Q3 2024 Howard Hughes Holdings Inc Earnings Call

Speaker Change: Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today. Eric Holcomb, SVP of Investor Relations, please go ahead.

Eric Holcomb: Aloha from Honolulu and welcome to Howard Hughes Holdings 3rd quarter 2024 earnings call. With me today, our David O'Reilly Chief Executive Officer, Dave Cross President, Carlos Salaya, Chief Financial Officer, Dave Striph, President of asset management and operations and Jovelane General Council.

Before we begin I would like to direct you to our website, HowardNews.com where you can download both our third quarter earnings, press release and our supplemental package.

Eric Holcomb: The earnings release and supplemental package include reconciliation of non-gap financial measures that will be discussed today in relation to their most directly comparable gap financial measures.

Certain statements may today that are not in the present tense for that discuss the company's expectations are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal security laws. Although the company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, we can give no assurance that these expectations will be achieved.

Eric Holcomb: Police City, the Ford-looking statement disclaimer in our third quarter earnings press release and the risk factors in our SEC following, spark factors that could cause material differences between Ford-looking statements and actual results.

Eric Holcomb: We are not under any duty to update forward-looking statements unless required by law. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, David O'Rain.

David O'Rain: Thank you Eric, hello everyone and welcome to our third quarter earnings call. On our call today I'm going to begin with a recap of the quarter and cover the segment highlights for our master plant communities. Dave Striph will cover the performance of our operating assets, followed by remarks from Jay, who will provide updates on our strategic development projects.

Eric Holcomb: Finally, Carlos is going to review our updated full-year guidance in the balance sheet before we open up the lines for Q&A.

Eric Holcomb: For the third quarter we reported exceptional results across our entire portfolio, further exemplifying the resilience of our unique business model and our continued ability to defy the narrative of the National Real Estate market.

Eric Holcomb: Turning to our segment results, in MPCs we continue to experience elevated home builder demand for new acreage, which contributed to a significant increase in residential land sales revenue.

These land sales, which were achieved at a near-record price per acre, led to a record quarterly MPC EBT.

Eric Holcomb: Our operating assets delivered strong 8% year-over-year NOI growth with meaningful increases for each property type.

most notably in office and multifamily. In strategic developments, demand for a premier condos and ward village in the woodlands continued at a solid pace, with 29 units contracted, representing more than $57 million of future revenue.

Eric Holcomb: Here in Hawaii, we completed Victoria Place just last week. Closings are expected to commence tomorrow, which we now expect to generate $760 million of revenue, with 27-28% gross margins in the fourth quarter.

Eric Holcomb: With all of these incredible results, we are raising our full year guidance in each segment.

Eric Holcomb: Looking deeper at our MPC segment results, we reported record MPC EBT of $145 million in the third quarter, which included the sale of 191 acres of residential land across our communities at an impressive average price per acre of $1 million.

Land sales were again led by Summerlin where we closed on the sale of 129 acres of super pads for an average price of 1.3 million dollars per acre.

Eric Holcomb: Land sales in Houston were also strong, with 62 acres sold in Bridgeland in the Woodland Hills, representing a 41% year-over-year increase.

Eric Holcomb: Overall, land sale revenues totaled $198 million in the quarter, or a 163% increase year-over-year, with our average residential price per acre increasing 13%.

New home sales across our MPCs remained solid in the third quarter, with nearly 500 homes sold. Although this represented a 19% year-over-year decline, the reduction was almost entirely related to reduced inventory of finished homes available for sale in Summerlin.

Eric Holcomb: As evidenced, in the second quarter, several neighborhoods were closed out, but these were not offset with new inventory.

Eric Holcomb: In fact, at the end of the third quarter, our home builders in Summerlin had 30% fewer floor plans available for sale as compared to the prior year.

Eric Holcomb: The reduction in inventory is temporary, however, as we expect several new Summerlin neighborhoods with additional housing inventory will come online in the fourth quarter, and a record number of new neighborhoods will open in 2025.

Eric Holcomb: It's important to note that we do not consider this temporary reduction in home sales to be an indicator of declining demand for future land sales. Instead, we remain very bullish on the outlook, as home builder demand for our land has not abated, and many of our partners continue to report strong results, healthy homebuyer interest, and increases in new orders.

Eric Holcomb: Within our communities, our homebuilder partners are working hard to meet the elevated demand, but the inventories of finished new homes and of vacant lots remain significantly undersupplied.

Eric Holcomb: Since the end of last year, new home inventories in Bridgeland and Summerlin have been in decline and are currently one month or less in both MPCs, well below the national average of approximately two months.

Eric Holcomb: vacant developed lots or VDLs remain well below equilibrium which we believe is approximately 20 months of supply.

