Macerich Company (The)

Good afternoon and welcome to the Q2 2026 Macerich earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star and then one using a touch-tone telephone.

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Please also note today's event is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference call over to Alexandra Johnstone, VP of Finance and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you for joining us on the second quarter 2026 earnings call. During this call, we will make certain statements that may be deemed forward-looking within the meaning of the safe harbor of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. including statements regarding projections, plans, or future expectations. Actual results may differ materially due to a variety of risks and uncertainties set forth in today's earnings results and supplemental and our SEC filings. Reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in a supplemental filed on Form 8K with the SEC. which is posted in the investor section of the company's website at nacerich.com. Joining us today are Jack Shea, President and Chief Executive Officer, Dan Swanstrom, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Doug Healey, Senior Executive Vice President of Leasing. And with us in the room is Brad Miller, Senior Vice President of Portfolio Management. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Jack.

Thanks, AJ. and good afternoon, everyone. When we published our Path Forward 3.0 plan at NAIRI in June, we highlighted that we were meaningfully ahead of schedule on the execution of the plan, which is delivering tangible results and positioning us for accretive growth above our original expectations. We're demonstrating strong execution across three pillars, simplify the business, improve operational performance and reduce leverage. We've made significant progress in leasing, dispositions, and balance sheet improvement, while also positioning us for sustainable NOI growth and new external growth opportunities. Today, I'll briefly touch on our second quarter results, then turn to where we stand on our path forward plan and how we're thinking about external growth. I'm pleased with our second quarter results. FFO as adjusted was 35 cents per diluted share and go forward portfolio NOI grew 3.8%. We expect this growth to continue to ramp in 2027 and 2028 as our signed not open tenants open and begin paying rent. Our snow pipeline reached 124 million. Portfolio sales reached a new company high of $919 per square foot and 954 across the go forward portfolio with least occupancy of 94% and 95.5% in the go forward portfolio. We remain ahead of schedule on our important strategic leasing initiatives. Our leasing speedometer, which tracks new deal completion in the five-year plan, is at 88% ahead of our 85% mid-year target. Only a small number of leases remain to complete the plan, and our attention has shifted to conversion. That means getting tenants permitted built out open and paying rent. Occupancy is tracking with what we projected in our path forward plan and the strong demand for our space has our teams already leasing into 2029 and 2030 as little space remains available in our best centers. We recently introduced the store openings completion percentage and operational metric intended to provide transparency on our progress to move tenants from LOI to store opening. As of May, we were at 50% and today we are at 57%. We expect to be ahead of our 60% year end target at the end of this year. We've talked about how our playbook is working within the portfolio at the elevate and transformation strategy moves through the later stages and occupancy tightens, traffic increases and NOI improves. If we look at our best performing centers year to date in terms of NOI growth, these centers have experienced the strongest traffic improvement as compared to our portfolio average. Our next good case study is the west wing of Tyson's Corner. That wing has historically been held back by weaker traffic, and we're changing that. We're adding, among other nationally recognized tenants, a two-level Eataly in the former American Girl space, Din Tai Fung in the former Pottery Barn, and cider in the Express space. These tenants are all proven traffic generators. With that wing now effectively full, that added traffic and dwell time should translate directly into pricing power. Year to date through the first six months, traffic is up 10% at Tysons as we have continued to upgrade the tenant base over the past three years. With these new tenants coming in that we've signed and others We expect to announce soon that traffic has even more room to improve. The scarcity of space in our best centers is by design in our path forward plan. No one is building new regional malls. And roughly 90% of our go forward NOI comes from Class A assets. And the best retailers in the world are concentrating their growth in high quality centers like ours. Retailer demand is as deep as we've seen it and is influencing how we are evaluating potential acquisition opportunities. Brands are pursuing quality over quantity and competing for limited space in our centers. The Gen Z consumer over-indexes on visiting physical stores and spending on goods, food, and experiences. and is on track to become the largest spending demographic in the country. Those tailwinds are only getting stronger. Let me turn to acquisitions, which is an increasingly important growth engine for us. Our opportunity set has grown and the pipeline is robust. We are evaluating a broad set of on and off market opportunities. The most at any point since we began the Path Forward Plan. We remain highly disciplined and our criteria has not changed. Our criteria for acquisitions includes assets that are one, accretive to our Path Forward Plan, two, located in strong trade areas with clear catalysts to elevate and transform using our leasing, development, and operational Thank you for joining us. The onboarding has gone smoothly and the momentum is clear. UniGlo is now open. Dick's House of Sport opens on August 14th, and the Elevate and Transform effort is well underway. It is a market-leading asset in one of the most affluent trade areas on the East Coast, and its proximity to Tyson's Quarter extends our platform across the Washington, D.C. region. At Crabtree, our leasing momentum has been strong. We recently announced Level 99 and Fogo de Chao, and Dick's House of Sport is opening in September. In addition, Lululemon has recently signed a lease to extend and expand their location. Since the acquisition, we have commitments on 45 new and expansion leases and 35 renewal leases. Both assets reinforce our conviction that our leasing capabilities and relationships with the best retailers in the world are what turn these acquisitions into value. And it's a big reason sellers and retailers want to work with us. We are increasingly in a position of strength with the balance sheet. Following our most recent offering, completed on a forward settlement basis, we have approximately $372 million from this offering available to fund future acquisitions. That financial flexibility combined with our platform lets us act with speed and certainty that sellers and retailers value. That's a real competitive advantage in this market. In summary, we are ahead of schedule. The plan is substantially de-risked and the structural tailwinds behind our business from the limited supply Thank you, Jack.

