Welcome to the 11:15 A.M. session on day one of Citi's 2022 Global Property CEO Conference. I'm Michael Bilerman. I'm here with Manny Korchman. We're extraordinarily pleased to have with us Chairman and CEO Steven Roth of Vornado Realty. This session is for Citi clients only. If media or other individuals are on the line, please disconnect now. Disclosures are up here and available on the webcast. For those joining us here in person, to ask questions, you can simply step up to the mic. But if you don't wanna step up to the mic, you can use the QR code to go to live QA and enter those questions there, and they're gonna come up on the screen for Manny and me. Those on the webcast can do the same thing. Steven, I don't know if I'm...
Am I turning it over to you for introductory remarks, or is it going to Franco?
This is the opposite of an intimate room. This is a happy room.
Yeah, we used to be around the table where we all can be together, but COVID planning changed that.
Okay.
this year.
Michael.
Mike, I'll turn it over to you. Introduce Vornado, the rest of the management team that's sitting up there with you, and then we'll go through some Q&A.
Sure. Just on the dais here, Michael Franco, President and CFO. Steven Roth, Chairman and CEO. To my left, Glen Weiss, Co-Head of Real Estate and Head of Leasing for us. And then Thomas Sanelli, who is our Chief Administrative Officer, EVP, Finance. You know, Michael, I think on Vornado, we should just get into Q&A. I think everybody knows who we are and what we are, and so let's just open it up.
Great. We've been starting each of these sessions asking each management team for three reasons why an investor should buy your stock over any other publicly traded REIT. What is it about Vornado? What are the three reasons why investors should step in and buy your stock?
You want me to kick it off?
Cheap. I know that was a few years ago.
Yeah.
That's still gonna be number one.
That's still number one.
What was that?
Cheap, cheap. We are cheap, Michael, right? We're cheap, I think, by any metric.
I think the phrase is stupid cheap.
Right? Stupid cheap.
Cheap by NAV, cheap by, I mean, you know, 5% dividend yield. I think our earnings growth over the next two, three years is gonna be one of the strongest, certainly in our sector and maybe any sector. You know, we expect that to be, as we've said, double digits. You know, I think two is, you know, if you look at the portfolio we've assembled, and it's not by accident, we've got a very high quality portfolio. If you think about all the trends that are occurring and the flight to quality and so forth, our portfolio is, and I think will continue to benefit. I think that segment of the market is gonna see disproportionate growth, right? I think that hasn't played out yet. It's gonna start playing out.
Then third is, and I know you happened to walk by the PENN District the other day and actually, you know, walked into PENN 1, the lobby, and saw what we're doing. The opportunity that we have in the PENN District is, I think, the most unique development opportunity in the country, maybe in the world, but certainly in the country, where one landlord owns 10 million sq ft, can expand that to 15-18 million sq ft over time. Can take rents that are in place in the mid-$60s and take those up into the $100 neighborhood. If you look at what we've done, where it's now online, Farley's online in terms of the project being done. The PENN 1 amenities are done, and that's now being opened up to tenants. PENN 2's in the works.
you know, I think the market underappreciates how dynamic that is and the impact that's gonna have both on those specific assets and everything we own around. Anything you wanna add to that?
Well, I think that everything that we're involved in, New York City office buildings, retail, et cetera, has bottomed. Significantly bottomed. I think that we are excited about the next two years, maybe three years, we will have enormous growth. For our company, I think as we pencil it out, I think our growth will be industry-leading. We foreshadowed that in an outstanding quarter that we announced our last quarter. There's more to come. We're extremely excited about the future.
Steve, that confidence of effectively bottoming in New York, what are you hearing from your corporate tenants about them trying to bring their employees back from the sense of. You know, I know as an office company, and Vornado's had an in-office policy, and there's a lot of benefits to being together. There seems to be this tension between the employees and the employers. Like, I can imagine, like, in 2019, if I told my team, "Hey, you guys can come in three days a week instead of five," they would have been jumping for joy. Now when I tell them, "You have to come in three days a week," they're like, "Why?
I can do my job at home." It just feels like a lot of companies have gone down to the manager level in terms of driving things versus the CEO level. Do you think that's going to change, and are you starting to see that changing at all?
We're
This is Mark's position.
