Spirit Realty Capital, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Spirit Realty Capital second quarter 2023 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 then one on a touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Pierre Raval, Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and thanks, everyone, for joining us for SPIRIT's second quarter 2023 earnings call. Presenting in today's call will be President and Chief Executive Officer Jackson Shea and Chief Financial Officer Michael Hughes. Our Chief Investment Officer, Ken Heimlich, will be available for Q&A. Before we start, I want to remind everyone that this presentation contains forward-looking statements. Although we believe these forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, they are subject to known and unknown risks and insurgencies that can cause actual results to differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors. I refer you to the safe harbor statement in our most recent filing with the SEC for a detailed discussion of risk factors relating to these four looking statements. This presentation also contains certain non-GAAP measures. Reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in the exhibits furnished to the SEC under Form 8K, which include our earnings release and supplemental investor presentation. These materials are also available for, on the investor relations page of our website. For prepared remarks, I'm now pleased to introduce Jackson Chey. Jackson.

Thanks, Pierre. And thanks, everyone, for joining our call this morning. At the beginning of this year, we outlined a plan for 2023 consisting of two primary objectives. First, implement a capital deployment strategy that utilizes free cash flow, asset dispositions, and existing debt to yield favorable investment spreads without issuing new capital. Second, demonstrate the strength and diversification of our portfolio through consistent operating performance. Halfway through the year, we are on track to meet our goals with our second quarter results building on what we accomplished in the first quarter. During the quarter, we acquired 138 million in assets comprised of 11 properties across five transactions at a cash cap rate of 7.63% and an economic yield of 8.88%. This is the highest cash cap rate and second highest economic yield we have achieved in the last eight quarters and higher than those achieved in the second quarter of 2022 by 129 and 180 basis points respectively. In addition, We invested $30 million in revenue-producing expenditures, primarily related to the development and tenant improvements, at a 9.87% cash cap rate, resulting in total capital deployment of $169 million at a cash cap rate of 8.03%, an increase of 166 basis points from the same period last year. We sold 18 occupied properties during the quarter for $41 million at a cash cap rate of 6.27%. The average size of these transactions was 2.3 million and consisted of QSRs, C-stores, drugstores, and Red Lobsters. We generated a 176 basis point spread between the cash cap rate on capital deployed and our occupied dispositions. We also sold 12 vacant properties for 26 million, resulting in total disposition proceeds of 67 million. Our capital deployment net of dispositions was 102 million. Excluding vacant sales, the net effective cap rate was 8.61%. Consistent with our 2023 plan, we didn't raise any equity this quarter. and funded our capital deployment with disposition proceeds, in-place debt, and free cash flow, with no change in our leverage. The strength and diversification of our tenants, the industries they operate in, and the quality of our real estate portfolio, combined with better than anticipated investment spreads, are allowing us to surpass our previous forecasts and revise our AFFO per share guidance upward for the second time this year. As we transition into the back half of the year, we remain dedicated to achieving our 2023 goals. We will maintain a disciplined approach to our investments, poised to seize the most favorable opportunities that will yield optimal returns for our shareholders.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Mike.

Thank you, Jackson. Good morning, everyone.

