Kimco Realty Corporation ($KIM)

Okay. Good afternoon, everybody. Kind of as we get settled in here, I'm Rich Hightower, Senior REIT analyst on the Barclays team. Very delighted to have the Kimco management team here with me. I'll do some quick introductions get into some questions and then maybe we can open it up to audience participation after that. But immediately to my right, Conor Flynn, the CEO. Then we've got Glenn Cohen, Chief Financial Officer. We've got Ross Cooper, President and CIO. And then all the way at the end, Kathleen Thayer, Chief Accounting Officer. So thank you again for being here, everybody. So Conor and I were sort of chatting a little bit about the state of the industry and really, frankly, how good the business is right now. And I think maybe it's a little bit underappreciated what's going on in shopping centers. And retail generally. So we'll just start there.

I think if I look at recent history, you're posting record new lease rents, blended leasing spreads, you're at near-peak occupancy, at this stage in the cycle, what really drives NOI from here?

Yes. Thanks for having me today. Look at Kimco, we're really well positioned, I think, to take advantage of the supply and demand dynamics that are playing out today. When you look at the the lack of new supply coming online, that's really sort of unique, I think, to the shopping center sector, where there's only 0.2% of stock under construction, which is the lowest of any commercial real estate sector. That's unique just in a point in time, but that's been the point for the last 13 years. So when you compound that year after year, it's pretty unique to be in a position where occupancies are at all-time high and yet rents have not escalated to a point where new construction and new development makes sense economically. So we've done a market-by-market analysis to see when new supply might come back online and you see some new development come out of the ground. Rents in our estimates or need to rise between 30% to 60% in certain markets to justify putting a shovel on the ground. Kimco's strategy is uniquely focused on first-ring suburbs in major metro markets where you're starting to see a little bit of new development is in the third ring type of scenarios in Phoenix and Vegas and in parts of Texas where you've seen [indiscernible], you've seen new household formations and there's really a retail desert there. And even in those situations, the only way the economics work is if tax incentives or unique situations with public private partnerships, justify the development returns. And so that's a unique situation that we really are excited to continue to have a pricing power advantage when spaces come available for rent. There is no better economic deal that a retailer has than the ones that they've signed over the past 5, 10, 15, 20 years. Our mark-to-markets are significant across our portfolio. We look at the anchor spaces of anywhere between 30% to 40% plus mark-to-market. So as we recapture spaces, we're able to really show that rent growth. We have unique ability as well to continue the occupancy push higher, even though we're sitting near all-time highs right now. I really circle the small shop occupancy lift opportunity that we have, which is, I think, going to be the next leg of growth for us. Last 2 years, we produced 5% and 6% FFO growth rates. That's really on top of the sector. The balance sheet is in the best shape it's ever been. We're A- A3 across all the 3 rating agencies. But I still think we're actually in the very early innings of this new retail. And so coming back and being like an institutional quality category has taken a long time. But what was once capital curious, whether it's from large sovereign wealth, large PE funds has now become capital deployment. There has been very large privatizations. There has been very large transactions to showcase the value proposition that shopping centers present relative to other sectors and the growth profile is real. And yet, Kimco is trading at a very compelling valuation when you look at it from a discount to NAV or net asset value, when you look at it at a multiple relative to the peer group, we produced some of the best FFO growth with one of the best balance sheets in all REIT world and yet our multiple is near the bottom. And so we see that this unique point in time as a pretty compelling opportunity for Kimco to be part of people's investment thesis because we have the largest signed but not open pipeline in history at $77 million. That's just annual base rent. That's leases that are signed that are not cash flowing yet. So if you want a crystal clear ball of where our earnings growth is coming from, it's that sitting right there as Milton Cooper likes to say frozen custered. It's nice to look at, but we have to get those tenants open and operating to get that rent to commence. And that $77 million is really what's going to drive the earnings growth going forward. So it's a unique time where we are feeling good about the fundamentals. We are feeling good about the balance sheet. We are feeling good about the future. And yet the valuation does not reflect where the private market sits today, but we're closing the gap, obviously, and have been off to a good start this year.

There's a lot of potential offshoots to that answer. But ICSC was, I think, last week, one of the common themes is there's tremendous retailer demand for space, it cuts across categories, and there's just not enough supply. So can you talk about some takeaways from that conference? And how does that translate into what actually happens in Kimco's portfolio?