Eric Holcomb: At the end of the third quarter, Summerland VDLs were 11 months and Bridgeland VDLs were 12 months.

Overall, with these dynamics at play and mortgage rates on the decline, we expect continued positive momentum within our MPCs.

Eric Holcomb: As a result, for the near term, we have raised the midpoint of our 2024 full-year MPC-EBT guidance by 10%, headlined by what we expect will be record residential land sales achieved at a record price per acre.

Eric Holcomb: Carlos will discuss this in more details in a few moments.

With that, I'm going to turn the call over to Dave Striph for a review of our operating assets.

Dave Striph: Thank you, David, and good morning.

Dave Striph: Our operating asset segment continued to experience heightened demand during the third quarter, delivering strong year-over-year growth across each asset type. In total, we delivered $65 million of net operating income, which represented an 8% improvement compared to the prior year.

Dave Striph: Our strong performance was once again led by Office, which reported solid NOI of $32 million, or a 9% year-over-year increase.

Eric Holcomb: This growth was primarily driven by continued abatement explorations in the woodlands and summerland, most notably at 9950 Woodlock Forest and 1700 Pavilion.

Eric Holcomb: This is the result of our successful leasing performance over the last couple of years.

Eric Holcomb: These gains were partially offset by lower occupancy at 1725 Hughes Landing in the Woodlands.

Eric Holcomb: During the quarter, we executed 114,000 square feet of new or expanded office leases across all of our markets, making our stabilized office portfolio 88% lease to quarter end.

Eric Holcomb: We expect a further benefit from this leasing momentum in 2025 as office build-outs are completed and free rent periods burn off.

Eric Holcomb: Our multi-family portfolio also performed well, delivering a second consecutive quarter of record NOI totaling $16 million, or an impressive 15% year-over-year increase.

Eric Holcomb: This growth was primarily driven by increased rental revenue associated with the lease-up of our newest properties, including Marlowe in downtown Columbia, Tangier Echo in Summerlin, and Starling at Brisbane.

Eric Holcomb: These properties have seen impressive leasing success with Marlowe now 75% leased, Tanager Echo 74% leased, and Starling at Bridgeland 93% leased.

Eric Holcomb: These improvements were partially offset by initial operating losses from Wingspan, the latest addition to our multifamily portfolio in Bridgeland, which was fully completed in June and was 49% leased at quarter end.

Eric Holcomb: Our stabilized portfolio continued to perform extremely well and ended the quarter 95% least with downtown Columbia and Summerlin both at 96% and Houston at 95%.

Eric Holcomb: In retail, NOI was $13 million in the third quarter, or an increase of 2% year over year.

Eric Holcomb: This growth was primarily driven by improved performance from the ground floor retail at Juniper and Marlowe in downtown Columbia, which ended the quarter 86% least.

Eric Holcomb: Overall, our stabilized retail portfolio is 94% leased at the end of the third quarter.

Eric Holcomb: Overall with these strong results we are further increasing our full year guidance for which Carlos will provide more details in a few moments. I'll now turn the call over to our president, Jay Cross.

Jay Cross: Thanks, Dave. And good morning, everyone. In the strategic developments, we had another great quarter and recently achieved several important milestones with our project under construction.

Jay Cross: Starting in Hawaii, as David mentioned, we have another strong quarter of pre-sales, contracting to sell 24 condos.

Jay Cross: The majority of these pre-sales related to the LENU, our 11th condo project in Ward Village, which continues to see steady demand. As of quarter end, 55% of this project was already pre-sold. At this pace, we hope to start construction of the LENU sometime next year.

Jay Cross: We also sold a handful of units at the Park Ward Village and Collide, with these projects now 96% and 92% pre-sold, respectively, with 45 units remaining to sell.

Jay Cross: At ULANA, our final workforce tower in Ward Village, construction continues to progress nicely, and we celebrated its topping off ceremony in late September. This tower is fully pre-sold and is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of next year.

Speaker Change: As David mentioned earlier, we completed Victoria Place just last week and will commence bulk condo closings tomorrow.

Jay Cross: This project represents our seventh completed tower to date and is expected to contribute record condo revenue and gross profit in the fourth quarter. Congratulations to the entire War Village team on this amazing achievement, which is a beautiful addition to the Honolulu skyline.

Jay Cross: In Texas, we sold an additional five condos at the Rich Carlton Residences of the Woodlands.

Jay Cross: making this 111-unit luxury project 69% pre-sold at quarter-end.

Jay Cross: In early October, we broke ground on this exciting project, which we expect to complete in 2027. As we have discussed on prior calls, in an effort to maximize returns on this project, we continue to hold back the majority of the remaining units, with plans to mark them for sale closer to the project's completion.

