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Text: If you did not receive a copy, these documents are available through the quarterly disclosures and supplemental SEC information links on the Investor Relations page of our website, cousins.com.
In particular, there are significant risks and uncertainties related to the severity and duration of the COVID-19 pandemic and the timing and strength of the recovery there from.
2020 was an extraordinary year.
The COVID-19 pandemic arrived swiftly and our lives changed almost overnight.
As I said in May of last year, crises don't build character, they reveal character.
At Cousins, we value our employees, our customers and our communities.
I've been so proud that our dedicated team has ably navigated the pandemic, while consistently providing our customers with the same excellent service they expect from us every day.
In addition, Cousins gave back to our communities as we committed $900,000 from our nonprofit foundation to support organizations focused on COVID-19 relief and important social justice causes.
Before addressing our long-term outlook, I want to provide a few highlights of our solid fourth quarter results.
On the operations front, the teams delivered $0.68 per share in FFO with second generation cash rents of 8.9%.
We leased 387,000 square feet and collected 99% of total rent, including 99% from our office customers.
In addition, we took advantage of economic uncertainty and made several investments in the South End of Charlotte, including our acquisition of the RailYard's for $201 million and two fabulous land sites, totaling 5.6 acres in aggregate.
These significant investments in Charlotte will provide a solid foundation for growth in that dynamic city for years to come.
Cousins was well-prepared to weather challenging times with a simple, yet compelling strategy that enabled us to operate effectively throughout the year.
Let me highlight the core principles of our strategy.
First, to build the premier urban Sunbelt office portfolio, second, to be disciplined about capital allocation and focus on new investments where our platform can add value, third and importantly, to have a best-in-class balance sheet, and finally to leverage our strong local operating platforms that take an entrepreneurial approach in our high growth markets.
We have made significant strides in progressing this strategy.
Today, we have the leading trophy portfolio in the best Sunbelt sub-markets of Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte, Dallas, Phoenix and Tampa.
Second, we have a terrific development pipeline of $449 million, that is 77% pre-leased and attractive land sites where we can build an additional 5 million square feet.
Our balance sheet is strong with net debt to EBITDA of 4.8 times and G&A as a percentage of total assets at 0.3%, both among the best in the entire office sector.
While the pandemic persists, we are starting to see early signs of hope with the promise that vaccines offer.
As we approach the other side of the health crisis, our conviction around our Sunbelt trophy office strategy has only grown.
Let me share why.
Our strategy has positioned Cousins at the intersection of two powerful trends driving the office sector, the migration to the Sunbelt and a flight to trophy properties.
While these trends were under way before COVID, they are likely to accelerate.
For example, the top five migration states from 2019 through 2020 were Texas, Florida, Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia, while the bottom five States were New York, Illinois, California, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
We've also seen announcements of relocations and large expansions, including Oracle, CBRE and Amazon.
In fact, 2020 with a record year for corporate relocations and expansions in Austin with 39 companies that announced plans to add nearly 9,900 jobs in the Greater Austin area.
And in Atlanta just yesterday, Microsoft confirmed, it had purchased 90 acres in West Midtown with plans to build a major employment hub, which will include thousands of new office-using jobs.
We believe that we're only in the early stages at this geographic shift.
I am confident we will see additional large relocation and expansion announcements later this year.
We hope to directly benefit from some of these situations.
But regardless, these moves will further validate the importance of the office to companies in the power of our Sunbelt footprint.
And to be clear, innovative companies aren't relocating from California to Texas, Georgia and North Carolina, to work-from-home.
Looking forward to 2021, let me share some of our top priorities.
First, we are focused on creating value in our existing portfolio, including making leasing progress in our larger blocks of space.
Second, we will look for opportunities to upgrade the quality of our portfolio through strategic acquisitions, with properties that reflect the office of the future.
An example of this is our recent acquisition of The RailYard in Charlotte.
We will likely fund these with the sale of older, vintage, higher CapEx properties.
As I said last quarter, we will not always be able to time our buys and our sales concurrently, which could on occasion create short-term earnings fluctuations.
However, our creative deal-making is a differentiator and integral to driving long-term earnings and NAV growth.
Third, we will continue to prioritize and appropriately size land bank to meet customer demand for new experiential properties in the best locations.
Lastly, we will continue to identify new office and mixed use development opportunities with an eye toward pre-leasing.
However, we will also selectively consider development opportunities with speculative components in unique markets like The Domain in Austin, where fundamentals and in-migration are so strong.
2021 is a transition year for Cousins from an earnings perspective.
Our financial results will reflect several known move-outs from recent value add acquisitions like 3350 Peachtree, 1200 Peachtree in Atlanta, as well as the Bank of America Plaza building in Charlotte, which is now known as One South at the Plaza.
Clearly, the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns delayed our releasing efforts.
However, with the vaccine rolling out, we are seeing restrictions ease, and revived customer interests.
We are eager to begin executing our business plans to reposition these exciting projects.
Our strategy remains intact.
The properties are in the right markets and the trends are in our favour.
As we look to 2022 and beyond, these value-added investment opportunities are a terrific source of value creation.
