Kimco Realty Corporation ($KIM)

All right. Welcome to our fireside chat with Kimco. My name is Zhihan Ma. I cover broadlines, hardlines retail here at Bernstein. I'm joined by my colleague, Aneesha, who covers softlines specialty retail here as well. It's a bit of an unusual setup. We've got 2 retail analysts talking about a real estate company. Now Kimco is very much involved in the whole retail space, right? I'm butchering your company profile, but very much kind of in the open-air shopping center space, grocery-anchored shopping centers. Very honored to have Conor here joining us today from Kimco to talk about not only kind of Kimco as a company, but also broader read across this in terms of -- what are we seeing from a retail real estate trends perspective? Why is the supply-demand situation so tight recently? What does it mean in terms of the competitive landscape? So a lot to dive into there. And I would encourage anybody in the audience if you have a question, you can submit them using the Pigeonhole link. We will do our best to incorporate those into the Q&A.

And with that, Connor, would you like to start with an introduction in terms of Kimco, what you guys do, the types of tenants you have? How do you differentiate between the anchor versus smaller ones? What type of use cases have been on the rise recently, and then we can start from there.

Sure. Happy to. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it being here. So Kimco Realty is the largest in the open-air shopping center sector. We're in the S&P 500. We have over 100 million square feet of GLA under management. That accounts to about 550-plus shopping centers across the United States. We focus on the first ring suburbs of the top major metro markets. So our strategy has always been to find the combination of value and convenience. And that's where we think that, that intersection really plays to the consumer today as well as the retailer. And so we've been through, I would say, quite a roller coaster in the retail evolution over the past decade plus. Kimco has come out the other side of it, I think, stronger. When you think about the evolution of retail, you sort of start at the beginning where it was really all brick-and-mortar and really how softlines and hardlines were developed to be sold out of the store. And then you think about the onset of e-commerce and sort of that black cloud that sort of came over brick-and-mortar was it Was going to be a winner take all. One, and most people were betting on e-commerce, including most of the retailers with their free cash flow and their working capital. And then you look at the next black swan, which for us was COVID, right? So when you think about how people were deemed essential versus nonessential retail, most people thought that would be the end of brick-and-mortar. And so when you combine all of those, in addition to the great financial crisis, you look at what sort of had the staying power. And I think Kimco Realty is exactly that. When you look at sort of how the consumer gravitates towards how they shop, when they shop, and it's that daily needs that routine. So when you go to work, when you go to the office, when you go to drop your kids off at school, what's the most convenient path of travel. And typically, our grocery-anchored shopping center is right in that path of travel. And so typically, our shopping center is anchored by a grocery store. So we're typically the largest landlord for on the large scale, the Walmarts, the Costcos, the Targets. On the mid-scale sort of the traditional grocers, the Krogers, the Albertsons, Whole Foods. On the specialty side, Sprouts, Trader Joe's. That is an anchor we love because it drives repeat traffic more frequently throughout the week. We also love the combination of grocery with what we call off-price, the treasure hunting category. And that's really sort of the TJX and all their concepts, T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, HomeGoods, HomeSense, [indiscernible], Ross and Burlington. We call them the treasure hunters because every time you go in, you're not going for a specific item, your treasure hunting and you typically have repeat traffic that way. And then you fill in around those 2 anchors with really sort of quick service restaurants, daily needs, essential goods and services, medical retailer, med tail, which has become very popular and a lot of services. And so the big trend that we've seen change recently is the lack of new supply. So that has been the tailwind for about 13 years. So if you look at it from a high level, commercial real estate sectors, they have, in essence, an amount of new supply coming online each and every year. For the past 13 years, retail has had 0.3% of existing stock under construction, which is the lowest of any commercial real estate sector. And then you look at the occupancy levels, and we're at all-time high occupancy levels. And then you look at, well, where is demand coming from? It's multiple drivers of demand across the retail spectrum from the anchor side to the mid shop to the small shops side. And then you wonder, well, if there's going to be a supply side shock anytime soon with new development come out of the ground. On our map, and it's been sort of substantiated by a number of analysts. Rents would have to rise between 40% to 50% in order to see new supply come online to make the return on cost, in essence, the development cycle makes sense from a risk-adjusted return. And so that's why we're in this unique point in time for retail, where for, I would say, a number of years, it had been redlined because of those big dark clouds of uncertainty, and then you look at what's happened since and all of a sudden, the consumer is gravitating towards back towards the store. Surprisingly, the younger cohort is actually preferring to shop in person versus online. You would think with all the screen time that all of our kids are having and the younger cohort is having, you would think they would be gravitating towards shopping online. It's the opposite. And then you look at where the retailers have been expanding, e-commerce has not been profitable. Even Walmart had just turned a profit this past year on e-commerce after forever, investing in it. And so now what's happened with the rate increase is retailers are really fundamentally looking how to expand margins and their margins are at the store base. And so they're reinvesting back into their store fleet, they're expanding their store fleet, and they're finding new ways to service their customer from the store, meaning like they actually can distribute the goods, if you buy them online, you can ship them from the store. And that's really what's turned the profit wheel for Walmart and sort of the blueprint for the future, is because, in essence, you're closest to the consumer is the cheapest way to get the goods to the consumer. And that's usually the store fleet that's populated in those pockets of concentration where their shoppers live.

