Equity Residential Q2 2009 Earnings Call Transcript

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2009-07-31 15:37:17.0

Tags: Equity Residential, Call Transcript, Dividend, Earnings, Citigroup Inc., Debt Maturity, Financial Planning, Balance Sheets, Personal Finance, Financial Accounting, Finance, Financial Statements, Seeking Alpha

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions). Your first question comes from the line of David Toti with Citigroup.

David Toti - Citigroup

Couple of questions about the dividend cut and it makes sense relative to positioning, but the language around opportunity, are you seeing any opportunity yet and where do you think that will appear?

David Neithercut

Well the answer to first question is, no, and to the second question is, I don't know. We've not seen what we had considered to be opportunity out there yet. We would expect there to be some opportunity, somewhere down the road. Frankly I'm not quiet sure David that will be the size of our opportunity meaning the sort of discounts that we might have seen back in the late 80s, early 90s in the RGC debacle, but we do believe there will be some opportunities down the road, we just haven't seen any as of yet.

David Toti - Citigroup

Okay. So what about the dividend cut relative to upcoming debt maturities, would that take precedent perhaps?

David Neithercut

Well I would say on the debt maturity side, that the dividend was not so under funded that it is such a substantial source of cash to us David. So, it's not really a key driver. Key driver here is not to aggravate the debt maturities schedule, but cutting the dividend does not really satisfy many of our forward debt maturities.

David Toti - Citigroup

Then just along those lines of debt maturities you've opted to hold cash on the balance sheet at relatively dilutive levels, why not be more proactive in [retiring] some of that debt forward or is it the penalties that are holding it back?

David Neithercut

We've certainly been proactive and you can expect this to be in the past. I mean we did $300 million on the debt tender back in January we bought a good portion of a convert back as well and made 19 million on that. You should expect us to continue to be out there and be active and just because the debt's trading at a premium doesn't mean we won't buy it David. I think that's the implication absolutely. We realize that having the money on the balance sheet at 40 or 50 basis points versus retiring some of our forward debt. We will do that when it makes sense and we're looking at it actively right now.

 

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