BXP - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Executive Summary

• Q2 2025 was solid: revenue rose 2.1% YoY to $868.5M and diluted EPS hit $0.56, with FFO/share of $1.71; EPS and FFO both exceeded company guidance midpoints, driven by a $18.4M gain on sale at 17 Hartwell and stronger portfolio operations.
• Full-year 2025 guidance was raised: EPS to $1.74–$1.82 (midpoint +$0.12) and FFO/share to $6.84–$6.92 (midpoint +$0.02), while Q3 guidance was set at EPS $0.41–$0.43 and FFO/share $1.69–$1.71.
• Leasing momentum continued: 91 leases totaling >1.1M SF; CBD portfolio 89.9% occupied and 92.5% leased; total portfolio 86.4% occupied and 89.1% leased, with 1.3M SF signed but not yet commenced expected to start in 2025–2026.
• Strategic catalyst: BXP launched vertical construction of 343 Madison Avenue (930k SF, targeted delivery late 2029) and executed an LOI with an investment-grade anchor for ~30% of the tower; BXP will buy out its partner’s 45% interest (~$43.5M) in Q3 2025.
• The company highlighted improving demand in premier workplace markets (NY, Back Bay Boston, Reston) and a clear path to occupancy and FFO growth through 2026, balanced against interest-rate sensitivities and life-science leasing headwinds.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• EPS and FFO beats with guidance raise: “FFO per share was $0.05 above our forecast and $0.04 above market consensus... we’re also raising the midpoint of our earnings guidance”.
• Development milestone: “We’re proceeding with full vertical construction of 343 Madison… we have executed a letter of intent with an anchor client for ~30% of the building”.
• Leasing execution and pipeline: 1.1M SF executed in Q2; in-service leased vs. occupied spread widened to 270 bps (1.3M SF signed not yet commenced), enabling visible revenue ramp in H2 2025–2026.

What Went Wrong

• Occupancy dipped 50 bps QoQ to 86.4% due to known Boston lease expiration (360k SF) and early terminations to enable higher-rent backfills; headline occupancy will be temporarily pressured as developments are added in Q3.
• West Coast softness: Life-science demand for wet lab space remains thin; San Francisco traditional office users continue to rationalize even as AI demand grows, resulting in mixed mark-to-market across regions.
• Interest expense outlook: fewer expected Fed cuts vs prior assumptions; BXP added ~$3M to 2025 interest expense in updated guidance (partly offset by lower G&A).

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Q2 2025 BXP Earnings Conference Call. At this time all participants are in the listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker, Helen Han, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Helen Han (VP of Investor Relations)

Good morning and welcome to BXP Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. The press release and supplemental package were distributed last night and furnished on Form 8-K. In the supplemental package, BXP has reconciled all non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure in accordance with Reg. G. If you did not receive a copy, these documents are available in the Investors section of our website at investors.bxp.com. A webcast of this call will be available for 12 months. At this time we would like to inform you that certain statements made during this conference call which are not historical, may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Although BXP believes the expectations reflected in any forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurance that its expectations will be attained.

Factors and risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by forward-looking statements were detailed in yesterday's press release and from time to time in BXP's filings with the SEC. BXP does not undertake a duty to update any forward-looking statements. I'd like to welcome Owen Thomas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Doug Linde, President, and Mike LaBelle, Chief Financial Officer. During the Q &A portion of our call, Ray Ritchey, Senior Executive Vice President, and our regional management teams will be available to address any questions. We ask that those of you participating in the Q and A portion of the call to please limit yourself to one and only one question. If you have an additional query or follow-up, please feel free to rejoin the queue.

I would now like to turn the call over to Owen Thomas for his formal remarks.

Owen Thomas (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you, Helen, and good morning to all of you. Our results in the second quarter demonstrate BXP's continued strong execution and provide further evidence of the property and capital market recovery underway in our sector. Our FFO per share was $0.05 above our forecast and $0.04 above market consensus for the second quarter, primarily driven by improved operations. As a result, we're also raising the midpoint of our earnings guidance for the full year 2025 by $0.02. We completed over 1.1 million square feet of leasing in the quarter, bringing our total leasing in 2025 to 2.2 million square feet. Over the last four quarters, our leasing volume of 5.7 million square feet was 18% higher than the prior four quarters. We continue to increase the preleasing of our development pipeline with 200,000 square feet of development leasing this quarter.

Now, regarding the operating environment, BXP's leasing activity remains vibrant across many, though not all, submarkets. As discussed before, the primary drivers of BXP leasing activity are corporate confidence and the in-person work behavior of our clients. Corporations generally see a favorable environment for their businesses unfolding this year with a pro-growth tax bill recently passed in Congress, less regulation, geopolitical risk relief in certain regions, resolution of U.S. tariff agreements with many important nations, and the possibility of lower short term interest rates as a proxy for corporate health. 2025 S&P 500 earnings growth projections, though revised lower since the beginning of the year, remain healthy at 7% to 9%. Investors are confirming this view with U.S. equity market indices achieving new highs and credit spreads on U.S. investment grade bonds trading at or near 10-year lows. Further, in-person work behaviors continue to improve.

JLL recently completed a study of Fortune 100 firms' office attendance policies. Over the last two years ended the second quarter of 2025, Fortune 100 companies that are fully in the office climbed tenfold from 5% to 54%. Hybrid mandates dropped by nearly half from 78% to 41%, and fully remote policies dropped from 6% to only 1%. These are material shifts that have undoubtedly augmented leasing activity. Return to office behavior is more advanced in our East Coast markets, particularly New York City, and well behind on the West Coast. Moving on to office market conditions, I'll continue to emphasize that the premier workplace segment, defined as roughly the top 10% of buildings in a market and where BXP primarily competes, continues to materially outperform.

The broader office market.

In our five core CBD markets, direct vacancy for premier workplaces is seven and a half percentage points, or 38% less than the broader market, and asking rents for premier workplaces continue to be more than 50% greater than the broader market. Regarding the real estate private equity capital markets, office sales volume increased materially in the second quarter to $14.2 billion, up 80% from the prior quarter and 125% from the second quarter of last year. Financing at scale is increasingly available at tightening spreads for higher quality office assets with WALT, particularly in the CMBS market. Equity investors are also starting to re enter the office sector given improving operating performance in certain markets and attractive asset pricing versus other sectors. There were several notable office transactions completed or committed in the quarter.

In Midtown New York City, 590 Madison is under contract for sale for $1.1 billion or $1,060 a square feet and a 5.2% cap rate. This building was constructed in 1981, is 85% leased, and sold by a pension fund to a local real estate operator with a financial partner. Also in Midtown, a half interest in 1345 Avenue of the Americas was sold at a gross valuation of $1.4 billion or around $740 a square feet. The cap rate is not particularly meaningful given stabilization is several years away and the transaction was facilitated by $850 million CMBS financing. The building was originally built in 1969, is 92% leased, and transacted between investment management firms with the building manager staying in and owning the other half of the asset.

