Kilroy Realty (KRC) Enters 10-Year Office Lease With Okta

Kilroy Realty Corporation (NYSE:KRC) announced today that it has signed a 10-year lease with Okta (NASDAQ:OKTA) for a space at Kilroy Realty’s 100 First Street office property. The deal is for 207,000 square feet of the property, which is located in the South of the Market district of San Francisco.

Okta, which presently leases space in 301 Brannan St. in San Francisco, will now be establishing its new headquarters at the 100 First Street property and begin shifting there in the second quarter of 2018.

Kilroy Realty is experiencing solid demand for its property. Over a year, Kilroy Realty has signed three of the largest office leases in San Francisco, totaling 1.3 million square feet. In October, Kilroy Realty announced that it has fully preleased 736,000 square feet of office space at its San Francisco-based property, The Exchange, to Dropbox. This makes the lease the largest single Class A commercial deal executed in San Francisco. Also, in November 2016, it signed a deal with Adobe, that totaled 320,000 square feet at 100 Hooper.

Technology companies have directed San Francisco’s strong office leasing with several deals larger than 100,000 square feet. Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Airbnb and Otto are some of the tenants in these deals.

As per, John Kilroy, the company’s Chief Executive Officer, “San Francisco continues to incubate some of the most dynamic new companies in the world and we are delighted that Okta, a thriving newly public company, has chosen to join our roster of tenants in the city.”

“The new space will give the team at Okta room to scale, build and innovate for our customers as we expand in the coming years, all under one roof — in the heart of the city,” said Todd McKinnon, CEO and co-founder of Okta, in a statement.

Shares of Kilroy Realty have gained 9% in the last six months, against the decline of 1.3% recorded by the industry it belongs to.

Currently, the stock carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Stocks That Warrant a Look

Arbor Realty Trust (NYSE:ABR) witnessed an upward earnings estimate revision of 8.7% for the current year, in the last 30 days. Also, its shares have gained 8.1%, in the past three months. It sports a Zacks Rank of 1.

Columbia Property Trust’s (NYSE:CXP) Zacks Consensus Estimate has been revised 2.7% upward for the current year, in the last 30 days. Also, its shares have rallied 4.7%, in the past three months. It carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

Note: All EPS numbers presented in this write up represent funds from operations (“FFO”) per share. FFO, a widely used metric to gauge the performance of REITs, is obtained after adding depreciation and amortization and other non-cash expenses to net income.

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