Jay Cross: Overall, at quarter end, projects under construction or in pre-development were remarkably 88% pre-sold, and collectively represented $3.4 billion of future revenue, which will be recognized between now and 2027 as each project is delivered.

Jay Cross: With respect to our newest operating assets in development, we continue to advance construction on several projects.

Jay Cross: including the Summerlin Whole Foods Anchor Grocery Center and Village Green at Bridgerton Central, which will both be substantially completed in the fourth quarter. These projects are now approximately 75% leased with more negotiation.

Jay Cross: In late September, we also celebrated a topping-off ceremony at One Riva Row in the Woodlands. This luxurious 13-story multifamily project on the waterway is expected to be completed in the second half of 2025.

Jay Cross: And with that, I would now like to hand the call over to our CFO, Carlos Olea, who will review our guidance and the balance sheet.

Carlos Olea: Thank you, Jay, and good morning, everyone.

Carlos Olea: With our incredibly successful third quarter in the books, we remain very confident that 2024 will be a strong and record-setting year. Today, we raise our MPC EVT, Operating Asset NOI, and Condo Sales Guidance expectations, and we tighten our cash G&A expectations for the year.

Carlos Olea: In MPCs, with a record EBT results in the third quarter, we now expect to deliver enhanced results for the full year. In the fourth quarter, we anticipate continuing momentum in Texas with incremental land sales in Bridgeland and the Woodland Hills.

Jay Cross: In summary, following the very successful sale of 217 acres of superpads year-to-date, we do not anticipate additional closings in the fourth quarter, but we do see very strong prospects for additional sales in 2025.

Jay Cross: Overall, for 2024, we now expect MPC-EBT will be down 1% to 6%, which will imply a midpoint of $330 million and represents an improvement over the original guidance of $30 million at the midpoint.

Jay Cross: This guidance contemplates record residential landfills revenue.

Jay Cross: including record acre sold at a record average price per acre, which largely offset reduced commercial land sales and builder price participation, as well as limited inventory of custom lot sales due to a significant past success of Area Island Woodlands and the Summit in Summerlin.

Jay Cross: In operating assets, with the strong performance of our portfolio year to date, we now expect record full-year NOI of approximately $257 million at the midpoint, with growth in all property types.

Jay Cross: Our guidance contemplates some seasonality and modest cost increases in the fourth quarter, but overall represents a solid 5-8% year-over-year increase.

Jay Cross: This compares favorably to our previous guidance range of up 3-6%, including $3 million of NOI from the Las Vegas ballpark in the prior year, and represents an increase of $2 million at the midpoint.

Jay Cross: Condo sales revenues, which was previously expected to range between $730 million and $750 million, are now expected to range between $755 million and $765 million.

Jay Cross: Gross margins expectations are not expected to be between 27 and 28 percent. This guidance is driven by the completion of Victoria Place, with more residences closing in the fourth quarter than we originally expected, and only $10 to $20 million of condo sales revenue is delaying into the first quarter of 2025.

Jay Cross: And finally, we now expect CAF DNA to range between $83 and $88 million for the full year, which compares to our prior guidance of $80 to $90 million.

Jay Cross: This guidance excludes $33 million of expenses incurred to complete the spinoff of Seaport Entertainment, which are now reflected in discontinued operations, as well as approximately $9 million of non-cash stock compensation.

Jay Cross: During the quarter, we recognized $90 million of other income related to the final settlement of our dispute at Buea in Ward Village. Over the last few years, we expensed $158 million to remediate construction defects, including the replacement of all the windows in the tower, while pursuing reimbursement from the general contractor, other responsible parties, and various insurance carriers.

Jay Cross: This $90 million payment represents the full payout of the related insurance policy and the release of any further claims.

Jay Cross: In conjunction with the settlement, we also agreed to pay General Contractor $22 million which settled final project costs that they incurred during YAS construction.

Jay Cross: Approximately $10 million of this was previously accrued. Therefore, we recognize $12 million of incremental condominium rights and unit cost of sales during the quarter.

Jay Cross: With those disputes now settled, the overall gross margin achieved on YAF was approximately 25%.

Jay Cross: Turning to our balance sheet, we have $401 million of cash at the end of the quarter, leaving us well-positioned to deploy capital as necessary in the future.

Jay Cross: At the end of September, the remaining equity contribution needed to fund our current projects was approximately $242 million.

Jay Cross: From a debt perspective, we had $5.3 billion outstanding at the end of the third quarter with $308 million of maturities during 2024.

