Welcome to the Prologis Q1 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Chris, and I'll be your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, then 1 on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, press the pound key. Also note, this conference is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the call over to Tracy Ward. Tracy, you may begin.
Thanks, Chris, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our first quarter 2019 conference call. The supplemental document is available on our website at prologis.com under Investor Relations. I'd like to state that this conference call will contain forward-looking statements under federal securities laws. These statements are based on current expectations, estimates, and projections about the market and the industry in which Prologis operates, as well as management's beliefs and assumptions. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of performance, and actual operating results may be affected by a variety of factors. For a list of those factors, please refer to the forward-looking statement notice on our 10-K or SEC filings. Additionally, our first quarter results, press release, and supplemental do contain financial measures such as FFO and EBITDA that are non-GAAP measures. In accordance with Regulation G, we have provided a reconciliation to those measures.
This morning we'll hear from Tom Olinger, our CFO, who will cover results and guidance, and then Hamid Moghadam, our Chairman and CEO, who will comment on the company's outlook. Gary Anderson, Chris Caton, Mike Curless, Ed Nekritz, Gene Reilly, and Colleen McEwen are also here with us today. With that, I'll turn the call over to Tom.
Thanks, Tracy. Good morning, and thanks for joining our call. Let me start with a few high-level observations. Supply generally remains disciplined across our markets. User demand is exceptionally strong in the small and medium-sized segments as our customers are prioritizing access to the end consumer and labor. Our proprietary leasing data continues to reflect healthy demand. Showings, average gestation period, and conversion rates have improved from the fourth quarter. This is notable as the first quarter is typically the softest leasing period of the year. Europe remains strong despite negative economic headlines, including the U.K., where our build-to-suit pipeline remains very active. Now for our results. We had a great first quarter with very strong operating performance and Core FFO of $0.73 per share. We leased almost 43 million sq ft, bringing occupancy at quarter end to 96.8%.
This was down 70 basis points sequentially, consistent with our strategy to push rate and term. Rent change on roll continued to be excellent, with our share over 25%, led by the U.S. at over 30% and Europe over 13%. Globally, our spread between in-place and market rents remains elevated at more than 15%. Our share of cash same-store NOI growth was also strong at 5.5%. This included a benefit of about 75 basis points from positive recovery and expense timing. G&A was about $5 million higher than expected due to stock-based compensation expense resulting from the increase in our share price. For capital deployment, we completed $157 million of dispositions and contributions. This excludes $500 million from the formation of our joint venture with Ivanhoé Cambridge in Brazil that closed in January. Starts were seasonally low at $239 million.
We expect starts to accelerate meaningfully in the second quarter. Stabilizations were a record $691 million, with an estimated margin of 30%. We continue to access capital globally at very attractive terms. In addition to our $3.5 billion global line of credit recast announced earlier in the quarter, we refinanced JPY 1.1 billion of yen debt at a weighted average interest rate of 45 basis points and a term of more than eight years. During the quarter, we reduced our ownership in our open-ended European fund from 28% to 24%, generating proceeds of $313 million. This was to accommodate our partners and to bring our ownership in line with the venture's long-term target of 15%. Investor interest in the logistics sector continues to be very high.
We have significant investment capacity with over $4.1 billion of liquidity and more than $6.5 billion from potential fund sell downs, positioning us to self-fund our run rate deployment needs well into the foreseeable future. For 2019 guidance highlights, which are on an our share basis. As we mentioned last quarter, we tempered our initial 2019 guidance by $0.05 per share to account for market and political turbulence at that time. We feel better today about our outlook, and our updated guidance removes $0.03 of that conservatism. We are raising and narrowing our cash same-store NOI guidance and now expect a range of 4.25% to 5%, up almost 40 basis points at the midpoint. We're bringing up the bottom end of our year-end occupancy forecast by 50 basis points to a range of 96.5%-97.5%.
We are raising our guidance for both development starts and acquisitions by $200 million to revised midpoints of $2 billion and $600 million respectively. We're increasing the midpoint for stabilizations by $100 million to more than $2.1 billion. We're also raising our realized development gains by $125 million to a midpoint of $350 million. We generated net sources of $550 million in the first quarter, as a result, there'll be an earnings drag given the timing to redeploy this capital.
