Regency Centers Corporation (REG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Well, thanks, everyone, for being here for the Regency Centers presentation. I am Michael Goldsmith, the U.S. REIT analyst at UBS. I'm joined by the Regency management team, Lisa Palmer, President and CEO; Mike Mas, CFO; and Alan Roth, East Region President and COO. Do you have any prepared remarks? Or should we just jump right into the...

If I may just take just a little a few minutes.

Absolutely.

I promise I'll be quick. Thank you, Michael. Really appreciate you joining us here. Good morning everyone, had to make sure it's still morning. It's already been a long one. So many of you may have missed -- have listened to our earnings call last month, if you haven't, the environment today is really -- it's very healthy. So we continue to experience positive operational trends across our portfolio with really strong leasing demand. And this robust tenant demand for space is evident in our record shop percent leased rate. Each of the last 3 quarters, we have exceeded the previous high. We have really solid rent growth and also in the strength of our continued executed and negotiated leasing pipelines. Top retailers around the country are aggressively seeking opportunities to expand. And this was confirmed very recently at the recent ICSC leasing conference in Las Vegas where our team met with dozens of retailers all looking to grow their footprints in Regency's -- throughout Regency's portfolio. These retailers in today's environment are really faced with a limited supply of available, high-quality, well-located space. And I think I said that exact same thing last year. That equation works for us. So we are benefiting from this and that is evident in those results. At the same time, our properties, which are in desirable suburban trade areas continue to benefit from post-pandemic tailwinds of micro migration to suburban markets and also sustained work from home trends. So all of this combined is resulting in healthy fundamentals for our portfolio. These healthy fundamentals are also translating to our development and redevelopment program. So we are experiencing great success in that area with over $0.5 billion of projects currently in progress as well as a pipeline of future projects, which we will self-fund with our free cash flow of over $160 million annually. I strongly believe that value-add development activity is a differentiator for Regency in our sector today and is a significant contributor to our ability to generate earnings growth over the long term. And important to that, which I just mentioned with our free cash flow is the strength of our balance sheet and the liquidity position, which enables us to be opportunistic in maintaining and funding this development program as well as continuing to pursue acquisition opportunities. We remain near the low end of our targeted leverage range of 5 to 5.5x net debt and preferred to EBITDA, and we have over $1.5 billion of liquidity today. This balance sheet, the health of this balance sheet, the strength of this balance sheet as well as our proven track record of operational excellence, were recently validated and recognized by both Moody's and S&P. So in February, Moody's upgraded Regency to A3, and we are now currently, the only operating -- I mean the only open air shopping center REIT with an A rating, something we are really proud of. And additionally, S&P raised our outlook to positive from stable last month. So in closing, we believe Regency is really well positioned to create long-term shareholder value, to drive above-average earnings growth over time due to our unique and what we like to call unparalleled combination of strategic advantages that really differentiates us from our peers, and they are a high-quality portfolio of mostly grocery anchored nearly 500 shopping centers, best-in-class retailers in the strongest trade areas in the U.S, our experienced team in 23 offices across the country, again, our value creation development and redevelopment platform and the strength of our sector-leading balance sheet. And with that, Michael, we'd love to take your questions and everyone's question.

Absolutely. So Lisa, you mentioned you were just at ICSC, which is a very large shopping center conference in Las Vegas. How would you describe the fundamentals for grocery-anchored centers in the business? And what are your conversations with tenants like? Are you seeing any slowdown in demand because of the uncertain macro or a pressured consumer?

