Kite Realty Group Trust

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Quarter 2, 2021 Kite Realty Group Trust Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star and then the number 1 on your telephone keypad. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Mr. Brian McCarthy, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications. Sir, please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Kite Realty Group's second quarter earnings call. Some of today's comments contain forward-looking statements that are based on assumptions of future events and are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from these statements. For more information about the factors that can adversely affect the company's results, please see our SEC filings, including our most recent 10-K. Today's remarks also include certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to yesterday's earnings press release available on our website for reconciliation of these non-GAAP performance measures to our GAAP financial results. On the call with me today from Kite Realty Group, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, John Kite. President and Chief Operating Officer Tom McGowan, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Heath Feer, Senior Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer Dave Buell, and Senior Vice President Capital Markets and Investor Relations Jason Colton. I will now turn the call over to John.

Thanks, Mark, Brian, and good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us today. I think I would say that the only thing may be more compelling than our quarterly results is the impending merger between CHI Realty Group and RPAI. Regarding that, please note at this time we're unable to provide any additional information beyond what we've disclosed publicly to date. What I can tell you is that every day we learn more about RPAI, our conviction regarding the merits of this transaction grows exponentially. We are very much looking forward to discussing the outlook of the combination after we close the merger. In the meantime, the primary goal on both sides is continued operational outperformance. With respect to our second quarter results, the continuing theme is retailer demand. During the quarter, we leased 637,000 square feet, which is nearly double the amount of square footage as compared to the second quarter in 2019, and an additional 211,000 square feet sequentially. Blended lease spreads were 14.7% and 9.2% on a gap in cash basis, respectively. The outsized volume widens our total retail portfolio lease to occupied spread to 310 basis points, with current signed not open NOI of approximately $12 million. Our anchor acceleration program is also progressing nicely. We've signed three anchor leases this quarter for a cumulative total of seven anchor leases since the program's inception. These seven leases are expected to generate cash yields of over 36%. The specific details of our executed and potential anchor leases are laid out on page four of our investor presentation. Not only will we realize a healthy uptick in NOI based on these deals, but we're vastly improving the merchandising mix and creating value. Backfilling empty Steinmart spaces with tenants such as Adidas, Aldi, and Total Wine will dramatically increase traffic and compress the cap rate of the underlying centers. With respect to the remaining boxes, demand remains extremely strong with several leases in negotiation and at the LOI stage. We look forward to providing more details on these deals on our next call. We've also been experiencing healthy demand for our small shop space across a variety of categories such as beauty and cosmetics, health care, service tenants, and the return of fast, casual, and full-service restaurants. The strong box and small shop demand resulted in a portfolio retail leased rate of 91.5%. This 100 basis point increase from last quarter is indicative of the continuing recovery in our financials. On page three of our investor presentation, our total 21% 2021 revenues will be only 2% lower than the annualized first quarter of 2020. Many of you ask, when will we fully recover to pre-pandemic levels? While we still don't know the exact date, we do know that we're quickly gaining ground. While the last 18 months have been tumultuous, to say the least, through it all, we remain focused and work to operate from an offensive posture. Today, we find ourselves driving towards the completion of a transformative merger. The opportunity currently in front of us was only made possible by virtue of the successful execution of a series of initiatives prior to the end of 2019. This put KRG in one of the strongest financial positions in our sector, which allowed us to intensely focus on operations during COVID, which resulted in sector-leading collection rates. I think it's worth taking a look back at the hard work over the past several years that put us into this position of strength. During Project Focus, we shed our lower growth and most vulnerable assets, resulting in a portfolio of high-quality properties with long-term, durable cash flows. We exited some low-growth markets to focus on markets that are benefiting from favorable demographic trends. We reduced our leverage and cleared out our near-term maturities. Our net debt to EBITDA currently sits at 6.4 times, despite the fact that our lease rate dropped by over 500 basis points in 2020. We dialed down our development pipeline and structured our non-retail projects to minimize risk and capital outlay. We started in this business as developers across all property types. If there's one thing we learned, is that development should never be a financial mandate, but rather a risk-adjusted decision around the highest and best use of the property. We also learned, like most things in life, when it comes to development, timing is everything. Finally, we assembled the best team in the industry, a team that embodies our intentional and results-driven culture, a team that is poised to get even stronger once we join forces with RPAI. Nothing ever happens intentionally. Great without great people. With all this in mind, the next bold move we are taking doesn't represent a new direction for KRG, but rather the next step down a path that we are firmly committed to. Before I turn it over to Heath, I want to again thank the KRG and RPAI teams. It's been an intense few months, and it's going to remain that way through the end of the year. I have the utmost confidence that the teams will remain focused, maintain operational excellence, and emerge as a unified best-in-class platform. Now I'd like to turn the call to Heath.