Like the first quarter, the second quarter reflected continued leasing momentum across our portfolio. Portfolio sales at the end of the second quarter were $919 per square foot, once again representing a new high watermark for the company. And that's our full portfolio. By contrast, when you look at our go-forward portfolio, the centers where we're actively investing, sales were $954 per square foot. And this continues to underscore The success of our elevation and transformation strategy. Occupancy at the end of the second quarter was 94%, up 60 basis points from the first quarter. The go-forward portfolio occupancy at the end of the second quarter was 95.5%, and that's up 60 basis points sequentially and up 270 basis points year over year, continuing to reflect strong demand for space in our best centers. As we get into actual leasing for the quarter, let's start with our lease expirations. We have commitments on approximately 93% of our 2026 expiring score footage that is expected to renew and remain open, with another 6% in the letter of intent stage. As I mentioned last quarter, we're effectively done with 2026 and now actively focused on 2027 and 2028. In fact, As we look specifically at our 2027 explorations, we're just about 50% committed with another 40% in the letter of intent stage. And compared to this time last year, we're ahead of pace and very pleased with the progress we've made. Turning to tenant openings, in the second quarter, we opened almost 350,000 square feet of new stores. Most notably, in the second quarter, we opened a new and expanded Zara store at Tyson's Corner Center. At 45,000 square feet, this is the first true flagship Zara in our portfolio, and its opening was extremely strong. In fact, in its opening weekend, Zara at Tyson's was ranked number one in sales in the United States and number five in the world. Since then, it remains number one in this region and in the top 10 in the country. And we look forward to opening our second Zara flagship and Los Doritos in the fourth quarter of 2027. In terms of leases signed in the second quarter, we signed 1.3 million square feet of new and renewal leases, of which 645,000 square feet were new deals, which is right on par with what we leased in the second quarter of 2025. And let's remember, last year was a record leasing year for us. Examples of leases signed in the second quarter span five categories. Legacy brands like Aerie, Offline by Aerie, and Old Navy. Food and beverage concepts like Eataly, Din Tai Fung, and Wood Ranch. International names like Zara and Sephora. Experiential concepts like Level 99 and Gulf Galaxy. And emerging brands like Alo Yoga, On Running, Viore, Rowan, Reformation, and Cider. So my point in listing examples of brands we signed in the second quarter, which is really just a subset of all the leasing we've done in our five-year plan, is this. Of the 1,000 new deals in our five-year plan, we only have 170 left to achieve our goal, two-thirds of which are in the letter of intent stage. And given the continued healthy retail environment and unprecedented demand for space in our centers, we believe this is very achievable. So how did we get here? We got here by record leasing activity in the last two and a half years, which we've discussed quarter after quarter. But it's very important to note, and I want to make this clear, we achieved this success not by just leasing space to fill space, but rather we got here by leasing space in a very thoughtful and strategic manner, targeting many of the best and most sought-after retailers in the world. And when these 1,000 new tenants open between now and the end of 2028, the Mace Ridge portfolio of shopping centers will have been completely reimagined and ultimately transformed and elevated like never before. And when we look out to 2029 and beyond, the narrative of our leasing story will change. With the vast majority of our 1,000-deal program complete, we shift from record leasing volumes to curating and optimizing a portfolio We expect our go-forward centers to be operating at higher occupancy and higher sales productivity than any point in our history, giving us continued pricing power and the ability to drive sustainable, same-center NOI growth for years to come. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Dan to go through our second quarter financial results.