So I'll start, and then I'm going to -- I will ask Alan to add with the conversations from the retailers. So I'll just -- reiterating some of the comments from my opening remarks and again, those of you that have been listening to us, following us for some time, you've heard me say that retailers have a renewed appreciation for a physical presence. So if you were to rewind the clock and go back to 2019, there was a lot of uncertainty about the impact of e-commerce on the physical store. And then you fast forward to today, a lot has happened in that period of time. But we've come out on this -- on the other end of that with a renewed appreciation for a physical presence from both the retailers and the consumers. And that is really strong, really evident today. So as -- again, as I said in the remarks, the demand for space for new stores for the top retailers is as strong as ever. And yet at the same time, there's been limited new supply growth. And so that's the demand-supply equation that really works in our favor. Now the retailers -- we're not going to -- we all read the headlines and read their earnings reports, they are facing challenges of increasing costs, supply chain pressures, increasing cost from inflation, labor wage increases, and they have been able to pass on some of those price increases to the consumers, but in some cases, not all. So they've had some pressures on margins. And so with that, that is what's -- that's the offsetting factors that is preventing us from taking our business to the sky, if you will. The good thing for Regency, and then I will hand it to Alan to talk specifically about conversations with retailers. When you think about the Regency portfolio, where the consumers have become more price sensitive in many cases, it tends to be on more discretionary goods and also in trade areas that are more -- the lower to moderate consumer. We happen to be in trade areas with above-average demographics, so the consumers in our trade areas are able to absorb those price increases more and therefore, impacting their spending less. And then it's also the mix of the centers in a grocery-anchored shopping center, I think, as you all know. So it's necessity convenience value. So certainly less impacted, not immune, but certainly more resistant.

Thank you, Lisa, and good morning. Michael, thanks for the question as well. I love ICSC. I love getting the opportunity to meet with not only retailers that are great relationships of ours, but also meet new and thriving retailers that are expanding. I'm going to take the dozens comment that Lisa made and turn it into hundreds of retailers and brokers that we met with. It was highly productive. Our pipeline remains robust, remain extremely encouraged about what the future holds in terms of transactions that are in process right now. But what I found to be wonderful at the ICSC event is there are times that you go and the retailer is hyper focused on the now. Where is the opportunity now so that I can meet my store count. And they all have lofty goals in terms of what they need to do to open. And we're finding, I would say, 2 key takeaways from my perspective in the negotiations with -- in interactions with these retailers is, number one, they recognize that supply isn't what it used to be, and that demand is higher. And as a result, we are finding more flexibility in format from the retailer perspective. And while they may have a defined set of criteria in terms of storefront width or storefront size in order to meet their growth objectives, they are being a bit more flexible, it certainly bodes well for a lot of us. And I would also say the second thing is, again, that comment of now, where is the opportunity now. There's also flexibility in terms of where is that opportunity in 12 months? Where is that opportunity in 24 months? And we want to focus on that. We want the opportunity to lock into that transaction. The other piece that I would add is there's also a number of new retailers, at least in many cases, new to Regency that we hadn't done a lot of business with. And Wren Kitchens, Painted Tree, Rally House. There's a whole lot of them that were out there looking for transactions beyond those that have been highly productive within the Regency portfolio. So we walked away meeting and exceeding really where our objectives were and feel great about the future.

And Lisa, you said the momentum in the business is clearly visible. You said in your opening remarks, that you said kind of the same thing as you did last year in terms of that growth. So in a strong leasing environment, how does that translate to the Regency earnings growth algorithm from the standpoint of occupancy, lease spreads and escalators? Just trying to sense how is that -- how is this environment translating to kind of like the solid earnings growth that you're reporting?