We are very pleased with second quarter results. AFO per share was 91 cents. two cents higher than last quarter. Occupancy remained high at 99.8%, and our acquisitions and dispositions were accretive to our earnings and portfolio metrics, including vault and lease escalations. During the quarter, ABR increased by 5.5 million, reaching 694.6 million, with industrial growing to 26% of our portfolio. Other operating income increased by 1.3 million from last quarter, with approximately half the increase resulting from two small lease terminations and half from higher interest income. Please note that the higher interest income, which resulted from unusually high cash balances related to the drawdown of $300 million in term loan proceeds, was mostly offset by the corresponding interest expense, so no impact to AFO per share. Cash G&A fell to $10.1 million from $10.6 million last quarter, primarily driven by the timing of certain employee benefit expenses that fall into the first quarter. Our cash G&A margin fell to 5.3%, approximately 30 basis points lower than full year 2022. Turning to our balance sheet, we closed the quarter with liquidity of $1.6 billion comprised of cash and availability under our credit facility and delayed draw term loans. Our leverage, which we define as adjusted debt to annualized adjusted EBITDA RE, remained flat at 5.3 times compared to the first quarter and dropped by one turn, inclusive of our preferred equity. Regarding our guidance, we are revising our AFO per share range to $3.56 to $3.62 and our disposition range to approximately $400 million, while maintaining our capital deployment range of $700 to $900 million. Consistent with our 2023 plan, We believe these targets allow us to achieve our capital deployment objectives, absent any capital markets activity, while maintaining low leverage levels.

For that, I will turn the call back to the operator to open it up for Q&A. Operator?

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. In the interest of time, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question today comes from Joshua Dennerlin with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Hey, guys. Thanks for the time. Um, one, one thing I've kind of noticed is, uh, on acquisitions, it looks like the wall, uh, is kind of getting longer this year, this quarter is 15.3 years. Is that something you guys are pushing, uh, to achieve or just like the market is, uh, getting a longer wall these days?

Hey Josh, it's a Jackson. I'll take that one. I mean, we're focused on primarily, uh, looking at new sales back opportunities. So I'd say at a minimum, Those start with a 15-year and generally can be up to 20-year new leases on our lease form. So that's primarily driving that vault.

Okay. Okay. Good to know. And then maybe just one follow-up, just the cap rates. Do you think we're still going to see more cap rate adjustment higher, or do you think that's kind of at a stabilized rate at this point?

I can tell you what we're seeing. I think generally I'd say they're pretty stable right now. The thing that we're noticing is that, you know, we have two investment pipeline meetings, two investment committees a week, and the volume of things that are coming into our pipeline are increasing, and they've continued to increase since the last quarter. So I wouldn't say the cap rate has increased, but the volume of opportunities seems to be increasing.

So that's encouraging for us. Thanks, Jackson. Thank you.

The next question comes from Michael Goldsmith with UBS. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thanks a lot for taking my question. Just, Jackson, just to follow up on your last comment, when you said the volumes are picking up, is that specific to one asset class, like industrial or retail, or is it just across the board? And any further detail you can talk about in terms of where there are greater opportunities would be helpful.

I mean, I think I would say across the board generally from what we see. I feel like there's a little bit less competition in the industrial space that we're focused on right now. And I think if I were to guess, you know, just make up, I think one of the reasons why you're seeing more volume is I think people, you know, companies are looking for liquidity, right? And they're trying to find the most efficient way to get it. Clearly there's, you know, challenges in the debt markets, corporate debt markets, bank markets, very selective. So the sale-leaseback opportunity is really a great source of liquidity and really hits right in the middle of what we're trying to accomplish. So I think some companies probably sat on the sidelines hoping things might get better. And I think they're just deciding, hey, these are the rates. We need to move forward. And so the thing that's most encouraging for us is we're seeing really good real estate opportunities, good credit opportunities at what we believe are attractive cap rates. I mean, these are cap rates a year ago that would have been in the mid sixes, low sixes for the same type of opportunity. So in some regards, I think companies are just deciding we need to move forward. And I think that's going to help us as we get into the back half of this year in terms of our acquisition volumes.

Got it. That's really helpful. And on the opposite side of the coin, during the quarter, how did your cost of capital trend, are you seeing any movement up or down or any visibility in the near to intermediate term about the trajectory where you think you can be back in the market and start to drive accretive growth through borrowings and acquiring? Mike, do you want to take it?

