On Thursday, Simon Property Group Inc (NYSE:SPG) reported its third quarter earnings and discussed the following topics in its earnings conference call. Take a look.
Competition:
Quentin Velleley – Citi: Just in terms of the outlets I know St. Louis and Charlotte are going to be a very small proportion of your growth assets, but given the competition that we’re seeing does it feels like there could be more projects where you’re competing head-to-head with some of the other rates and potentially product guys. Can you give us a sense of how many they might be out there, how many more announcements that we might see where they are for sort of these completing projects?
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David Simon – Chairman and CEO: Look, there is potential for a couple more of these situations to arise. I know we’ve got – Quentin we’ve built 19 of these since we have acquired CPG. We have been extremely successful. We’re also expanding a handful of our industry-leading shopping centers. So again we have a very good perspective of this. If we didn’t think we could lease and produce quality projects we would not do it. We have all the confidence of our track record in our team to continue to produce the results that the market and more importantly what I have grown accustomed to. If there’s one or two of these things that that might pop up, so be it. That’s the nature of real estate development for 60 years. It used to be Simon and the Barlow competing for malls. It’s not all that different, but I think we have earned the respect and the confidence of our retailer partners and when we announced an outlet center development, we expect to lease it and they have all the confidence in the world that we’ll be able to do so. There is none that come to mind immediately on that front, Quentin and we’ll just see how the next couple of years move forward.
Quentin Velleley – Citi: Then, just in terms of the strength of our operating metrics, the sale’s up almost 10%, leasing spreads, gaining momentum up over 10%, is this consistent across both the malls and the outlets or are your premium outlets outperforming the malls a little?
David Simon – Chairman and CEO: No, it’s relatively consistent. The mall, I’ll turn it to Rick but generally the demand, since ’09, ’10, the demand for the outlets has been relatively strong. What we’re seeing in ’11 and ’12 and ’13 is that the malls have caught up from the retailer base and demand for our mall activity has been very strong. Rick, do you want to add anything?
Richard S. Sokolov – President and COO: The only thing I would add is, to David’s point about where all of our development dollars are going, if you look where most of the anchors are being added and most of the boxes are being added and where we are doing our redevelopments they’re in that Mall portfolio, where we are having an increasing amount of demand. So, it’s pretty equal in terms of the momentum in the platforms.
Retailers and the Future:
Jeff Donnelly – Wells Fargo: David, if I could actually ask Quentin’s questions maybe from a different angle is that, the outlet industry development pipeline does seem bigger than ever and rather than just a question of bumping into and another. How do you think about the rescue of overbuilding into this business, do you think it’s one where metro markets can ultimately sustain two, three, four outlet centers I mean we just haven’t scratched the surface here in the new unit potential?
David Simon – Chairman and CEO: Well, look I can only answer from our perspective. We will not make any outlet mistakes, okay. The reason we won’t is because we’re the leader in the business, we have 70 premium outlets in the world, we have the best franchise in this business and I just know that we won’t make a mistake. So, I can’t say the same thing for others. That’s not my job to worry about what others do. Undoubtedly there will be development mistakes made, they’ve been made in the lifestyle business, in the power center business, in the mall business, but they won’t be made by us. I have said this for the last year or two, I don’t think – I do not think there will be as much built as people, as people think. There has been a list of 50 potential deals that have been kicked around and there is still going to be three or four of these things built a year maybe and not as much as you think, but I’m not – it’s not my responsibility to opine for others, they will make mistakes we won’t. We’re not going to – you can lease something to if you give away the building. We’re not going to do that either just to get something built.
Jeff Donnelly – Wells Fargo: Just a follow-up for Ray thanks, David. What are retailers, I know it’s a little early but maybe telling you about their expectations for this holiday season, I guess how do you think that affects their unit expansion plans for 2013 and ’14, does it influence apparently?
Richard S. Sokolov – President and COO: I don’t think there’s much of a connection. I think people are cautiously optimistic for this holiday. I don’t think they are bullish. They all just have been holding up consumer confidence back above levels where it was in 2007. Studies are showing that the consumers have a higher percentage of disposable income now than they’ve had in the recent past. So, all that augers pretty well for the holiday. That said I think the retailers balance sheets, their growth plans are still very well-articulated and we’re still seeing pretty substantial demand and I don’t think that will be materially impacted by whether holiday sales are 1% or 2% plus or minus expectations.
A Closer Look: Simon Property Group Earnings Cheat Sheet>>
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