Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Q3 2015 Simon Property Group Inc. earnings conference call. My name is Julie, and I will be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. We will conduct a question-and-answer session towards the end of the conference. If at any time you join the call you require assistance, please press star and zero, and an operator will be happy to assist you. As a reminder, this call is being recorded for replay purposes. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Tom Ward, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please proceed, sir.
Thank you, Julie. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. Presenting on today's call is David Simon, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Also on the call are Rick Sokolov, President and Chief Operating Officer, Andy Juster, Chief Financial Officer, and Steve Broadwater, Chief Accounting Officer. Before we begin, a quick reminder that statements made during this call may be deemed forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Safe Harbor of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and actual results may differ materially due to a variety of risks, uncertainties, and other factors. We refer you to today's press release and our SEC filings for a detailed discussion of forward-looking statements. Please note that this call includes information that may be accurate only as of today's date.
Reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included within the press release with supplemental information in today's Form 8-K filing. Both the press release and the supplemental information are available on our IR website at investors.simon.com. For our prepared remarks, I'm pleased to introduce David Simon.
Good morning. We had a productive quarter. We opened, started, and completed several new projects. We closed our joint venture with HBC, including the acquisition of certain Kaufhof department store, which will serve as another avenue of growth for us. Most importantly, we continue to produce strong operating and financial performance. Results in the quarter were highlighted by FFO of $2.54 per share, which exceeded the First Call consensus by $0.07. These results were achieved even with the negative impact of $0.04 from the quarter compared to the prior-year quarter due to the strong dollar. On a comparable basis, excluding the loss on the extinguishment of debt in the prior-year period, FFO per diluted share increased 12.9% or $0.29 year-over-year. Key metrics occupancy was 96.1%. Leasing activity remains healthy.
The malls and outlets recorded re-leasing spreads of $11 per square foot, an increase of 18.4%. Comp NOI increased 4.3% in the third quarter of 2015 and increased 3.8% year-to-date, keeping us on track for full year guidance of 4% Comp NOI growth. This is on top of our industry-leading growth of more than 5% in 2014. As a reminder, we do not include lease settlement income in Comp NOI disclosure or new transaction. We also do not include the impact of recently redeveloped or expanded centers. Total sales across the portfolio increased 1.8% for the trailing 12 months, even with the loss of bankrupt tenants. On a comparable basis, the sales per square foot increase for the 12 months ended September 30 was 2.7% positive.
They were strong in the mall, but affected in the outlet business due to the strong dollar has had on sales activity from the international tourist in properties along the Canadian-Mexican border, as well as traditional tourist markets. The end of the third quarter redevelopment and expansion projects were ongoing at 30 properties across all three of our platforms, with a total committed spend of $1.7 billion. During the quarter, we opened significant expansion at two of the country's most productive outlet centers, San Francisco Premium Outlets and Chicago Premium Outlets. Following the expansion, the outlets in Chicago and San Francisco are the largest, respectively, in Illinois and California. We recently opened the fashion wing at Del Amo. The wing includes a new Nordstrom and more than 100 exceptional brands, many of them exclusive to the trade area.
This transformation we have completed, Del Amo, is just another example of how we continue to invest in our proven assets to enrich the shopper's experience and enhance the value of our real estate. We started construction on several new strategic projects during the quarter, including significant redevelopments at the Shops at Riverside, the Westchester, and our progress is excellent with our Sears boxes at Seritage as we move forward. Construction continues on major redevelopment expansion projects, some of our most productive properties, including Roosevelt Field, the Galleria in Houston, Stanford Shopping Center, the King of Prussia Mall, Sawgrass Mills, and Woodbury Common. All of these projects we expect to be completed over the next 12 months. In terms of new development, we opened two new in the quarter, Vancouver and Gloucester. We also opened Tucson Premium Outlets October 1, and we're opening Tampa on Thursday of this week.
During the quarter, we started construction on a new premium outlet center in Clarksburg, which is projected to open October 2016. We are also, with our partner, McArthurGlen, we started construction on a new outlet in Provence, France, which is scheduled to open in March of 2017, which will be the only designer outlet in the South of France. Our share of investment of new outlets and full price is currently $725 million, not including the recently completed Gloucester and Vancouver. Let's talk quickly about the balance sheet activities. We issued $1.1 billion of new notes with a weighted average duration of 7.8 years and an average coupon of 3.05%. We completed several secured placements during the quarter, as well as the U.S. and German loan facility financings for our joint venture with HBC. Our current liquidity between the revolvers and cash on hand is approximately $6 billion.
