Douglas Emmett Q3 2024 Earnings Call - Leasing Slowdown and Strategic Multifamily Expansion Amid Property Tax Refunds

Conference Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Douglas Emmett’s quarterly earnings call. Today’s call is being recorded. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After management’s prepared remarks, you will receive instructions for participating in the question-and-answer session. I will now turn the conference over to Stuart McElhinney, Vice President of Investor Relations for Douglas Emmett.

Stuart McElhinney, Vice President of Investor Relations, Douglas Emmett: Thank you. Joining us today on the call are Jordan Kaplan, our President and CEO; Kevin Crummy, our CIO; and Peter Seymour, our CFO. This call is being webcast live from our website and will be available for replay during the next 90 days. You can also find our earnings package at the Investor Relations section of our website. You can find reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures discussed during today’s call in the earnings package. During the course of this call, we will make forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs of, assumptions made by, and information currently available to us. Our actual results will be affected by known and unknown risks, trends, uncertainties, and factors that are beyond our control or ability to predict. Although we believe that our assumptions are reasonable, they are not guarantees of future performance, and some will prove to be incorrect.

Therefore, our actual future results can be expected to differ from our expectations, and those differences may be material. For a more detailed description of some potential risks, please refer to our SEC filings, which can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website. When we reach the question-and-answer portion, in consideration of others, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. I will now turn the call over to Jordan.

Jordan Kaplan, President and CEO, Douglas Emmett: Good morning, and thank you for joining us. Obvious leasing during the third quarter was obviously not what we had hoped. While July was strong with over 300,000 sq ft leased, our typical August slowdown in new leasing was deeper than usual and lasted into September. Fortunately, renewals did better, with tenant retention above our 70% long-term average. Fourth quarter office leasing is off to a good start, but we’re now hesitant to be encouraging until we complete the quarter. We’ve seen that multifamily growth rates have slowed in other parts of the country and other markets in LA County, but we’re not seeing that in our portfolio. Our multifamily same-store cash NOI increased almost 7% compared to the prior year. Same-property cash NOI for the whole portfolio is up 3.5%.

With office benefiting from higher property tax refunds, we expect property tax refunds to be impactful for the foreseeable future, though the timing remains unpredictable. Our two multifamily development projects in Brentwood and Westwood will add over 1,000 premium units to our portfolio. In addition, recent changes to state and municipal law allow us to build more multifamily units at a number of our existing locations. For example, we can now build a new 500-unit residential tower at the corner of Wilshire and Barrington in Brentwood. During the third quarter, we refinanced almost $1.2 billion of debt at very competitive rates. We are also actively working on a number of off-market office opportunities with full engagement from our joint venture partners. I will now turn the call over to Kevin. Thanks, Jordan, and good morning.

At 10900 Wilshire and Westwood, we are finalizing plans for converting the existing office tower to apartments and building a new ground-up apartment building. Construction should begin in 2026. At the Landmark Residences in Brentwood, construction is in full swing. When we finish the project, it will meaningfully add to our in-service residential portfolio. Finally, we continue to make good progress leasing at Studio Plaza in Burbank. During the quarter, we completed three financing transactions that extend our debt maturities at very competitive fixed interest rates. As we mentioned in our last call, in July, we refinanced a $200 million office term loan that was scheduled to mature in September 2026. The new non-recourse, interest-only term loan matures in July 2032, with interest effectively fixed at 5.6% through July 2030. In August, we closed a package of new residential term loans.

The new secured non-recourse, interest-only loans total approximately $941.5 million. They interest at a fixed rate of 4.8%. They mature in September 2030. They replace loans aggregating $930 million that were scheduled to mature in 2027 and 2029. We also repaid the debt that encumbered the Landmark Residences and added that property to our pool of unencumbered assets. We continue to work on refinancing our next loan maturities, now scheduled for late 2026. We look for attractive acquisitions. With that, I will turn the call over to Stuart.

