10/30/2025

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Steve Zara, Vice President, Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

speaker
Steve Zara
Vice President, Investor Relations

Thank you. Welcome to Stagg Industrial's conference call covering the third quarter 2025 results. In addition to the press release distributed yesterday, we have posted an unaudited quarterly supplemental information presentation on the company's website at www.stagindustrial.com under the investor relations section. On today's call, the company's prepared remarks and answers to your questions will contain forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements address matters that are subject to risks and uncertainties and may cause actual results to differ from those discussed today. Examples of forward-looking statements include forecasts of core FFO, same-store NOI, G&A, acquisition and disposition volumes, retention rates and other guidance, leasing prospects, rent collections, industry and economic trends, and other matters. We encourage all listeners to review the more detailed discussion related to these forward-looking statements contained in the company's filings with the SEC and the definitions and reconciliations of non-GAAP measures contained in the supplemental information package available on the company's website. As a reminder, forward-looking statements represent management's estimates as of today. Stagg Industrial assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. On today's call, you'll hear from Bill Crooker, our Chief Executive Officer, and Matt Spenard, our Chief Financial Officer. Also here with us today are Mike Chase, our Chief Investment Officer, and Steve Kimble, our Chief Operating Officer. We're available to answer questions specific to their areas of focus. We'll now turn the call over to Bill.

speaker
Bill Crooker
Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Steve. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the third quarter earnings call for Stagg Industrial. We're pleased to have you join us and look forward to telling you about the third quarter 2025 results. Our year-to-date results continue to exceed internal projections. The outperformance year-to-date has allowed us to increase our core FFO guidance for the year to a range of $2.52 to $2.54 per share, a $0.03 increase at the midpoint. Industrial fundamentals remain stable and are improving. Leasing demand is improving with increased tours and RFPs. However, lease gestation periods remain elongated. Supply pipeline continues to decrease, and we are forecasting further decreases next year. While we expect national vacancy rates to be in and around 7% for the next two to three quarters, we anticipate those will improve materially in the back half of next year. Based on this, we believe our market rent growth for next year to be similar to the 2% market rent growth expected for 2025. We have accomplished 99% of our forecasted leasing for 2025 at levels consistent with our initial guidance, including cash leasing spreads of approximately 24%. Turning to next year, 2026 represents a record amount of square footage expiring in a calendar year for our company. I'm pleased to report that we have addressed approximately 52% of the operating portfolio square feet we expect to lease in 2026. This compares to 38% at the same time last year. We expect cash leasing spreads to be between 18% and 20% for 2026. This leasing success is a testament to the quality of our portfolio and a welcome sign of tenant engagement and commitment to their space. We've seen an increase in acquisition opportunities in the market, specifically with sellers eager to close by year end. Acquisition volume for the third quarter totaled $101.5 million. This consisted of two buildings with cash and straight line cap rates of 6.6% and 7.2% respectively. Subsequent to quarter end, we acquired one building for $49.2 million with a 6.5% cash cap rate. In addition to the $212 million of stabilized acquisitions we have closed so far this year, we have $153 million more under agreement and slated to close before year end. In terms of our development platform, we have 3.4 million square feet of development activity or recent completions across 13 buildings as of the end of Q3. 52% of this 3.4 million square feet are completed developments. These completed developments are 83% leased as of September 30th. This includes a full building lease totaling 244,000 square feet, which commenced in Greer, South Carolina on September 1st with 3.75% annual rent escalations. Subsequent to quarter end, we leased the remaining 91,000 square feet in our Nashville development. This project is now 100% leased with a cash stabilized yield of 9.3%. We stabilized this transaction 210 basis points higher than our initial underwriting and six months ahead of schedule. Including this transaction, our completed developments are currently 88% leased. I'm happy to announce a recently signed Build-A-Sue project on a fully entitled 40-acre parcel of land located in Union, Ohio. We'll develop a Class A 349,000 square foot warehouse with our development partner. The building is scheduled to be completed in Q3, 2026. Upon completion, the building will be fully leased for 10 years with 3.25% annual lease escalations to a strong credit tenant. The project is estimated to cost $34.6 million and is expected to have a stabilized yield of 7%. With that, I will turn it over to Matt, who will cover our remaining results and updates to guidance.

