Douglas Emmett, Inc. (NYSE:DEI) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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I mean, I’m feeling a little burn. So we didn’t try and decide — we didn’t try and say people are going to regain confidence in the economy and the leases are going to pick up again. And we also said for ourselves, we’re probably kind of where we’re going to be. The fourth quarter has kind of given us an example of where we’re going to be or an idea, but I think there will be changes next year. And so it was a very hard number to put out, quite frankly, because there’s still — you’re talking about something where there still is — I mean even that rough fourth quarter, still a lot of activity, over 700,000 feet.

Steve Sakwa: And Stuart, I know you sort of guided broadly to interest expense. I know you have a couple of swaps that are coming up, the debts not due, but the swaps are burning off at relatively low rate fee, and I think they’re burning off relatively soon, one in March and one in April. So do you have a sense given where the market is today on kind of where that debt would reprice today?

Stuart McElhinney: Well, the debt is not repricing, only the swaps burning off.

Kevin Crummy: So Steve, no, we’re not super excited about swapping in the current environment. And we think that when you look at the forward curves that things are going to start coming down. And so we’re monitoring the market every day and when we find the right opportunity we’ll swap. We set up our debt specifically for this where we have a two year runway to refinance an asset. And we’re entering that with these where we’ve got 24 months to figure out and replace the loan.

Peter Seymour: Just to be clear though, we are assuming — that those loans float and that’s included in our guidance.

Jordan Kaplan: The same loan, so it’s not repricing, but it’s just — we’re just doing standing you could do, which is you just look at the forward curve on floating rate, and we just put that in our model.

Steve Sakwa: I just wanted to clarify. You’re just going to let them float for the time being, and so they’ll just go to the SOFR curve plus their spread.

Jordan Kaplan: Yes, I mean it’s not — there’s a lot of insecurity right now around where rates are going. And so there’s just too big of a margin to be paid in terms of swapping to cover people’s kind of conservativeness. And so I think even though it’s painful and expensive for a little bit to be unswapped, I think this is the right thing, at least to watch for another little bit of time.

Operator: The next question is from with Bank of America.

Unidentified Analyst: Following up on your occupancy outlook from another angle. Relative to the amount of expiries you have coming due this year, the midpoint of your occupancy guidance isn’t really implying a steep drop off, which I assume is partially supported by the leases that have not yet commenced. So just curious, like what are you seeing on the demand side that gives you comfort here that occupancy doesn’t trend below these levels?

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