Yes. You're spot on. The retail demand is extremely robust across all different square footage categories. And so when you go into a conference like ICSC, you're really trying to continue to maintain and enhance those relationships with decision-makers on the retailer side. So Kimco is uniquely positioned to take advantage of gaining market share, specifically in the retailers that are doing very large new opening store plans. And that's where we've really focused on using the relationship and the platform and the technology tools that we have to take more and more of those new store opening plans and make them Kimco opening plans. And so when you look across the spectrum of retailers that we do business with, it's healthy across the board. Even some of the watch list tenants that we've been talking about for a number of years have seemed to turn the corner. You look at like Michaels, you look at some of the recent results of Kohl's, they seem to have really been able to turn the corner even in a higher interest rate environment because the customer is really focused on essential goods and services and value. And so that's where we think Kimco is the unique intersection point. And so retailers are super aggressive in terms of openings because they know if they don't sign the deal today, it's likely that the space is going to be even higher rent tomorrow. And so they know that there's no new supply. And so the space is available, they have to jump over each other to get it. And you're even seeing it in some of the bankruptcy process where if a defunct retailer goes away, the retailers are actually buying those leases and putting their own capital to work to build out the space because they can't find those types of deals today. And so that conference is really sort of a microcosm of what's going on across the sector is a lot of capital being formed for the asset base, a lot of retailers expanding. And I think one of the biggest tools that we have is to help and reeducate people that brick-and-mortar -- it's not e-commerce versus brick-and-mortar. It is an omnichannel approach that's the winning strategy, full stop. There is no debate what's the winning strategy in retail. You look at Walmart, you look at Amazon, you look at Costco, it is a combination of the two. And now that the working capital of these retailers is being focused on reinvesting in stores and opening new stores, you're seeing that flywheel continue to have earnings growth be a meaningful driver for these retailers because the e-commerce on top of a physical store, whether it's distributed from the store, whether it's pickup in store, whether they been return from the store, that flywheel just continues to add the highest margin, which is in the store. And so that's the beauty of where we sit today is what was once sort of a winner-take-all scenario where it was going to be all e-commerce. And then all of a sudden now, it's become very, very clear that the winning strategy is the combination of the two. And you're seeing that we're able to push rents because that halo from the e-commerce actually has more sales coming through the door of the store.

So I was having another conversation just before we started here. Truth Social is now part of my daily news feed as it has to be, but this is in the context of oil prices, consumer health. I know we touched on this a little bit just a second ago, but maybe help help us understand the kind of natural defensiveness of the portfolio and maybe how -- what Kimco owns, how does it sort of screen from a relative risk and return perspective? How does consumer health factor into tenant sales and the ability to push rents and grow rents and grow NOI? I mean, maybe take us a little deeper into that.

Yes. The nice part about Kimco's portfolio is it's based in essential goods and services. So we're 86% grocery-anchored. And really, when you look at the combination of what we deliver to the consumer, it has changed over time. There are more uses coming into shopping centers today than ever before. Medical retailer, medtail, medi spas, all of these new categories of services have actually been the driving force of some of the small shop occupancy gains that we've seen. And actually, 80% of our new deal flow on the small shop side has been service-based. So if you still are in the e-commerce-resistant camp, that is obviously something that you can't do online. The consumer is actually healthy. When you look at our customer, and so Kimco is focused on really that first-ring suburb of major metro markets. That's an affluent customer. And what we deliver is really essential goods and services. So typically, it's the grocery shop, combined with maybe a treasure hunt at T.J. Maxx and then you have all the small shops that surround those 2 anchors. And that's really where that flywheel continues to show the growth or you layer in different merchandising mix that drives traffic at all times of the day. And what you're trying to do is take the data and understand who your customer is, and prioritize what the customer needs, wants and is missing. So avoid analysis of really what's missing in a market. Because if you can add what's missing in a market, all of a sudden, you expand your market and draw from a much wider trade area. And that's where the sales go up all across the board of your shopping center and you get to charge more rent. And so the NOI growth that we're experiencing today is really tied to a combination of demand from anchors, junior boxes and small shops and individual categories are really deep in terms of the demand pool. So it's a nice combination of seeing both the goods and services all work at the same time.

That's great. So you mentioned this earlier about where Kimco is trading relative to net asset value earlier before we got started here. We talked about just the the volume of private capital that obviously is very interested in retail real estate. So maybe we can -- we can move Cooper in Ras on this one. how do you close that gap? I mean, you guys have a lot of tools at your disposal. You've got asset sales, you get structured investments. obviously, regular acquisitions, dispositions. Help us understand how all that fits together and what are you working on?