Our industry-leading balance sheet continues to differentiate us in a very positive manner. We exercised caution during the third quarter with respect to our common stock repurchase program and did not repurchase any stock during the period due to the increased market volatility and the dislocation in the debt markets. We remain committed to our buyback efforts, of course, subject to market conditions. We announced our dividend of $1.60 per share for this quarter. That is an increase of 23% year-over-year. That is the fourth consecutive quarter that we have increased our dividend. We will pay $6.05 in 2015, and that is an increase of 17.5% compared to $5.15 of last year. With all that said, no one is as active as we are in terms of redevelopment and new development.
I am pleased, based upon the performance to date, to once again raise our guidance of 2015 of $10.10-$10.15 per share. This compares to our original FFO guidance of $9.60-$9.70 per share, or approximately $0.48 higher from the respective midpoints. We are now ready for questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your touch-tone telephone. If your question has been answered or you wish to withdraw your question, please press star 2. Press star 1 to begin. Please stand by for your first question. The first question comes from the line of Michael Bilerman from Citi. Please go ahead, sir. You are live into the call.
Hey, it is Michael Bilerman here with Christy McElroy. David, your comment about the stock buyback being, I guess, a volatile stock market and some uncertainties in the debt markets, is not that exactly the time where you should be exercising your fortress balance sheet and significant cash proceeds to be able to buy the stock? I know hindsight is 2020, watching the stock go up $27, I am just curious about the mentality at that point in time about not being aggressive at that point.
Well, Michael, I think stock buybacks, in terms of the marketplace reaction to them, may be overstated. What I'm most interested in at this company is growing our earnings and our dividend and maintaining our balance sheet, improving our properties, and enhancing our relationships. I don't look at it a quarter-by-quarter basis. We are more focused on growing our earnings per share and our dividend. The fact is that in August, the market was very volatile. As you know, the debt markets gapped pretty significantly. We chose for one quarter to be cautious. I have no regrets about that because our number one priority is to grow our earnings and our dividends, and that to me is more important, and I think that's what the market should value more importantly than what one's buyback activity may be from one quarter to the next.
We remain committed to it, but we're going to be opportunistic about that because we continue to believe, and I'm terrible at reading from the script, I can barely get the words out, but as you know, our activity in redevelopment and new development is not hypothetical. It is ongoing. I think prudence in that category of the buyback is appropriate. Again, I think our number one priority is earnings growth and therefore dividend growth. We'll buy stock back when we feel like it's a real opportunistic time.
Great. Christy has a question as well.
Sure.
Hey, David. Just in thinking about the Simon Ventures group stuff, and we appreciate the in-depth look at that business earlier this month. Beyond just sort of the small financial investment you've made, what do you view as the primary benefits of this business to Simon over the longer term as consumers' shopping habits continue to evolve? Maybe you can sort of give us a sense for how big you think that your investment in this business could reach over time.
Well, let me just talk about what I think the goal is. Ultimately, it's to help connect with the consumer. The mall business historically has always felt like our job was to get the box leased to the right retailers and let the retailers do most of the connecting and driving most of the traffic. Well, I think the industry has evolved where we've got to become the driver of traffic, and we've got to connect with the consumer. What I'm looking for in those investment, and that connection with technology, is how do I connect with the consumer to drive traffic and make their shopping trip more enjoyable or more effective? 2, how do I help the retailer do that as well? Then maybe third, is there some new concept or new retailer that ultimately can proliferate our portfolio through these kind of connections?
If we can accomplish those two or three goals, I think we'll have succeeded. It's all about trying to take the mall box, making it a smart, connected box to help our retailers and the property owner connect with the consumer, so that their trip is better, more efficient and more productive, which we think will lead to sales growth. That's the goal. We may do a little bit here and there that's a little far afield, like funding a new retail or restaurant concept, because we think maybe that has potential down the road. In terms of size, we're not going to get carried away, but it's really hard to pinpoint right now exactly how big that can be. You have a sense of where we'll ultimately be in the mid-20s by the end of this year.
