Brandywine Realty Trust (BDN)
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Earnings Call: Q3 2021

Oct 26, 2021

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Brandywine Realty Trust third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press the star then the one key on your touchtone telephone. Please be advised that today's conference may be recorded. If you require operator assistance, please press star then zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker host today, Mr. Gerard Sweeney, President and CEO. Please go ahead, sir.

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

Lydia, thank you very much. Good morning, everyone, and thank you all for participating in our third quarter 2021 earnings call. On today's call with me are George Johnstone, our Executive Vice President of Operations, Dan Palazzo, our Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer, and Thomas Wirth, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Prior to beginning, certain information discussed during our call may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities law. Although we believe these estimates reflected in these statements are based on reasonable assumptions, we cannot give assurance that the anticipated results will be achieved. For further information on factors that could impact our anticipated results, please reference our press release as well as our most recent annual and quarterly reports that we file with the SEC.

Well, first and foremost, we hope that you and yours continue to be safe, happy, healthy, and engaged. I think looking at our business, despite reopening delays related to the Delta variant, you know, the office market continues to improve. Tour activity, lease negotiations, and deal executions remain on a positive trend line. Our portfolio occupancy has increased to approximately 35%. The predominance of tenants returning has, though, expanded beyond just small employers, as occupancy for tenants 50,000 sq ft and below is now over 50%. During our prepared comments, we'll review our third quarter results, discuss progress in our business plan, and update you on our recent capital and development activity. Tom will then also provide a financial overview. After that, Dan, George, Tom, and I are available to answer any questions you may have.

From a portfolio management standpoint, we remain focused on reducing forward rollover and providing a solid platform for growth. These efforts have been successful. We have reduced our forward rollover exposure through 2024 to an average of 6.8%, a slight improvement over last quarter. Our forecast of rollover exposure is now below 10% annually through 2026. Revenue and earnings growth remain a top priority. Key near-term earnings drivers for us are, as you all know, we have several key vacancies that upon lease up will generate between $0.07-$0.10 per share of growth.

We're delighted to report that we have now leased about 46% of that targeted square footage and achieved about 45% of that forward revenue growth at an average mark-to-market of 12% cash and 19% GAAP, and that income will be substantially in place by the third quarter of 2022, which can create a good growth opportunity for us. Some notable components of that during the quarter, the last 38,000 sq ft vacated by SHI in Austin has been leased, and we've also signed a replacement lease for the 42,000 sq ft tenant in Radnor, Pennsylvania. Lastly, we did sign three new leases at Commerce Square totaling just shy of 29,000 sq ft. We do see clear trend lines of tenants requiring higher quality space, which we do think positions our portfolio extremely well.

From a financial standpoint, for the third quarter, we posted FFO of $0.35 per share, which is 1% per share above consensus estimates, which Tom will walk you through. We've also made excellent progress on all the other components of our 2021 business plan. We do anticipate about 100,000 sq ft of positive absorption during the fourth quarter, and we will achieve our year-end occupancy and lease percentage guidance ranges. To reinforce our leasing progress to date, we are increasing our speculative revenue target by $500,000 from our midpoint range of $20.5 million-$21 million, and we are over 99% complete on that revised target.

It's important to note that $21 million target that we're now circling is about 15% above the bottom end of our original range, and it does reflect ever-improving office market conditions. Looking at some other operating statistics, we also posted great results there for the quarter as well. Tenant retention was above our 2021 business plan range. Of the 59 new deals that we signed this year, the weighted average lease term is 7.8 years. 68% of those lease terms are longer than four years, and our median lease term has remained fairly consistent with what we were able to achieve in 2018, 2019, and in 2020. Third quarter capital costs came in below 8% of generated revenue, so well within our business plan range.

Cash mark-to-market was a positive 12%, and our GAAP mark-to-market was a positive 16%. Our year-to-date mark-to-market results are above our full year ranges. However, as we noted on last quarter's call, based on leases already executed and commencing this, the fourth quarter with lower mark-to-market results, we will finish the year within our business plan ranges. We also expect that every region will post positive mark-to-market results on both a cash and GAAP basis this year. Our third quarter GAAP same store NOI was 2%, and year-to-date results are within our 2021 range. Our third quarter cash same store NOI was 5.5% and above our 2021 range of 3%-5%.

Again, similar to our mark-to-market dynamic, tenants scheduled to take occupancy later this year will accelerate same store growth and will enable us to achieve our 2021 business plan ranges. We are still forecasting a 2021 year-end debt to EBITDA in the range of 6.3-6.5x. And in looking at leasing velocity, we know that everyone is keenly focused on recovery data points, and we have several encouraging signs to report. The Philadelphia suburban market produced more than 350,000 sq ft of leasing activity in the second quarter. It was a 42.7% increase quarter-over-quarter.

The CBD market also posted 181,000 sq ft of leasing activity, and Philadelphia generally is making a strong recovery from the pandemic in comparison to a number of other major American cities. Our vacancy rate is lower than the national average, and based upon a major brokerage report, Philadelphia is in the top 10 of all American cities for pandemic recovery, as measured by recovery rates in employment, vaccination, and leasing activity. During the quarter, we had a total of over 1,500 virtual tours that inspected over 758,000 sq ft, in line with second quarter results. Physical tours were down slightly from the second quarter, and we attribute this really more to the summer months as third quarter physical tours outpaced first quarter tours by over 13%.