So this strong leasing, again, I'll bring it back to the record shop lease. And the fact that we continue to reach peak percent leased in our portfolio in the shop. We've had -- we are aware of -- all of you are aware of some of the bankruptcies that have happened, which have kept our anchor occupancy from reaching that. But the demand was Bed Bath & Beyond bankruptcy last year, the demand for the replacement of that space is we re-leased those quickly. So it translates through I'm not going to walk through our entire same property NOI growth model, but I'll do it as briefly as possible. I should say, I will walk through it. So rent growth of in-place tenants is contractual rent steps. That plus every year, you're going to have 10% to 14%, 15% of your tenant base whose lease is going to expire and you have the ability to grow the rents from prior. We call that rent spreads. That increase there, which high single digits to approaching 10% plus the embedded contractual rent steps will contribute same property NOI growth of 2% to 2.5%. And then we actively manage the portfolio, redevelop or able to get more by investing capital, and that could add another 50 basis points. So call it 2.5% to 3% same property NOI growth with stable percent leased. Then when you're able to increase occupancy, that's going to increase that. And then contribution from same-property NOI growth to earnings growth will translate. And so today, we have -- it's a spread. It's very affectionately called the SNO in our portfolio, which is signed but not occupied and rent paying. The spread on that percent leased and percent commenced is 370 basis points, which is the largest and highest in the company history. So as those tenants begin to open and pay rent, that will contribute to earnings growth. And that's approximately $50 million of rent. So all of that is going to contribute to greater earnings growth in the future.

Yes. That was exactly where I was going next, and maybe we can get Mike involved in this party here. But -- so the pipeline for the signed not occupied, as Lisa said, is $50 million -- about $50 million in the first quarter. So what's your outlook on the pace that you can kind of convert that from not paying to paying? Does that drive -- does it provide visibility to kind of continued momentum in earnings through the year and into 2025?

It does. What a leading question. I appreciate it. So Lisa's algorithm for our sustained, perpetual, same-property growth in 2024, our guidance is 2% to 2.5%. So it's below that level. And this year, in particular, and I'll kind of come back to this year before we talk about '25. We are dealing with some circumstantial lost occupancy some of which was intentional. So we've got the continued downtime from the Bed Bath & Beyond stores that we have re-leased and we will bring online by the end of 2024. We've had some lease expirations that have weighed on our anchor occupancy and is resulting in an average occupied percentage down about on a 50 basis point basis this year. But the intentional redevelopment activity that Regency is working through, we've actively chosen to take some tenants out of occupancy so that we can increase those rents, redevelop those shopping centers for our shareholders over the long run, resulting in increased returns. We see that average occupancy rate on a physical basis starting to return towards and the trajectory to move north towards historical highs at the end of '24 and into '25. As this SNO pipeline is delivered next year, $50 million will come online largely in 2025. And then we have significant runway beyond that. We're about 240 basis points away from our high point of in-place occupancy or ramping in occupancy. To give you some perspective to your question, in a very good year with limited downside, we can move percent occupied up by about 100 basis points. So that's just straight lining that. That's over 2 years of continued growth potential in the portfolio. To be fair, the opposite side of that growth potential is the -- what I would call the hole in the bucket, the continued -- we need to be very cognizant and careful with our tenant watch list, right? And at Regency, we have about 2% of our tenant base as a percent of ABR on our tenant watch list. That's a very low rate. It always -- it typically hovers in that area. We feel very good about our exposure. I do think that, that kind of hole from a move-out perspective, will remain limited. And we are -- we have a lot of conviction about that forward growth rate going forward. Last point before giving back to Michael. The redevelopment contributions to our business should be outsized in 2025 as well. We talked about this in our last conference call. We've spent a tremendous amount of time building that development and redevelopment pipeline. These projects are largely complete, and we're in leasing phase. And again, the conviction level of delivering those leases on those redevelopments next year should add about 100 basis points of positive contribution to our growth rate on a same property basis in '25.

And you brought up 200 basis points on the watch list. What's driving it so that it's kind of at a pretty much like reduced level? And has there been any changes in the last several months?

No changes in the last several months nor really the last several years, has always hovered around that 2% plus or minus area. What's driving that is the team under Alan and they're just -- our team is amazing at selecting the right retailers for the shopping centers and the communities that we serve. We do an exceptional job of just merchandising is what we would call it at Regency. So picking the right retailers who are going to have success in the traders where we invest and when there is disruption in retail and retail is evolutionary, you will have concepts that grow and then concepts that fade. What we tend to have at Regency is the kind of the muscle behind these chains where these are the stores they need to have for success, and they tend to sustain their existence within our portfolio.

