Earnings call transcript: First Industrial Realty Q2 2025 beats forecasts

First Industrial Realty Trust reported a strong performance for the second quarter of 2025, surpassing earnings and revenue expectations. The company’s earnings per share (EPS) reached $0.42, exceeding the forecast of $0.38, while revenue totaled $180.16 million, above the anticipated $177.59 million. Following the announcement, the stock rose by 1.27% to $49.31. According to InvestingPro data, the company maintains a "GOOD" overall financial health score, with particularly strong marks in profit and cash flow metrics. The stock is currently trading near its Fair Value, suggesting balanced market pricing.

Key Takeaways

• EPS of $0.42 beat the forecast by 10.53%.
• Revenue exceeded expectations by 1.45%.
• Stock price increased by 1.27% post-announcement.
• Strong leasing activity with 2.5 million square feet leased.
• Issued $450 million in senior unsecured notes.

Company Performance

First Industrial Realty Trust showed robust performance in Q2 2025, driven by significant leasing activity and strategic financial maneuvers. The company leased 2.5 million square feet, including 400,000 square feet of new leases and 2.1 million square feet of renewals. Despite a slight decline in in-service occupancy to 94.2%, the company maintained strong cash rental rate growth.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $180.16 million, up from the forecast of $177.59 million.
• Earnings per share: $0.42, surpassing the forecast of $0.38.
• Funds from Operations (FFO): $0.76 per share, up from $0.66 in Q2 2024.
• Cash Same Store NOI Growth: 8.7%.

Earnings vs. Forecast

The company reported EPS of $0.42, a 10.53% increase over the forecasted $0.38. Revenue also exceeded expectations, coming in at $180.16 million against a forecast of $177.59 million. This marks a positive quarter, continuing a trend of beating market expectations.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings announcement, First Industrial Realty Trust’s stock price rose by 1.27% to $49.31. The stock trades with a P/E ratio of 24.29 and remains within its 52-week range of $40.31 to $58.17, indicating positive investor sentiment in response to the earnings beat. The company’s strong gross profit margin of 73% and healthy current ratio of 1.12 demonstrate solid operational efficiency and financial stability.

Outlook & Guidance

The company provided a NAREIT FFO guidance of $2.88 to $2.96 per share and expects occupancy rates between 95% and 96%. With plans to lease 1.5 million square feet of development in Q4 2025, the company anticipates continued growth. InvestingPro analysis shows the company maintains strong financial metrics, with analysts forecasting continued profitability this year. Discover comprehensive valuation analysis and growth projections in the exclusive Pro Research Report, available to subscribers.

Executive Commentary

CEO Peter Basile commented, "When the tariff picture becomes more clear, we expect improved confidence, more timely decision making and an increase of investments in new growth initiatives." This statement underscores the company’s anticipation of stronger market conditions once external uncertainties are resolved.

Risks and Challenges

• Industrial market vacancy rates have increased slightly, potentially impacting future occupancy.
• Tariff uncertainties could affect investment decisions and market confidence.
• Construction costs, despite a recent decline, remain a concern for new developments.

Q&A

Analysts inquired about tenant demand and construction costs. The company noted that while some tenants are pausing, others, particularly in sectors like food and beverage, 3PLs, and e-commerce, are actively leasing. Construction costs have decreased by 5-10% from the previous year, providing some relief for future projects.

Full transcript - First Industrial Realty Trust Inc (FR) Q2 2025:

Conference Operator: Good day, and welcome to the First Industrial Realty Trust, Inc. Second Quarter twenty twenty May. All participants will be in listen only mode. After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Art Harman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing. Please go ahead.

Art Harman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing, First Industrial Realty Trust: Thank you, Michael. Hello, everybody, and welcome to our call. Before we discuss our second quarter twenty twenty five results and our updated guidance for the year, please note that our call may include forward looking statements as defined by federal securities laws. These statements are based on management’s expectations, plans and estimates of our prospects. Today’s statements may be time sensitive and accurate only as of today’s date, 07/17/2025.

We assume no obligation to update our statements or the other information we provide. Actual results may differ materially from our forward looking statements and factors which could cause this are described in our 10 ks and other SEC filings. You can find a reconciliation of non GAAP financial measures discussed in today’s call in our supplemental report and our earnings release. The supplemental report, earnings release, and our SEC filings are available at firstindustrial.com under the Investors tab. Our call will begin with remarks by Peter Basile, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Scott Musil, our Chief Financial Officer, after which we’ll open it up for your questions.