Stuart McElhinney, Vice President of Investor Relations, Douglas Emmett: Thanks, Kevin. Good morning, everyone. During the third quarter, we signed 215 office leases covering 840,000 sq ft in our in-service portfolio. This included roughly 200,000 sq ft of new leases, which reflects the slowdown in the latter half of the quarter that Jordan mentioned. Office rental rates and concessions are steady. Looking ahead, our remaining office expirations in 2026 and 2027 are below our historical averages. The overall straight-line value of new leases we sign in the quarter increased by 1.8%, with cash spreads down 11.4%. At an average of only $5.63 per sq ft per year, our office leasing costs during the third quarter remained well below the average for other office REITs in our benchmark group. Our residential portfolio continues to enjoy strong demand and remained essentially fully leased. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Peter to discuss our results.

Peter Seymour, CFO, Douglas Emmett: Thanks, Stuart. Good morning, everyone. Compared to the third quarter of 2024, revenue was flat at $251 million. FFO decreased to $0.34 per share, and AFFO decreased to $52 million, with increased interest expense outpacing higher contribution from operations. Same-property cash NOI increased 3.5%, reflecting a strong 6.8% increase for multifamily and a healthy 2.6% increase from office. As Jordan mentioned, we continue to receive significant property tax refunds, whose timing varies unpredictably from quarter to quarter. Excluding property tax refunds, our office same-property cash NOI growth would have been essentially flat. At approximately 4.3% of revenue, our G&A remains low. Turning to guidance, we still expect our 2025 net income per common share diluted to be between $0.07 and $0.11, and our FFO per fully diluted share to be between $1.43 and $1.47.

For information on assumptions underlying our guidance, please refer to the schedule in the earnings package. As usual, our guidance does not assume the impact of future property acquisitions or dispositions, common stock sales or repurchases, financings, property damage insurance recoveries, impairment charges, or other possible capital markets activities. I will now turn the call over to the operator so we can take your questions.

Conference Operator: We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch-tone phone. If you’re using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. Again, in consideration of other participants, please limit your queries to one question and one follow-up. Thank you. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Nick Yulico with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Thanks. I guess starting off with leasing, if we go back to last quarter and the call, you guys had some optimism on the leasing pipeline. You still had your occupancy guidance intact, and then this quarter did not play out as expected. I was hoping to get a little bit more detail on sort of what exactly did not materialize in the new leasing plan. If there were certain markets, buildings, anything you could just sort of quantify a little bit more on that.

Jordan Kaplan, President and CEO, Douglas Emmett: Good morning, Nick. I do not have a great answer. I can’t point to an industry. I can’t point to a market. I can’t point to a building. There was a slowdown. We actually still did a number of deals over 10,000 sq ft. All of that worked. It just slowed down. If you ask the question, where are we now, it seems like the slowdown was temporary, and it looks like we’re off on this quarter a good start. I don’t want to make any predictions because we were so surprised by July. From July to August, we were like, "Oh, this is going to be a great quarter." August and September just kind of fell off, or actually later, part of August. I mean, maybe it’ll be timing. I’m not sure.

Stuart McElhinney, Vice President of Investor Relations, Douglas Emmett: Okay. I guess second question, Jordan, is you’re a larger shareholder in the stock. I’m sure you’re not happy with how the stock’s done, and some of that has to do with leasing and performance there. Are you starting to think about other alternatives? You mentioned some acquisitions, but I guess I’m wondering, do you think about trying to prune the portfolio? Do you think about stock buybacks? Are there other opportunities to do something, sort of pivot here a little bit in terms of a strategy to sort of improve the stock performance outside of just the leasing focus that needs to be addressed? Thanks.

Jordan Kaplan, President and CEO, Douglas Emmett: I would say that. First of all, I still feel very good about both our office and residential portfolios. We’re growing our residential portfolio, and we’re working on growing our office portfolio. I think the markets will be good. I actually think both of them will come back at a good clip. When I look at kind of more macro things, there is obviously some stuff that’s been in the way. I’d say locally, the only real thing that’s been in the way has been politics. I think politics are kind of starting to move back into the right direction. There has been some national stuff, but I know some other markets are recovering. I’ll still say we have very good tenants. We have high renewal rates. I like our prospects in office. I’m working on buying more office, as Kevin said.