Good morning, everyone. Like John, I couldn't be more thrilled about the impending merger. Having spent two years at RPAI, I am uniquely positioned to understand the quality of the combined portfolios, the cultural similarities, and the potential of the platform. Turning to our first quarter results, we generated $0.34 of may-read FFO, and we also generated $0.34 of FFO as adjusted. As a reminder, we are guiding the 2021 FFO on an as-adjusted basis to reduce the noise associated with the 2020 receivables and 2020 bad debt. As set forth on page 19 of our supplemental, the net 2020 collection impact in the second quarter was minimal, with a collection of $1.6 million of prior bad debt offset by $500,000 of accounts receivable we now deem uncollectible. We continue to refrain from giving same property NOI guidance for 2021, provided that we are committed to reporting the same. Our same property NOI growth for the second quarter is 10.1%, primarily driven by a reduction in bad debt as compared to the prior year period. This includes the benefit of approximately $500,000 of previously written off bad debt that we collected in the first quarter. Excluding those amounts, our same store NLI growth would be 8.9%. That 120 basis point difference is just noise from 2020 and is precisely why we didn't provide guidance on this metric. It's also important to note that when comparing same store results across the peer group for 2021, keep in mind that KRG consistently achieved the highest levels of rent collections in 2020. With respect to outstanding accounts receivable items, As of last Friday, the balance on our outstanding deferred rents stands at $2.1 million as compared to $6.1 million as of December 31, 2020. Furthermore, less than a half million dollars of deferred rent payments are currently delinquent, of which 70% is already reserved. The current outstanding balance on our small business loan program is $1.2 million as compared to $2.2 million at inception, and not a single borrower under the program is delinquent. Our balance sheet and liquidity profile not only remain solid, but continue to improve. Our net debt to EBITDA was 6.4 times, down from 6.6 times last quarter. Pro forma for the $12 million of signed but not open NOI, our net debt to EBITDA is six times. Excluding future lease-up costs, we have only $17 million of outstanding capital commitments and have roughly $620 million of liquidity. We are extremely pleased with the flexibility in our balance sheet. We are raising our 2021 guidance of FFO as adjusted to be between $1.29 and $1.35 per share, an increase of two cents at the midpoint. Our guidance assumes full year 2021 bad debt of approximately $6.4 million, of which $2.6 million has been realized as of June 30th, 2021. This guidance assumes no additional transactional activity, including the previously announced merger. We are looking forward to closing the merger with RPAI and I am excited to provide 2022 guidance for the combined company. Thank you to everyone for joining the call today. Again, as John mentioned earlier, we are unable to answer any questions on the pending merger, so please focus your attention on our operating results. Operator, this concludes our prepared remarks. Please open the line for questions.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Again, just press star and then the number 1 on your telephone keypad. And to remove your question from the queue, just press the pound key. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Flores Van Dijkum from Compass Point. Sir, your line is open.

Morning, guys. Thanks for taking the question. Morning, Flores. So it looks like it's a pretty good quarter. Maybe if you can just comment on, I think on page five, you put in the potential NOI growth in this portfolio, which is as a percentage of your existing NOIs is pretty high, 14%. How do you see that falling over the next couple of years? And how confident are you that that's going to occur?

I mean, sorry, did you say how do I see it?

Falling? Over what time period do you see that occurring, I should say? Oh, sorry. It's probably a little less clear in the question. And how certain is it? Because part of that is obviously dependent on lease up and demand. And what are you seeing in terms of tenant demand?