Thanks, Doug, and good afternoon. I'll start with a review of the second quarter financial results. FFO as adjusted was approximately $100 million or $0.35 per share during the second quarter of 2026. Go Forward Portfolio Center's NOI excluding lease termination income increased 3.8% in the second quarter of 2026 compared to the second quarter of 2025. With a strong second quarter of NOI growth, Go Forward Portfolio Center's NOI has now increased 2.5% for the six-month period ended June 30th, 2026 as compared to the same period in 2025. We continue to expect Go Forward Portfolio Center's NOI growth for the full year 2026 to increase at least 3% over 2025 and to accelerate meaningfully in 2027 and 2028 as the Snow Pipeline tenants continue to open and begin paying rent. We have a high level of confidence in achieving the total snow opportunity of approximately 140 million. The estimated annual contribution is 30 million in 2026, back end weighted, 40 to 45 million in 2027, and 45 to 50 million in 2028. This represents a clear, visible path to drive incremental growth. Turning to the balance sheet, we are making strong progress on the balance sheet initiatives contained in our path forward plan. 2026 continues to be an incredibly productive year by the team in relation to our various financing activities. With respect to our equity capital markets activity, in May we priced an upsized public offering of common stock at $21 per share, resulting in net proceeds of approximately $450 million. The use of proceeds were primarily to fund the acquisition of Annapolis Mall and related strategic leasing capital investments at Annapolis. In June, we priced the public offering of common stock at $23.90 per share through forward sale agreements. The company did not initially receive any proceeds from the sale of shares of its common stock by the forward purchaser banks. We intend to use the future net proceeds to fund future acquisition opportunities. Year-to-date in 2026, we have closed on a four-year loan extension through November 29 at our South Plains property, completed an amended and restated $900 million revolving credit facility, repaid the loan outstanding on Vintage Fair Mall, and closed on a new $115 million five-year mortgage loan at Deptford Mall. With respect to our 29th Street property, this $76 million loan at the company's pro rata share remains in default after its February maturity date. As we are currently in discussions with the lender on the terms of this loan, we do not have any additional commentary at this time. We're proactively addressing our remaining 2026 debt maturities through a combination of potential asset sales, refinancings, loan modifications, or if necessary, property givebacks. We currently have approximately $1.2 billion in liquidity, including $900 million of capacity on our revolving line of credit. This excludes the net value of unsettled forward equity proceeds of approximately $372 million. From a leverage perspective, net debt to adjusted EBITDA at the end of the second quarter was 7.3 times, which is almost a half turn lower than last quarter, and over a one and a half turn lower than at the outset of the path forward plan. Inclusive of the unsettled forward equity proceeds, net debt to adjusted EBITDA is now below seven times. And importantly, we've outlined our strategy to further reduce leverage to the six times plus or minus range. We are executing on the dispositions we've outlined in our path forward plan. During the second quarter, we closed on the sale of our joint venture interest in West Acres for $1 million, plus the assumption of $13 million of debt at our share. To date, we have completed approximately $1.3 billion in total dispositions, representing about two-thirds of our initial disposition target, and the disclosures we've provided in our supplement include the summary of these asset dispositions. These sales transactions are consistent with our stated disposition plan to improve the balance sheet and refine our portfolio. We continue to expect to sell or give back 300 to 400 million of additional assets, out parcels, and land by the end of this year. This would increase total dispositions to approximately 1.7 billion. Year to date, we have closed on about 30 million in total dispositions and we now have approximately 100 million under contract to sell. We'll provide further updates on our disposition activities as we progress through the year. Overall, we are making great progress on our path forward plan objectives to reduce leverage, refine the portfolio and strengthen the balance sheet. With that, we'll turn the call over to the operator.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star and then one on your touch tone phones. If you are using a speaker phone, we do ask that you please pick up the handset before pressing the keys. We do ask that you please limit yourselves to a single question. Please note that if you have additional questions, you may rejoin the question queue. To withdraw your questions at any point, you can press star and two. Once again, that is star and then one to join the question queue. And our first question today comes from Andrew Real from Bank of America. Please go ahead with your question.