Jay Cross: Approximately $304 million of these near-term maturities are related to the construction loan on Victoria Place, which will be repaid as units close this quarter, leaving us with approximately $3 million of principal amortization payments during the remainder of 2024.

Jay Cross: For 2025, we have approximately $461 million maturing, which includes the office construction loans for 6100 Merriweather and 1700 Pavilion, both of which are more than 90% leased.

Jay Cross: It also includes our multifamily construction loans for Marlowe, Tanej Oretko, and Wingspan.

Jay Cross: Financing discussions for many of these assets are already underway, and we will have more to share with you in the coming quarters.

Jay Cross: And finally, during the third quarter, we closed in the sale of $193 million of existing MAD receivables through the issuance of third-party tax exempt bonds, from which we received cash proceeds of $152 million after transaction costs.

Jay Cross: The third-party bonds will be fully serviced by micro-reimbursement cash flows.

Jay Cross: As part of this transaction, we also sold $33 million of future MUD receivables for additional cash proceeds of $24 million.

Jay Cross: If the MUD reimbursement cash flows are consistent with our expectations, the future MUD receivables could either be returned to Brechland or sold in a future transaction.

Jay Cross: However, if a delay or other event causes a shortfall to bond holders, the cash flows from this huge amount of receivables would then be used to service the bonds. However, there are no obligations for Howard Hughes to service the bonds or provide any additional collateral.

Jay Cross: Although this transaction generated a gap loss on sale of 52 million dollars after considering relevant accounting adjustments, it significantly accelerated the time to recapture this cash while creating a new liquidity mechanism which further enhances our self-funding model with 33 million dollars of the loss being next to security available to support future MUD sales.

Jay Cross: We use the cash proceeds from this transaction to significantly pay down Bridgerton's line of credit by $192 million in the quarter.

Jay Cross: Subsequent to Quarter End, we also successfully expanded this line of credits borrowing capacity from $475 million to $600 million and extended its maturity by three years to 2029, providing additional optionality to fund MPC development in the coming years.

Speaker Change: I would now like to turn the call back over to David for closing remarks.

David: Thank you, Carlos. In closing, our third-quarter results were simply outstanding across the portfolio and further solidified our bullish outlook, which includes record residential land sales with robust MPC-EBT well above historical averages,

Jay Cross: Record operating asset NOI and nearly 210 million dollars of gross profit from condo sales for the full year.

Jay Cross: We look forward to sharing more details on our record-setting results and our favorable outlook at our upcoming Investor Day, which will be held in Summerlin in less than two weeks on Monday, November 18th.

Jay Cross: For everyone who planned to attend, we look forward to seeing you soon and showing you why Summerlin is consistently ranked one of the top-selling MPCs in the country. If you can't attend in person, please mark your calendars to join the live webcast, which will be accessible from our Investor Relations website.

Jay Cross: With that, let's start the Q&A portion of the call. Operator, can you please open the line for the first question?

Speaker Change: Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, please press star 1 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced.

Jay Cross: To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again.

Speaker Change: Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster.

Speaker Change: Our first question comes from the line of Anthony Paolone from J.P. Morgan.

Anthony Paolone: First question is, if I look at slide 26 where you give a rough value for the MPCs, can you maybe spend a minute just giving us a little background as to how you're getting the $3.9 billion, whether it's

Jay Cross: Just kind of applying recent acreage prices to what you have On the balance sheet, or is there also like an included cost that you'd have to incur to achieve the 3.9 billion Just any color there would be great

Jay Cross: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker Change: Morning, Tony. Good to hear from you.

Speaker Change: Real quick, what we're doing here is similar to what we do in our annual investor day when we provide an NAV update. We take the remaining acres times the price per acre against the margin that we use to sell it and discount it back to today.

Jay Cross: It's the same methodology that we've used in each one of the appendices of the NAV analysis that we provide. It's illustrative. And we're trying to use very similar metrics and margins, but just applying the revised price per acre, showing the increase that's been achieved over the past seven years.

Speaker Change: Okay, so that does include some margin and just the costs and discount rate and timing and all those sorts of variables.

Speaker Change: Yeah it does and you know as you know there are certain communities where the margins are higher and some where they're lower. Some of it has to do with the topography and the grading that has to occur in Summerlin which is why there's a slightly lower margin there.

Jay Cross: And some of them has to do with the relative maturity of the community like Woodland Hills earlier on is going to show a lower cash margin today, higher cash margin later, and a consistent gap margin throughout.

Speaker Change: Drinks With Diablo A Presentation of TheFNDC.com

Speaker Change: Okay, got it. And then, I don't know if you'd be able to comment, but any thinking around the timeline for the board special committee around the process that Bill Ackman and Pershing Square is running?

