7/30/2025

speaker
Conference Operator
Operator

on the Investors section of the company's website at inventrustproperties.com. During the presentation you can register a question by pressing star followed by one on your keypad. If you change your mind please press star followed by two. I would now like to hand the call over to Mr. Dan Lombardo, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead sir.

speaker
Dan Lombardo
Vice President of Investor Relations

Thank you operator. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us today. On the call from the inventrust team is DJ Bush, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mike Phillips, Chief Financial Officer, Christy David, Chief Operating Officer and Dave Heimberger, Chief Investment Officer. Following the team's prepared remarks the lines will be opened up for questions. As a reminder some of today's comments may contain certain forward-looking statements about the company's views on the future of our business and financial performance including forward-looking earnings guidance and future market conditions. These are based on management's current beliefs and expectations and are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Any forward-looking statements speak only as of today's date and we assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made on today's call or that are in the quarterly financial supplemental or press release. In addition we will also reference certain non-gap financial measures. The comparable gap financial measures are included in this quarterly's earnings materials which are posted on our Investor Relations website. With that I will turn the call over to DJ.

speaker
D.J. Bush
President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks Dan and good morning everyone. We're pleased to report another quarter of solid operating results. For the first half of the year same property NOI grew approximately 6% and narrate FFO per share rose nearly 5% year over year. Least occupancy of .3% remains near an all-time record while small shop occupancy reached another high water mark of .8% highlighting the ongoing success of our grocery anchored necessity-based retail strategy. Despite a less confident consumer and stubborn inflationary pressures our retailers have been resilient and continue to operate at healthy levels within the InvenTrust portfolio. For this reason we are raising our same property NOI growth expectations for the year to 4 to 5%. During the quarter we also executed on a key initiative completing the sale of a five property California portfolio for approximately 306 million dollars. These prime assets commanded strong pricing which speaks to the level of institutional interest across the open air shopping center sector. Following this transaction we have one remaining property in San Pedro California that we expect to sell by year end marking our full exit out of the state. This transaction was not monetization event but rather a tactical reallocation of capital that enhances our focus in our core markets that we expect will deliver long-term value. We have been methodical and disciplined in redeploying proceeds into high growth Sunbell markets fully aligned with our strategic vision. As of today we've successfully closed on six properties totaling approximately 230 million dollars. In addition we have either secured or under contract for another two properties representing nearly 126 million dollars in value. We are actively targeting investment opportunities in Asheville, Charleston, Charlotte, Nashville, Phoenix, and Savannah. Markets that share common themes such as healthy population and job growth, business and tax friendly environments, and high quality of life driven by relatively favorable cost of living. Mike will touch on guidance in more detail but given the positive outcome and speed at which California portfolio transacted our net investment activity will be more back and loaded for the year than initially expected. That said we remain extremely confident in our acquisition pipeline expect to be active in the second half of 2025 both using proceeds from the affirmation asset sales and utilizing the ample capacity provided by our low levered balance sheet. In summary Strip Center fundamentals remain solid supported by strong tenant demand, limited new supply, and ongoing appeal of a necessity based retail. Against this backdrop InventRest continues to deliver meaningful results while executing on our long-term strategy. We are scaling our enterprise efficiently with minimal increases to G&A and leveraging our well-capitalized balance sheet and proven platform to support sustained expansion. Operationally we are driving rent growth through embedded lease escalations optimizing small shop occupancy across the portfolio and activating signed but not open leases. We remain hyper focused on growing sustainable cash flow and delivering superior total returns for our shareholders over the long term. With that I'll turn it over to Mike to discuss our financial results.

