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Text: Also on the call are Brian McDade, chief financial officer; and Adam Reuille, chief accounting officer.
As all of us know, 2020 was a difficult year for all of those affected by COVID-19, including our company.
Even with the unprecedented operating environment, we accomplished a great deal.
We earned $9.11 per diluted share and funds from operation for the full year, which includes a $0.06 per share dilution from our recent equity offering in November.
We generated over $2.3 billion in operating cash flow.
We acquired an 80% interest in the Taubman Realty Group, made strategic investments in several widely recognized retail brands at attractive valuations and have already made significant progress in repositioning each brand and increasing their operating cash flow.
We raised over $13 billion in debt and equity markets; opened two new international shopping destinations, expanded two others, completed three domestic redevelopments; abated rent for thousands of small and local businesses, regional entrepreneurs and restaurateurs who, frankly, needed our help to survive; paid $700 million in real estate taxes which, unbelievably, was an increase from 2019 despite losing approximately 13,500 shopping days in our domestic portfolio during the year due to the restrictive governmental orders placed upon us, and that's roughly 20% of the whole year to put in perspective; and we returned $2 billion in cash to our shareholders in dividends.
These results and, frankly, these accomplishments are a testament to the entire team, Simon team, for the resilience, relentless focus on operations and cost structure and the safety of the communities we serve and, obviously, focused on giving back to the communities in terms of what we did from an abatement and real estate tax point of view.
Now let's go to the fourth quarter, and then we're going to turn the page.
Fourth-quarter FFO was $787 million.
That's $2.17 per share.
Obviously, that was affected by the dilution of our equity offering that I mentioned.
I'm pleased that -- to report that with the solid profitability and the $900 million in operating cash flow we generated within the fourth quarter, our domestic international operations in the quarter were negatively impacted by approximately a net $0.95 per diluted share, primarily due to the reduced lease income, including sales-based rents and other property revenues caused by COVID-19 disruption and $0.06 also from the international operations due to various restrictions placed upon those properties.
Collection from our U.S. retail portfolio continued to improve.
As of last week, we have collected 90% of our net billed rents for the second, third and fourth quarters combined.
We made significant progress in the fourth quarter in addressing previously unresolved amounts with certain large tenants.
We still, even to this day, have a handful of large tenants, unfortunately, who have yet to resolve their receivables.
And we are hopeful that -- and we anticipate resolving those, certainly, in the next few weeks.
Again, to remind you, these are on a gross basis and not a company share.
Last year, our NOI was $1.6 billion in the fourth quarter.
This year, it's $1.2 billion.
That's a decrease of 23.9% or approximately $380 million.
And here are the components of the decline: $220 million in aggregate from domestic rent abatements and higher uncollectible rents, primarily associated with retail bankruptcies.
And this is an important reminder, we do not amortize any of the abatements.
Even though through FASB, you could, we chose to write those off in the period that they were granted.
And hence, they affect our lease income in the period that we decided to go ahead and grant the abatement.
Approximately $205 million from lower minimum rents reimbursement, short-term leasing, ancillary property revenues and terminations associated with bankruptcy tenants and lower sales volume due to COVID-19 disruption, obviously, lots of government restrictions on restaurants and amount of people we could have in the properties and, just as a reminder to you, we have a great deal of seasonality in the fourth quarter, so obviously, the card kiosk overage rent was impacted by, again, the immense restrictions that we had in terms of operating our portfolio by government mandates.
And then, we offset some of that decline by our diligent cost reduction initiatives.
Operating metrics at the fourth quarter was basically flat compared to the third-quarter 2020, and we were down year over year.
Average base minimum rent was $55.80, up 2.2% for the year.
Leasing spreads declined primarily as a function of mix.
We had some boxes last year that rolled out and are no longer in the 12-month reporting period.
Good news is leasing momentum is continuing.
We signed over 1,400 leases, representing 6 million square feet and have a number of -- significant number of leases in our pipeline.
And that's a testament to our quality of our real estate.
And I do think we're starting to see our retailers get back to what they do best, and that is operate stores.
We opened two new outlets, frankly, in Spain and Bangkok, which we're proud of.
We have an outlet under construction in England, which will open this spring.
Redevelopments, as I mentioned to you, we completed a number of properties.
We also added, which is essentially the Woodbury of Asia, the Gotemba outlet expansion, another 178,000 square feet and another property in Japan, adding another 110,000 square feet.
So look for those to add to our cash flow in future years.
We continue to densify our centers with the opening of a multifamily residential complex and hotel.
We also have three hotels under construction.
We completed the redevelopment and -- of another Northshore Mall, and we started construction on an expansion in Naples.
So we're back to focused on continuing to add improvements across our portfolio worldwide.
We also have a pipeline, as you know, of redevelopment, new development that is under consideration.
Now let me just turn to our retail investments, and I think and I hope this puts all of this in proper perspective.
Obviously, we have an unbelievable track record in capital allocation, making significant returns on investment.