Okay. We're seeing the change right now. We're talking to all of our tenants, I mean, all of our tenants daily, particularly the big tenant CEOs. The winds are changing as we sit in this conference this week. Everyone is marking end of March, beginning of April, to come back, number one. I think the tone of the notice to the employees has changed. I think it's changed from, you know, "If you'd like to come back, call your boss," versus, "When you come back, the bagels will be ready for you to eat." I think the tone is changing. I will tell you, I think-
We are really energized by the prospect of growth by these companies in New York. We're hearing it over and over and over, particularly by the tech companies and by the financial service companies, number one. Number two, we're seeing new entrants coming into New York into our buildings. I think the winds are changing right now. We're feeling, you know, much better as we go month to month. As expected, you know, it's taking time to thaw out, you know, from where we came almost two years ago. But in terms of tenant psychology, leasing of space, locking into long-term large lease commitments, it is happening. If you look at our leasing statistics during all of 2021, the length of term was almost 13 years.
We leased 2.2 million sq ft to big, important tenants taking a big stake in the buildings, growing, expanding, building new space and looking forward, I think, very confidently at this point.
There's no reason for these folks to be making these huge commitments for space in New York and around the country unless they really expected they were gonna need it. I look at it differently, okay? I'm just a bricklayer, okay? You all are the investors. If each of us has our own thinking about whether the buildings are gonna fill up, whether the office is going to win or whether the Hollywood Squares is gonna win, you get it? Whether the kitchen table is going to win, okay? If you wanna be successful and you have a view, the stocks are now priced as if the buildings are gonna remain that, you know, basically half empty.
When the buildings start to fill up again, the stocks will make their move, so it depends upon you. Each of you have to make your own decision. It's not gonna take that long. You wait another six months or nine months or a year, it'll all become very evident, and by that time, it'll be too late.
Are you finding that the tenants that are signing leases, how much of it's just pure forecasting their employee growth, so they're gonna have to house some amount of people in office versus, you know, relative to the old requirements of, you know, person per square foot?
There is growth. There's also an appetite to relocate into better buildings with the strongest landlords. That's a big theme we're seeing, that we can deliver the goods, deliver the product. We have the balance sheet to serve the buildings, build the buildings, create the amenities, et cetera. We're seeing growth. It's not just the renewal game, it's not just the short-term lease game. I think you're seeing the commitments, and a lot of it is expansion, new to New York and a lot of relocations to the highest quality buildings with the best owners.
Michael, we have an advantage over you. Okay? You're speculating as to what's going to happen, which is valid. We think we know. We talk to our tenants. We have 1,300-1,500 tenants. We talk to every one of them, you know, weekly, monthly, whatever. We think we know what the management teams of these big companies want to do, need to do and will do. Okay? We're fairly confident that these buildings are gonna fill up, and you're gonna know pretty soon.
You talk about the PENN district going from 10 million up to 15-18 million. How are you thinking about overall funding of that pipeline, the inflationary costs on construction costs and ensuring that the rents are commensurate to ensure that you're getting the value creation and the yields that you're looking for?
Hey, Michael, look, I think in terms of the development over time, you know, that's a lot that's not knowable today, right? I don't know what inflation is gonna be in two, five and eight years and so on. This is not an overnight project. This is gonna take a series of years to execute. What we do know is that we're finishing PENN 1, PENN 2 right now, and when those are done along with Farley, we're gonna have assets, three assets in particular, that have significant income being generated that are not today, right? By the way, all three of those assets are unlevered, right? I don't know of another developer that's actually built-
What does unlevered mean?
Unlevered means no debt.
No debt.
No debt.
Yeah. I thought that's what it meant.
You know, I don't know of a real estate developer that's built, you know, basically 5.5 million sq ft with no debt.
I must be laughing today.
You know, just from that, right, if you just think about rolling that capital into a PENN 15, for example, okay, you build that building. Right? We'll see what comes next. By the way, PENN, we talk about the district, it's not necessarily all office buildings, right? There's likely to be a residential building or two. We got diversified product type and we'll see, Michael, we can't predict what inflation's gonna be and so forth. If the costs don't work, they don't work. At the same time, you know, historically as inflation occurs, rents benefit as well. I think what we're doing in the area is gonna benefit.
We'll have to take it year by year, but right now we're executing what we have already started. PENN 15 is being taken down, and when that comes down by the second half of 2023, we'll evaluate. Where's the market, right? We're already getting incomings, right? Just by the fact we've announced we're taking it down. Why we're in the game, right? We weren't in the game really before. Now we're really in the game. Glen's getting some incomings from even, you know, 1 million sq ft financial tenants that we're looking at the building. We're gonna build, we think, the most unique building in the city, and we'll evaluate when we get closer to that point.
By the way, the PENN 15 site also has no debt on it.
