NetSTREIT Corp.

Welcome to the NetStreetCorp first quarter 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Amy Ahn. Please go ahead.

We thank you for joining us for NetStreet's first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. In addition to the press release distributed yesterday after market closed, we posted a supplemental package and an updated investor presentation. Both can be found in the investor relations section of the company's website at www.netstreet.com. On today's call, management's remarks and answers to your questions may contain forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements address matters that are subject to risk and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ from those discussed today. For more information about these risk factors, we encourage you to review our Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020, and other SEC filings. All forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof, and NetStreet assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements in the future. In addition, certain financial information presented on this call includes non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our earnings relief and supplemental package for definitions, GAAP reconciliation, and an explanation of why we believe such non-GAAP financial measures are useful to investors. Today's conference call is hosted by NetStreet's Chief Executive Officer, Mark Manheimer, and Chief Financial Officer, Andy Walker. They will make some prepared remarks, and then we will open the call for your questions. Now, I will turn the call over to Mark.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for NetStreet's first quarter 2021 earnings call. We are pleased to be here with you today. I'll start with our portfolio metrics and recent acquisitions activity, and then take a moment to discuss our pipeline and continued focus on external growth in light of our recent transformative equity race. Andy will then provide more detail on our first quarter results and balance sheet. He will also update you on our expanded outlook, including AFFO guidance for 2021. We will then open the call for questions at the end of our prepared remarks. As of March 31st, 2021, our portfolio contained 235 leases comprising of 4.4 million square feet in 39 states with a diversified tenant roster of 60 tenants in 23 industries. Our weighted average lease term is 10.1 years. We are 100% occupied with no lease expirations until 2023 and less than 2% of ABR expiring before 2025. Based on ABR, our tenancy is 70% investment grade, with an additional 11% classified as investment grade profile, and 89% of our industry exposure is what we refer to as defensive. We continue to focus on well-positioned tenants who have strong balance sheets and great access to capital, and on physical locations that are integral to the tenant's ability to generate cash flow. Finally, let me remind you that we do not own or intend to own theater, health club, or early childhood education tenants, as these tenants typically have weaker credit profiles and real estate that is often cost prohibitive to efficiently adapt to other use. Our strategic approach to portfolio construction has resulted in strong collections through COVID. Through this April, we have collected 100% of rents for each of the past eight months. This steady operational performance has allowed us to focus on our external growth plan. In the first quarter, all of our acquisitions were either with investment-grade tenants or with tenants with investment-grade profiles. We completed $88.2 million of acquisitions at an initial cash capitalization rate of 6.7% and a weighted average lease term of 8.8 years. Subsequent to quarter end, we extended two of these leases that increased the weighted average lease term from 8.8 years to 9.6 years with an impact of only six basis points to the quarter's going-in cash cap rate. We also provided $1.3 million of funding towards an estimated $4.4 million development project for an investment-grade tenant that is expected to be completed in the next few quarters. We also acquired two more O'Reilly's auto parts stores in New England at a 6.9% cap rate with more than 10 and a half years of lease term as an add-on transaction to a portfolio done in 2020. These are good examples of our ability to extend leases as part of our acquisitions and grow our opportunity set through providing development capital for our target tenants. Our multi-pronged acquisitions approach allows us to sift through a broad opportunity set and pursue where we see the best risk-adjusted returns with the highest quality tenants in all retail throughout the country. The different approaches have allowed us to add several new tenants to our portfolio, including Marshalls, Natural Grocers, Ross Stores, and Wawa. As we look ahead, our pipeline continues to grow in size, and we are excited about our ability to execute on our external growth strategy. Earlier in the month, we raised our acquisitions guidance to $360 million from $320 million. And to fund that effort, we subsequently completed a transformational, well-oversubscribed equity offering that allowed us to reload our balance sheet with approximately $194 million of additional direct power. We view this offering as a milestone for NetStreet, given its expected impact on our future growth. We continue to review a wide breadth of opportunities, including investments in stabilized assets, blend and extend opportunities, debt leaseback transactions, and development projects. We will continue to target the same industries and a similar mix of investment grade and high-quality tenants that currently make up our portfolio. We do expect to continue to grow the portfolio, but we are also focused on diversification as well as enhancing the overall quality of our portfolio. Finally, we expect that cap rates and lease terms will be generally consistent with what you've seen from us over the past few quarters. We are truly excited by the opportunity ahead of us, as we know that execution on our external growth effort should result in extremely attractive earnings per share growth, given our size. As I mentioned previously, but bears repeating, our track record of 100% rent collections for the past eight months means that we have not been distracted by chasing rents or workouts with problem tenants. We remain focused and have diligently built a strong pipeline of acquisitions. Over the past 16 months, we have raised over $600 million of equity capital in three separate transactions, with our 144A offering, our IPO, and our most recent follow-on. We have historically deployed each capital raise efficiently and accretively. With the completion of our recent follow-on offering, we remain laser-focused on growth. We will continue to keep you updated on our progress. I'll now turn the call over to Andy to discuss the balance sheet and our capital markets activities. Andy?

