Equity One, Inc.’s (EQY) Focus on Leasing Begins to Pay Off

July 23, 2015

Equity One, Inc. (EQY) CEO David Lukes says the company has made it a priority to focus on leasing. He says those efforts are beginning to pay off, and are apparent in first quarter results.

“There are a couple of interesting data points from our first quarter results that are good indicators of what’s happening in our business,” Lukes says. “Number one, the average days that a suite was vacant, and all of our leasing was quite large. What that means is we were able to lease stubborn inventory by focusing on tenant mix. Shopping centers are very much like a rolling ball. The hard labor is to get it moving; keeping it moving is a little easier.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THIS INTERVIEW CLICK HERE.

Lukes says that a lot of the “heavy lifting” was completed last summer in getting a couple of big deals done and getting some centers moving and picking up steam. Those efforts, he says, resulted in higher occupancy and great leasing spreads.

“So one of the takeaways from first quarter is almost verifying that the business plan of leasing focus was the right one, and it’s paying off,” Lukes says. “The second is that we announced a couple of large redevelopment projects — two in Florida and one in California — that together are about $140 million in cost. Those are great opportunities for us to create shareholder value by investing back in our best assets.”