Lastly, in Culver City, California, Entrada was sold for a gross price of $212 million or $675 a square feet and a 7.4% cap rate. This building was constructed recently in 2021, is 75% leased, and transacted between investment management firms, again with the building manager staying in and owning a small.

Stake in the property.

Now let's transition to BXP's capital allocation activities. As discussed on many prior calls, BXP controls what we think is the best positioned, currently actionable office development site in New York City located at 343 Madison Avenue, the building will be a highly amenitized, sustainably designed, 46-story, 930,000 square feet premier workplace with direct escalator access into the Madison Concourse of Grand Central Terminal from the building's lobby. Today we are making several important announcements regarding this project. First, we're proceeding with the project per the terms of our ground lease with the MTA and plan to immediately commence full vertical construction of the building which will allow delivery in late 2029. Site preparation, foundation work, and development of the Grand Central escalator access is well underway having commenced in October 2024.

Second, we have executed a letter of intent with an anchor client for approximately 30% of the building with economics consistent with our investment underwriting. The client is a prestigious investment grade financial institution that will be leasing the lower middle section of the building. We have experienced strong client demand for the project and have active anchor tenant proposals out to six clients representing in total approximately 1.3 million square feet. Negotiations continue with anchor clients for the base of the building and we intend to be patient leasing the upper floors of the project, which we expect will be attractive to smaller users that make leasing commitments closer to the date when they can occupy their new space.

Third, BXP is opting to buy out our 45% equity joint venture partner which we will do no later than the end of this quarter for approximately $44 million at their cost basis. While our partner has been funding its share of predevelopment expenses since 2017, they have decided to prioritize investment in existing as opposed to development assets which better align with their current risk adjusted return objectives. Given the trophy status of the asset and very promising preleasing activity, we believe introducing a new capital partner for an interest in 343 Madison if we elect to do so, is readily achievable. As a reminder, 343 Madison has a total development cost of just under $2 billion including approximately $400 million of imputed capital cost carry and a projected stabilized cash yield on cost of approximately 7.5% to 8% depending on how we ultimately elect to capitalize the project.

The leasing market in Midtown remains very strong with trophy buildings having a vacancy rate of 6.3% and no large blocks of space available in the Plaza district of Park Avenue. As a result, office rents are growing at rates well above inflation and the very few high quality building trades that have been completed were done at cap rates well below our projected development returns. Culminating 13 years of effort by our New York region in securing and entitling the site, we believe 343 Madison will be a core long term holding for BXP and represents a very strong and significant value creation opportunity for BXP shareholders.

Turning to asset sales, we're in various stages of execution for the sale of 10 non income producing assets, both land sites and largely empty buildings that we believe will generate if successful net proceeds of nearly $300 million over the next two years. We're also exploring the sale of a handful of income producing properties that could generate another $300 million in net proceeds, more likely in 2026 than 2025. There is strong demand for housing in the communities where many of our sites and out of service buildings are located, allowing us to create value through re entitlement. Though the process can in select cases take up to two years to complete. Other sites are being sold for industrial or other non office uses. In the aggregate.

We do not expect these sales will be dilutive to BXP's FFO because of the significant portion of non income producing assets. A great example of our creativity in monetizing a non producing asset is 17 Hartwell Avenue in Lexington, Massachusetts which is a 30,000 square feet commercial building built in 1966, vacated in 2024 and recently demolished. We successfully rezoned the property in the town of Lexington to build a 312 unit multifamily building on the 5 acre site and secured an institutional partner to provide both construction financing and 80% of the equity required to build the project. The stick frame construction development will cost $180 million and is projected to deliver a 7.1% yield on cost including land at current market value and capital cost carry upon stabilization in 2028. In terms of economics to BXP, we received $22 million at closing for our land contribution.

We own 20% of the project which will require $10 million of funding from BXP over time and will earn a development fee of more than $4 million. The inferred land value is $70,000 per residential unit or $22 million, which is $733 a square feet for the existing empty commercial building, significantly more than its as is value. In conclusion, Premier Workplace Leasing and capital markets continue to recover from their lows in 2024. Our clients are generally optimistic about their business prospects and are demanding more in person work from their professionals, both creating leasing demand. Further, new construction for office has virtually halted and users are gravitating to higher quality assets with strong sponsorship, the combination creating occupancy and rent growth for many of our assets as we gain market share.

Private equity investors are increasingly taking note of these trends and starting to invest in the office sector. With our current leasing momentum and limited rollover in 2026 and 2027, we expect to gain occupancy, revenue, and FFO in the years ahead and development, deliveries, and potentially acquisitions will provide additional growth. Let me turn over our report to Doug.

Doug Linde (President)

Thanks Owen. Good morning everybody. Hope everyone is staying cool in this rather warm and humid air on the East Coast. As we think about the demand for premier office space across our markets, the pattern and the sources of demand that we've been describing for the last few quarters have really basically continued to sort of go on as we've already talked about specifically on the East Coast submarkets with a concentration of financial and professional services businesses, which is the New York and the Boston CBDs. We've had real demand growth there. Defense services and cybersecurity businesses located in Northern Virginia have continued to weather the potential federal spending cuts and there's been growth there. Biotech demand growth with extensive lab uses continues to be light, while demand from life science clients with needs for high quality office space continue in the urban edge of Boston.

On the West Coast, there's been an improvement in overall demand in San Francisco led by organizations focused on AI, albeit with a large established tech company still largely absent from growth. Venture funding from a deal count continues to be dominated by California, where there are 2.3 times the next state, which is by the way New York. To reinforce the dominance of AI related venture investing, California companies have raised more than $100 billion in first half 2025, which is 10x what was raised by New York City startups. The next largest ecosystem financial service and professional service clients are active, though not showing the same growth that's present on the East Coast. Owen mentioned our 2.2 million square feet of leasing in the first half.

During first half 2025 we leased 810,000 square feet of vacant space and 750,000 square feet of space associated with 2025 expirations, for a total of 1.56 million square feet. Our 2025 plan calls for 4 million square feet of total leasing with 3 million square feetof activity on vacant space and known 2025 expirations. Leasing vacant space and near term expirations will drive improvements to our occupancy over the next 12 to 18 months when we experience very modest expiration. We are on track post 7/1/2025, the end of the second quarter. We have 1.8 million square feet of leases in negotiation compared to 1.1 million square feet at the beginning of the second quarter. If you include our letter of intent at 343 Madison, the number jumps to almost 2.1 million square feet.

Our pipeline covers 575,000 square feet of currently vacant space, 65,000 square feet of known 2025 expirations, and 600,000 square feet of 2026 and 2027 expirations. Additionally, we are engaged in more than 550,000 square feet of client-initiated early lease renewals on leases that expire between 2028 and 2031. We have active dialogue on space that is not yet in lease negotiations totaling about 1 millionsquare feet. BXP's total portfolio occupancy for the second quarter ended at 86.4%, a decline of 50 basis points or 240,000square feet. As previously communicated during our first quarter earnings call as well as our remarks in January, Biogen's 355,000 square feet lease in the Urban Edge portfolio of Boston expired in May 2025, this quarter. We have re-let 45,000 square feet and have 310,000 square feet of space available. There were two other notable declines in our in-service property listings this quarter.