Thanks, Mark, and thank you for your time with us this morning. Let me begin with our results for the first quarter of 2021. Yesterday in our press release, we reported net income of $0.02, core FFO of $0.22, and AFFO of $0.23 per deleted share for the first quarter. Please note that these per share results reflect that we owned the acquisitions completed during the first quarter for an average of only 13 days during the quarter. As of March 31st, 2021, the in-place portfolio is generating $48 million of annualized base rent or ABR, which reflects the effect of acquisitions completed in the first quarter. Turning to our balance sheet and capital markets activity, as of March 31st, we had $13.7 million of cash and $13 million drawn on our $250 million revolving fund credit. We have no debt maturities until the maturity of our revolver in December 2023, which is subject to a one-year extension option, which would match the December 2024 maturity of a fully drawn $175 million term limit. Our net debt to annualized adjusted EBITDA ratio was 4.7 times that quarter. Subsequent quarter end, we completed our first follow-on offering. The offering saw significant oversubscription by investors, which resulted in the upsizing of the offering by 20%. We raised $194.3 million in proceeds, net of offering expenses, including the exercise in full of the underwriter's option to purchase additional shares. We view this equity raise as a pivotal moment for the company, as this will serve to further fund our growth. In addition, this will take us through to our one-year anniversary since our IPO last August, at which point we expect we will further expand the capital choices available to us. We intend to utilize the proceeds for acquisition and to repay our revolver. Performed for the offering at March 31st, 2021, we would have $195 million in cash and a fully undrawn $250 million revolve. We would like to thank our entire bank group for their support and execution. We're also very proud of our entire team for their hard work that positioned us for this milestone offering. With respect to dividends, earlier this week, the Board declared a 20-cent regular quarterly cash dividend to be payable on June 15th to shareholders of record on June 1st, reflecting an annualized dividend rate of $0.80 per share. Now let me take a few minutes to discuss our outlook. We are introducing full-year 2021 AFFO guidance in the range of $0.95 to $0.99. This guidance reflects the impact of a recent follow-on offering and, as previously disclosed, we now expect to complete $360 million of acquisitions this year in net of disposition, up from our original guidance of $320 million. We still see this as back-end weighted in each quarter, and a cap rate consistent with our recent activity. We continue to expect our G&A to be in the range of $11 to $12 million, with an additional non-cash compensation expense of $3 to $4 million. We expect our cash interest expense, including unused line of credit fees, of $3 to $3.5 million, and an additional $600,000 of non-cash deferred financing fee amortizations. We expect to incur state and franchise taxes in the range of $200,000 to $300,000. And lastly, we expect fully diluted weighted average shares outstanding to be in the range of $38 to $39 million for the year. To wrap up, we're very pleased with our strong first quarter activity. But beyond that, we believe our recent equity offering was a very key step in our progress as we seek to achieve certain important public company milestones, such as index and investment grade ratings, that will have a meaningful impact on our cost of capital. We take our role as stewards of our investors' equity capital very seriously, and we are focused on execution. We thank our shareholders for their support. This concludes our prepared remarks. We will now open the line for questions. Operator?