Yeah, sure. We saw some marginal improvement in our cost of capital, both on the equity and, say, the long-term debt side. Nothing that would make us want to go explore issuing more long-term capital. Remember, we're very early in the term loan market. We have a lot of term loan capacity, capacity we haven't drawn yet, and all of it is fixed at very low rates of maturity. So we have enough debt to really take us that's fixed to take us into next year. So we can be patient on that. And again, we have cash on the balance sheet. We have a good disposition program. So we'll be in quiz at the right time. We have seen some incremental improvement, but not enough to that make us want to get out there yet and less yields on our acquisitions go materially higher.

Thank you very much.

Good luck in that, Kev. Thanks. Thanks, Michael.

The next question comes from Greg McGinnis with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. Jackson, given the substantial investment yield on the revenue-producing CapEx, can you just provide some details around those investments, what the opportunity is, looks like there in terms of continued investment and the types of yields you expect over the next year?

Yeah, I mean, look, I think on our CapEx investments, you know, they're always going to be a smaller portion of what we do in a given year. I think that what we're seeing is, you know, tenants where we have existing, you know, master leases or say a lease-backed business, You know, they're needing, you know, changes to their facilities, either expansion or new facilities or adding on to facilities. And coming back to us is, one, efficient because they know we're a very credible source of funding. But more importantly for our shareholders, you're getting paid to put this capital out now finally. And it also – that opens the door to give us an opportunity to have discussion around our lease term, provisions of the lease. So it's a kind of a give and take, but it's a very positive one for us. And so, yeah, we'll continue to be very selective about it. But it's not going to be a material part of our business going forward. It's a pretty high bar right now. But most importantly, I do think, you know, we used to talk about forward commitments being 50 basis points premium. People used to talk about that. I'd say that premium is much higher now. If you're going to forward commit, we'll provide any type of development CapEx funding. I'd say it's closer to 100 basis points premium to a stabilized cap rate.

So I guess, and then just thinking about where those investments are going, is that primarily industrial? So maybe as the industrial percentage of portfolio increases, that level of opportunity increases?

I think it's less – we're kind of more agnostic to property type. It's really how good is the customer, how good is the real estate, what's the position of our real estate within that master lease. So we look at it really less focused on industry type, but more how can it improve our yields as well as potentially improve certain aspects of a master lease. We'll look at it that way as well.

Okay. And just one more from me, if I could. Given this increasing volume of potential acquisition opportunities, coupled with the low cap rate achieved on dispositions, does full-year investment guidance potentially feel conservative, especially given the, you know, other liquidity that's available on the term loans?

I wouldn't say it's conservative. I mean, you know, we've been pretty methodical about what we've been doing, as you can tell, through the first two quarters. you know, I'm saying that the volumes of things that we're seeing are increasing. So you probably see that in the fourth quarter. But I'd say our guidance, we feel good about where it is right now. I wouldn't say it's conservative or aggressive. It's right in the middle.

It would always be selective.

Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thanks, Glenn.

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

Hey, guys. Good morning. I have a few questions, I guess, more broadly on the tenant, the health of tenants. Can you, I guess, first discuss how you're seeing the portfolio performance versus expectation categories that are doing well and maybe better than expected in categories that you're a bit more concerned or watching more closely and how your watch list has changed over the past quarter or two? Thanks.

I mean, look, I'll start with, I think portfolio is doing great. We're not concerned about any aspect of it. Um, Of course, from time to time, you'll focus on particular tenants, but I feel like our industries that are mixed right now are ideal, and we've got a really good balance of retail, mission-critical industrial, industrial outdoor storage. The industrial is very, very well diversified. If you look at our square footage, we're over 55 million plus square feet. The industrial position is 50% of that, so we're half Half of our GLA right now is an industrial space. So I would say overall, we're very comfortable with our industry mix. If we could lighten up on movie theaters, I think we would do that, as I've said in the past. But we're in no rush because our movie theater tenants are extremely diverse and are doing well. So maybe, I don't know, Ken, if you want to talk about credit watch lists.