We gave you a sense of how much more aggressive we’re becoming on developing residential, and our residential is performing extremely well. I am more on the development side. We are moving on a number of things. There is a ton that we can do here in LA as there are all these changes in laws. I am going to tell you, I still feel good about our office portfolio. I get it that last quarter was more upsetting to me than anybody, but we’re trying to continue to invest.

Stuart McElhinney, Vice President of Investor Relations, Douglas Emmett: All right. Thanks.

Jordan Kaplan, President and CEO, Douglas Emmett: Thanks.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from Steve Sakwa with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Peter Seymour, CFO, Douglas Emmett: Thanks. Stuart, you provided a little bit of comment on kind of the tax refunds, and Peter did as well. But I’m just trying to make sure when we look at kind of the third quarter office expenses, is that $74 million kind of a good run rate, or are there some kind of one-time true-up payments that sort of hit in the quarter that benefited Q3 but won’t carry forward in the Q4 and beyond?

Stuart McElhinney, Vice President of Investor Relations, Douglas Emmett: It’s Steve. It’s Peter. Yeah. I mean, whenever we have tax refunds, you’re going to see it in the expense line. As we said, we expect to continue to get property tax refunds, and we expect those to be impactful. It’s just hard for us to predict quarter to quarter, year to year, what the numbers are going to be.

Peter Seymour, CFO, Douglas Emmett: No, I understand that. But is the 74 kind of like the new base with which you grow from, or were there past refunds that were kind of one-time in nature that the run rate is higher than that?

Stuart McElhinney, Vice President of Investor Relations, Douglas Emmett: It’s kind of hard to pull it all apart, but there’s a little bit of both. There’s some of it that’s one-time, and there’s some of it that you reset for a period of time.

Jordan Kaplan, President and CEO, Douglas Emmett: I mean, I don’t think we have guidance for you on expenses for the next three years, but I can tell you this, Steve. We have been receiving rolling tax refunds for quite a while, and I think they’re going to keep rolling forward. They’re just very slow. The money comes in very slow. We don’t recognize the money till we receive it. I mean, it’s been coming in, and I think it’s going to keep coming in when I look at the amount we have in front of them.

Peter Seymour, CFO, Douglas Emmett: Okay. Thanks. Maybe, Jordan, just going back to kind of leasing broadly, I mean, I did see that UCLA downsized kind of their footprint with you in the third quarter. Just any comments kind of around the industries that did lease in kind of the third quarter? Maybe where were you positively surprised at activity, and were there any industries that just are still kind of stuck and maybe underperforming your expectations?

Jordan Kaplan, President and CEO, Douglas Emmett: I would say, and. I’m glad you reminded me of that. I was going to say the one area where I’m seeing. Weak—it’s not a lot of it in our portfolio with the exception of UCLA—but where we see weakness is government. Government is definitely. Having. Everything. They’re having trouble bringing people back in. They’re having budgetary problems. They’re shrinking. They got it all going on. Most of our other sectors seem to be okay. Every time we get bonked, I’m always like, "Oh, great. UCLA again." I will also tell you, I think UCLA is going to bring people back. It’s hard to know where they’re going to end up. They could end up being. Our growth engine going forward in terms of new leasing because they have been shrinking for a while, and they really need to bring people back in.

In a more robust way. I do not want to beat on them too much. They really are only—they rely on the government, both the federal government and the state government. They are obviously part of the state government. I know the government has beaten the daylights out of downtown. Anyways, that is the only industry I can give you some feel for.

Peter Seymour, CFO, Douglas Emmett: Okay. Thank you.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from Alexander Goldfarb with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Hey. Morning out there. Thank you for keeping your conference call old school, not going the high-tech route. Appreciate that. Jordan, your stock is trading at a 9 implied. I understand the enthusiasm for apartment development. It’s been something long in the making over the past few decades, and it’s great to see you guys be able to take advantage. You also mentioned potential more acquisitions. From a funding perspective, you can’t really issue equity. That makes no sense. You’re always hesitant to sell assets to gin up additional cash. With everything that’s on your plate and where the stock is, how would you think about funding new acquisitions if you have demands on your capital for the development projects?

