Empire State Realty Trust, Inc. (ESRT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you. Greetings and welcome to the Empire State Realty Trust second quarter 2026 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. The question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Suzanne Liu, SVP, Chief Counsel, Real Estate. Thank you. You may begin.

Good afternoon. Welcome to Empire State Realty Trust's second quarter, two thousand twenty-six earnings conference call. In addition to the press release distributed yesterday, a quarterly supplemental package with further detail on our results and our latest investor presentation were posted in the investor section of the company's website at esrtreit.com. During today's call, management's prepared remarks and responses to questions may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. These statements reflect management's current views and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Empire State Realty Trust assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement in the future. We encourage listeners to review the more detailed discussions related to these forward-looking statements in the company's filings with the SEC. During today's call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures such as FFO, Modified and Core FFO, NOI, Same Store Property Cash NOI, EBITDA, and Adjusted EBITDA, which we believe are meaningful in evaluating the company's performance. The definitions and reconciliations of these measures, the most directly comparable GAAP measures, are included in their earnings release and supplemental package, each available on the company's website. Now we'll turn the call over to Tony Malcolm, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

Good afternoon everyone. Yesterday we reported ESRT's second quarter results. We delivered strong performance across the property portfolio, which represents approximately 80% of our NOI. Office leasing accelerated from the first quarter as we converted our pipeline into executed leases. Our retail portfolio was highly leased. that our multifamily properties delivered solid growth. We remain active on transactions. During the quarter, we completed the once in a lifetime opportunity to acquire the land under 111 West 33rd Street and 1400 Broadway and executed on the sale of 250 West 57th Street, the proceeds from which we swapped into the prior purchase of 130 Mercer. Against excellent leasing in our property portfolio, the Empire State Building Observation Deck weighed on performance. In our press release, we gave an updated FFO range under an assumption there is no improvement to current visitation levels, but it utilizes $55 million of NOI for the observation deck for full year 2026. I'll spend a few minutes on our observation deck business. and get to our strong leasing. During our first quarter call, we called out softer visitation amidst today's geopolitical environment and K-shaped consumer economy, and stated it was premature to alter guidance based upon performance in our seasonally lightest quarter. did say we would reassess our outlook after six months of results. In our NAERIP meetings and updated presentation we shared, that softer visitation persisted through the second quarter. The Empire State Building remains the world's most famous building and its brand is undiminished. Our iconic Empire State Building Observation Deck remains a world-class attraction with absolute top-of-sector customer reviews. The Empire State Building Observation Deck was ranked number one as an attraction in the US by TripAdvisor last year, and we had 326 billion global media impressions. remain the international symbol of New York City. The path ahead is to convert our international brand to revenues amidst the following changes in the market. Historically, we have relied on international visitors. In the past, more than 60% of our visitors were international. Last week, in which we had our second highest visitor numbers of 2026, More than 60% of our visitors were domestic. While not as high a number for the year to date, the shift is definitely to a majority of domestic visitors. The past program channel that has been a source of significant visitor traffic to us has experienced significant headwinds. Historically, these past programs have been largely international and specifically with the international budget conscious traveler. One past program operator went out of business in 2025. from 2024 year to date to 2026 year to date, we have seen a 45% decline in past program visitors. While all attractions have experienced reduced visitorship in 2026, Our drop compared to the market in general is larger due to our prior dominance with patch programs and their international presence. These, in fact, may be tailwinds in the future. The competitive environment with other observation decks and alternatives is also a factor. We began a total reevaluation of our observatory business model and execution. early in the first quarter in anticipation that market conditions may continue to work against our historic customer sourcing mix. With our team and logical partners, this is a fresh channel-by-channel approach. Part of that is the shift from traditional search engine to AI search. This is ongoing work, and we have adjusted our online presence to accommodate the impacts of this shift. Some of our actions have already produced positive results. Historically, our operational costs have been relatively fixed and made tremendous operating leverage with increased visitors and revenue. At the same time, we will reinvest to strengthen the business and monetize on the strong brand and operations over the long term. We've remained confident in the long-term value of our iconic asset. Let me turn to our real estate business. The Manhattan office leasing market remains healthy for our top of tier product. Tenant demand remains broad-based and resilient. Availability of high-quality space remains constrained, and there is no new construction at our price point. These dynamics continue to support strong leasing fundamentals for our portfolio. Our commercial portfolio was 94.9% leased at quarter end. So we expect occupancy gains for the year. We achieved our 20th consecutive quarter of positive mark-to-market spreads within our Manhattan office portfolio, reflects sustained demand for our best-in-class assets. Our portfolio remains well positioned to deliver strong operating results. Brian will discuss our and his significant leasing accomplishments in the second quarter. ESRT has maintained a leadership position in sustainability for more than a decade. Our focus remains on measurable business outcomes that produce excuse me, that produce viable outcomes. Sustainability is, remains an important differentiator that attracts tenants and supports retention, renewals, and expansions across our portfolio. Across the organization, we remain laser focused on four priorities. space, optimize observation deck and Empire State building brand cash flow, maintain our balance sheet, and achieve our sustainability goals. These priorities guide every decision and we make and align directly with our objectives to drive long-term cash flow growth and value creation. Christina, Ryan, and Steve will provide additional detail on our results and outlook.

