Douglas Emmett, Inc. (NYSE:DEI) Q1 2024 Results Conference Call May 8, 2024 2:00 PM ET
Company Participants
Stuart McElhinney - Vice President of Investor Relations
Jordan Kaplan - President and Chief Executive Officer
Kevin Crummy - Chief Investment Officer
Peter Seymour - Chief Financial Officer
Conference Call Participants
Steve Sakwa - Evercore
Anthony Paolone - JP Morgan
Alexander Goldfarb - Piper Sandler
Michael Griffin - Citi
Richard Anderson - Wedbush
Peter Abramowitz - Jefferies
Dylan Burzinski - Green Street
Upal Rana - KeyBanc Capital Markets
Operator
Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Douglas Emmett’s Quarterly Earnings Call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, you will receive instructions for participating in the question-and-answer session.
I will now turn the conference over to Stuart McElhinney, Vice President of Investor Relations for Douglas Emmett.
Stuart McElhinney
Thank you. Joining us today on the call are Jordan Kaplan, our President and CEO; Kevin Crummy, our CIO; and Peter Seymour, our CFO. This call is being webcast live from our website and will be available for replay during the next 90 days. You can also find our earnings package at the Investor Relations section of our website. You can find reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures discussed during today’s call in the earnings package.
During the course of this call, we will make forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs of, assumptions made by, and information currently available to us. Our actual results will be affected by known and unknown risks, trends, uncertainties and factors that are beyond our control or ability to predict. Although we believe that our assumptions are reasonable, they are not guarantees of future performance and some will prove to be incorrect. Therefore, our actual future results can be expected to differ from our expectations and those differences may be material. For a more detailed description of some potential risks, please refer to our SEC filings, which can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website. When we reach the question-and-answer portion in consideration of others, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up.
I will now turn the call over to Jordan.
Jordan Kaplan
Good morning, and thank you for joining us. During the first quarter, we leased 1.2 million square feet of office space, which includes renewing a 250,000 square foot lease with WME through 2037. Even excluding that lease, we still did 950,000 square feet of leasing. New leasing was just over 200,000 square feet. Still not quite enough to drive positive absorption. As we said in February, we are not assuming a significant increase in new leasing demand this year. However, our strong renewal rate tells us that our existing tenants, especially the smaller tenants on which we have built our portfolio, are not reducing their space needs.