Andrew Real Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Now that all 30 anchor replacements are committed and starting to roll on, maybe could you just talk about in some more detail sort of the second order effects on leasing and rent spreads at the rest of the center once that anchor opens? How might that compound over both the next few years and then even beyond 2028 when the renewal opportunity really accelerates?

I'll take that, Andrew. So you're asking sort of the If I get the question right, of our 30 anchors, sort of a net follow-on effect of... Correct. Yeah, okay, great. So there's probably like three stages that it goes through. The first is when we sign an anchor deal and can announce it. You know, it's obviously not open yet. That already enables us to begin the releasing effort with getting strategic All of these tenants that we can build upon on the inline. Then there's the second phase, which is when the store opens. That obviously brings more energy traffic into those wings. And then you've got what I call the after effect two years later when now you've got that anchor open, operating, and multiple tenants now also open and operating in that wing. If I were to use an example of the Shields store at Chandler, that store in itself right now is drawing 3.1 visitors to its store, according to Placer, in the last 12 months. It's the number one Shields in the system. That's enabled us to bring Fiore, Aloe, Din Tai Fung now is coming on to the outside. Seafood City just opened, for instance, at Chandler. That's a pretty exciting brand that just opened last week. So you're seeing, like, and Shields is very unique, right? They draw tremendous volumes. But if you looked at another important anchor tenant that we've talked a lot about, Dick's House of Sport, you know, we have... about nine months operating history at Freehold with them. And according to our math, they're drawing over 800,000 customers into the center from their store. So we expect them to achieve a 1 million incremental customer run rate. That's already not only helped tenants within that wing, but enabling the teams to continue to follow on more leasing. So it's sort of a, it's not a simple answer, but what I'd say is we get the first bite when we're able to announce the anchor, we get the second bite when they open, and by then we've got other tenants on the inline opening, and then when you look at it two years later, you get the full effect.

Our next question comes from Vince Tabone from Green Street Advisors. Please go ahead with your question.

Hi, good afternoon. I understand acquisitions are lumpy and hard to predict, but how should we best think about overall acquisition volumes going forward? Based on your comments, it seems like there's a lot of interesting opportunities you're underwriting. So just trying to get a sense of if there's any thresholds in terms of risk mitigation or human capital or number of assets. You know, you recently acquired that are in some state of transition that you want to, you know, kind of limit in terms of the overall portfolio. Ultimately, yeah, just trying to see how many of these we should reasonably expect over the next, you know, 12, 18 months.

Yeah, okay, Vince, I'll try to take that. So you kind of try to pin me down on size, shape, and volume. And, man, if I was in my triple net, I would be spewing out quarter by quarter what we could do. And I was listening to some of my peers in the shopping center business Talk about volumes. I guess the way I'll answer it is I believe that this is a really unique opportunity to buy enclosed regional shopping centers. I think that we have a tremendous advantage having an integrated operating platform. We've got great national tenant relationships, and we got the money. And we don't need mortgage debt, and we've got speed and certainty. And to me, that should give you confidence like that enabled us to win Crabtree in a fully marketed deal. That enabled us to secure Annapolis, which was off market because the seller wanted certainty and he wanted speed. What I can tell you today is since I've been at this company, we have a robust and broad on or off market set of opportunities with stabilized yields in the nine to 11% area. I'm not gonna give you a number, But the way I would think about the net effect to us and what makes it so exciting for me sitting where we are right now, we're at $1.90 and six times that to EBITDA on the core plan. If we invest that $372 million of forward equity that we have, 100% equity on an acquisition in the 9% to 11% stabilized yield area, that's going to generate about $0.02 to $0.04 incremental FFO accretion and lower our leverage 25 to 30, you know, low 30 bits. So our will be down in the high five range, you know, if we're able to just deploy that 372. So we're going to be picky, we're going to do the right thing. And, you know, I probably got a lot of sellers listening to this call too so I don't want to make it harder on myself but I think it's a tremendously unique opportunity for us as a company today.

Our next question comes from Craig Melman from Citi. Please go ahead with your question.

