Empire State Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:ESRT) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

John Kim: That’s great color. Thank you. My second question is on your tenant vacates in the first quarter page 14 of your supplemental. It looks like the quarter ended up less than you were expecting last quarter. What led to that? Was that just a timing issue? And maybe related on a related note, second half of the year and 2025 looks like this estimated vacates have ticked up a little bit, any color that you could provide on the tenants or location of these known vacates?

Tom Durels: Yeah. It’s really just really just timing. If you look at the overall hasn’t changed significantly with the expected total vacates for the year about 192,000 square feet in our Manhattan office portfolio. But it’s really just timing from — from quarter-to-quarter. And to John too given the volume of tenants that we deal with it’s nothing significant that stands out that caused that change.

John Kim: Any particular asset, the same known vacates and others?

Tom Durels: No. No, it’s you know it’s really it’s really across the board. I mean, at 1400 Broadway, we have full floors that are being vacated backfilled by the Burlington lease. But as vacates uncovered we got our consolidated full for 1400 Broadway has got a full floor consolidated 1333 Broadway, a tower floor at Empire State Building at this year. The good news for us is that these are full floors. They’ve been built out base building work a lot of the base building work have been done. So it puts us in a good position to market and lease those spaces. And then in 2025 notes the known vacates about 122,000 square feet. It’s really across the board the largest one being a 26,000 square foot built space. So we built on a really a pre-book basis that I want to lend West 33rd Street. So the rest are our smaller spaces. So it’s across the board.

John Kim: Got it. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of Michael Griffin with Citi. Please proceed with your questions.

Michael Griffin: Great, thanks. I want to go back to the new leasing in the quarter and maybe get some more color. For those tenants that are taking new space, is it people moving down the affordability curve from higher rent buildings? And if so, would you expect this trend to continue throughout the year.

Tom Durels: What we’re trying to tenant from all markets, and it’s a mix of tenants that are looking for to move to a those that are better amenitized, modernized and provide better service turnkey installations, newly built tenant spaces which we provide and offer all of that. So some are looking for to improve their employee experience in their office environment, others are involved some expansion and so — and we continue to attract tenants from really all of our submarkets. And so again it speaks to this flight-to-quality that we’ve spoken about. And it’s not just new developments its all the things that I continue to mention and the things that we continue to market that is very appealing to tenants to our locations that modernization, the amenities, the great service.

So by and large, we see more and more as tenants are looking for just an overall better landlord, better experience, better product, better environment. And that’s why we’re having the success that we have.

Michael Griffin: Right. But I guess what I’m saying is are you seeing tenants that are paying $90 rent that are looking for the pay in the $60s or is it people that are currently paying that middle of the road price point? Just trying to move to a better MedTimes building?

Tom Durels: Well, I would characterize it more that they are, I think all tenants look for value and we have attracted tenants that could certainly afford to pay more. And they look for they look for the value that we provide they will — they recognize that we provide the absolute top product in our price tier and we look at the vast majority of deals in the market. There’s patient our investor deck to speak to this that the vast majority of the market. We are really in our price point and that’s call it high $50s to high $70s per square foot is where the bulk of activity occurs. And that’s where we play. That’s where we compete and win deals.

Michael Griffin: Got you. I appreciate the color there. And then just on the full year guide, it seemed like a pretty strong quarter. You saw a pretty good increases particularly in the Observatory. I wonder is it just conservatism I’m citing to not raise the guide right now? Or maybe how should we think about that?

Christina Chiu: Yeah. I think as mentioned we always have building blocks for guidance. We’re very clear on the various drivers. And as the year proceeds, we can look at areas where we can tighten up the range and make adjustments. And as mentioned there was a $0.012 impact from all the activity that we just announced and we were able to maintain that. So we’ll continue to monitor and make adjustments as we go along.

Michael Griffin: Great. That’s it for me. Thanks for the time.

Operator: Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Blaine Heck with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your questions.

Blaine Heck: Right, great. Thanks. Good afternoon. Observatory attendance, definitely continued to improve and July is now above pre-pandemic levels. So can you just talk about how you plan on continuing to improve those numbers? And maybe just how sensitive that business could be to a hypothetical slowdown in consumption in the US?