Maybe we'll do another type of investment like that next year. It wouldn't shock me if we're in the 50-plus range by the end of next year, but that's just a swag.
Great. It's interesting stuff. Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you for your question. We do have another question, and it comes from the line of Jeffrey Spector from Bank of America. Please go ahead so you're live into the call.
Great, thank you. Good morning.
Good morning.
I guess, just thinking about the bumps throughout the year, David, what exceeded your expectations, and how are you thinking about the budgeting process for 2016? I guess, can you compare year-over-year, your mindset?
Well, I think what's interesting to put in perspective, first of all, is that as you look at our earnings growth, we have had an increase in lease settlement income, we've also had the negative of the currency negative from our foreign operations. If you put the two together over 2014, we've actually had a negative $0.05 variance. The increase in lease settlement income from 2015 to 2014, offset against the reduction in earnings that we've taken from our foreign investments due to the strong dollar, net-net year-to-date has been a negative $0.05. You have to put that in perspective. We've had good rental growth, good leasing spreads. We're obviously had a lot more bankruptcies in 2015 than we did in 2014.
The other impact we've had on the negative side is that we've lost certain amount of percentage rent from the outlet business because of the fact that the strong dollar has also hurt tourism shopping, we've seen that impacted more in the outlet business, the outlet tourist centers than we have in the mall business. The mall comp sales have been better than our expectations and are leading the portfolio in terms of that. The fact is, we always know year in and year out, that's what makes us a little bit unique. We always have some positives, we always have some negatives, we somehow manage to hit our numbers, exceed our numbers, produce very strong industry-leading results. I'd also say to you, as we look into next year, the key focus for us, frankly, is we'll have anniversaried the stronger dollar.
That will not be the negative it was this year. The big focus, obviously, is going to be leasing up the bankrupt tenants. We're probably 60%-70% on our way there. Our total lost square footage is 1.3 million. We've got our work cut out, we've seen this movie before. The good news is we have quality real estate that allows us to do it, we have other levers to continue to have industry-leading comp growth. I think the big exciting thing that we've got in 2016, which won't show up in our numbers, is all of the major redevelopment that we've done between King of Prussia, Roosevelt Field, Stanford. I want Craig to go see Del Amo. It's unbelievable what we started there. Of course, we're still finishing it.
We got Woodbury Common coming on board. We've got the extension of Sawgrass Colonade, new development, et cetera, that is going to be really terrific to open up in the latter half of 2016, which positions us 2017. The model is reinvest, generate excess cash flow, pay higher dividends. I should, of course, remind you that our dividend in 2008 was $3. Actually in 2008, I think it was 2009, it was $2.70. It's $6.05 today. We'll have significant growth in next year as well. We got to show up, and we got to go to work every day.
All right. Thank you. That's helpful. Good timing on the.
I hope it answered.
Yeah.
I hope it answered your question, but I'm not.
Yeah, no.
We've got work to do. If you look at 2013, we had, I don't know, 5%. What'd we have, guys? 5%? 2014, we had 5%. This year, we're going to have 4%. We're building it off a pretty strong base, and we didn't have any down years of non-performance to build it off of, right? It's great to build it off a base if you had non-performance, but we haven't had that, frankly. In the Great Recession, our comp NOI was relatively flat, which was industry-leading as well.
No, it's very helpful. Thank you.
Of course.
Good timing on the Del Amo, because I know Craig has put in a request to visit it.
Come on down.
Great. Then my one other question was just on your previous comments on the redevelopment pipeline. We believe you've mentioned through 2017. Are you at the point where you think that pipeline could continue a $1 billion plus beyond 2017? Are we correct on that?
Yeah. I feel pretty good about that. Yes.
Beyond 2017 or not yet?
Yes. No.
Oh, beyond. Okay.
In fact, no rest for the weary. This morning, we're going through our budget cycle now, which is a lot of fun. This morning, we're going through our capital plan for 2016, 2017, and 2018. We don't see it abating. It's actually, in 2017, it'll be higher, probably around $1.5 billion, and 2018 in that range. The big unknown is how fast these Seritage things happen. It's a joint venture, so it's not just a question of how fast we can go, but also how fast Seritage can go and how fast Sears can go, which is clearly we're trying to influence, but we don't have complete control in that. We certainly have a lot on the drawing board to do there.
Great. Thank you.
Sure.
