Camden Property Trust (CPT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Citi's 2024 Global Property CEO Conference. I'm Eric Wolfe with Citi Research, and we are pleased to have with us Rick Campo of Camden Property Trust. This session is for Citi clients only. If media or other individuals are on the line, please disconnect now. Disclosures are available on the webcast and at the AV desk. For those in the room or on the webcast, you can go to liveqa.com and enter code GPC24 to submit any questions if you do not want to raise your hand. Rick, I'll turn it over to you to introduce your team, give some opening remarks, tell the audience what the top reasons are to own your stock today, and then we'll go into Q&A.

Okay. Well, thank you for hosting. We appreciate it. For those of you who are not familiar with Camden -- and we had a few in our meetings this morning, which I think is great, to have new folks in. We are a multifamily company with 59,000 apartments roughly in 15 major markets in the U.S. We're an S&P 500 company with a total market cap of $14 billion. And last year, we celebrated our 30th year as a public company. Our strategy is to focus on high-growth markets measured by employment, population and migration growth. We operate a diverse portfolio of multifamily properties, geographically diverse, A and B; urban, suburban. We recycle capital and create value through acquisitions, dispositions, development, redevelopment, repositioning programs of our properties. We maintain a strong balance sheet with low leverage, ample liquidity and broad access to capital, and deliver consistent earnings and dividend growth for our shareholders. Recent operating trends -- I know everybody is going to want to talk about that. We saw your report this morning; good work. When did you get that done? Like middle of last night, perhaps?

Up all night.

There you go.

An analyst's job is never done.

That's great. Okay. So our 2024 guidance calls for FFO per share of $6.74, the same property growth rates of 1.5% for revenue and 4.5% for expenses, which basically creates a flat NOI at the midpoint of our range. The level of bad debts in our portfolios continues to decline as we regain possession of units formerly occupied by nonpaying residents. This accounted for 440 units during January and February and resulted in bad debt dropping to 90 basis points versus a budget of 120 basis points for the quarter. We have a 1.1% or 110-basis-point budget. So that's actually pretty good news and a net positive. These additional move-outs, though, have put downward pressure on our occupancy and was a factor in our decision to shift the leasing strategy in February and focus more on boosting occupancy across the portfolio ahead of our peak leasing season, which begins next month. The marketing initiative that we implemented is to get occupancy rates in our communities that were less than 95% occupied up prior to the peak leasing season beginning in the middle to the end of March. We are particularly emphasizing what we call stale units, which are apartments that were vacant for more than 30 days, and by pushing those lease prices to get those at least as soon as we could. We have seen positive traction from this program so far, and we'll continue to push for additional occupancy over the next few weeks. Once we get to the occupancy levels we want, we will pivot to higher rates. Overall, apartments continue to be a great business. Housing is a necessity. People always need a place to live. Demand for high-quality apartment homes is strong, given the unaffordability of home buying and the lack of existing single-family home inventory. Our resident retention remains high, turnover remains low and our move-outs for home purchases less than 10% over the last few months. New supply is expected to peak in the third quarter of 2024 and fall dramatically in 2025 and 2026 as new starts are falling significantly. This should create a very constructive multifamily environment, particularly in our high-growth, high-demand Sun Belt markets. From a capital allocation perspective, the transaction market remains slow, with very few deals trading so far. And buyers and sellers are still on the standoff regarding pricing and valuations. And we hope to see activity pick up and more assets and development sites coming to market this year. We think the market is waiting for the first rate cut. And then it will be off to the races for folks who want to invest in multifamily. While our guidance for 2024 calls for net zero acquisition disposition volumes for the remainder of the year, we look for opportunities to be able to continue to invest capital and diversify the quality of our diversified portfolio. Share buybacks have been talked about a lot over the last few months, and we -- at the beginning of the year, started buying stock. We've purchased 14 million shares -- $14 million under our $500 million authorized program. We currently have $1.2 billion available on our unsecured line of credit, with only $290 million of debt maturing later this year, with no maturities in 2025. We have one of the best balance sheets and lowest leverage ratios in the multifamily sector. So do you want me to do the -- why you should buy the stock now?

Sure.