Jordan Kaplan, President and CEO, Douglas Emmett: As I mentioned, we have extremely good engagement from our joint venture platform. You’re right. We’re not issuing stock. Historically, we have not issued stock to make acquisitions regardless of where the stock price was. We do have positive cash flow coming out of the company. We’re generating cash flow. We’re using it to do a number of things. We have a lot of ability to do financing. I mean, I know we don’t mention it that often, but we’re all non-recourse first trustee debt, and a huge portion of our portfolio doesn’t have any loans on it. We can actually use that to use financing. We can use our free cash flow to invest alongside our joint venture partners. Today, most of what we’ve done is use some of our free cash flow and invest it alongside our joint venture partners.

We have used some of our free cash flow to power the two development, or at least, yeah, the two development projects we have, although one of them has a lot of joint venture partners in it, so it is not taking much.

Okay. Your point is that between the demands to fund the current development pipeline, there is still excess cash that you are generating to fund JV acquisitions.

That’s 100% true.

Okay. Second question is just playing off of that. Again, given where the stock is trading and you guys haven’t been huge issuers over time. Why would the joint venture partners not be interested with you guys in just, maybe taking the company private? I mean, the public markets haven’t rewarded what you guys have achieved. You certainly have a lot of growth ahead of you, but it would seem like an opportune moment to arbitrage the difference.

I mean, yeah, they ask that a lot. I don’t think it’s a very good time to go private because you’re my shareholders, of which I’m one, and a lot of us are, because I think the stock’s super undervalued. I want to do a good job for the shareholders. Yeah, I mean, you’re right. They all lead with that.

No, I’m just saying you guys—I mean, there’s a lot of good stuff that you guys are doing, but it’s not reflected in the stock.

Yeah, I know. It’s not. It’s a point in time. The stock kind of moves around vis-à-vis what’s going on. Most of the time, I’m wrong. It should be up. It’s down. Things slow down, and it’s up. I think over the long haul, we’re going to have a great opportunity to do a good job for our shareholders. I don’t want to crawl out with my tail between my legs. I want to do a good job for them.

Okay. Thank you.

Thanks.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from Blaine Heck with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Great. Jordan, appreciate the commentary. Can you just talk a little bit more about the size of the opportunity set within your portfolio to potentially do more office-to-residential conversions or ground-up residential development? Maybe where in the timeline of getting the required permitting or zoning you are? Is the opportunity you mentioned in prepared remarks something that you think could be shovel-ready in 2026? Are there any others that you think could be started in the next couple of years?

Jordan Kaplan, President and CEO, Douglas Emmett: There are a number of extremely great locations that we now feel we can build meaningful additional resi. Ken and I have been talking a lot about it. I mean, I’ve said to you guys historically, really the gating issue for us is kind of growing our ability to do more projects. We’re talking about that. The early stages of that, we are already doing. We’re working on planning and looking at some of these sites, talking to architects about what can we do here, working on a lot of that. I mean, if you ask me, do we have a lot of sites that could be ready to go at the end of 2026? We probably do, but we ourselves have to finish building the stuff we’re building to do a good job.

We are kind of—I would say we are tightening up that line of projects and getting them more than theoretically ready. How fast will we roll them out? That is a little harder to answer.

Okay. Great. Just to follow up, similarly on the acquisition side, do you think you’re close to closing on any other interesting opportunities? Maybe how have your return requirements evolved along with the changes in your cost of capital?

I believe we’ll make some meaningful acquisitions in a reasonable timeline. I’m extremely confident of that. What was the second part of your question? You want to know how my returns are?

Just how your targeted yield return requirements?

I mean, I’m not sure. Kind of best in class but consistent with the world of returns that we live in right now. We do not want to lose best-in-class deals, and that’s the stuff that seems to work the best for us. In terms of where we like to operate, which I’ve said before, is in the top quartile of our portfolio. I think that’s more achievable now than ever. I’m telling you right now, I’m really confident that that will happen. I think that as a result of that, we’re not going to miss any of those. The return metrics are better than they were in 2019, but I do not know if they’ll be all the way to where you guys want them. For us, I think we’ll feel very good about them.

