Slate Grocery REIT

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Slate Grocery REIT 4th Quarter 2023 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and if at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star 0 for an operator. Also note that this call is being recorded on Wednesday, February 14, 2024. And I would like to turn the conference over to Jennifer Piper, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Q4 2023 conference call for Slate Grocery Reef. I am joined this morning by Blair Welch, Chief Executive Officer, Joe Placatus, Chief Financial Officer, Alan Gordon, Senior Vice President, and Brayden Lyons, Vice President. Before getting started, I would like to remind participants that our discussion today may contain forward-looking statements, and therefore we ask you to review the disclaimers regarding forward-looking statements as well as non-IFRS measures, both of which can be found in Management's Discussion and Analysis. You can visit Plate Grocery REIT's website to access all of the REIT's financial disclosure, including our Q4 2023 Investor Update, which is available now. I will now hand over the call to Blair for opening remarks.

Thank you, Jen, and hello, everyone. Slate Grocery REIT delivered a strong year of growth in 2023. Our team set a new record of 2.9 million square feet of total leasing in the year at some of our highest annual rental spreads. Of the 635,000 square feet of total leasing we did in the fourth quarter, new deals were done at 31% above comparable average in-place rents. Non-option renewal spreads were similarly strong at almost 16% above expiring rents. And our leasing momentum supported healthy occupancy gains. We are up 150 basis points from the start of the year, bringing occupancy to 94.7% at the close of the quarter, our highest level in nearly a decade. After adjusting for completed redevelopments, our same property NOI increased by 2 million on a trailing 12-month basis, and we expect our 2023 leasing to further drive NOI growth in the coming year. We have continued to prudently manage the REITs balance sheet to mitigate risk in the current interest rate environment. In November, we amended the terms of $137.5 million interest rate swap to look to a 2027 maturity and limit the REITs exposure to floating rate debt. Over 94% of the REITs debt is fixed at a weighted average interest rate of 4.4%. Our low-in-place rents provide additional protection. At $12.41 per square foot, we are well below the market average, meaning we have significant runway to increase our rents and in turn grow NOI. The grocery-anchored sector has displayed resilience in the face of broader market turbulence. Tenant demand for grocery anchored centers continues to accelerate, and essential goods and service providers want to be in our well-located centers in populated markets close to consumers. New supply has remained very limited. The amount of new retail space delivered in Q4 set an all-time quarterly low, and we expect elevated interest rates and high construction costs to continue to limit new supply into and throughout 2024. At the same time, our tenants are investing heavily into their stores, demonstrating continued conviction in their physical locations. Together, all these factors create a favorable dynamic for landlords, providing pricing power to increase rental rates. We believe Slate Grocery REIT is uniquely well positioned to unlock higher rents and grow net operating income over time. In our view, the REIT's current discounted unit price presents a compelling investment opportunity for investors. The REIT's unit price at year end indicates an implied cap rate of 7.9% on a trailing 12-month NOI, which represents a 33.5% discount to net asset value. Year to date, the REIT has purchased 1.2 million Class E units at a weighted average price of $9.61 per unit. This demonstrates management's belief that the underlying value of the REITs units are well above current public market pricing. On behalf of Slate Grocery REIT team and the board, I would like to thank the investor community for their continued confidence and support. I will now hand it over for questions.

Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your touch-tone phone. You will then hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging your request. And if you would like to withdraw from the question queue, Simply press star followed by two. And if you're using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. Please go ahead and press star one now if you have any questions. And your first question will be from Brad Sturgis at Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. Hey, Brad. Just want to touch on occupancy first off. You're approaching the 95% level. I think that's a level that you've talked about in the past of where you expected the trend to. I guess just looking forward, where do you think you go from here? It seems like you're getting good momentum on the shop space and seeing further lease up on that side of things. Just curious your thoughts on occupancy trends. Sure.

You know, what I think is the strong leasing the team's done over the last couple of years, you'll really start to see that net operating income growth in 2024 and 2025. So you'll see that pick up. So that couple hundred basis points of occupancy gain, you'll see it in our income in the next couple of years, which is great. As it relates to your question specifically on where do you think occupancy is? The whole market's pretty tight. I think we believe there's probably a little bit more we can squeeze out in basis points for occupancy uptick. However, you're getting to the point where it's full, but given the market is full, we're going to switch our attention or continue our attention to really driving face rates and operating efficiencies through the portfolio to keep focused on that NOI growth. We really don't think the strong leasing has flown through our numbers yet, but we're extremely confident for really good NOI growth in the next couple of years.

That leads to my next question, just on leasing spreads. When we look at your numbers, clearly the spreads that you're achieving have been, I guess, at the higher end of the historical range, I guess, of the 6% to 10%. Do you have a different target in mind in terms of those leasing spreads going forward, given how full the market is or how tight it is now from a vacancy perspective? And is that range going forward going to be higher than that 6% to 10% range?

We think in 2024, for sure, or in the near term, rental spreads will continue to be high because they're coming off of such a low base rent. That $12.41 is... probably almost half of the Green Street average for the space in the entire United States. So we feel confident. Simply put, if there's no available space anywhere and our rents are that, we think there's really good probability and momentum for us to keep those higher rental rate spreads, given current market conditions. As you know, Brad, we're always focused on buying cheap rents, and I think we're really going to see that that really play to our favor and growing the net operating income in the next couple of years.