Speaker Change: I really can't have any comment on that process. That is something that as you know has been filed publicly and if there are any updates we'll file it publicly as well for all shareholders to see.

Speaker Change: Okay, the last question just for me looking at the operating portfolio still looking at areas like Summerlin

Speaker Change: retail where the NOI is off from kind of 22 levels and then

Speaker Change: Just the upside that you think might exist with some of the office assets in Meriwether. Like, any just context around timeline for some of those projects where there's a big NOI gap that could be achieved?

Speaker Change: Yeah, you know I can kind of hit those one at a time. The retail portfolio in Summerlin, we're hitting our 10-year anniversary right now, Tony, of downtown Summerlin, so we're seeing...

Speaker Change: a meaningful number of explorations that are that are highlighted in our supplemental

Speaker Change: And we're taking that opportunity to thoughtfully renew those tenants that are performing well and

Speaker Change: Take advantage of the market environment where we have incredible demand for our retail there to upgrade some of the tenancy across the board and we've signed recent leases with Lego and Chanel that will continue to drive the credit quality and the sales per foot of that center higher. In the meantime, for the next.

Speaker Change: 18 to 24 months, as we have meaningful expirations and some downtime, turnover, and tenant buildout.

Speaker Change: That NOI will probably lag behind what we saw a couple of years ago when it was

Speaker Change: As it is today, very high 90s percent lease.

Jay Cross: but without the kind of downtime and turnover that we've seen recently. I think over time that gap will close pretty quickly as those new tenants open and we see them performing the way we expect.

Jay Cross: The Meriwether Rowe portfolio in Colombia is a little bit more of a challenge. It is the older vintage assets within the portfolio and there's, as you know, conservative pressure on office.

Jay Cross: Right before the pandemic hit we invested meaningfully in upgrading the amenity base, some conference centers, fitness facilities, life paths, landscaping, etc. And we're starting to see the

Jay Cross: The benefit of that capital expenditure from a couple years ago materialized as we're seeing a kind of turn in leasing momentum. In the past year or so, we've seen a modest degradation in the occupancy, and I think we've really hit an inflection point now where instead of one step forward, two steps back, it's two steps forward, one step back.

Jay Cross: and we're seeing a little bit more momentum in the leasing of that space. So, I look forward to speaking to that in a lot more detail on the Investor Day. We have a handful of slides pulled out to talk specifically about those assets and I think that we see some positive momentum there for the first time in a little bit.

Speaker Change: Okay, thank you.

Speaker Change: Thank you.

Speaker Change: Thank you. One moment for our next question.

Speaker Change: Our next question comes from the line of Alexander Goldfarb from Piper Sandler.

Alexander Goldfarb: Hey, good morning out there. So, a few questions here.

Alexander Goldfarb: David, maybe you could just go back to, you rattled off some numbers early on, on land and home inventory in your communities versus national.

Alexander Goldfarb: And, you know, one, if you could just go back over those, but two, more importantly, you know, mortgage rates certainly haven't dropped as much as people thought. There's still a pretty wide, you know, still sort of high relative to the past, you know, where they were a number of years ago.

Alexander Goldfarb: and, you know, the economy is what it is, and yet...

Speaker Change: Your your land sales and home sales just you know would almost suggest like a really strong economy so

Speaker Change: Two parts to this. One is, you know, if you could just run back through so we can catch the numbers on how your communities are positioned for land and homes versus, you know, sort of national dynamics. And then two, you know, the performance of your communities on home and land versus, you know, the general economy overall.

Speaker Change: Yeah, there's a lot there, Alex, so forgive me if this answer takes a few minutes. In Bridgeland and Summerlin, which as you know are the communities where we sell the most land to home builders, our communities there have one month or less of new home supply.

Speaker Change: and the national average is about two months or slightly higher so we are we're pretty tight.

Speaker Change: And then if you think about vacant developed lots, or those kind of lots that are available for new homes.

Speaker Change: I would argue that equilibrium is about a 20-month supply because it takes that long to get the model home up, run, take an order, and then build the home to complete that order.

Speaker Change: Right now we're sitting at, you know, Summerlin is at 11 months and Bridgeland is at 12.

Jay Cross: I think compounding that and what has led to the modest decline in underlying home sales this quarter

Alexander Goldfarb: is that

Alexander Goldfarb: Our community count and the actual number of floor plans available in Summerlin is close to a record low right now.

Alexander Goldfarb: because we've seen such incredible home sales over the past several quarters.

Jay Cross: that we're kind of low. And home builders paused momentarily buying new land and new communities when we saw mortgage rates increase over a year ago. And that's what's caused a little bit of the bottleneck now.