Right.
As you think about the amenity side, obviously at PENN 1 and combining it into a large campus with PENN 2, a lot of that investment is benefiting the entire area. How should investors think about that capital spend in relation to the return that it's generating? Is it effectively taking those rents from $60-$100 and allocating all of that amenity and infrastructure work across that increased rental stream?
You know, I think so. I mean, I think Glen would tell you even, you know, the PENN 11, for example, right? We have tenants that are already seeing what we're doing at PENN 1 and coming over and using it. I think it's gonna have a, obviously, a direct effect on those two buildings, right? Because the amenities are housed there. I think the tenants in the area, by the fact that they have access to that, I think you're gonna start to see lift on those rents as well.
Let's do some math, okay? Let's just do some math. PENN 1 is a 2.5-2.6 million sq ft building. When we started our capital plan, which by the way, I'm gonna quiz you as to your reaction to it in a second. Prepare-
I have to listen. All right.
What's that?
I have to listen carefully.
No. When we started the plan, when we announced the plan, we said we were gonna spend $400 million, which is accurate. It's almost done now. That $400 million and other things would raise the market rents from, pick a number, 55, 60 to 90, 95, okay? The last lease that we put out at PENN 1 was at $100 a foot. Let's say 60 to 100 is how much?
$40.
Thank you. x 2.5 million feet, how much?
We're $90 million.
$100 million. Okay? Take a little bit off for expenses, and how does $100 million compare to a $400 million spend?
25%.
Not bad. Okay? There's gonna be a ground lease kick-up, which will pay for that. Anyway, We're very happy with the numbers, okay? We think that they're, I hate this phrase, but they're industry-leading, okay? I hate when people say that. Anyway, the math works. The way I look at it is actually a pretty simple thing, okay? We're in an amenity-rich world. We're in the hospitality world. We treat our tenants like they were staying at a hotel, and we treat them well, and that's why we have the franchise that we have. Now, from an amenity point of view, and there's an arms race in amenities, which we think we're winning by a lot. From an amenity point of view, let's say that you could afford to put 4% of a building into amenities.
By the way, most of our amenities pay for themselves. They're revenue generating. The gym generates revenue. The co-working space generates revenue. The conference center generates revenue. The restaurants generate revenue. Now let's say you have a bogey of 4%. You have a 1 million foot building and 4% are amenities. That's 40,000 square feet. How much do we have in PENN 1?
160.
We have 160,000 sq ft in that one building. If you have 5 million sq ft and you can put 4% in amenities, that's 200,000 sq ft. It's mind-boggling. Our strategy is that the competitive advantage of a single building anywhere is X. The competitive advantage of 10 million, 12 million sq ft in one ownership connected underground and above ground on top of the most important train station in North America is a whole different kettle of fish, okay.
Right.
It's the clustering of buildings. It's the campus. Think about it this way. If you're a 300 or 400 thousand sq ft tenant, you go into a million sq ft building, and you need to expand, you probably have to go down the block around the corner somewhere else. If you're a 300 or 400 thousand sq ft tenant and you're with us, Glen can always find you another 100 or 200 thousand sq ft in that complex, okay? This is going to be a rethink, the innovation and a change in the way people think about office.
Right.
We believe that what we're doing, when we get done with it, will command premium rents, okay? Think about it. If we have, pick a number, 10 million sq ft and the market rents go up $10 a sq ft, how much is that? You're my math steward.
Well, if the rents go up, you have 5 million sq ft, another $50 million.
No, let's say 10 million sq ft, $10 a foot, that's $100 million, okay?
$100 million. I thought you were doing it on the existing.
That $100 million is probably largely incremental, okay? Because the taxes are already paid, et cetera. What would the value of that $100 million be?
A lot. I mean.
A lot.
Current cap rates, you're talking about.
Give me a number.
You're talking about, like, almost probably $2 billion of value.
How much?
$2 billion of value.
Okay. Well, that's something. Okay.
Right.
$2 billion of value is $10 a share.
Obviously, the PENN District is-
How much a share is it?
Sorry?
How much a share?
The shares are trading at $45 a share.
No, no. How much, $10 million-
How many shares? You have 300 million shares.
Okay.
This is like, an exam. I didn't know I was gonna get tested.
Hang on, hang on. I'm not done yet. You wrote me an email recently because you came out of your cave, and you walked the PENN District for the first time.
Out of my cave. You think I sit at home every day? I'm in the office every day.
I'm gonna get David Simon to take care of you.
Yeah, I know that.