Sure. I mean, it's really all dependent on lease up, right? So I think we're very – let's put it this way. After the quarter that we just had in leasing, you know, we feel very good about achieving, you know, somewhere on that chart. You know, we said that the potential is 14%. We kind of give you a little view to the right of that in that investor presentation page of what it looks like in terms of 5%, 10%, 15%. growth. So across the board, that looks very good as it relates to, you know, value for the company. But when you lease, you know, 600 plus thousand square feet in a quarter, which is, you know, a significant chunk of our total square footage in one quarter, you know, I think we feel pretty good about that, Floris. And when you look at the demand across the spectrum that I kind of mentioned in the prepared remarks, the demand is wide. I mean, it's not just in one segment of the market. And remember, this is against the backdrop of no supply, no new supply, really. So I think we feel very confident that we will continue to lease as we are. It's not only leasing space. Look at the spreads that we generated on those leases. So I'd have to say it was better than a pretty good quarter. I'd say it was a great quarter in that regard.

Flor Salet, you look at that 14%, you look at the components of it, You already have 6%, which is signed not open. That's $12 million of NOI. Half of that's coming online this year. And then with respect to the anchor lease up, which is another 5%, you know, we told you that we have 27 boxes. Seven of them are done. And also in our materials, we're telling you that we have five in lease negotiations and five in LOIs. So we've already had, you know, a beat on 17 of the 27. So we think this is, you know, this is going to be a fairly quick exercise, you know, you know, it's not going to be overnight. But like John said, the demand remains strong.

Great. Thanks. And maybe another question, I guess, follow up on, you know, cap rates that you're seeing in the private markets and what that and where you think Your own cap, you put that obviously in that same slide in page four as well, but where do you think cap rates for KRG should be at, and what is the market missing?

Well, I mean, to the second question, I would say that, you know, the cap rates we put on that page five of the investor presentation, we think KRG is in that spread somewhere. as it relates to, you know, and that's based on what we're seeing in the private market. I mean, that's not just a swag. That's what's occurring in the private market. I think you're familiar with, you know, there's a pretty sizable portfolio that is going to trade soon in the low five cap rate. We looked at the portfolio. You know, good portfolio. It's being bought by one of the private equity sponsors, to my knowledge. And it's going to trade in the low fives, and it's a good portfolio, but I wouldn't say that it's one of the best I've seen. And I think it's really hard to get product. And it's, again, why we're so excited about our pending merger is that what we are going to do together, how we're going to do it, you just can't replicate that. And when you find these quality portfolios and they get on the market, you have 15 legitimate bidders, all cash, hard money. I mean, it's very, very aggressive when people go out for properties like this. So I think that it is what it is. It's maintained that kind of, you know, five to six range that we talked about. You know, I just, and I don't see that changing, Floris. I think right now that there's just not enough product. And you look at yields in the market that you can get in other places. You look at the durability of these cash flows. And you look at the upside, right, that occurs when you're buying something right now because there's usually a little bit of vacancy, so. I mean, that's a long-winded answer, Floris, but the cap rates certainly where I think we should be represented would be on that page five, somewhere in that range of cap rates that we displayed, that five and a half to six and a half. And on the lower end of that, not the higher end. Thanks, John. I appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alexander Goldfarb from Piper Sandler. Sir, your line is open.

Oh, hey. Good morning, and thank you. So, John, as you guys think about RPAI and then also getting back into regular normal course acquisitions or ramping up the redevelopment program or undertaking new external investments, how do you think about you know, sort of the balancing of the management time needed to integrate RPAI versus getting back out and doing the normal course investments, especially as you just indicated to Floris, like, you know, the investment market is certainly heating up

Yeah, good question, Alex. I think time allocation is like capital allocation. We're looking for the highest return we can get, whether that's investing our time or investing our capital. And right now, without going beyond what I'm allowed to go beyond, we obviously believe that's the highest return on our time and capital to be integrating the companies after we merge. And, of course, we're actively working on that right now. So I think it's a great question because time is money, and we're very focused on that. We've always believed that we're pretty smart capital allocators, and I think that will come to bear here. And there's a lot of opportunity there with that. And then the great thing is when you look at the lease-up platform, and the lease-up opportunities that we have in front of us and they have in front of them and we have in front of we, I think it's awesome. So there's just really, really good opportunity there.

Alex, I'll also mention that none of us have been relieved of our day jobs. So while the transition activities are happening, we're still out there looking. We're still underwriting things. We're still looking to maintain ourselves offensively. So just because it's not mutually exclusive, right? We are... The transition activities are above and beyond what we're doing on an everyday basis.