Okay. Last question. Obviously we've seen, and you've highlighted, you know, some of the retailers focus on reinvesting into their own stores and you guys highlighted the Walmart announcement in the fall. Just curious to see, curious to get thoughts on other discussions you're having with your tenant base today. whether they're approaching you to help fund that, and maybe there's a return that you can generate, or how we should think about sort of that activity in the near term in the context of the current economic environment.

Yeah, so, hey, Brad, it's Braden. So a couple interesting anecdotes from Walmart last year. Q423, they came out saying they were going to invest multiple billion dollars across 1,400 stores, probably a $6 million investment across their entire retrofit portfolio. And our stores are in that portfolio as well, I would add. And then they said earlier this year, they're going to be opening 150 new stores over the next three to four years, which is the first time they've opened new stores in three or four years. So that's what we're seeing from Walmart. They're the most public about it, I would say, of our tenants. But we've had conversations with others like Publix and Kroger about similar type of investments in their stores. We're seeing them, you know, it's investments in their stores across omnichannel, across new service offerings inside the stores, new exterior improvements, et cetera. And I think the overwhelming fact is those are within their own four walls, so that's grocery funded. If they ask us for capital, there needs to be a return on that, and that's kind of the way that conversation goes.

So to be clear, in the Walmart case, There's zero dollars required from Slate Grocery REIT. And what Braden's saying is when they do ask for something, then we get something in return. And I would say those development yields would be double digits. But right now, the announcements are that they do it all themselves. This is why we love the business, because it's below the line costs are very thin. And I think it shows their commitment to the store. Moreover, in the last several years, I believe 100% of our grocers have invested in improving their stores for omnichannel distribution at no ask from Slate Grocery. So they're all doing it.

Got it. And with Walmart, there's no change in the box size at this point. They're just making changes to the format or modernizing the format within the existing box.

Yeah, it's primarily like within the existing box, Brad. You know, they might retrofit, you know, what's an existing pharmacy and instead have that be like an omni-channel portion of the store with cold storage, robotics, et cetera, for curbside click and collect, which is kind of emerging as the more favored method of omni-channel fulfillment for consumers. But, you know, they might expand by a very small amount. But, yeah, it's primarily it's not like a massive expansion.

But remember, if they expand outside the existing box terms, they have to come talk to us, and that's an ask. and therefore we would then get those development returns. Yep, makes sense.

All right, thanks a lot. Yeah, thanks, Brad.

Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you do have any questions, please press star followed by one on your touchtone phone. And your next question will be from Gaurav Mathur at Laurentian Bank Securities. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Good morning, Gaurav. First question here. You know, we've seen a lot of chatter around real estate debt and, you know, the market being over leveraged, especially in the States and grocery anchored being sort of a safe haven for most investors. Are you sort of seeing opportunities now come up opportunistically that you would look to engage on from an acquisition standpoint over the next 12 months?

Yeah, I would say that it's starting. I mean, To answer your first question, lenders are still very comfortable lending to grocery-anchored real estate. But, you know, I think the difference in the market is if the average grocery store is plus or minus $25 million in value, it's pretty granular. Those individual purchases, if they were done by privates, many of them were financed through CMVS or regional banks. So that... has been different in the U.S., so I think they have to go to other sources. I think that's really good for a company like Slate Grocery Rate that has the capital to go finance through bank facilities and the like. We are seeing people need to sell real estate assets because just the overall market they need, and they can sell groceries, so we are seeing some opportunity, but I think we'll see more starting this year And I mean, there is always activity, but I think we'll see more motivated sellers in certain cases. We are starting to see that. It hasn't really happened, but I think it's almost related to other parts of people's portfolios or ownership, and they can sell grocery because there's a market, and it can still be financed.

And just back to your more motivated sellers point, does that mean that the bid-ask spread for these assets continues to narrow?

You know, I would say like the bid-ask spread for office is massive. And if you kind of go down, like there is a pretty good bid-ask spread in grocery, but it's much tighter than other asset classes. You know, I think you can probably be, you know, it's not like a 10 cap, but I mean, I think you're going to get, you know, things in the, sevens and depending on what the situation is, that's kind of what it is. But I think you've got to take a step back and really focus on the rents. If we can buy something and be at half of what we think market rent is, that's great NOI growth. So it's all relative. I think that you know, it's whether your rents are at market and what is that cap rate. It's still wide because of the way the market is. And we think there's good, compelling buying opportunities, but we're being very selective. Okay. Okay. Fantastic.

And just last question, you know, we've seen the payout ratio trend upwards. I'm just wondering if you have a view to, you know, where you see that going to for 2024. Yeah.

You know, I think, as you know, We do all of our TIs and capital and redevelopment flows right below the line, so it's actual cash, and we've done a lot of leasing and development. We get good returns, so it has crept up, and for other reasons, as you know. We think, given our NOI growth that we forecast over the next couple of years, that is going to go down, and I think we will continue to focus on the payout ratio, but I think our income growth will help offset that. I think some operating efficiencies will help offset that. But I think it's crept up because we have done so much leasing and development that it's elevated because of how we do it, which is unlike some other of our peers. Right. Okay. Well, thank you for that.

I'll turn back to the operator. Thanks a lot.

Thank you. And at this time, Ms. Piper, it appears we have no other questions registered. Please proceed.

Thank you, everyone, for joining the Q4 2023 conference call for Slate Grocery Reef. Have a great day.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does indeed conclude your conference call for today. Once again, thank you for attending. And then we ask that you please disconnect your lines.