Sure. Thanks, Rich. And as Conor articulated before, all the reasons why that retail capital curiosity has converted into conversion and execution in terms of new deal flow and capital being put to work. It's extremely competitive. It's a frothy environment for retail for all the reasons described and we are trading at a discount, which makes it challenging to do new deals that are accretive to our cost of capital. We're fortunate that we have a strategy in place where we could utilize what we already own and deploy that and recycle that capital accretively and what I mean by that is if you look at the composition of our portfolio, first and foremost, we have 9% of our annual rents that are coming from long term relatively flat in nature -- long-term ground leases with some of the best credit tenants in the industry. I think Home Depot, Lowe's, Costco, Walmart, et cetera, et cetera. Those are [indiscernible] instruments that are highly coveted in the private market today, extremely aggressive cap rates, but have a relatively low growth profile, plus or minus a 1% compound annual growth rate which is serving unintended as a bit of an anchor to our growth profile. So as we continue to look at ways to redeploy capital accretively and also enhance the growth profile of the organization, that is a great opportunity for us to divest some of those locations and those leases and then redeploy that capital into multi-tenant shopping centers that not only have a nice spread, call it, 50 to 75 basis points in terms of the going-in year 1 cap rate and yield, but arguably, more importantly, have a compound annual growth rate that's anywhere from 200 to 300 basis points higher than what we're selling. So it's a really nice way for us to continue to enhance the growth profile of the organization. On top of that, we do have our structured investment program. So when you think about where we're recycling capital into. There's going to be 1031 exchanges in the multi-tenant shopping center acquisitions, as I talked about, as we're very mindful of being tax efficient with some of the gains from the sales. And we also have our structured investment program where we're putting out capital in the form typically of preferred equity or mezzanine financing, where we're able to generate very attractive yields in the near term, but also getting right of first offers and right of first refusals to acquire those assets and hopefully bring them into our long-term hold portfolio if given that opportunity. So you've seen us exercise that right a bit in the past in an environment where you have a significant amount of competition like we talked about, having the inside track or our foot in the door on high-quality real estate that we like, where we can exercise that ROFO or that ROFR is a real differentiator for us in addition to looking at some of the joint venture opportunities where some of our partners might be looking for an exit. We've been successful in the past in terms of buying out their interest in deals that we like where the price is right. So we're in a fortunate position that we don't necessarily have to win a bidding war, which, in many cases, is getting extremely aggressive, and we have opportunities to deploy capital accretively without the need for any issuance of equity or additional debt.

That's great. We're about halfway through. I'm happy to take any audience questions if there are any. Otherwise, we just keep rolling. So there has been some consolidation in shopping centers and in retail. Kimco historically has been a consolidator at times. So tell us about the benefits of scale, what it means for spreading out investment efficiencies, things like that. What are you working on now? What should we -- what KPI should we be looking at from the outside as far as that goes?

Yes. I think the key at Kimco is to always focus on enhancing the growth profile as well as the quality spectrum. And so you never want to just get big to be bigger because then it's harder to grow. And so what we're focused on is understanding that the platform has to continue to evolve, and it has to continue to enhance the margins that we're delivering to our investors. And so I think the AI tools that are now injected into all of our workflows is something that we're seeing in the very early innings, a lot of productivity increasing. And so the nice part, I think, about platforms like Kimco is I think margin enhancement is still going to occur because of all these technology investments that we've been making. I think when you look at the M&A landscape, I mean, as I mentioned earlier, our multiple is nowhere near where it needs to be or where it should be reflected in our opinion. And so it doesn't make any sense for us to be a consolidator today. We need to focus on organic growth as well as continuing to execute on the strategy to enhance the earnings growth to really have a meaningful cost of capital to allow us to go and do things accretively with our equity. That doesn't occur today. So as Ross articulated, we've really focused on enhancing the growth profile reinvesting accretively, taking costs out of the business. As you've seen, we're taking $3 million of cost out of the business this year. We're taking assets to market showcasing the disconnect between public and private pricing and continuing to put up like really strong earnings growth. And so on the -- you have seen a number of privatizations, which again, I think will probably continue because of the amount of capital that's been raised for our product. You've seen ROIC, Alexander and Baldwin, Whitestone, all become -- all privatized. So that, again, is probably going to continue, in my opinion, as long as there's a big disconnect between public and private pricing. I do think that platforms of scale will continue to have advantages going forward in the future, not just from technology but also from the ability to manage more without having to have any additional G&A. And that's where we've seen sort of our mergers continue to shine for us. When you look at the amount of assets we've been able to acquire and drop onto our platform without having any incremental G&A really allows us to extract a lot of value, both on the synergy side, but also on the revenue side because then you're starting to see the leasing take hold and the occupancy left take hold. And that's what we were able to execute on RPT and actually, that occupancy gap has actually been completely closed, and we're actually now a little bit higher on the RPT legacy portfolio than we are at Kimco. So we were able to do that in a relatively expedited fashion. And there's still more juice to squeeze there. There's a lot of assets there that we're adding grocery anchors to, we're repositioning some of the assets as well. And there's a lot of leasing momentum that continues there.