Thank you for your question. We do have another question. It comes from the line of Caitlin Burrows from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. You're live into the call.
Hi. Good morning.
Good morning.
Earlier this year, mall rates were, of course, impacted across the board by retailer bankruptcies. Your same center occupancy was down 80 basis points this quarter, which was actually more than the first and second, which seemed surprising. I was just wondering if you could talk about what drove that year-over-year decline in occupancy to remain in the third quarter, and how you expect it to trend going forward.
Well, we had more bankruptcies in the third quarter. Jones went out, just more bankruptcies. We've also opened up a few centers which had some decrease. Just so people understand, in our statistics, we put in new centers the minute they're in terms of occupancy, or new expanded centers. They're not in our comps, NOI growth, but they're in our sales per square foot, and they're in our occupancy. Part of that decrease was also that we added some new centers and some new expanded centers, which actually drove our occupancy down about 20 basis points as well.
Got it. Like you were mentioning before, you guys have had consistent, pretty strong same-store NOI growth. Do you think then this creates some easy occupancy comps for 2016 that should be able to help you even more?
Nothing is easy. Have you seen my gray hair recently? Nothing's easy. Now, well, I won't say anything about Goldman. We did read this retail report. We found your list of 100 malls curious. I assume the real estate folks didn't have much to do with that, but we're happy to help you develop that.
It was our retail team that put it together.
Right. You quoted traffic statistics, which I'd encourage you to read the footnotes from your source.
Will do. Thank you.
Thank you. Happy to help.
Thank you for your question. The next question comes from the line of Paul Morgan from Canaccord. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Just on the sales trend, can you talk a little bit about it? Whether and to what extent the tourist markets were a drag due to the dollar or maybe, looking at any differences between the mall and the premium outlet portfolio.
Well, we're not going to run from this. We're just going to tell you reality. We have unbelievable tourist centers in our outlet business, Orlando, Woodbury, throughout Las Vegas, and those generate a lot of tourism dollars. The tourists, because of the strong dollar, was quiet. The high-end luxury retail market in, say, New York City and Miami has been hurt as well. We saw that usually it has very little impact, we saw that a little bit more in the outlet business and very little in the mall business. We think it's more or less temporary. These are great assets, has no impact on retail demand and leasing the space and comp NOI growth. That's why the sales metrics are a bigger reaction from you than they are from me. We tell it like it is.
That had an impact on our retail sales per square foot, we don't think it's going to have an impact on our ability to continue to grow comp NOI growth.
Yeah, okay. That gets to my other question, I guess, which is just, if you look at the public retailers, a lot of them, at least their stocks have gotten hit pretty hard over the past several months. As we head into the holidays, as you talk to them, engage with them about their open to buys for next year, how is their sentiment? Has it been shifting at all? Is this just sort of the shifts in market share between different retailers, or is there anything more kind of systematic in terms of maybe how they're approaching their growth over the next year or two?
I'd say this, Paul, it's retail dependent, but the better retailers are dealing with the stronger dollar, which has a short-term impact on them. Second, the consumer, look, the fact is our GDP growth is anemic. We are growing our general economy at 2% below. I think retail can't avoid that fact. The good news is we outperform that because we cater to generally the better consumer. What I think we've seen from the better consumer this year is a little bit move toward, which happens in cycles, a little bit more toward durable goods than non-durable goods, which has the impact of making kind of a flattish comp sales growth increase. Like I said, the mall business, we had very strong comp NOI, I'm sorry, comp retail sales growth this year, which was offset, as I said, only by the tourist centers and the outlet business.
Net, we're up 2.7%, but if I isolated just the mall, we'd be up much higher than that, and that is a testament to, even though in an anemic GDP growth, the better consumer is spending, even though there's been a significant increase in durable good purchases. Retail right now generally is challenging. We're producing results, and we intend to continue to do that.
Would you say it kind of hasn't translated into a meaningful shift in the appetite for space in your centers as people talk about next year?
Not really. I think the opportunity to grow their business in good real estate, for the better retailers is strong. I don't see the current environment affecting that.
Great. Thanks.
Sure.