You did your job, and you walked. What did you see? What did you think?
I mean, for those that haven't toured the entire PENN District, I mean, it's, you know, it's unbelievable what is taking place, even though the density of the workers are not there. If you're sitting in PENN 1 up on the stairs, there was all these people working. They were on Zoom calls. They were having team meetings. There was people in the gym. There was people in the medical center.
Building.
There was people in the restaurant on the second floor. There was a lot of activity. I walked all the way through the train station, all the way to Brookfield. I mean, it was at the nucleus, and then think about, you've already ripped off the western half of PENN 1 . The building looks completely different. It's gone from a 1980s look to a modern look. You've been able to bring out the view lines because you put the windows on the back, you gain square footage.
The steel for The Bustle, which is going to be 430 feet long, is gonna be an enormous piece of architecture on three blocks of Seventh Avenue. When the steel starts to go up, that'll be another revelation. That's gonna start happening in a month and take six months to complete.
Right.
So-
The PENN District has been.
The punchline to it is, we think what we're doing is transformational, entrepreneurial, and revolutionary, and we've been on it for a long time.
Right.
Everybody has PENN fatigue, I understand that. Here we-
Well, that's it. It's really.
Here we go.
Right. It's really happening. That PENN District is-
Now, there's a believer.
Is-
Well, no, the point. Like, I think we're spending a whole lot of time talking about a single asset, and I think that investors are far more worried about what happens with these markets more generally. I think that the conversations that I have with a lot of investors focus on the increasing gap or valley or however you wanna describe it between the A's and super A's and the B's and C's and the stuff that doesn't survive this. I think the concern is that right now you've got all these tenants leasing, and that's awesome, and they're looking for the new buildings.
As we go through this and whether it's a year from now or five years from now or whatever number of days it is from now, as we look around and say, "Hey, some of these users that have been in those crappy buildings, maybe they're the ones that go more work from home. Maybe those buildings, maybe they do upgrade to the better buildings." You're going to have supply, and you're already there with 17% or 18% vacancies across New York. How do we get comfortable owning the best house in what seems like not the best neighborhood? Maybe I'm wrong there, but that's the question I get.
No one's doubting, I think, the successes of some of these really good buildings, but I think people do have a lot of frustration or caution or whatever you wanna call it to be buying in these cities generally. Where is that wrong?
Hey, Manny. It's Glen. You talk about, you know, the entire city. Number one, you know, for us specifically, we think we very proactively transformed the entire portfolio over the last 10 years, forgetting PENN for a moment. We think our core portfolio in Midtown and then the 70s, the 85 tenths, the Meatpacking projects, we think we got the best of a lot by far, number one. We're seeing, you know, a lot of leasing action throughout the portfolio, not just in PENN. I know we've talked a lot about PENN. Number two, as it relates to, you know, what you said about, you know, what's gonna happen with the 18%-19% vacancy. In our day-to-day doings, I don't even pay attention to that because that's not what we're about. We have the buildings where the tenants wanna come.
We make the matches with the best tenants. I mean, think about PENN. I mean, we've hardly started. We got Facebook and Apple planted in those buildings for 1.2 million sq ft. We haven't done nothing yet. If you think about everything Steve has spoken about this morning, we're getting ready to just keep growing and growing and growing that tenant base. It's all about having the right buildings, knowing what to do with the buildings, knowing how to service these tenants going forward. While there is a lot of space around town, you know, our leasing team has their heads down focused on our portfolio with the brokers. I'll tell you, the brokers will tell you what I'm telling you in terms of our portfolio.
That's our singular laser focus every day, is the quality and the way we do things in the market compared to you know, the competition.
Steve, how do you think about the portfolio and the company overall in the sense of. You know, obviously, we've been talking a lot about the PENN District, which is obviously the highest growth opportunity that the entity has. And you've talked, you know, obviously, we put forth this tracker idea, and now it's on pause. Are there other things in terms of what you want Vornado to be in the sense of, is there an opportunity to recycle maybe some of the more core assets at attractive cap rates that may not have the same redevelopment or development upside as the PENN and effectively fund your growth like that, and in five years' time, Vornado becomes basically the West Side, and that's what the company becomes?
In a word, sure.
We're a what?
In a word, sure.
Sure.
Sure.
I guess, is that on? I don't know. You haven't shelved the tracker idea, I don't believe.
The tracker.
The stock reacted well.
The tracker is not shelved. There will be a tracker. It's just on pause. I thought it was kinda stupid to launch something that I think should be and will be very successfully received by the investing public when the buildings are only occupied 30%. That's not the right time to do it. It's just a timing thing.