speaker
Matt Spenard
Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Bill, and good morning, everyone. core FFL per share was $0.65 for the quarter, an increase of 8.3% as compared to last year. During the quarter, we commenced 22 leases totaling 2.2 million square feet, which generated cash and straight line leasing spreads of 27.2% and 40.6% respectively. Additionally, executed leasing activity accelerated from 4.1 million square feet leased in the second quarter to 5.9 million square feet leased in the third quarter. 2025 is on track to be a record year in terms of leasing volume. The tension for the quarter was 63.4% and 78% for the year through September 30th. We have accomplished 98.7% of the operating portfolio square feet we currently expect to lease in 2025, achieving 23.9% cash leasing spreads, demonstrating the strength of our portfolio. As mentioned by Bill, we have accomplished 52% of the square feet we currently expect to lease in 2026, achieving 21.8% cash leasing spreads. Same-store cash NOI grew 3.9% for the quarter and has grown 3.5% year-to-date. Included in same-store cash NOI is 22 base points of cash credit loss incurred this year as of yesterday. Moving to capital market activity, on September 15th, we refinanced the $300 million term loan G, which was scheduled to mature in February 2026. It now matures March 15th, 2030, with one one-year extension option. The terminal bears an aggregate fixed interest rate inclusive of interest rate swaps of 1.7% until February 5th, 2026, and will then bear an aggregate fixed interest rate inclusive of interest rate swaps of 3.94% from February 5th, 2026 through initial maturity. Leverage remains low with net debt to annualized run rate adjusted EBITDA equal to 5.1 times with liquidity of $904 million a quarter end. As for guidance, we have made the following updates. We have decreased and narrowed the range of expected acquisition volume to a range of $350 to $500 million. As a reminder, the impact of external acquisition volume has always been heavily weighted to the end of the year and has a minimal impact on our core FFO guidance. G&A expectations for the year have been reduced to a range of $51 to $52 million, a decrease of $1 million at the midpoint. Cash same-store guidance has been increased to a range of 4 to 4.25% for the year, an increase of 25 basis points at the midpoint. These guidance changes contribute to a revised corporate FOA guidance range of $2.52 to $2.54 per share, an increase of 3 cents at the midpoint. I will now turn it back over to Bill.

speaker
Bill Crooker
Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Matt, and thank you to our team for their continued hard work and achievement towards our 2025 goals. We're excited about the opportunities that are in front of us here at Stag. Activity is improving across all aspects of our platform, including acquisitions, operations, and development. These areas will all be key contributors to the future growth at Stag. We'll now turn it back to the operator for questions.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. If you'd 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 2 if you'd 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 key. To allow for as many questions as possible, we ask that you each keep to one question and one follow-up. Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Craig Mailman with Citi. Please proceed with your question.

speaker
Craig Mailman
Analyst, Citi

Hey, good morning, guys. the, the progress on 26 here is, is really good. Put you guys in a good spot for next year. I'm just kind of curious. Um, is it tenants coming to you? Can you just talk about what is driving that? I guess, is there a higher weighting of those maturities kind of skewed toward the first half? And so you're just in that window of tenants kind of looking to get that done or people coming to you early, um, I just kind of want a little bit more color on what's driving that. What's the breakout of renewals versus kind of new leasing or backfills of vacated lease expirations?