Also with us today are Jojo Yap, Chief Investment Officer Peter Schultz, Executive Vice President Chris Schneider, Executive Vice President of Operations and Bob Walter, Executive Vice President of Capital Markets and Asset Management. Now let me hand the call over to Pete.

Peter Basile, President and Chief Executive Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: Thank you, Art, and thank you all for joining us today. Our portfolio continues to perform well, producing strong cash rental rate growth with a solid pace of renewals. Tenant leasing activity and investments to support new growth continue to move at a deliberate pace. The uncertainty around tariffs, whether they will be applied, where and when, and to what degree continues to dampen momentum around decision making. That said, we have a couple of success stories to share in the form of new development leases that I will review shortly.

As we said on prior calls, a positive for our business is with new starts at a ten year low. Even with modest net absorption, the available alternatives for new Class A space continue to diminish. This trend is reflected in the most recent metrics on the broad industrial market reported by CoStar. Vacancy in Tier one U. S.

Markets was 6.3 at the end of the second quarter and up 30 basis points compared to the prior quarter. On the demand side, according to CoStar, net absorption year to date totaled 16,000,000 square feet nationally and 5,000,000 square feet in our target markets. We should also point out that there is a wide variation in reported net absorption. Depending upon the source you use, year to date net absorption ranges from negative 4,000,000 square feet to positive 63,000,000 square feet. Nationally, new construction start volume was 62,000,000 square feet in the second quarter versus 66,000,000 in the 2025 and seventy two percent lower than the peak of third quarter twenty twenty two.

In our 15 target markets, new starts were 37,000,000 square feet and completions were 38,000,000. Space under construction totals two zero four million square feet, and that is 42% pre leased. From a portfolio standpoint, our in service occupancy at quarter end was 94.2%, in line with our expectations, reflecting the known 708,000 square foot move out in Central Pennsylvania and the impact of two developments placed in service, partially offset by some new leasing. We’ve now taken care of 88% of our twenty twenty five rollovers by square footage. Our overall cash rental rate increase for new and renewal leasing is 33%, and if you exclude the large fixed rate renewal in Central PA we previously disclosed, the cash rental rate increase is 38%.

This puts us on track to achieve our overall cash rental rate growth expectations of 30% to 4035% to 45%, excluding the fixed rate renewal. Moving now to developments. We are pleased to report that after we issued our press release, we leased the remaining 501,000 square feet of the 968,000 square foot building in our Camelback 303 joint venture in Phoenix. That brings the entire three building 1,800,000 square foot project to 100% leased. Per our press release, we also leased 58,000 square feet at our First Loop project in Orlando.

As discussed on our last call, we’re underway on two new starts in the quarter. The first is a 176,000 square foot facility at First Park 121 in Northwest Dallas. The second is the 226,000 square footer at our First Park New Castle project in the Philadelphia market. The total estimated investment for both of these projects is $54,000,000 with target cash yields of approximately 8% for each. Both of these opportunities are located in infill locations with low submarket vacancies and target the 50,000 to 100,000 square foot tenant segment.

Turning to our capital markets activity. We reached two important milestones during the quarter. First, we were upgraded by Fitch to BBB plus in early May. That upgrade was timely, and shortly thereafter, we launched our first public bond offering since 2007 in the form of $450,000,000 of senior unsecured notes at a coupon rate of 5.25%. Demand from fixed income investors was strong, and we appreciate their support for the offering.

Let me conclude by saying thank you to my teammates around the country who are executing on our plan and taking care of our customers. With that, I’ll turn it

Art Harman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing, First Industrial Realty Trust: over to Scott. Thanks, Peter. Let me recap our results for the quarter. Daybreak funds from operations were $0.76 per fully diluted share compared to $0.66 per share in 2Q twenty twenty four. Our cash same store NOI growth for the quarter, excluding termination fees, was 8.7%, primarily driven by increases in rental rates and new and renewal leasing and contractual rent bumps, partially offset by lower average occupancy.

We finished the quarter with in service occupancy of 94.2%, down 110 basis points from the quarter. As Peter noted, our occupancy change reflects the impact of the known move out in Central Pennsylvania and two developments entering the in service pool offset in part by some new leasing. Summarizing our leasing activity during the quarter, approximately 2,500,000 square feet of leases commenced. Of these, approximately 400,000 were new, 2,100,000.0 were renewals and 100,000 were for developments and acquisition with lease up. On the capital side, as Peter noted, we were very pleased with our return to the public bond market for the first time since 02/2007.

