Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Bank of America's Global Real Estate Conference. I'm Josh Dennerlein, and I cover the residential REITs, for those of you who don't know me. We're pleased to have with us ELS's CEO, Marguerite Nader, CFO, Paul Seavey, and Patrick Waite, EVP and COO. With that, I'll turn it over to Marguerite for opening remarks, and then we can do Q&A. And, as always, I encourage audience questions. With that, Marguerite.
Wonderful. Thanks, Josh, and thanks for allowing us to present today, so a couple of things I wanted to focus on included in our investor presentation on page two of our deck. The first thing is really just focused in on our annual revenue sources, and that 90% of our revenue comes from annual sources. The next thing, just to focus in on our annualized total return since IPO has been 15%, and our ten-year total return has been 303%, and I think, as most of you know, last year we were added to the S&P 400. The next thing on page three touch on just ELS at a glance, for those of you who are not familiar with us.
We've really focused on translating NOI growth into FFO growth, strong FFO growth. So our NOI growth over time has been about 4.4% and translating into 8.6% of FFO growth, and that compares to the REIT industry average of about 4%. Turning to our balance sheet, looking into the future, in 2026, 12% of our debt is coming due through 2026, compared to the REIT average of about 27%. Paul is gonna highlight for us our performance through Q2, and then Patrick is gonna walk through the demographic trends for our sector.
Thanks, Marguerite. The page after the one Marguerite was just highlighting has our highlights. We've been very focused on talking with investors about our performance year-to-date through June. Our normalized FFO per share growth, the chart on that page shows our performance at right around 6%, compares favorably to REITs at roughly 4%, and the resi sector, which is just below 2% in that year-to-date period. Internally, and with investors, we spend a good amount of time talking about our focus on the NOI that's generated by the core portfolio and how we make sure that that translates into normalized FFO per share growth.
Very pleased to be able to show the chart in the center part of the page, which is consistent with the long-term performance that Marguerite mentioned a minute ago. Core NOI growth at, excuse me, 6% is more than double residential REITs and the REIT sector broadly, and that comes on strong revenue growth and our demonstrated ability to control expenses. I will point out when we think about revenue, I think one key differentiator for us is the payment patterns of our customers. We have extremely low delinquencies and have historically had that. Before, kinda during the period of the pandemic and after the pandemic, our delinquencies have been very consistent in the 30-40 basis points range.
So, I'm happy to see that performance continue and broadly very, very pleased with how the portfolio is performing year-to-date.
Thanks, Paul. Patrick's gonna walk through demographic trends.
Yeah. So, excuse me. On page 15 of our investor presentation, there's a graph that goes through kind of the demographic trends and the cohorts that are aging into our core customer demographic. We've been talking about the Baby Boomers since we went public in 1993. We're on basically the back half of that cohort aging into their retirement years. Currently, 10,000 Baby Boomers are turning 65 every day. The Baby Boomers are about 70 million in population. That's gonna be followed by Gen X of 65 million, and behind Gen X, Millennials at 75 million. As each one of those cohorts age into their retirement years, they all age into a kind of our core demographic.
And if you think about Millennials are gonna start retiring in about 20 years, and you'll have about a 15-year trend of them working their way through their retiring years. We've got a 30-plus-year trend of aging demographics that are gonna hit our core customer base. I'd highlight back on page nine, just kinda what that population cohort aging means with respect to our core portfolio. Florida, California, and Arizona represents about 2/3 of our total revenue. Florida, currently on a five-year look forward on population growth, is favorable to the overall population growth in the U.S., and the 55-plus age cohort population growth in the U.S. by about 300 basis points for each one of those age categories.
Arizona and California are both in line with respect to the fifty-five plus cohort, and relatively in line with respect to total population. California's lagging a little bit with respect to total population growth compared to the comp for the U.S. I'd highlight that our locations in California have a favorable population trend relative to the balance of California, favorable by about seventy-five basis points. And then our housing and our RV products in California comp very favorably within that high-cost market.
Maybe could we go through just, like, the demographics, I think, like, 'cause I cover senior housing as well. It's very well known there. It's great that you brought it up for how it impacts your portfolio. Just like, how can we think, like, where w-
... Like, where will it kind of show up more? Will it be more RVs, more MH, marinas? Like, where, where's kind of like this demand kind of really gonna push the needle?
I think you're gonna see it show up primarily on the MH side. First, you see, seventy percent of our properties are age-restricted communities. So as we continue to fill and repopulate, as people leave, the communities will be repopulating with that demographic. As you move down into the RV space and the marina space, it is a younger customer, and they... The RV annual stays with us about 10 years, so they're kind of aging into that demographic.