speaker
Bill Crooker
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, thanks, Craig. I'll just answer the second part first. The breakout between renewals and call it new leasing, about 95% of that number is renewals, which makes sense. just given where we are in the calendar. So 5% is renewals. And then with respect to are they coming to us, are we going to them, it really is a blend. We've been a little bit more proactive with our tenants, just given the larger than normal lease expirations we have in 2026. So we've been proactive. Our team has been proactive. But then also we've had our larger sophisticated tenants reach out to us and engage earlier than normal because, you know, I think a couple of factors. One, they like their space. They view themselves in their space for long term. And they wanted to lock it up because in some instances, they have a large investment in that space. And that skews a little bit more to the bigger suite sizes. So next year, we had we have five five or six large lease expirations. So call it anything over 400,000 square feet. So of those, we've addressed all of them except for one, which we're in active negotiations with. So that was a little bit of a different dynamic in 26 than we've had in previous years. So that also impacted the 52% versus, you know, in prior years, you know, circa 38%.

speaker
Craig Mailman
Analyst, Citi

And you guys, you know, you talked about the build to suit in Ohio. You guys got Greenville done. You got Nashville done. I mean, is this, I know that everyone and you guys included in talking about sort of a thawing of this tenant decision-making. I mean, is it people just feeling more comfortable putting capital out the door? Or is there a bit of FOMO in some of your markets where you don't have as much new supply as kind of, you know, where it's top heavy in a couple of markets in the U S and so, some things have been taken off the table and now people are rushing to make sure they secure a spot. Like, can you talk a little bit about the dynamics across some of your markets and maybe point out some of the really kind of your best and maybe still slowest markets in terms of, you know, activity.

speaker
Bill Crooker
Chief Executive Officer

You're good, Craig. I think that was six questions in one, but I'll do my best to try to address all of them. Yeah. I'll try to address as much as I can there. With respect to our markets and developments, we haven't had the volatility that the top five markets in the U.S. have with respect to vacancy. So our vacancy rates have held in there. Our occupancy rates in those markets have held in there a little bit better than others. So that's been beneficial to us, and you can, you know, corroborate that through any, you know, third-party industry report. You know, is there FOMO for developing in our markets? I think to some degree you could say that. We're certainly having a lot of success in our development platform. I've said the past, you know, several quarters, our best use of capital then was incremental deployment of capital was developments. really happy with the way that initiative is playing out. And then if you think about what our messaging has been the last two quarters, it's been this degree of uncertainty in the market. And our messaging now is the stability in the market. So it really has been a pretty big shift as we move into the last quarter of the year here. And that's a great thing. And we knew this was going to start to calm down. Now, we say stability, but as I mentioned in prepared remarks, looking at industry reports, vacancy rates nationally around 7%. I think our number is maybe high sixes. When does that really start to tick down and you can drive some additional market rent growth? It's probably another two, three quarters. But overall, we feel really good about where our portfolio sits with respect to the markets they're in. Maybe I got four out of six there.

speaker
Craig

I tried, Greg. You got a bunch. Thanks, Bill. Thanks.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Nick Tillman with Baird. Please proceed with your question.

speaker
Nick Tillman
Analyst, Baird

Hey, good morning, guys. Maybe talking on the 26 leasing and the progress there, just the sustainability of these spreads in the mid-20s a little bit higher. You mentioned sort of the four leasing large renewals. If we just look at the expiration schedule, it looks like the rents expiring here are around 15% below where they were at the beginning of this year. So just curious on what we're thinking for spreads for the remainder of the expirations.

speaker
Bill Crooker
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, thanks, Nick. As I said in my prepared remarks, we're guiding to 18% to 20% cash leasing spreads for next year. And if you look at, you know, where they were a few years ago, or I think, you know, 30, and then went to 24 this year and 18 to 20 next year. And if you look at where our market market has been in those years, it's, you know, similar to what our escalators have been. So you haven't been driving additional, you know, mark to market opportunities. So naturally that, you know, similar type of degradation and spreads will happen. Um, and then, um, With respect to next year and those large tenants, what we've done, those tenants early renewed, as I mentioned earlier to Craig, much ahead of time. But when you think about the spreads, what we've signed to date and what we're guiding to next year, there's a little bit of a difference there. We usually don't get too much into the fixed renewal options, but they're a part of our portfolio every year. So the remaining... 48% of incremental leasing next year, almost all of our fixed renewals are in that number, which is why the spreads are a little bit lower for the remaining non-leased asset plan for next year.