Christina? Thanks, Tony. I'll provide some comments on our recent transaction activity, including the sale of 250 West 57th Street and the acquisition of land beneath two Broadway campus properties. Our capital allocation strategy is focused on value creation and long-term cash flow per share, even when at times individual transactions are not immediately accretive to earnings. Our second quarter activity reflects that disciplined approach. During the quarter, we completed the sale of 250 West 57th Street for $275 million, which includes the buyer's assumption of $180 million of mortgage debt. The disposition effectively recycled capital into our prior acquisition of 130 Mercer Street in SoHo, executed in December 2025, without the recognition of a taxable gain. Also in the second quarter, we executed on the unique opportunity to acquire the land beneath 111 West 33rd Street and 1400 Broadway for an aggregate $110 million, or approximately $65 per square foot. The acquired ground leases carried below market annual rent of 1.4 million, which applies a sub-2% cap rate. If we include below-market rent amortization, the implied cap rate is just under 7%, which better illustrates what the cap rate would be on rents that are closer to market. While this transaction reduces our FFO, it creates a permanent and material increase in the value of our real estate given the substantial difference in valuations and exit cap rates for owned real estate versus leasehold assets. Shifting to our balance sheet, subsequent to quarter end, we announced a new $245 million unsecured delayed draw term loan that matures in 2032. Proceeds are expected to be drawn in January 2027 and used to repay existing debt, including our line of credit. We remain disciplined in our proactive approach to balance sheet management. We maintain ample liquidity, a well-laddered debt maturity schedule, and have no unaddressed debt maturities until January 2028. maintain a well-positioned and flexible balance sheet, and predominantly unencumbered portfolio that provides substantial optionality. Thank you. At the end of the second quarter, our leverage was approximately 6.6 times net debt to trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA. Against the backdrop of a healthy transaction market, we continue to underwrite opportunities across New York City office, retail, and multifamily, evaluate strategic capital recycling opportunities that enhance long-term cash flow, and assess opportunistic share repurchases. In each instance, our evaluation is guided by whether the transaction creates long-term value per share. New York City's enduring strength is rooted in its property fundamentals, and ESRT owns high-quality New York City real estate aligned with the city's live, work, play, and visit demand drivers. We continue to look for ways to further enhance the quality of our portfolio and grow cash flow through disciplined, value-driven capital allocation. With that, I'll turn the call to Ryan to review our leasing activity.