Our $450,000,000 unsecured notes issued in this offering mature in January 2031 and carry a coupon rate of 5.25%. We remain strongly positioned on the capital front with our next maturity coming in 2027 assuming all available extension options exercised on one of our bank loans. We would like to thank our banking partners for their outstanding execution and support in this transaction. Now moving on to our guidance. Our guidance range for NAREIT FFO for the year remains $2.92 per share at the midpoint with the range narrowed to $2.88 to $2.96 per share.

Our assumptions are as follows: average quarter end in service occupancy of 95% to 96%. This range reflects approximately 1,500,000 square feet of development leasing assumed to occur in the fourth quarter of this year. Cash same store NOI growth before termination fees of 6% to 7%. As a reminder, our same store guidance excludes the impact of the accelerated recognition of a tenant improvement reimbursement in 2024. Guidance includes the anticipated 2025 costs related to our completed and under construction developments at June 30.

For the full year 2025, we expect to capitalize about zero nine dollars per share of interest. And our G and A expense guidance range is $40,500,000 to $41,500,000 Now let me turn it back over to Peter. Thanks Scott.

Peter Basile, President and Chief Executive Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: Our diversified operating portfolio continues to perform strongly, generating cash rental rate growth on new and renewal leasing amongst the top performers in our sector. When the tariff picture becomes more clear, we expect improved confidence, more timely decision making and an increase of investments in new growth initiatives. We remain focused on securing and serving existing and new customers to drive long term cash flow growth. Operator, with that, we’re ready to open it up for questions.

Conference Operator: And your first question comes from Rob Stevenson with Janney. Please go ahead.

Peter Schultz, Executive Vice President, First Industrial Realty Trust: Good morning, guys. Peter, incremental development starts from here more or less attractive today than they were three or six months ago. And how is construction pricing in terms of labor materials today versus

Peter Basile, President and Chief Executive Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: take the first part of that. Joji, you can talk about construction pricing. Like we said on the last call, in order to really get deeper into new starts, we’d like to see more consistent development lease signings. There’s a lot of activity in the market. The amount of gross leasing activity in the first half of the year is pretty strong relative to 2024, but we need to see more investment in new growth, more take up of development space.

As you’ve seen, we have executed on new starts in certain markets, and in those markets that we think continue to show good fundamentals and where there’s demand that is going unmet, we’ll continue to execute starts there. Joe, do you want to talk about the costs?

Jojo Yap, Chief Investment Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: Yes. For construction costs, from the second half of last year, costs are down 5% to 10%, depending upon the market. From the start of the year, total construction cost has been pretty flat. The contractors have been more aggressive, so their margins have compressed, a slight increase in construction costs. Keeping an eye on steel, there’s some talk that steel might go up, but we haven’t seen it.

Contractors, though, are able to keep their pricing for thirty to sixty days, which is good. You probably all follow this, there’s been a tariff increase in copper, so you’re looking at electrical supply to switch gears, but these items have a small impact on the cost, maybe total construction costs under 1%.

Peter Schultz, Executive Vice President, First Industrial Realty Trust: Okay. That’s helpful. And then, Scott, anything abnormal or not recurring in the second quarter FFO? Or anything expected to be sequentially a drag in the back half of the year? Just trying to figure out you guys did $0.76 and just doing a flat $0.76 and $0.76 in the next two quarters puts you at the very high end of your current guidance range.

I just wanted to get a feel for what’s coming up here.

Art Harman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing, First Industrial Realty Trust: So I would say in the third and fourth quarter recognizing more interest expense than in the second quarter. And Rob that’s driven by two items. We have to continue to fund our development pipeline. That’s about $110,000,000 of spend for the last six months of the year. So that’s driving interest expense higher.

Also the May bond offering was slightly dilutive. We used the funds to pay down our line of credit. And the line of credit had a lower interest rate than what the bond offering rate was. So on the back end of the year, you’re going to see a little bit of higher interest expense which will knock down our FFO in the third and fourth quarter.

Peter Schultz, Executive Vice President, First Industrial Realty Trust: Okay, that’s helpful guys. Thanks. Appreciate the time this morning.

Conference Operator: And your next question comes from Vikram Malhotra with Mizuho. Please go ahead.

Vikram Malhotra, Analyst, Mizuho: Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I just want to understand the new lease you just announced that was not in the $1,600,000 target. And if you can just sort of maybe walk us through some of the bigger pieces in the $1.6 like how do the prospects look for 3Q and 4Q?