Right, but if I understood what John said, it sounds like the focus of the company post-closing is going to be the integration and dealing with the combined portfolio. That's where the bulk of the time will be spent. less so on new external stuff. That's the message that I took away.

I think the message, Alex, is that we're very focused, but we're not one-dimensional. So we're very capable of being able to get something like this done and integrated and be efficient. We've done something similar. We were very efficient. We were very ahead of the game. You don't wait until you close and then figure it out. You know, when you close, you're running. You're running. You're in a sprint. You're not just waiting around to figure out where the course is. So I think we're very capable of doing that and executing and being aware of what's going on and being aware of the market opportunities, which is what's, you know, that's why we have a great balance sheet, and you continue to protect that great balance sheet to give you optionality. And I think that's what I was trying to say with the prepared remarks is is that this balance sheet that we have and that we've worked hard to get only gets better, by the way, and then we have, you know, lots of optionality with a cheaper cost of capital to boot.

Okay, I know that's a tough one. By the way, John, I didn't know that you did anything other than run. I never knew you to sit or walk. I always thought of you as running. I appreciate that, yeah. No problem. So second question is, you know, sort of the COVID question, forgive, but you guys obviously are heavy Sunbelt, heavy Florida. Recently, from what you've heard from your tenants or property managers or maybe your own site visits, is there anything in the shopper dynamics, whether it's at the stores, restaurants, et cetera, that indicates to you that people are starting to go back to the COVID mentality, the hoarding, the limited trips to centers, or is everyone or all the shopping patterns, restaurant patterns, everything is normal, like people doing normal shopping trips, lingering, you know, all the early bird specials in Florida, the late bird specials, whatever, all those normal people are doing normal stuff. I'm just trying to figure out if the rise in recent COVID, Delta, whatever, is having an impact or it's really not.

No, I mean, at this point, the answer is no. At this point, you know, we are business as usual. We have traveled the country extensively in the last, two months and are doing it again this week. So where we are, where we're traveling, where we're going, we're seeing significant demand. We're seeing busy stores, busy restaurants. Obviously, each individual situation, people are going to adhere by what they have to adhere by. I'm not tremendously worried about that at all. I have personal opinions. that are informed by a lot of research and data that would lead me to believe that, you know, this is going to – we're going to talk about this a lot for the next several weeks, and then we're not. And I think there's a lot of data that would point to that. In fact, you mentioned, you know, Florida and some other markets in the south who are already seeing numbers come down off of what you mentioned, the Delta variant, which is really what is predominantly going around. and it's predominantly going around amongst unvaccinated people predominantly. So it is what it is, Alex. It's out there. The media loves it. They'll lean into it, and we'll lean into operations, and, you know, I think we'll win. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Lucas from Capital One Securities. Sir, your line is open.

Okay. Good morning, guys. Just a couple of quick ones. Okay. for me. Just on the pending anchor lease deals, I guess just trying to think through what the timing commencement for rent would be for those. Are these 23, 24 type openings, or are they something that could hit in 22, assuming they get done?

Yeah, so Chris, an example would be at Eddy Street Commons, we'll be opening up the Trader Joe's this month, and we have a nice sequence of deals that we signed in 21, the two in the first quarter of 21, the three in the second quarter. And I think you'll see quite a bit of progress in the third quarter as we take on boxes. But it's a pretty consistent run as you get through the quarters. But we'll see, obviously, the majority of this occurring in 2022.

But when you're referring to specifically the pending ones, Chris, I mean, it really, you know, those deals haven't been signed yet, right? So the pending deals, you know, we'll see when we get them signed. And, you know, if they get signed in Q3, then you obviously have a potential opportunity for late 22. If you don't, it's 23. So in terms of when they open and pay rent. That's the beauty of having the significant pipeline that we have is that the cadence over 22 and 23 will be consistent over each quarter and it will grow. And it's why I mentioned I'm going to prepare remarks. You know, when our annualized revenue is only down 2%, right, versus where it was pre-COVID, and you see this pipeline that we have, that tells you, wow, there's a pretty good runway to exceed 19, let alone be there. So I think we're in really good shape, and I think the cadence is great. The team is executing. You know, this is one of the beauties of having a platform that we have that's been there before. We've executed on a major initiative like this before, and we're executing now. And the difference is our yields are higher. You know, when you look at our return on capital, that's the difference. That's way higher. So I'm pretty psyched about what that means. What that means is more free cash flow, Chris, and as you know, that's what we care about.