At South of Market in Reston, Meta terminated 51,000 square feet in May. We have already executed a lease for the entire space done this month, but the space was neither occupied nor leased at 6:30 and at 599 Lexington Avenue we early terminated 100,000 square feet of late 2025 expiring space in conjunction with executed leases for the entire square footage. We demolished these floors so they were taken out of occupancy and are shown as leased at 6:30, 2025 but not occupied. Improvements at our other properties offset much of these declines. BXP's total portfolio percentage leased for the second quarter was 89.1%, a decline of only 30 basis points.

As we highlighted last quarter and at our Nareit meetings in June, the difference between leased and occupied square footage has grown again this quarter and now sits at 270 basis points versus 190 basis points on December 31, 2024. 500,000 square feet of this approximately 1.3 million square feet of space is expected to become occupied in 2025, with the bulk of the remaining 800,000 square feet commencing in the back half of 2026. Looking forward, we project the current in-service portfolio to end the year at around 87% occupied, an improvement from where we are today. However, there will be three developments that are being added to the in-service portfolio in the third quarter.

360 Park Avenue South, which is 450,000 square feet, 23% occupied and 28% leased, 1050 Winter Street, which is 162,000 square feet and will be 100% occupied and leased when it is added, and Reston Next Block D, which is square feett, 4% occupied and 95% leased when it is added. If we were to add these properties this quarter, occupancy would drop by about 70 basis points. When we quote our statistics next quarter, you will need to adjust for these additions to gauge the progress of the in-service portfolio. We will be sure to highlight the impact on our occupancy in the third quarter earnings press release. Our development portfolio lease percentage this quarter increased by another 500 basis points to 67%. Office market conditions are pretty consistent with my earlier comments on demand.

Those markets with the strongest demand growth also have the most landlord favorable conditions: Midtown, New York City, the Back Bay of Boston, and Reston, Virginia. What this means is that availability is sparse, rents are increasing, and concessions are either improving or remaining constant. We completed 91 individual transactions this quarter, 236,000 in Boston, 344,000 in New York, 185,000 on the West Coast, and 356,000 in D.C. We had 20 clients expand in the portfolio by a total of 190,000 square feet and only 2 contractions for just over 3,000 square feet. 482,000 square feet of the leasing this quarter represented new clients in the portfolio and the rest were either renewals and or extensions. The overall mark to market of leases signed this quarter on a cash basis was flat with modest increases in Boston and New York and slight decreases on the West Coast in D.C.

we only executed three leases in the in-service portfolio that were greater than 50,000 square feet this quarter. The second generation rent change in the leasing statistics this quarter represents only about 400,000 square feet and if you are curious, the L.A. numbers are skewed by a subsidized rent at the Santa Monica Business Park for a secondary school that was destroyed by the Palisades fire where we did a lease. Our activity in Boston this quarter was very granular and spread around the portfolio. We completed five renewal and expansions in the CBD, both in the Back Bay and the Financial District. Last quarter I described life science client activity without the need for lab infrastructure.

The first of these transactions was executed in the first quarter at 180 City Point and we are in lease negotiations with two additional clients for another 76,000 square feet also at 180 City Point. In addition, we have discussions going on with another group of companies that fit the same profile at our other Urban Edge assets. The economics of doing an office transaction on raw space even though the building has been purpose built for lab and has the infrastructure are far superior to a lab transaction today given the elevated tenant improvements necessary to compete in the lab market. We are in negotiations however with one true lab user for a second-generation lab building again in the Urban Edge portfolio. In New York, our leasing activity was focused on the Midtown East portfolio this quarter.

The highlight was leasing six floors at 510 Madison Avenue where we have opened an enhanced amenity offering including a new outdoor space. We also completed a renewal at 399 Park Avenue and two law firm expansions, one at the General Motors Building and another at 205th Avenue. The 550,000 square feet of client-initiated extensions mentioned earlier are concentrated in our Midtown portfolio at 360 Park Avenue South. We are currently in negotiations with two floors for approximately 47,000 square feet. One of those floors actually got executed last night, late breaking, so we're now at 33% leased there. In Princeton, we completed over square feet of leasing with 13 clients, including 76,000 square feet of new clients and expansion. Interestingly, all the growth in Princeton is from office requirements for life science users.

In San Francisco, at Embarcadero Center, we completed about 100,000 square feet of law firm transactions including one 65,000 square feet renewal with no reduction in space square footage. Many of the traditional office users have continued to rationalize their space, which has led to little if any growth in the San Francisco CBD traditional demand. Incremental leasing is going to be all about tenant relocations. Our largest block of available space in San Francisco is at 680 Folsom where we are finishing up an amenities improvement including a new outdoor roof space there as well. During the first six months of the year we have had 11 tours of the property. In the month of July we had seven additional. Virtually every potential client is a technology company working in the AI space.

The granular absorption of space is very much underway and the south of Mission buildings are great options for these clients. Our listing agent at 680 Folsom provided us a list of 37 AI related tenants in the market, with aggregate demand growth of almost 1.2 million square feet active in the market today. Before I conclude my remarks, I do want to discuss tariffs as they relate to construction activities, particularly because we are in the process of establishing our GMP contract for 343 Madison Avenue. Subcontractors are actively bidding the job after taking into consideration the sectorial tariffs associated with non domestic suppliers and the recent preliminary country agreements. To date, we have either awarded or are negotiating bids for three separate components of the job and in each case we are obtaining meaningful savings relative to our last general contractor's estimate.

Given the overall slowdown in construction activity in Manhattan, there is enough subcontractor interest to provide savings in spite of the tariffs. Remember, the construction is a composition of labor, materials and profit. Let me hand over the call to Mike to talk about our earnings speech.

Mike LaBelle (CFO)

Great, thanks, Doug. Good morning. Today I'm going to talk about our second quarter earnings results as well as the update to full year 2025 earnings guidance and as Owen and Doug both described, we delivered a really strong second quarter earnings surpassed expectations and we're raising our full year guidance. For the second quarter we reported funds from operation of $1.71 per share that is $0.05 ahead of the midpoint of our guidance range and $0.04 above consensus estimates for the quarter. Our portfolio generated approximately $0.04 of the outperformance. A penny came from earlier than anticipated revenue recognition on leases which was very granular and spread across the portfolio. We generated an additional penny per share from higher than anticipated service income from our clients primarily in Boston and New York, which tracks the higher space utilization on the East Coast.