Combined with our existing and future development pipeline, Cousins is uniquely positioned to deliver long-term growth for our shareholders.
Importantly, we have the right balance sheet with low leverage and ample liquidity to capitalize on the opportunities.
They always rise to the occasion, providing excellent service to our customers and applying their talents to make our Company stronger.
I'm proud to be part of Cousins.
We reported solid fourth quarter operating results, delivering a constructive close to a year that presented every one of us with truly historic challenges to overcome.
As I've done for the past couple of quarters, I will begin by updating you on general business conditions.
First, an update on customer utilization within our 20 million square foot operating portfolio.
Utilization continues to track at an average of approximately 20% across the company, squarely in line with our reported levels last October.
Given the widespread increase in COVID cases over the past couple of months, we've used steady utilization through this period as [Phonetic] encouraging.
Like last quarter, we sensed that utilization will not move materially higher until the second half of 2021, and should be highly dependent on vaccination efforts.
Rent collections were consistent and strong again this quarter.
We collected 98.8% of rent from all customers and 99.2% of rent from office customers in the fourth quarter.
Collections are running at comparable levels so far in 2021 as well.
We also continue to have very few ongoing rent deferrals, which are at this point largely limited to our retail customers.
In the fourth quarter, rent deferral agreements represented just 0.3% of annualized contractual rents.
And we're only 1.5% of contractual rents for all 2020.
Now let's turn to operating results.
Our total portfolio into the fourth quarter at 90.8% leased with our same property portfolio at a solid 92.7% leased.
Total portfolio weighted average occupancy held steady this quarter at 90.4% and the same-property portfolio moved up to 92.4%.
As Colin already referenced, we expect 2021 to be a transitional year for Cousins, including occupancy.
While only 8.5% of our annual contractual rents expire in 2021, our operating portfolio includes value-add investments with known 2021 pending vacancy, such as 1200 Peachtree and 3350 Peachtree in Atlanta and One South at the Plaza in Charlotte.
The final 169,000 square feet of Bank of America space at One South expired at the end of 2020, representing about 90 basis points of portfolio occupancy.
So, we will see a lower weighted average occupancy beginning in the first quarter of 2021.
I would also note that in late 2021, our occupancy will reflect the positive impact of some known commencements from new deliveries, most notably at the domain in Austin.
In short, occupancy will be lower in 2021 compared to 2020.
But as Colin said, we have a great opportunity to create long-term value as we lease up these blocks of space.
On top of that, we have only 8% or less of our annual contractual rents expiring in each year through 2024.
As expected, the pandemic once again impacted quarterly leasing volume with a new activity slower.
With that said, we saw an encouraging bounce in overall activity this quarter.
In all, we executed over 387,000 square feet of leases during the fourth quarter and over 1.4 million square feet of leasing for the year.
Notable leases in the fourth quarter included a renewal of NASCAR and NASCAR Plaza in Charlotte and the renewal and expansion of Amazon at Terminus in Atlanta.
After quarter end, we also signed a new lease at our 100 Mill new development in Tempe.
Our average lease term this quarter was a healthy 6.6 years, and it was seven years for the full year.
Our average lease term was fairly consistent between new and renewal activity and was not meaningfully different than our three-year pre-COVID run rate of 7.5 years.
Lease concessions defined as free rent and tenant improvements were $4.15 per square foot per year this quarter, below our rolling eight-quarter average.
Nonetheless, we continue to feel the most lease negotiating pressure around concessions.
Rent growth within our portfolio has remained strong, especially for operating in pandemic, with second generation net rents increasing 8.9% on a cash basis for the quarter and 13.1% on a cash basis for the year.
With solid rent growth and lower than normal concessions in this past quarter, our average net effective rents came in at $25.19 per square foot.
We have printed higher net effective rents in only three other quarters since the beginning of 2018.
As we look ahead, despite continued headwinds and overall vacancy and sublease availability, there are hopeful signs in each of our markets that meaningful economic recovery is possible as the year progresses.
Let me provide some examples.
There has been a clear ramp in major Sunbelt job and office relocation announcements.
Oracle's relocation to Austin, Microsoft sizable new East Coast hub in Atlanta, and Pfizer's growth commitment in Tampa to name just a few.
For CoStar, Uptown Charlotte and Tempe still have notably low Class A vacancy rates of 7.7% and 6.9% respectively.
These would be great launching off points emerging from a recession.
For JLL, there are currently over 5.4 million square feet of tenant requirements in the market in Austin.
40% of these requirements are focused on the CBD and Northwest domain.
Also for JLL, employees in Dallas have returned to the office faster than the rest of the country at almost 40% in December.
This compares to only 10% to 15% in the coastal markets.
Even more impressive, both Dallas and Austin are already back above pre-COVID-19 employment levels.
Across the board, it is becoming clear that physical office space will remain important as we emerge from the pandemic.
According to a recent PwC study, 70% of executives expect their real estate footprint to stay the same or grow over the next three years due to the rising headcounts and social -- due to rising head counts and social distancing.
In one example of this sentiment, Google CFO said during the company's most recent earnings call that when they look ahead, the company quote expects to return to a more normalized pace of ground-up construction and the fit out of office facilities.