And then, Chris, one other thing, as you look at the tenants that we're replacing, you know, people like Steinmart, Office Depot, et cetera, we're bringing in an incredibly different quality of tenant that is going to drive massive amounts of additional sales to our center. So we're hitting a lot of key components as part of this program.

Hey, Tom, let me follow up with you then. On the anchor deals that you have signed and even in the conversations you're having on other deals, are the tenants flexible on the space or do they stick to a format box that, you know, they want to keep? And then I guess the other question along those same lines related to flexibility is, as it relates to opening, has that, you know, bended at all? Or are they still very focused on some narrow windows throughout the course of the year?

Well, first of all, I would talk about the fact that in terms of delivery, without question, they like to maintain their sequence. There's no question that they like to have stores open in late fall. And if you don't have that, they move over. But we're doing a lot of things up front by spending capital, getting design moving, working with their construction folks to make sure we're meeting those time frames without question. So that part has been working well. We've got a lot of great relationships without question. And then in terms of handling these deals from start to finish, I think that has continued to go well. The negotiations haven't been tremendously different from what they were in the last several years. So we have this positive momentum. We have people that want to get stores open, and we're going to be in a good situation moving forward into the third quarter as well.

So, Chris, in terms of your question regarding flexibility, John, yeah, they definitely are more flexible now. And, again, that's a supply-demand issue, right? You've got lower amounts of supply and you've got strong demand. The retailers learned a lot through COVID. They adapted their businesses tremendously through COVID. So today, when we're looking at a site plan, we think we have lots more flexibility than we used to relative to a particular site. you know, general footprint. And, in fact, we've got multiple examples right now of deals we're working that are outside of the traditional footprint. So I think they're much more flexible. They're much more creative. We're more flexible as landlords. I mean, you know, we're more flexible in what we're willing to do. So it's a great marriage of that. And that's just because, you know, we're both benefiting from this increased consumer demand.

Okay, thank you. And then my last question is going to be just on the shop space demand. You know, is that mostly coming from national and regional tenants, or is there some local tenant activity as well, or has that been sort of squelched because of the pandemic impact?

No, I think that's what I was trying to say in the prepared remarks, Chris. It's extremely broad-based. I mean, when you look at the deals we did in this quarter, you know, we basically did, you know, For example, even just looking at renewals and you look at the type of retailers that are renewing, it's across the board. You know, guys like Pure Bar and The Joint and Sally Beauty and Torchy's Tacos and Orange Theory and then New Deals. You know, we're doing New Deals with noodles and You know, the joint is doing new deals. Restaurants are doing new deals. So I think the small shop space is probably more broad-based than it's ever been. I think there's been a lot of business formation coming out of COVID. And I remember we talked about restaurants and COVID and, you know, the failure rate. And then it was just amazing how quickly new restaurant concepts came up. And chefs, you know, who are in one restaurant moved to another, created their own. The franchise business is strong. Look, the reality is the consumer is strong. Debt levels at the consumer level are very reasonable, frankly, and there's a lot of money moving in the system. Again, low supply, great real estate, great locations. It's another reason why we love the upcoming deal. We both have both of those.

Yeah, the diversity is unbelievable compared to where we were five years ago. All these medical services, pet services, educational, it just goes on and on, which is a great benefit to us.

And I think, Chris, I think it's a point worth talking about for a little bit because it is the open-air platform in a nutshell. It is that pliability, that flexibility that we have in these retail distribution points that aren't massive that we can control and redirect. You know, the average square footage of these things is less than 200,000 square feet. It is not hard for us to adapt and move them around. And they also all generally have more parking than they really need. So we have that upside as well that we're now tapping into and that communities are beginning to realize, you know, doesn't make sense. These old parking ratios don't really make sense. So, look, I think this open-air business and this platform has got so much room to run, and we're really in the beginning of a new era of retailers, you know, expanding into our types of properties because of this last-mile point that we have that is just unmatchable. I mean, an online retailer can never match that, and that's what we're super excited about. Great.

Thank you for answering my questions this morning. Thank you.

Thank you. Once again, as a reminder, to ask your question, just press star and then the number one on your telephone keypad. Again, just press star and then the number one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from the line of Craig Schmidt from Bank of America. Sir, your line is open.