During the year, we capitalized on buying four recognized retail brands in bankruptcy.
So we bought them at attractive valuations.
They include Forever 21, Lucky Brand, Brooks Brothers and Penney.
Each of these brands, we believe, presents a very interesting repositioning opportunity, and each investment has completed at attractive valuations, and we've made significant progress improving the positioning and operating results of the company.
And let me just give Forever 21 as an example.
And as you know, we bought it in February, pre-COVID, well before we knew COVID would have the impact it did on 2020.
And despite all of that -- despite all of that, Forever 21, both in -- in the company generated a positive EBITDA pre-royalties of approximately $75 million in 2020.
And we basically paid $67 million for that.
So our share of that is $30 million.
And you can divide it by $67 million to give you our return on investment in COVID 2020.
Now you could probably conclude that that's a pretty good return on investment.
Now if you put all of our retail brand investments in context, we have approximately $330 million of remaining invested capital, net of cash distributions and the value of appreciation of our ABG investment, which has just had a recent trade.
And so in marking that to market, our net investment in all of these activities is $330 million.
And all of these brands will generate for us in 2021, our share, $260 million of EBITDA.
So you can take $260 million, divide it by $330 million to get a sense of our return on investment.
Now I want to remind everyone that we do not add back the depreciation associated with these retailer investments to our FFO because it's not real property.
So the contribution of that from an earnings point of view will, obviously, be much less.
But the EBITDA is the EBITDA.
So the other point to make in these retail investments is all of these brands generate $3.5 billion in digital sales.
$3.5 billion in digital sales.
And all we have to do is look at how e-commerce brands are being valued today, and I think you could all conclude, we hope you do, that we've been making some wise investments here.
Now with respect to Taubman, I'm very pleased to have completed the transaction for 80% TRG and their premier retail portfolio, asset portfolio.
Our teams have worked -- started working together.
And we are off to a very productive, good spirited start.
I really do look forward to the partnership and growth inherent in the portfolio, and I think we'll all work very well together.
As many of you know, we recently filed an S-1 with the SEC to raise $300 million in a Simon-sponsored special purpose acquisition corporation, i.e., SPAC.
We are currently in a quiet period for the filing and are unable to speak to it, about the proposed offering, at this time.
We've been very active in the debt and equity capital markets, raising $13 billion in the last 12 or so months and, just some highlights, amended and extended our credit facility with a $6 billion facility that included a $2 billion term loan, which was used to fund the Taubman transaction; issued $3.5 billion of senior notes including the recent $1.5 billion offering in January, addressing all of our 21 unsecured maturities and, obviously, before the treasury really moved up; we completed 15 secured loan financings -- refinancings for $2 billion; and again, in November, we completed a common stock issuance of 22 million shares for $1.56 billion.
The term loan funded the Taubman deal, and our net debt was flat compared to last year, exclusive of the properties that we added with the Taubman transaction and the term loan drawdown.
Fourth quarter, we ended our liquidity with $8.2 billion, consisting of about $1.5 billion of cash, including our share of joint venture and $6.7 billion of available credit facility.
This is net of $623 million of commercial paper outstanding at quarter end.
Dividend, we paid our fourth-quarter dividend of $1.30 per share, which is $6 in total for the year.
We paid more than $2 billion in 2020.
We're up to over $34 billion in dividends of our history as a public company.
And we're really proud that we paid the cash dividend when many of our other companies are either suspended or completely eliminated or dramatically reduced their dividend.
Now, finally, let's move on to 2021 because I do, frankly, want to turn the page on 2020 as I'm sure we all -- as you all do.
We feel confident we've turned the corner.
We expect growth in cash flow and earnings.
In 2021, our guidance is $9.50 to $9.75 per share.
This range, it includes approximately $0.15 to $0.20 per share from our retailer investments.
Again, keep in mind that we can't add back -- or we don't add back depreciation for those investments.
That's a growth range of 4.3% to 7%, compared to our full year of $9.11.
And just no more -- our diluted share count will be 376.
No significant acquisition or disposition activity and no further government mandate shutdown of our domestic retail properties is in that guidance.
As you know, we are dealing with certain shutdowns in Europe as we speak.
So let me just conclude, one heck of a year.
Let's not repeat it in any stretch of our imagination.
Let's turn the corner.
In a very tough environment, we've dealt with just basically about everything.
And everyone out there, be well.
And we're ready for any and all questions, though I'm sure people want to go home and warm up because it's cold.

user
simon property group sees fy 2021 ffo per share $9.50 to $9.75.
sees fy 2021 ffo per share $9.50 to $9.75.
q4 ffo per share $2.17.
ffo will be within a range of $9.50 to $9.75 per diluted share for 2021.
expect growth in earnings and cash flow in 2021.
simon property group - as of feb 5,, has collected from its u.s. retail portfolio, 90% of net billed rents for second, third, fourth qtrs, combined.

assistant