Okay. So this is all really good material and we want to go into each of these pockets. I'm going to ask a little bit about the consumer. And then Zhihan will talk a little bit more about kind of the retailer side and the tenants. So maybe on the consumer side, we've seen across the retail landscape a pullback in traffic to malls and to big shopping malls, right? And more of a mix shift towards outdoor centers like what you have, I cover the off-price retailers. They've been talking about it for more than a decade, that they're getting more of the traffic. Can you talk about -- I mean, you've been at Kimco a long time, more than 20 years. Can you talk about kind of what you've seen the consequences of that traffic shift being? Are you seeing a different type of consumer coming to your outdoor centers, different demographics, what are kind of the knock-on effects of that shift in traffic from malls towards more outdoor plazas?

Yes. It's an interesting dynamic. I think, so far this year, traffic is up 3% at Kimco shopping centers. So we feel obviously really good about the shopping habits and how they continue to gravitate towards our product. I always thought post COVID, there would be a pullback in traffic. And we've actually compounded up year-over-year. Because if you think about the work-from-home dynamic that was existing for a while, and a lot of people were posting up as like an office in Starbucks or their local coffee shop, you would think it would have a rebound in terms of like we wouldn't have a continually uptick in traffic. I think what the shopping center has become is really sort of a combination of a whole bunch of things that allow people to use it in more ways than one. So traditionally, it was your grocery shop. And then all of a sudden, off-price became sort of that playground for everyone to come in and do that treasure hunt we talked about. And I think there's this fundamental difference in the U.S. consumer is that they're -- everyone is looking for a deal. It doesn't matter where you are in the K shape. Everyone is fundamentally looking for a deal. And I think the off-price category has captured that like spirit, that animal spirit of like finding consumerism and everyone. And so I think when you look at what T.J. Maxx has done, what Ross has done, what Burlington has done and you in [ Nordstrom Rack ] and some of the others, it's you find that the shopper base continues to widen out, and it doesn't have to be a very small cohort of the demographic profile. I remember talking to T.J. Maxx for a long period of time about HomeGoods. They had a very narrow demographic profile of who their HomeGoods shopper was. And then they started testing it in different demographic areas. It turns out they had a much wider demographic spectrum. It's almost the same when you go to -- we're doing deals with Sephora now. And so before Ultra Cosmetics was the category killer for us. They were the dominant beauty retailer that we would always try and you always try and look at your merchandising mix and having the best-in-class on everyone that you can possibly line up. So again, your gravitational pull is 1 that drives traffic at all times during the day. Now Sephora has come into the shopping center space and realized you don't have to go to the mall. People -- your shopper is actually shopping at Whole Foods. It's actually shopping at Trader Joe's. And with gas prices being up, with people's time being more valuable than ever, a better way to cross shop than capturing those eyeballs when you're already at the shopping center. And so that's the dynamic that I think has really helped the shopping center evolve where it can be a little bit of everything to everyone because it ties back to people's most efficient use of time. And so once you get the shopper on the product, on the property, you have the ability then to have them cross shop. And we actually have really good data analytics now to showcase really the traffic drivers that we can add to a shopping center, that really enhance the cross-shopping ability because in essence, what you're trying to do is have every retailer succeed. So their sales go up significantly, so you can charge more rent and you get more cash flow that way. And that's the sort of the evolution of the shopping center is there's been more uses than I've ever seen before make sense of the local grocery anchored shopping center. And it can be medical, it could be physical therapy, you name it in terms of the medical retail, the medi spa that's become sort of normal in every day people's uses...

It's services as well.

80% of our new small shop leases and services. And so what typically was more weighted towards goods has now been weighted toward services because I think that's really a post-COVID rebound where people are prioritizing services again.

Do you think that it could this pendulum could swing back towards malls because everything you're describing around convenience, one-stop shopping, right, everything 1 place, that was the appeal of the mall, right? Maybe not grocery, but kind of everything under 1 roof, including services, including apparel and footwear, essential goods, food, all of that was under 1 roof.