For the full year, we expect $400 million in net deployment uses, which we plan to fund with modest leverage and free cash flow. As a result of valuation gains in Europe, we now expect our net promote income for the full year to be $0.14 a share, up $0.04. As a reminder, the vast majority of the promote revenue will be earned in the third quarter. Taking these changes into account, we're increasing our 2019 Core FFO guidance midpoint by $0.07 to $3.23 a share and narrowing the range to between $3.20 and $3.26 per share. This includes $0.14 of net promote income. At the midpoint Core FFO excluding promotes is now approximately 8.5% higher than last year. I want to point out that the value we create from our development business adds to this growth.
This business is often underappreciated in valuation, as we do not include realized gains in our Core FFO, but it obviously adds to our cash flow growth. Our development business has a long and successful track record of significant profitability. We've completed over $12 billion of developments since the merger in 2011. Over this period, our development business has delivered an average margin of approximately 30% and has created more than $3.5 billion of value, roughly $450 million annually. To sum up, we had a great quarter. We feel good about our position and are excited about our prospects for the rest of the year. With that, I'll turn it over to Hamid.
Thanks, Tom. You covered it well, and I don't have much to add. We had another great quarter. Our portfolio is in excellent shape, and our balance sheet is stronger than ever. With this foundational work behind us, we're entering the next phase in our evolution as a customer-centric organization. Our scale and global reach enable us to address the key pain points for our customers through innovation, data analytics, technology, and customer service. That's why we realigned our executive team earlier in the quarter. In closing, our plans are clear. We'll stay vigilant in looking for shifts in market conditions and customer sentiment and remain confident in our ability to deliver sector-leading operational and financial results. With that, I'll turn it over to Chris for your questions.
At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star, then the number 1 on your telephone keypad. We ask that you limit yourselves to one question. If you have a follow-up question, please rejoin the queue. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question is from Jeremy Metz with BMO. Your line is open.
Hey, good morning. When we started the year, you had talked about how Europe rent growth could possibly outpace the strength here in the U.S. as we move further into 2019. Obviously, the first quarter looked quite good in the U.S. You talked about the increased optimism in the market, what you're seeing in your data and your traffic there. Do you think Europe can still get there? Maybe more broadly, can you comment on your outlook for rent growth from here for both the U.S. and abroad?
Hey, Jeremy, it's Chris Caton. Thanks for the question. Yeah, indeed, we've revised our rent growth forecast. We expect mid to high fours globally. That's more than a 100 basis point increase. We still expect Europe to outperform later this year, the increase was principally driven by the U.S.
Your next question comes from Manny Korchman with Citi. Your line is open.
Hey, good morning, out there. It's Michael Bilerman here with Manny. Hamid, in your comments at the end of the call, you talked about transforming to this customer-centric organization. I'm curious how far down do you want to go in that outside of just leasing space to your customers, right? Clearly, you launched the whole data analytics platform. Could we see Prologis move into other verticals in helping your customers? I think this past quarter, Simon announced that they are launching an e-com platform where people are going to be able to buy goods online, and they'll get them to them rather than coming to the store. I just don't know how far, how you're thinking strategically about the other verticals that the company can go into.
Good question, Michael. The way we're thinking about it today is that we are going to attack all of those things that our customers need to basically operate our properties. These are products and services that they need to basically fully utilize our services. We're going beyond a roof and four walls in that sense. Are we going to be in those businesses ourselves? The answer is clearly no, but we will partner with vendors and other players that can help us execute that business plan. I'll say I will never say never, but right now our vision is limited to the logistics sector and the supply chain.
Your next question is from Nick Yulico with Scotiabank. Your line is open.
Thanks. Tom, I was hoping to hear just a little bit more about what drove the increase in the same-store guidance and then on occupancy as well. You boosted that, and I know you talked about the strategy of trying to push more on renewals this year, and you thought that that would create a little bit more frictional, I guess, vacancy on turnover. With the occupancy guidance going up, does that mean that you're just finding tenants are willing to accept your higher renewal pricing more so?
Yeah, Nick, if you look at the increase in same-store, it's going to be a function of continued strong leasing activity, continued strong customer interest and demand. Occupancy did outperform our expectations. Our retention was quite good and quite high this quarter. We are continuing to push rents, and we will do that. Don't be surprised if you see occupancy be a little lower throughout the year, but we're going to make the right long-term decision, which is going to mean pushing rents and extending term. It's really a function of better occupancy, a little better rent growth, and really, really good customer dialogue and activity.
Your next question is from Jamie Feldman with Bank of America. Your line is open.