Michael, I'd love to jump in on that because this is where my passion for the industry comes in. A perfect example is you can take the office supply sector, and we just signed 3 transactions. We could have taken a path of least resistance and kept those office supply stores in place. We chose to bring sprouts into one of them. Think of the traffic and the volume they're going to do relative to the store that was previously there. We brought HomeSense into another one, which is a TJX concept. Think of the traffic and volume they're going to bring into that. In the third location, we brought a Baptist Medical Health. Now we ended up doing a 2-story deal that was part of a redevelopment in a Whole Foods anchored center. And so that intense asset management that Mike talks about is why I love this business. It's an opportunity to be strategic. It's an opportunity to put forth that creative mindset and say, who is the right retailer today, who's right for the community, who's right for this asset. And while that did impact the short term of 2024, back to Mike's comments, it's the right long-term decision for us, for our shareholders, and that's how we think about managing our business.

When I think of Regency, I think about its successful track record of development and redevelopment, Mike, you said that you're expecting a greater contribution from that in 2025. What's the environment like that for these type of activities right now? What projects have been going on? Can you continue to do these accretively? And then said another way, like your peers tell us that ground-up development may not pencil. So what is Regency doing right here that others aren't able to do?

I'll take that. So I ended my initial closing remarks with the combination of unparalleled, what we call our strategic competitive advantages. And the development platform is one of them. I've been with Regency now almost 28 years. And development has always been an important part of our business, and it's -- we also have a very successful track record. So when I think about the development platform, development is not -- you have to be committed to it. You cannot flip a switch and turn it on and off. And we've always been committed to it. We have the talent, we have the experience, and I also mentioned the 23 offices across the country. So we are national and across the country. And it is the balance sheet, the talent of the team, the relationships with the retailers that we talked about, the successful track record that is enabling us. It's not easy. And the team, if they're listening, I will acknowledge that I understand it is a very difficult business, especially today, because of the comments that Michael made, that others will say it can't pencil and that's because of land prices, construction costs and what the retailers are willing to pay from a rent standpoint. But we're good. We are really good at it. And we -- last year, I think I said this in my remarks, we started over $250 million of ground-up and redevelopment projects. We expect to do a similar amount this year. Mike commented on the development contribution next year, specifically from redevelopments. We also expect to complete approximately $200 million this year. So it's just a commitment to it. It's the platform that we've built. It's the relationships that we have, and it's the balance sheet that we have to fund it.

From a capital markets perspective to add on to that, a large amount of shopping center development happens locally, a large -- and that development is contingent upon their access to bank capital and construction loans. And that's where that -- that environment today isn't what it once was, it's impaired. So these local developers are often coming to Regency who has the access to capital through our free cash flow, as Lisa mentioned. And that is further separating us right now and giving us even more kind of bold conviction that we'll continue to have success delivering on this objective of $250 million to $300 million of annual starts and deliveries.

Is that the growth funding strategy that you have?

The growth funding, it's going to start with same-property NOI growth. It's the hallmark of our growth plan at the company, and then we'll add to that this kind of development engine, it's kind of supercharged development growth engine where if we're delivering 250 to 300 a year successfully over time, that should add on a levered basis, another 100 basis points, plus or minus of earnings growth fundamentally to the story.

And I think another -- and an important part of that is just the risk-adjusted returns because, again, how we approach development, you can't eliminate all risk, but we really derisk it. We have -- we do not land bank. We have the anchor lease executed in place prior to start and so when you think about the returns, so we're targeting 7% to 9% for our developments, that is still a spread over private market cap rates today because there is a -- there is still a wide disconnect between private market cap rates for high-quality grocery-anchored centers versus where the public markets are trading. The transaction market is still thin. And Michael may have been asking this question, but I'll volunteer the information. The transaction market volumes are still pretty thin, but where we are seeing shopping centers trade with -- in high-quality trade areas, with high-quality grocery anchors, they're still in the 6% range and in many cases, below sub-6 or just above 6%, and that is a very wide gap from where public companies are trading today, especially Regency.