Okay. Great. Well, we're buying the stock. And that tells you that we think it's [indiscernible] at a significant discount to NAV and at an implied cap rate that's much higher than the private market for similar quality assets. Our markets lead the nation in job growth and in-migration trends and demand for apartment homes. We have a strong balance sheet and low leverage that allow us to capitalize on future growth opportunities. So those are the sort of 3...

Great. So I guess you read the reports; so feel free to say if I got anything very wrong in there. I'm not sensitive, so just tell us -- I'd rather have investors get the right information. But I think as talking to a few people this morning, I think, there's some skepticism that given this pricing change, you're going to be able to hit your guidance. So I guess first question is, is that true? Because you also referenced in your press release that it was sort of a small net benefit or a net benefit, I think, is the term that you used. So just trying to piece it all together, do you actually see this as a net benefit to your guidance? Is guidance intact after this? How should we think about the sort of longevity of this program to boost stock and seeing the impact it's going to have on rate?

Well, we think the marketing program will boost occupancy pretty quickly because we're basically just buying occupancy. We have levers. If we wanted our occupancy to be 96%, we could get there. If we want it to be 94%, 95% we can get there, too, by just making sure that we modify pricing appropriately in the marketplace. So the thing that's interesting about February was, usually, February is a flat month to a down month. It's not the start of the leasing season. And what sort of surprised us was, #1, we had a budget of 120 basis points of bad debt; we got 90. And so we had over 400 apartments that were high-balance apartments that came back to us, primarily in L.A. and some in Atlanta. And so when you look at occupancy levels in L.A., Orange County, our occupancy today is 92%. And it's not supply driven at all. It's driven by the fact that we have more move-outs from people who aren't paying for a long time. So I think the strategy of getting us to a 95% number -- and we're 94.9% today. We have about 8 markets that are under 95%, and then we have a bunch of markets -- the other balance of the markets are above 95%. And so we're pushing only those markets primarily. And so the pivot is all about just being in a position when the peak leasing season starts that we can drive rents as opposed to trying to drive occupancy. So we're willing to take some reductions in rates in February for the benefit of having higher occupancy when we hit the peak leasing season where we can drive occupancy from a position of power.

And then, I guess, just as far as guidance, I mean, certainly, it's going to change the individual components, right? But at the end of the day, do you still feel like the revenue...

We're not revising our guidance.

Okay. All right. So a couple of questions on that. So you said that you did in more markets than just sort of L.A., Southern California and Atlanta. But at the same time, the impetus of it seems like it was really because you had certain markets where there's a lot of move-outs from nonpaying tenants. Can you just kind of tell us like, is it -- is the majority of the price decrease that we see in those numbers just in those 2 markets? Or is that sort of a widespread thing across all of your markets? In other words, is it just being driven by the markets where you saw this decrease in occupancy that you're now trying to boost because nonpaying tenants are moving out?

Well, it's clearly the nonpaying tenants moving out and the -- and getting our real estate back to -- for paying tenants is at least 30 basis points of occupancy, okay? So when you're talking about going from 94.9% to 95%, you're talking about 10 basis points, right? So had we not had that significant -- it's the good news, bad news, right? The good news is we have our real estate back. And we're going to put paying tenants in there, paying residents in there. The bad news is it was 30 basis points -- it was a negative 30 basis points on our occupancy. In terms of -- so the significant part of the occupancy is really related to this getting our real estate back. But when you then look at other markets that don't necessarily have that problem -- let's take Austin, Texas, as an example. Austin is definitely supply driven. And what happens in -- Austin is one of the most oversupplied markets or the highest supply market in the country besides Nashville. And there is -- so there is a certain amount of supply pressure in some markets. There's no question about that. And then the other thing, I think, is really interesting is that when you have a market like Austin, for example, even though we have a lot of B properties there and properties that are not competitive to brand-new development, when there's a buzz around the city that discounts are coming or people are getting discounts in downtown and elsewhere, the market becomes a little more price sensitive. And sort of like everybody thinks they can get a deal, including the suburban market, so -- and some of the Class B properties. So there is a little bit of supply kind of hangover, if you will, on properties. So to try to make their deals, people -- or try to keep the occupancy levels up, some of the B properties are giving some discounts to -- or are lowering the rents a bit as well to make them feel better about being in the market. So I think it's a combination of -- the biggest issue is getting the real estate back and the 30 basis points that we lost in occupancy as a result of that. And then there's definitely supply issues that are pressuring some markets. And then other markets, if you look at like D.C., for example, we're not having any of those issues in D.C. Even though in the district, you still have a hard time getting people removed from your property that haven’t paid for a long time, but it's just not as big an issue there.