Peter Basile, President and Chief Executive Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: Peter, you want to talk about what’s happening in your markets?

Peter Schultz, Executive Vice President, First Industrial Realty Trust: Sure. On the 1,600,000 square feet that we have in our guidance at year end, the largest component of that is our building at First Aurora Commerce Center in Denver. We continue to have active prospects for all or portions of the building. In fact, a couple of the prospects have a need for rail, which we can accommodate on this site. Difficult to peg exactly when those get signed, but we continue to be pleased with the level of activity.

Jojo Yap, Chief Investment Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: Part of the $1,500,000 in the West Coast, We have three buildings there, two in the 150 square foot range and one in the 324,000 square foot range in East IE. Good product, great product with very, very good functionality. We’re having tours and proposals for every building, but no lease to announce yet. And then the remaining in the West would be under the West Region, it would be 120,000 square foot in Chicago. Like East IE, we’ve been getting tours and we’re responding to requests for proposals, but don’t have a lease to announce yet.

Vikram Malhotra, Analyst, Mizuho: Okay. And then can you just clarify the $02 impact you had mentioned prior, like if you don’t do any of the $1.6 is that still the $02 is still in the guide or have you pushed that out? And and sorry, if you could just clarify that new 500,000 square foot lease that was not part of the original 1.6?

Art Harman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing, First Industrial Realty Trust: Well, with the good news is with the benefit of that lease that Peter just announced in the call coupled with the lease that we did in first loop earlier than what we projected, Vikram, that $02 a share is now $00 a share. So what does that mean? The 1,500,000 square feet of development leasing that we still have in our guide, And I’ll also throw in the 708,000 square foot in Central Pennsylvania. Now effectively they’re heavy twelvethirty one lease up. So they’re assumed to be leased up on twelvethirty one.

Vikram Malhotra, Analyst, Mizuho: Great. Thank you.

Conference Operator: And your next question comes from Nick Thielman with Baird. Please go ahead.

Nick Thielman, Analyst, Baird: Following up maybe on that Camelback and the lease up there, is the plan there to kind of take that out like you did similar in 1Q?

Jojo Yap, Chief Investment Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: The plan there is to maximize value. We have a couple of executions we can take to market, we can acquire the product, we can look at holding it, but it’s all about the center again, about maximizing value. Also, we’re very pleased about the execution because that JV project delivered returns exceeding our expectations. I also want to remind you there’s another 71 acres left with great land, freeway frontage, and we’re focused on maximizing value there, either developing it, either doing a higher and better use deal like we’ve done before, and all of that.

Nick Thielman, Analyst, Baird: Maybe dovetailing on that, just on you guys have outlined maybe the potential opportunity for monetizing some of the land bank or existing portfolio for data centers. I guess is there any update there, the size or scope of what that opportunity set is?

Peter Basile, President and Chief Executive Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: Not really. That’s a pretty big project. It’s going to take some time. We have to look into power, of course. Without that, you really don’t have much to talk about.

And these things are going to take several months to get to the answers on some of this.

Blaine Heck, Analyst, Wells Fargo: That’s it for me. Thank you.

Conference Operator: And your next question comes from Craig Mailman with Citi. Please go ahead.

Craig Mailman, Analyst, Citi: Hey, good morning. Peter, maybe can you just give some context around the 501,000 square foot lease? Was that a longer kind of burn on the demand there? Is that more recent? Just to give us a sense of how quickly some of these can come together, having some bigger ones like First Aurora left to take care of?

Peter Basile, President and Chief Executive Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: Yeah, sure. That was on the shorter end of the spectrum. JoJo, do want to talk about that?

Jojo Yap, Chief Investment Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: Sure, sure. Basically the building was just completed, so basically the building was leased at completion. Craig, we had a number of showings. As you may recall too, that building has been 48% leased, so we leased already basically half the building. So, we had continuous showings of the remaining vacancy, and we actually had three interested parties in this party.

They needed to grow and they wanted to control the space pretty quick.

Peter Basile, President and Chief Executive Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: Tell them how long from beginning to now, that discussion?

Jojo Yap, Chief Investment Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: The discussion, I would say, would be about forty five days.

Vikram Malhotra, Analyst, Mizuho: Okay. And when does that one commence?

Jojo Yap, Chief Investment Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: Right now. Yeah. On today.

Craig Mailman, Analyst, Citi: Right now. Oh, immediately. Okay.