speaker
Nick Tillman
Analyst, Baird

No, that's very helpful. And then just on maybe Matt's, on occupancy, you had a little bit of a headwind this year. As we think of building bucks for 26, good progress on the leasing. How are we feeling about sort of portfolio occupancy or potentially even growing that in the same circle next year?

speaker
Matt Spenard
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. Hey, Nick. Good morning. You know, I think as we sit here in October, we're going to provide 2026 guidance in February. So I don't think that we're prepared to start walking down the list of what guidance is going to be next year. I think Bill gave a lot of the color in terms of the change from maybe a little bit of instability in the first half of the year into the third quarter to a much more stable environment now. You know, again, I just point to the fact that we did the 52% of what we expected to do last year, which is north of 10% higher than where we normally are at this point during the calendar year.

speaker
Nick Tillman
Analyst, Baird

You know, I had to try my best, Matt.

speaker
Matt Spenard
Chief Financial Officer

It was very obvious.

speaker
Craig

Great job.

speaker
spk14

Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Eric Borden with BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

speaker
Craig

Hey, good morning, everyone.

speaker
Eric Borden
Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Bill, can you just talk a little bit about your appetite to lean into developments here, just given the improving demand environment and the potential for a vacancy inflation in the back half of 26? How are you feeling about potentially leaning into developments to get ahead or time up the deliveries with the improving landscape?

speaker
Bill Crooker
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, we're bullish on development. We're trying to sign up, you know, the right developments. We obviously are very careful with our underwriting and we still want to achieve, you know, at least that 7% going in yield. We're really happy with the Ohio deal, Ohio Build-A-Suit deal we signed up and, you know, that we signed up at a 7% yield to a very strong credit. So, So happy there. We're working on some others. We're trying to get more internal developments done as well as some additional partner developments. And as we sign those up, we'll announce those. So it's certainly a great use of our capital. The market is stable now and looks to be improving and certainly in the back half of next year. But what, you know, one other change in terms of, you know, deploying capital, we're seeing a great opportunity to deploy capital on acquisitions right now, which is, you know, not what we saw earlier this year. So if you look at where we are from an acquisitions, we did lower the top end of our guidance. But we've, you know, we've closed $212 million to date. We've got another $150 under contract and LOI. So to get to our midpoint, we need to sign up another, you between now and Thanksgiving. And we're underwriting a lot of deals. We're evaluating a lot of deals on a weekly basis. So we're hopeful that we can get to that midpoint this year. So that's been a pretty nice change that we've seen over the past couple quarters.

speaker
Eric Borden
Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Thanks. I appreciate that. Just one on the guidance. You raised guidance three cents at the midpoint, but it implies a sequential deceleration from the third quarter to the fourth quarter. Maybe could you just talk about some of the offsetting factors in the fourth quarter that are driving that sequential drag?

speaker
Matt Spenard
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, absolutely. I'd say the easiest thing to point to here is credit loss. We've been outperforming our credit loss guidance, but we're not through the rest of the year. So we do have some credit loss baked in on a spectral basis for the remainder of the year. To the extent we outperform that, again, these are unforeseen, just call it more of a modeling number, we would be at the higher end.

speaker
Bill Crooker
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, so your math set the midpoint, I assume, right? Yeah, that's right. I think it depends on where we fall within that core flow range.

speaker
Craig

Great. Thank you. Thanks.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Blaine Hex with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question.

speaker
Blaine Hex
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Great, thanks. Good morning, guys. Just following up on acquisitions, Bill, can you talk about what might have changed over the last 90 days to kind of pull back on your forecast, if there was anything specific that you noticed? And then, you know, this is probably difficult to forecast now, but given the trends you're seeing today that you just alluded to, how do you feel about your ability to make up for this 2025 decrease in 2026 and show a more significant increase in activity year over year?