Maybe not to pile on or try to pin you down even more but on acquisitions I mean you guys came back pretty quickly to the equity market and I mean, is that even a possibility given what you have in the pipeline today? It's not possible. I'm just going to tell you, Craig, it's just not possible. The reason why we decided to Pursue the forward equity. We have so many good things happening in terms of leasing. And I'll spend, you know, later in this call, talk about what we're seeing on sort of late stage and mid stage transformation and the impact it's having. But literally like doing a forward equity is a no brainer. We've got very, very large pipeline. We know that the net effect will take our debt to the DAW down into high fives, like 575, right in that range. and it's going to be accretive. So, yeah, we're going to use that money. I'm telling you, way before June of next year. So, I think it was just kind of prudent given the biggest thing I was concerned about just there's a lot of macro things happening in the world right now and right now I'm very comfortable settling that forward equity somewhere between a 9 and 11 stabilized yield and I kind of know the net effect of it which will be positive. Our next question comes from Todd Thomas from Key Bank Capital Markets. Please go ahead with your question.

Yeah, hi, thanks. I'll switch over to operations for this. Dan, you reiterated the full year go-forward NOI growth of at least 3% and reiterated also that you expect a meaningful acceleration in 27 and 28. Just in terms of the cadence from here, following 3.8% this quarter, is there anything in the second half of the year that should create a headwind to go forward NOI growth? Or do you see this period representing the inflection in growth with growth continuing to track higher from here on commencement?

Yeah, hey, Todd, this is Dan. Thanks for the question. Yes, we continue to expect at least 3% for the year, which based on obviously second quarter was very strong at 3.8. That brings us in at 2.5% year to date. So that does imply three and a half percent NOI growth, at least for the second half of the year. You know, we think maybe the fourth quarter, you know, based on the snow contribution might be a little stronger than the third quarter. But, you know, kind of think about the second half of the year as three and a half percent plus for twenty six. And then as you noted, there's a meaningful ramp from there. We did put out our path forward version 3.0 at NAVREET, you know, the three year NOI CAGR midpoint was 6.5% for years 26 through 28. So if you just for simple math, assume a 3% in 26, you know, that implies north of 8% NOI growth in 27 and 28. And our We've given you the snow contribution by year in my prepared remarks. And again, 28 is slightly higher than 27. So you can kind of think of 28 as a little bit higher than 27. But over those two years, eight and a quarter percent sort of midpoint growth based on the six and a half over the next three years.

And Todd, I'll pile on to Dan's comment on operations. So, you know, you've heard us in my comment talk about, you know, later stage transformation, mid-stage transformation, early stage transformation. You know, we're releasing, as you know, 1,000 new units, about 25% of our portfolio. So what does a late stage transformation look like? So if I took Fairland Commons, Broadway Plaza, Scottsdale Fashion Square, Tyson's Corner, those I would consider in the late stage transformation of what's going on with those properties. If you looked at the placer traffic June year to date, those four centers are generating low teens traffic increases over last year, same period, versus if you look at our go forward portfolio, it's flat. If you looked at year to date, 26 NOI on those four properties versus Thank you for joining us. So the point I'm trying to make is we're seeing tremendous lift when we get this right. If you looked at two examples of what I call mid-stage transformation, that's Los Cerritos and Chandler. Those centers are seeing kind of mid-single digit placer numbers, so it's in excess of our go-forward average. It's mid-single digit NOI growth year-to-date compared to 2.5% for the go-forward average. and sales are also mid single digit versus the 3.7. Each of those centers have very unique things about them like Chandler we just talked about, Sifu City just opened up, Zara is under construction, Dentai Fung is under construction, Sephora, Alo, Wagyu House, all under construction and Los Cerritos, Dick's House of Sport under construction, Flagship Zara under construction, Coach Cider, basically under construction and other tenants that we haven't announced yet. So you're going to see this follow-on effect. I think the question came in earlier from someone about the 30 anchors. And if you look at the others, there's 15 other centers that are either in the early It's a mid-stage transformation that are undergoing that are going to start to contribute and follow on as we get into 28. And you'll see the effects roll into 29, 30 that Doug talked about, incrementally curating the portfolio. So there's a lot of power that comes from doing this. If you do it in the right centers with the right trade areas, with the right mix of anchors and inline coming on. You know, the go-forward averages don't tell the full story. That's the point. And so we'll begin to start to talk about this in the future quarters as we get more data. But very exciting from my feet, from what I'm seeing, because basically it's working. And we keep talking about, you know, same center NOI going up. You know, we're seeing it real time in those later stage assets. And now the mid started to see it. So... There'll be more to come, but it gives us a lot of confidence that this is working.