It does not get any clearer than that.
Now, some color on our leasing pipeline.
While we had a pause during the fourth quarter with COVID and seasonal headwinds, early stage interests and inquiries have noticeably increased again since the beginning of the calendar year, signaling the companies now seem willing to begin the process of making longer-term real estate decisions.
The most noticeable upticks and inquiries in activity have been in Austin, Midtown, and Buckhead of Atlanta and Tampa.
Economic development teams in every one of our markets are still signaling high optimism, noting that they're as busy as they have ever been.
As I said last quarter though, keep in mind that early stage activity can often take multiple quarters to evolve.
In summary, we enter a transitional 2021 with a sense of renewed optimism albeit cautious for what lies ahead.
Before handing off to Gregg, I want to say how proud I am of all of my Cousins' teammates, who have responded to this pandemic with amazing confidence [Phonetic], resilience, and hard work.
I'll begin with my remarks by providing a brief overview of our quarterly financial results, including some detail on our same-property performance, our development pipeline and our transaction activity, followed by a quick discussion of our balance sheet and dividend before closing my remarks with information on our outlook for 2021.
Overall fourth quarter numbers were solid and it held up relatively well since the onset of the pandemic.
FFO was $0.68 per share for the quarter and $2.78 per share for all of 2020.
Same-property cash NOI growth remained positive during 2020 at 0.7%, and it was up a very solid 4.5%, when adjusting for COVID related rent deferrals and parking losses.
Most impressive as all as Richard said earlier, was that we increased cash rents on expiring leases by over 13% during 2020.
Focusing on our same-property performance, cash net operating income during the fourth quarter declined 3.3% compared to last year, driven by a 4% decline in revenues and a 5.2% decline in expenses.
Adjusting for COVID related rent deferrals and parking losses, same-property cash NOI actually increased 1.7% during the fourth quarter.
Before moving past same-property performance, I wanted to take a moment to highlight the outstanding work done by our property management teams with controlling expenses during the pandemic.
For all of 2020, same-property operating expenses were down 6%, compared to 2019, and excluding property taxes, expenses were down almost 10%.
These are terrific results during challenging times.
Turning to our development efforts, one asset Domain 12 in Austin was moved off our development pipeline schedule during the fourth quarter, as economic occupancy at that property exceeded 90%.
The remaining development pipeline represents a total Cousins investment of $450 million, across 1.5 million square feet in five assets.
Our remaining funding commitment for this pipeline is approximately $125 million, which is more than covered by our existing liquidity and future retained earnings.
On the transaction front, we closed three acquisitions during the fourth quarter, the purchase of The RailYard in Charlotte for $201 million, as well as the purchase of two land parcels in Charlotte for $47 million.
In addition, we sold our interest in two small non-core land parcels that the company acquired over 15 years ago, when the strategy was decidedly different than it is today, incurring a loss of approximately $750,000.
One parcel was a residential tract in Texas and the other was a golf course in Georgia.
With the completion of these sales, only one non-core parcel remains in our land inventory.
A tract in North Atlanta adjacent to a shopping center, we developed and subsequently sold over eight years ago.
Looking at the balance sheet, we entered this period of volatility without standing financial strength, among the very best of our office peers.
Not only do we have low leverage, our liquidity position is strong and our dividend remains well covered.
The only near-term debt maturity is a construction loan at our Carolina Square property in Chapel Hill.
We've selected a lender and anticipate closing a new five year floating rate loan on this asset in the next few weeks.
Before discussing 2021 earnings guidance, I wanted to highlight an asset that we have moved to the held for sale classification as of year end.
As we've previously discussed, our Burnett Plaza property in Fort Worth is a non-core holding for us.
It was acquired as part of the TIER REIT transaction in mid-2019.
We are actively pursuing a sale of this property, which will hopefully close during the first half of the year.
However, the completion and timing of the sale remain uncertain.
For GAAP, we have marked the value of Burnett Plaza down to reflect its current market valuation.
This impairment reflects approximately a 6% decline in value for the asset, which is not surprising considering the disruption to energy markets, since we closed the TIER transaction 1.5 years ago.
Looking forward, we're providing initial 2021 FFO guidance of between $2.76 and $2.86 per share.
No acquisitions, dispositions or development starts are included in this guidance.
If any transactions do take place, we will update our earnings guidance accordingly.
Please also note that our earnings guidance assumes physical occupancy will remain significantly below normalized levels until the second half of 2021.
As a result, quarterly earnings are anticipated to gradually increase as the year progresses.
Finally, don't forget that year-over-year comparisons on all performance metrics, including earnings won't be perfectly claimed during the first quarter of 2021.
It'll be a bit of an apples and oranges comparison to 2020 during the first quarter as the impact of COVID really didn't kick into our numbers until the second quarter of 2020.

user
cousins properties releases fourth quarter and full year 2020 results.
funds from operations was $0.68 per share for quarter.
collected 98.8% of rents, including 99.2% from office customers, during quarter.
sees 2021 ffo in the range of $2.76 to $2.86 per share.
guidance assumes physical occupancy remains significantly below normalized levels until the second half of 2021.

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