Also have monthly payer WSR on the Bernanke blurb list. Currently not covering their dividend:
Carol L. Kemple - Hilliard Lyons, Research Division Okay. And has there been any change in the board's attitude or tone on the dividend at recent meetings?
James C. Mastandrea - Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President That's a good question. In fact, what we do, Carol, is we present to them the financial information and where we believe that the company's going. And we set as a target to reach FFO that exceeds the dividend, and our goal to do that is before the end of the third quarter. We walked them through all the potential opportunities we have within the portfolio and what we think the intrinsic value is. And with that -- when I say that, let me let you know what I'm referring to, and that is the inventory or space that we purchased when we made most of our acquisitions that we have on our shelves that we can lease. And that's in 3 different categories, it's in brown boxes that's -- which means it doesn't have their HVAC in as yet; it's in white boxes, which means drive-own HVAC is in; and then it's in space where a tenant occupied, moved out or might just need some paint and decorating. So on a net-net basis, we walk them through that particular area to show how we can reach our target. The second area we look at is just ordinary lease-up, bringing our occupancy up on a net basis, net of the cost it takes to get us there. And then the third area is a restructuring of our debt. We got some significant opportunities to capture a fairly good portion of our interest savings to reduce our interest expense. And then the last area is accretive acquisitions. And so we've been very successful in making progress towards each of those goals. The only thing is the time frame of this, the gestation period on a piece of real estate is usually anywhere from 12 to 24 months. And we're now starting to get out towards the latter part of that with a lot of our assets, meaning closer to the 18, 24 month range, with some of these you'll start seeing come to fruition.
Carol L. Kemple - Hilliard Lyons, Research Division So from all that, that you've presented to the board, have you noticed -- I guess, basically, have they been any more concerned with the dividend than they have in the past? Or are they feeling more comfortable than they have?
James C. Mastandrea - Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President Well, they feel just as comfortable. Yes, very comfortable, yes. And yes, if you look at it overall, look in the business size of the company, the spread on the dividend right now is actually very minimal. To catch up is not -- it should not be overwhelming to us. And we've been -- we've fully disclosed that each time we've done an offering, and we've exceeded it in the past, then we do another offering depending on what kind of assets we buy, there's a little catch-up period. So they're very comfortable with it.
Source: Whitestone REIT Management Discusses Q1 2013 Results - Earnings Call Transcript |