Mm-hmm.
But the MH customer is right squarely inside that demographic.
And then like, I know you've been in the business a long time. Like, when different kind of generations or age cohorts kind of start to hit the age that they would come into, like MH, have you kind of had to change your strategy on how you approach, like, acquiring those customers? Or is there things that might resonate, like the Boomers versus like the Silent Generation-
Mm-hmm.
that you've typically had?
We've certainly changed our marketing over time, and marketing to the customer base, kind of based on the way people view offerings. So it used to be a classified ad. Years ago, it was a classified ad in an Ohio paper. And obviously, that's changed over time to where we're focused our marketing efforts on social media. There's a lot of focus on social media, Facebook, Instagram, where we're posting examples of our lifestyle to encourage people to become a fan and follower. And then after a while, they just keep seeing these great postings, and then they go to the website, and then they, you know, there's communication, and they become a lead.
That lead takes a while to work through the system in terms of when is that person prepared to make the decision to go from living in the Northeast or living in the Midwest, and then deciding that they're going to buy a home in Florida or Arizona. And what we've seen is kind of a two-pronged approach. First, they buy the home, and they still have a home in up north or in the Midwest or the Northeast. They'll do that for a few years until they kind of think, "You know what? I'm gonna stay down full time, and I'm gonna become a full-timer in the South.
Is there anything that... I know in the past we've talked about, like, different things that have been installed, like at the clubhouse or pickleball or stuff like that, to kind of, cater to, like, the changing needs. Anything that you guys are doing on the property level that might kind of transition over time?
Yeah, maybe Patrick can touch on a little bit what we're doing now, but in the past, we, you know, we built some internet cafes that obviously, you know, that's not in favor anymore, and now it's really a lot of focus on physical fitness and what we can do to encourage people to come to our communities to live a more active lifestyle. So maybe, Patrick, you could touch on a couple of those things.
Yeah, I mean, and I'll start on the fitness front. One thing that we started four or five years ago was Peloton bikes in our fitness centers. Very well received. You see it in a lot of, you know, hotels, and most of us here travel pretty regularly. And I recognize at least a few faces in the room that I've seen on the Peloton next to me at the fitness center. So yeah, that's a component of, you know, ensuring that the fitness center, those types of offerings are up to date. Pickleball, I know we talk about it a lot, but that is in high demand, and we continue to expand across the portfolio.
And then I think from the perspective, I'll move over to the more specifically to the RV side of the business. Continuing to upgrade offerings, not only with respect to the amenity package, but also upgrading some of the services that are offered at the site-specific locations. Full-service upgraded electric to accommodate the newest units in the RV world. That also helps drive rate and a sticky customer.
And a lot of those decisions, those capital decisions, are made in conjunction with the homeowners association. So to say, you know, "What do you think you would like to have at the property? What are the things that are important to you?" So that we're not operating, you know, out of Chicago and understanding what's going on at the property level. And I think that's an important factor that happens at the property and regional level.
And then, I guess just thinking about, you know, you do have the demand pipeline coming, like there's gonna be more and more. You mentioned in your opening remarks that 90% of your revenue comes from annual sources. Is there a way to kind of use that demand to kind of continue to grow that revenue from annual sources? Maybe like take transients and convert them to annuals. Like, is that will that be a trend that we're gonna see for a while, or?
Sure. You know, one of the things that we've been talking about over the past couple of days as we've been meeting with investors is this, the transient business and the importance of that transient business for those annual streams.
Mm-hmm.
So the transient business is an important lead for us. It's a paid lead. Usually, we have to pay for leads, but these are leads that are paying us to stay at our property, experience the lifestyle, and then decide to stay with us up for a longer-term basis, you know, to become a seasonal and then to become an annual. So that transient piece of the business is important. It does have volatility inside of it, mainly due to weather events, but it's an important piece, so it's not going away. And it is the reason that we're able to post such great numbers on our highly annualized, you know, cash flows.
... Okay, so it's like it's more strategy-driven at this point?
Right.
I guess, how do you attract the transient customers in? Like, is that a lower cost than bringing an annual in, or?
Well, what it is, is it's a person that hasn't yet committed to the lifestyle or can't because their lifestyle doesn't allow them to. Maybe they're working full time. They don't have the kind of time off to be able to dedicate a month at a time or a full year to a different location, so you're really marketing to a younger person who maybe has the weekends, has a few weekends, a summer that can dedicate to camping. And many of those efforts are done through social media and are focused on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, et cetera.