Got it. Thanks for the color.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from Seth Burgi with Citi. Please go ahead.

Thanks. It’s Nick Joseph here with Seth. Maybe just following up on the transaction market. Are you feeling that there’s more competition as you’re bidding for assets? How are you seeing, kind of, the competition landscape changing?

Jordan Kaplan, President and CEO, Douglas Emmett: I think that. We’re a little bit like—as odd as it’s going to sound, there’s so many markers that remind me of when Ken and I got into this business. When we—in the early 1990s, we did a lot of buying. All through the 1990s, we did a lot of buying. I remember looking at that time at where. How much was broker transactions, how much was off-market, getting people to come to us. I’m seeing that shift again. A lot more off-market. I mean, an amazingly higher percentage of off-market of we know you’ll do it in close, which. Is great. It’s great. It’s kind of a payback for decades of building that reputation. That has given me confidence. We’re seeing real deals, and we’re running at them and stuff that I’ve wanted for a long time.

Thanks. And then just on a couple of questions, I’ve been on kind of the discount and ways to close it. I understand where obviously you’re not happy with the stock prices and see a path to closing that discount. Is that—you’d mentioned kind of the LPs maybe having some interest. Has that been a broader board discussion, or is that more just kind of your opinion on where the opportunity is to close that gap right now?

I didn’t give that as an opportunity to close the gap. I said, "I wouldn’t want to do that now. The stock price is too low. That’s not doing a good job." All I was saying is, of course, they ask me about it all the time. Why would I go with an incredibly low point in the stock and say, "Oh, now I’m going to go?" I mean, you guys are looking at me like I’m an idiot. I believe that office and resi has huge upside. Why wouldn’t we deliver it to our existing shareholders?

Thank you.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from John Kim with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Good morning. I wanted to ask a two-part question on leasing. Jordan, you mentioned October seems like it picked up. I’m wondering what you attribute that to. Secondly, is there anything that you can do to stimulate demand? We’re seeing here in New York, a lot of landlords really stepping up on amenities. I know your portfolio doesn’t really have the same footprint to do that, but I was wondering if any amenities would resonate in your market.

Jordan Kaplan, President and CEO, Douglas Emmett: Where some amenities make a difference, we have done that kind of thing. We’ve been pretty successful in projects where we have a lot of leasing and making deals with a gym or something like that, a commercial gym, to be there, high-end gyms. That becomes an amenity of the project. Obviously, we make money on those deals. Our portfolio is in very amenity-rich areas. I’m not just talking about access to high-end housing. I’m talking about restaurants, the whole nine yards. We do not have a ton of additional demand like that on that front. In terms of stepping up demand, nobody’s better than us at getting out there and getting access to every deal that’s out there and pushing and trying to get them done. I mean, if you looked at the.

Various tiers of our portfolio and the outreach and the aggression of showings and trying to turn those into every step of the way you go, we have an incredibly aggressive platform. Yeah. I have a lot of confidence in that. That is why you hear me saying I have a lot—I got it that. The pace of real estate and the recovery of the office portfolio is not consistent with a quarter-to-quarter analysis. Certainly, we had a quarter that did not look great. When I look at what is happening in general and our platform and its outreach and what is out there and what we are going after, I go, "No, I still feel good about this." I am confident we will get there. We just have to stay focused and keep playing hard. We will. I think we are going to do a great job for everybody.

Okay. My second question was on Barrington Landmark. Any update on the litigation progress if you think we will get some news on that in the next year or so? You added a new development site there this quarter. Do you expect that to get off the ground before Landmark Residences?

We would not build that before we have Landmark Residences built, at least because that would just compete directly with it. We already have 700 units there, so we would do all the work to get it ready, which is a good thing to do, and we are already doing that to marry it to the project. As I said, we have to play through what we are building right now, but it is probably also smart for us to do all the kind of some of the other work on many other sites. That is one site, but on a number of the other sites to go like, "This is kind of getting more and more ready to go with all the, that we need to know that when we do want to get to it, we can get right to it." That is the early stuff that.