Thanks, Christina, and good afternoon everyone. In the second quarter, leasing performance was strong. Volume was high as we signed 382,000 square feet, which includes over 250,000 square feet of new leases, our highest level since the fourth quarter of 2021. Our lease percentage increased to 94.9%, up from 93.8% in the first quarter on a comparable basis, excluding 250 West 57th Street from both periods. This demonstrates strong tenant demand for our top-of-tier portfolio, and we remain confident in our year-end occupancy. guidance of 90 to 92 percent. In the second quarter, we achieved mark-to-market spreads of 17.8 percent in Manhattan office, our 20th consecutive quarter of positive spreads, which underscores our sustained pricing power. Tenants continue to make long-term commitments to us, as highlighted by our average lease duration on new leases of 12 years, which includes United Talent Agency's 16-year office lease at the Empire State Building. United Talent Agency's 101,000 square foot lease across four full floors addresses our largest expiration this year of approximately 70,000 square feet, where the existing tenant is expected to vacate in October. Other notable leases signed during the quarter include a 29,000 square foot new office lease with Infiniium wall systems for the duplex penthouse at 1359 Broadway. A 26,000 square foot new office lease with Instacart at 111 West 33rd Street. The building is now 100% leased as of July. A 12,000 square foot full floor new office lease with landmark management at one Grand Central place, which set a record average rent of $89 for a new transaction in the building. and also a 59,000 square foot renewal office lease with Alfred Dunner at 1333 Broadway. At just under 95% leased, we have less space available to lease. We remain focused on the execution and the creation of opportunities within our portfolio. At the Empire State Building, we have one full floor available and we will look to continue to increase rents. At One Grand Central Place, we just launched our base block space to the market, an 80,000 square foot duplex with a private terrace that overlooks the Vanderbilt Plaza. expect to see strong tenant demand given its unique attributes, in-building access to Grand Central Terminal, and the lack of supply for competitive large contiguous space in the market today. At 1.30 Mercer, our capital improvement program is underway, and we are in active discussions for the remaining two full floors left to lease. Our pipeline of leases and negotiation remains healthy at 200,000 square feet. In today's bifurcated office market of have and have nots, ESRT remains firmly in the have category. Demand continues to concentrate in high quality, modernized, amenitized, transit-oriented buildings owned by well-capitalized landlords with proven operating platforms. Our best-in-class portfolio enables us to capture this demand as reflected in our strong results. New York City's leasing market remains strong and provides a favorable backdrop for execution, with demand broad-based across finance, professional services, TAMI, and consumer products. Lastly, our multifamily portfolio continues to perform well. Net rents increased 8% and our portfolio is almost 98% occupied. Thank you. I'll now.

I'll turn the call over to Steve. Steve? Thanks, Ryan. For the second quarter of 2026, we reported core FFO of 21 cents per diluted share. store property cash NOI, excluding lease termination fees, increased 3.3% year-over-year. The Improvement is primarily attributed to the receipt of approximately $4 million related to prior period real estate tax payments. Adjusted for non-recurring items, same-store property cash NOI was off 3.2%. This primarily reflects increases in free rent and operating expenses, partially offset by higher tenant reimbursement income. Our observation deck generated approximately $12.4 million of NOI during the second quarter, as compared to $24.1 million in the prior year period. with revenue of $24.2 million and expenses of $11.8 million. Visitation was lowered by approximately 28.5% year-over-year. Revenue per capita increased by approximately 1.6% year-over-year after the exclusion of gift shop license fees. Turning to funds available for distribution, core FADs for the second quarter was approximately 16.2 million, up from 11.9 million in the prior year period. This improvement reflects FAD CapEx savings of approximately $14 million year over year, due in part to reduced capital requirements for a recycled portfolio and is also attributable to the significant lease-up we executed since the fourth quarter of 2021. this helped drive our commercial portfolio lease percentage to 94.9%. As a reminder, that leasing velocity was accompanied by elevated levels of FAD CapEx in 2024 and early 2025. Lastly, our 2026 core FFO range is now 75 to 79 cents. Given the uncertain operating environment and limited visibility into near-term performance trends for the observation deck, we utilize $55 million of NOI, a level that assumes no improvement to current visitation levels and expenses similar to the half of this year. This represents a change to core FFO of 13 cents relative to our prior guidance, which is partially mitigated by lower income taxes, higher non-cash rent, and real estate tax abatements. For our commercial portfolio, we assume year-end occupancy of 90 to 92%, which is unchanged from our prior guidance. Our assumption for same-store property cash NOI growth of negative 1.5% to positive 2% is unchanged and continues to include a 270 basis point impact from temporary downtime associated with the FDIC expiration which has been released. We expect G&A to decline to approximately $17 million per quarter in the second half of 2026, which is consistent with our prior guidance of a 5 to 10% reduction in run rate G&A by the end of this year. This concludes our prepared remarks. I'll now turn the call back to the operator to begin the Q&A session.

Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 to remove your question from the queue. The assistance using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. please while we poll for your questions. Our first questions come from the line of John Kim with BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your questions.

Thank you. On the observatory, I just wanted to ask if you could separate what you think The changes have been, aside from international tourists, if there's anything in terms of ticket pricing or competition in the market or bad weather or any other items that resulted in... what we achieved in the second quarter.

Sorry about that. We were on mute. I think the biggest change has been the mix of international to domestic, or more importantly, the gutting of the bargain international traveler and the really tremendous decline in our past program partners. I think there are other things around the edges. In general, attractions in New York have seen declines. We declined more than others. We think that's primarily because of our exposure to these two sectors. We believe that both we have work to do and a lot of a lot of new learnings and things we've already put in place. Some of this has to do with how we appear online. to the customer and how our different online travel agents present us. But I think the biggest item is the change in the budget traveler path to New York and the past programs. So that said, we build our business here. we build it back. And we're very confident in that. It just will take time. It's work to get done.

I appreciate that. In the guidance, there's no assumed improvement in visitation levels. But I was wondering what you saw in June and July, to get sure of that. Just looking at the Times Square traffic data, it did look like it improved in June, whereas earlier in the year it was a little bit different.

was negative. I'm wondering if you saw any pick up in visitors recently. You know, we really don't have much more to add. I did mention that our, that our, our last week was our second highest week in the in a year as far as traffic, number one. And number two, interestingly, we saw no bump from the World Cup. In fact, I think the World Cup was a distraction. Had a lot of people on the streets, but... Not a lot of people who are there for anything but the World Cup. And I also want to be very careful. This is not guidance that we've provided. We've provided parameters within which we believe we can... give you on the basis that business continues the way it has been through the end of the year. That how we come up with that $55 million of NOI. It's a framework. We don't want to hold ourselves to that because we just don't have a lot of confidence in what we see right now.

If I could just squeeze one in on the opposite side, the leasing spreads were positive. It's been that way for a while. Occupancy is up, yet this cash things to run away with negative if you exclude the one-time items. So I'm wondering when that the free rent burn off or other items when that starts to not impact your same store growth and we see the impact of the positive leasing in the same store results.

Yes, you'll start to see some of that flow through. I mean, at the Williamsburg portfolio, we had our free rent at H&M burn off during the quarter or cost. So that goes to- And then on the on the office side, we continue to see any of our increases in operating expenses, like utility costs, materially offset by the increase in tenant reimbursement income. So that continues to go through. But remember, we have a drag on office from the downtime, about 270 basis points. And so LinkedIn comes into occupancy this year for that space.

and begins cash flowing in early next year. And the team did a great job, the construction team, of delivering occupancy of that space to LinkedIn this month.

Thank you. Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Manas Aveki with Evercore ISI. Please proceed with your questions.

Yes, thanks for taking the question. A quick follow up in the beginning on the observatory business you talked about, how you maybe want to look into AI and revaluating the business a little bit to help improve it. I was just wondering if you could expand a little bit on your thoughts on how you could maybe help and improve that business a little bit and what's on your mind there.

We'll provide updates as our work progresses. We're very focused on our marketing efforts. not just our messaging but our execution to align with the changing landscape between search engine optimization, which is really, at this point, you might as well put that away. It's all AI right now. And so that's a big bit of work where it's a new skill set and good work underway to adapt to the new and very fluid landscape. Aside from that, we've got a fantastic brand, and how we move that brand towards revenue and convert customers, that's our focus. More than that, really nothing to add other than what we've said.

Got you. Okay, I appreciate that. And maybe a quick follow-up if I can on this capital allocation, just wondering your appetite for additional either disposition or share repurchases. If there's any appetite for that. I'm just curious if you could help us maybe think through that a little bit, what's on your mind?.