I mean the mall has rebounded nicely as well, especially the A mall category. So if you think about what's working today, it's really the luxury high-end lifestyle type of mall. And those A malls are at all-time high occupancies have significant pricing power there's usually, by everyone's count, somewhere in the range of 300 to 350 A malls in the U.S. And so I think that happened with Sephora was they're already in those 350 A malls. So where do you go? Do you go to a B mall that might become a C mall or a B mall that might become an A mall or do you go to a shopping center. And so that's the dynamic that's playing out is most of the malls that are on the fence, you have to have a very well-capitalized owner and you have to have a visionary to be able to invest and reposition it. The challenge with malls that we found, we've done 1 mall repositioning over the last 7 years. And it was a former GDP owned mall and it took us a while because, in essence, the mall is almost like a 4 headed monster. Each of the mall anchors are typically owned by the retailer or owned by another party. And so the challenge with repositioning them all is you have to own and control all the different components of it in order to tear it down in order to reposition it. So that's why it took that long to reposition that mall, and we did a Costco. We did a Lowes. We did a grocery anchor with T.J. Maxx concepts, 7 years is a long time in the public space. So like it's 1 of those situations where it probably makes more sense for the private side to take some of these malls and reposition them. And then that's why the A malls are doing well because of the lack of supply and that the luxury brands are doing quite well in terms of looking to service that customer. So I don't think it's a winner take all there.

You talked a bit about the K-shape. We obviously hear as consumer analyst. We hear a lot about that from our companies, from our investors. What are you seeing in terms -- I mean some of the retailers you talked about that your tenants span both sides of the can, right? So 4 on top, T.J. Maxx, especially HomeGoods, average income is 6 figures, Burlington towards the bottom, Dollar stores towards the bottom. So you're kind of spanning both sides of the K. What are you seeing in terms of traffic trends? Are you seeing any difference between the top half and bottom half, some more color on that?

Right now, the U.S. consumer is very strong. I mean if you think about the backbone being the employment market, I think most people are anchored where they feel comfortable or confident that their job is not way. And so therefore, that's what's leading to the uptick in traffic. I think the -- we can see the traffic when they come into the shopping center. We don't see the ticket sales when they go and so where they're spending their wallet. So the wallet share is something that we don't see. I do think most of your retailers will tell you that people are trading down from the lower side of the K-shape, and they're trying to make their [indiscernible] further. And so a lot of those retailers that you named have the ability to service both the top and the bottom. And so I think having relevance and having pricing power and having the ability to service both in a way that doesn't ostracize any single consumer, I think, is the sweet spot today. And I think when you look at like what Walmart has done in terms of grocery, it's apparent that they can be a consumer friendly environment for it doesn't matter where you sit on the k-shape. And I think that's what retailers have really understood is that, again, going back to that point, your original demographic might be who you think your consumer is, but you might -- if you figure out how to service a much broader base, you can actually stretch that significantly and now is the time to do it because people are trying to either a trade up or trade down and make their dollar go further.

Okay. And then SP1 Last 1 for me. You mentioned fuel prices, and you mentioned kind of the trade down dynamic that's happening right now. Are you seeing any recent changes in trends like recent, I mean, within the last quarter, like year-to-date around as fuel prices have increased as people's wallets have been compressed, is there a shift from discretionary towards staples? Or is there a pullback in some of that discretionary traffic with some of your tenants?

So we haven't seen it. I would say that the the shopping centers that we own are really the ones that don't take a lot of gas, right? So in essence, they're part of your daily routine. The destination shop is not who Kimco is. And so I think, again, we might be benefiting from that. because people are maybe not going to that extra 10-plus miles to go shopping, they'd rather just do something convenient.

And then the one-stop shop with the grocery and the services everything...

Exactly. And so that might be a second derivative benefit of what we're getting. But I think when you look at the shopper and the habits today, I mean we just came from Las Vegas for the ICSC convention and I mean the animal spirits are real in terms of like retailers jumping over each other for space, recognizing how little supply there is, recognizing if they don't get a space today, they're probably not going to get that neighborhood that they want for the next 5 years. And so like when you are able to pre-lease space that you don't even have your arms around, so in essence, like a retailer hasn't given it back to you, but you get a chance that you might recapture it, you can pre-lease that space today at 30% to 40% above the rent than what the current retailers pay. And so that's the dynamic. And I would say that retail for a number of years was red lined in terms of like an investment thesis because of all those overhangs. And I think we're at a very new chapter where it's being institutionalized again. When you think about the capital being formed, Blackstone's second highest conviction is open-air shopping centers. When you think about GIC, when you think about Norges, when you think about Colon and Steers when you think about these massive, massive capital deployers all having conviction on the space and yet that hasn't flown through to the publicly listed sector. It's on the private side. But usually, when you start to see [indiscernible] privatized by some of these conglomerates, that's usually what resets the actual share price to reflect the disconnect between public and private pricing and the REIT sector.

Interesting. That's a good segue because I then want to talk about the supply/demand dynamics as well as the retailer dynamics. Maybe we'll start on the supply side of things, of course, understanding in severe tight supply market right now. How do you expect that to evolve in the next 5 to 10 years?