Yeah, credit watch lists, Pinnell, continues to be very, manageable. It's relatively stable. We're in a position now where we have a much deeper relationship with all of our tenants. But overall, it's very stable, not seeing it increase.

Okay, great. Great. Thank you for that. On the theaters, I guess, I've noticed, I think there was a $2 million straight line of reserve in the queue from a bankruptcy. Not sure what tenant that was, but assume... That was tied to movie theater sales? Is that right?

No, no. Sorry. That was not a movie theater. That was another small operator went off that was running some issues that we put on a cash basis last quarter.

Got it. Okay. In the queue, we also think you bought 10 million of term loans for 79 cents on the dollar. I know it's not a big nominal amount, but just curious on if the the borrower is an existing tenant or anything, you could tell us about it. Thanks.

Yeah, I mean, I describe that as an existing tenant. From time to time in the past, we've bought debt of tenants. You get a different kind of reporting than what you see in a lease. So sometimes we see that as a tool to get more insight into a company's credit. It gives you a different relationship versus landlords. And I'd also say that that's not going to be an expanding part of what we do. It's super select and one-off.

Yeah, I appreciate the call. Thank you. Sure.

The next question comes from Anthony Poloni with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning. Jackson, can you talk about just your thoughts on how much runway you have as you start to look out to 24? to continue to be able to sell at lower cap rates than what you're basically investing in?

To be honest with you, we could do it for a long time. That's not to say we will do it for a long time. I'd like to be issuing equity and financing the normal way. The things that we're selling You know, we laid out a plan earlier this year that, you know, we thought the spread might be something like 100 basis points between, you know, our dispo cap rate, acquisition cap rate. And that mixes in, you know, what I'll call accretive sales. There'll be some defensive sales that are part of that mix. But, you know, with the size of portfolio that we have, Anthony, there are a lot of assets, obviously, we've been selling. The things that we've been selling, I would describe as really middle of the fairway type of assets. They're not the best, obviously, and we don't have a lot of worse, so they're just generally pretty average. You know, the dispo cap rate range this quarter was on the low side, 495 cap rate, you know, up to a 7 cap, with the majority being in the low 6s in terms of the cap rates that we were able to execute. You know, a lot of lease, you know, we sold a lot of properties that, a couple properties that had flat leases, lower bump structures, some were, you know, non-reporting. You know, so there were things that, you know, we feel like we can, they're right to be sold and we can reinvest in things that have longer wall, we think have a lot of cap rate compression. You know, we're buying, growing businesses across the country, especially in the industrial side where we think that'll be much more creative for our shareholders, not just from earnings, but also from an NAV standpoint. But to answer your question, yeah, there's a long runway to do this strategy. I'm hopeful that this is just this year's strategy. Next year, we go back to the normal things. And I think we're getting closer, too. Obviously, our cost of capital is getting closer to the point where we can move forward if we want to pursue that strategy. what I'll call regular way financing via the capital markets.

Okay. And then Mike, just for you, can you, I think you'd mentioned it, but what was the lease termination in the quarter? And just trying to understand in your guidance for the second half of the year, it implies a little bit of a dropdown from the 91 cents you reported to about 89 cents. And so just wondering if that's a part of it or kind of what the, what the items driving that are.

Yeah, there's obviously some rounding there. So, you know, we did have about $500,000 of lease termination income in the second quarter. That caused us to round to $0.91. Without that, you'd be about $0.90. If you look at the second couple of quarters, Q3, Q4, it's kind of rounding. I know it's like right there at that $89.5, the midpoint where Guy's just kind of rounding to $0.90. So you're kind of flat if you kind of remove that other income in the back half of the year. The interest income piece of that, Again, that was offset by higher interest expense. We actually made about a $20,000 spread on having that extra debt drawn and having cash on our balance sheet. Ironically, our invested cash is making a little bit more than our $475,000 that we get charged on that term loan today. I haven't seen that since 2008. But for the back half of the year, we do have, again, some rent disruption built in consistent with our guides we put out at the beginning of the year. That was a little more There's some conservatism built in there. And also, as you saw, we took up our disposition guidance, and we typically have a view that our dispositions are going to come in a little quicker than the acquisitions. The acquisitions are a little more weighted towards Q4, and our dispositions are a little more weighted to Q3, which also puts a little pressure just on the quarter over quarter AFO per share. So it's just, you know, some assumptions like that moving around to cause a little bit of flatness in the back half of the year if you're looking at the midpoint of guidance.

Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you.

The next question comes from Keevan Kinn with Truist. Please go ahead.

Thanks. I was wondering if you can just provide an update on at home and how their sales or EBITDA productivity has trended over the past couple quarters and if there's anything concerning.

Hey, Keevan. This is Kinn. Basically, no.

We're not concerned with the long-term aspect of at-home. Obviously, they're normalizing after just an incredible run-up in sales during COVID. But, you know, obviously, everybody, I'm sure, has seen they recently completed some debt transactions. You know, they got incremental liquidity of $200 million to $300 million. And very importantly, they pushed out their maturities to $2,028. But, no, we're still – You know, we still believe in their underlying business model. So no, no concerns.

And on Party City, there was some news that the company might consider spinning out is balloon business, which I believe is one of your warehouses focuses on any kind of high level thoughts you can share on how that might impact you guys.

Yeah, you know, on Party City, you know, they expect them to emerge from bankruptcy during the third quarter. Yeah, there's some, you know, last-minute things back and forth going on, but at the end of the day, I would submit that our path on Party City really confirms what we've always believed in. You know, you've messed in mission-critical real estate. Everything turns out okay. We have had zero disruption in any of our lease obligations, be it rent, taxes, or anything. So, yeah, there's some things going on right here at the end of the bankruptcy, but We don't expect those will have any factor in us getting rent payments going forward. Zero concerns.

And, Kevin, I would say just on that facility, you know, I've been inside that balloon manufacturing facility, and it's, I'd describe it as a, it's just a turnkey operation. They do design, procurement, distribution, you know, out of that facility. It's a very sophisticated manufacturing facility that can kind of punch out different designs, paint on mylar, We're super comfortable with that. That's going to be a business that's going to be around a long time in that facility. And as Ken said, whether it spins out or doesn't spin out, it really doesn't matter. It's going to just be a very valuable business within a very valuable piece of real estate that we own in that little sub-market in Eau Claire.

Okay, thank you. Eden, sorry.

The next question. The next question comes from Rob Stevenson with Jannie. Please go ahead.

Good morning, guys. Just one for me. Jackson, despite comparable operations and a solid balance sheet, the stock continues to trade one of the lower multiples and higher dividend yields in the peer group. Other than maybe increasing the industrial exposure or the IG tenant base, what do you think drives at least a relative revaluation, if not an absolute one here?

I mean, I think for me, what I believe is we just keep doing what we say we're going to do, which is try to punch out solid acquisitions, fund ourselves accretively. You know, it's a mystery sometimes why we're trading at this kind of multiple when the portfolio is so solid, so diverse. I think in time, you know, we'll be able to close that gap. And so, we believe that we have a plan that can demonstrate the, the ability of our team as well as the performance of our underwriting and the real estate assets and tenants. So that's our playbook right now.

Okay. And then when you're looking at the back half of the year on the stuff that you guys are either negotiating on a contract, is it highly likely that the acquisitions are going to continue to be tilted towards industrial or are there some big sale leasebacks in the retail space that'll sort of even that out? How should we be thinking about that in terms of the asset base? at year end?

I mean, for what we see right now, it's, if I were to guess, it'd probably be industrial. But that being said, there are some large portfolios on the retail side that are floating around out there. And we're evaluating them as well. You know, one of the things that we're starting to just see is just the amount of repeat business coming out of our existing database. We don't break it down, you know, every quarter, but I can just tell you it's increasing and we're getting better investment opportunities from existing owners and operators within our tenant base.

