Vornado Realty Trust (NYSE:VNO) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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John Kim: Okay, my second question is on the mark, with the occupancy falling this quarter, really driven by the showroom and trade show. What’s going on with such a big drop in occupancy of this quarter? And if you could also comment on variable businesses, which, in the past few quarters have been a driver of earnings growth, and it’s not really disclosed so much this quarter. I wanted to know, what’s been going on with signage and tradeshow.

Glen Weiss: Hi, it’s Glenn Weiss. So on the more the increase in vacancy was due to the casual business, leaving Chicago for Atlanta. We are converting that showroom visits into office space. And that’s the increase in the vacancy at the mart. In other words, there are headwinds in Chicago known like New York in terms of leasing volume, pipeline, etc. Our 2.0 programs coming along great that we expect to be complete in June. Our tour volume has been very good of late. We have a couple of leases in negotiation right now. But the increase in the vacancy is the casual business, which moved out of town to Atlanta in the fall.

Steven Roth: Yes John, on the variable businesses, I think the punch line, if you will, is that all the variable businesses, except for the trade shows are back to pre-COVID levels. We had a very strong 2022. I think signage had our most successful year ever and that was with a little bit offline, fourth quarter. So a little bit more that we’ve got a couple signs located at PENN 2 and hotel PENN that are impacted by the development. And so fourth quarter was a little bit off and fourth quarter 2021. But really every signage, garages, BMS had a strong year, generally up as I said, except for signage quarter-over-quarter, or year-over-year, I should say. And then the trade shows a little bit of timing difference in the prior year fourth quarter, when we were cranking it back up some of the shows got moved to fourth quarter, and this year back on their normal pace.

So trade shows are not back to peak yet. We think they’ll get there the next couple of years, but the rest of the businesses are performing quite well. And I think our in particular, the signage where we got the dominant signs in Times Square, we’re actually redoing the sign on 1540 right now, which we’ll book and both sides of the bow tie and hopefully allow us to drive additional revenue given the fact we control two mega signs a part of the bow tie. That’s a positive and then obviously what we’re doing in PENN over time, we think will perform continue to perform well once the construction is completed, but that’s in a nutshell, where we’re at their businesses.

John Kim: So net is variable going up or down this year?

Steven Roth: In 2023, we’re going to have I mean, like an answer is, it’s hard to predict, I would say because we’ve took a couple signs off line in PENN. A lot of this is based on what comes in third party roadblocks. So net-net we think it’s probably comfortable that 2022. It could be down a little bit just because of what’s offline on the signage side. And the fact that we’re, as I said, rebuilding 1514. So we’re taking some revenue offline. So I think overall, probably down a little bit, just given the fact we’re taking some stuff offline.

Operator: The next question is from Camille Bonnel with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Camille Bonnel: I know the opportunity with Citadel is still a bit down the road. But are you able to speak to the financing strategy there in context with your existing development pipeline around PENN districts? Just generally, like how are you thinking about the capital allocation and sourcing for these future projects?

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