INDIANAPOLIS - Ray Weeks relinquished his role as president and COO of Duke-Weeks Realty Corp. at the company's January board meeting. Weeks will remain vice chairman of the company that was formed when Indianapolis-based Duke Realty Investments merged with Atlanta-based Weeks Corp. last year. Duke-Weeks' Chairman and CEO Tom Hefner will assume the president's role.
Weeks, 47, said he will devote approximately half of his time to Duke-Weeks as he addresses family needs.
"My decision to reduce my responsibilities is based on two very important family priorities: the need to support my wife as she works through recent challenges to a sizable catalog business she founded 18 years ago, and some extra time we need to devote to our two young children," says Weeks. "These issues are neither short-term, nor can they be adequately addressed given my current responsibilities."
In other news, Duke-Weeks reported a 15.9% per share increase in funds from operations (FFO) for 1999. The company's per share FFO for the year was $2.19, while fourth-quarter FFO was 57 cents per share, a 14% increase over fourth-quarter 1998's FFO of 50 cents per share.
Duke-Weeks' net income for 1999 totaled $1.32 per share, a 17.9% increase over net income of $1.12 per share in 1998. For the fourth quarter, the company's net income totaled $41.2 million - 33 cents per share - on revenues of $183.6 million, compared with net income of $23.3 million - 27 cents per share - on revenues of $101 million in the fourth quarter of 1998.
In the fourth quarter, Duke-Weeks sold $54 million of properties, bringing total dispositions for 1999 to $234 million with an average cap rate of approximately 9.5%. The properties sold in the fourth quarter include Shadeland Station, a 263,000 sq. ft. suburban office park in Indianapolis; Tri-County Office Park, a 102,000 sq. ft. suburban office park in Cincinnati; a 75,000 sq. ft. single-tenant retail building in Columbus, Ohio; Sugarcreek Plaza, a 78,000 sq. ft. shopping center in Dayton, Ohio; and a 504,000 sq. ft. industrial building in Columbus that Duke-Weeks recently completed for General Motors Corp.
The company's board of directors also announced a stock repurchase program encompassing up to $100 million of Duke-Weeks' common shares.