The last 2 cents of outperformance in the portfolio came from lower than projected operating expenses. Lower expenses partially came from lower real estate taxes resulting from successfully negotiating reductions in our assessed values. We do anticipate about a penny per share of the expense reduction that related to repair and maintenance costs will be deferred into the third quarter and will not benefit our full year results. Our G&A expenses also came in lower than we expected resulting in a penny per share better earnings performance. The savings came from lower compensation expense due to capitalized wages and savings in professional fees versus our budget. Now turning to the increase in our full year 2025 guidance, we're increasing the projected contribution from our same property portfolio from the second quarter strong performance combined with our ongoing leasing activity that Doug described, which continues to be aligned with our expectations.

We now expect that the NOI from our same property portfolio will increase in 2025 by about 0.25% at the midpoint from 2024. On a cash basis, we expect the same property portfolio NOI to grow 1.25% at a midpoint year over year. This represents an improvement of approximately 25 basis points from our guidance last quarter or about $0.03 per share at the.

Midpoint of our range.

We continue to expect our in-service occupancies to start to improve in the second half of the year excluding changes to the portfolio. As Doug detailed, we will be adding several development properties into service in the third quarter that will reduce our headline occupancy rate temporarily. We are increasing our assumption for interest expense on our floating rate debt this quarter due to the expectation for fewer interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve. Our prior guidance included the potential for three rate cuts starting in the third quarter and we've now reduced this to a maximum of two cuts both in the fourth quarter. The result is approximately $3 million of projected incremental interest expense for the year or $0.02 per share of higher expense in our G&A.

We recognized a penny of lower expense in the second quarter and we anticipate that savings flowing through to the full year in our FFO guidance. In summary, we have increased our guidance range to $6.84 to $6.92 per share. This represents an increase of $0.04 per share at the low end and $0.02 per share at the midpoint of our range. The increase at the midpoint is from $0.03 of better same property NOI, $0.01 of lower G&A expense, partially offset by $0.02 of higher interest expense. Overall, we had a great quarter highlighted by strong leasing activity at 343 Madison catalyzing its development start, more than 1.1 million square feet of leases executed in the quarter and an FFO beat and guidance raise driven by stronger core portfolio operations. The last thing I would like to remind everyone of is our upcoming Investor Day.

It will be held in New York City on September 8th from 10:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M., at 599 Lexington Avenue with a cocktail event at 6:00 P.M. at our Coco's Dining Club on the 37th floor of the GM Building. For those of you who are really ambitious, you can join Owen and James for the 6:00 A.M. fun run through.

Central Park before the conference.

We already have over 100RSVPs and it will be a highly informative event with leadership from across our regions attending. If you have not responded and you would like to attend, please RSVP to the invite or you can send Helen a note. That completes our formal remarks. Operator, can you open the line for questions?

Operator (participant)

Thank you, sir. As a reminder, to ask a question, you would need to press star one one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. We ask that you please limit your questions to no more than one, but feel free to go back into the queue and if time permits, we'll be happy to take your follow-up questions at that time. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster, and I am sure our first question comes from the line of Steve Sakwa from Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Steve Sakwa (Senior Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Yes, thanks.

Good morning.

Thanks for all the detail and some.

Of the additional information on 343 Madison. I was just wondering if you could provide kind of an outlook for the unlevered return that you expect on that project. I realize when Norges was your partner.

Maybe fees were being factored in, but.

Just sort of how are you thinking?

About that return on an unlevered basis. Of all the tenants that you're talking to, are many of them new to the BXP portfolio or are a number of the clients you're talking to kind of existing BXP tenants?

Owen Thomas (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah, Steve, so, you know, we think about this on a yield basis and I quoted those numbers as 7.5% to 8%. That's an unlevered cash yield upon delivery. You know, I think if you overlaid that and looked at an IRR, obviously the exit cap would be very important, but it would certainly be a high single digit number. If you put a construction loan on the property, the IRR levered would depend on one, what's the BXP cap when you sold it, but you're probably in the mid to high.

Teens on a levered basis.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. I show our next question comes from the line of Jamie Feldman from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Jamie Feldman (Managing Director and Head of Real Estate Investment Trust Research)

Great.

Thanks for taking my question. Filling in for Blaine here. I just want to get your thought.

You know, you gave a lot of.

Color on, you know, what tenants are thinking, where they want space, AI clearly a big driver of demand in San Francisco.

You know, you have a view across.

You know, many of the largest across the country and talk to a lot of tenants. We'd love to get your thoughts on, you know, the impact of AI, where you think it's a net demand driver, where you think it's actually going to shrink demand? What are companies saying about their space needs going forward and just what their labor force looks like going forward as it's implemented more and more?

Owen Thomas (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah, so I'll take a first crack at that. You know, we've been starting to say and talk about the impact of AI and frankly have been saying that we think it's actually something that's a lot more important than the work from home phenomena. My guess is we're going to have more conversations about this in the quarters ahead. Our basic premise, and we have spent time studying this with our board, with outside experts and so forth, but our basic premise is we think that there will be job creation at the top of the intellectual pyramid in the workforce, meaning those companies that are industry leaders will be creating AI products, will be using AI products and we will experience growth in demand from those companies and some of which will be startups.

I mean, Doug talked about the extensive AI demand that we're starting to see in San Francisco and all of that.

Are newly created jobs.

There is a lot of discussion that we're aware of out in the market right now from CEOs in lots of different sectors about all the efficiencies that we're getting, that they're getting from AI. We haven't seen an impact yet from those companies. No one's come to us. We're reducing our space because of AI. That all being said, could that happen in the future? Yes, it's possible. I think where jobs are going to be reduced are going to be more in the processing type of work. Those are the kinds of jobs that can be automated. I think that that's where AI applications are going to allow companies to save money. Our premise is as a result, that we think that the top of the intellectual pyramid and where we see the most job creation are going to be in those cities with the deepest talent pools.

Frankly those are the gateway markets where we operate, the Bay Area, New York City, Boston and so forth. I think the job destruction is going to occur more in markets that are more value markets. Space is cheaper, the workforce is more doing back office work as opposed to front office work and that is less. I think that also, that concept also manifests itself in the quality of the buildings. Our strategy is to be at the top of the pyramid from a quality standpoint. We want to have industry leading clients that are leasing our properties. We don't have as much back office uses in our buildings because most of our buildings aren't necessarily, people aren't leasing them because they're cheap, they're leasing them because they're very high quality. That's at a very high level way, the way we see things going forward.

Doug Linde (President)

Yes. Jamie, I would just add the following. From an empirical perspective, our average lease length this quarter was 9.4 years. You know, the lease that we're negotiating now at 343 Madison is a 20 year lease. The clients that are signing up for space now are not doing it on a short term basis with an expectation that they're going to no longer need the space, AKA they're going to be reducing their headcount. That's just sort of a fact pattern. I do think it is fair to acknowledge that there are what I would refer to as a number of established technology companies whose CEOs have come out and said that we think our job growth is going to either slow down or go in the negative direction. We've seen layoffs from companies like Meta, Microsoft, and Google over the past year or so.