Is tracker the best solution to highlight that value, given the complexity that normally is with trackers in terms of governments and ownership and things like that? I think a lot of the feedback, Steve, and just the way your stock reacted from putting it on pause, would indicate that perhaps investors wanna see more rigorous value creation. You've done an immense job at simplifying the organization, financing your assets, activating the development, reducing the mall exposure, reducing the street retail exposure. Like, there's a lot of value-creating things that the market just hasn't recognized. I'm just wondering if there's just one step further rather than putting a security or a tracker into the mix.
I think the tracker is the best solution. It may not be the eventual solution, but it's the best solution in the short term to accomplish what I think our objectives are, and to give investors a perfect and wonderful choice of to invest in the PENN District, our pretty wonderful class A core business, or both. I've said that, you know, multiple times, and the tracker is still high on the agenda. It's just the timing is not perfect, and it'll come.
From a corporate view, what's your perspective, Manny?
By the way, I don't see complexity. Okay? Complexity is a very interesting excuse for I don't know what. While our company might have been complex ten years ago, I think it's anything but that now. I mean, it's in basically, you know, one major city and basically one major asset class, and that's about as simple as you can get. We're doing things which are totally unique in terms of the entrepreneurship of how we treat our buildings, how we operate our buildings, how we transform our buildings. We think we're delivering the goods.
Well, I think the idea is Vornado is a lot simpler today. When you look at the breakdown of gross asset value, exactly today. You can identify the Mark, you can identify 555, you can isolate street retail, you can isolate Penn Plaza, and then you can isolate the core assets. It almost seems like maybe there's opportunities to divest or to harvest some of those other pieces so that the PENN District becomes a larger percentage of the core, and you've already had that capital. It's effectively, you know, investors are buying that growth. Versus trying to play it within a, you know, sub-entity underneath the parent.
I said before, sure.
It's not mutually exclusive, Michael.
Right.
The other thing is, we have spent, you know, years, you know, working for our shareholders trying to create value, and we'll continue to do that.
That's where I wanted to go to next, on corporate governance, you added Bill Helman to the board in 2019, and I remember the terminology was to challenge us and to break glass. Can you take us a little bit into the boardroom? You obviously have a number of long-serving directors. What has changed in the boardroom over the last couple of years with Bill being part of that mandate that you set of challenging you and breaking glass?
I don't think it's appropriate for me to get into a conversation about what happens in our wonderful boardroom. I can only tell you that Bill Helman is a piece of work.
Am I not gonna be invited back again? Is that?
What's that?
Am I not gonna be invited back again? He has a very active board, and Steve was very nice to invite me a number of years ago to present to his board. They take it very seriously. That's why I was just trying to understand a little bit more about the intensity that he may have been brought or the looking at different alternatives.
I can only tell you that our board, as you said, is very active. I think, you know, very smart, very knowledgeable. You know, we consider multiple alternatives for creating value at every meeting.
Manny, I'll turn it over to you.
Sure. I don't think we've covered in this meeting yet, what's the number one ESG priority for Vornado in 2022? What do you say?
Number one ESG priority? You know, Manny, look, we are, I think, by all accounts, you know, one of the leaders in sustainability, so we're gonna continue to make progress there on our Vision 2030 plan. I think we made a lot of social improvements over the last year and, you know, I think you're likely to see some board refreshment, this year. I would say that's probably the number one priority.
By the way, just as an aside, we have an enormously active HR department, and the number of programs that we have initiated for the well-being, the enjoyment, the happiness, the training of our staff is actually pretty extraordinary. Maybe at some point we should, you know, disclose that.
Yeah. I think we're gonna do it in this year's ESG report.
How much should investors be worried about inflation? That comes from either the cleaning business, maybe the labor involved in the Mart business, the CapEx needs, the development projects, all those things.
You know, on the development projects that are underway, you know, that's bought out, right? I don't think there's a lot of risk on that front. You know, when you get on subsequent projects, as I said earlier, we'll have to see, you know, where the market is relative to when we wanna start. I can't predict that today. Obviously, with costs go up, right, rents are gonna have to go up commensurately to make those make sense, and we'll evaluate the time. You know, labor front-
You know, this inflation is a double-edged sword. One statistic that's very interesting is if you graph replacement cost, which is the cost of new buildings, that has been rising, you know, at a very interesting rate, and it's accelerating right now. As replacement cost rises and maybe, I don't know, I'll pick a number, $1,500 a foot to build a class A building on a mediocre piece of land, by the way. If it's a great piece of land, it could be $2,000 a foot. As that goes up, and we're sitting here with a wonderful portfolio that's priced in our stock at what?