That's great. Maybe one for Glenn. And I think you mentioned this in another comment, but obviously, the balance sheet is in a stronger position as it's ever been. So as you think about your sort of menu of the highest and best use of available funds for different purposes, how do we -- how does it rank order today? How do we think about that?

Yes. I mean we're really happy to sit here as an A-minus A3-rated company. We're the only retail REIT that has an A- rating across the board. We spent a lot of time and a lot of effort to really delever the company. We're sitting today with net debt to EBITDA on a consolidated basis at 5.2x and 5.5x on a look-through basis. And it gives us lots of capacity to do things. Best use of capital, I mean, we're always looking to see what that is. You saw us last year as the stock price was really trading at a very heavy discount. We bought back 6.1 million shares of stock last year. So the buyback is clearly part of the menu. Redevelopments are always really top of mind as well. The yields on our redevelopment activity that we do run in the 10% to 12% range. So that's another avenue for us. And we also have to -- we have a -- we do have some interest expense headwind that we'll need to deal with. We have about $800 million of debt that matures this year. The weighted average rate on that debt is about 2.6%. So looking at the current rate environment that puts a little bit of a challenge. But we've put a lot of things in place that we think could help mitigate some of that interest rate expense. We recently renewed our $2 billion revolver, which we borrow at SOFR plus 63.5%, which puts us at around 4.2% for that. We put together a $750 million commercial paper program, which has nothing drawn on it as well as another avenue of capital that we haven't tapped previously. There, we would probably borrow somewhere in the low 4% range. We have access to the term loan market, the traditional bond market, a new 5-year for us would probably be around 4.8%, a new 10-year would probably be around 5.25% with some of the lowest spreads that we've ever had. We probably have a new 10-year deal done in the -- really in the low 70s today. And then we are exploring the convert market. That's another avenue where coupons are lower there, obviously, to start. And depending on where stock price is and volatility, that's another option for us. So we have the full gamut available to us to want to address maturities and to really deploy capital in a very, very accretive manner.

That's great. Thank you. So I'm going to try to bring it all together for a second here, but every security that I cover, I try to think about an earnings growth algorithm and a total return algorithm. And so maybe just for the sake of everyone in the room, what are the building blocks to FFO growth? What are the building blocks to total return as we think about a dividend yield plus the earnings growth? And obviously, you'd like to see the multiple rerate on top of that. So how do we think about that?

The earnings growth profile is something that, obviously, we're building to continue to enhance. And so when you look at the growth profile that's coming from the portfolio, the new leases that are being signed are getting better economics, better annual escalators, better economics in terms of bumps. And so that's really leading us to continue to enhance the profile growth. Glenn mentioned some of the refinancing headwinds. One of the things that we do point to is the dividend growth at Kimco. We've been touting our 5% and 6% FFO growth the last 2 years as being top of the charts in the sector. Do you -- the dividend growth for us will be meaningful going forward. Our taxable income is pretty much right on top of our dividend. So everything the portfolio is producing, we're going to distribute out. And so that growth profile, plus the earnings growth is really sort of the combination that we've been pointing to as a total shareholder return that will make Kimco a unique investment.

Yes. When you think about some of the building blocks, so just straight out, simple contractual rent growth in the portfolio average is about 1.5% a year. So right out of the box, that's a lot better than it was probably 4 or 5 years ago where it was more in the 1%, 1.25% range. The redevelopment activity, as I mentioned, is another additive feature that we continue to really drive towards. We'll invest somewhere between $100 million and $150 million a year in redevelopments that are earning in that 10% to 12% range. And then you have our snow pipeline. So the snow pipeline today are signed but not open pipeline is $77 million just from the base rents. On top of that, that does not include the net, so the recoveries of CAM and tax and insurance, which generate about another $20 million. And behind that, we have a shadow pipeline of leases that are signed we're tenants already in this space, and that amounts to about another $20 million. So as that snow pipeline comes online, that is going to fuel both FFO and same-site NOI growth. So those are -- those are some of the really key things as well as we do have a structured investment program. Ross can probably talk about that a little bit more, but that's another driver of some of the growth that we have. Maybe you want to...