Thank you for your question. The next question comes from Ross Nussbaum from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hey, everybody. I'm here with Jeremy Metz. Hey, David. When we met the other day, you talked a little bit about the amount of money that consumers are spending in your mall for every minute they're there, saying there's like a one-to-one ratio. I'm curious if you've done any work to think about the spending of millennials and teens versus, say, their parents to sort of further dig into whether the impact of the internet and technology is going to be a growing problem just from a generational perspective.
I don't have it in front of me, yes, we've looked at the typical generational gaps that you would see Baby Boomers, Generation X, so on. I don't have that in front of me, but those numbers are. It's not what you think it is. In other words, there's not a big differential between Generation X and the Millennials. The one thing we're starting to see is the Baby Boomers, probably more of a trend on their decreased expenditures than anything else. Again, I think the Millennials offer great opportunity for us because they are generally going through their increase in income opportunity over the next decade. It's a huge population base, greater than even the Baby Boomers.
These folks will get married, they will have children, they will move out of urban environments, especially with the more difficult living conditions that's going on in a lot of urban environments. They are, we believe, loyal mall shopping consumers. We've got. We're making the mall generally a better experience for them to be at. I don't think there's a big differential. I don't have the numbers in front of me. I think the Millennials, 80 million deep, grew up in the mall environment. They're comfortable with the mall environment. As their income grows and as they age and have kids, I think they'll be loyal mall shoppers, especially given the environments we're creating.
Okay. Appreciate that. I think Jeremy's got a question as well.
Sure.
Just two quick ones. In terms of the lease cancellation income, it's the highest it's been in a long time. David, earlier you mentioned Jones. I was just wondering if there's any other tenants in particular that maybe drove this. I think Forever 21 was in a few super-sized locations. They were looking to downsize. Not sure if they were a part of it this quarter.
Forever 21. It's basically the big one was Jones. There were a couple others year to date that we've dealt with. I hate kind of going through retailers on that. It's somewhat confidential. The good news is lease settlement income does ebb and flow. The good news is anytime we do that, we still have the space. If I get three years of rent, I get the chance to lease the space back again, that's good business. There's nothing wrong with that. To put the earnings in perspective, and you may not have caught the original response to an earlier question, net-net, when I look at the stronger dollar from our foreign investments versus the increase in lease settlement income from 2014 to 2015, I'm in the whole $0.05 year to date.
Please keep that in mind as you think about our business.
Got it. Just switching gears quickly, Highwoods recently announced they were looking to sell Country Club Plaza. I was just wondering, is that something Simon would be interested in, or any thoughts on where that process is at? Thanks.
I understand there's a process. I think it's a good real estate. It's got a good position in its marketplace. Beyond that, I'm not informed in terms of numbers or anything else or process, but I understand there's a process, and it's always been very good real estate, good market.
Okay. Thank you.
Sure.
Thank you for your question. The next question comes from the line of Jeff Donnelly from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
Good morning.
Morning.
Just maybe sticking with leasing. I'm just curious, David, do you think the increase in lease settlement income you're getting foreshadows potentially more space coming back to you guys after the holiday season through bankruptcy?
I actually think it's tailing down. As I look at what generated the list, it's a couple of odd things, our watch list is actually the guys that we were worried about has happened and done that. It's out there, it's possible, I actually think next year we'll be less impacted by bankruptcies than we were this year.
Switching gears, I'm just curious for your take, as Macerich has taken to joint venturing some assets at a low to mid-4 cap rate that we've been told are fairly middle of the pack for them. Does that pricing in the market maybe lead you to feel there might be pockets of your portfolio where you're open to JVs or even selling out some assets entirely to expand your repurchase initiatives?
Why don't you rephrase it? I don't really want to comment on what Macerich did.
I'm just curious about just as a comp for transactions in the market, does something in the 4s compel you to say, "Gee," maybe you look at some of selling your assets to fuel repurchases.
I don't know. The fact of the matter is, we are very comfortable with what we're doing. We sell assets. There generally is complexity when you go to joint ventures. We like to do joint ventures when there's new opportunities, because it's easier to justify. For instance, just to take a few that we're pleased to be part of new joint ventures on a couple of the new developments like Brickell and Clearfork. Very good partners, great real estate. That was the only way we could do that. I like those kind of joint ventures where it's more new opportunity than otherwise. We'll sell assets. We've sold a bunch of assets. Don't forget, we did a significant spinoff of our strip centers and our smaller malls. I don't rule it out. It's not a priority to do.
