Sentiment Analysis of the earnings transcript to help figure out if there are any bullish or bearish sentiments that could be gathered from it. We're doing ML and AI based analysis on the earnings call to get some more insights.
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| But that that’s baked into guidance and we feel good about what the guidance that we've reiterated today |
| We feel pretty proud about the results we posted last year and we're excited about this year |
| There's different compounding periods and clearly at 15 that represents a pretty solid flow through of those escalations for us |
| If you want to follow-up with Mark or Rob, afterwards we'd gladly kind of answer any questions that you might have had, but generally congrats to the team for an excellent quarter, an excellent year |
| In summary, we are quite pleased with our fourth quarter and full-year results and remain excited about the prospects for the business |
| Finally, the strong performance to end the year in 2023 are conservatively capitalized balance sheet and the investment pipeline we are seeing, all support our previously issued 2024 AFFO per share guidance range of a $1.71 to a $1.75, which implies a 5% growth rate at the midpoint |
| Our conservative leverage, robust balance sheet and significant liquidity positions the company well to fund our growth plans for 2024 based on the pipeline we see today |
| As we look to aggressively capitalize on these trends that are creating the opportunity to generate historically wide risk adjusted returns |
| Our same-store rent growth in the fourth quarter was 1.5%, an improvement from 1.2% in the third quarter, driven primarily by positive leasing results and asset management activities, including a gym operator that we discussed in our last earnings call |
| This translated to AFFO per share growth of 8% in 2023, which we are proud of given the industry backdrop of heightened volatility in the capital markets and wider bid-ask spreads in the transaction markets, serving as a testament to the resilience of our differentiated investment strategy and variable portfolio |
| Generally, as we've said in the past, very comfortable with car washes, given the trends in the industry and the stability of the cash flows and the high margins and the solid rent coverage |
| Our experiential tenants are doing great and continue to – we continue to see good sales trends there and coverage improvements |
| Because that's ultimately our collateral and our first form of payments is solid cash flow at the unit level |
| As a value added capital provider, we are able to dynamically price our sale leaseback transactions, which over time has afforded us the ability to generate investment returns in excess of market pricing |
| Should our pricing power diminish later this year, we would hope benefit from a commensurate reduction in our cost of debt capital such that our net investment spread is maintained |
| I think early child who is going to be much different than casual dining or our early childhood education providers have done a good job of passing through increases |
| With quarter end pro forma leverage of 4.0x and liquidity of nearly $800 million, our balance sheet continues to be well capitalized for continued investment activity |
| As Pete noted, we had a great fourth quarter, which was punctuated by a strong level of $315 million of investments at a 7.9% cash cap rate |
| Our investment team has done a great job of proving the overall terms |
| Tenant diversity is an important risk mitigation tool and a differentiator for us, and it is a direct benefit of our focus on unrated tenants and middle market operators, which offers an expansive opportunity set |
| The overall health of our portfolio is a result of our disciplined underwriting process, which focuses on growing operators in durable service and experience based industries, and owning granular and fungible properties that generate strong cash flow for these operators |
| We have a relative advantage to alternative sources of capital currently like the bank market and the high yield market and leverage loans and private credit |
| Regarding our strong and consistent year of investments, we remained active in support of our longstanding tenant relationships as they increasingly turn to us as a valued and reliably consistent capital provider to grow their businesses given the limited funding availability in the bank market and the continued dislocation in the credit markets and the diminished level of competition from other net lease investors |
| In the current environment, we try to maintain our most profitable relationships and service the relationships that generate the best risk adjusted returns and take care of the good clients and reliable clients |
| I would say more importantly it's really just having good relationships and working with these tenants because our interests are aligned and not keeping a site that doesn't work online and operating |
| So both from an alternative capital perspective and from a competitor perspective, we're finding nice opportunity to put capital to work |
| But we continue to see good opportunities to invest in that space and we like it |
| During the fourth quarter, we invested $315 million through 43 separate transactions at a weighted average cash yield of 7.9%, representing a continued increase in pricing power for sale leasebacks |
| I did make, I would point out on the prepared remarks, our weighted average lease term at 14 years is the same as it was a year-ago which would speak to the benefit of the long duration leases that we added this past year, which is a good spot to be |
| It's been in business for a long time and we're happy to have them in our top 10 |
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| There's clearly, overall transaction volume in the single tenant net lease market is down 40% |
| But the lack of financing out there is making it a little more difficult to sell assets than in a normalized environment |
| I think the casual dining sector is the price, is a little more a) competitive, b) less discretionary and certainly those guys are going to have less ability to drive through inflationary pressures and we are seeing some margin compression there |
| Clearly, the current market for dispositions is a bit challenged |
| From a tenant health perspective, our weighted average unit level rent coverage ratio was 3.8x this quarter down slightly from last quarter, driven in large part by investment activity |
| Clearly, if interest rates trend down, we would expect some downward pressure on cap rates |
| And maybe on the terms that you're getting, is they given the lack of alternatives that a lot of these tenants have |
| We would expect some downward pressure on cap rates |
| And so that private buyers is greatly diminished |
| Clearly, the headline number decreasing from down 20 basis points, some of that is attributable to the acquisitions in the fourth quarter as well as the acquisitions in the third quarter, both of which were at 3.3x |
| I would not set the expectation that that's going higher |
| And so we certainly see competition here and there |
| We really don't have specific concerns about the consumer and specifically as it relates to the service and experience based industries that we're in |
| But ultimately on both in all those industries, those end up being equity owner risk and not landlord risks |
| But we're just not seeing that as we sit here in the first quarter |
| We continue to expect that on an annual basis, our cash G&A as a percentage of total revenue will decline in 2024 as our platform generates operating leverage over a scaling asset base |
| I think, I wouldn't even call it an early warning sign |
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