Ken and I have talked about doing and are doing. We are doing it.

And then litigation?

The litigation. They’re trading mountains of documents. I mean, obviously, we feel very good about it. Nothing like that’s ever very fast. It is certainly not going— I mean, the metabolism of the courts is extremely slow, as slow as a sloth. Just assume that’s what we’re dealing with.

Okay. Thank you.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from Jana Galan with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Stuart McElhinney, Vice President of Investor Relations, Douglas Emmett: Hi. Thank you for taking my question. When you talk about the slowdown experienced in August and September, was that more that touring and top-of-funnel activity slowed, or the activity was there and then the decision-making just kind of got paused? When you think about the improvement in October, is it more just a normal month, or is it seeing that kind of delayed activity from the summer coming now into the fourth quarter?

Jordan Kaplan, President and CEO, Douglas Emmett: I think it was probably a slowdown in decision-making to close. In terms of this quarter, I’m so nervous to make projections. I would like to have the proof be in the pudding. Let us just deliver the answers. I told you, things are—I mean, if you’re looking at it, you go, "What’s the problem?" I mean, let’s just see closing and all the rest of it. Let’s see how we do this quarter.

Stuart McElhinney, Vice President of Investor Relations, Douglas Emmett: Great. Just curious if you could kind of talk about the decision or the strategy to refinance the multifamily properties early and to unencumber the Landmark Residences.

Jordan Kaplan, President and CEO, Douglas Emmett: I would say Fannie Mae was a great partner there. They allowed us—they left their loan intact and allowed us to basically empty the buildings. There’s not a—they’re pro-housing. When they knew that we were going to build back and do the housing, they’re a pro-housing bunch. They were like, "We don’t want to get in the way of housing." I said, "It’d be hard on me. We could probably handle it, but it’d be hard on me if you told me I had to repay your loan at this exact moment, right?" Once we had made it into the construction, they were saying, "Okay, we’ll let you roll forward on that. That’s great." I can’t damage—I appreciate that because that makes a huge difference to adding this housing.

I also said, "When I see a good opportunity to get you back out of that," because I know it’s like a— It’s whatever. It’s an item on your list. We’ll take it. As those other resi deals have just matured and the cash flow just keeps increasing, we saw an opportunity to extend everything out at very good pricing, very good spread. We certainly had the room to, at that point, delever Barrington, take all the leverage off so it did not have to be on their watch list. It’s great points with your lender when you can do something for them. We did it.

Stuart McElhinney, Vice President of Investor Relations, Douglas Emmett: Great. Thank you.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from Rich Anderson with Cantor Fitzgerald. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks. Good morning out there. Perhaps a tough question to answer, but is there anything about the coming Olympics economic activity, you as a landlord of office and multifamily in the area, that you see as an opportunity short-term, long-term, given what typically happens in front of and after an Olympic event? Anything you’re thinking about at all, or is it just not an event from the standpoint of Douglas Emmett?

Jordan Kaplan, President and CEO, Douglas Emmett: There is one big primary thing, which is that the council member for that, CD5, has a strong interest in making a lot of really positive changes. UCLA is the Olympic athletic village. All of the athletes stay in the dorms at UCLA, and then their area is going to be that Westwood Village area. She is really leaning into every type of funding, everything they can put together to get that area really nice and showing well to the world. She has come to a couple of large donors, of which obviously we are one of them, and said, "I want you to come lean into all this with us." We said we would, and we have joined her. In a very similar way that Santa Monica came to us, and they are doing something similar, not necessarily for the Olympics, but here in this downtown area.

We have joined them too. I think if you are asking specifically about the Olympics, I think it is going to leave that area much better off. We see that the city and county and even state and all the rest want to show well there in that village. Those improvements to the village, where we are a large owner, in terms of making more of walking areas of streets, making the retail work, pushing the transportation to the outside. She is focused on all those things. I think they are going to get a bunch of them done. She wants to get it done.