speaker
Bill Crooker
Chief Executive Officer

That's a good one, Blaine. As Matt said, I think we'll handle all the remaining 2026 guidance in February. But certainly, if you look at the cadence throughout this year, it has been accelerating into year end. What dynamics have changed? You've got a couple of things. You've got interest rates that have been stable. I think just a macroeconomic environment that's a little bit more stable. And you've got some seller, call it seller pent-up demand. So I think the ask price is a little bit more reasonable. If you look at what happened last year, there was not a lot of transactions trading in the market compared to historical norms. This year you had all the uncertainty as you move through the year. And then lastly, with this stability that's in the market, you have a lot of sellers that want to get their deals done faster. by year end. So when you look at somebody like us who have a really strong reputation in closing deals in a pretty short period of time, we're the preferred buyer in a lot of these instances. And some of them, we're not the high bidder. There's a preference to close by year end. So that's another driver in terms of giving us some confidence with our Q4 transactions. But I don't know if there's, Mike, I don't know if there's anything else that you're seeing.

speaker
Mike Chase
Chief Investment Officer

No, I mean, I think you hit on it. At the end of Q3, we started seeing a significant increase in deals coming to the market, particularly ones that wanted to close year-end. And as you said, Bill, in those deals, charity of closure is almost as important as pricing, and SPAC has a great reputation for charity of closure. So we're seeing a lot of deals, and we're cautiously optimistic that we'll have a good Q4 here.

speaker
Bill Crooker
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. And we expected a lot of deals to come to market post-Labor Day after the summer slowdown and the other uncertainty happened this year, and that's exactly what we saw.

speaker
Blaine Hex
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Okay, that's helpful and makes a lot of sense. Just shifting gears to leasing, can you talk about any leases you've signed that are directly or indirectly related to manufacturing projects or nearshoring and onshoring and, you know, any markets that you think are particularly well-positioned in your portfolio to benefit from some of those transfers?

speaker
Bill Crooker
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, I mean, from the markets, they're going to benefit from those trends. It's a lot of the markets we operate, right? It's what we've said before. It's Midwest, it's Southeast, and we signed that lease last year, or it was earlier this year. Everything's kind of blending together, but that was a direct onshoring lease. It was a building that was a local distribution, regional distribution building that ultimately became a supplier building to a wood flooring manufacturing company that brought their operations onshore to be closer to the consumer. So we're certainly benefiting from that. There's a couple of leases that we've signed this year that are related to solar manufacturing plants. There's some leases that we've signed that they, you know, one lease we've signed actually manufactures generators for data centers, so not just staging for data centers, but generators for that. So that was a lease that we're benefiting from in our markets that maybe does not have the same demand drivers in other markets.

speaker
Craig

Great. Thank you, guys. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Vince Devone with Green Street. Please proceed with your question.

speaker
Vince Devone
Analyst, Green Street

Hi. Good morning. For the near-term acquisitions you're looking at, are you considering any value-add deals that require lease-up or focus more on stabilized assets? Just curious kind of where you find the best opportunities today and if there's any, you know, greater opportunities from some for-sellers, you know, with some spec projects that have not gone according to their underwriting, kind of hitting the market and allowing for any interesting opportunities for yourself.

speaker
Bill Crooker
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, we're seeing some of them. I would say we're not seeing a lot of value-add deals come to market, or at least the ones that we have a desktop review. We're not penciling the pricing out, so they don't even make it to the full underwriting stage. But we will absolutely evaluate those transactions, right? I mean, it's what we do, right? We build buildings, we buy buildings, we lease buildings, so If there's a developer that wants to take some chips off the table and has a vacant asset that they don't want to try to lease or that's not their core business, we'll absolutely take a look at that transaction and put a bid in to price that. But we're not seeing a lot of those. I think what we're seeing now is probably a little bit more skewed to – three, five and, you know, longer, least term transactions. And part of it is the ones we are seeing, like I said, just don't pass that even initial desktop review with respect to where we would price those assets.