Jojo Yap, Chief Investment Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: Yes. Immediately.

Craig Mailman, Analyst, Citi: Okay. And then just I guess more broadly, Peter, you’re kind of showing that there’s some improvement in demand

Vikram Malhotra, Analyst, Mizuho: but doesn’t sound

Craig Mailman, Analyst, Citi: like you guys are getting excited about it yet but at the same time there can be some big deals that can come quickly. I’m just kind of curious as you guys are talking to people at some of these developments like First Aurora has been one that’s been vacant for two years.

Vikram Malhotra, Analyst, Mizuho: Some of these and I know I’ll

Craig Mailman, Analyst, Citi: call them stubborn vacancies, but kind of longer tailed lease ups. Are these in your opinion like is it a leasing strategy issue? Is it a product issue? Or is it just a market issue that you guys are contending with on some of these that are taking a little bit longer to lease up?

Peter Basile, President and Chief Executive Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: It’s a demand side issue. It’s finding the right fit at the right time for the particular candidate or potential tenant. People make decisions. This particular tenant that took the Phoenix property or the other half of the Phoenix property made some business decisions that caused them to need it pretty quickly. It’s really just finding the right fit, Greg, and having the right sized space at the right time.

And so, we’ve had, as you point out, in Denver, several tenants come by there and actually traded proposals with several tenants. Look, there’s definitely pent up demand. There’s frustration to some degree. The tariff thing has really caused people to pause, and yet there are also other tenants who are less tariff sensitive who are going to do deals, that would in fact include the one that signed the lease in Phoenix.

Craig Mailman, Analyst, Citi: Great. Thank you.

Jojo Yap, Chief Investment Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: And

Conference Operator: your next question comes from Blaine Heck with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Blaine Heck, Analyst, Wells Fargo: Great. Thanks. Good morning. So one of your competitors mentioned that their build to suit pipeline is very strong. I guess are you seeing demand on that side as well?

What’s your general appetite for build to suits? And how do those returns compare with what you might be able to generate through spec development?

Peter Basile, President and Chief Executive Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: Yeah, the returns are always going to be a little bit lower unless there’s a special circumstance. We do execute on build to suits. You’ve seen us do that, but it’s also not ever been a very high volume component of our business. Our platform is set up and our land holdings are such that we’re more targeted to the speculative development business, but we do like the build to suit business depending on what we can earn, and obviously we’re trying to maximize returns for shareholders, so we’re going to evaluate the kinds of returns we can earn on a build to suit relative to the risk in taking on a speculative project risk and return of taking on a speculative project.

Blaine Heck, Analyst, Wells Fargo: Great. That’s helpful. And then maybe a little bit more high level. It seems as though there are a few different strategies we’re seeing from tenants, those that are continuing on with their business plans and leasing despite the uncertainty. You’ve got those that are strategizing more, but still in the market, but taking a little bit longer to make decisions and those that are completely on pause and waiting for clarity.

I guess would you agree with that characterization and how would you kind of characterize the relative size of each of those groups today in your markets?

Peter Basile, President and Chief Executive Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: I would agree with it. We’ve had some conversations. We’re close to trading paper and they’ve said, Gee, we want your building,

Art Harman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing, First Industrial Realty Trust: but we’ve just got word

Peter Basile, President and Chief Executive Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: from HQ that we have to pause now. And that was post April 2. So there’s definitely a large group there. There is definitely a large group who window shop because they know they need space, they’re just not sure when. And then there are the ones who are a

Jojo Yap, Chief Investment Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: bit more bold, and some of

Peter Basile, President and Chief Executive Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: them who say, Hey, we see what Amazon is doing, spending 15, or at least they’re announcing to spend $15,000,000,000 on new centers largely in rural areas, and they’re going to build out their same day delivery from the city to the suburbs to the rural areas, and they can’t afford to sit and watch, so they’re going to go ahead and sign leases. So I think you outlined it pretty well. You’ve got tenants kind of active across the spectrum in terms of objectives.

Blaine Heck, Analyst, Wells Fargo: And do you think those different strategies are roughly equal in size, or would you say one or another are more prominent here?

Peter Basile, President and Chief Executive Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: Hard to say. Okay.

Blaine Heck, Analyst, Wells Fargo: Fair enough. Thank you guys.

Conference Operator: And your next question comes from Caitlin Burrows with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Caitlin Burrows, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Hi, good morning. I think you historically mentioned the answer was that it doesn’t, but to what extent have you found that reducing price can create more leasing demand, whether it’s developments or other vacancies? Like, have you seen this work in some places but not others?