The priority for us is to grow our earnings, grow our dividend, execute our deep redevelopment development pipeline. We have the buyback, and I don't think we necessarily need the capital from existing properties in terms of a joint venture to execute on the buyback.
Speaking of JVs, I guess you teamed up with Hudson's Bay to acquire, was it Galeria Kaufhof stores?
Kaufhof, yes.
What can you tell us about those properties and just maybe what your plans are for those locations down the road?
Well, look, I think it's great. Mostly city center real estate in Germany, which is a very strong market. Very little retail space per capita as compared to the U.S., as an example. It's got built-in growth, even if it just stays the credit lease that it is. We think there's some ability to redevelop some of the stores, take back some of the frontage, much like we're doing with some of the department stores here in the U.S. It's a strong cash flow business, appropriately valued, with some redevelopment upside.
Thanks.
Thank you for your question. We do have another question. It comes from the line of Ki Bin Kim from Robinson Humphrey. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Just going back to your retailer watchlist comments. Last year when we had RadioShack, Wet Seal, and Deb Shops and Delia's and some others, how early did you have a read into that they would go BK overall?
Those particular ones?
In general. I was just curious to know how much of an early warning sign does the watchlist provide to you?
Pretty early. Yeah, Ki. It's Rick Sokolov. We certainly can see this coming a long way away based on the trends of what their leasing activity is, their sales activity. When they publicly report, are they looking for new equity? None of these are surprises. As David said, the ones that went away, they had been on the ropes for years and years, and they just ultimately ran out of the incremental equity sources and had to file.
Okay. Maybe if you could put it in a kind of easily digestible number. You mentioned 1.3 million square feet that was impacted this year. In broad numbers, what does that look like next year?
Well, it's hard to predict what next year's going to be, but as David said, we anticipate that next year will certainly not be as large a year on bankruptcies as we had this year.
Okay. Thank you. That's it for me.
Sure.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Vincent Chao from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, everyone. I know we spent quite a bit of time on the sort of impact of the dollar and tourism sales, just curious if you could maybe give some more specific color about Miami and then specifically, Brickell Center.
Well, Miami is feeling some of the heat from, obviously, Latin America, but actually the leasing of Brickell, Rick. Yeah, Brickell is doing very well. It's opening fall of next year. We've been announcing periodically the tenants that are signing up. It's a wonderful mix of designer tenants and restaurants, and it's anchored by Saks with a cinema. If you've been down there, it's a very incredible project with the two condo towers, the EAST Hotel, and the two office buildings, in addition to the retail, in a market that is really the financial center of that market. We're very excited about it going forward.
Okay, safe to say, no impact on demand despite some of the immediate tourism impacts in the near term. Similar to your comments for the overall.
Look, I think what I said earlier is consistent with that. Look, that's going to attract the better long-term thinking retailers. The fact that tourism's a little soft right now doesn't detract the better retailer. When I say better, I'm not just talking mix, but just they're better retailers. I'm just trying to explain to you what's been reported in our sales per square foot. I also made the comment to you, I don't think that is going to detract from the demand of our real estate and our ability to drive comp and NOI, because we're going after the better retailers, and the better retailers look through a quarter or two of sales volatility for whatever reason. That's the point I've been trying to make to a lot of folks, a lot of time over retail sales.
Retail sales is interesting, but not a predictor of comp and NOI growth. We've done all sorts of regression analysis. I've talked about this ad nauseam, but we report the facts for you to have, but it doesn't detract from the ability to generate increased cash flow because that's more supply and demand oriented and what the market rent of our space rolling over is and what that particular location is. If you got a good space and a good mall, you're going to be able to generate, given that rent rollover, that rent has been there for seven years. You got to look at where that rent was rolling over seven years ago. That's why we have re-leasing spreads of $11 a foot. That's the focus. The volatility of retail sales is more interesting from a retailer point of view, less from the landlord.
Take New York Citi street retail. There's volatility in that retail real estate there, I'm sorry, in retail sales, but has the market value of that real estate changed? Probably, if you talk to a lot of people, they'd probably tell you no.
Okay. Fair enough. Thank you.
Sure.
Thank you for your question. We have another question from the line of Mike Mueller from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Hi. Couple of questions here. One you may have indirectly answered before, but what was your share of the lease term that you booked this quarter?
It's in our supplemental.