speaker
Vince Devone
Analyst, Green Street

No, that's helpful color. Maybe just switching gears for a second, just on the updated same store guide for the year, it looks like it's implying a you know, decent acceleration in the fourth quarter. If you could just talk about kind of what's driving that. Are you expecting any sequential occupancy gains in the fourth quarter or kind of what else may be in play that kind of gets, I think, like the mid to high fives is what it implies for the fourth quarter, the updated same store guide. You can just touch on that. That'd be helpful.

speaker
Matt Spenard
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, absolutely, Vince. Thank you for the question. So I'm going to walk you through. It's related to a tenant in some cash basis accounting. So number one, we've executed virtually all the leasing we expect for this year. In the third quarter, the metrics include the impact of moving one tenant to cash basis accounting and obviously the associated impact of writing off the AR balance. Well, you know, after September and quite recently, we executed a repayment agreement that requires the tenant to become current during this quarter and also make the required rental payments. So they performed pursuant to the agreement through today. And to the extent they become current by year-end, we'd expect to be near at the high end of our same-store guidance. So this is what I think is going to help here. Had we not written off the AR balance, the Q3 same-store would have been approximately 5% as opposed to where it is, and year-to-date would have been approximately 4%, right in line with our updated guidance. So it's basically a matter of timing. The tenants catching up on past due payments in the fourth quarter, Q3 is lower due to the write-off. And the fourth quarter will benefit from the payments being made by the tenant as they become current. Just a little background. This customer is a supplier to the automotive industry and has an incredibly strong customer roster and is profitable. So it really is timing, Vince.

speaker
Vince Devone
Analyst, Green Street

No, that's super helpful. And is there any color on occupancy? I mean, should we expect, you know, same-store occupancy to be around 97 as well in the fourth quarter, given it sounds like, you know, most of the leasing is done?

speaker
Matt Spenard
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, I mean, our guidance, which we didn't change, is roughly 75 basis points of toxicity loss in the same sort for the full year. So we didn't change that.

speaker
Craig

Great. Thank you. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of John Peterson with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

speaker
John Peterson
Analyst, Jefferies

Great. Thank you. The $153 million of acquisitions that you have under agreement, can you give us a sense of the cap rates on those properties that we should be thinking about?

speaker
Bill Crooker
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, it's pretty consistent with what we've closed in the third quarter.

speaker
John Peterson
Analyst, Jefferies

Okay. And then the new land that you bought in Union, Ohio, I believe that's near Dayton. Can you just talk about that market a little bit? It's maybe not one I'm super familiar with. So what are you seeing from a demand and supply perspective that gives you confidence in doing a development there?

speaker
Bill Crooker
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, and just that land that we bought, that's that build-a-suit that I mentioned in the prepared remarks to strong credit for 10 years. But I don't know, Mike or Steve, who wants to take that? Mike, why don't you take that?

speaker
Mike Chase
Chief Investment Officer

Yeah, I mean, you know, Dayton is kind of, I would say, a market that is up and coming and emerging. It's 104 million square feet. It's about 4% vacant. They have less than a million square feet of construction going on right now. So, you know, but all that said, you know, we were very comfortable with, you know, acquiring that land and developing as we had a, you know, a long-term bill to suit lease signed up with a strong credit tenant. So that was an easy one for us to kind of take a look at. And this property is near the airport. Yeah, this property is located right next to Dayton International Airport, a couple miles away from, you know, from the main interstate there.

speaker
Bill Crooker
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, if not, if not the best sub market in the market, one of the best sub markets, right? And the building fits the market really well. So, you know, to the extent after the 10 years, the tenant doesn't renew, we feel very comfortable with the leaseability of that house.

speaker
John Peterson
Analyst, Jefferies

Okay. Uh, and then I know we're all trying to tease out 2026 same store. So maybe I'll ask it one more way. Is there any known move outs that we should be thinking about as we look into 26?

speaker
Bill Crooker
Chief Executive Officer

All right. I'll answer that one just cause you were so direct with it. Uh, Nothing material. We call out the large no move outs, call it anything over 400. As I said, I think there was five of them. We addressed four of them. We're in active negotiations with the last, so nothing to call out.