At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Our first question comes from Nate Crossett with Barenburg. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, guys. I was wondering if you could comment on the activity so far in queue two. You know, I think you highlighted some stuff in the offering perspectives in terms of what was under contract and LOIs. Is there anything notable that's different from what you disclosed a few weeks ago there?

No, I don't think that there's too much, you know, different than what we disclosed, but we have continued to add to the pipeline. I feel pretty good about where we are for the quarter. Obviously, we increased our guidance at the end of the first quarter. I feel like we're on track to be able to feel pretty good about that for the year. Our line of sight, obviously, is only kind of 75 to maybe 90 days out. And so with what we're seeing now, not even just with what's in the portfolio, but the types of opportunities that we're seeing, as we mentioned in the prepared remarks, we've got a multi-pronged approach, whether that be you know, Sally's back or, you know, blend and extends or development. And some of those take a little bit more time, you know, the public company to really kind of have a few of those types of transactions done that, you know, you get a lot of repeat business. So I think a little bit more on the, on the development side, as well as kind of your on the blend, blend and extend side. So feeling pretty good about the volume and quality and pricing that we're seeing for the second quarter.

Okay. And, So pricing is pretty consistent over the last three months. I mean, we tend to get questions as to the fact that you guys are able to get a little bit higher yields than some of your closest competitors. And maybe you can just kind of remind us what you guys are doing that may be a bit different than peers to kind of achieve that little bit higher yields on acquisitions.

Yeah, no, it's a good question. We get asked that question quite a bit by investors. I think it has a lot to do with our size being a smaller public REIT, not needing to go out and acquire several hundred million dollars of properties every single quarter. We really try to build out a bell curve of what opportunities fit our criteria that we really want in the portfolio and then what assets are most inefficiently priced and really kind of build out that bell curve chop off the left side of the bell curve there and try to buy the most inefficiently priced assets. And only needing to go out and buy $360 million net of dispositions per year allows us to be a little bit more surgical with the assets that we take into the portfolio.

Okay, I appreciate that. And if I could just ask one for Andy, it sounds like you'll probably put the ATM in place later this year. And I'm just curious, how do you view kind of ATM funding versus, you know, overnight follow-ons? And how should we kind of think about that heading into next year?

Yeah, thanks, Nate. Yeah, I mean, look, I think that based on the level of acquisitions that we're going to be executing, you know, certainly as we look out over time, ATM, based on our current liquidity, you know, average daily trading volumes that we're seeing, you know, would not, we would not be able to be solely relying on the ATM. So I think it's, you know, just like everything else that we do, I think it'll be a balance. You know, to me, the benefits that it provides is better match funding, right? You know, so we're not sitting with, as we are right now, $195 million worth of cash on the balance sheet. But yeah, I think just similar to what everything, you know, that we're trying to do at NetStreet, you know, it's just going to be a balance.

Okay, thanks, Gary.

Next question, Greg McGinnis with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. So now that Biden appears to actually be going after 1031 exchanges on property tax gains over a half million dollars, and given your comments that most of your competition seems to fall into that category, How do you expect a potential rollback of that PERT to impact the business?

Yeah, that's a good question. And I think there's still a lot of wood to chop for that to become law. But that being said, you're right. Most of our competition are 1031 type buyers, smaller family offices and individuals. So we're not really competing much with the larger institutions. I think it would be reasonable to assume that if they get through all of the loopholes that they're going to have to get to to remove this loophole, I think you could expect to start to see pricing increase. I do think that you will get a pretty big fight from lobbyists and the various different associations before that becomes law. But, yeah, I mean, I think it helps us a little bit on the acquisition side with pricing, with less competition. And then, fortunately, we aren't selling many assets, didn't sell anything in this quarter, and really took a deeper knife to the portfolio before we raised money as a private company. So we don't really need to go out and sell many assets, but it certainly is a helpful avenue to be able to sell into in the event that you want to cull some of the assets out of the portfolio and sell into a deeper 1031 private market.