Yes. So we get this question a lot where you see all this demand, why aren't you seeing more supply come online? Why aren't you seeing the development cycle pick up? I think a lot of it has to do with retail was oversupplied for a long period of time in United States. When you look at any metric on the retail per capita in the U.S. versus any other , this is a global audience, right? So when you think about U.S. versus Europe, you think about U.S. versus Canada, you think about U.S. anywhere. We have way more retail space than any of like a developed country. And so we had an oversupply issue for a while that we had to work through. Now that's worked its way through that we're at all-time high occupancies. But the rents haven't picked up the pace to keep on pace with where construction costs, labor costs and land costs have gone. And so when you combine those major factors, the return on cost, which is really what your development pro forma is focused on, needs to be at a spread somewhere in the range of 200 basis points over your exit cap. So there's a risk-adjusted return that you feel comfortable going through the development cycle, that spread in order for it to be there, you need to have rents be 30% to 40%, sometimes 50% higher than where they are today. And so what little development you do see coming out of the ground, it's in these new pockets of household formation, where there's a retail desert, where there isn't any service or a retail center servicing that new area. And so if you think about where there's sprawl like the third ring of Vegas, the third ring of Phoenix, and where there's a lot of population growth like in Texas. And so that's where local municipalities are incentivizing development in order to support the new household formation. And you can really count on 1 hand the amount of developments that are going on there, and it's usually done by tax subsidies that make the return on cost spread to your exit cap feasible to make some development makes sense. But again, that's a very, very small amount.

Interesting. I do want to dive into the lease terms and the rent side of things as well. But maybe a broader question on the demand side of things. Why are retailers willing to sign some of the longer-term leases given that there's still, of course, the overhang of which way e-commerce agentic AI is going to change how people shop in the next number of years.

It's interesting. I think from our investor base, we get the opposite question, why wouldn't we sign shorter-term leases in order to get the mark-to-market because in essence, there's no supply coming, whereas retailers want the longer-term lease because then they can understand what their cost is going to be because real estate is typically 1 of their #1 line items in terms of cost structure. And so I mean, from a retailer perspective, they have a lot of investment, right, so that they have to look at in terms of like the investment horizon, how long they're going to invest in that space and how long the control is on that space, and so that's why they want to sign up for longer periods of time because in essence, all of that investment has to have a return on it for it to make sense. If it's a 3-year lease, they have to make that investment back quicker, obviously. If it's a 10-year lease, they have a lot more time I think the interesting dynamic that's occurred is you continue to see sort of the demand cycle pick up and the retailer is trying to figure out how to go and activate space within their store footprint to be able to service more online orders. And so like the digital map of your store is going to be something that comes very quickly and some of our largest retail partners are already doing it in order to maximize sort of back of house to be able to understand how to go about servicing those online orders because the dynamic right now that you're seeing is -- and you see this with a number of retailers is the experience of going into a shop, maybe hurting the consumer because there's more online pickers and servicers going through the store right now that is hurting the customer experience. And so that's the big dynamic that is yet to play out, is people trying to figure out how to optimize the store as a distribution point without hurting the customer experience. And I would say of all your retailers, there's probably only 1 or 2 that have figured it out. And so like that's the big dynamic that people are trying to solve for. They don't want to pay us more, right? They want to try and keep their cost controlled on their store, all while trying to reinvent how you go about reenvisioning the front and back of house to make it more profitable.

And as aside, does that involve some stores turning into dark stores. If they no longer have the traffic to justify the consumer-facing side and then you just have a really efficient fulfillment hub.

Yes. So usually, the lease has an operating covenant where they have to have the doors open to the consumer, you are starting to see more hybrid stores where I would say it's like, in essence, what would you call it Costco right? It's pretty much like a hybrid.

Like warehouse right?

So like if you think about what's probably going to continue to evolve is, I think the back of house becomes more of like a robotic warehouse where they can essence, service the online consumer in a way that doesn't impact the front of house. I don't think there's going to be a dark stores just because the demand side is so strong, where like there's going to be e-commerce fulfillment sites where you have dedicated hubs of e-comm that they're going to service from and they won't have any real customer interfacing and that's more of an industrial play, whereas the retailer, I think, themselves recognize that the consumer has to have a good experience coming through the door or they're not going to come back. There's too much choice. There's too much optionality.

No, that makes sense. You also mentioned that rent probably has to go up 30%, 40%, 50%. Can you talk about how much they're going up now based on how the lease terms are structured? And is there room for the upside from your guys perspective?

Yes. So we report spreads on new leases and then on renewals and options. And so spread -- that's running around 10% to 12% or so. So the issue is that leases are long in nature. Our weighted average lease term is over 7 years, whereas like you think of like a multifamily apartment leases like 1 year, right? So they get the mark-to-market up and down every year depending on where supply and demand is. Ours is more insulated in terms of waves of either shock. And so we never even in the depths of COVID or even in the depths of the GFC, we never dropped below 92% occupancy. And that's, again, primarily because our tenant base is typically credit rated and typically a long-term nature in terms of lease. Now the downside of that is minimizing the upside, right? So you only get a very small slice, usually between 5% and 10% a year, that you get to mark-to-market on those new lease spreads. And so that's the dynamic as retailers today recognize they will never get a better deal than what they currently have. And so that's why you're seeing renewal rates or retention rates be at all time. So that's running at over 90%. So in essence, the retailer recognizes they've got to keep the store that they have because they won't find a better economic deal either in the corridor that they earn.