speaker
Craig

Okay. Thank you very much.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Griffin with Evercore ISI. Please proceed with your question.

speaker
Michael Griffin
Analyst, Evercore ISI

Great, thanks. Bill, I want to go back to your comment and your prepared remarks about lease gestation timeframe remaining longer and maybe marrying that up to the execution you've had in your 26 leasing plan already. Whether it's new leases or renewals, can you give us a sense, are tenants shopping around for a deal or does it seem like they're getting closer and closer and ready to sign on the dotted line given the maybe greater clarity and certainty that's out in the market?

speaker
Bill Crooker
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, and that's, it's a good question. And just to clarify, it's, you know, call it, you know, a couple months for, you know, the negotiations to go on, maybe, you know, a little bit longer for normal negotiations with the lease. You know, historically, those are the numbers, maybe we're a little bit longer this year. But for example, in our Nashville lease that we got done, that was done from start to finish in weeks, right? So I do expect those to, you know, remain elongated for a period of time, you know, similar to tracking with vacancy rates, right? As I mentioned, you know, in around that 7%, a high six is marked for the next, you know, couple, three quarters. And as those vacancy rates comes down, naturally the least gestation periods get reduced, right? Because there's less options. You need to make decisions a little quicker. And Nashville, great example, really strong industrial market, not a ton of options. Tenant needed their space. We got the deal done start to finish in a matter of weeks. So I think it's just a period of time for these to stay relatively, you know, call it elongated. And then those will start to shorten as vacancy rates come down.

speaker
Michael Griffin
Analyst, Evercore ISI

Thanks. Appreciate the color there. And then maybe you could just give us some insights into the demand of the four development projects that are going to be completed in the fourth quarter. I know there's probably some time until those stabilize, but what's the traction sort of looking like on that space? And would you be willing to give on concessions in order to get the projects leased up?

speaker
Bill Crooker
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, I'll let Steve answer the details there. And just as a reminder, we underwrite 12 months of lease up for our development projects, but Steve can walk through the demand that we're seeing for the ones that are going to be completed soon.

speaker
Steve Kimble
Chief Operating Officer

Yeah, Michael, appreciate the question. We've made good progress on the existing, but the stuff coming that we still have left to lease, I'll just walk you through the five markets. That's probably the easiest way to do it. We have a small amount of vacancy in Greenville-Spartanburg, just 70,000 square feet. As you probably know, the activity in that market has been very good. with a lot of absorption in the last couple of quarters. And we do have activity on that 70,000. So we feel pretty good about that space. It's built out. The office is there. It's ready to go. And we have users looking at it. And that market has dropped to below 7% vacancy. And on these calls, we've talked about it being double digit for some time. So big improvement in that market. The next market where we have vacancy would be in Tampa. If you recall, we had the two buildings there. We leased one of them relatively quickly to a single user. We have one remaining at 140,000 square feet. That market as a whole is about 6.5% vacant, and our sub-market is below 5%. And there again, we have activity for that building. And so we feel good about the Tampa market and prospects for that building. The next market where we'll be delivering here in the fourth quarter is two 200,000 square foot buildings into the Charlotte market. That market's about 8% vacancy with a lot of positive momentum, particularly in the larger bulk that's brought that vacancy down. So as it was alluded to earlier, one of the questions about developing into improving markets, I think Charlotte should be one of those stories where that market's starting to improve and we're delivering product. In the sub-market that we're in out in Concord, That's about a 5% vacancy market. And in that project, you'll recall when we've talked about it, we have some benefits on users relative some of the peers because there's some zoning issues with sewer availability in the market. So we can do distribution and manufacturing tenants when some of our competition can't do the distribution. Next market would be Reno, where we have two buildings delivering a 285 and a 76,000 square footer. Both of those buildings fit the North Valley sub market that we're in. That market has been slower absorption in the last probably six quarters. And so that the little bit of headwinds there, but we expect absorption will pick up as we deliver these buildings. And And we do have activity and have had activity on both buildings, but nothing to report yet. And then the last market is Louisville, probably the one I'm personally the most bullish about. It's a 4% vacancy market. We are in a Class A park just south of the market and a very established park. We have strong activity on our building, and there's very limited supply that we'll be competing with in that market. That takes you through kind of the five markets where we have future exposure.