Okay. Great. That’s a bad question after all. The second question, you mentioned progress at Studio Plaza. Can you put a finer point on that in terms of anything around leasing activity where you’re at? I know you’re hesitant typically to not get too specific, but I’m wondering if you could share anything about progress there. Thanks.

I think the big comments around Studio Plaza is, number one, I had a lot of fear there. Of reading the entertainment industry and what’s going on. We are doing tons of entertainment deals there, and it is leasing. We are getting all sizes of tenants. Some little larger multi-floor. We are getting single-floor. We are getting all of it. We have to close them, of course. A number have closed already. I think some are already paying. We finished a project. The project shows incredibly well. I would just say my blood pressure went down on it now that I am seeing it perform. That is the main thing. I have a lot of confidence it will be—well, it was great. It was great to own it. It was leased for 30 years to a mix of tenants.

Ever since Warner Bros. took it over, it was always a subject. Now it is going to be a good, robustly multi-office project that will take kind of the risk profile of those large single tenants off our plate. It is just not something we enjoy. It is getting done. I am pretty happy about it, actually. The redo of the building is stunning. That is one also that has a lot of the amenities that our earlier question asked me about. Can get set up with great outdoor amenities, indoor amenities, the whole thing.

Yeah. When do you think you’re kind of, sort of done getting that back leased? Do you have a timeline in mind?

Yeah, but if I give a timeline, I’ll blow it. So I don’t want to do that.

All right. Thanks very much.

All right. Thanks.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from Upal Rana with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you. Jordan, you mentioned doing more acquisitions. I wanted to get your thoughts on the Beverly Hills office market. Some assets have traded there recently, including one of your peers buying Maple Plaza. I just want to get your thoughts there. Maybe if you could tell us if you were part of the bidding there as well. Thanks.

Jordan Kaplan, President and CEO, Douglas Emmett: I saw the stuff they sold, and I saw what they bought. What I have for them is applause. I mean, that was a great trade. To move out of that other stuff and into that. I’m like, "Well done." I love the Beverly Hills market. I think it’s a great market.

Okay. Great. Thanks. Could you talk about any of the larger tenants coming back to the market? You mentioned in the past that you were seeing an increase there, but just curious what your thoughts are today.

You were—go ahead. You want to—

Yeah. I mean, we saw, again, very typical, good, healthy leasing over 10,000 sq ft in Q3. That was good to see. It was a year, I think more than a year ago now that we were really seeing that category underperform. It has been pretty healthy the last couple of quarters. Okay. Great. Thank you.

Conference Operator: Again, if you have a question, please press star then one. The next question comes from Dylan Burzinski with Green Street. Please go ahead.

Hi, guys. Good morning. Just a quick one from me. You mentioned the amount of acquisition opportunities that you guys are looking at on the office side. I guess. Presumably these are mostly sort of value-add type deals where Douglas Emmett can bring them into their operating platform and execute lease up. I guess, how do you guys weigh that with the existing portfolio level vacancy that you guys have in the office portfolio today?

Jordan Kaplan, President and CEO, Douglas Emmett: You saw us do a value-add deal. Maybe that’s why you’re saying that, because we took that one; we bought that 220,000 sq ft building with a development site, and we’re converting it. My main guiding principle is: buy the best stuff in the market and keep control over the best stuff in the market because I still believe in the markets. The best stuff could have some vacancy. It could not have vacancy. If you go, what’s the number one criteria? It’s not value-add, not value-add, whatever. We want to buy the best buildings in the markets that we think are long-term great investments that have great supply constraints and a great kind of natural tenant base and amenities and good access to high-end housing, all the stuff that.

Seems like pablum that we put in the front of our original S-11, but really has what’s guided us.

That’s helpful. Thanks, Jordan.

Thanks.

Conference Operator: This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back to Jordan Kaplan for any closing remarks.

Jordan Kaplan, President and CEO, Douglas Emmett: Thank you for joining us. We look forward to meeting with a number of you individually soon. Bye-bye.

Conference Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.