Alexander Goldfarb: The good news is that as those home sales continued strong when mortgage rates increased,

Alexander Goldfarb: Those homebuilders came right back to us to buy land.

Jay Cross: And those new communities will be coming online, a few in the fourth quarter, but really meaningfully in the first half of 2025. Our community count will be back up.

Jay Cross: at where it belongs, if not a little bit higher than what we've seen long-term averages at. The number of floor plans available to buyers will increase dramatically. The price points will increase dramatically and we'll be able to meet that demand that we see right now that we just don't have the diversity of product to meet today.

Alexander Goldfarb: Look, I would argue that

Alexander Goldfarb: If you pulled the public home builder results, they continue to demonstrate good numbers. Number of orders are up, backlog is strong, cancellations are down, margins are high. I think the new home market has continued to be very resilient, despite the national headlines that overall housing sales are down.

Alexander Goldfarb: If you pull apart those

Alexander Goldfarb: high-level numbers of total sales into what's a new construction versus a resale. The new construction market has increased pretty meaningfully, and I think that's the dynamic that we see taking hold in our portfolio, that has increased the demand for our raw materials, our land, that the homebuilders desperately need to effectuate their business plan.

Alexander Goldfarb: and we're able to sell that land at increasing values per acre to meet the underlying demand of those that continue to migrate and look for a better quality of life that we offer in Howard Hughes communities.

Speaker Change: Okay and then second question is I realize you're not given 25 guidance and but still when we look at this year your business is heavy transactional clearly it's been a better year than you anticipated but as we the analyst community think about you know where you're going to be for 25

Jay Cross: Is there some sort of, you know, ballpark where you'd say, hey, look.

Jay Cross: This year was outsized. Take, you know, 20% off the numbers and, you know, use that as a run rate.

Jay Cross: How do we sort of gauge...

Alexander Goldfarb: The best way to try and look for where you're going to be just given, you know, the heavy transactional nature and the fact that this year certainly well exceeded where you originally started out.

Speaker Change: Look, I think it's really difficult for us, even when we do provide guidance on the forward year, to anticipate a record year and to say that next year is going to be better than we've ever experienced in the history of the company. Which is what we're saying here today, because our residential land sale number has never been so high.

Speaker Change: I don't see in all...

Jay Cross: that demand for housing is going to decline. We're still short millions of units of housing.

Jay Cross: across the country.

Alexander Goldfarb: And I think it's going to take years for that to resolve itself. And as a result, I think we're going to continue to see strong demand. You know, I, we're not providing 25 guidance today, so it's very difficult for me to give you a lot more color than that. We feel great about our communities. We feel great about the number of folks that want to live in a higher quality of life community like Bridgeland and Summerlin and Woodland Hills. And I think that's going to continue to translate into strong land sales to home builders.

Alexander Goldfarb: How much next year? It's way early to tell, and we'll look forward to providing guidance on our fourth quarter call early next year.

Speaker Change: Okay, and just final question. Carlos, on the MUDS sale, you know, you guys generate a tremendous amount of liquidity through the land sales.

Speaker Change: So just curious, what prompted you to monetize the MUDs?

Alexander Goldfarb: And by doing so, does that necessarily, you know, not necessarily restrict, but is there an offset to that, or is this like, you know, sort of free, I'm just trying to understand if this is free money, and then what drove that decision, just given all the liquidity you generate out of your land sales?

Speaker Change: Yes, Alex, well, as you know, the muds are an asset that sits in our balance sheet and has liquidity anytime between three to five years.

Alexander Goldfarb: depending on where exactly it is. In this case, it is what's in Bridgeland, but there's an administrative process that can take up to five years.

Alexander Goldfarb: So the opportunity to see if there was a liquidity mechanism for that for that asset was was very enticing And this is the first time that we do this we prove that it can be done And so the the impetus was to see if we can take What it can be a largely illiquid asset for up to five years and turn it into a liquid asset

Alexander Goldfarb: at an attractive, with attractive proceeds that then allowed us to turn around and de-leverage by paying down the Bridgeland line of credit. And then subsequent to that, by having created liquidity for an illiquid asset, we were even able to expand the line of credit that we have in Bridgeland by $125 million.

Alexander Goldfarb: So it was really a positive all around that helped us understand that we have a lot more functionality, a lot more optionality than we thought before, now that we can take this liquid acid and turn it into liquid.

Speaker Change: Thank you.

Speaker Change: Thank you. One moment for our next question.

Speaker Change: Our next question comes from the line of John Kim from BMO Capital Markets.

Alexander Goldfarb: Hey, good morning. It's Eric Gordon on for John Kim.