The question will be whether there will be an incremental addition of those companies that are in this AI field that are going to take up the gap associated with the reductions in the headcount from those types of organizations. If in fact there is no longer the same need for coders, for software engineers at those types of traditional companies, what will the world look like for people looking for the kinds of skills needed for the AI companies that are now being formed? As I said, there are 37 of these companies in the market right now. I can't tell you if one or two or 10 are going to become unicorns and have a real need for significant numbers of employees. There's a meaningful amount of growth going on. In that sector.

It's just much more granular than it was in terms of what we've experienced in the sort of 2012-2019 period of time when all of the growth that we were seeing across the entire country from a demand perspective was coming from those quote unquote tech titans.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. I show our next question comes from the line of John Kim from BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

John Kim (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Thank you. On 343 Madison, you disclosed $390 million of capitalized interest at the project. I'm wondering if you can clarify if that's capitalized interest going forward. In terms of financing the project, you discussed $600 million of asset sales. I was wondering if you could discuss your other options and your preference in terms of finding another JV partner, construction loan, or if an equity raise is on the table for you.

Mike LaBelle (CFO)

That's two questions. We'll answer them both.

John Kim (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Thank you.

Mike LaBelle (CFO)

So you know, capitalized interest for this project, we always impute capitalized interest in all of our development budgets that are on our development pipeline based upon, you know, a blended cost of equity and debt that we anticipate. And so for this property, you know, we're assuming a blended rate of around 7.5% for the four year development and kind of lease up period beyond that. That's how we come up with that number. What the actual capitalized interest will be at the end of the day based on how we capitalize it actually may be less than that. Again, depending on how we end up capitalizing it. With regard to funding 343 and funding any growth that we have, we have a lot of different sources.

The 343 project is a four year time horizon and if you look at the ramp up of the costs, most of the costs really don't start to ramp up until late in 2026, kind of 2027, 2028. We have time to address the funding needs for that project in specific. As with any funding decision and you know we've described this previously, we have multiple sources of capital to fund our growth. We talked about pursuing asset sales, and mentioned that we can certainly raise private equity or we could raise public equity, we can reset the dividend and we can use either property specific mortgage, construction debt or corporate debt in addition to the excess operating cash flow that we generate. We have a lot of different opportunities and as I said, we have time to kind of select which combination of these we will use.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. I share our next question comes from the line of Nicholas Yulico from Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Nicholas Yulico (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Thanks.

I was hoping to just hear a.

Little bit more about the mark to.

Market you reported this quarter. You know, I know this is on the number and the sup is on commencements, but it did mark to market looked a little bit worse than last quarter even in like New York. Maybe you just talk about like what drove that and then from a real time leasing standpoint how the numbers could be different on the re leasing spreads. Thanks.

Doug Linde (President)

Yes.

Nick, like I said, I gave you the number for the leases that we signed this quarter and this quarter the numbers were slightly up, meaning call it small single digits in Boston and New York and they were slightly down in Washington, D.C. and on the West Coast. That is the today number in terms of the space that we pushed forward and actually got executed this quarter. In the numbers that were in the statistics that are reported in the supplemental, first of all, it is only 400,000 square feet of space, so it is not the entirety of the leasing that would commence this quarter. In Boston there was a 44,000 square feet deal at the space that was expiring from Biogen. It was an as is deal, so there were no TI's associated with it.

Obviously, when you have no transaction costs, your rent will be reflected in that. In New York City we had a couple of 15-year leases in the lower portions of the building expiring which we re-let to another client, and so there was a natural increase over that period of time. There was a slight downturn there. In San Francisco, the majority of the leasing was either at Gateway, which has some distress associated with it relative to life science demand, and leases that we did in Mountain View in our R&D spaces. There I can tell you that there in fact has been a reduction in rental rates. I mean, we were as much as, call it, $4.50 or $5 per square feet per month, and today we are doing deals in the mid threes. There has been a reduction in rents there.

Again, very little in the way of transaction costs. In D.C. there were a number of very low TI deals that also impacted the number. Unfortunately, it is very much a question of what exactly is coming online in the quarter. I would not read much into where those numbers were. I explained the dramatic negative in the stuff that was done in Los Angeles.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. I share. Our next question comes from the line of Jana Galan from Bank of America Securities. Please go ahead.

Jana Galan (Research Analyst)

Thank you. Good morning. One more on 343 Madison. Can you remind us of the terms of the MTA ground lease?

Doug Linde (President)

Hilary, do you want to take that one?

Hilary Spann (EVP of New York Region)

Sure. The terms of the MTA ground lease are basically a 99 year ground lease and the company has the opportunity to move forward with this. There was a termination right that needed to be exercised by July 31st. We have said that we are not exercising that because we're moving forward. As we move forward with the lease, the lease itself has very knowable and documented increases in payments. Over time, we think that that makes it a really attractive lease for us to underwrite, both from the perspective of tenant interest and from the perspective of financing.

Mike LaBelle (CFO)

One of the things I think that's important in this ground lease that may be different from some other ground leases in New York City is that there's no reset associated with market valuation estimates in the future. As Hilary said, there are increases that are basically known or related to the performance of the property, not the performance of the overall market values.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. I show our next question comes from the line of Michael Goldsmith from UBS. Please go ahead.

Michael Goldsmith (Research Analyst)

Good morning. Thanks a lot for taking my question. On the guidance, you beat on the second quarter earnings, but only took the bottom end of the annual range up. Can you just talk a little bit about the timing of the shift? Seems like it is a little bit more fourth quarter weighted than third quarter. Just trying to understand kind of the cadence of earnings through the back half of the year. Thank you.

Mike LaBelle (CFO)

Sure. Thanks, Michael. So yeah, you're correct. We increased the bottom end. You know, the way we build our guidance right is we have a base model and then we have kind of a list of things that are kind of underway or could happen. Some of those could happen. Things happen in the quarter. We were able to increase our bottom end. As I mentioned, most of it was in the portfolio. The reason that the full year guidance is not increased as much as the quarterly beat is because we're giving back a little bit of the expense savings in the second quarter into the third quarter and we have a little bit higher interest expense that we expect later in the year. In the third quarter, our seasonal operating expenses are always highest. It's the hottest, as Doug mentioned, it's hot out.

It is the hottest time frame in the location for many of our assets. Our utilities expenses are higher. The third quarter will seasonally be a lower FFO than the fourth quarter because the fourth quarter operating expenses will be less. That makes up about $0.05 quarter to quarter if you look at what our guidance is. The other impact is the occupancy ramp that we expect later this year. Most of it will have more of an impact in the fourth quarter than it does in the third quarter. So our property NOI should be higher.

In the fourth quarter.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. I show our next question comes from the line of Caitlin Burrows from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Caitlin Burrows (VP)

Hi. Good morning everyone. You mentioned a number of funding sources for 343 Madison. I realize you kind of already talked about it, but as a potential follow-up to that, you mentioned a dividend reset was one of them. I realize it could happen, it might not. Based on, I guess, your taxable income today, how much would you be able to reduce the dividend if you wanted? To the extent you do have that flexibility, what would make you wait rather than do that sooner?