Our overall pipeline stands at 1.6 million sq ft, which increased by about 600,000 sq ft during the quarter, another good sign of more tenants entering the marketplace. While these recovery data points are encouraging, they also do compare favorably to the pre-pandemic leasing trends. Our pipeline today is 7% better than our third quarter 2019 results. Deal conversion rate was on par with previous quarter results as well. Now, as you might expect, and we reported last quarter, median deal cycle time continues to trail pre-pandemic levels by approximately 30 days. On a very positive note, during the quarter, we executed 464,000 sq ft of leases, including 347,000 sq ft of new leasing activity. We also continue to see two favorable trends that we think positively impact our portfolio.

First, quality product does matter. Since the beginning of the pandemic, approximately 100,000 sq ft of deals have moved up into Brandywine buildings versus lower quality competitors. Secondly, we have seen approximately 20 tenants expand their premises by approximately 122,000 sq ft since the beginning of the pandemic. In looking at our liquidity and dividend coverages, as Tom will report, we have excellent liquidity and anticipate having approximately $550 million available in our line of credit by the end of the year. We have no unsecured bond maturities until 2023, have a weighted average effective rate of 3.73%, and a fully unencumbered, wholly owned asset base. Our dividend remains extremely well covered, with a 54% FFO and 81% CAD payout ratio.

As we noted, our 5-year dividend growth rate has been 5.3%, while our 5-year CAD growth rate has been just shy of 8%, well in excess of our core peer averages. From a capital allocation standpoint, it was frankly another quiet quarter, but we continue to make progress on many other fronts. As part of our land recycling program, we did sell three non-core land parcels, generating just shy of $11 million of proceeds and at a $900,000 gain. Also, as we noted in our supplemental package, during the quarter, our $50 million preferred equity investment in two office properties in Austin, Texas, were redeemed. We did record a $2.8 million incremental investment income during the quarter due to that early redemption.

That $50 million preferred equity generated just shy of a 21% internal rate of return during the hold period. Taking a quick look at our development opportunity set, 250 King of Prussia Road, which we noted in our supplemental package, is a 169,000 sq ft project under renovation in the Radnor submarket that was started in the second quarter and will be wrapped up by the second quarter of 2022. The project will accommodate heavy life science as well as office use. Our costs did increase quarter-over-quarter due to some additional MEP work to facilitate broader life science penetration, as well as us adding an additional generator for power redundancy. Those two items did impact our target yields by reducing it about 20 basis points.

The project, as we noted before, is really the first delivery in our Radnor Life Science Center, which will consist of more than 300,000 sq ft of life science space in one of the region's best performing submarkets. Our current pipeline for 250 King of Prussia Road totals more than 200,000 sq ft, including 51,000 sq ft in lease negotiations. Looking at Schuylkill Yards, our Schuylkill Yards West project is on time, on budget for a Q3 2023 delivery. That project will be delivered at 7% blended yield. As you may recall, it consists of 326 apartment units, 200,000 sq ft of commercial and life science space, and 9,000 sq ft of street level retail.

We have an active pipeline continuing to build on that project, and our $56.8 million equity commitment is fully funded. Our partners' equity investment is currently being made, and the construction loan that we closed recently will not have its first funding until the first quarter of 2022. Looking at 405 Colorado in Austin, Texas, this project is now complete. During the quarter, we did increase our lease percentage from 24%-44%. We do have a growing and active pipeline now that the building's been fully delivered. We did slide our stabilization date a couple quarters to reflect the timing of these new lease signings, as well as the timing of our targeted pipeline.

The 522-space garage did open during the summer and is currently just shy of about 12% occupied, and we have signed already 102 monthly contracts since we opened the garage. 3,000 Market Street in University City, Philadelphia, is a 91,000 sq ft life science renovation as part of our Schuylkill Yards neighborhood. Base building construction is complete. The building is fully leased for 12 years at a development yield of 9.6%. The redevelopment did include increasing the building size from 64,000 to about 91,000 by converting below grade space into labs. This property was placed into service on October first.

Cira Labs, which we announced a couple quarters ago, is where we partnered with Pennsylvania Biotechnology Center to create a 50,000 sq ft, 239-seat life science incubator within the Cira Centre project. That will be completed later in the fourth quarter and will open January 1, 2022. Since the announcement, we have had great leasing success and now stand just shy of 50%, about 49% leased with 118 of the 239 seats leased and a pipeline with 17 additional proposals aggregating more seats than we have available capacity. Very excited about delivering that project on a substantially pre-leased basis. Just looking at some future development at Schuylkill Yards and Broadmoor. You know, within Schuylkill Yards, the life science push really continues.

We can develop about 3 million sq ft of life science space. We've already delivered 3000 Market, the Bulletin Building. 3151 Market, which is our 424,000 net rentable sq ft life science building, is fully designed, ready to go, with a strong leasing pipeline. Our goal remains to be able to start that project in early 2022, assuming market conditions permit and the pipeline continues to build. At Broadmoor, Block A, which consists of 363,000 sq ft of office and 341 apartments at a total cost of $321 million, will be starting later in the fourth quarter. We are finalizing documentation, including construction financing with our partner.

The first phase of Block F, which is 272 apartment units, will be starting in the same venture format in Q1 of 2022. On the office leasing component, our leasing pipeline right now is slightly over 500,000 sq ft with about an additional 1.5 million sq ft of inquiries. Just one additional note related to our third quarter earnings cycle. As we outlined last quarter, we would normally have provided 2022 guidance for earnings in our business plan and FFO during the third quarter cycle. However, consistent with what we did last year and based on the continued uncertain business climate, we will announce our 2022 guidance on our fourth quarter earnings call. Tom will now provide an overview of our financial results.

Thomas Wirth
EVP and CFO, Brandywine Realty Trust

Thank you, Jerry. Our third quarter net income totaled $900,000 or $0.01 per diluted share, and our FFO totaled $61.1 million or $0.35 per diluted share, and that was $0.01 above consensus estimates. Some general observations about the third quarter. While our results were above consensus, there were a number of moving pieces and several variances to our second quarter guidance. Portfolio operating income at $68.5 million was in line with our guidance for the second quarter. Interest and investment income totaled $4.5 million and was $2.5 million above our $2 million guidance number.

As Jerry mentioned, this variance was due to the early termination of a $50 million preferred equity investment, which resulted in the acceleration of some fees totaling about $1.5 million, and some make-whole interest on the investment income side of about $1.3 million. That all was recorded in the third quarter. We forecasted $2.3 million in land gains and tax provision, which was $1.4 million below our actual results. Two land sales were delayed, and we believe they will both close in the fourth quarter. As a result of those two, that nets to a one penny increase to the reason we're above consensus.

Interest expense of $15.2 million was below our second quarter forecast by $800,000, and that was primarily due to a higher than anticipated capitalized interest on 405 Colorado. Termination other income totaled $1.8 million and was $400,000 above second quarter forecast, primarily due to the timing of some anticipated transactions. G&A was $7.1 million, $400,000 below our $7.5 million second quarter guidance, and that was primarily due to lower employee costs. Our third quarter fixed charge and interest coverage ratios were 4.3 and 4.1 respectively. Both metrics improved from the second quarter, primarily due to the higher investment income.

Our third quarter annualized net debt to EBITDA decreased to 6.5, and is currently at the high end of our 6.3-6.5 guidance. This metric also benefited from the increased investment income. On the additional reporting, as we look at cash collections, they were over 99%, continued to be very strong. We did have some net operating write-offs of tenants that totaled about $700,000 and did lower our portfolio operating income for the quarter. For portfolio changes, 3000 Market. Based on Brandywine completing our base building obligations, 3000 Market will be added to our core portfolio during the fourth quarter, as it's 100% leased life sciences Spark Therapeutics.

Looking at fourth quarter guidance for 2021, we anticipate the fourth quarter results to improve compared to the third quarter, and we have some of the following assumptions. Portfolio operating income will total $70 million and be sequentially higher from the third quarter. That's due to the approximately 212,000 sq ft that's gonna be moving in during the quarter at a positive mark-to-market and will commence in addition to 3,000 sq ft at market. FFO contribution from unconsolidated joint ventures will total about $6.1 million for the fourth quarter, relatively flat compared to the third quarter. G&A will total roughly $7.1 million, again, sequentially flat to the third quarter. Interest expense will be approximately $15.5 million, with approximately $2 million of capitalized interest.

Termination fees and other income should total about $2.5 million. Net management fees will be about $3 million, and interest and investment income about $400,000. We do anticipate land sales and tax provision to be about $1.3 million, mainly based on the slides from the land sales that didn't occur in the third quarter, and this will generate about $6 million in net cash proceeds. On other business plan assumptions, there will be no property acquisitions. We did note one JV sale in our Allstate portfolio, which should generate about $12 million of net cash proceeds. No anticipated ATM or share buyback activity, no financing or refinancing activity in the quarter, and our share count will be about 73.5 million diluted shares.

On the financing front, as previously mentioned, we did close on our construction loan at Schuylkill Yards, which represents a 65% estimated cost, loan to cost. The initial interest rate will be about 3.75%. Based on our current capital plan, we will start drawing on that during the fourth quarter of 2022. We plan to restructure and extend our current loan in covering our joint venture at 4040 Wilson, and that will lower our borrowing costs by about 100 basis points, generate minimal initial proceeds, but allow for increased borrowings to complete the leasing of the vacant office space. While we have no other financing or refinancing activity in our plan, we continue to monitor the debt markets ahead of our 2023 secured bond maturity.

Looking at our capital plan, our second quarter CAD was 65% of our common dividend, and year-to-date coverage is within our range. Our fourth quarter 2021 capital plan is very straightforward at $140 million. It includes $70 million of development and redevelopment activity, $33 million of common dividends, $15 million of revenue maintenance, and $15 million of revenue creation capital expenditures, and contributions to our joint ventures totaling about $5 million. The primary sources will be cash flow after interest payments of $38 million, $42 million use of the line of credit. $42 million cash on hand and cash, other sales and land totaling about $18 million. Based on our capital plan, we will have about $558 million available on the line of credit.

The increase on a projected line of credit is partially due to the build-out of our incubator at Cira Centre, and we also project the net debt to EBITDA to fall within the 6.3-6.5 range, with a big variable being the timing and scope of capital development payments that could reduce cash. Our net debt to GAV will be 39%-40%. In addition, we anticipate our fixed charge ratios to approximate 3.6 on interest coverage and will approximate 3.9%, No, sorry, fixed charge of 3.6, interest coverage of 3.9, which will present sequential decrease, again, primarily due to some of the investment income that we received in the third quarter. I'll now turn the call back over to Jerry.

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

Great, Tom. Thank you very much. The key takeaways as we wrap up our prepared comments. The portfolio and operations are in excellent shape. We've made some really good progress on both building the pipeline as well as beginning the process of significantly filling some of those larger vacancies we have that will be a great growth driver as we look out over the next couple years. The leasing pipeline certainly continues to increase as tenants return to the workplace. That pace is not as fast as any of us would like, but we certainly are seeing a lot of green shoots in terms of more tenancies coming into the market.

Along those lines, we actually do expect, as we're beginning to see now, a compression of decision timelines later in the year and into early 2022, and we are certainly anticipating a continuation of positive mark-to-markets driven by improving market conditions, as well as the necessity of having higher rents based on escalating construction prices. Safety, health, and amenity programs, both in design and execution, are remaining a top priority of all prospects, large and small. Based on that, we really do believe that new development and our trophy inventory stock will remain in a very positive position.

We are very much focused on our two forward growth drivers, both delivering additional product within Schuylkill Yards, leasing out what we have under development, and are delighted to be moving forward on the first phase of Broadmoor later this year and into the first quarter of 2022. The success we've had at 3000 Market, the Bulletin Building just reported results on Cira Labs, as well as a focus on starting 3151 Market early next year. We'll have over 1 million sq ft of life science space operating or under construction, which starts to build that base of revenue diversification that we've talked about.

We certainly are very focused on continuing to grow cash flow, and our attractive CAD growth over the last five years has really resulted in a well-covered and attractive dividend that's poised to grow as we increase earnings. Then just a final comment on financing capital availability. Private equity remains readily available at very effective pricing, as well as we all know, it's a very competitive and advantageously priced debt market. Strong operating and development platforms like Brandywine have significant traction for project-level investments, as certainly as evidenced by what we've demonstrated thus far at Broadmoor and Schuylkill Yards. We really do believe there's readily executable, attractive financing available for our development at very attractive third-party equity cost of capital.

As usual, we'll end where we started, which is that we really do wish you and all of your families well. With that, we're delighted, Lydia, to open up the floor for questions. We do ask that in the interest of time, you limit yourself to one question and a follow-up.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press the star then the one key on your touchtone telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Now, first question coming from the line of Jamie Feldman with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Jamie Feldman
Director and REIT Equity Research Analyst, Bank of America

Thank you, and good morning. I think you had mentioned the leasing pipeline is now 1.6 million sq ft, up 600,000 sq ft quarter-over-quarter. Can you just talk about the big moves in there and what the incremental 600,000 is and just a little more color on how much of it's development, and then by market?

George Johnstone
EVP of Operations, Brandywine Realty Trust

Sure, Jamie. Good morning. This is George. I'd be happy to answer. You know, as we always report pipeline on these calls, it's exclusive of any of our development projects. It really is just the core portfolio. The composition of that 1.6 million is 1.2 million sq ft of new deals and about 400,000 sq ft of renewals. It's fairly evenly spread among the regions, about 400,000 in Austin, 300,000 in D.C., just north of 500,000 sq ft in the Pennsylvania suburbs, and about 400,000 sq ft in CBD.

That roll forward, you know, we had, you know, last quarter had reported, you know, a pipeline. We subtract from that the deals we execute during the quarter and then add to that the deals that come into the pipeline. We're seeing a good mix of activity. You know, both renewals, there are tenants that are willing to make some decisions and are entertaining proposals. On the new square footage, we're extremely pleased with the level we achieved in the third quarter and with the pipeline that we see moving forward to build 2022.

Jamie Feldman
Director and REIT Equity Research Analyst, Bank of America

The incremental 600, I mean, how would you characterize that? Is it tenants that were, you know, hesitant to make a decision and now looking more active, or I'm just trying to think what's changed here so much.

George Johnstone
EVP of Operations, Brandywine Realty Trust

Well, I think, again, it's you know, tenants that are just looking to, you know, a combination of, you know, make decisions because they know their return to work horizon is a little bit more in the near term now as the first of the year approaches. Flight to quality, as Jerry mentioned in his commentary. We did have a couple of you know, larger renewals that have 2023 and beyond expirations that are looking to maybe come up with some type of a blend and extend that entered the pipeline.

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

Yeah. Jamie, Jerry, I think just to add on to George's good comments. You know, I think with the economy really starting to reopen and there more of a defined path of return to the workplace, I think we're generally seeing a much more active dialogue from both the brokerage community, tenant reps, as well as prospects themselves, just trying to really think through their space options, looking ahead to 2022. I think for a couple quarters, we weren't sure what the pace of that would be. Certainly, since Labor Day, we've seen a pretty nice uptick just in activity generally across the board. You know, we're actually pretty pleased that there's not like one sub-market leading that.

We're still seeing good activity in, you know, the Pennsylvania suburbs, particularly, you know, Radnor, the King of Prussia, Conshohocken, corridors. CBD activity, which as you know we talked about last quarter was slow to recover. That's heated up nicely in the last couple months. Then certainly the pipeline that we've been able to build within our Northern Virginia and Maryland portfolios is increasing at a nice pace too. I think it's a recognition that we're kind of returning to the workplace, and a number of tenants are finally focusing on identifying where they wanna be.

Jamie Feldman
Director and REIT Equity Research Analyst, Bank of America

Okay. I guess you're in a unique vantage point with kind of a sizable suburban and CBD portfolio in Philly. I mean, are you seeing any noticeable trends in terms of, you know, with hybrid work? Are some tenants looking to go, you know, if they're downtown now, are they looking to be in the suburbs or vice versa? Or not really?

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

Not really, Jamie. I mean, I think that's what I think what a lot of pundits were thinking about, you know, four or five quarters ago. We stay in really close touch with all of our tenants through our property management and leasing teams. Rare is the discussion where there's a thought about shifting from one versus the other. We just really had George. I mean, I don't think you wanna add anything.

George Johnstone
EVP of Operations, Brandywine Realty Trust

Yeah. I mean, we've seen you know, a handful of downtown tenants actually take a small footprint in the suburbs. Not to give back any square footage in the city, but to have some level of a touchdown space in the suburbs to accommodate workforce commuting patterns, et cetera. Again, they're relatively on the smaller side of the equation and probably not a trendsetting. It is one of the things that having the footprint that we do, we can offer to the tenants. Then, you know, the other attraction we have is, you know, our BEX locations where we have, you know, kind of built out space that can accommodate tenants on an as-needed basis to touch down if they're city workers in the suburbs for the day or vice versa.

Jamie Feldman
Director and REIT Equity Research Analyst, Bank of America

You're seeing more traction with that, the flex office?

George Johnstone
EVP of Operations, Brandywine Realty Trust

We're seeing a little bit, yeah, where, you know, you've got the person who doesn't wanna make the drive one day because they've got, you know, schooling concern or whatever the case may be, so they take advantage of using the suburban location.

Jamie Feldman
Director and REIT Equity Research Analyst, Bank of America

I know I'm over my questions, but just to finish that, I mean, how long are those leases, whether it's with the touchdown suburban or even these flex leases?

George Johnstone
EVP of Operations, Brandywine Realty Trust

Well, yeah, I mean, the touchdown is an amenity that we provide, so that's not even a lease situation. You know, the couple of smaller deals that we've seen were, you know, 3-4 years where they entertained a small footprint.

Jamie Feldman
Director and REIT Equity Research Analyst, Bank of America

Okay. All right. Thank you.

George Johnstone
EVP of Operations, Brandywine Realty Trust

Thanks, Jamie.

Operator

Now next question coming from the line of Manny Korchman with Citi. Your line is open.

Manny Korchman
Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Hey, good morning, everyone.

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

Hey, Manny.

Manny Korchman
Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Jerry, wanted to talk about the redemption of the preferred investment that you guys made. Certainly a good IRR on that capital invested, but you do lose that income going forward. Are you looking for more preferred deals, or sort of what are you gonna use that $50 million for now? Thanks.

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

Yeah. Hey, Manny, it's a great question. Look, I think when we announced the transaction, we were always looking for kind of spot opportunities where we can kind of use our local network to identify where we might be able to facilitate an advantageous kind of short-term investment for us. To answer your question, yes, we continue to look at a number of opportunities. We don't have anything that we're prepared to announce at this point. When we entered into that transaction, we knew that it had the potential to be very short term, which is why we built in some of the exit fee arrangements that we did. It will have a slight impact.

I think it's less than 2% as we look at it in terms of 2022, assuming we don't do anything. Certainly we would expect to be able to find other deployable opportunities for that $50 million, whether that's in another type of preferred investment with a high quality group that needs some bridge financing, or whether that's plowing back into our very active development pipeline or renovating lobbies for a good return on incremental capital, et cetera.

Manny Korchman
Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst, Citi

I wanted to turn back to your closing remarks for a second. It sounds like your approach to bringing in institutional capital may have changed a little bit, unless I'm just reading too much into it. Are you now saying that you're gonna go out sort of on more of a per building or per project basis and offer that project to institutional partners because there's so much capital out there? Do you think you'd still go into sort of a bigger deal, you know, to more broadly encompass a large project?

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

Yeah. I don't think there's any change from before, Manny, so I apologize if my intonation was different. No, look, I think, you know, we're dealing with that continual balance between, you know, how we take advantage of what we think are extraordinarily good market development opportunities and figure out the right financing platform to do that, being very mindful of our discount to NAV and the higher cost of our Brandywine equity cost of capital, given where the current public market pricing is. What we've seen is that in the private marketplace, we can get very effectively priced third-party equity well below our weighted average cost of equity capital, while still preserving, you know, a significant upside potential for our shareholder base.

That seems to be a pretty good algorithm for us to finance some of these larger scale projects. Same process, same program, same objectives as last quarter.

Manny Korchman
Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst, Citi

One last one for, I don't know if it's for George or for Tom. You mentioned a few impairments or write-offs on the collection side. Any more details on what encompassed that? Tom, I think you said it was $700,000, but what types of tenants or geography or whatever other kind of color you can provide.

Thomas Wirth
EVP and CFO, Brandywine Realty Trust

Yeah. It was a combination of a couple tenants that were in the retail sector, and it was one tenant that was in Austin. But it wasn't a trend, and there wasn't a number of them, but a couple of retailers or I would call non-office users and one office user.

Manny Korchman
Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst, Citi

It looked like the collection dipped on the office side, not necessarily on the other.

Thomas Wirth
EVP and CFO, Brandywine Realty Trust

Yeah.

Manny Korchman
Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Was it just that the bigger part of that was the office user?

Thomas Wirth
EVP and CFO, Brandywine Realty Trust

Yes, that was the bigger part of the office use helped take us down a couple basis points.

Manny Korchman
Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Thank you very much.

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

Thanks, Manny.

Operator

Our next question coming from the line of Steve Sakwa with Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

Steve Sakwa
Senior Managing Director, Evercore ISI

Thanks. Good morning. I wanted to just maybe piggyback off of Jamie's question. You know, you guys signed a lot of leases in the quarter, and I'm just curious, Jerry, if you could sort of talk about space planning and how these companies are designing the new space and what the densities of that, you know, new space look like or what they're planning for versus maybe the space they were coming out of.

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

Yeah. Good morning, Steve. Yeah, I will tell you there is no discernible trend line that I could quantitatively identify for you. It still seems to be very anecdotal and company specific. I think we are seeing a number of tenants as evidenced by the number of expansions we've had, you know, continue to grow their business and their physical footprint as they bring on more employees. I think, you know, we are seeing, again, anecdotally without being definitive, more space per employee, larger workstations, a higher percentage of fixed wall offices, be they partition or demising walls, more but smaller conference centers, wider circulation areas.

We're not seeing, which I think is really important trend that we are watching, is we're not seeing a lot of tenants looking at hot desking or, you know, shared workstations. I think that was one of the things we were really tracking very carefully, Steve. With very, very few exceptions, we're not seeing that at all in any of our tenants. Even those who are looking at a hybrid work schedule. The exception is the tenant who wants to eliminate personal workspaces for each employee within their office. I don't know, George, you have any other observations?

George Johnstone
EVP of Operations, Brandywine Realty Trust

No. I mean, you touched on most of them. I think the bottom line takeaway is that it hasn't really changed, you know, I think, but for, you know, maybe smaller gathering places and wider turning radiuses within the space.

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

I think, Steve, honestly, a lot of tenants are—it's kind of wait and see, particularly the larger companies are trying to think through what the return-to-work timeline and configuration looks like. W e're doing everything to stay in front of every single one of our tenants. As you know, we have a really talented internal space planning team within the company. They're in constant communication with both existing tenants and new prospects. I think the trend lines that they're seeing are the ones we've just articulated.

Steve Sakwa
Senior Managing Director, Evercore ISI

Great. As maybe a follow-up, you know, you mentioned, you know, the good demand that you're seeing down at Broadmoor. I think you said the pipeline was maybe above 500,000 sq ft, and there was another maybe 1.5 million sq ft of inquiries. You know, and without naming names, can you sort of maybe just describe the types of tenants, and are these tenants that are sort of already in the Austin market, or are these potential relocations that, you know, may be looking at moving the entire business or parts of the business, you know, into Austin?

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

The bulk of them, Steve, are tenants who have some element of a footprint in Austin. They're looking for significant expansion. Primarily tech tenants. But it's kind of interesting. I mean, you know, the pipeline of active prospects in Austin throughout Austin is, you know, close to 260 companies. About 40 of those are kind of technology companies, but you also have, you know, over 20 financial service companies, over 22 life science companies. So I think what we're seeing in the marketplace is again, it's slower than we would like, but a nice return of major prospects looking for higher quality new development space.

We think, by launching that first phase at Broadmoor, with our partner, we'll be able to really get ourselves in the game for some of those larger prospects.

Steve Sakwa
Senior Managing Director, Evercore ISI

Great. Thanks. That's it for me.

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

Thank you, Steve.

Operator

Our next question coming from the line of Craig Mailman with Citigroup . Your line is open.

Craig Mailman
Director and Equity Research Analyst, Citigroup

Hey, good morning, guys.

Operator

Okay.

Craig Mailman
Director and Equity Research Analyst, Citigroup

Jerry, maybe just go back to the $0.07-$0.10. You noted, you know, 40% of that is done. Just given what you guys have in the leasing pipeline and prospects there, kind of when do you think you get the other 60% put to bed?

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

George and I can tag team this. I mean, I think you know the biggest variable there is really the delivery pace in our 1676 Northern Virginia property. I think with you know with the Austin piece put away, the PA suburban piece put away, we have some very good leasing prospects for a couple of holes within Logan Square in Philadelphia. The major variable really Craig is the rate at which we can accelerate the absorption at 1676. I mean, there we have a very very healthy pipeline. The market, as you well know, is very competitive. We've been aggressive in meeting the market in terms of pricing concession packages.

As I look at that schedule of our key vacancies, which we look at all the time, the major variability is the lease up of that. Commerce Square, which we again have, it's not wholly owned, we have a joint venture. That's our second-largest exposure. I think there the team's really doing a very good job chipping away at those larger vacancies. The challenge we're facing right now in Philly in that is that there's not a lot of larger tenants. Most of our tenants are kind of in that George, 8-20,000 sq ft range.

George Johnstone
EVP of Operations, Brandywine Realty Trust

Exactly. I think, you know, you saw evidence of that, you know, the fact that we signed, you know, 3 leases this quarter that, you know, they total just about 30,000 sq ft. It's kind of, you know, singles and doubles, you know, to kind of continue to chip away at it. I think, the two big holes really are, as Gerard mentioned, 1676 at, you know, on the wholly owned side, and then obviously Commerce. Now the one benefit that we have at Commerce is that some of those upper floor plates are only 15,000 sq ft in size. You know, you can kind of get a, you know, medium-sized tenant and kind of knock out an entire floor.

Craig Mailman
Director and Equity Research Analyst, Citigroup

Gotcha. Of that $0.07-$0.10, what is $16.76, like, as a percent of that?

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

It is probably about 40% of it.