Okay. Thanks, guys. Appreciate the time. Sure.

The next question comes from Wes Galladay with Baird. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, everyone. I'm just curious if you have any developments that you're funding that will open in the second half and maybe a question for offline, but if you have, it would be great. Do you have the amount of, I guess, what we call CIP that you spent the money, but you're not really getting any income at the moment?

You know, this is Ken.

There's no, you know, huge meaningful project that opens up in the back half of the year. As Jackson mentioned, that, you know, that revenue-producing CapEx line has a mix of TI dollars, so that's obviously – folks that are already open. We're just improving our real estate. There are a couple of development projects, but whether or not any of those open before the end of the year, not quite sure. Possibly, but nothing I would suggest that is going to move the needle.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's like one project.

The next question comes from Ronald Camden with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hey, just two quick ones. So one on the disposition guidance raise. Just can you talk a little bit about just the activity that you're seeing and what you're putting out, what you're looking to put out, and, you know, what are the likelihood of actually hitting the top end of that guidance? in this environment?

Yeah, look, we, the reason why we increased that guidance, well, we actually went into the market with a larger tranche of properties. And they're very strategic in terms of what they're, in terms of targeting different small retail buyers, 1031 type buyers. So you've got that out there. We've got some risk mitigation assets in the market, which, who knows, time will tell whether those will get sold or not. And I'd say, like, it's the other thing I mentioned about what we're seeing most recently is some of these small retail buyers are actually now able to get debt commitments again, which is a little encouraging. For a while there, it was getting more, it was getting very challenging from some of the regional banks. But we've noticed recently in our disposition effort the ability of potential buyers to get,

60% LTV bank loans as part of our disbursement process, which I think is encouraging from what we're trying to do.

Great. If I could ask one more. So looking at the acquisitions in the quarter, I think the question came up already on the vault. I'll add to that in terms of the rent bumps as well. And then I think about that 8% plus cap rate. The question is, how do you get comfortable and how do you sort of make investors comfortable that you're not going too far out on the risk curve and you're still sort of balancing basically the acquisitions that you're doing at a cost of capital that makes sense, but not reaching too far out on the risk curve? Thanks.

I mean, look, I think I would just say anecdotally, You know, the assets that we're selling in the sixes probably a year ago would have been in the fives. Some of the retail assets that you can buy right now, even investment grade, would be closer to the high six cap rate if the Walt was sort of, say, 10 years. The things that we're seeing are just, in my opinion, very, very solid real estate investments. You know, one of the deals that we did This past quarter was for a distributor of original OEM parts for the automotive industry. Very, very successful business. Very sticky business. We did a sale east back for a company that manufactures pipe fittings and flanges down in the Houston area. We did a food manufacturing company up in the Boston MSA area that does confection cakes you know, confection and cakes and bagels. We did an entertainment asset. So all of these are really solid businesses. The price per square foot is reasonable. Market rents make a lot of sense. And they're mission critical for these companies. These same opportunities, like I'm saying, would have been in the mid-sixes last year. And so we don't believe we're going out on the risk spectrum at these cap rates. These are well underwritten credits in very, very viable industries. at really attractive price per square foot. And just all cap rates have increased. So, you know, we could clearly stay in the high sixes, sevens, but you're not going to get the unit reporting. You're not going to get the wall. You're not going to get the master leases or necessarily the mission critical aspect of what we're seeing on the investment we're doing.

So I don't believe we're taking more risk at all. That's your question. Great. That's it for me. Thanks so much.

The next question comes from Linda Tsai with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Hi. Just two questions. In your 1Q supplemental, you showed unreimbursed property costs of 1.5%, but we didn't see it this quarter. Just wondering why it was taken out.