Great. Thank you. Tom, you had mentioned in your remarks about strength at the small and mid-size segment. I just want to get your thoughts on how Prologis can attack that given the size of the company, and your traditionally kind of larger box developments. Also, does that suggest you're seeing a slowdown at all in the big box? Just thoughts on supply there going forward.
Jamie, it's important to remember, when you look at our space sizes, our space sizes greater than 250,000 sq ft represent about a third of our square footage by space. Spaces under 100,000 sq ft, spaces between 100 and 250 represent two-thirds. We have much more space that's infill than not. When you look at that is on square footage. When you look at it based on NOI, certainly more NOI in the under 100 and 100 to 250. I think we're well-positioned to capture that market. When you look at occupancy potential, occupancy is actually a little lower in the smaller and medium-sized boxes than the big boxes right now. I think we're well positioned to capture that opportunity.
Just to put some specific numbers around that. Only about 25% of our portfolio is sort of the really big box, super regional type of facilities. The vast majority of our portfolio is actually city distribution and maybe closer in stuff. To the extent that we have multi-market super regional distribution centers, those tend to be in very high barrier to entry markets. The commentary about small and medium-sized businesses was really intended to point to that strength. I wouldn't read weakness in the larger spaces. There are some markets on the periphery, for example, the outlying corridors in Chicago, where there are a lot of big buildings and the market rent is softer for now until those buildings get absorbed. That's the exception, not the rule.
Your next question is from Craig Mailman with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open.
Yeah, it's just two quick ones. I guess first, Tom, you guys raised the promote $0.04. Was any of that related to the sell down of PELF? Did that trigger anything? Also separately, you guys mentioned two-thirds of the portfolio is lesser leased than the big box stuff. Are you guys getting better pricing power on the smaller spaces than the big box spaces? Is there any kind of bifurcation in the market depending on space size?
Yeah, Craig. On your first question, there was no impact on the promote increase and the fund sell down. Those are totally two separate items. Second, on the smaller spaces, the under 100, the 100 to 250, we are definitely seeing higher rent change on roll, in that category versus the bigger box. That's been something that's been pretty consistent. I'd say it's probably accelerating. That spread's accelerating a bit.
Yeah. The big boxes got their growth early in the recovery cycle. If you look at those rents, they're up significantly, as much as 40% or 50% during the course of the last four or five years. Now they're taking a pause and somewhat of a back seat to the medium and smaller spaces. I think by the time this is all over, all segments would have enjoyed really good rent growth.
These rents are going to follow replacement costs. Replacement costs on smaller spaces is significantly higher, and it's growing faster as well.
Your next question is from Steve Sakwa with Evercore ISI. Your line is open.
Thanks. Actually, I wanted to ask a question about development. I guess you guys took your starts up for the year. I'm just wondering if you could sort of talk about maybe the geographic kind of focus of where you're seeing the best opportunities. I guess Gene made the comment about replacement costs and that going up. Just how that's maybe impacting your going -in yields, given the strong rent growth we're seeing, but presumably higher replacement costs.
Yeah, Steve, I would generally say that every deal is underwritten very specifically, looking at the dynamics of that market and the competitors that are on the market today and will be coming out of the ground down the road during the development period. There is no general answer to that question. I mean, we underwrite rents that we think we're going to get. By and large, the experience in the last three or four years has been that we have undershot rent growth, and actual rents have been higher than what we had projected, which is why the margins are better. That and obviously cap rate compression. The smaller spaces are also more difficult to replace because they're generally areas where land constraints are greater. Anyway, Gene, do you have anything to add to that?
Yeah, Steve, maybe just a little bit of color. The starts in the quarter were in 12 different markets. By the way, the average building size of those starts is about 200,000 feet. Every single building we build, whether it's 1 million feet or 150,000 feet, is sub-dividable, so we can appeal to the smaller customers. If you look at our overall development program, it's 160 buildings in 51 different markets. Obviously, we're going to tick through all of these, but we stay away from the markets that are getting overbuilt, and I think we're very clear, to keep you all updated on where those are. From a market selection perspective, we're lucky that most of the markets are very healthy right now. We feel very good about that composition.
Your next question is from Blaine Heck with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.
Thanks. Tom, following up on promotes. When I look at the strategic capital page in your supplemental, there are six co-investment ventures that are eligible for promotes this year. Obviously, some are bigger than others. I guess I'm just wondering how many of those are assumed to be in the money at this point, and is there a chance that we could see promote guidance continue to move up as we progress through 2019?