Eric Gordon: Maybe just starting with, you know, now that the drag from the seaport is gone, and you're going to receive a large infusion of capital from condo sales, which is coming online next quarter, I guess, how are you thinking about allocating capital to new development starts, and what operating asset segment is the most attractive in terms of return profile across your multifamily, retail, and office segments?

Alexander Goldfarb: Thank you.

Speaker Change: That's a great question, Eric, and I appreciate you asking.

Speaker Change: Love the fact that we have more liquidity rather than less, monetizing muds, selling condos, selling land that generates free cash flow to our balance sheet and perpetuates our self-funding business model. It's all paramount to how we operate. The most important decisions that we'll make as a management team, in conjunction with our board, is how we allocate that capital. And we're always trying to chase those highest...

Alexander Goldfarb: risk-adjusted returns and those highest opportunities to create value. Sometimes that is in great condo developments like we have here in Hawaii with the closing of Victoria Place this week. Sometimes that is in share buybacks.

Alexander Goldfarb: So we're always looking at where we're going to drive the highest risk-adjusted returns, whether that's purchasing our own shares and owning more of a company that we love and we see the underlying value in.

Alexander Goldfarb: or sometimes it's in new developments. As we think about prioritizing those new developments, it's very market-specific, it's very demand-specific, so it's hard to generalize and say that X property type is the highest and best used today.

Alexander Goldfarb: As we sit here today, if we have the opportunity to do another condominium tower here in Hawaii or another tower in the woodlands of Summerlin like we did with the Ritz-Carlton residences in the woodlands, we'll absolutely continue to execute on that where we can sell it at 25 to 30 percent margin and generate a lot of free cash flow for the company.

Alexander Goldfarb: The next highest and best use today is probably in multifamily where we've seen strong same store results. We're full across

Alexander Goldfarb: portfolio and when we're full and we see incremental demand sometimes we're able to build new products that will generate a lot of value for our shareholders and we see those opportunities will move.

Alexander Goldfarb: Given that we do have some vacancy remaining in our office portfolio, I think it's unlikely that we'll do more office development in the very near term.

Alexander Goldfarb: And then retail is really a great amenity and if we can build it at an outsized return and create a lot of value.

Alexander Goldfarb: in a market that is tight and full and we see incremental demand, we'll continue to do that. And you've seen that in kind of small targeted instances like Whole Foods in Summerlin and the retail center that we're building around H-E-B in Bridgeland.

Speaker Change: Thank you. Maybe one on the retail leasing demand environment. You know, just curious if you could comment on the strength there. And, you know, with 15 percent of leasing rolling next year, I was hoping you could provide some brackets around your expectations for cash for leasing spreads.

Speaker Change: Yeah, and I think largely that question is going to focus around downtown Summerlin, which is where we see the majority of the expirations. I think we have a great opportunity here to see a positive mark to market. How wide that will be, you know, it will depend, right? It's very difficult to predict today because some of those expirations.

Speaker Change: You know kind of all in including kind of mark rent rent rent mark to market as well as kind of fixed cam Adjustments it could keep up with the increasing operating expenses

Alexander Goldfarb: And it's positive, it's strong, it's demand like we haven't seen in a long time for retail, but I don't expect to see double-digit mark-to-market increases.

Alexander Goldfarb: Thank you. Hey, David, it's John Kim. I just wanted to squeeze one last question in if that's okay. Of course, John, yeah. On your GNA, it's up 15% year over year. I know some of that is the non-cash.

Alexander Goldfarb: I would have thought that might have come down a bit or moderated with the Seaport spin-off. And I'm wondering if you expect going forward, GNA to moderate.

David: I think over the next year or so, you'll continue to see GNA moderate. I think that making knee-jerk reactions in the immediate aftermath of the spinoff

Alexander Goldfarb: is very difficult to do and to see, you know, kind of an overnight.

Alexander Goldfarb: change. You know, it's still, as you know, a more complicated business than a lot of our public real estate brethren. We're not just one product type, we're multiple, and we're also in land development, condo development, and it takes meaningful amount of capital, not just

Alexander Goldfarb: monetary capital but human capital to execute on that business plan and we're thoughtful on our GNA. We've come a long way from the 140 million that we were five years ago and down to a run rate in the mid 80s that I think is very sustainable and we can continue to grow our portfolio meaningfully without adding to our GNA.

Speaker Change: Are some of those costs success-based, you know, based on land sales or condo sales? I'm sorry, some of those costs what, John? Success-based, like on the closing of land sales, like a, you know... No.

Speaker Change: No, the success-based fees are all, you know, around condo closings and condo sales, and those are in the cost of sales of the underlying project, not within G&A.