And then I think you just said something like 30 basis points of occupancy. If I look at the update, it looks like occupancy is consistent, right, 94.9% in January and February. Is that coming down, I guess, in March? Is that what we should expect? And then if we think about now that you've made these pricing adjustments -- sort of you said you can get to the right occupancy quickly. What's the right occupancy that you think you're trying to get to? And when do you think you'll get to that?

So let me be clear on the 30 basis points. The 30 basis points -- we had at least 30 basis points more leases to be able to get to 94.9%, right? So that's the key to me is it's not that this 30 basis points of occupancy or vacancies coming. We had to fill up those units. In order to fill up those units, we reduced prices in markets where we thought we could create momentum to do that, and we did. And so the right pricing for us is 95% in most markets. Sometimes -- in some markets, it might be 96%. But it really just depends on the market and what our product mix is there, and what the supply and demand sort of dynamics are for that. But we really only need maybe 10 or 15 basis points of occupancy to feel really good about our marketing program.

And I guess, how quickly can you tell if you're getting the desired response. Can you tell from the hits to your website? Can you tell from the traffic coming to the door, maybe the reservation pace? I mean, I don't know on average how -- maybe the question is, on average, how far in advance do tenants sign their leases? And sort of how much visibility do you have and to say, future occupancy like 1 month to 2 months from now? Just because I assume someone is not renting a unit and then moving in the next day, they're doing at 1, 2 months ahead of time on average. So trying to understand kind of the visibility you have to occupancy building, and then sort of what that's telling you about how the peak leasing season might look like.

We get immediate response to our pricing strategy, like daily. You can see how many leases come in the door, how many leases close. And we monitor it through our dashboard literally daily. And we change our price every night, right? So because of fair housing, you can't do it like real time during the day. But every evening, our revenue teams are looking at, okay, what happened today? What was the price? How did it work? Do they get more leases? And over the last month, we have more net leases than we had over the last -- in January and February. And so bottom line is we monitor it and see it every single day. And if it's -- and it seems to be working at this point based on what we're seeing from those perspectives. In terms of when they become effective, generally, you're anywhere from 30 to 60 days out. So that's why in our information, we show you not only signed leases, but effective leases that are going on that are effective in the current month.

Yes. And that data is always very helpful. Maybe just 1 last 1 on this little individual stuff, and then I'll get into -- so we don't spend all the time on the month-to-month stuff and start thinking through like what's going to happen this year and over the next couple of years. But just in terms of renewals, I did see that they came down a little bit as well. I mean, is that also part of the occupancy strategy? Or is that just a function of people negotiating more? Granted, we're talking from like high 3s to kind of low 3s, but still just trying to understand if that's a shift in renewal strategy or tenants' sort of willingness to accept increases.

I don't think it's tenants willing to accept increases because we're getting -- in some markets, we're getting higher than 4. But it is strategic in the sense that we know we want our occupancy level where we want the occupancy level going into peak leasing. So we know there are 2 levers to pull. One is renewals; one is new leases. And so we're going to capture as many as we can. So there is a -- we do back off a bit on our renewals in the markets that are under 95%. So there is a relationship to that. Generally, if you look at an -- over long period of time, anywhere from a 3- to 5- or 6-percentage-point differential in renewals versus new leases. And the 3% would be the weakest markets where you have more pressure. And the higher end would be markets that are already at mid-90s or 95% to 96% occupied.

Got it. And then probably the most common fear that we hear from clients -- I mean, obviously, I think everyone would agree that the stock looks like a good value today. Stock looks cheap. You're buying the stock yourselves for the first time in a long time. But the fear really is that -- the Sun Belt companies kind of said, hey, we think pricing is going to recover later this year, maybe early next year. But the market thinks that it could take a lot longer simply because the supply doesn't really start coming down to the middle part of next year. And there's usually a compounding effect to it at a time that it takes to sort of lease everything up. Do you think that fear is misplaced? When do you think about sort of the real recovery in rental rate growth, sort of when it could bottom and then start sort of moving and inflecting upward?