And how much of your acquisitions are sourced from 1031 sellers?

You know, not very many. You know, when you really kind of look at, you know, what we're acquiring, there's a lot of deals that we're working with developers. There's a lot of, you know, kind of where we're taking a piece of a shopping center and we partner with, you know, a shopping center buyer. So those are mostly going to be more institutional, you know, type sellers. So it's really a pretty small percentage of what we're acquiring. But I think, you know, kind of what you're getting at is there could be a decrease in volume just in total numbers of transactions, which I think is true. But I've certainly listened to some of our peers that sell a lot more assets than certainly that we do, and that's really only about 25%, 30% of what they sell is into that 1031 market. So I think it will have an impact on total transaction volume, but I think maybe it will be a little bit less impacted than maybe some of our peers.

Okay, thanks. And just the last one for me. I know you mentioned that you expect kind of volumes and cap rates to remain the same in the acquisition pipeline, but as we start to move past the impacts and restrictions of the pandemic, have you started to see any changes in cap rates or desirability that may make you, you know, that may make certain tenants or sectors more or less attractive to you?

No. You know, we definitely are seeing a lot more transactions happen in areas that were less focused. So I think that's healthy for the overall market. I think there are some, you know, casual dining and sectors that were not focused on starting to loosen up a little bit. So you're seeing some of those, you know, transactions happen. But we were, you know, even before the pandemic, you know, this has always been the strategy of the company is really focusing on You know, essential, you know, type retailers and also retailers that have very strong balance sheets, very strong access to capital and are in sectors that are working in retail. We, you know, we continue to think that there's going to be a lot of change in retail. There was a lot of change pre-pandemic, obviously post-pandemic that was expedited quite a bit. And, you know, I think it's really important in retail as that continues to evolve to not only be in sectors that are, you know, somewhat cushioned from what's happening in e-commerce, but then also when there is inevitable change in retail to have the capital to be able to reinvest in your business and adapt to that change. And so that was really the thesis going into retail. You know, starting the company and raising capital as a private company going back to 2019, that did not change through the pandemic. You know, we really want to be a source of very consistent cash flows for investors. You know, we're not going to go chase yield and, you know, really try to adapt to our investment thesis based on, you know, changes that are going to be cyclical. You know, we're viewing these as, you know, very long-term investments and, you know, there's going to be cyclicality and there's going to be change and we want to be very well positioned for that change when it comes.

All right. Thanks, Mark. Appreciate the time.

Next question, Todd Thomas with KeyBank. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning. This is Ravi Vaidya on the line for Todd Thomas. Hope everyone's doing well. I wanted to ask, as a result of recent migration trends, are there certain markets that you're trying to strengthen your position in or trying to expand into?

Not really. I mean, I do think that we are seeing more opportunity where there is population growth. So I think over time, you'll likely see us have more of a concentration in the Sunbelt areas of the country. But we're really viewing the real estate pretty similar to how retailers look at it in a market-by-market basis. Do the demographics support not only the use that we're jumping into, but then also various other uses in the event that we take a property back And there just are more healthy growing markets in the southeast and the southwest and the Sunbelt area. So I think on the margin, you'll see us increase exposure there. But I think over time, we're likely to be in all of the lower 48 on a very market-by-market specific underwriting.

Okay, thanks. And can you comment on development opportunities, whether you see more opportunity there and expect to see more development in sale leaseback opportunities in the future?