I don't know, $600 a foot.
Okay. Replacement cost, which is to some degree, caused by either inflation or scarcity of land or whatever, that sort of sucks up everything else. We're in a very interesting position, and we want to be sucked up as the. If you can live with that expression.
I think you know, translating a little more what Steve said, right? Rents on the existing buildings, right, the high-quality buildings should start to see increases, right? Supply moderates. On the expense side, Manny, you know, the tenants are reimbursing the bulk of that activity. Right. Obviously, when there's turnover, you may lose some of that, but you know, tenants reimburse the expenses, so there's rises on the expense side. That's covered generally.
Steve, how should investors think about succession? You've done a great job at lifting up the next generation at Vornado. Glen is an example of that. Tom, Barry. How should investors think about when the right time is for a new CEO, as you would continue as Chairman, I would assume in that scenario. What needs to get done for you to feel comfortable making that transition?
Oh, I'm gonna get fired before. You know what they say about a dictator? They very rarely die a natural death. Okay? I'm gonna try to die a natural death. I'm gonna get fired pretty soon.
You're gonna get fired pretty soon?
Sure.
What is that supposed to mean?
Next question.
Should I put in my resume now for that or is it?
By the way, if you keep this up, you're not a candidate. You're not gonna get the big job if you keep this up.
Yeah. Yeah. It's part of my job, right? Another question came here through the live Q&A. Maybe you can talk a little bit about the political and regulatory environment in New York, and how it impacts the business. Obviously, we have a new mayor, you have the governor changing, and so how is that evolving in your ability to execute the plans that you have?
You want to take a shot at that? I'll counterpunch.
Sure. Look, I think that, you know, we have a new mayor, we have a new governor, obviously, who's gonna run, be up for reelection next November. I think in general, the political backdrop today, Michael, from where it was under the prior administrations, I think is much more positive, right? You have Mayor Adams, who I think absolutely has his priorities in the right place, right? He's focused on quality of life, right? Safety, cleanliness, you know, trying to eradicate the homelessness issue. You know, he couldn't be any more serious about it, right? I think he knows what's important to make sure. You know, he's focused on getting people back.
Obviously, if you listen to him every day, right, the drumbeat of what he is saying, I think is important, right? He's working with people to make that happen, right? Hochul, the same thing. I think what you have fundamentally is, I think, a pro-business administration, both at the state and the city level. What that means is, you know, we're welcoming business. We're done with taxing business, right? We're not gonna try to scare business off. Administrations are focused on quality of life. I think, you know, we're in a much better place than we were a year ago.
The fiscal situation, obviously, is a lot better, not just because of the stimulus package, but because frankly, you know, business in New York, you know, the companies that are here have generally done very well, led by the financial service industry. I think we're in a good spot. It doesn't mean there's not issues. It doesn't mean, you know, the progressive wing is not gonna continue to be challenged on certain fronts. I think we're in a much better place than we were a year ago.
All right.
Michael.
Yeah.
You know, we are, to some degree, a regulated industry. What we really seek is access for political leaders to listen to our industry's opinions and a level playing field. Okay. Now, that level playing field not only is for all the companies that we compete with in Manhattan, but across the country. What we find is that the politics in New York are very similar to the politics in Washington. Not the federal government, but the city government is the region. Chicago, other northern cities, San Francisco as well. These things sort of go in waves.
We think in New York that we may be in a better political position because our two new leaders are really pretty business-friendly and pretty savvy, and so we are very enthusiastic about the political future of New York.
Right. I had our rapid fire, but I don't think you're gonna answer the same store NOI growth for office next year.
Say it again.
Same-store NOI growth for the office sector overall.
We know that number. It's probably a mid-single digit.
10-year Treasury a year from now.
Mid-single-digit plus, by the way. What was our same-store last quarter?
6.5, Manny.
What was our same store last quarter?
No. 8.5, Tom.
8.5.
By the way, you will have to admit we had a rocking quarter last quarter.
I agree. 10-year Treasury a year from now, sub 1.8%.
Most of the smart people that I talk to think it tops out at 2%, believe it or not.
All right. Will the office sector have more or fewer companies a year from now?
More.
More? Attractors.
You know, if the merger, which would combine companies, the urge to merge seems to be very tepid.
Yeah. All right. Well, thank you very much for your time.