So investors have to make their choices, right, in terms of what they're going to be afraid of and not. And having operated in these markets for over 35 years, we've seen lots of ups and downs over the times. And supply has always been the bugaboo that people worry about. And it's always been the -- and it's never been as bad as people think, okay? So the dynamics you have today are interesting in the sense that if we were in a normal like economic environment and interest rates were -- people thought interest rates were going to stay where they are and home buying was going to happen and all that. And we were having 15% to 18% of the people moving out to buy houses. It would be 1 thing. I would say that's going to be a tough supply market to handle. And if we needed 5 jobs for every multifamily demand created, I would say you should be worried about supply. It's going to be tough. However, you're in a different world today. The post-COVID world is such that, in this environment with interest rates and homebuilding, it's just a very different world. So we have 10% of the people moving out to buy houses, not 15%. So that's 500 basis points of less pressure on filling apartments that we have going on because of what's going on in the housing market. In addition, the people who are coming into the market are having a hard time buying a house. You have the lock-in effect that is creating a lot of -- lack of supply for the resale market. So the homebuilders are doing incredibly well. The Federal Reserve wanted the homebuilders to slow down. They had about 6 months of the slowdown in 2022. And now they're booming, right, because they're taking massive market share from the resale housing market that won't sell because of lock-in effect. Well, those folks that are moving that we continue to have massive in-migration. If you look at 3 markets alone, the top 3 markets, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, between '24 and '26, there'll be 600,000 people move there. They all need a place to live. A lot of them are not going to buy houses because of the housing market. And the housing market is not going to change dramatically this year or next year, probably unless there's a massive recession, and the Fed has to go hard to cutting rates. But if we have a soft landing and rates stay longer or higher for longer, then we're going to have -- we're going to take more demand away from the single-family market than we've ever done in our history because people can't afford houses. We're at 30-year high in terms of housing price versus multifamily. So when you put in place the housing situation, the in-migration continuing -- and even if job growth slows, you should have enough demand to pick up that supply, and it shouldn't have a supply problem. The question will be, is that demand going to be there? And I think that's the ultimate question. We know supply is coming. And we know that we absorb a lot of product in this -- in the multifamily market because of the discussion I just had. So yes, you should be concerned about it. But on the other hand, when we're selling properties at 5.5% or 5.25% cap rates and our stock is trading in the high 6s or 7s, that doesn't make any sense. And that's why we're buying the stock.

Yes. Let's talk about that in 1 second because that's interesting since you haven't done it in a while. But maybe let's think, like if you were to take 2026 development level -- so you kind of have a sense already for where that might end up. You don't know exactly because there's a certain time. But if you were to take 2026 development levels and the decline that you see there and you were to layer it on top of the current economic environment, what kind of rebound do you think we'll eventually see in rental rate growth? I'm just trying to think about that 2026 supply level versus today's economic environment. What would you be guiding to in terms of rental rate growth? Just to help frame what the recovery might look like when you come out the other end of this.

So we know what supply is going to be. And we think supply is going to be -- we think that construction starts in America are going to go down to a little over 200,000 units when it bottoms. And that's because construction costs continue to go up or be flat, and rental rates are coming down. The cost of capital has doubled or tripled for merchant builders. So it's really hard to make anything work today. And most merchant builders are cutting back dramatically, and that will happen. The real question is, what happens to the economy? If you're a soft landing -- in the soft landing camp and you -- and interest rates stabilize at some level, then -- and you continue to have economic growth, you could have a scenario where it might look like a 2021, 2022 -- or 2011, 2012, 2013 setup, which for the multifamily business was the best 3 years in 20 years at the time. And you had very little construction. All of a sudden, all this demand came out. And you had the best revenue growth and best NOI growth that we'd had in 20 years. Does it set up the same this time? It all is -- it all rests on, I think, what happens to the economy. If you have a hard landing, then I would say all of the earnings projections that everybody has put out this year are going to be wrong. You're going to be at the low end of the guidance or out of the low end of the guidance if you have a really hard landing middle of the year. If you have a soft landing, there is upside in those guidances, probably given the demand discussions that we had a minute ago. So I think it really just depends on what your view of the economy is. I know that everybody needs a place to live. And we know the supply is going to go down. And the question is, how many folks are going to be looking for apartments at the time when there's not a lot of competition?

