Brandywine Realty Trust (NYSE:BDN) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Jerry Sweeney: Sure, Tom, you want to take that.

Tom Wirth: Sure. Mike, hi, it’s Tom. On that we are talking to a number of lending sources, I think that Mike, on the traditional lender side, which are mainly your banks, we are seeing, there has been and continues to be a bit of a pullback on their appetite for new loans, newer origination loans. So we are looking at some of the other opportunities, whether it be maybe securitized type loan, or whether it be one of the debt funds. So there are other sources other than just the traditional banks, although we have a couple of banks looking at it. And I think if they were to do it, it may be with a group of banks rather than one single bank, taking this project due to its size. Pricing is still a TBD, I would expect pricing, though, to be higher than where the debt is today. And we’ll see how that progresses over the next month or so. We don’t really have a good handle on pricing, we’re getting those quotes kind of in the near future.

Michael Lewis: Okay, great. Thanks. And then I read an article recently, arguing that Philadelphia suburban office market might be in trouble because the flight to quality is bringing those tenants into the Center City, you already talked about flight to quality a little bit. But on the other hand there’s a theory more broadly that people are going into cities less so perhaps offices in the suburbs are more easily commutable and better position, post COVID. So are you seeing anything in terms of demand in the suburbs versus the city? That you think there’s a shift that favors one strategy over the other? I know, obviously, you’re involved in both?

Jerry Sweeney: Hey, Michael, great question. We really haven’t seen a discernible trendline to tell you the truth. We were expecting to see at certain points more people, either moving into the city or moving out to the suburbs, we really haven’t seen that, we’ve only seen a couple of tenants from the CBD move out to the city. We conversely seen a few tenants move from outside of the city into the city. So no real discernible trend line by tenant type, or by tenant size. We do continue to see tenants focused on quality in both places. And I think our Radnor portfolio and look the build to suite we did, we announced on Arkema and Radnor is a great example of a company — a high-quality company, great credit, really can upgrade the amenity space they present to their employee base.

And they love the location of Radnor served by 2 train lines and access to Interstate highways. So I think those basic location and quality predicates are in place, whether it be in the city or the suburbs. By far the percentage of folks returning to the office is higher in the suburbs than it is in the city. And even though in the city foot traffic is back to the pre-pandemic levels during the workday mass transportation is kind of on a very positive trend line. It seems as though — and I know, George, you’ve had those numbers, what kind of the occupancy, daily occupancy levels in the suburbs are higher than the city. But that has not been Michael a driver and locational decisions as of yet.

George Johnstone: Yes. And just to add on, I mean, in the suburbs, we’re seeing closer to a 70% to 75% kind of back in the office, where in the city it’s probably on average closer to 50%. But again, there’s still a number of large employers that have been even a little bit slower to kind of bring everybody back even on a two -to three-day a week hybrid plan.

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