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| We also, as you heard in the remarks, are really keenly focused on looking at off market opportunities that might come through our network, as well as unique investment structures that we can take advantage of with developers and others that are struggling still, because of the constraints in the commercial real estate lending business, that's one of the areas that we talked about a lot last year and we're starting to see some good effort and good opportunity there |
| So that's why we believe that there's good opportunity to sell these and move them along |
| The other assets, so in terms of our core verticals, industrial and then defensive retail and restaurant sectors, we feel really, really good about, particularly after doing a deep dive and going through it asset-by-asset and sector-by-sector in terms of what works for us and what we think will drive that long term shareholder value and multiple expansion |
| As you can hear from our remarks, we are quite proud of the way we navigated 2023 and are excited for what's to come in 2024 |
| So that positions us really well |
| Our dividend remains well covered and represents an attractive dividend yield relative to many of our peers |
| Reflecting on 2023 and my first year as CEO, I'm proud of the decisions we have made, the discipline we have shown in our commitment to long term value creation, and the results our actions produced in a volatile year |
| We're really excited about executing on this in ‘24 and what that's going to mean for 2025 and the years beyond in terms of our ability to grow and drive value for shareholders, including AFFO accretion and multiple expansion |
| I'm happy to report a strong fourth quarter to close out the year |
| So we're very excited about that |
| As I mentioned during my remarks, 2023 was a great year in many ways for us to be able to sit back and think about what do we want to be, what is the thing that's going to help us drive long term shareholder value, get into some multiple expansion, get back to that virtual cycle |
| Lastly, re-leasing efforts for our previously tenanted Shutterfly location has increasingly improved as we have received significant interest in the property |
| It was an active marketed process, so we were very pleased with the ability of the brokers that we worked with and our team to drive this down to the best optimal disposition outcome for us |
| Buyers that are well capitalized, all cash buyers, are in a much better position than those that are coming in with financing [constituencies], which you continue to see on both deals that we're bidding on and deals that we are actively selling ourselves |
| We once again ended the quarter in a strong and flexible financial position despite no capital markets activity |
| I'm extremely pleased with the outcome of our full year disposition efforts, which exceeded our initial guidance for the year as we were able to capture opportunistic pricing for what I would consider a risk mitigation exercise |
| Red Lobster site level performance remains healthy |
| There's a lot of good indicators that suggest it should |
| And that's what we're doing this year and that was what drove this decision and we're excited, as I said, to sort of harvest the fruits of these labors in 2025 and beyond |
| Shifting to our overall portfolio, which remains predominantly leased to industrial and defensive retail and restaurant tenants, it continued to perform exceptionally well, as evidenced by 99.2% rent collections during the fourth quarter and 99.4% occupancy as of December 31, 2023 |
| I'm proud of what our team accomplished throughout 2023 and what was a uniquely challenging year on many fronts |
| 2023 credit performance was in line with prior years, which exceeded expectations given the interest rate and macroeconomic backdrop |
| With prudent redeployment, we expect those key metrics will improve even further |
| The core mission of this business, as any publicly traded net lease REIT would be, is to grow long term shareholder value to grow AFFO |
| There's still good opportunity out there, particularly in places where we're able to find off market opportunities and unique investment structures with developers or others that aren't able to find the type of financing they used to 18 months ago |
| So we're excited for what that is |
| We took a long time to think through this process and what we thought was going to provide the best long term shareholder value and we believe this is it |
| Repeat relationships, being able to find those off market direct opportunities to invest capital and things that we get really excited about are the places where we hope to see some more |
| We feel pretty good about our prospects there, so we're not looking to take a step back |
| Despite the lower than expected investment volume, we are pleased to report a full year AFFO of $1.41 per share in line with our guidance as we realized operational efficiencies across G&A and bad debt |
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| Of note, we have seen some operational performance decline in the furniture sector and as recently as this month have one tenant within the industry representing one asset or 0.2% of ABR file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy |
| Heading into 2024, we remain cautious on and continue to pay extra attention to industries that are sensitive to discretionary consumer spending |
| The tenant has been unable to pay rent since October of 2023 and still has not commenced operations given the ongoing challenges in the financing markets |
| Interest rate volatility continues to influence the capital allocation decisions of buyers at a more accelerated pace than the price expectations of sellers, leading to a persistent gap in bid-ask spreads and an overall muted level of completed transactions in the broader market |
| But from the rest of this portfolio, this is a strategic structural issue, call it |
| On the healthcare, in particular, there was already some attrition that we had experienced during the year |
| At one time, our diversified healthcare portfolio may have served as a positive differentiator, but it has since become a negative distraction as a publicly traded net lease REIT and a challenge to our growth and performance |
| You expect it to be down $6 million or 15% this year versus last year |
| As an example of our continued discipline as well as the challenging transaction market, late in the fourth quarter, we walked away from a roughly $70 million investment opportunity |
| We're cautiously optimistic that this will start to sort of clarify itself over the coming quarters and you'll start to see volumes pick up |
| Since going public in the fall of 2020, the composition and complexity of our healthcare portfolio has been a hurdle for many investors over the years, and for good reason |
| You heard us during our remarks from a bad debt and from a tenant credit standpoint, there's only a handful of relatively immaterial issues that we're focused on right now |
| It's not something that is causing any real issues for us |
| As rates retreated from their highs at the end of the fourth quarter, we started to see sellers re-enter the market at the beginning of this year with a somewhat refreshed set of expectations as compared to what we had seen during much of 2023 |
| As a reminder, the following discussion and answers to your questions contain forward looking statements, which are subject to risk and uncertainties that can cause actual results to differ materially due to a variety of factors |
| We -- as you've heard in our remarks, there's a little bit of price discovery still going on |
| There's not anything that we were thinking about from a broad credit issues, there's no credit bad debt stuff that we're worried about |
| Assets with real estate fundamentals critical to the tenant's business and little to no regulatory risk |
| But what we have seen is even though there's been an increase in some places in the number of offers, you're not seeing it everywhere |
| Mitch Germain And last one, Kevin, obviously you mentioned the swaps are expiring and I think that's kind of going to start to bleed into earnings over the course of the next couple of quarters or years |
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