You need to look at what's driving those different promotes. Some of the funds have annual development promotes to the extent they do development. The vast majority of the promote will be earned, we're stating the obvious, where the larger AUM is. That's going to be in our open-ended funds. That's what's going to drive the bulk of our promote revenue.
I would say, I can't think of any venture that is not in the money. They're all pretty much, at this point in the cycle, have been and will continue to be in the money, more or less. The more time passes, obviously, the more we'll capture that, and there's going to be less of it available down the road. It will normalize down to a number which historically has been about 25, 30 basis points of AUM, and the share that goes to the bottom line is about 60% of that. You can think about it as sort of 15-ish basis points of AUM. That would be the across-the-cycle type of number. Don't hold me to that, but that's what it's been over the last 10 or 15 years.
Your next question is from John Guinee with Stifel. Your line is open.
Great. Thank you. Talking about some of your multi-level development, I think you've got one in Seattle. Can you talk about what rents you need to hit different floor levels and how that compares to market and whether the market is accepting of that product type? Then segue into the most current Amazon prototype, which I think maybe goes up 60 or 70 feet, relatively small footprint, and are you involved in those build-to-suits?
Yeah, John, it's Gene. Let me start with that. We do have a project in Seattle. It's Georgetown. To give you a sense, market rents on the ground for naturally older product in that infill location sort of range from a buck a square foot to a buck 40, depending on the size of the customer. Most of that is going to be sort of in the $1.10 range per month. Our product, on average, is probably going to be in the $1.40, but it's going to range from sort of a buck 30 to maybe over two bucks a square foot for certain space in our product. There is definitely a premium. It's 20, 25%, depending on the size denomination. We have done a 100,000-square-foot lease in this asset. We've gotten that behind us.
One lesson we've learned about this is that there is a process that we have to go through with customers. This is a new product in a new location. We need to get a premium. We think we'll get that premium. Deal gestation periods are long, and they'll continue to be long until customers are basically more accustomed to this product. With respect to the question on Amazon.
John, it's Mike. With Amazon, we certainly see everything in terms of RFPs, given that they're our largest customer, and we pursue those opportunities that we think are the best fits within our portfolio. Broadly, we're seeing customers like Amazon and other customers focused on e-comm with some network rollouts involved, a combination of large buildings and a series of a higher number of smaller buildings that are located close in to larger population centers, all of which fits real well for our portfolio.
Yeah, I think, John, what you are probably driving at is that the old prototype was 880 and the new prototype is a little bit smaller, but much smaller footprint. The reason for that is that they just would like to have more options in terms of the parcel size that they can fit the building on. That's essentially what they're doing, is they're putting the same building into a higher clear height with more mezzanine floors, et cetera. Effectively increasing the utilization of the site.
Your next question is from Eric Frankel with Green Street Advisors. Your line is open.
Thank you. Just a question on same-store results. Can you clarify how much of your same-store NOI growth is attributable to free rent burn-off? Just noticing your acquisitions this quarter, I think your 4.3% stabilized cap rate, I think is an all-time low. Maybe you can just talk about pricing the market for assets that you'd like to buy and the competitiveness and what you think the total return prospects are. Thank you.
Eric, this is Tom. I'll answer the first question. Free rent was a little more than 50 basis points of benefit in the first quarter, and that's a pretty good run rate. It will bounce around quarter to quarter just based on mix and the like, but that's a pretty fair run rate. It also would explain long-term the spread between, or why the spread between cash and GAAP should be about 50 basis points on same store.
That's why we actually focus on the GAAP number more than the cash number, but we got tired of that battle, so we now feature the cash number more prominently. Really the right way to look at it is the way you asked, which is to factor in all the concessions. With respect to the 4.3% yield on investments this quarter. Look, we're not buyers of stabilized operating properties that have been maxed out. By and large, we're buying value-added plays, we're buying covered land plays, we're buying things that have significantly below-market leases. We're trying to operate in areas where other more constrained institutional capital cannot compete. We're not afraid to take on leasing risk or redevelopment risk or rehab risk. A lot of that 4.3 reflects those kinds of situations.
If you were to, for example, look at the NOI at market, those investments would be actually in the mid-fives to high fives, low sixes type of numbers, but it may take us a few years to get to those numbers. We're very focused on replacement costs in those kinds of investments as well because that shows us how much upside there is in those deals.
Your next question is from Vikram Malhotra with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Thanks for taking the questions. Just going back to Europe, just two parts to that. Given sort of the broader slowdown in several markets, can you give us a little bit more color on maybe rent growth and prospects by some of the key markets? Second, just a bigger picture question on looking at Europe as a case study for how logistics may perform in somewhat of a slowing environment as it relates to the U.S., if the U.S. were to slow down. Any thoughts there would be great.