speaker
Mike Phillips
Chief Financial Officer

Thanks DJ. The first half of the year demonstrates InventRest's continued ability to execute on both strategic initiatives and operational performance. In addition to successfully completing our California portfolio rotation we solid results on the operational front. Same property NOI for the quarter was $42.6 million representing a .8% increase compared to the same period last year. The growth was primarily driven by embedded rent escalations which contributed 150 basis points. Occupancy gains added another 110 basis points and positive rent spreads accounted for 80 basis points. Other positive drivers included redevelopment activity of 80 basis points as well as percentage rents providing a 60 basis point tailwind. The increase was offset by net expense reimbursements which reduced NOI growth by 20 basis points. Year to date same property NOI totaled $85.1 million, a .6% increase over the first six months of 2024. New read FFO for the second quarter was $35.5 million or 45 cents per diluted share representing a .3% increase compared to the second quarter of last year. Core FFO also increased .3% to 44 cents per diluted share for the three months ending June 30th. Components of FFO growth for the quarter are primarily driven by same property NOI of 2 cents, net acquisition activity of 2 cents, interest expense of 2 cents, interest income of a penny and partially offset by the impact of increased share count of 6 cents. For the first half of the year over year increase. Core FFO for the first six months of 2025 was 90 cents per diluted share up .4% compared to the prior year. And Ventrust continues to maintain a strong and flexible balance sheet providing a foundation to execute our long-term goals. We finished the quarter with $787 million of total liquidity including a full $500 million in borrowing capacity available under our revolving line of credit. Our net leverage ratio stood at 17% and net debt to Justin Ebedo was 2.8 times on a 12-month basis. We fully expect these ratios to normalize on the back half of the year as we continue to execute on our acquisition plans. We close the quarter with a weighted average interest rate of 4% and a weighted average maturity of 2.9 years. As we evaluate our debt maturity profile, we are in active conversations reviewing options with our advisors to negotiate the terms of our $400 million term loans maturing in late 2026 and early 2027. Finally, we declared an annualized dividend of 95 cents per share representing a 5% increase over the prior year. Turning to guidance, we're raising our full year same property and wide growth guidance range to 4 to 5% and adjusting our bad debt reserve to 65 to 85 basis points of total revenue. This reserve accounts for recent tenant bankruptcies as well as an estimate for potential fallout for the remainder of the year. We are maintaining our NAE REIT and Core FFO guidance and our net investment guidance remains at $100 million. Further details on our guidance assumptions are available in our supplemental disclosure. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Christy to discuss our portfolio activity. Christy?

speaker
Christy David
Chief Operating Officer

Thanks, Mike. The leasing environment remains healthy and highly active. Retailers are strategically expanding and prioritizing centers that offer excellent visibility, easy accessibility, and a complementary tenant mix. Today's tenants want more than just space. They seek adjacent businesses that drive traffic throughout the day like restaurants, wellness providers, fitness users, and essential services. These positive trends are clearly reflected in our leasing results and ongoing momentum. In the second quarter, we executed 73 leases for approximately 304,000 square feet. New leases were signed at a .1% spread while renewals were .2% resulting in blended leasing spread for the quarter of 16.4%. One of our strongest quarters since the company's listing in 2021. Our retention rate remained robust at 91% and we successfully embedded annual rent escalators of 3% or higher in over 90% of our renewal leases, supporting sustained and predictable NOI growth over the long term. At quarter end, total lease occupancy stood at .3% with small shop lease occupancy reaching a near full capacity at 99.5%. With 100% of our 2025 leasing complete and approximately 85% of new 2026 leasing already secured, providing excellent visibility into near term cash flows and continued confidence in the durability of our income straight. Also on the leasing front, I'm pleased to announce a new Trader Joe's at the Shopps at Gallery in Austin, Texas. Trader Joe's presence will further elevate the center's profile, increase traffic, and create meaningful synergies with our existing tenants. This opportunity originated from our proactive efforts to recapture space from an underperforming junior anchor tenant. Securing Trader Joe's marks a significant enhancement to one of our premier properties in Austin, our largest market, and reflects the strength of our leasing strategy and our ability to attract top tier tenants to high performing locations. Health and wellness remains a key growth category, consistently driving daily foot traffic to our centers. Reflecting this momentum, we signed a notable lease this quarter with Crunch Fitness at our Skoll Field Crossing property, also in Austin. This addition enhances the center's overall appeal while also delivering an extraordinary rent spread of over 90%, underscoring the significant value created through the strategic repositioning. Leasing demand remains strong across a variety of categories. Quick service restaurants, off price retailers, medical and wellness operators, and experiential users continue to be highly active. Brands like Chipotle, Kava, Starbucks, Burlington, and Five Below continue to seek space in high quality locations. In closing, let me briefly highlight four recent acquisitions that reflect our strategic focus and redeployment of capital from our California portfolio sale. First, we purchased West Ashley Station, a fully leased Whole Foods anchored property in Charleston, South Carolina. This marks our third Charleston acquisition in the past six months. Next is 12 Oak Shopping Center in Savannah, Georgia. This property is anchored by Publix and features a strong mix of retailers, restaurants, and service tenants. This is our first asset in Savannah, a market with accelerating population and economic expansion. In July, we acquired the marketplace at Encino Park in San Antonio, Texas. The property is 100% leased neighborhood center anchored by a top performing Sprouts. San Antonio is one of the most affordable cities in Texas and is projected to become the sixth largest city in the U.S. Finally, we expanded our presence in Richmond, Virginia with the acquisition of West Broad Marketplace. This center is anchored by Wegmans and Cabela's with additional national retailers TJ Maxx, Burlington, and Michaels. We believe these acquisitions reflect our disciplined capital allocation strategy and we are excited to have these properties as part of our growing portfolio. With that, I'll turn the call back to the operator for Q&A.