Peter Basile, President and Chief Executive Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: Know, Caitlin, first of all, focus on the NPV of that discussion, if you want to call it that. There are lots of different inputs. Certainly, rate is one, TIs, free rent, and move in dates. Some people want to sign leases and not move in for six or eight months.

Jojo Yap, Chief Investment Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: So there’s a lot

Peter Basile, President and Chief Executive Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: of variable there. Lowering the rate doesn’t create new demand, and it’s really then you subject yourself to a big hit to that NPV model, and so that’s always the thing you try to hold steady on is rate.

Caitlin Burrows, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Got it. Okay. And then just on the decision to issue the unsecured bonds, I was wondering if you guys could go through, I don’t think you had talked about it before, but maybe you had, but kind of like what drove that? Is it based on your size today, efficiency of the market that you’re not doing dispositions or like what was different now versus the last eighteen or so years?

Art Harman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing, First Industrial Realty Trust: Sure Caitlin, it’s Scott. I think we saw that we had a path to be a serial issuer in the public bond market. We’ve got maturities coming up the next five years. And if you look over the majority of the years in the last twenty years, the pricing in the public bond market is inside of this pricing in the private placement market from a spread point of view. So that was the rationale for doing it.

As far as the home for the offering, we had about $500,000,000 on our line of credit. So we utilized the proceeds to pay down our line.

Caitlin Burrows, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Got it. And just in terms of like what was different now versus like four years ago or something to not do it then, any comments on that?

Art Harman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing, First Industrial Realty Trust: Well, now if you look at our maturity schedule over the next five years, we’ve got enough maturities to be somewhat of a serial issuer in the public bond market, which is what the investor base wants to see. And four years ago, we just didn’t we might if we did something then, we might not have been back to the market for a couple of years and a public bond investor is likely to be back on a more reoccurring basis than And

Peter Basile, President and Chief Executive Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: the size of the offering back four years ago was smaller than it is today. It wasn’t benchmark size. And in some cases, the private placement market was cheaper actually than the public market. ’seventeen and ’eighteen. Got

Caitlin Burrows, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: it. Okay, thanks.

Conference Operator: And your next question comes from Jessica Zhang with Green Street. Please go ahead.

Caitlin Burrows, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Good morning. I was wondering if you have any insights around how private industrial developers are behaving in the current environment. I just wonder for, you know, the firms that are sitting on, let spec developments, are they, start to offer, elevated concession packages or are they materially cutting safe rents to try to secure a tenant?

Peter Basile, President and Chief Executive Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: Peter and Jojo, you guys want to talk about what you’re seeing?

Peter Schultz, Executive Vice President, First Industrial Realty Trust: Sure, I would say generally speaking where there are more choices, you’ve seen concessions drift up because tenants have a lot of choices, so developers are responding in that way. But I wouldn’t say there is a material difference across the landscape for developers. Jojo?

Jojo Yap, Chief Investment Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: Yes, I would agree. And then, in terms of starts, they are cautious, hard to get debt, debt is expensive, and a lot of developers are sitting on their land because they’ve got still some vacancies on their new developments.

Caitlin Burrows, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Helpful, thank you.

Conference Operator: And your next question comes from Nick Yulico with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Art Harman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing, First Industrial Realty Trust0: Hello, this is Victor Feddevon with Nick Yulico. Now that the focus is shifted to addressing 2627 expirations, we see that expiring rents are rather on the lower end for ’26 and ’27 as well. Are those assets indicative and comparable to the types of assets you leased in 2025? Just trying to understand here the demand and potential rents passed for those properties.

Art Harman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing, First Industrial Realty Trust: Asking about ’twenty six and ’twenty seven expirations and how the rent stack up. So ’twenty six compared to ’twenty five, I would say pretty consistent, but in ’26, we do have a higher proportion of expirations in Dallas and Atlanta, which have been very good markets over the last several years. So I would say that’s pretty much the difference between 2625%. 27%, I don’t know right off hand. I can get back to you after the call.

Art Harman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing, First Industrial Realty Trust0: Got it. Thank you. And then a quick follow-up on your current development Any types of tenants that you might highlight that are having a kind of higher interest in your assets at this point or there is no kind of particular trend you can highlight?