The share of it is? Because I thought that was the consolidated amount.
Well, if it's consolidated, that's our share. We may have a little minority interest in it, but if it's consolidated, it's our share. Right?
Okay. secondly, on the outlet development side, can you talk a little bit about the returns you're seeing when you compare Europe starts to U.S. to Asia and how you think about the pecking order of opportunities?
I would say that the new development in Europe tends to be a little lower than our developments here, around 11% return on cost, generally. In Europe, they may be a touch lower, say, eight or nine to start with. In Asia, we really don't do them unless they're double digits, because you got tax impact and we want a better risk-adjusted return. I'd say they're probably in the 12% or 13% range.
Got it. Okay. I guess, as you're thinking about opportunities going forward, is it more skewed toward the U.S. for new starts at this point? Or do you think you're going to see a little bit more pickup in Europe?
Europe, like I said, we're really excited on the Provence deal. We own 90% of it. That's a big project and a big market, that hasn't seen a quality outlet like that. That's good news. There's two or three others through McArthurGlen that we're making good progress in, one in Spain that we hope to start construction in 2016 on as we go through the permitting. That's up there as well. Another one in the western part of Paris that we are making good progress on. Another one in Belgium that we're making good progress on. In Asia, we've got two or three others that are a little more difficult to predict. We've got our second one in Malaysia, that we're confident we'll get started as well as Mexico, we expect to start one next year as well. We're making progress.
Got it. Okay. That was it. Thank you.
Sure.
Thank you for your question. The next question comes from the line of Carol Kemple from Hilliard Lyons. Please go ahead.
Good morning. How does your volume of temporary and pop-up tenants for this holiday season compare to the recent past? Historically, do you know what rate of those tenants convert to a longer-term lease once their temporary lease expires?
Well, if they're pop-up, generally, they don't convert. More and more retailers are testing pop-ups to decide whether they want to do a longer-term deal. I would say generally, there's an increase this year, primarily because we have a little bit more space from the bankruptcies that we've had this year. Carol, just to remind you, we don't include that in our occupancy.
It's got to be a year in that, but there'll be more activity in pop-up stores for the season just because we've got a little bit more vacancy due to some of the bankruptcies.
I was thinking of your American Girl store that's open in Castleton. I've seen where they're basically doing that to test the Indianapolis market. Are you seeing more retailers not just doing a pop-up store for the season, but more so to actually test the market?
You're starting to see a little bit more of that. I think that's safe to say.
Okay. Thank you.
Sure.
Thank you for your question. We do have another question. It comes from the line of Ryan Peterson from Sandler O'Neill. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you. I just wanted to ask about Houston Galleria and the Houston market, and if you guys have seen any change in the shopper demographics there or the retail sales trends more generally, and what your expectations are going forward.
In what sense?
Just whether you think that Houston will be hit, whether retail is kind of the second impact of oil prices there.
Our Galleria is such a great asset. It's kind of the unambiguous number one. For a market of that size, it's kind of unambiguously the number one shopping center. It tends to weather any economic downturn, generally. I will say this, look, our retailers are not immune to a little bit of a down economy, and Houston is also a big tourist market for the Mexican nationals. There might be some slight retail sales impact, but it will have no impact to the long-term great asset that Houston Galleria is, as well as you know, we're doing a significant amount of transformation of that asset with the new Saks store, the new Saks wing-
the new The Webster, which is going to open in the next 30 days or so. We have a lot of phenomenal stuff going on there. Sure, could retail sales be marginally impacted there? Sure. Houston Galleria tends to continue to way outperform just because it's such a great asset. Rick, I don't know if you want to add anything.
No, I think it is very well positioned. As David said, it's got the unique mix of anchors, restaurants, and small shops in that market, and it's been very enduring over cycles in the energy belt for decades.
If anything, I think Houston generally has become less of a I would certainly say 20 plus years ago, it was more boom bust. With the universities, the medical facilities there, it's a much more diversified economy than just oil and gas.
Okay, thank you.
Sure.
Thank you for your question. We do have another question. It comes from the line of Steve Sakwa from Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning, David.
Morning.
Just two quick questions. I know you've talked about the weakness in the U.S. outlet business, but just what about stuff kind of north of the border, south of the border? Just how are the international assets performing?
I'm sorry. I didn't hear your first part, Steve.