So where you started, you talked about the strength of your balance sheet, which is an amazing balance sheet. You've acknowledged and have acted on the fact that you would like to buy stock. And you're saying that, potentially -- you can't see the future -- but potentially, you have in front of you an equivalent period to 1 of the best in 2 decades when it happened. So on the branches of the probability tree, you've got an amazing potential future with a really cheap stock price. And in the other, you've got an incredible balance sheet to protect you in the downside. Why not be more aggressive with your buyback with that outlook?

Well, we just started. And the challenge with buybacks is you don't have a big window. So our window just opened in -- after earnings, right? So we have -- I think it's 3 days after earnings, we can start buying stock. Earnings was at the end of January, right? And then when we get closer to our next earnings, we have to stop. And so -- and there are certain limitations in terms of what you can buy in a day and all that. So we -- you've seen the early part of it. And what we've always said about buying stock back was that it needed to be a 20%-plus discount to NAV and be persistent. And we needed to have a -- we needed to sell assets in advance of buying stock. We're not going to borrow money to buy stock, period, end of story. So in the last 90 days or 120 days, we sold $400-plus million of assets at -- or some of our oldest and more -- and higher-CapEx assets that had actually AFFO yields of sub-5. And so we're buying.

Right. So I was just going to follow up on that. So I mean, -- so what's the sort of framework from which -- so you have to sell assets ahead of time. You've sold $400 million. I think on a net basis, if you kind of look at your guidance for this year, it's like a little bit over $300 million. So does that imply like you potentially buy $300 million worth of stock? I know you're not going to give us the exact number. But trying to understand like what would be the sort of maximum amount that you would be looking at? Is it just based on the amount of disposition proceeds or based on a leverage level that you don't want to exceed? What's the framework you're using to decide how much.

Well, we have a leverage. Number one, we're not going to leverage the company to buy stock, period. That's just not going to happen. So if you take the -- what I just said a minute ago was that -- so our upper limit today would be $400 million based on the sales of the assets we already did. And we look at that as a nice arbitrage play to be able to sell assets on Main Street at full value. And then buy it from Wall Street at a discount. But if you go back to when the last time it was as persistent, we bought 16% of the company back. So let's see how it works out. But at the end of the day, if we sell more assets, that would definitely increase our capacity. Right now, we have a $0.5 billion limit from our Board. So we have to go back to our Board if we got to that level. But just when you think about allocating capital, when I think about allocating capital, I know the assets that we own. It's a whole lot better for me to buy the stock at that discounted NAV and that high cap rate on a relative basis than it is to buy any other asset.

And I guess, how are you thinking about that versus the development pipeline? I mean, it sounds like you can maybe get sort of high 5s and maybe low 6s if you're able to sort of accomplish some of the cost decreases there. That sort of -- you think about sort of the IRR on that, I assume you're probably talking about something in the high single digits. So how are you thinking about sort of the return on the development pipeline? And then as a sort of aside to that, you mentioned before that you've seen construction come down. Sort of what kind of rental rate increases do you think you would need to see in your markets for the development pipelines for merchant builders or otherwise to start ramping back up?

Well, I think they have -- you first have to see them start going up rather than down, right, or flat. Because they've come down over the last couple of years in terms of growth rates. And construction costs still hasn't gotten to the point where it's going down. I mean it's -- some parts of it are down, but other parts are up. And what I am worried about on construction costs longer term is the crowding out of private companies by virtue -- or public companies by virtue of the federal government spending a ton of money on infrastructure. Just to give you an example, just the Port of Houston has $1.7 billion of land side investments going on, all driven by concrete, steel. So concrete and steel prices aren't going down. And so from the -- when I think about our pipeline and I look at it, and we have, I think, $300 million that we have in development starts potentially at the end of the year. And those are 2 specific projects in Charlotte that are low-density suburban projects that all have a 6 handle on them. And the question will be, by the end of the year, do we get more information about -- do we have a soft landing? Do we get more information about how do the demand -- supply and demand work out in terms of how we think it's going to work out? And if we have a couple of cuts that happen between now and then for the Fed, and you look forward to '26 and '27, those might look pretty good from a start perspective. But I wouldn't do anything until some of those -- some of that math works. If you look at our cost of capital, it went from 4% to 7.25%. And we have to get a 150- to 200-basis-point positive spread. So our IRRs need to be 9% -- 8.75%, 9%. And those are hard to do when you start with a 6, unless you have pretty good rent growth, or you assume cap rates are going to compress 7 years down the road. So I think the math is pretty complicated and stays complicated for a while until we get a better understanding of what longer-term rates are going to be.