Okay. A big, I've asked this pretty much to every company that's come up on the panel with me, and it's an area where I'm really focused in on, and it's just the platform advantages that REITs can build. You think about your permanent long-term capital vehicle, you have the capabilities to kind of do investments that others might not. What are their focuses right now at ELS on, like, improving the platform, the ability to kind of just, yeah, just drive a better outcome for investors? Like, what, what's the real focus at ELS these days?
Sure. I think Paul maybe could touch on some of the technology things that we're doing, to support some of the strength that we have in our portfolio.
Yeah. Definitely. We focus really on two primary areas. One is the customer experience, and the other is the employee experience, and how can we make them better for each? So from the customer perspective, there's a lot of attention around self-service, enabling the transactions that they otherwise want to process, whether that's making reservations for stays at our RV communities, whether if you're a boat owner, the ability to schedule the delivery of your boat into the water and show up and enjoy yourself, rather than having to arrive and request it and wait for that.
The MH side of the business, enabling electronic payments, there's a complete flow-through of electronic documentation related to application and home purchasing and so forth that's been implemented over the last couple of years, so a lot of attention on those types of issues, and then, in terms of the employees, a big focus on how we reduce and hopefully eliminate manual tasks. We can automate processes, we can write scripts, we can and have implemented bots into our processes to really facilitate a higher quality, a higher level of thinking rather than kind of rote tasks that would otherwise be completed by administrative groups or our accounting team and so forth.
Any questions from the field? One thing that I was thinking about with your model is just it seems like margins have dipped a little bit, and just trying to think through, like, is there a margin expansion opportunity in the years ahead, and kind of how are you guys thinking about that?
Yeah, we have a page in our investor presentation on expenses, that I think has been really helpful to walk through with investors, and maybe Paul could touch on some of the highlights.
Sure. I think that, you know, what we saw over the past couple of years, kinda during and following the pandemic, was a bit more volatility and pressure on our expense base. That came in a few different areas. Utilities was one that was experiencing pretty significant increases, particularly electric costs, in 2022 and into 2023. We've seen that moderate significantly, and it's returned to kind of our long-term historical experience, which is close to CPI. That's meaningful for us. Utilities are - that's the largest expense category that we have. We saw in our repairs and maintenance some cost pressures, supply chain type pressures, and that has eased as well.
With respect to our payroll, as we've seen, shifts in activity at the transient RV properties, the team has historically been very efficient with respect to staffing, and they've managed that, those staffing levels quite well. So we've seen a, you know, a moderation in those expenses. I think on a go-forward basis, as we think about it, we're in line with again, a historical experience which tracks expenses far closer to CPI than what we saw for a period of time. I will point out two expense categories that continue to either be under some pressure or have the potential for just some maybe unplanned or unexpected increase. One is insurance. We saw last year an increase in our insurance program.
It was 58%. This year, that moderated significantly to 9%. That's on the heels of a year when we didn't have any insurance claims. But we're, you know, several months away from our renewal. It's April first, and we are three months into a six-month hurricane season, and so far, haven't had any claims to speak of. Hopefully, we're in a similar situation as we talk to our carriers for next year. Then real estate taxes is just one that our historical experience is kind of a mid-single-digit increase on an annual basis. But, you know, local governments are looking for sources of revenue, and that's just an area that could have some exposure to us going forward.
... Oh, interesting. You think there'll be more pressure on, like, the millage rate or just like the-
I think it probably, it could come through in the millage rate, and then also, you know, as transactions have traded-
Mm.
Some possibility that assessed values are adjusted.
Okay.
And then just as a reminder, real estate taxes, we do have the ability to pass through some of those real estate tax increases, specifically within our Florida portfolio. That is helpful, from the standpoint of being able to oppose any, you know, rate increases-
Mm
-because the homeowners are part and parcel of that, of that opposition. So that's helpful to have more than just us, going and talking about, kind of, you know, reducing the rates.
So is that, that's mostly in a Florida setup, or why, why did that come about in Florida and maybe not other places?
Yeah, it's just historically been part of the Florida prospectus.
Okay.
And that's just the way the industry kind of evolved over time.
Okay. Interesting. And then, mostly focused on the expenses, but did the margin dip because expenses just grew faster than rate? And I guess, like, the recovery would be more on if rate kind of outpaces them-
Right.
-expense growth?
Right.
Okay, interesting. Maybe that leads me to my next question. Just, I think you guys start... Well, I forget when you guys start notifying, like, the residents of, like, potential rate increases-
At the end of this month.
End of this month?
Yes.