Yeah, no. We are seeing more opportunity in development. That was a real focus for our acquisitions team. I think they've done a great job of going out and trying to source those types of opportunities. When we were first getting going and initially publicly had a few of those opportunities, they really do take a lot of nurturing those relationships to get them going. And then you really get a lot of repeat business once you do a few. And now we're starting to get a lot more traction with a lot of those repeat sellers. So we're very encouraged by that. So I do think you'll see a little bit of an uptick on the margin as it relates to development. We've always been somewhat not a sell-y spec, but thinking that that's probably not going to be an area that we're going to have a lot of success. Usually those are cash-driven events where you might have a private equity firm buying a retailer and trying to pull as much cash out of the real estate as they can and write a smaller equity check. That's not a great equation for us in how we look at corporate credit. So we have not really focused too much on that, but we are seeing even more opportunity there. In fact, part of our pipeline does have a Sally SPAC in there with an investment-grade retailer that's looking to really grow. So I think you are seeing a little bit more opportunity with investment-grade and high-quality retailers, mainly because they're the ones that are growing, and some of them like to use the real estate as an avenue for funding their growth.

Thank you. Appreciate the time.

Next question, Linda Tai with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning. Can you remind us on how you plan on managing leverage going forward? What are the current drivers and is there anything preventing you from operating at a higher level?

Well, so right now we're at zero. Yeah, you know, when Mark and I were building out the story, you know, we really tried to draw on our experience. You know, our targeted leverage is, you know, four and a half to five and a half times. We think that that's a reasonable level, right? You know, so from our perspective, you know, could we, you know, the portfolio could certainly support higher leverage, but within the public company, Space, we believe that four and a half to five and a half times is an appropriate leverage range for our company.

Got it. And then how is your investment sourcing pipeline broken out? Does it loosely mirror your 70% IG, 11% IG-like? I'm just wondering if there's a ratio of how much you have to source in order to execute in those categories.

Yeah, we're not beholden to really much of that, although with our focus on what gets through investment committee, we're going to be between two-thirds and three-quarters. It's been remarkably consistent for the investment grade bucket. We would like to continue to grow the investment grade profile bucket a little bit more, and we've been doing a little bit more of that over the past couple of quarters and think that looking forward to the pipeline, there are certainly more More of those types of assets that we'll be acquiring, we view that as very similar risk with maybe a little bit more return. So we certainly like to grow that. And then on the margin, we'll look at your BB minus to BB plus sub-investment grade bucket where we really like the operator. There are one or two of those types of opportunities in there. But really not doing much in the fourth bucket of your non-investment grade profile, kind of smaller operator without a rating. Now, that being said, I think, you know, quick service restaurants has been maybe the one sector where we may look to push on that a little bit just because we think those assets are incredibly fungible, incredibly resilient in various different economic cycles, and have really proven that, proven out over the past couple of cycles. So I think you may see some of that over time. There's not really much of that in the pipeline right now, but we are starting to see a little bit more opportunity there as well.

Just one last one. Given recently raised net investment volume, can you discuss how your acquisition team has evolved over the past year? And, you know, what do you think they are capable of in terms of, you know, how much can they actually deliver in terms of volume?

Yeah, I think significantly more than what we're doing. You know, right now, you know, we're very focused on pricing and really trying to cut off that side of the bell curve of what's the most inefficiently priced assets. I think we can maybe eat a little bit more into that bell curve. I think you'd see a little bit of degradation on cap rate, maybe 10, 20 basis points at the most, if we were to double the amount of acquisitions that we're doing. I think the team has really bought into our approach and has really been very creative in terms of how we've gotten in front of a lot of opportunities. And then, you know, like I mentioned earlier, a lot of, you know, the development side and, you know, doing some blended extends with some retailers. Now that we've done a couple, you know, everyone's pretty comfortable with the process and kind of what the lease amendments need to look like if it's a blended extend. And so the repeat business there I think should get easier over time and certainly starting to see that in the pipeline. But I think, you know, with the team that we currently have, I think doubling our acquisitions volume is pretty achievable. If we were to double, I think we may look to maybe add a little bit more help on the closing side and asset management side, so maybe one person on each side there. But I think we really built the business for scale at the senior levels and the acquisitions team to really be able to scale the business without adding much G&A. So really happy with the progress that the acquisitions team has made. and developing relationships and really getting into more and more repeat business because I think that's going to be more and more important as we grow the portfolio.