Yeah. This is Gene. I'll take the high level, Chris can probably add some color on the rent growth specifics. Basically, Europe is performing very well right now, more so by far than the economic headlines. Remember that part of the demand in Europe continues to be supply chain reconfiguration and modernization of that supply chain. You are going to continue to see take-up that is in excess of economic growth. Other than some limited weaker markets, Spain is pretty weak right now for example, and some of the CEE is fairly weak. Overall, we're seeing strength. With respect to specifics on rent growth, maybe I'll turn it to Chris.
Yeah, happy to share it. Key message naturally will be the rotation of outperformance from the U.K. to the continent. Rents are rising faster on a net effective basis on the continent. That's led by a combination of markets, Germany, the Netherlands, and to pick one region, Central Europe, both in Poland and Czech Republic are also outperforming.
Your next question is from Sarah Tan with J.P. Morgan. Your line is open.
Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. I'm on the line for Michael Mueller. Quick question on, could we get some color on the low acquisition cap rate of 4.6%? Was this stabilized or value-add assets, and where did you guys buy?
Sarah, we're having a really hard time hearing you, but I think your question was, what explains the low cap rates on recent acquisitions, and you may have to step that up.
Yes, that's what I meant.
We just talked about it. Yep.
Or just-
Yeah. I'm sorry. I just explained that maybe a minute ago in response to Eric's question. Basically, the 4.3 reflects a lot of unstabilized deals and covered land plays and the like that are not stabilized. If you were to look at the stabilized numbers at market, they would be significantly higher cap rates.
I'd add on to this and just say, you are going to see this quarter-to-quarter. You're going to see cap rates on acquisitions are going to be all over the map because we are buying, particularly in infill sites. It's almost impossible to buy a site that is leased at market because rents have been growing so quickly. This is something to probably get used to.
By the way, anticipating everybody's next question, that our dispositions are at a higher cap rate than our acquisitions. The answer is yes, because they're value maximized. We've rolled all those leases to market, and by and large, they're a sale of non-strategic assets. That explains the other end of that equation.
Your next question is from Dave Rogers with Baird. Your line is open.
Yeah. Hi, everyone. I guess maybe just a follow-up on the PELF sale. Thoughts about selling down in Europe maybe versus selling down in the U.S. Can you give us some added color on demand for assets and kind of where you still overown in the U.S. in your funds? Especially given kind of the comments about growth you just mentioned about Europe. Maybe wrap all that up would be great.
Yeah. Our challenge in selling down is that we don't need the capital, if anything, it gets us too low in leverage and dilutes our earnings growth. We're now under levered. We're just over 20% of market value in terms of leverage. We'd like to be higher than that. That's why we're not out there rebalancing to the target size immediately. In effect, it's money that's invested, and we're happy with where it's invested. Once we find other deployment opportunities, for example, building out our land bank or other acquisitions, we can, in effect, sell down those funds and redeploy in places where we want. In terms of our ability to sell down, both of our open-end funds have significant queues, and they have significant shadow queues.
We've stopped trying to raise more money for them because until we can get the capital invested, there's no point in doing that. There's plenty of money, and our timing decision is more driven by our alternative investment opportunities. We are not making a market call about Europe or U.S. or any of these things. We think there's plenty of rental growth left in both markets.
Your next question is from Derek Johnston with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.
Thank you. With rising equity valuation, how do you think about the possible use of equity capital given the favorable cost profile?
The most profitable use of capital for us is building out our existing land banks, because the marginal return on those investments is significantly higher than anything else we can do with the capital. As to whether we need more capital or more equity, we don't need more equity. We're not going to be raising any equity anytime soon and maybe never. The way we look at it, in terms of our run rate development needs and capital, our ability to sell down in our funds back to target levels is enough to take care of 10 years of that type of deployment. We've got lots of money. The question is where are the best places to deploy it?
Your next question is from Manny Korchman with Citi. Your line is open.
Hey, guys. Tom, earlier in the call, I think you said that $0.03 of the guidance lift was related to being less conservative than you were, call it 90 days ago. If we go back to your comments then, it looked like about $0.02 of that was based on same-store occupancy and $0.03 was based on deployment. Is that still the same mix, or are you now essentially not just less confident or buffering, but you're actually beyond where you thought things would be?