Our next question comes from Floris Van Dijkum from Lattenburg. Please go ahead with your question.

Hey, thanks, guys. I don't want to belabor the capital markets questions and the investments. Hopefully, people have gotten a pretty good sense of the growth ahead. My question is, I guess, what percentage of your total NOI today is in your go-forward portfolio? And then maybe also a little bit of update on the percentage of your S&O pipeline that's from redevelopment versus your core portfolio. Please. Yeah.

Hey, Floris.

I can take the first part of your question on the NOI contribution. Maybe Brad can chime in on the second part. In terms of the NOI, and I will refer you to our supplement, page 7, just to draw it out. We had NOI for all centers for the quarter of $211 million and the go-forward centers represent $185 of that $211. And then for the six months ended June 30th, you know, the NOI go-forward centers are about 360 relative to 400 for the total portfolio.

This is Brad. I'll take the snow contribution. So of the 124 million of snow we have out of the $140 million total opportunity, the 124 roughly breaks down $20 million to our development pipeline of Scottsdale, Green Acres, and Flatiron. $20 million to what we call the redevelopments, which is all the anchors that we're opening up. And then the remainder, the $84 million, is the rest of the leasing of the portfolio.

Our next question comes from Handel St. Just from Mizuho. Please go ahead with your question.

Hey there, guys. I wanted to go back to You know, redevelopment, capital spend, the curating, optimizing the portfolio. With your leasing goals now nearly complete, it seems it's going to be a bit more of a shift towards some of that curating, optimizing portfolio. You have a number of anchor commitments. So I guess I'm curious if you could share some color, maybe the scope of the opportunity for redevelopment in front of you within the portfolio. How can we think about that on maybe an intermediate term basis in terms of redevelopment spend and yield that you're targeting? Thanks.

Yeah, thanks, Daniel. So, you know, in terms of your question on redevelopment priorities, yeah, the team, we're actually going through that exercise right now as a team because there's been so much focus on nailing down the 28 plan with 1,000 units. There's things that we haven't touched that are going to really contribute. I'll give you one example. At Broadway Plaza, we have the former Neiman's Marcus anchor box that was going to originally be a resto. That's not going to happen anymore. Thankfully, we actually have the opportunity to actually convert it to more inline opportunity. There is so much demand for We don't have the space. So that's going to actually end up being more accretive than have we followed through on the restoration hardware opportunity. At Scottsdale Fashion Square, we have probably one of the most valuable pieces of commercial real estate on the north parcel adjacent to the Apple Store. We're undergoing plans to evaluate that. Tysons has tremendous opportunity up by the Silver Diner across from the West Wing that we talked about. And there's others like that within the portfolio that we are really beginning to put pen to paper on how to do it, how much does it perform out, does it add value, does it add traffic, is it gonna enhance our position and continue to put that moat around our assets.

Our next question comes from Greg McInnis from Scotiabank. Please go ahead with your question.

Hey, good evening. For the acquisitions, looking at targeted yields in the 9% to 11% range, and I recognize that this math is not one-to-one, but how should we think about the quality of those assets compared to the in-place portfolio, considering the mid-to-high 6% implied cap rate on the stock?

Yeah, you're kind of asking like quality of the 9-11 versus kind of our implied cap rate, if I got that right. I would say the things that we are evaluating are really, you know, just going back, obviously, assets in very strong trade areas, where we believe that if we can come up with a catalyst plan, whether it's a leasing, anchor redemise, you know, can really pick more share from that trade area. That's first and foremost starts with that. Obviously, there's got to be a creative, it's got to be the right financing within our leverage targets. You know, at the end of the day, we have a portfolio and the things that we're looking at, we believe can either, they're either RA already or if they're not, we believe that employing our strategy can get it there. So, I'd say the quality of things that we are looking at, you know, are very solid. If that helps.

Our next question comes from Michael Griffin from Evercore ISI. Please go ahead with your question.