speaker
Conference Operator
Operator

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by on your telephone keypad now. If for any reason you want to remove your question from the queue, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. Our first question comes from Linda Sy from Jefferies. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

speaker
Linda Sy
Analyst, Jefferies

Good morning. Thank you. Given acquisition activity is more back and loaded than you initially expected, does that mean you would have raised guidance if you had had the acquisition activity happen during the time period you initially expected?

speaker
D.J. Bush
President and Chief Executive Officer

Hey, Linda. Good morning. It's a great question. I think the short answer is you would have seen probably a similar movement in our expectations relative to the internal operations. I think that's a fair assessment, especially when you're moving the amount of, I guess, proceeds that we are. If you think about our California portfolio, it's roughly 10%, maybe a little bit more of NOI. To do that in one year and match fund it perfectly, nothing is really perfect in the transaction market. The transaction market this year in the spring was a little bit slower than what we anticipated. We were being a little bit more selective. We are seeing that speed up, I think, as many of our peers have mentioned in the back half of this year, which gives us a lot of optimism as we finish 25 strongly and then move into 26.

speaker
Linda Sy
Analyst, Jefferies

That makes a lot of sense. Then just a two-part question. What was the same store growth profile of the California assets you sold? I'll follow up with the next one.

speaker
D.J. Bush
President and Chief Executive Officer

It's a good question. Without getting into the writing of those assets, obviously what we were expecting, I think the way I would frame it is the growth profile that we were going to expect for the next couple years in California was not going to be as favorable as what we've been seeing and experiencing in our portfolio in the southeast. There's a lot of reasons for demographic trends, migration, business-friendly environments. All things have continued to draw us towards the Carolinas, towards Florida, in some select areas in Texas. We see the unlevered risk-adjusted returns in those markets just to be more favorable than what we were experiencing in California.

speaker
Linda Sy
Analyst, Jefferies

Given what you're saying, does that mean the 4 to 5% same store growth that you expect for this year becomes more sustainable as you look to next year? I know you're not giving guidance.

speaker
D.J. Bush
President and Chief Executive Officer

That's a good question. I think what I would say is what we used to think 3 to 4% is a very strong year on an internal growth basis. We've been surprised to how sticky it's been north of 4%. I think that's building in higher escalators. Obviously, our occupancy is near an all-time high, getting close to frictional vacancy if we're not already there. We continue to surprise ourselves on hitting high water marks. We still do have some nice visibility as it relates to occupancy gains in our small shop for the next couple of years, notwithstanding any material change in the economy that would suggest any small shop fallout. But that 4% does seem like a sustainable number, or it has been for the last couple of years.

speaker
Linda Sy
Analyst, Jefferies

Appreciate the color. Thank you.