Okay, interesting. Any kind of, like, call out. Could you remind us the process and just, like, how you guys typically think about, I guess, you know, setting the rate?
Sure. Patrick can walk through the process that he's in right now, and he and his team are going through right now for September, end of September notice, effective January first.
Yep. So, most of our rent increases occur in the first quarter. So, over the next couple of months, starting end of September, which is, like, an October notice, we'll start sending out those notices. And we are going through the portfolio as part of our typical budget process, updating comp sheets for each individual property. That's really run by our general managers at each property with their regional manager, 40 regional managers across the company. They come up with a view towards the market and recommendations, and then we meet as a senior team, including me, and we settle on rate increases across each one of the properties in the MH portfolio.
That's really governed by direct comps in the MH space, but also what's going on in multifamily, single-family rental trends in single-family, home prices as well, so that we take a broad view of what's going on in the broad residential market where each one of our properties is located.
Could you remind us what it was, the rate increases you sent out last year, and then what you ultimately achieved for this year?
The notice rate was-
It was just over 6%, and that's what we've achieved.
Oh, okay. Okay. And the variability. Where would the variability come from? Like...
The biggest source of variability is just if CPI changes dramatically from the beginning of the year to the end, then those increases or, excuse me, those leases that are tied to CPI would have an adjustment-
Okay
if there's meaningful volatility there.
Okay.
In our deck, it shows what we've achieved in terms of MH growth rate over time, and you can see a hundred and forty basis points spread to COLA over time.
Inflation's been coming down. I guess the assumption... Would it be a wild assumption to assume it's weaker, or I guess, six versus-
I'll say this. Consistent with what we've done in the past, in October, at our earnings call, we plan to disclose where we're at for top-line growth for RV revenue, RV annual, and MH. So it's a little bit early to talk about it, but we're, you know, not that far out.
Okay.
Questions from the field?
Maybe I can just ask.
Yeah, please.
So go back to the insurance cost there. I mean, do you have like... It's important to you to come with, like, one big national insurer, or is that done locally? How, how does that work? Just curious.
So we place our insurance through Lloyd's of London. So, we go meet annually with the underwriters, and essentially, there's a syndicate that's put together that provides a blanket coverage for our entire portfolio.
Thank you.
They look at the experience of the entire portfolio, and, you know, there's been a concentration of claims in Florida, but they look at the whole portfolio.
Other questions?
How do you guys think about your ability to maybe accelerate expansion sites being added to the portfolio? Like, in the beginning, we were talking about the demographics and, like, the demand. You'd think, like, this is probably a big growth area, but just kinda how do you think about the governor or the pace?
Yeah, we have a slide in the deck that, you know, goes over the last five years, and we've been delivering about a thousand expansion sites on an annual basis. Talked about this on the last earnings call. I expect this, the current year, 2024 , to end up in the range of 700-800 . Some of that is just reflective of the cadence of the pipeline. We've also experienced. You know, we have Florida's a big market for us. We also are doing several expansions in Florida. There's a lot of development activity in Florida, which means those local administrative oversight offices and building departments and other review departments have a lot of workflow coming in. And some of the timelines between plans to permits to completing projects end up being delayed.
I think the demand profile's been very consistent. Just as a reminder for everybody, our expansions are exactly that. They're incremental expansions of existing properties. So we've already got a going concern business. We have brand recognition, we have operations in place, we have core amenity packages. So that incremental investment that's selling off call it 8-10% returns, is a really attractive risk reward profile, because the ability to drive revenue once you complete the expansion is pretty favorable.
Interesting. So I guess, is that land you have to acquire, or you already have the land, and I guess like, what's the land bank look like? Is probably the proper right question.
Yeah, so we have about 6,000 acres adjacent to our properties. So we're developing those vacant acres that we've owned for a long time. In addition, over the past four or five years, we have purchased land that is adjacent to our properties that we hadn't previously owned. And what we've done there is received the entitlements before we close on the property so that we're able to build it as quickly as possible.
Those 6,000 acres, like, is that located in areas like Florida where you wanna develop? Or like, I guess what's the-
The probably 85% of that is adjacent to our RV parks, so it's not on the MH side.
Okay.
Now, some of the stuff that we have acquired over the last five years, some of the acreage has been on the MH side.
Interesting. And then, sorry, Paul, if I missed it in your update, but the, transients, how did that go over Labor Day?
Labor Day revenue growth was essentially flat-
Flat
-to last year.
Okay. Okay. Any weather or any...?
Over Labor Day, there wasn't significant weather that impacted it, so.
Okay. Other questions from the field? I guess, in turning to external growth and transaction market, any opportunities you guys are seeing out there in the acquisition market?