Great, thanks. Jack, you mentioned the deals that you've closed over the past, call it year and a half, Annapolis and Crabtree. One was marketed and one was off market. I'm just curious if you're seeing any increased competition for prospective transactions. I got to imagine it's a relatively limited buyer pool, but just given the operational intensity and the nature of how to run these malls, have you seen more capital interested chasing these deals? And just curious, any thoughts on that?

I mean, from my standpoint, you're talking about sort of the nature of the competition that we're competing with. I think compared to the Crabtree opportunity, that was pretty robust bidding. and I think the players that we were able to win over, they're still there. They're still looking at the same things that we're looking at. I think our cost of capital is tremendously different than when we were evaluating Crabtree. And I think I would agree with your point that these are not You know, commodity assets. So, you know, anybody that wants to invest in this needs to be partnered with a really good operator. It's all leasing. It all takes time. It all takes money. But if you get it right, you know, you get a Scottsdale Fashion Square that, you know, does 18% sales increase year to date versus last year. And it's phenomenal kind of stuff that happens if you can get this right. I would say when we were successful with Crabtree in Annapolis, I mean, I was doing that part-time with one of the asset managers. I have now, I got an EVP of acquisitions. He's got a team and he is, we've got an unbelievable list of things that we're evaluating right now compared to last year and the year before. So yeah, I mean, I feel like I'm sure it's going to be competitive. People are going to try to beat us and try to find things that make sense. But I also think that one advantage we have, if you were going to try to bring a Dick's House of Sport on your campus, we have probably the most of any company right now that I can think of in terms of commitments with them. We have a very unique relationship with them where we can get really good insight as to Does this make sense? Will it make sense? If we do it, will you be there? If you were there, we can do some other things with it. And I think that it creates more predictability as we're underwriting these different opportunities versus, say, someone else that maybe only has done one of them or maybe two or trying to get one done. I think it's very different. I'd also say one advantage we have is kind of like working with municipalities. The project we're doing out of Flatiron in Broomfield in partnership with the city of Broomfield, that project is going to be something that our company is going to be super proud of when we get done with that. And I would say that there are assets that are like that that can be transformed and we'll need to work with the local government in partnership to get those things Over the goal line, potentially. So deals like Flatiron would not have worked were it not in partnership with the city of Broomfield. And that's going to be a project that's not only financially super successful for us and super additive from a quality standpoint, but it's something that their community and their tax authorities are going to be very proud of.

Our next question comes from Tayo Okasanya from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead with your question. Good afternoon, everyone.

Just curious, with the recent increase in the tenure and all the concern about REITs being higher for longer, does that kind of change Any of the calculus for you guys at this point in regards to capital allocation or is that just kind of less of an issue now kind of given everything you've done with all the asset sales and the leveraging?

Dan, you want to try to tie this question about capital allocation and how we're thinking about it?

Yeah, I would say, Tayo, it's not having any immediate effect. You know, and also, you know, in terms of, you know, as we think about the refinancings within the plan, we did assume kind of a 6%, you know, all in cost of financing and refinancing. So, Even with the rise in the 5-year and the 10-year, spreads still are very constructive and really at all-time lows. So I think that's not currently impacting where we expect to be able to refinance the rest of the portfolio. In terms of broader... Capital Allocation. Not yet. It hasn't had any impact on us. I don't know, Jack, you want to add anything to that?

No, I think you said it great. And obviously, with having that forward in place, just completely protects our ability to get the balance sheet under six times that EBITDA. I mean, just straight out, I'll tell you that. In 2028.

Our next question comes from Ron Camden from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead with your question.

Hey, great. I guess going back to some of the conversations in terms of the pipeline for sort of acquisitions, obviously you guys have done two successfully. Is there a way to sort of categorize what that potential pipeline could look like over the next three to five years? Other opportunities like this coming along, whether it's reverse inquiry, just like to sort of categorize how often these deals can come about. Thanks.

All right, Ron. I mean, you guys try to pin me down, but if I tell you it's robust, it's the most stuff we have in our pipeline right now since I started, I'll give you one piece. It's about half of our pipeline is on market, half is off market right now. So you can call around and ask the brokers what they're selling or what they think is selling, and half of our portfolio is directly with the seller. That I will tell you.

And our next question comes from Mike Muller from JP Morgan. Please go ahead with your question.