Mike LaBelle (CFO)

We have maintained a steady dividend for several years now, even though the current dividend has been higher than our taxable income during that time frame. That is why we are putting it in as a list of potential funding sources, as you mentioned, Caitlin. The other thing I would say about our dividend is it has consistently been covered by our FAD, which is the reason we kept it stable. Even though we have had external growth that has been going on and funding needs going on. We have not made any decisions. You can see our reported return of capital for 2024, which I think was about $0.41 a share. That was our return of capital or overfunding in 2024. We also were able to carry over our full fourth quarter dividend into 2025, which is $0.98. That will give you some sense as to the size.

Obviously we need some amount of carry forward. Right. That is not going to go to zero. With respect to timing, as I said, we have plenty of time to make these decisions and we have not made any decisions at this point on the dividend.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. I show our next question comes from the line of Vikram Malhotra from Mizuho. Please go ahead.

Vikram Malhotra (Senior Real Estate Investment Trust Analyst)

Morning.

Thanks for taking the questions.

I just want to clarify two comments you made, I guess it's first on 343 you outlined 7.5% initial yield. Do you mind just giving us a sense of like what rents broadly are you targeting say compared to One Vanderbilt just, you know, $200+, just maybe give us a broad sense of what you hope to achieve and how you get to that 7% yield, meaning there are other fee streams or anything else baked in? The second clarification you mentioned, occupancy trajectory, I just want to clarify, does that your comments, does it suggest you end up towards kind of the.

Lower end of the range or you.

Know, 80% to 86% by year end.

Thanks.

Owen Thomas (Chairman and CEO)

I'll answer 343. Turn it over to Doug on the occupancy. On the rents for 343, our assumption is that in the lower part of the building we're in the mid to upper one hundreds and at the top of the building we're in the mid to upper two hundreds per square feet gross. The average rent roughly throughout the property is in the low 200. The pre lease that we have, the 30% client, where we have a letter of intent for a lease, is in line with the economics that we assumed for this project. If you put all that, you put those rents into the model and you use the costs as we have outlined, including the carry, the yield on cost is roughly 7.5% unleveraged and that's to the project.

I quoted a 7.5%-8% range because if we bring in a capital partner into the project, our yields go up somewhat because we're able to put in less capital and earn some fees for all the property and investment services that we provide the partner. That's the basics of how the 343 economics work.

Doug Linde (President)

On our occupancy. The portfolio in-service as it sits today we believe will end the year around 87% occupied and obviously significantly higher leased. We are going to add these three assets in the third quarter and those assets will have an impact of about 70 basis points of reduction in the overall portfolio, as we reported at the end of the year, based upon where those buildings are currently leased. Of those assets, 360 Park Avenue South is the one that has sort of the most amount of available space in it and unlikely it will be occupied by the end of the year. We may get a floor or two additionally, but not incrementally more. The Reston Next asset is going to be leased in late 2026, early 2027, occupied. It's already been leased. Similarly, I said where 1050 was.

It's kind of like that's going to be the net new portfolio as we exit the third quarter. I don't want people to.

Be.

Surprised by a reduction in our in-service portfolio because our in-service portfolio is changing by the addition of these developments. The in-service portfolio as it sits today is going to have an increase in occupancy as we move to the end of the year.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. I show our next question comes from the line of Omotayo Okusanya from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Omotayo Okusanya (Senior Research Analyst)

Yes, good

morning, everyone.

Just curious about your thoughts on the emerging mayoral race in New York City. If we do end up with Mamdani as mayor, how do you think that kind of changes regulation as it impacts kind of CRE development in New York City? How do you guys kind of think about preparing for that?

Owen Thomas (Chairman and CEO)

Yes.

Hey, why don't I take a first crack at this? And Hilary, please jump in on anything that you'd like to add. Look, I think we acknowledge that some of the policies articulated by candidate Mamdani are not particularly constructive for commercial real estate. A few things I would mention: one, the election. He won the primary. The election has not occurred yet. I think his election is a real possibility, but it hasn't happened yet. The second thing I think that's important is the system in New York, due to the 1970s financial crisis, is that New York State, headquartered in Albany, obviously has significant controls over the operations and.

Governance of New York City.

Specifically, the state controls the MTA, the Port Authority and various other agencies in the city. The state also has approval rights over many matters that are important to business, such as local tax. My guess is that some of the policies of candidate Mamdani won't be supported at the state level, particularly things like tax increases. The only last thing I would say is New York is a force in and of itself. It is a vibrant city. It has continued to excel through many different mayors with different political stances on lots of different topics. My strong bet is that New York will continue to thrive regardless of the election outcome. Hilary, what did I miss?

Hilary Spann (EVP of New York Region)

I would just confirm what you're saying, Owen, and just point to the fact that we have investment grade credit tenant committing to a 20 year term at 343 Madison Avenue as evidence that the businesses that are successful in New York City plan beyond the length of a mayoral term or two for their future success. I think they're looking out, you know, much farther than the next four or eight years.

Doug Linde (President)

Good point.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. I show our next question in the queue comes from the line of Anthony Paolone from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Anthony Paolone (Senior Analyst)

Thank you.

Mike, you talked about just the various options you have for raising capital, but maybe can you step back and just give us a sense, the over eight times leverage? Where do you want that to be? I know you have time before you have to spend some of this money, but I guess why wait and perhaps pull some of these levers if in fact you want that leverage to be lower than the eight plus times over time?

Mike LaBelle (CFO)

You know, we've talked many times about our leverage and how we think about current leverage and pro forma leverage. Right. You know, we believe that our, you know, the company, our target, I guess for the company is somewhere in the mid sixes to the mid sevens and that's been very consistent over a long period of time. I do expect our leverage is going to continue to move up for the next couple of quarters. We are delivering 290 Benny Street in the middle of next year. It's 100% leased and it delivers substantial EBITDA to the company and it will act to counteract that and reduce leverage a little bit. We also have the other developments that Doug talked about that we'll be leasing up over time and providing EBITDA. The last thing is occupancy improvement.

Occupancy improvement over the next 18-24 months can be very powerful because it's going to generate a lot of EBITDA if we can achieve our business plan and bring our leverage down into our desired range. We talk about asset sales. Owen described $600 million of asset sales we're working on right now and that will further reduce our leverage. We are already working on things.

Right.

That will moderate our leverage and we're thinking about what the future leverage looks like and getting back to that range.

That.

We think is the best range.

For the company to operate at.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. I share our next question in the queue comes from Dylan Burzinski from Green Street. Please go ahead.

Dylan Burzinski (Senior Analyst)

Hi guys. Thanks for taking the question. I guess just touching on that last point on occupancy. It sounds like occupancy has bottomed and is expected to improve throughout the rest of this year. You obviously mentioned that the pipeline remains strong. Leasing activity year to date is tracking above the initial expectations that you guys set forth at the beginning of the year.

