the initial onset of the pandemic.
I will center my comments around our capital status, rent collections and deferment requests and assumption changes that increased the midpoint of our FFO per share estimate.
During the second quarter, we raised $30 million of equity at an average price of $123 per share.
And earlier this month, we agreed to terms on two senior unsecured private placement notes totaling $175 million.
The $100 million note has a 10-year term with a fixed interest rate of 2.61%.
The second note is $75 million on a 12-year term with a fixed interest rate of 2.71%.
We anticipate closing on both notes in October.
That activity, combined with our already strong and conservative balance sheet, has kept us in a position of financial strength, which is serving us well during this time of uncertainty.
Our debt-to-total market capitalization is 21%, debt-to-EBITDA ratio is 5.1 times, and our interest and fixed charge coverage ratios are over 7.2 times.
Our rent collections have been equally strong.
We have collected 98.1% of our second quarter revenue and entered into deferral agreements for an additional 0.8%, bringing our total collected and deferred to 99% for the second quarter.
As for July, we have collected 95.5% of rents thus far and have entered into deferral agreements on an additional 0.7%, bringing the total of collected and deferred for the month to 96.2%.
That is slightly ahead of June's pace.
Last April, we reported that 26% of our tenants have requested some form of rent deferment.
In the three subsequent months, that has only risen to 29%.
We have denied 79% of the request, are in various stages of consideration on 8% and have entered into some form of deferral agreement with 13% of the request.
The rent deferred this far totals $1.5 million, which only represents approximately 0.4% of our estimated 2020 revenues.
As we stated last quarter, the depth and duration of the pandemic and its impact on the economy is undeterminable.
However, the menacy and degree of potential tenant financial stress and loss of occupancy we had budgeted for in April did not occur in the second quarter.
As a result, our actual performance and revised assumptions for the remainder of the year increased our FFO earnings guidance by 2.1% from a midpoint of $5.17 per share to $5.28 per share or a 6% increase over 2019.
Among the changes were an increase in average occupancy from 95.2% to 96% and a decrease in reserves for uncollectible rent from $3.8 million to $3.6 million.
Note that the reserve for potential bad debt for the third and fourth quarter of $2.4 million is not attributable to specific tenants.
Rather, it is a general assumption that there will be some companies who succumb to the disruption in the economy caused by the pandemic.
Other notable revisions include a lower average interest rate on new debt and the increase of equity issuances by $95 million.
In summary, we were very pleased with our second quarter results.
We will continue to rely on our financial strength, the experience of our team and the quality of our portfolio to navigate us through the remainder of the year.
Now Marshall will make some final comments.
In closing, I'm proud of our second quarter results.
We said the past few years, our fear wasn't shallow bay oversupply as much as a black swan economic event.
We don't want either, but now we have just that.
Our company and our team have worked through these before and while different, we're working through this one, too.
As the economy stabilizes, it's the future that makes me the most excited for EastGroup.
Our strategy, which has worked well the past few years, will come out of this pandemic with trends that we're hearing of, including companies carrying additional safety stock inventory, shopping habits that have changed accelerating the consumer to e-commerce, new industrial users as a result of these shopping habits and increased U.S. manufacturing or nearshoring in Mexico.
Meanwhile, our bread and butter traditional tenants will remain and continue needing last-mile distribution space in fast-growing Sunbelt markets.
All of these, along with the combination of our team, our markets and our properties, have me optimistic about our future.

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q2 ffo per share $1.33.
during q2 did not begin construction of any new development projects.

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