Yeah, hi, thanks. I know you're seeing more competition for acquisitions, but you're still talking about cap rates that are fairly high in the 9 to 11% range.

Are you seeing any signs of cap rate compression? You know, are you seeing it come anytime soon? or do you think this window is going to be open for a while?

Okay, Mike. Well, first, I just said personally, I hope it doesn't compress because I want to buy more. But I think to me, I'd have to focus on debt yields. At the end of the day, debt yields are shorteningly compressing on the best A++ properties. You've seen that. But I think it's gonna still be a while before debt yields really start to have an impact, in my opinion, on cap rates, broadly speaking, in the mall business. And any mall that requires any kind of elevate and transform effort to it, there's gonna be a limitation on the leverage advancement on the acquisition. So whoever wants to buy it is going to put up 40% equity maybe, 35%, 40%. You're going to have to write more checks for the next three years, and you hope your partner does the right thing and gets the math to work for you. So I think as long as that dynamic stays in place, I think we'll be able to sort of experience these kinds of yields we're talking about. You know, if there are more buyers like us or Other shopping center companies that want to get into this, that might have an impact on cap rates. But right now, I'd say I haven't seen it yet.

Our next question comes from Alexander Goldfarb from Piper Sandler. Please go ahead with your question.

Hey, good evening down there. Jack, can you talk a little bit about – I haven't heard you talk about ancillary income, sponsorships. and all that sort of overlay that you know the malls can have and just sort of curious as you look at the plan forward if your focus right now is more on assembling the portfolio you want and then once you're done with the plan forward then going back and doing sort of the ancillary income overlay or if it's a dual track strategy.

Hey Alex, yeah in terms of ancillary income we haven't missed a beat on it. One of the things That was a really exciting transaction with the Pen Fent Plaza transaction that we were able to enter in a partnership with down at Tyson's. You know, in that open plaza where Dick's House of Sport is going to go and where the hotel, you know, the main entrance of the property on that upper level. It's branded Pen Fent Plaza. We're looking at a branding opportunity in Scottsdale, Fashion Square, similar to that right now. We're kind of, quote, in the market with it. and I do think that there are other areas like that. That's an example of ancillary income. And so we're constantly, our team in business development are looking at those opportunities because we've got these centers that have real cache. They're driving 14, 15 million annual customers through the doors and they're staying on the campus, enclosed campus, which is a pretty unique opportunity and so I think in our best centers that that's going to be more and more of an opportunity for us. And there are a lot of other things, you know, beyond just putting kiosks and carts out there in the common area where we're driving incremental revenue. So yeah, that's definitely, we're not going to wait till this gets there. You know, as these centers are upgrading, you know, there's real opportunity to cross sell into those non-real estate opportunities that generate NOI.

And our next question comes from Caitlin Burrows from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead with your question.

Hi, everyone. Maybe just two modeling points. Wondering if you could confirm versus the goal of 88% to 89% physical permanent occupancy what it was as of 2Q. And then just on the management company side, it looks like revenues are down year over year, but the management company expenses are up. So just wondering if you could go through kind of what's driving that, what we should assume going forward, if it's impacted by acquisitions or something else.

Brad, you want to take the first and then Dan take the second?

Yeah, sure. Thanks, Jack. So we reported 95.5% leased occupancy for the Go Forward portfolio. Physical occupancy at the end of Q2 was 91%. And yeah, we still think we are definitely going to get to that 88, 89% physical permanent occupancy when we get these 1,000 tenants open.

Yeah, on the management company revenues, they were down slightly in the second quarter relative to The first quarter was up. Year to date, we're actually up almost a million and a half versus 25. That's really from development fees, our outsides versus last year. We would expect that to continue in the second half of 26 as we complete green acres and flat iron in the last stages of development. Scottsdale, in terms of the three major redevelopments. On the expense side, we did see some increases year over year, and those are primarily attributable to some headcount and compensation. We built out our asset management team and obviously have built out the acquisitions team, and there's a little bit of investments in technology and AI spend as well.

Go ahead, sir.

I apologize. I want to thank everyone for coming on tonight and just to let you know that we are extremely excited about what we're seeing on the operational lift in terms of our transformation strategy and also our pipeline of acquisition opportunities. So thank you for joining our call.

And ladies and gentlemen, with that, we'll conclude today's conference call. We do thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines.