Cousins Properties Incorporated Q3 2008 Earnings Call Transcript

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2008-11-20 04:05:29.0

Tags: Opportunity, Financial, Goldman Sachs & Co., Call Transcript, Leasing, Capital, Earnings, Capital Structures, Business Structures, Financial Accounting, Finance, Seeking Alpha, Opportunity, Financial, Goldman Sachs & Co., Call Transcript, Leasing, Capital, Earnings, Capital Structures, Business Structures, Financial Accounting, Finance, Seeking Alpha, Cousins Properties Inc.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator instructions) Our first question is from Jay Habermann with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Jay Habermann Goldman Sachs

Hey, good morning, Jay Habermann here with Sloan as well. Tom, just following up on your last comments about the stock and obviously the level at which it’s trading. If you weigh the different options in terms of capital at this point in the cycle, I mean where are you leaning? You’ve talked before about looking at sort of distressed land deals. I mean clearly the stock has an interesting opportunity here, but you also talked about preserving the balance sheet and keeping cash on hand as well as availability in the lines. So I was just curious as to your thoughts on those various options.

Tom Bell

Well, Jay, I think that will definitely be a subject of conversation at our November Board meeting and it exactly the right question and the right place to focus, what is the best use of our capital? We expected, as most of you know by now to have seen significant distressed opportunities that we felt – where we felt we can add real value. And we expected that that would be the highest and best use for our available capital. To-date we frankly not seen those opportunities. We have looked at many opportunity. Most of those opportunities so far have been in the residential area. But frankly we’ve not found anything to-date that’s compelling. We think the banks, frankly, and other financial owners and builder [ph] are reluctant to move particularly on their commercial properties and we know there were many extremely liberal, let me say, financing agreements made in late four, throughout five, and most of six, so we expect that in the first or second quarter of ’09 we’ll see some of these assets start to come back. So we’ll have to balance all these issues when we think about how to use our capital going forward and how to employ the partnership relationship that we have from a financial perspective, going forward. And, frankly, we are just waiting right now to make those decisions.

Jay Habermann Goldman Sachs

And then just switching gears, you mentioned retail and obviously the bankruptcies as well as the developments in the leasing – current leasing position. Can you just give us a sense of interest level thus far in the spaces in terms of the bankrupt space and you’ve held really there?

 

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