Armada Hoffler Properties, Inc. (NYSE:AHH) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

So it seems folks are pretty optimistic. And we are right with them. It’s interesting in our prior lives, as private real estate developers, we love this kind of environment, with unemployment at all-time low. Since we became a REIT, it appears that, you are supposed to pray for a recession, so that rates will go down. Unfortunately, we are not getting that message, or I guess I should say fortunately. We are in full growth mode, interest rates in our minds are normalized now to where they have been historically through most of our career. And we want the economy to keep chugging along and we are going to keep expanding.

Peter Abramowitz : Sure. And then one last one for me, kind of big picture here. So obviously, you have had a lot of success at Town Center and your kind of close to reaching critical mass at Harbor Point. As you think about the future, do you see opportunities to do sort of development on that scale? Maybe not at the Town Center scale, but Harbor Point where you are kind of creating overhauling an entire submarket. Do you see the opportunity to do that in other places? And is that something you want to do, or is it kind of more, a case of blocking and tackling on just the one-off things you see in the portfolio in your markets as you are doing with the opportunities right now?

Lou Haddad: Well, it’s an interesting question. Obviously, we would love to do more mega development in a growing submarket, and in a location. Those opportunities are few and far between. We will always have our eyes out for them. I think more naturally, what you are going to see is, the kind of thing that we are doing in Southern Post. In these satellite cities around the major metropolitan is, again, the Charlotte, Raleigh, Atlanta satellite cities are presenting a lot of opportunities for mixed use developments in revitalizing, older downtowns, where people are, where the population is growing pretty significantly. So I think you will see more Town Center-ish type development, but it’s going to be on a smaller basis in selected cities.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Chris Sakai from Singular Research.

Chris Sakai: Hi. Good morning. I had a question on office occupancy. It looks like, it ticked down a percent this quarter. I wanted to get your idea of what were the drivers there and how do you guys see, occupancy rates in your guidance for 2023?

Lou Haddad: Sure. I’m going to let Sean answer that specifically. But I think there is only one factor that’s contributed there.

Shawn Tibbetts: We feel good about the offense occupancy. Actually, we feel great about it. As I mentioned in the comments, when we acquired the Interlock last quarter, there was some vacancy, some upside vacancy that came along with it, which obviously added to the denominator on our total square footage. So we have been rather consistent. And if you look at the renewals, and the releasing, we have done well. There just hasn’t been much activity because there hasn’t been much change. So for us, we feel good about that. And again, we have got upside to lease up between 27,000 and 30,000 feet down in Atlanta. And we’re active in that space. So again, that’ll just add to the overall income.

Lou Haddad: Chris, I think, if you took interlock out of the equation, you’d be right back to that 98% on the office. So, again, that was pretty much the entirety of the change.