Hey, Linda, this is Mike. We actually took it out because I think it was the first in three years that's actually asked us about it. So we just kind of dropped it. And we do have that information in our SIP where you can calculate it. But it was 1.7% for the quarter. It was driven a little hard despite timing of some real estate tax reimbursable and CAM expenses. But I'd expect to migrate around that 1.5% to 1.7%, well, under the 2% that we had to kind of put out in the best for a day a few years ago. But the information's in there. We just No one really focused on it, and none of our peers reported.

Okay, got it. And then this strategy of not increasing your leverage using free cash, debt, and acquisitions to fund acquisitions, I know it's not exactly ideal, but the hand that's been dealt for now, how do you think about the level of earnings growth this can support?

It's interesting because this year we were hit with some pretty big interest rate headwinds for the step up from last year. In fact, if you go back to our original guidance in February, we gave you Q4 annualized, which was $3.52. We did that because Q4 had the full impact of rising rates on us for last year. Compare that to our midpoint of guidance, that would imply 2% growth this year. So right there, you can see that even this strategy of recycling can produce some growth. We're pretty bullish about next year, given that all of our debt is fixed at pretty low rates. But, you know, we feel like we have a good plan for growing going forward. We'd really like some help on the equity side to grow more and faster. But we do feel like the way our balance sheet is locked in, the yields and spreads that we're producing, we can produce better growth going into 24.

Thanks. Thank you.

The next question comes from Michael Gorman with CTIG. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks. Good morning. I just wanted to go back to some of the prior comments and just ask about the current tenants in the portfolio, kind of looking at your new investment opportunities coming from increasing sale leaseback volume because of what's going on in the financing markets. How good of a read-through do you have on your existing tenants and how they're handling the challenges in the financing markets and understanding the coverages are still strong? You know, what's going on below the EBITDA line for your existing tenants that are, I would assume, facing the same financing markets that the new CLD SPACs are?

Yeah, it's hard to generalize a good question. We monitor it every day, basically, is the answer. It's just in our normal dialogue. And we have a CRM that we are utilizing now through Salesforce that's really helping us at the senior management level. So what I can tell you we're seeing is the companies are doing better than people expect. There's real onshoring happening, there's real manufacturing happening. I still think that labor is still an issue for some of our tenants that are in that manufacturing sector in terms of getting people on the job to procure and finish out items that are being manufactured. And on the retail side, generally the way our tenants are set up, they largely were pretty smart during COVID in terms of recapitalizing their balance sheets, getting debt termed out, re-equitizing, going public. And so we felt really good about their They're very sophisticated and they're good operators. So we have largely been pleasantly surprised with the credit worthiness of the portfolio at this point. Of course, you've got a couple areas, a couple tenants that are always watching more carefully, but generally it's not because of necessarily financing that got them into trouble or interest rates. There's some other kind of issue that might be affecting them. But I'd say overall, we feel very, very good about the health of our portfolio. And it's reflective in our ability to generate very little rent disruption. The lost rent we talked about was 0.2%.

Great. That's very helpful. And then, Jackson, maybe just on that same vein, and I'm sorry if I missed this, but as you're thinking about investment opportunities and investment volumes, how does that look coming from the existing tenants and existing relationships, the volume that's coming through that pipeline recently?

Yeah, it's coming from all, it's a good healthy mix between coming from existing tenants, which are really led by our asset management team, and also just third party new opportunities, new tenants that are looking for financing or new sponsors, and that's being procured by our acquisition teams. So it's a healthy mix that we're seeing. That's why I said like the pipeline of investments that we're evaluating has increased meaningfully over the last several weeks. And 80% of the business this quarter, I think, is existing tenants.

Great. Thank you for the time. Great. Thank you.

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Jackson Shea for any closing remarks.

Thank you, Operator. And thank you all for participating. I'd also like to thank our professional and colleagues over at Spirit Realty. It's been a very good quarter, and we're quite

about what we see right now thank you the conference is now concluded thank you for attending today's presentation you may now disconnect