Right. And are some retailers getting better deals than others if they're more of a traffic driver or more of an ideal anchor tenant?

For sure. I mean, every negotiation is a knife fight, right? I mean most knife fights in my career, the retailer has won because of that supply-demand dynamic being more favorable to the retailer. When you look at today's environment, it's different. And so when you look at who has pricing power for negotiating leverage, there is very clear a subset of retailers that still drive the most value for a shopping center. So in essence, a cap rate compression. So if you have the best grocer, they will drive meaningful value creation to the asset. And so they are typically able to drive very strong economic deals for themselves. Now you try and make up for that by having the halo effect or the surrounding retail be able to pay for that loss leader, that anchor that's driving more traffic than others. And you know who those retailers are. They're very strong in terms of their offering. And many times, they're able to generate a, call it, an economic plus deal that they have the advantage. I will say that though that those are few and far between today because there are more and more competitive retailers that I would say are very, very close to those -- that elite group that drives incremental traffic, maybe not to the same level, but pretty close.

Got it. And last 1 from me before turning over to Aneesha. Are there more demand for certain types of boxes in terms of size, what capabilities they have, e-commerce fulfillment versus others?

Yes. So if you think about like range of square footage, you have like the big box category. So if you think about Costco, Walmart, Target, you've got Dick's House sports, you've got a number of these big-box retailers, Home Depot, Lowe's, you go category by category, and it's very healthy right now. In my career, you have had lulls in terms of different demand drivers for different square footage sizes. The big box is very strong right now, there's a lineup of tenants that would love to try and find those opportunities because, again, no new development, landing an aircraft carrier is super hard. So when you find a big box that spits the needs of a handful of those, they will bid that up to try and control that real estate. The junior box or the mid-box size is always a little bit in terms of a funky tweaker. So like if you think about 50,000 to 65,000 square feet, that's where like a Dick's and then it sort of drops off from there. There's -- sometimes the larger format grocers like a Kroger marketplace, you get a handful of other users that like that sort of larger size. But there's not a very deep bench in terms of users for that category. Then you drop into sort of the more traditional grocery size, which again can range from 25 to 40, and that's inclusive of all the major brands that are growing from the small side, Trader Joe's, Sprouts, you've got all the lead on the discount side. You've got Kroger, you've got Albertsons, you've got AlhoDelis. So you've got a whole food. You've got a number of folks that are in that square footage size that are doing new deals, and that's on top of all the off-price sector that we've talked about. Each 1 of those is doing 100-plus new deals a year. And so when you think about the demand drivers for that sector, that's probably the deepest bench of demand. You get to the smaller sort of midsized boxes, what we call it, that 10,000 to 12,000. That's where you've got the [ Ultas ] you've got the Dollar stores. You've got a number of folks that are very active in that category. The small shop side, I would say, is the most upside for Kimco. We're at -- we're over 96% occupied, but our small shops are just over 92% occupied, and if you think about our anchors are 98% plus occupied, the small shop lift is where we see the future growth coming from Kimco, and that's where all those services are coming in. And that's where we're super excited to see a diversity of demand coming in. And so it's not a 1 size fits all. You can come up with a 1,000 square foot user, a 2,000 square foot user, a 5,000 square foot user, and it sort of ranges from all the different use cases. The nice part is that depth of demand is about as good as it gets.

Okay. I want to ask a bit about capital allocation. And maybe start with this point you ended on, which is the occupancy rate if you are 98% occupied for those anchor boxes, and as you say, you're already selling these pre-leases, so you're kind of selling the lease before the current leases do. Why aren't you moving to more short term, maybe more flex term leases? Like if you look at Europe, for example, right, the European retailers, H&M and so on, they do 3- to 5-year leases that are flex term and linked to revenue and so on, and we're still doing these 10-year fixed-term leases. Why not?

Yes. I think it has to do with maybe legacy, right, where like that's sort of the industry norm is on the shopping center side. The anchor is typically like these 10 years of firm term with options on top, and there's bumps every 5 years. And that was sort of the way that they could control the space and control their cost side of the business. When you look at the mall sector in the U.S., that is very much linked to a percentage of sales. So similar to the European model, where there's a lot more volatility, both up and down, depending on the success of the retailer.

But SP1 But to push back on that point, I mean, with 98% occupancy, surely, you call the shots rather than the tenant, right?

No doubt. I mean you still have the ability to reprice the new leases, the problem is your base is set from 7-plus years. In the past where those economics are not changing anytime soon. So you are seeing a repricing of economics on new leases going forward. You're seeing it both in the small shops and on the anchor side. Typically, there was a lot of covenants and controls that anchors had co-tenancy provisions, sales kickout rights. All of these provisions that are retailer-friendly, that allow them, again, to have more control over their destiny, most of those are long gone. And then the economics are improving in terms of both the going-in rent that you're able to mark-to-market on as well as the economic lift in terms of the annual or the 5-year type of growth and the reduction of options controls as well. And then moving to fair market value options versus sort of a fixed market option. So those are -- that's all happening real time. No doubt about it. It's just, again, that sliver that you're able to reprice [indiscernible].