Yeah. Just a reminder. The $0.05 originally in the January call was $0.02 of NOI, including same-store, $0.02 of more and faster deployment potential, and $0.01 from just fees related to higher transaction volumes. That was our original plan. That was the delta. Today, I think the mix, we've got $0.02 to go there, and that mix is relatively the same. That $0.02 is probably a little back half weighted from a deployment standpoint, from a driver standpoint. No, we've got $0.02 to go. If the market conditions hold, customer sentiment remains strong, build-to-suit activity is good, I would expect that we would see this $0.02 of upside down the road if things hold. We'll tell you how things are. We're giving it to you straight.
This is our best guess at where we're going to land today based on what we see, and we'll update you as that view changes.
Yeah. The converse of what just Tom said is, by definition, if the mix is the same with the $0.02 that remains, the $0.03 of, if you want to call it outperformance or reversion to original performance targets, is also the same mix. Everything is the same mix that we originally laid out for the $0.05. It's just we haven't realized the full potential yet. Doesn't mean we won't. We'll report on that as time goes on.
Your next question is from Jamie Feldman with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is open.
Great. Thank you. Just a quick follow-up on the AI initiatives or big data initiatives. Can you provide some thoughts on what you think it might mean for margins or impact on earnings or development margins? Just some ability to quantify what this whole program might mean.
Well, that's a big topic. The first specific project that we're tackling is revenue management. Our expectations for the impact of revenue management is between 1%-3%. If you were going to put a gun to my head, I would probably say 2%-3%. We'll see. We're expecting to fully roll that program up at the beginning of the third quarter. Of course, it will take a number of years before the results of that fully come about, because not all the leases are rolling over at the same time. That's just the first project. Once we get that one over the finish line, we have a number of other projects that are on the docket for us to roll that out.
We're going to take our time and do each part properly and build some confidence in the organization in terms of our ability to do that work and move on to the next one.
Your next question is from Ki Bin Kim with SunTrust. Your line is open.
Thanks. I think most of the big questions have been asked already, so just a couple of follow-ups. Going back to Europe, can you talk a little bit more about the customer behavior you're noticing there as it compares to the U.S.? Maybe it doesn't show up in rental rates or occupancy, and maybe it's more subtle in terms of what's the language in the leases or duration or TI usage, but maybe you can provide some color on how that compares to U.S. The second question, this might be a little bit early, but do you have any kind of early thoughts on micro-fulfillment centers and what impact that might make on business?
Yeah. In Europe, look, absorption across the continent was in the 68 million square feet to 70 million square feet range a couple of years ago, and now it's in excess of 90 million square feet of absorption. Trends are reasonably healthy in Europe. In terms of discernible trends, I would say there is less spec development in Europe, and therefore more of our business is build-to-suit and customers. We have plenty good build-to-suit pipeline in the States, but it's even better in Europe. That market tends to be less spec. Land is interesting in Europe because in a couple of the big markets like Germany and France, by and large, land is controlled by the government, and there are strict controls as to how much of it they release for development, and usually it's tied to employment generation and the like.
The metering out of land and, if you will, the risk of overbuilding of spec is less in Europe than it is in the U.S. for that reason. Mike, anything else you want to-
Yeah, I think it's worth pointing out 3PLs are very active, probably at two times the percentage we see in the U.S. A lot of activity in Last Touch activities. We're seeing familiar players like UPS and Amazon over there making some significant structural investments. Good activity and sentiment in Europe.
On e-commerce, they're ahead of us by and large, because they don't have quite the same infrastructure of existing retail in 26 different formats.
Your next question comes from John Guinee with Stifel. Your line is open.
Great. Yeah, one follow-up question. My recollection, and Tom, correct me if I got this wrong, but you raised your dividend about $0.05 a share, 10.4% late in the first quarter. Was that just to meet your taxable minimum, or did you pay a dividend above your taxable minimum?
No, John, it's the former. It's to meet our minimum. We continue, quite frankly, to run that tight. We're retaining a lot of cash flow. If you look at our earnings over the last three years, we're going to grow north based on our new midpoint, north of 9%. Our cash flow and AFFO has grown into low double digits. Our dividend's grown 8% over that same period of time. We clearly have capacity.
By the way, while we've deleveraged.
Yeah
delevered by about 10 points.
Yeah. It's the bare minimum is the short answer.
Okay. John, you get the last word. I thank you for your attendance and look forward to seeing you next quarter, if not sooner. Thank you.
This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.