Peter Schultz, Executive Vice President, First Industrial Realty Trust: I would say generally we’re seeing a lot of activity from food and beverage and 3PLs, some automotive, some manufacturing, some consumer products. E commerce continues to be very busy. As Peter mentioned a couple of minutes ago, Amazon in particular has a range of requirements in a number of markets. They are very, very active. So activity overall continues to be pretty broad based.

We’re pleased with the breadth of that.

Art Harman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing, First Industrial Realty Trust0: Got it. Thank you.

Conference Operator: And your next question comes from Brendan Lynch with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Art Harman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing, First Industrial Realty Trust1: Great. Thanks for taking my questions. You mentioned the interest rate drag on FFO in the back half. Can you also discuss the drag on same store that’s implied in guidance for the second half as well?

Art Harman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing, First Industrial Realty Trust: Chris? Yes. If you

Peter Schultz, Executive Vice President, First Industrial Realty Trust: look at same store kind of the second half, that’s primarily due to lower average occupancy in the second half of the year compared to

Art Harman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing, First Industrial Realty Trust: the first half of the year, a little bit less contribution of the cash rental rate increases. And then we have some assumed increased pre rent concessions on the leasing. So that’s really what’s driving that a little bit lower in the

Peter Schultz, Executive Vice President, First Industrial Realty Trust: second half of the year.

Art Harman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing, First Industrial Realty Trust1: And can you also discuss what dictates when you grant a fixed rate renewal option for tenants? Where does that kind of fall in your list of priorities when negotiating a lease? And should we expect any more of these in the remainder of ’25 or into ’26?

Peter Basile, President and Chief Executive Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: It’s not on page one of the list, let’s put it that way. Obviously, you’d rather not do that, but sometimes there is a benefit in that particular case, very large tenant, very good credit, and it made sense for that deal.

Peter Schultz, Executive Vice President, First Industrial Realty Trust: And Brendan, the timing of that, that was done in 2017 as part of a lease renewal at that point, so you should not take that as a reflection of market conditions in the current environment.

Jojo Yap, Chief Investment Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: Yes, we know it very rarely, very rarely.

Art Harman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing, First Industrial Realty Trust1: Okay, very good. Thank you. And

Conference Operator: your next question comes from Todd Thomas with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Art Harman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing, First Industrial Realty Trust2: Hi, thanks. First question, just from your comments earlier around the Camelback lease, you mentioned that it replaced the lease up assumptions on the 1,600,000 square feet that you had in guidance, the zero two dollars and that you’re now assuming a twelvethirty 1 lease up essentially. But two questions. Do you actually feel different or less confident in the timing of the lease up on that 1,600,000 square foot bucket, any different than you did last quarter? And then I suspect this means that the 95% to 96% occupancy assumptions, if you’re pushing out some of that leasing that that should sort of be disregarded, guess, to some extent as it pertains to 25%.

We can do the math, but just wanted to ask about that also since this sort of hit after the release, it sounds like.

Art Harman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing, First Industrial Realty Trust: Scott? So for the occupancy assumptions don’t change, Todd, because both the $1,500,000 actually and also that includes the $708,000 that are assumed to lease up on twelvethirty one. So that impacts positively impacts our four quarter average on that. And I’m sorry, what was the other question you had? I think I took care of the last part first.

Art Harman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing, First Industrial Realty Trust2: Whether or not you actually feel different at all around the timing of that 1,600,000 square foot lease up, right? Camelback helps in the sense that you’re kind of pushing back that assumption, but in terms of traffic and the leasing prospects that you’re working on, do you feel any different than you did last quarter?

Peter Basile, President and Chief Executive Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: Well, look, we’ve got five and a half months left in the year. Traffic around those assets is decent. They happen to be most of them happen to be assets, as someone earlier pointed out, that have been available for a while. So, the risk of getting those done is not zero. So, generally, we felt that it was more reflective of the probability to push those to the end of the year.

Art Harman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing, First Industrial Realty Trust2: Okay. Got it. Thank you.

Conference Operator: And your next question comes from Michael Moeller with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Art Harman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing, First Industrial Realty Trust3: Yes. Hi. Two questions. And one’s probably like a really dumb clarification question. But on the first one, was there anything to note out of the ordinary with either property operating expenses or recoveries this quarter?

Because it just looks like the ratio, the expense ratios were kind of lighter compared to where they’ve been running and especially compared to last year and stuff.

Art Harman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing, First Industrial Realty Trust: Mike, it’s Scott. I’ll explain it this way. It has to do with our tenured policy related to equity based compensation. If you remember in the first quarter, our G and A was a lot higher because of that tenure based policy. What does that mean?