Every 10 years as you're rolling over there.

Correct.

What about new capital allocation opportunities? You've talked about ground lease parcels. You've talked about mixed use developments with residential as well. Can you tell us a little bit about what you're doing there?

Sure. So Kimco Realty owns, as I said, over 550 shopping centers. If you think about it as like a -- from the high level, like as a commercial real estate sector, it's about 20% single-story buildings, 80% parking lot. And so when you think about the underutilization of that real estate, we are probably the most underutilized form of commercial real estate. And so we set out to understand how to unlock value for our shareholders by identifying the highest and best use of a lot of this parking that I think is going to be future upside for our shareholders. And so if you think about driverless cars, the robotaxis, all the things that are here already, we've been talking about this for 5 years, is parking ratios, the reason why we have those 20%, 80% ratio is because it's mandated from the municipality. You need to have 400 or 500 per 1,000 parking stalls, and that's the ratio, and that's why you've created these huge fields of parking. We're already starting to see parking ratios come down, and that's where you're able to then add density to your parking lot. And that density can be in all forms and shapes and sizes. What we've identified is we've entitled 14,000 apartment units across the portfolio as future upside to unlock from the parking lots. And that's already in place. So that's already the work we've done over the past 3 or 4 years. And so when we look at the long term, again, we're trying to look at the long term and focus on that we see these shopping centers evolving into mixed-use communities, mixed-use campuses where multifamily is really where we've been focusing, the apartments enhance the retail, the retail enhances the apartments. If you think about how an apartment prices on a relative basis, it's usually the location and the amenity base. It's servicing. We have typically our shopping center as close to 50 to 100 retailers in each location, name 1 apartment building that has 50 to 100 amenities in it. Like maybe they'll have a gym. Maybe they'll have a coffee shop, maybe they'll have a grocery store. Then you get to the next 50, and there's no chance, right? So that's why all of our apartments that we've activated we've built over 4,000 now are pricing at a premium to market. And so that's sort of the long-term vision of the evolution of the shopping centers to create these mixed-use environments. And again, we like to think that that's like the untapped upside to Kimco all while we're hitting all-time high occupancies on the retail with the pricing power and the earnings growth that we have. And so we've got an opportunity to deploy capital in a number of different areas. We do have a number of ground leases that you mentioned. That's really sort of the Costcos, the Walmarts, the Targets, the Lowe's, the Home Depots that are sitting, we like to call them flat pancakes. They have close to, call it, 50 to 100 years of control, paying little or nothing with no economic sort of increases along the way, but they would price pretty much on top of where their bonds price. And so that's accretive recycling we're looking at activating going forward where we can sell these ground leases at close to a 5%, 5.5% cap and then redeploy that into a growing shopping center at a 6%, 6.5% cap. So not only going in is the FFO accretive, but the same-site NOI growth is usually 200 to 300 basis points higher because, in essence, you're getting a very, very little growth from one, and there's usually a significant growth from the other. And so that's sort of the accretive recycling in terms of capital allocation we're doing.

Interesting. Okay. So we want to ask some retailer-specific questions as well. Maybe I'll start with off-price and then Zhihan can ask a little bit about the big box stores, within off-price, you have this dynamic of TJX, Ross and Burlington, your top 3 tenants in that order, right, where, as you say, they're all adding minimum of 100 units net boxes per year. And Burlington is going to closer to 120, what are the dynamics between the 3? And do you often get them bidding for the same box? And talk a little bit about the colocation dynamics as well? Do you like to have them co-located in the same center? Or do you try to avoid that and spread them out?

We think they enhance each other. They are not so keen on each other coming into the same shopping center. It is a dynamic where it's evolved over the years. I would say that the shopping experience is 1 where each of them have a little bit of a differentiated strategy, as you know. I think Burlington has been the most aggressive in the bankruptcy market, which I mean by their buying leases out of the bankruptcy market, to be more competitive to get stores in a hypercompetitive market. T.J. Maxx has been very successful in sort of expanding the demographic profile that we talked about going to new markets, with all of their flags, finding new areas, new white space to go and launch. I would say Ross has had an interesting one. They have what they call the double-down strategy where if you have a really strong Ross store they have found that they can put a second Ross store within very close proximity and have no cannibalization in terms of 1 store hurting the other because, in essence, the merchandising mix is so different in each one. I'm really fascinated to how they can turn merchandise so quickly and make it so different each time you go into a store and each store is differentiated from...

They have store-by-store allocation it's a mix.