Thank you. I guess keeping on small shop and anchor shop, it looks like the anchors sequentially increased to 120 bps. and the small shops increased 30 bps. Is it a matter of needing the anchors to be in place to drive the small shops, or is there some hesitancy from the small shops that they're not growing to the same pace as the anchors are?

Great question. And I think, look, I think generally in these situations, especially coming out of COVID, national retailers move quickly, right? Small shop retailers are entrepreneurial. They've got to put it together. I don't think it's unusual for the anchors to lead. And it is true, generally speaking, you know, anchors draw, you know, small shop players are drawn by the anchor composition, right? So I think it bodes well for the future of the small shop program. And we want that to increase. We want that 30 basis points to come up. Also, you know, when we had a very specific hit in the big box side, you know, with the Steinmart dislocation, and that enabled us to kind of market that in one way, right? Like we had people literally coming, Craig, saying, show us every Steinmart box, right? before, you know, while they were still going through bankruptcy, right? So I think we just got a quick head start there, but I don't think it's indicative of anything that we would worry about moving forward. And I think the best thing, and we didn't mention this since we're talking about small shops, when you look at, you know, we always talk about how do you judge health, Craig? I mean, the small shops... You know, we did 20 small shop non-option renewals. You know, we talked about that a lot in the past when a small shop tenant lease expires and they have no options. I mean, we got an 11% cash spread on that. That gives you an indication of real health in the small shop space.

Great. And then I guess looking at the elevated leasing volumes, are you expecting that to continue into the third and fourth quarter? or may there be a dip to sort of the pre-pandemic levels of leasing?

I don't think we're – you know, look, I think we're in this unique situation where there's a lot of pent-up demand. We certainly think we're elevated, and we will continue to lease a lot of square footage. Can't predict exactly how much. As we mentioned on the call, we have several leases in negotiation that happen to be anchors. That's a lot of square footage. So I think over the next couple quarters, you have likely to have some pretty strong square footage numbers. But honestly, Craig, we never really get very fascinated with a quarterly number in anything. It's a quarter. It is not representative of the next couple years or whatever. It's a quarter. So we'll continue to pound away. The leasing team and, frankly, the whole company is focused on this outcome of leasing. And that's, as you know, that's the way we are. We drive to that goal. We will hit those goals, and we want to outperform them. But the demand is just so broad-based. I can't say enough about our platform and the quality of the real estate and the demand that's out there in the retail universe because they're making money, and they make money at our shopping centers. It's kind of that basic.

Okay, thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Todd Thomas from KeyBank Capital Markets. Sir, your line is open.

Yeah, hi. Good morning. John, you touched on development in your prepared remarks and mentioned that, you know, development decisions are considered carefully and the timing is everything. You know, you have a few projects in process today. How are you thinking about development over the next couple of years? It seems like lease economics have improved, you know, and I'm just curious, you know, if there's an appetite to take on some additional development exposure as you think about allocating capital.

I think, look, for our current balance sheet, it's appropriately sized. You know, and we're being appropriate in terms of our risk-based math that we go through, Todd. And, you know, we have a, as you know, we have a couple projects in the pipeline, you know, that are more mixed use in nature. We're feeling very good about those. I think as we get through, we're going to focus on executing on those. I think the main reason to discuss that is going forward, when the company has a bigger balance sheet, you can look at that in a different light because you're not going further out on the risk spectrum. I think the timing is good in certain pieces of real estate to take advantage of that. So that's an exciting future opportunity. But as we sit today, just KRG's balance sheet, I think we're going about it appropriately.

Okay. And then just a question for Heath on the balance sheet. Looks like you moved some cash into short-term instruments. Can you speak to that and what sort of yield you're generating and I guess how long you might look to keep that cash invested?

Sure. That's the proceeds from the exchangeable notes that we did, Todd, and that's in there probably to the end of the year. And we're getting 50 basis points on that. So rather than have it sit there and get nothing, we decided to put it in a short-term instrument. And then as the debt in 2022 comes up in a par, we'll start tapping that money in to pay off our secure debt in 2022.

Okay. Got it. All right. That's all. Thank you. Great. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Wes Galloway from Baird. Sir, your line is open.