Yes, I mentioned we're issuing preferred equity as well as [indiscernible] financing, in some cases, stretch senior subordinate mortgages. It's really a capital solutions program where we've had the opportunity to invest in a more passive structure in real estate that we like with operators that are high quality on good real estate and having, again, as I mentioned, that right of first offer and that right of first refusal is a situation where we're earning a very attractive yield while sort of waiting to see if we get the opportunity to acquire the asset. So that has led to a couple of acquisitions that we put into the pipeline over the last couple of years and part of what we anticipate being in the pipeline going forward.

Yes. And just to reiterate, the other part is, again, as we're selling these ground leases that we've talked about with the very low CAGR that Ross mentioned, as we redeploy that capital, that's just another piece of the flywheel of investing accretively for us. So having an accretive disposition program is another piece to the puzzle. So when you put it all together, we think we can achieve the growth levels that we've talked about. And at the same time, the dividend yield -- the dividend rate itself is going to increase as that FFO continues to grow. And we're generating today about $160 million of free cash flow after TIs, leasing commissions, CapEx and our dividend payment. So cheapest form of capital to redeploy in the best way possible.

That's great. Thank you. Look, as we think about that, I guess, that sort of risk return, longer-term profile, I mean, at some level, a generalist investor base should become interested in that return stream. So talk about some of those conversations you might be having at this point. I feel like conference attendance this week is pretty good, not a record, but still pretty good. So what are those conversations? And what's the pitch to someone who's not sort of involved in REITs every day of their professional lives.

Yes. I think we have seen the generalists start to be curious and start to do some digging. We've had more reverse inbounds from the generalist community that we've seen in a while. And I think a lot of it has to do with the Blackstone second highest conviction is shopping centers. When you look at GIC, like putting a lot of capital out, and these big sovereigns that are coming into the space, it indicates sort of where the generalist is starting to see that and starting to take notice. And so we've been trying to expand the tents to make sure that we go to more generalist conferences NAREIT is great, but it also is a consistent Rolodex of very similar faces and names that we love, but we're trying to make sure that we go to conferences like Raymond James, conferences like Bernstein and others where it's more of a generalist population. And we continue to see even some of our larger shareholders are now generalists as well. So we continue to think that the shopping center is one that resonates with the generalist because, in essence, everyone goes shopping. Everyone sort of can connect with their local grocery store. And I think it's surprising if you haven't followed retail in a while to see that occupancies are at all-time highs to see what's happening at the shopping center to see how it's evolving. And they're all full. Like if you go and so people like to talk about the grocery store that they shop at, people like to talk about the retailer that's coming in or who's missing from their community. And I think that all bodes well to have these tissues of connectivity to the investor to understand that, hey, this is something that's a living, breathing entity that's continuing to evolve and always getting stronger because it's in essence, evolving with the taste of the community and bringing in something new and fresh that people are excited to go and experience.

That's great. Last 90 seconds, what is the maybe 1 or 2 things that are just simply underappreciated about what Kimco is and what it can be?

I think when you think about Kimco's growth profile as being a very consistent earnings driver, there's going to be years where I think certain names outperform if they have a certain event to have 1 year be an outsized growth year. Kimco is going to be a consistent growth vehicle. And I think that's going to be our calling card that differentiates us is to make sure that we are in that top piece of the pie where we have earnings growth plus dividend, that total shareholder return be a very compelling opportunity, all at a compelling valuation right now. And so we don't see anything on the horizon in terms of credit tenant risk or pull back from demand on the retailer side. Our shopping center traffic is up 3% year-to-date. I think everyone likes to try and find a crack in retail like there always seems to be sort of like a gravitational pull towards like a bankruptcy name or like a watch list tenant. Right now, if you look at our growth the last 3 years and you look at the shopping center industry as a whole, it's hard press to find a better sector in terms of demand and supply setup and Kimco being the largest in our sector, if given the ability to actually go and acquire accretively using our equity. We would have an enhanced growth profile because all that earnings growth we did was when we were trading at a discount. And so all of that was done organically. And so imagine if we got a cost of capital advantage to go on offense, and so that's really a unique situation that we have today at Kimco is we're doing everything we can to enhance the growth profile going forward. We feel really good about the runway. But also, we're super excited to hopefully have the sector come back into the sweet spot of the REIT flywheel of being able to actually issue accretively acquire and go on offense and have that external growth layered on top of all this organic growth we've been talking about.

That's great. We'll leave it there. Thank you, guys. Thanks, everybody.