Their buyers, I think, are the secret sauce, right? They're buyers are the ones, and they have a very loyal customer base, like you get text when there's a new truck coming to a store if you're a loyal customer, knowing that when that truck unloads there might be that 1 handbag that is the in handbag, it might not be the color, but it is a color of the handbag and people are going to jump over each other to get that. So you talked about earlier like the market shift away from department stores. We had a slide for a long period of time to showcase that. It's remarkable. If you look back 10 years and just look at market share from like market cap weighted of like where the departments were -- department stores were and where the off-price sector was and where it is today. I mean, it is a monumental shift in terms of market share shift. And I think, again, they have become what the U.S. consumer is looking for. They want the brands, but they don't want to pay full price. They want the handbag, but they don't mind if it's the off-color and they have the ability to push product there like you know each time you go in, it's not scale.

Do they have co-tenancy you mentioned they don't love being right next to each other. In the past, they have said that being next to each other helps them because it's sort of the auto dealership idea, right? It makes the pie bigger. Do they have cotenancy limitations or veto against 1 another when they sign new leases?

So each lease is different depending on the vintage and when it was signed. And if you acquired it, somebody else signed it. So there are co-tenancies in older leases when the retailer had negotiating leverage. And so many times, it's tied to the number of anchors in a location and if a number of those anchors go vacant, then a co-tenancy clause kicks in and there are a percentage of rent versus a fixed rent. So that's the way the co-tenancy clauses typically work. The exclusive cause is what you're talking about is more of can you block another competitive retailer coming in. And again, depending on the vintage when the lease was signed, some of them do have exclusive clauses. Now being the largest landlord for T.J. Maxx, Ross and Burlington does have its benefits, we can do package deals with all 3, and we have. And so the same goes for negotiating out some of these clauses to allow some of the others into these shopping centers where if we already have a TJX or if we have a Ross or we have a Burlington we can do some horse trading to allow them to come in if they allow them to come in some of our other shopping centers. And so they will say that they like to keep each other out when they have the negotiating leverage, but they also enhance each other when they're in the same shopping. So it's a little bit of a cat and mouse game. And understanding that dynamic is important, but we're at a point where they are okay with living with each other, but they'd much rather be the dominant force in the shopping center by themselves, getting all those sales.

Okay. And then last 1 on off-price. Where do you kind of see the end game here? If they're adding -- you're talking about net 300-plus boxes per year. and they're all highly profitable, highly productive sales per square foot, it's soaking up market share. At some point, that starts to stagnate. Do you think we're close to that point. And TJX has had some new strategies like opening more rural stores, in second, third tier markets. Is that the natural evolution as some of the high-demand shopping centers are filled to capacity?

I'd like to hear your perspective on this. I feel like you've probably done some modeling on this on where it's going. I mean I've always been surprised at the growth engine of off-price. And it doesn't seem to be anywhere near even plateauing. It seems like it continues to grow and it continues to take share. There's not many department stores left, if you think about who they've been really taking a lot of market share from? And then where does that continued growth come from? I think it's new markets, right? I think it's those markets where they continue to bend the demographic servicing.

Well, let me ask -- so to answer your question, I think from a demand perspective, there's absolutely more share to gain. Departments [indiscernible] plenty of revenue. There's still a lot of mainstream stores, mainline stores, even online retail. From a real estate perspective, do you think they're reaching saturation because they have so many stores now. They have about 6,000 between 6,000 and 7,000 stores total in the U.S.

I think as long as the product is differentiated, there's still more runway to go. I think when you look at sort of [indiscernible] of T.J. Maxx and how differentiated they are I think when you look at Ross and DDs and how differentiated those 2 are, and then you think of like Burlington as the [ Inger Brother ] trying to catch up to the other 2, I think they have a lot more white space to go in terms of new markets. Ross just coming into the Northeast. Like that's a massive market, but they're not even really penetrated yet. So clearly, there will be a time, and they are global in a lot of ways and so TJX like there's more areas for them to grow, but I think there's still a lot of pockets for them to continue to go on the pace they're on.

Right. And on the flip side of the fast-growing of pricers, the Dollar stores I cover, a lot of them have slowed down store growth in recent years. Why do you think that's the case? I think they're citing the higher cost and lower ROI on new stores than before? And do you see a world where they're going to reaccelerate store openings?

Yes. That 1 is always a tough 1 to try and wrap your head around. I think at 1 point, there was like a Dollar store opening every day, right? It was 1 of those situations where like the growth profile was just -- it was unsustainable, right, in terms of like how fast they were trying to grow the fleet. And then the combination and divorce right between at the Family Dollar and all so I think there was a combination that was ill advised. And then when they put it back up, they're probably on better footing separately. I think Family Dollar is a little bit more rural focused.

They tried to be rural but unsuccessful.