Thanks.

Next question, Kybin Kim with Truist. Please go ahead.

Good morning. So as you become a bigger company and acquirer, what kind of, benefits do you think you can see in terms of deal access or visibility? I know you guys have a long history of doing this anyway, regardless of the size of the company, but just curious what kind of benefits you might see.

Yeah, no, it's a good question. It's something that we anticipated happening maybe a little bit more gradually over time as we build out relationships and you really build out the reputation and people think of you a little bit more if they're looking to sell something. And that's come a little bit more quickly than I probably would have thought. We're still not going to be very competitive for the much larger portfolios. We've seen a number of those types of opportunities come our way, but those are typically going to be very broadly marketed and very competitive, and we're just not going to get there in pricing in almost all of those situations. So I don't think much will change other than You know, as we, you know, continue to build that relationships and get more and more repeat business, I think that kind of feeds on it on itself. But I think we're a long ways away from, you know, really competing on the larger transactions.

So how would you describe the deals that you're looking at today? Like how much is like repeat business that are kind of directly done with tenants versus more broadly brokered type of deals? And is there actually like a pricing benefit?

Yeah, no, I mean, it's, you know, I certainly have seen a lot of peers get into, you know, what's brokered, what's not brokered. All of ours kind of have an element of it being in the gray area. So, you know, take, for instance, if we're buying a blend and extend opportunity, you know, we find a shorter-term lease and then we, you know, that's widely marketed, but it's a shorter-term lease. Well, that doesn't have as much interest from a lot of buyers. We'll tie that up and then go back to our, you know, retail relationship and get that lease extended and you know, before we close or right after we close. And so that to me is, you know, a situation where we've created our own deal. So technically, I guess there's a broker involved, but, you know, and so we don't really think of it that way. But that being said, there's some element of repeat business in almost everything that we're buying, maybe 80% of what we're buying in the second quarter.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next question, Katie McConnell with Citi. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning. So if you were able to double your acquisition volumes at some point in the future, what do you anticipate would be the mix of equity versus debt funding for acquisitions going forward?

I'm sorry, Katie. Can you say that again?

Sure. Can you hear me?

Yeah, I can hear you.

Okay, so I just asked if you were able to double your acquisition volumes in the future, what do you anticipate would be the mix of equity versus debt funding going forward?

Yeah, I mean, look, I think that, you know, if you kind of do the math and you assume, you know, the impact on NOI associated potential increase in G&A, what that means from a EBITDA perspective, You know, rough math, it probably looks like something like, you know, two-thirds equity, a third debt, rough numbers.

Okay, great. And then can you just update us on how you're thinking about the timing of acquisitions throughout the remainder of this year to get a sense for the potential ramp in ASFO throughout the year?

Yeah, sure. I mean, I think we're going to be pretty consistent. You know, we did about $90 million in the first quarter with no dispositions. We may have a few dispositions here in the second quarter with a little bit more acquisitions. So I think we'll likely be pretty consistent with around $90 million net of dispositions each quarter.

Yeah, and, Katie, one thing that, you know, Katie, one thing just while we have you, if You know, we did note that on average, you know, when the first quarter acquisitions, you know, those acquisitions were only on the balance sheet for, you know, 13 days in the quarter, right? So, you know, when we talk about back-end loading, we're certainly working to try to improve that. But, you know, based on the size of that company, that could have a meaningful impact to absolute AFFO in any given quarter and for the year.

Okay. Thanks for the detail.

Thanks, Katie.

Our next question comes from Todd Stender with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks. Maybe just sticking with you, Andy, on that last question. When you layer in the oversubscribed equity offering, where does that leave your expectation for debt funding? I guess has the sourcing changed? You're now a bigger company. The size, pricing, how did that really transform how you're looking at your pricing, probably just from the debt side?