speaker
Michael Griffin
Analyst, Evercore ISI

Well, appreciate the detailed analysis there, and thanks so much.

speaker
Craig

You're welcome.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Nikita Belli with JP Morgan. Please proceed with your question.

speaker
Nikita Belli
Analyst, JP Morgan

Good morning, guys. It looks like you are pretty bullish on both acquisitions and developments. Can you talk a little bit about how you rank them on the relative basis, one versus another? And as you start to ramp both of them up, it appears in 2026, how do you plan to fund it? And are we close enough to issue equity at these prices?

speaker
Bill Crooker
Chief Executive Officer

Hey, Nikita, it's Bill. With respect to ranking, it's hard. I mean, that was good. I guess I'll still say the joke. It's like ranking your children, right? They're different. I would say we evaluate opportunities for development and acquisitions. And depending on the returns, the market, et cetera, we may choose to look at one or the other. But the reality is we've got a balance sheet and liquidity to, if we like both opportunities, we can deploy capital to both opportunities. So it's not an either or for us. And we certainly have, you know, the process, the people and the systems internally to evaluate all those opportunities. So for us, it's not an either or. So we don't have to force rank those two opportunities. But as I said, you know, development was, you know, the favorite choice of deployment of capital earlier this year. And I think, you know, acquisitions is catching up, which is great to see. In terms of capitalizing those and financing those, I'll turn it over to Matt to talk about that.

speaker
Matt Spenard
Chief Financial Officer

Hi, Nikita. So as we sit here today, you know, we're retaining north of $100 million of free cash flow or balance sheets at the low end of our balance of our leverage target. So those are probably the two first sources. We have $47 million of unfunded forward equity, which would be the next source. We don't anticipate any deviation from our normal leverage bands generally operating in the low five times.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brendan Lynch with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.

speaker
Brendan Lynch
Analyst, Barclays

Great. Thanks for taking my question. You mentioned the fixed renewal options that are in place for some of the leases that are going to roll in 2026. Do you have a lot more of these and are they mostly reflecting acquisitions that you've made in the contracts that were put in place by the prior owners?

speaker
Bill Crooker
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, they're almost all based on assuming leases. Um, and I would say they're not, you know, higher, materially higher or lower than, than other years. They just happen to be in the remaining portion of the unleased space for next year. Generally those renewal options have some sort of notice period. It could be as short as three months. Um, so some of those are to the back end of next year. Okay. Thanks.

speaker
Brendan Lynch
Analyst, Barclays

That's helpful. And then maybe a kind of a strategy question. Um, You seem to have an improving view on how the market's trending, and I think there's a lot of third-party data out there to support that. When you think about the acquisitions that you have made versus the ones that you passed on, do you get the sense that you could have been more aggressive in the past to make more acquisitions? And is that changing your calculus now as the market seems to be improving?

speaker
Bill Crooker
Chief Executive Officer

And one of the things we look at for acquisitions is, you know, are we deploying capital accretively, right? And that was, you know, part of the issue that we were seeing earlier was that we weren't able to do that with all of them. You can always, you know, Monday morning quarterback, you know, decisions. You know, we try to evaluate decisions with the information that we have on hand at that point in time and make the best informed decision at that point in time. So, yeah. I think we've made a lot of good decisions this year. Really am happy with the acquisitions that we've made this year and really happy with the development decisions we've made this year. So we'll continue to evaluate acquisitions and development opportunities with the information that we know and try to make the best decision we can.

speaker
Craig

Great. Thank you. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our question and answer session. I'll turn the floor back to Mr. Crooker for any final comments.

speaker
Bill Crooker
Chief Executive Officer

I just want to thank everybody for joining the call and, as always, the thoughtful questions. And we look forward to seeing you all soon at the upcoming conferences. Take care.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

-

-