Speaker Change: on it. Thank you so much. Thanks, John.

Speaker Change: Thank you. One moment for our next question.

Speaker Change: Our next question comes from the line of Dara Hewatt from Black Oak.

Dara Hewatt: Good morning, everyone.

Dara Hewatt: Victoria Place being delivered just now, which is great. Big wins on the land sale side. Seaport behind us. I mean your business is really hitting on all cylinders right now and it's showing up in the form of rising liquidity and net worth in the financials.

Speaker Change: You've already kind of touched on this a little bit, but against that backdrop...

Speaker Change: of success and looking forward.

Speaker Change: We're really focused on that, you know, how you all are comparing the relatively low new development returns against

Speaker Change: What at least to us seems to be, you know, a continuing very conservative valuation of your stock. And as, you know, looking ahead in the fourth quarter and beyond, you know, even higher liquidity from condo sales.

Speaker Change: and other liquidity drivers.

David: I guess, could you just, any more particulars you could give around your latest thinking on capital allocation over the next few quarters? And is it possible that we sit on this much liquidity in your mind for a year or more?

David: I guess as I ask all that, I know you have a capital market today, so maybe if you plan on addressing it more, then maybe just punt us to that. But congrats again on the quarter, and I look forward to anything you have on that topic.

Speaker Change: Well, I appreciate it. Thank you for the comments and I'm happy to answer the question. It's as nice as it would be just to punt on every question for a couple weeks, you know. It should be answered. Look, I think your question comes back to whether or not we should just develop and continue to develop at tighter spreads.

David: sit on liquidity or use that capital to buy back our own shares. And I think that those are decisions that we try to make every day. It's tough to say that at any one point in time, it should be a hundred percent one or the other.

David: and we have to be thoughtful about how we allocate our capital, not just in the very short term, but thinking long term. And if we took all of our excess liquidity, for example, and put it into share buybacks, we wouldn't be spending any capital improving our communities.

David: And the more we improve our communities, the more people want to live there, the more we can drive higher land values, the more we can create great communities that people want to be in, and can continue to drive to these incredible results.

David: So, I think we have to be thoughtful, not just for the short term and for next quarter, but over the long term to make sure that we are balanced between creating value on a per share basis.

David: by reducing our share count and continuing to improve our communities, but improve those communities by allocating capital to developments that generate value creation.

David: and that balance is what I think you'll continue to see us do. Sometimes those development yields are tight and you know a great example of that is the Whole Foods in Summerlin.

David: But we've seen in every single one of our communities, even here in Hawaii, what adding a Whole Foods amenity to that community can do, and how it can change the price of condos and positively impact the value of all of your remaining land that's adjacent to those developments.

David: So, I don't think it's a one-size-fits-all answer, it's a balance, and it's a...

David: a balancing act that we

David: try to tackle every day, every quarter, every year. You know, with that said, I think the results have been outstanding. Thank you for highlighting it. I think it shows the resiliency of our business plan and the underlying value in our company. And it shows the disconnect between underlying value and our current share price today and makes the opportunity to buy back shares more attractive.

David: As we get through the election, the Fed meeting, and see where the housing market sits over the next several months.

David: Great.

Speaker Change: I appreciate that. Yeah, and yeah, obviously your Sumlin project is great, and I appreciate that, that just additional context. So congrats again. Great quarter. Appreciate the question. Thank you.

Speaker Change: Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced.

Speaker Change: To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again.

Speaker Change: One moment, one moment for our next question.

Speaker Change: Our next question comes from the line of Amanda Schiavo from Commercial Observer.

Amanda Schiavo: Hi, I was just wondering if you could go into a little bit more detail about your office leasing, particularly in the Hawaii market and the success you guys have had there?

Speaker Change: We really don't have an office portfolio in Hawaii, Amanda, to speak of. We're sitting here in the IBM building, which is kind of an iconic building within Ward Village.

David: that we almost predominantly occupy with the 80 or so employees that work here in Ward Village, as well as the sales galleries and sales center that support the condo sales. So it's tough to speak to, and I don't have a tremendous amount of color on the Hawaii office market.

Speaker Change: Okay, thank you.

Speaker Change: Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next time.

Speaker Change: Thank you. At this time, I would now like to turn the conference back over to David O'Reilly for closing remarks.

David O'Reilly: Thank you again for everyone for joining us. I think our third quarter results were nothing short of outstanding.

Speaker Change: And we look forward to hopefully seeing a lot of you in a couple of weeks out in Summerlin. It is showing off what is one of the best communities in the country that offers an outstanding quality of life and talking a lot more about what we see ahead for Howard News. Thank you again.

Speaker Change: Thank you so much for your story.