SL Green on Track for Success Despite Mixed Q1 2026 Earnings

SL Green Realty’s balance sheet continues to reflect mixed results, dipping cash flow into the real estate investment trust’s (REIT) coffers, even as occupancy and leasing improves.

Executives at SL Green said during a Thursday afternoon earnings call that, despite less than optimistic analyst feedback on its first-quarter earnings results, the data was on target for what the company was shooting for in terms of positioning itself for improved performance down the line.

“We achieved nearly all of our objectives and then some,” SL Green CEO Marc Holliday said during the call. “I know there’s some misunderstanding in the analyst community about the cadence of our quarterly earnings, but internally we were right on our numbers for Q1 and advanced many of our objectives for the year. The headline news starts with our leasing, where we had the single biggest first quarter in the 28-year history of this company.”

The REIT signed 51 office leases in its Manhattan office portfolio totaling 929,264 square feet in the first quarter of 2026, with an average rent of $105.12 per square foot.  The largest deals SL Green signed during the period were for artificial intelligence-driven sales platform Clay, which took 163,095 square feet at 11 Madison Avenue, and AI platform Harvey AI, which expanded to 185,326 square feet at One Madison Avenue.

For comparison, SL Green signed 56 office leases in Manhattan spanning 766,783 square feet in the previous quarter.

The “misunderstanding” highlighted by Holliday was likely in its funds from operations (FFO), which reached $64.6 million, or 84 cents per share, in the first quarter of 2026, compared to the $106.5 million recorded in the same period last year. The fourth quarter of last year saw SL Green accumulate $131.9 million in FFO, Commercial Observer reported in January.

Revenue for the first quarter of 2026 was $253 million, compared to $276.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2025 and $239.8 million in the first quarter of 2025, SL Green reported.

SL Green reported a net loss of $84.4 million, or $1.20 per share, in the first quarter of 2026, compared to the net loss of $21.1 million, or 30 cents per share, on a year-over-year basis.

Still, Holliday was optimistic for the prospects of its $160 million acquisition of 346 Madison Avenue in September 2025 and the promotion of Harrison Sitomer to be the REIT’s president in March.

In terms of overall economic outlook, Holliday said he believes the company has figured out its approach to business when it comes to the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration. Those tariffs have created unpredictability in the stock market and in a number of industries, as well as in local politics.

Holliday is also confident that Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration will be able to close the city’s budget deficit, especially after Gov. Kathy Hochul and hizzoner on Wednesday announced an effort to hammer out the details of a pied-à-terre tax on New York City non-primary homes trading for over $5 million.

In addition, SL Green made headlines last month for securing a $1.65 billion refinancing for One Madison Avenue from Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank and Crédit Agricole.

Mark Hallum can be reached at mhallum@commercialobserver.com.