speaker
Conference Operator
Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Andrew Reel from Bank of America. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

speaker
Andrew Reel
Analyst, Bank of America

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. It seems like the level of competition for core grocery anchored centers has just become so strong this year. Just curious if you're seeing any decline in the number of accretive core grocery opportunities available to you. Then I guess, could we maybe see you target more unanchored or shadow anchored opportunities versus core?

speaker
D.J. Bush
President and Chief Executive Officer

Hey, Andrew. Good morning. All really good questions. I'll walk you through. I do think on balance, and I think you've seen it from some of our peers' commentary as well and their transaction activity, that there is a lot of institutional interest, both public and private, to grow the grocery anchored parts of their portfolio. The competition is there. I think the reason that we were so excited about the opportunity to rotate out of Southern California, which is obviously a core market for almost everyone, certainly it gets a tremendous amount of private interest as well because of the financing options that you do have in such a liquid market. But our ability to take those proceeds and redeploy, that cost of capital is probably as good as we can get. We were able to be appropriately competitive on assets that we really liked at cap rates that would probably otherwise not be available to us. Not only were we able to do it day one at Credits, but the growth profiles on the assets that we're acquiring are more compelling.

speaker
Andrew Reel
Analyst, Bank of America

Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks. Then now, small shop, almost 94% least, new high watermark there. What's a realistic ceiling in terms of where that can go from here?

speaker
D.J. Bush
President and Chief Executive Officer

It's hard to say. Obviously, not every center was built to perfection when developed. There's always areas of the center that are a little bit more challenging to lease, and that's even in the A-plus types of centers. But we do have a process and an operational strategy to lease some of those areas that may perhaps the market rent in those locations is much, is material lower than in the center of the shopping center per se. But based on what we see today, we have direct visibility and call it another 100 basis points. Obviously, that could be offset by any tenant fallout or bad debt expense that we're taking. But based in our pipeline outside of executed leases, so you think of LOI and legal stages, there's another 100 basis points of runway, and we think that there could be a little bit more after that as well, so long as the small shop health stays as strong as it has.

speaker
Andrew Reel
Analyst, Bank of America

Okay, great. Thank you.

speaker
Conference Operator
Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. Our next question comes from Cooper Clark from Wells Fargo. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

speaker
Cooper Clark
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Great. Thanks for taking the question. Can you provide some color on the current acquisition pipeline in terms of size and pricing and the confidence level on hitting the 100 million that acquisition got from here?

speaker
D.J. Bush
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, no doubt. So what I would say is we've, our acquisition pipeline, give or take, always has about a billion dollars of real opportunities in it that will flex up and down a tad, but we tend to try and be canvassing that amount. Obviously, our level of success on closing on everything has been pretty good. We have looked at opportunities here that we weren't successful in acquiring, which is fine. We just couldn't get to the final pricing. But as we sit here today and obviously as we reiterate our core guidance, we feel very confident that we're going to get to that 100 million. And if there are more opportunities, which it feels like a lot more opportunities are going to unlock and have already unlocked following the holiday, we think we can surpass that if those opportunities do come to fruition. And we have obviously plenty of capacity to do that.

speaker
Cooper Clark
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Great. And then as a follow up there, just trying to figure out kind of what assumptions you need to get to the low end of the FFO range and if the low end assumes any farther transaction activity throughout the rest of the year?

speaker
D.J. Bush
President and Chief Executive Officer

It's a good question. I think you're thinking about it the right way. If activity kind of froze as we sit here today, that would put us probably closer to the low end of guidance. And then on the flip side, if we're able to bring a couple deals forward or timing is a little bit better or a little bit more on our side, you can see us float to maybe the higher end of our range. So it really at this year, at this point in the year, it really is mostly dependent on timing of that net transaction activity.

speaker
Cooper Clark
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Great. Thank you.

speaker
Conference Operator
Operator

Thank you. We currently have no further questions. So I'll hand back to DJ for closing remarks.

speaker
D.J. Bush
President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you all for joining us. We look forward to seeing you guys in the coming months throughout the conference schedule. Enjoy the rest of your summer.

speaker
Conference Operator
Operator

This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your line.

Disclaimer

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