Yeah, Todd, thanks. I mean, from the debt side, I don't know that it had a material impact. You know, as we talked about previously, you know, look, we've got the fully drawn $175 million term loan outstanding as of right this moment. We have zero balance on, you know, the $250 million credit facility. Obviously, the term loan is fully hedged, you know, through its maturity date in December of 2024. So I think it'll be a bit before we start, you know, kind of generating significant debt that we can term out, you know, through private placement, so on and so forth. I think that's probably 12 to 18 months into the future. Based on our conversations with the banks, we think that there are a number of things that both the insurance companies or the principal players in the private placement market and also the rating agencies would be positive about what we do, which is obviously our focus on high quality investment grade and investment grade profile tenants. So we think that those are net positives. And the negatives, as we see it, is we need to continue to improve our diversification. And even to continue to improve our diversification and continue to get bigger, right? So I don't know that there's been a material change. You know, we were – last time we talked, we were talking, I think, seven-year private placements and, you know, kind of the high twos and 10-year and below threes. And I think that those are still pretty good points for people to be thinking about.

Got it. Thank you. And probably for Mark, when you're looking at the cap rate on the quarter, can you bifurcate, if you can, what the investment grade properties went for collectively? If you had a 6-7 average cap rate, what did the investment grade go for? And then I guess the other third that was either below investment grade or not rated.

Yeah. I mean, there's not a huge difference. There's maybe a 30 or 40 basis point difference. The only assets that we acquired in the quarter were either investment grade or investment grade profile, so there's maybe a 30, 40 basis point difference on average between those two buckets.

Okay, got it. Last one. When you look at the average lease term, it's not that far off from your average, but you're inside of nine years now. How short did you go on any leases? Maybe just kind of speak to your appetite for anything in the short to medium term categories.

Yeah, sure. And we did extend a couple of leases here in April. So that ended up being more like 9.6 years than 8.8. But that being said, we will look at some shorter term leases where we have, in fact, there was one in particular that was about three, two or three. And so that was one where we had a conversation with a tenant. They're committed to the site long term. It reports sales where they perform very well and the rents are below market. So We feel like we're not really taking, you know, very much risk there. So we will, in some cases, you know, go that low, prefer to have a little bit more term. And that conversation was driven off of us wanting to extend the lease early. That particular tenant just doesn't do that. But we were able to get comfortable that, you know, A, that they are likely to stay there long term, and B, even if they don't, that we'd be able to reposition the box and potentially increase the rent. So those are situations where we'll do shorter-term leases. And then, yeah, I mean, so 9.6, probably a little bit shorter than what we typically would like. I do think you can expect, you know, I can only speak to the second quarter. I do expect that to be a little bit longer term on average for the quarter.

Great. Thank you.

Next question, Michael Gorman with BTIG. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks. Good morning. Mark, you talked about some of your acquisition strategy working with shopping center owners for potential parcels of their centers. Obviously, we saw some pretty visible transactions in the public space about a quarter ago. Are you seeing increased interest from shopping center owners to look at their properties for potential, I don't know if I want to call it breakup value, but to look at potentially unlocking value in their centers?