Got it. And then we have 2 audience questions. The first, I think, was my question maybe implied a circular argument such that if merchant builders go back -- and so do you start seeing -- I think the question comes down to, if there's going to be such a strong recovery in fundamentals at some point and interest rates stabilize later this year, are we just going to see things just pick right back up in terms of development? So let's look out 12 months, you'll be closer to the end of the supply. Interest rates have come down. Won't we just see the supply cycle just go back to normal?

Well, developers are really good at putting supply in the market. And so the challenge, however, is, today, in order to put -- to have a development that opens in 2026, you need to be in the ground today. And you need to be -- so there's always cycles in developments. And when you have a down cycle we have now, it always overcorrects more than it probably should. And then it starts going up again. And so I think that with the current environment that we see today that you will have to worry about supply until '28 or '29, not '26 or '27.

And then this 1 is on the housing market, effectively saying that you all have been benefiting from a very weak housing market. You can see it in the turnover statistics. You can see it in the renewal rates. But there's a huge pent-up demand in terms of buying a house. And your customers on average are getting a little bit older. If interest rates drop later this year as the Fed and others have signaled, won't that be a headwind effectively to your rate growth later on, simply because affordability is getting better?

Well, since we're at all-time 30-year high of multifamily economics versus single-family economics, something has to dramatically happen to change that. And I don't think -- when you look at the forward curve, you don't see rates going down to 3% again or -- I'm talking about all-in single-family mortgage rates. So I think there's a lot of time that has to take to heal that. We either have to have incomes go up dramatically or rates come down dramatically. And when you look at price of homes, it keeps going up, not down. And I don't see that fixing itself anytime soon, unless something dramatic happens. And the dramatic could be that you have a hard landing, and the Fed has to go hard on the cutting rate side and rates plummet and -- but in that scenario, you lose probably 2 million to 4 million jobs. And people are going to be buying houses when they lose jobs, right? So I don't think it's -- I think it's a -- from a multifamily perspective, it's going to take a while for that to unwind. And in the meantime, the homebuilders are doing a great job filling the gap between people who would want to sell their house, but won't sell their house because of the low locked-in interest rates.

And then maybe just last question. Obviously, a little while ago, you entered -- I don't say entered the SFR business, but you did more of an SFR project. So what has your experience been like with that so far? And then could you do more there just based on the fact that, again, your customer demographic is getting a little bit older?

I think the SFR business is definitely a potential class of properties that Camden could operate. The 2 that we have now are doing well. They are leasing up, but leasing up a little slower than a multifamily property because the folks are -- they take longer to move in, right? So instead of a 30-day, they may take a 60-day or 90-day because they're moving from another house or something like that. But beyond that, we're getting the rates we thought we'd get. We think it's going to be a good business. And the jury is out until we finish them all. But we -- I think it's a pretty interesting business for sure and a great kind of side -- a very similar business; could be a line of business for Camden long term.

All right. So rapid fire questions. What will same-store NOI be for your property sector, so the apartment sector overall in 2025? And if you want to break it down by Sun Belt versus coastal, I won't stop you.

I'm not going to do that. I think it's going to be up 2%.

By this time next year, will we have more, fewer or the same number of public companies within the apartment space?

Same.

And do you think the capital markets will be more accommodative towards M&A later this year? Or do you see that building or...

I don't know that the capital markets are -- I think the companies will be bigger. Because I think there's a lot of product that needs to move from private hands and could be in public hands.

Got it. And then what is the best real estate decision today: buy, sell, build, redevelop or repurchase stock?

You don't have to buy your stock here. I would say that the best bet would be to redevelop it. It's always better to invest in your own properties and continue to improve their market positioning.

Got it. And we have, I guess, 27 seconds left. Anything you want to leave investors with in terms of some...

Let's give them back their time. Thank you.

Great. Thank you.