Sorry. Is that better?
Yeah, that's better. Thanks.
Okay. I know you've talked about the weakness in the tourism markets for the international, for the outlet business here in the U.S. I'm just curious how the assets in Canada, Mexico, over in Japan, the few that you have over in Europe, just kind of how are the non-U.S. ones performing from a sales and leasing perspective?
Yeah. Again, I don't want you to overreact. There is a little bit of softness due to the strong dollar with U.S. tourism. You're seeing that in all sorts of businesses, hotel business, whatever. We're dealing with it. The fact is, the international properties are actually performing very well. Europe retail sales is actually relatively impressive in the Klépierre portfolio. The outlet sales that we have with McArthurGlen are very impressive. Japan, you see that in our 8-K. They are very impressive. Up, what, 7%?
7%.
Korea, a little bit soft. I'd say the only market that's a little soft is Korea, a little bit because of not SARS, but whatever the last version was, MERS, whatever. The Chinese consumer there probably going a little bit less to Korea for the time being. I would say Mexico sales are. We got one asset. Canada's great. Toronto's terrific. Montreal's finding its market increasing. Generally, those centers are very. We've been very pleased with those results.
Okay, thanks. I guess the second question, you sort of briefly touched on Klépierre. I didn't really hear much on the call, but just how's the integration gone? If you had to kind of rank on a scale of one to 10 of just all the things you want to do, where are you guys in the kind of process of transforming the combined company?
You mean with respect to Corio?
Yeah, Klépierre, Corio, just kind of overall business and kind of the merger.
They bought Corio. We don't own them, so we're not integrating with them. I just wanted to distinguish that. I would say, look, over the three years we've owned it, they've done a lot of transformation, selling a bunch of stuff, buying a bunch of stuff. That's pretty much passed them. The big focus next year is really operationally, which they, through osmosis, is improving their capabilities of doing that. That's been the big focus, I'd say in 2016, now that the integration with Corio is pretty much done, the sale of the big Carrefour portfolio is done. I think it's going to be an operational story. We're not operating the business.
We're providing strategic input. I think they've done a very good job of gleaming whatever nuggets of strategy we are able to impart and ignoring the ones that have no value because you know what? Sometimes we don't have the right strategy. They're doing a good job, but I think operationally, I'd say they're the first to admit that they can continue to improve just like we can, and I think that's a big focus for them in the upcoming years. We're not integrating. They're running their business.
Well, no, I understand that. I'm just saying, as sitting as chairman, you kind of can sit at the top and look at what they're executing strategically and just trying to figure out how much of the playbook has been done and how much is left to do.
Well, look, there's always a gap in terms of how we might do things versus how they do things there. I still think there's room where they could be operationally better, and that'll take longer for them to achieve, but I have confidence that they will get there. We'll help out as much as we can.
Okay, thanks.
They're pretty good, and they're doing a good job.
Thank you for your question. The next question comes from the line of D.J. Busch from Green Street Advisors. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Just a quick follow-up on the Hudson's Bay partnership. Is the opportunity set to do deals like a Kaufhof greater abroad versus here in the U.S.? I guess, how do you see that investment growing from a geographic perspective?
Well, I do think perhaps the international business may offer a few more opportunities, but they're very creative folks, along with our resources dedicated to it. I wouldn't rule out domestic opportunities, but I'd say maybe marginally more opportunities internationally than here, but I wouldn't rule out domestic opportunities as well.
Is the joint venture open to kind of retail leaseback opportunities outside of the traditional department stores as well?
Sure. Yeah.
Okay. Not to belabor the point on the softness in international tourism, The Mills operating metrics were pretty impressive again.
Yeah.
Those are obviously greatly influenced by Sawgrass. Is that similar to your comments on the Galleria? Is Sawgrass one of those assets that kind of bucks the trend?
Yeah, we did see a little bit of softness there as well. All of these assets buck the trend. They might have, again, the retail sales, not the cash flow, may have some short-term impact. Sawgrass had a little bit of softness as well. It's not immune.
Okay. Thank you.
Okay. No worries.
Thank you for that. We have no further questions this time, so I'd like to turn the call over to David Simon, Chief Executive Officer, for closing remarks.
Okay. Thank you so much, and we'll talk to you soon.
Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes your presentation. You may now disconnect. Have a good day.