It just sounds like the overall.

Narrative and demand backdrop continues to remain strong. In our view it seems like there's a clear path here to BXP's in-service portfolio level occupancy as it.

Sits today to get to call it.

90% plus occupancy in short order. Does that seem fair? I mean, I guess is there anything we might be missing as we sort of think about that trajectory here over the next 18 months?

Doug Linde (President)

It's entirely fair and it's what our expectation is in terms again, we have to be careful about what the exact timing is. You said over the next period of time and I think that is absolutely true. We have again we've got leases that are signed that have yet to commence. The majority of our activity going forward currently in the pipeline is around our available and our near term expirations, AKA 2026 and 2027. If you look at the expiration schedules that we have that are outlined, they're very low.

If we're able to maintain a modest reduction in the amount of leasing that we're doing in 2025 into 2026 into 2027, we're going to be having a meaningful increase in our occupancy.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. I share our next question comes from the line of Alexander Goldfarb from Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Alexander Goldfarb (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Hey, good morning. Morning down there. Just want to go back to the asset sales and maybe I missed at the front. I had multiple calls going. I think you outlined $600 million of sales including $300 million of net proceeds from income producing. As we think about income producing assets sold later this year, what would be the earnings hit on an annualized basis? Just trying to understand as we think into next year. Also, Mike, to your point on deleveraging, if you're losing income, obviously that also affects leverage. Just want to understand the income FFO impact of planned asset sales.

Mike LaBelle (CFO)

The.

$600 million that we're talking about, Alex, I'm not going to give you an exact number for this because these things are still in process being thought about and certainly not finalized. But the income producing that we're talking about combined with the land that we're talking about, if you utilize that money to reduce the borrowing that the company needs to do it is not dilutive to the company.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. I show our next question comes from the line of Upal Rana from KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Upal Rana (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks for taking my question. Could you give us an update on 360 Park Avenue leasing? Doug, you mentioned you got a lease done last night. So the project's now 33% leased. Maybe you can give a sense of the current pipeline as it stands today.

Doug Linde (President)

Sure.

I'll give you a numerical view and I'll let Hilary talk about what's going on from a market perspective. We have two additional leases in progress. As I said, one of them got executed last night. That brings us to 33% leased. There's another that's actually on a piece of space that I believe is close to being completed or will be completed in 2025. That will bring us up by another, call it 8 or 5 to 6 basis points. We'll be closer to 40% at the end of calendar year 2025, assuming no other leasing gets done. Hilary, you can talk about your pipeline.

Hilary Spann (EVP of New York Region)

Thanks, Doug. I would say that the pipeline for Midtown South has been thinner than Midtown proper north of 42nd Street, but we are seeing consistent activity for the property. We've seen tenants as large as 200,000 square feet looking at the property in recent weeks. As Doug pointed out, we've also got a couple of single floor tenants that are looking at the property. There has been a notable, I would call it micro trend of businesses that are in the AI space looking at the building. Both the lease that was executed last night and the one that Doug is talking about for future execution are businesses that are in that space. It is interesting to see that New York is starting to see a pickup in those businesses leasing space here on the heels of the demand that we've seen out on the West Coast.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. I show our next question in the queue comes from the line of Ronald Kamdem from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Ronald Kamdem (Head of Commercial Real Estate Research)

Hey, just back on 343.

Just the building has, I think the floors are a little bit maybe smaller.

Than some of the typical sort of.

Trophy buildings that we're used to. Just curious if that lends to sort of a different type of tenant base as you're leasing up the portfolio. My quick follow up is just the development pipeline showed 651 Gateway stabilization pushed out. Just any comments on that assets and just life science leasing in general.

Thanks.

Doug Linde (President)

I'll answer the last two of your three questions and I'll let Hilary answer the first. 651 Gateway, you know, again we're going by Alexandria's accounting for when it quote unquote comes into service. We would have already put into service based upon our accounting, but that's the way they do things. I would say the leasing activity for pure lab out in that part of the world is relatively quiet still. There are, I would say, more maker tenants looking at space that was "designed for lab" in the sort of northern Peninsula market than there are pure lab tenants looking for blocks of space right now, interestingly. There are a few "office companies" that are looking for space down there as well.

I'd say that the lab market in itself for a, you know, we want to be in a pure wet lab is a pretty thin market still in the, in sort of the Bay Area. The other question was 343 plate, right? 343. I'll let Hilary answer that one.

Hilary Spann (EVP of New York Region)

Sure. The floor plates at 343 Madison range from about 27,000 square feet at the base to 22,000 at the top. You know, I think there's a case to be made that that lends itself to tenants that are in the 200,000-250,000 square feet range. But honestly, we have 1,500,000 square feet of LOIs that we've issued and some of those prospective clients are as large as 700,000 square feet. I don't think 700,000 square feet is a likely size, particularly not given what we've just done. We have seen real demand in the, call it, 300,000-400,000 square feet range. I think that what that really points to is that there is such a lack of premier workplaces availability in the Park Avenue and Madison Avenue submarkets that really high quality investment grade firms that are looking for really high quality space do not have that many options.

343 is extremely well positioned to capture a range of client sizes. I think, as Owen noted in his initial comments, you know, we continue to think that it makes sense to work on leasing the base of the building. I think, you know, we'll be patient with regards to the upper floors, because I do think those will tend to lend themselves to clients that are single, double, maybe three floor lease profiles.

Operator (participant)

Thank you.

Doug Linde (President)

Before you go on, I just want to add one thing to sort of what Hilary was just describing. A bunch of people have called Mike or Helen or myself and said, who's the tenant? Who's the tenant for 343? As we said, we're not going to announce who the tenant is. We're going to let the tenant announce their decision to their employees, and then it will become public. People are also asking the question, oh, is it someone in your portfolio? I would just point everyone to the rents that are in our existing portfolio in Midtown. The average rents in the buildings are, I believe, if you look at 601 or 599 or 399, about $100 a square feet.

I think, Hilary, you would love to get some space back in those buildings if you could, to lease in this market, which is obviously something that is not going to happen in the short term. Anybody who's sort of concerned about where the tenant might be coming from and if it's one of our portfolio tenants, if that were the case, it would be a great opportunity for us to release space that is dramatically under leased. As Owen said, the average rents at 343 are in the mid-200s. So we're talking about huge upside potential there.

Hilary Spann (EVP of New York Region)

To Doug's point, we have existing clients in our Midtown portfolio that do not have room to expand and who would like to expand. I would view getting space back at any of our Midtown assets as a net positive for the company, not only from the perspective of being able to increase rents, but also from the perspective of being able to accommodate important clients who want to expand with us.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. I show our next question comes from Peter Abramowitz from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Peter Abramowitz (Senior VP and Equity Research Analyst)

Yes, thank you for taking the question. I know, Doug, you touched a little bit on it with your comments around some of the AI tenants in San Francisco, but just wondering if you could talk about kind of, you know, the portfolio by Embarcadero and demand that you're seeing in that part of the city versus some of the assets south of Mission. South of Mission seem to be kind of picking up and participating in that recovery. Just curious how that's kind of unfolding.