Yes. I think we've seen a little bit more interest from the sellers, and quite frankly, we're seeing more interest from the buyers of multi-tenant retail. So you've seen some cap rate compression there, and you're starting to see a lot of those buyers come back. So some of those situations, quite frankly, have gotten a little bit more competitive. So there's a little bit less of that in the second quarter, although our volume is higher. There's a little bit less of that that we're looking to do. But yeah, I think that's a strategy that makes sense. Fortunately for us, we've got five or six different groups that we look to partner with. They all have a different approach to what they're looking for. Some want a little bit more value add and want to put a lot of money into a property to reposition it. Some are satisfied with clipping the coupon and keeping the cash flow coming. where we're just, you know, focused on, A, getting a strong retailer that is otherwise sometimes difficult to get our hands on with a, you know, with a good lease and a location that we think they're going to stay in long-term. But then also, you know, the other key piece that we don't talk much about is that the rest of the center needs to be very healthy and needs to continue to be a long-term traffic driver for our tenants at those locations. But, yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, there was, you know, like you mentioned, there was one in particular location you know, a group coming in more aggressively there. My take on that is, yeah, that's really, they've got one specific approach. There are a lot of shopping centers that trade and get marketed. So I think it's, you know, unlikely that we're going to run into that particular buyer. And I think they're using that as much as an avenue to bring in some net lease assets, which obviously you're, you know, more and more attractive with the news that you saw yesterday. But yeah, I think that's, you know, a strategy that makes sense for us, but we are seeing a little bit more competition, you know, for the multi-tenant retail buyer. So that cap rate compression is making it maybe a little bit more difficult for us to do a lot of volume with that particular strategy, which is, you know, I think the benefit for us is we've got, you know, five or six different approaches for how we're, you know, looking at acquisitions. In some situations, we're going to see a lot in one area and a little bit less in other areas and allows us to continue to to fuel the machine and continue to buy accretive opportunities and sift through where we're going to get our best risk-adjusted returns.

Okay, that's helpful. Thanks. And then when you're looking at acquisitions with tenants who maybe are in more of an omnichannel space but are doing a good job with it, how do you change your underwriting? Or as you look at the tenants, are you getting increased visibility in terms of what kind of e-commerce volume is flowing through that specific location? Are you looking for specific real estate attributes, whether it's clear heights or end caps? So if it's a tenant like maybe, as an example, like a Walmart, are there different things you're looking at to see how critical that location is to their omni-channel strategy?

Yeah, no, it's a really good question. And to me, I think it speaks to the evolution of retail and making sure that we're focusing on that and understanding it. And even for Walmart, it's a good example. Each market's very different for them, where they need to have kind of more of the buy online and pick up in store, and that's a more critical piece in some markets than it is in others. Best Buy is certainly one that they've really changed the way that they're thinking about their footprint, how much they need as distribution. And I think the clear heights and things like that matter a little bit less, as long as they have the ability to kind of load in the back but they are reconfiguring their stores quite a bit, Best Buy in particular. So they've kind of went from, you know, very large to they even tried a very small, you know, Best Buy, you know, store footprint that was too small. So they've kind of moved back up a little bit, but they don't want to have the really big location. So really making sure that we're talking to the tenant, understanding that particular location, how they think about it is as important as it is to, you know, not just have one blanket approach of saying, okay, we need to have You know, clear heights of 30 feet in the back so they can store a lot of products so that people can pick it up and store. Sometimes that isn't the strategy. There are some areas where they kind of focus on having the hub and spoke approach. So, you know, really making sure that we're understanding what the strategy is. And then also understanding that that's probably going to change. And so, you know, what can we do with the box in the event that we get it back is a critical piece of our underwriting.

Okay, thank you. And then one last one, Andy, I apologize if I've missed it, but maybe could you just talk about how the board's thinking about dividend policy here? Obviously, I think, you know, just looking at the guidance range, you're on track with the current payout for, you know, kind of low 80s. Should we think about as the company is in its kind of major growth phase that that payout will trend down or will the dividend growth kind of keep pace with the ASFO growth from here as the company expands?

Yeah, so I think that we, you know, stated, you know, throughout our process, whether it was during the 144A of the IPO and the follow-on, you know, kind of a two-thirds to three-quarters AFFO payout, right? We think that that's the right balance of returning, you know, dividends to shareholders, you know, satisfying our re-tax obligations, but also making sure that we are retaining free cash flow. So, you know, if you go out over the course of the year, I think that, you know, based on the numbers you talked about, you know, we're probably, you know, the ultimate decision with respect to the dividend is the boards, right? You know, we certainly propose something. But, you know, I would think that we'd be in a position where we should be able to start thinking about, you know, potentially increasing the dividend starting in 2022.

Excellent. Thanks, everybody.

I would like to turn the floor over to Mark for closing remarks.

Well, thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We look forward to continuing to discuss our progress in the future. Take care.

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and thank you for your participation.