Sure. I think just to kind of frame the acquisition market, I think as everyone is aware, acquisition activity can be pretty lumpy in our industry. And if you think about the available base of communities, there's about 50,000 manufactured home communities across the country, 3,000 of which we would consider investment grade, and we own about 200 of those. On the RV side, there's about 16,000 RV parks. 8,000 of those are publicly owned, and then 8,000 are privately owned. So if you take those 8,000, there's about 1,200 of those that we would consider investment grade. We own 200 of those, so the difference between those two is what those opportunities for us.
So the opportunity set is significant, and it's for us, it's a matter of the right timing. Right now, what we've seen is, RV park owners and MH owners have kind of sat by the sidelines for the last year and a half to two years. I think they were seeing it in interest rate environment where rates were rising. They weren't seeing as many people come to their door, to inquire about owning the asset. Numbers that they had in their head before are no longer the numbers that they are now seeing. So they kinda just took a step back. And I think, to the extent that rates fall a little bit, I think you'll see some more activity.
But a lot of what happens in the RV and MH space is really a function of, you know, understanding where the owner is deciding whether or not they want to hand it down to their family, the asset down to the family. Does the family want to own it and operate it, or are they at the point where they wanna sell it?
Questions? Maybe just thinking about, like, your land bank and how it's tied to... Like, a lot of it seems to be located around RVs, and then I think a big part of your utility expense that you can't pass through is from RVs.
Mm-hmm.
Have you thought about adding solar to kind of offset the real loss, the stuff you can't recover?
Sure. We do have solar at various properties. I think we have something in the deck, and maybe Patrick, you could walk through some of the solar plans that we have put in place over time.
Yeah. We have about 20 projects that a few completed, the rest in process. In the deck, there's some shots of covered RV storage in California. So, I thought there was one you're, you are getting the solar benefit next year, you're getting the benefit of covered RV storage in places where covered RV storage is able to generate a premium to just regular surface RV storage. And we look for opportunities to continue to expand on the solar front. Just with respect to energy conservation, I'd also highlight that we've gone through a review and a retrofit across the portfolio, close to completing the portfolio in the common areas of LED conversions.
Mm-hmm.
which helps to obviously moderate our electric consumption.
... Any other initiatives you're working on that front?
On the electric front?
Well, yeah, I guess, like, anything on the property management side.
Well, utilities broadly, investment in particularly water meters, electric meters on our long-term annual customers, where you get the benefit. When people get a bill for that type of consumption, their consumption goes down. There's a 100% correlation there. The question is: How much does it go down? So, you know, we're working to make sure we have that investment in infrastructure everywhere we have those long-term customers.
Okay. Any update on the marina front?
Not really. You know, it's a small piece of our business. It's going as planned. The annual streams are doing well. You know, we're happy with the portfolio that we own. And as we look to grow that portfolio, we would want it to have the same hallmarks as our existing portfolio, which is a highly annualized base, not a lot of ancillary revenue, fee simple, not ground leases. So that's the kind of buy box for marinas. But they've been performing in line with our pro formas.
Has expansion into that space. Like, did you expect to maybe see more opportunities to acquire? I know, like, when you got into the space-
Mm-hmm.
Like, you were the pioneers.
Yep.
And then others came in, like-
Mm-hmm.
Has, you know, the opportunity set been smaller, or the competition's been higher, or?
I think that when we got into this space, we were focused on just the things I just highlighted.
Okay.
We knew that that buy box was going to be smaller as a result of that. Because if you expand it out and you and you focus on ground leases or ancillary, additional ancillary revenue or transient business, you're going to be able to cast your net wider. What we were focused on is: How can we make it be as close to MH, as close to RV annual as possible? We think we've achieved that. As you know, all marinas are not the same.
Right.
So it's important that we pick the ones that are very similar to our existing portfolio and cash flow characteristics.
Excellent. Any last questions? So we are at time, but we do have three rapid-fire questions. They're multiple choice. We've been asking all management teams this. So the first one is: Do you expect real estate transactions to increase once the Fed starts to cut? Yes or no?
Yes.
If yes, when do you expect them to pick up? A, 4Q 2024, B, first half 2025, or C, second half 2025.
Uh, B.
How would you characterize demand for space today? A, improving, B, steady, C, weakening.
Improving.
Last year, the majority of companies at our conference stated they expected to ramp up spending on AI initiatives in 2024. How would you characterize your plans over the next year? A, higher, B, flat, C, lower.
A, higher.
Excellent. Thank you.
All right. Thank you very much, Andrew.