Doug Linde (President)

Let me answer in the general and I'll let Rod take the time to answer in the specifics. The south of Mission market is clearly getting better and there is clearly a AI related resurgence from a demand perspective because of the growth. That is unequivocal.

Rod, you can talk about the demand that we're seeing in and around Embarcadero Center as well as the other parts of the market.

Rod Diehl (EVP of West Coast Regions)

Yeah. So definitely demand around Embarcadero Center has been what it has traditionally been, which is mostly the financial services and traditional companies. I mean, that's who we are leased to and that's who we see most of the demand from. We're getting good activity outside of Embarcadero from the AI companies Doug mentioned previously. The interest that we've seen down at the 680 Folsom block of space, which is our largest block, a little over 200,000 square feet. You know, the central downtown around Embarcadero Center has been thriving with the traditional companies and we've been happy to do deals with some of these that have been in the market. We're going to continue to do that. We have an active program of doing spec suites, prebuilt spaces, and that's been successful and we're continuing to do that both at Embarcadero and at 535 Mission.

I would just add too, in terms of just sort of the overall vibrancy of the downtown around Embarcadero Center, we just recently completed eight retail transactions. I mean, that's a lot of deals to get done in a short amount of time. These are very much homegrown companies, little small businesses. We're bringing them in to Embarcadero Center and it's creating a much more enjoyable place for our tenants and it's getting great attention. We're very pleased about that.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Brendan Lynch from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Brendan Lynch (Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks for taking my question. You mentioned clients starting renewal discussions for 2028 to 2031 one already. When you look back at past cycles, how common is it for tenants to start negotiations so early?

Owen Thomas (Chairman and CEO)

I would say that it is common for larger tenants, particularly in certain of our CBD markets, to get out there two to three years in advance if they want to consider new development. To the extent that the market is soft, they tend to wait longer and longer. I think it's an indication of the tightness of the market that a company that has X hundred thousand square feet of space would be considering doing early renewal or extensions prior to getting into that shorter window. It's all part of the same phenomenon, which is we are in a very supply constrained market in certain of our sub markets.

In the Back Bay of Boston, where you saw us do a year ago a deal and last year a deal with two large financial institutions, now my guess is you'll see some of the same thing happening in our portfolio in Midtown Manhattan because it's really hard to find a 300,000 or 400,000 or 500,000 square feet piece of space or even 200,000 square feet piece of space and not be able to go into a new building given the challenges associated with lease encumbrances, etc. Tenants are, you know, I'd say thinking hard about what they need to do to protect their footprints, you know, over a, in a "improving market".

Operator (participant)

Thank you. I show our next question comes from the line of Nicholas Yulico from Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Nicholas Yulico (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Hi, thanks for the follow up. Just going back to 343 Madison. I just wanted to ask, in terms of the funding, I know you've talked about, you have a lot of different levers to pull, but it's also now a bigger funding amount than might have previously been expected because of the existing JV partner not being there anymore. I guess what I'm wondering is, do you guys have a timing standpoint from when you plan to give an update about which direction you're looking to go in terms of how exactly you're going to capitalize the project? Is this something that you're going to lay out at the investor day or any sort of sense of timing on an update there would be helpful?

Thanks.

Mike LaBelle (CFO)

Look, Nick, you know what I mentioned was that we do not have a lot of costs going out this year and early next year. I think we are going to be focusing on this, a high level of focus over the next couple of quarters and cementing what we want to do. I think with respect to raising private equity, I think we would like to get this lease signed and we have other proposals that we are working on for the rest of the base of the building. If we can get some of those going, I think that creates a very more, even more enticing package for that. I think that that part of it could align with finishing up that work.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. I show our next question comes from the line of Caitlin Burrows from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Caitlin Burrows (VP)

Hi, sorry, two more follow ups. You were just talking about how you would like to get space back in Midtown because of the positive mark to market, which just makes sense. I was wondering if you could kind of square that with the reported leasing spreads from the quarter being down. Were those just specific spaces or something else I'm not appreciating? As you think about guidance for the full year, it seems like you are expecting a pickup in the fourth quarter. I was wondering if that is solely related to occupancy pickup or if there's something kind of more nuanced like gains on land sales or something included. Thanks.

Doug Linde (President)

Okay, I'll try and do the first part of your follow up question and I'll let Mike do the second part. Regarding mark to markets in our Manhattan portfolio in the quarter, that is in the supplemental, there were a bunch of smaller transactions at 767 at the lower portions of the building where we aggregated space and did leasing. Those rents were coming off relatively high rents for that space. That's where most of the negative mark to market came from. If I were to look today at the deals that are being done in Midtown Manhattan, as I said earlier, we have a positive mark to market, including at that same building. I would expect that over the next few quarters when I'm reporting what's going on, that number will continue to get higher and higher. From my perspective, the improvement in rents in Midtown Manhattan is real.

We are seeing double digit annual increases in asking rents in our portfolio.

In Midtown

Mike LaBelle (CFO)

On the kind of ramp up of our FFO into the fourth quarter, as I mentioned, part of this is due to expenses being higher in the third and the fourth, but part of it is also due to our expectation that we're going to be growing occupancy. Yes, I would say a meaningful portion of that is that we expect that the NOI from the portfolio is going to be higher in the fourth quarter. With regard to asset sales, we don't expect to have any of these standing property, existing property asset sales to occur in 2025. I wouldn't expect that we will have some of the land sales should occur later in, later in 2025. That will kind of reduce, you know, we'll either earn more interest income or reduce interest expense a little bit on that.

It's going to be later in the year so I don't think it has a super meaningful impact.

Doug Linde (President)

Mike's numbers also include the occupancy ramp up as we move into the year. The square footage I said is likely. It's going to start and become online as we move into the third and fourth quarter.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question. I show our next and last question in the queue comes from the line of Alexander Goldfarb from Piper Sandler.

Alexander Goldfarb (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Please go ahead. Hey, thank you for taking the question. Just quickly going back on the Norges on the 343 Madison that you guys are buying out their interest. Are there others in the Norges JV, like should we think about others of the Norges JV assets being sold? Are you guys buying out interest in others of your partnership with them in other assets?

Owen Thomas (Chairman and CEO)

Alex, we have never described our partner at 343 as being Norges. Let me just put that on the table. Our partnership with Norges is stable. We're not buying out, they're not buying us out of any assets. From time to time we look.

At new investments together.

Alexander Goldfarb (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. This concludes our Q&A session. At this time I'd like to turn the call back to Owen Thomas, Chairman and CEO, for closing remarks.

Owen Thomas (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you all for your attention and interest in BXP. I'll just close by reminding everyone of our investor conference on September 8th and we look forward to continued engagement. Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating.

You may now disconnect.