Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Greg Milken - Citigroup.
Gregory Milken – Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.
You mentioned that you haven’t yet seen any reduced demands despite the weak numbers over the past few months. And your same-store assumptions for the year are essentially unchanged. Are you not cautious that weaker demand may start seeping into the portfolio in the quarters ahead?
David P. Gardner
Again, that could happen. It certainly takes at least, in our opinion, a couple quarters of job loss before you start seeing reduced demand. So I think we’re still a little early on. But more importantly, we’re taking our cues more from—instead of just the general economic environment—our specific markets in traffic and occupancies. And things are holding up so well that it’s difficult to see out the number of quarters where we’re going to see an issue. And it if comes I think it’s going to be much later in the year; possibly even early next year. And maybe by then the tide will have turned.
Edward J. Pettinella
A couple of more specifics to what David is just saying—we’re looking—we’re deep in April, our occupancy is hovering well above 95% right now. Our traffic is clearly up. Our turnover ratio is at a 7-8 year low, hovering down near 40% annualized, 9%--which is even below that—for the quarter. There are a number of trends that we’ve watched—you know, we must have missed the memo about the recession that is happening right now because it’ll probably be for us—even if there is one coming that will affect our properties, we sense its many months off.
I’ve asked all our key people along the East Coast and Chicago what are they seeing; are they seeing any early signs. And quite frankly, for us, we’re not seeing them. And if you go back to the—and it’s been written about us a lot—if you go back to the 2001-2004 period, even in that recession where it dropped precipitously for many of our peer-group competitors, we only had a mild dip. We dropped, but it was not nearly as much. And I would say that given the strength of our portfolio today versus where it was five and seven years ago, I think we’re going to hold up even better. And I think that’s what you’re seeing right now.
Gregory Milken – Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.
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