Craig Mailman
Director and Equity Research Analyst, Citigroup

Okay. All right. That's helpful. Okay. Separately, the mark-to-market you guys have been getting has been pretty good, and capital costs have been low, so net effective seem to be doing okay here. I'm just curious, as you guys are going out at Schuylkill and Broadmoor, kind of what's the tenant reaction to rents that you guys are asking for there? I know there's probably just not as many prospects in the market these days for tenants. I'm just kind of curious, your confidence in getting those underwritten rents.

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

We feel very good. Actually, you know, it's one of the projects we have is 250 in Radnor, and there we were targeting, you know, rental rate range, which, you know, we are very much in the throes of getting with some of the leases we have under negotiation. The proposal we have outstanding, both at Schuylkill Yards and in Austin, both at 405 and pending discussions at Broadmoor, we don't really see much resistance at all to meeting our pro forma rental rates. I think the marketplace recognizes that, you know, new high quality construction costs money to build and construction costs have been escalating.

I think given the tone of a lot of the prospects we've talked to, Craig, that are really focused on top quality space to bring their employees back to, we've yet to see an erosion that would lead us to down-tick any of the rental rates that we're asking for. I think we feel pretty good about where we're positioned. Certainly very well positioned versus our competitive set in all those markets.

Craig Mailman
Director and Equity Research Analyst, Citigroup

No, that's helpful. Maybe slip one more in here, like on block A, would you guys expect to start? I mean, just given supply chain issues, where are you guys on procuring materials?

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

To refresh your memory, you know, before we start a project, we've gone through the full pricing exercise, have negotiated a full GMP that breaks down. That is really predicated upon subcontractor bids. In those bids, what their delivery timelines are. Whether it be at Broadmoor or the experience we have here up at Schuylkill Yards West or 250, which are the active ones underway, we don't really anticipate any issues on the supply chain. We are, you know, our major components, Craig, be it steel, glass, or in some cases, plumbing, we do early release packages, get ourselves in the queue for delivery cycles that meet our critical path.

On the projects we have underway, we believe we're in very good shape from a supply chain issue.

Craig Mailman
Director and Equity Research Analyst, Citigroup

Great. Thanks, guys.

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question coming from the line of Michael Lewis with Truist. Your line is open.

Michael Lewis
Equity Research Analyst, Truist

Great. Thank you. A couple of times on the call.

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

Hey, Michael.

Michael Lewis
Equity Research Analyst, Truist

You touched on, you know, cash flow growth and kind of limited capital expenditures. I noticed the low TIs and leasing commissions on the leasing you accomplished this quarter. I'm just wondering, was there a concerted effort to try to do more direct deals without brokers, you know, as much as possible, or was that just something that happened to be the case this quarter and not really a change in strategy at all?

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

Yeah. Not really a change in strategy, Mike. I think, you know, sometimes these quarterly results are a bit episodic. I think it's really a function of, I mean, our approach has always been to work as close as we can with our tenants. We always respect the brokerage market and the value they can bring to the table. To the extent that we have an opportunity with a long-standing tenant to pre-negotiate a direct deal, that's certainly a key part of our landscape as well.

Michael Lewis
Equity Research Analyst, Truist

Okay.

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

No real change, just really the way we normally conduct business.

Michael Lewis
Equity Research Analyst, Truist

Okay. Got it. Thank you. My second question's kind of big picture, and I wanna leave it a little open-ended for you. You know, as I have conversations with investors, you know, we talk about the recovery and leasing and, you know, you went into detail in your pipeline. You know, the counter is that, you know, occupancy's been falling. Similarly, you know, you've got this strong kind of mark-to-market that looks durable, as we look out, you know, but the counter to that is, you know, market rents are falling. I know in your guidance, you know, you're projecting some occupancy recovery.

What do you think, you know, as we look out the next several months, I mean, do you think the narrative in office and for Brandywine is, you know, occupancy under pressure and market rents, you know, kind of struggling to find their footing? Or do you know, given what you're seeing, some of the optimism in the leasing environment, you know, do you think we're closing in on this narrative a little bit where, you know, occupancy can stabilize and market rents can stabilize? You know, given the fears from work from home and all these other things going on, that we could start to, you know, kind of find our footing here in the next few months?

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

We'll tag team it, Michael. Look, it's a great question, and certainly, you know, the state of near and long-term office conditions is certainly near and dear to our hearts every day. We're actually pretty pleased with what we're seeing. You know, I think if you go back, the narrative, you know, four to six quarters ago was that, you know, the sky is falling, rents are gonna collapse. There'll be no tenants looking for space. We're actually seeing the opposite. We're actually seeing, you know, the unifying element of people working together in a physical space as a key driver of what a lot of these prospects are looking for.

The sublease market can at least in the markets we're in continues to decline in terms of available square footage. We have not seen any real decline in net effective rents. I mean, certainly some submarkets remain very competitive. We're just talking about you know Northern Virginia. That's a very competitive market. But we haven't even in that market seen a real diminution in effective rental rates versus where they were a couple quarters ago. You know, if you think about what we're doing strategically at least tactically at a leasing level, we're in front of every one of our tenants, and one of our major goals going back a year was to reduce our forward rollover exposure through 2024.

To buttress ourselves in the event that there is some gray clouds. We've done that, and we have our forward rollover exposure less than 7% through that time period and below 10% through 2026, which we feel really positions the platform for growth. You know, running our portfolio in the low 90s in occupancy is not where we wanna be. We wanna get it back up into the mid-90s.