Yes. So like, again, where Kimco focuses is on the first-ring suburb. And so I actually think dollar stores have a little bit of advantage because there's really no more toy stores left, right? If you think about the offering that they have, they have the combination of -- they have a little bit of grocery. They have a little bit of toys and they have a very wide demographic that they service because the grab-and-go stuff is services everyone. So they're probably saturated in a lot of markets just because of that growth profile, which was, I think, unsustainable. I mean they were better than I do. I think their new growth plans were crazy for a while, right? It was thousands of stores. So it's -- I think it was again, like grow, grow, grow for growth's sake. And then when the comp store started to flatten out or go negative, that's when it becomes very difficult.

I think the 1 exception is [indiscernible] growing really nicely. There's still sub 2,000 stores, kind of a younger retail chain, do you see them becoming more of an aggressive grower again?

They definitely are my top choice when you think about -- they have really filled that niche of like the toy store, the new generation. So like in essence, they have really latched on to that. They just entered Pacific Northwest long ago. They have a pretty big expansion plan there. They have a lot of white space. And so I think when you look at their growth plans and how successful they have been in our shopping centers, it gives me a lot of conviction to want to do more of those.

Yes. I have another couple of questions on the ground lease side of things -- knowing that you don't -- Yes. Yes, absolutely. I was going to ask about Walmart and Costco as well given that you don't directly lease to them, but some of them are doing interesting real estate strategies, on their side to Walmart is getting into a shopping center, Costco is doing, I think, a mixed-used property with apartments on top of a Costco. What do you make of those moves? What are they trying to achieve?

So we do do leases with Walmart and Costco. So just so you know. So we -- typically, those are our ground leases. Typically, they like to build with their own capital. It's the cheaper cost for them. So that fixes their rent to much lower rent. So we do have a lot of Walmarts. We do have a lot of Costco. I think the Walmart deal that you're talking about is really more of a rehabilitation of a mall into more of a distribution type hybrid center, where they can control sort of the back of house and create sort of a new model for distribution into that hub. That might be a solution for some of these malls that probably need to be reconfigured as make it more of a distribution hub, because in essence, they're not super close, but they're close enough to the population. Costco has always tinkered with trying to get into markets that are -- that they don't service. And so many times, that makes them creative in terms of format. And so in order sometimes to get into these higher dense population pockets, you have to do a density play in terms of multifamily over retail. We've done a lot of those with grocers, Costco being a supercharged grocer is not surprising to me. Those are pretty nuanced though, think you need a pretty large parcel for a Costco and then you need a developer to feel comfortable doing the multifamily over that Costco. So again, that, I think, is more of a penetration of a certain market to get into. You have to get creative, you're not going to land your aircraft carrier in a market where there's just no open land for that to happen. And so many times, you have to be part of a mixed-use environment, and I think that's what justifies.

Final question from my end. Similar to Aneesha's kind of anchor tenant restriction question. I'd be hearing something like the anchor tenant being a grocer or mass club retailer, maybe putting restrictions on what some of the smaller boxes can or cannot do. in their format. Is that kind of in line with your understanding? I seem like Dollar Tree is trying to expand into the multi-price point ranges? Are they facing some restrictions from anchor tenants?

For sure, like it depends on like when, again, the lease was signed in the vintage of the lease. So typically, if the retailer has negotiating leverage, they will try and restrict as many uses as I can, maybe not to force them out but maybe to use that to extract leverage from a landlord. And so in essence, when Dollar Tree wants to add a layer of groceries, the grocer typically says a shop cannot have more than maybe it's 10% or 20% of their floor play dedicated to groceries. And so usually, those nuances occur when the lease is signed in a different vintage because they have like the ability to sort of form it in a way that gives them more control over the surrounding retail. I will say that it's interesting to see the store within a store concept continue to evolve. You've seen Target do it a number of times. You've seen Kohl's do it with Sephora. You've seen a number of them do different combinations. And you're seeing, obviously, the brands that really drive a lot of traffic.

So we have about a minute left. Maybe you could give us closing view kind of on your outlook for the sector in general and why you think there is structural growth rather than cyclicality ahead?

Yes. I mean the structural growth, I think, for Kimco specifically, is really tied to that lack of new supply. I think that is something that I think is going to continue to be a tailwind for at least the next 5 years because in essence, if you put a shovel in the ground today, it's going to take all of 3 to 4 years to bring that product online and stabilize. So when you look at that backdrop and where demand has gone, again, think about the black swan events that have occurred that were going to be the nail in the coffin to brick-and-mortar retail. And now what's interesting is like e-commerce is actually a tailwind to brick-and-mortar retail. So like if you think of Amazon, Whole Foods has massive expansion plans. Amazon is going to keep throwing things against the wall to see what technology they can put in retailer boxes, and you probably just saw the Amazon announcement of trying to use their AI for other retailers. And that's going to continue. That's exactly what they're supposed to do. They're like a test kitchen for all types of technology for retail. And so if it's the grab-and-go technology that didn't really work for the consumer, but you know what that technology may work in other forms. And so it's exciting to be in a part of the retail cycle where it's evolving but it's very clear that the store and the consumer is gravitating toward our product.

Okay. Well, we can end it there. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Conor. This is a really interesting conversation.

Pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Thank you.