GAAP accounting requires us to expense immediately awards issued to folks that reach a certain point of age and have a certain point of service in accordance with our policy. You saw that it increased our G and A that quarter. It also increases our property expenses because our people that manage our properties, their compensation is reflected down in that line item. So what happens is it causes a depressed margin in the first quarter and then in the second, third and fourth quarter the margins are elevated. And if you were to look back in the 2024 and compare it to the following quarters that same dynamic happened.

And my bet is if you look back further years that dynamic has happened. So I would say that’s the cause of the differential in margins between 1Q twenty twenty five and 2Q twenty twenty five.

Art Harman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing, First Industrial Realty Trust3: Got it. Okay. Yes, I just thought it was a little bit bigger even compared to last year, but maybe not in that context. And then the second one, and this is kind of the dumber question. When you talk about the development leasing, because in my mind, I think development, external growth, development pipeline, when I think of same story, think of occupancy, the in service portfolio.

How much of this like is all the 1,000,000 point dollars development leasing you’re talking about doing or the 1.5 is all that related to the in service portfolio? So it just happens to be, stuff that you developed at some point in time that is in there. So you can have development leasing that’s impacting your occupancy guidance for the in service portfolio? Or is a portion of that kind of true development leasing where it’s not in the in service portfolio? It’s just getting a little kind of confusing from my standpoint.

Art Harman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing, First Industrial Realty Trust: Mike, mean, way that we look at it, it relates to what’s already in service. That’s the 1,650,000.00 If you want to walk through those projects after the call, I’d definitely be willing to do so. Now life isn’t perfect in development leasing though. We saw that last year as well. There might be 300,000 square feet of projects that we’ve completed that aren’t in service, that aren’t in our guidance, that we lease up this year that have a positive impact, that make up maybe for not leasing up some of the 1,500,000 square feet.

But what we have in guidance is in service. Again, I’d be glad to walk through the projects with you after the call if you’d like to.

Art Harman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing, First Industrial Realty Trust3: Got it. That helps. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Conference Operator: And your next question is a follow-up from Caitlin Burrows with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Caitlin Burrows, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Hi again. I feel like there hasn’t been much talk about specific markets, so I figured I would follow-up on it. Could you talk a little bit first about SoCal, how you saw it evolve during the quarter maybe from a demand perspective and on the rent side, and whether there are any differences to call out by submarkets?

Jojo Yap, Chief Investment Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: Sergio? Sure, Caitlin. Let’s start with the rent. Rent, I would say, from Q1 to Q2, there was a 5% decline in market rents, but it’s still rents today are probably about 100% or double the pre COVID rents. That’s the way to look at it.

If you look at it, it’s about 13.5%, 14% CAGR. Now let’s move on to activity. Gross leasing activity in Q2 was kind of comparable to Q1. Vacancy increased about 10 basis points in both IEE West and IE East. IE West is a little bit lower vacancy rate.

It’s performing better than IE East. In terms of net absorption, it’s somewhat flat because despite the positive gross leasing activity, there has been a little bit higher giveback of space. Then moving on to supply tests, deliveries and starts have been really low. Total deliveries is under $2,000,000 of which roughly about 35% is pre leased, and starts are about $1,600,000 under $2,000,000 of which 600,000,000 was a build to suit. So now, the stats I’m giving you is basically only IE Core because we don’t invest in the High Desert, IE North, which is less than 4% of the market.

Anyway, I hope that helps in terms of rents and absorption and activity.

Caitlin Burrows, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: It does, thanks. And then I guess as you think about the other markets you guys are in, are there any to call out as being strongest versus weakest today?

Peter Schultz, Executive Vice President, First Industrial Realty Trust: Peter Kalin, it’s Peter Schultz. I would say Nashville continues to be among the strongest in the country. Little new supply, good demand, rents continue to go up. We’ve seen some increased activity in Florida recently. So all the markets are doing pretty well, but those would be two of the stronger.

Peter Basile, President and Chief Executive Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: Caitlin, I’d just add certain submarkets of Dallas and Houston we like right now. They’re doing well.

Caitlin Burrows, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Thanks.

Conference Operator: This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Peter Basile for any closing remarks.

Peter Basile, President and Chief Executive Officer, First Industrial Realty Trust: Thank you, operator, and thanks to everyone for participating on our call today. If you have any follow ups from our call, please reach out to Art, Scott or me.

Conference Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.

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