Yeah, good morning, everyone. I want to go back to more of a bigger picture question here. I guess, in short, do you think we can get back to the early 2000s pricing power based on the supply and demand imbalance that we're seeing, I guess, going forward?

I don't know. I mean, if you look back to that time frame, You know, there was obviously great demand, and the difference then was that, you know, people were leaning into new construction in a big way. So over the next few years, you take 2000 to 2004, there was a tremendous amount of stuff built, you know, and I think over time that diluted the pricing power. I think this has a longer, maybe a more gradual gestation period in that, Wes, in that This pricing power is a little different. I mean, this is a supply-demand equilibrium that's in really good shape. Demand is strong. Supply is low. I think we continue to think that if we continue to drive these leasing spreads, that's obviously indicative of good pricing power. So it's kind of a stay tuned, right, depending on what happens over in the economy in general. But the best thing that I can say regarding that is, You know, supply is going to remain very moderate. It's going to be muted. I think people will, you know, there's not a lot of people looking to build ground up. It's a very complicated process. It's why I said development is something that it's great to have the opportunity to do it in a measured way because you're not competing with a lot of people. There's just not a lot of competition there, and that allows us to continue to get those spreads. Look, we're excited about what we see in front of us. We've never had this much opportunity in terms of lease up in front of us, and I think this quarter kind of exemplifies what this team can do.

Yeah, I think, I mean, it appears to me it looks like we have a potential setup for 2.5% plus rent growth, and supply does take a while to come online. I guess if you had to give me your best estimate, how long it would take to entitle a project and then get it built, what would you say that is today?

Oh, geez. I mean, depending on where you're doing it and what part of the country, if you're going out and buying an unzoned piece of raw land, it's minimum, you know, two, three years minimum. And in certain parts of the country, it's seven years, eight years, you know, ten years. It really depends. That's the thing. It's not a light switch. Even if you buy a piece of ground that is zoned, the entitlement process is It's a very slow process, let alone the zoning process. So I don't know.

Yeah, then you jump into construction, delivery, and you run into all the issues of unforeseen conditions. So as well as anyone, it takes time.

And in today's world, the environmental process is tougher no matter where you are. So it's tough. It's hard to do, which is great. I'm glad it's hard to do. A lot of people got out of this business, Wes. When we were doing this years and years ago, every doctor and dentist was developing a strip center. That's over. It's only people like us that have deep capital, deep relationships, and deep knowledge that can do ground-up development.

In our current situation... You know, we've talked to heads of real estates from some of the biggest national players. It's starting to get tougher for them to find locations. The new supply is not coming. The number of bankruptcies has slowed. So it's getting tight, which all works in our favor.

Yeah, i.e. rent growth.

Yeah, and I guess as a bigger company, would you plan on having a small allocation to land banking?

Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, we're not looking to go out and buy raw land. So that's just kind of saying for that that I can't say on the phone right now. I'll get you that one. One-on-one, I'll give you that one. That's a good one. But I will tell you that, you know, look, we're well positioned to do what's on our balance sheet. You know, when I look forward to the combined company after the merger, we're well positioned to handle that. And it's just good incremental upside, you know. That's all that is.

Gotcha. And last one, just on the anchor lease, and you're about a quarter of the way through the anchor acceleration, and the capital per square foot is $40. There may be some outliers in there, I'm not sure, but I guess where is the median one, penciling that versus the $100 that you were projecting?

You know, I mean, we continue to feel pretty good that the projection that we made was pretty conservative. I think when the project is Over and done, it won't be anywhere near 100 in my mind, but it's too early to say. Things can move around. We could end up with some splits. But as we pointed out when we laid out that $100 a foot, that was just us being conservative, and it was in the light of a lot of moving parts as it related to increasing costs out on the supply chain, which is moderated significantly. So overall, construction costs have held pretty firm, even though certain commodities have increased substantially, others have dropped. You know, margins actually have tightened. So I feel very good about just saying that 100 is very conservative.

Got it. Thanks a lot, guys.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Again, as a reminder to ask a question for a star and then the number one on your telephone keypad. Again, just press star and then the number one on your telephone keypad. There are no questions on the queue. I will now turn the call over back to Mr. John Kite. Sir, please go ahead.

Okay, great. Just wanted to thank everybody for joining us. Have a great day. Enjoy the limited amount of summer you have left. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.