Just deal with frictional vacancies. We think we're on a path to do that. I think if we take a look at the forward rollover exposure, we feel pretty good about our major tenancies. The pipeline, again, I think is reflective of tenants looking more and more carefully at the quality of the space they're moving into. I think our inventory across the board, forget our development projects for a moment, but across the board really does resonate very well, both from a current quality set and from the on-site property management, engineering, and maintenance services we provide to our tenants. That stuff is very meaningful to our tenant prospect list right now. They wanna know they're dealing with a hands-on landlord that understands the building, has a multiple year track record of investing capital in the building.

I think that creates the leasing momentum that will build our pipeline. Certainly, as evidenced by the numbers we've posted thus far, we would expect to continue to see rent stability and an improving pipeline for our portfolio.

Michael Lewis
Equity Research Analyst, Truist

Great. Thank you.

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question coming from the line of Anthony Paolone with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Anthony Paolone
Executive Director, Co-Head of U.S. Real Estate Stock Research, J.P. Morgan

Yeah, thanks. My first question just follows up on the occupancy discussion there, and more specific to look at you have one big lease rolling, BakerHostetler, and you got half of that backfilled. We can see the expected commencements that you show in the supplemental, and you talked about the pipeline. Just trying to understand, like, you know, what are we not seeing? It would seem like occupancy should actually go up in 2022.

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

We think it will. I think a couple of key contributors, remember, the vacant space at 1676 is 134 basis points of occupancy. Filling that hole certainly moves the needle. The forward leases that we have, and we have a number of them on space that we know the in-place tenant today is leaving, and we've leased it to somebody new. That was one of the reasons why we did change the presentation of our expirations on page 19 of the supplemental, so that we can start to kind of reflect, you know, where gross expirations have been netted by some additional new leasing.

I think the one you cited is a perfect example where, you know, Baker giving us back four floors, we've leased two of them. We've got a lease out to another tenant for a third of the four floors. The last one, we have a proposal out to a potential life science user and a proposal out to a potential office user. I think the occupancy gain, it's really not having these large move-outs that we've kind of suffered from in the past. Staying out in front of those expirations and then plugging away, you know, on 1676. That makes the most impact.

Anthony Paolone
Executive Director, Co-Head of U.S. Real Estate Stock Research, J.P. Morgan

Got it. Just my second question, I know it was fairly quiet quarter in terms of acquisitions, dispositions, but you talked about the liquidity in the market. Would you be able to go around the horn, you know, in terms of suburbs, CBD, Austin, Philly, and some of your, you know, key segments and give us a read as to where cap rates might be?

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

Sure. I'm not sure there's really been any perceptible change since previous quarters. You know, certainly I think starting down in Austin, you know, I think certainly you're seeing, you know, office cap rates in the 5%+ range, multifamily cap rates below 4%. We've seen a couple prints even below that. You know, D.C., I think, depending upon the duration of the leases in place in the Northern Virginia and Maryland marketplace, I think you're seeing cap rates kind of in the 7% range. And up here in Philadelphia, I mean, there have been a couple trades in the suburban space, well below 7%.

I'm trying to think if there's been a trade of any note downtown in the last quarter or two. There really hasn't been, but the last cap rates on there were kind of between 6%-7%. I think we're actually seeing. I alluded earlier to the amount of private equity. Certainly with debt costs being where they are and projected to stay that way, that has really fueled, I think, a lot of interest in office product.

I think certainly, you know, a number of institutions, based upon feedback we're getting from a lot of the big investment brokers and our own conversations, we're certainly seeing that, you know, a piece of institutional capital is looking at the pricing in a couple of their market segments, be it multifamily, be it industrial, and recognizing that cap rates are at historic lows and starting to rotate some of that capital availability back into office. Which we do think if you connect the recovering demand side of the office business with the low interest rate and capital availability side, I think it does portend that you're gonna see continued downward pressure on office cap rates over the intermediate term.

Anthony Paolone
Executive Director, Co-Head of U.S. Real Estate Stock Research, J.P. Morgan

Okay, thank you.

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

You're welcome.

Operator

Our next question coming from the line of Daniel Ismail with Green Street. The line is open.

Daniel Ismail
Managing Director, Co-Head of Strategic Research, Green Street

Great. Thank you. Jerry, you mentioned a few times in the call the resiliency of rents and demand across your footprint. I'm just curious how that translates into property taxes and assessments in the near term, and how that differs perhaps between Philly and Austin. Thank you.

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

Great. George?

George Johnstone
EVP of Operations, Brandywine Realty Trust

Yeah. I think we haven't really seen a lot of pressure on tax assessments yet. I think some of that should be expected because I think as a lot of these municipalities and cities try to right size some of their budget deficits, it could be something that we have to contend with. You know, both Philadelphia and in Austin, you know, the nature of the leases triple net now that still, you know, puts overall pressure on occupancy costs. We haven't seen it, you know, come through thus far. We certainly are up on top of assessments.

We've seen a number of school board reverse appeals, because again, you've got, you know, city budgets, school budgets, county budgets, all kind of competing for dollars.

Daniel Ismail
Managing Director, Co-Head of Strategic Research, Green Street

Great. Thank you.

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

Thank you, Danny.

Operator

I'm showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Sweeney for any closing remarks.

Gerard Sweeney
President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust

Great, Olivia. Thank you for your help today, and thank you all for joining us for our third quarter 2021 earnings call. Stay safe, stay well, and we look forward to updating you on our Q4 results after the first of the year. Thank you very much.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference call today. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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