Great. And Regency recently announced the acquisition of the Compo Shopping Center in Westport. What criteria made that a compelling use of capital? And how is this affected by the interest rate environment if at all?

Well, let Mike talk on the compelling use of capital and Alan to talk about the asset.

Okay. Let's go capital first. So from a funding model perspective, it's pretty simple at Regency. We are largely self-funded. So going back to the root of all of our capital planning is $160 million of free cash flow plan for this year. So that -- what that means is on a leverage-neutral basis, we have about $300 million plus of investment capacity, where we can fund on a prioritized basis our development pipeline. Remember, that's $250 million to $300 million is what we're aspiring to do, which allows us some capacity to acquire shopping centers without the need of raising additional capital in the capital markets. Alan will speak to the attributes of the property that made sense.

Yes. I would say we are big fans of Westport, Connecticut. We have an office there. We own a multitude of properties up and down post road. We know it extraordinarily well in terms of the retailers that are there. The performance that they're doing, the rents that they're paying. And when the opportunity presented itself to acquire this asset and to see that rent roll and to see the performance of what are some really good retailers in there, it's an opportunity for us to really do what we do best and where it's appropriate to find enhanced merchandising, we will. We will, where it's appropriate to rightsize the rent, given where it's at relative to where the market is, we will. But overall, we're really excited about adding another asset in that community. We own the Trader Joe's center right across the street from it. And again, I just think it's a great add to our portfolio and our team is really excited about it up in Connecticut.

I have a couple more questions, but I feel like this could be a good chance to open it up to your audience if there's any questions. But if there's not, I'll keep going and maybe someone will think of something clever. How have your capital allocation priorities and investment threshold changed over the last several years?

They haven't. So I'd say that with a smile. From capital allocation priorities, Mike, I -- we talked about we're generating $160 million of free cash flow. When you're able to leverage that and you get investment capacity of just say, roughly $300 million, plus or minus, the best use of that capital is the development, redevelopment, program projects, as I spoke to, because of the successful execution track record that we have and the return on those investment dollars. And that has been a priority. And I mean, we paused during COVID, we paused some during the GFC, but we've remained committed to that, and that is the best use of our capital and is the first place. And then second would be to acquisitions, and that has not changed. Our thresholds, of course, as we've seen cost of capital go up have risen some, but we're still developing in that 7 -- again, that 7% to 9% returns and that makes a lot of sense with our cost of capital and with the private market pricing.

Anyone in the audience? It doesn't have to be clever.

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The question is what keeps us up at night? What's on our mind that we're monitoring? Number one, what I always say is retention of the team. I think our assets are -- they sort of speak for themselves, but you need the people to harvest the value, the same with the development program. So making sure that we continue to focus on the culture of the company and retaining the best people in the business is #1 for me. And then we clearly also are monitoring the uncertainty in the greater macroeconomic environment, and it's something that we talk about. But I believe, again, that we're really well positioned to withstand any economic cycles with the portfolio that we have, with the product type that we have.

And Lisa pointed at us and we're not going anywhere.

Yes. You mentioned about the renewed depreciation of physical presence. Can you talk some of the retail conversations your occupancy cost ratio versus alternatives in digital and how that conversation has changed.

Let me start at a little bit higher level, and then I'll let Alan add any additional color if needed. So renewed depreciation from the retailers, from the consumers. So again, there's so much -- there's a cloud hanging over retail in 2019 because there was so much uncertainty of the impact of Amazon, impact to Walmart, anyone that was really focused on e-commerce. And then when COVID hit, it would just accelerate what was already happening. And as you said, we came out on the other side with one. From the consumer's perspective, they realize they did not want to stay at home all the time and order everything from their couch. They enjoyed shopping. They wanted to get out. So that was also really important. But they also want to stay close to their neighborhood. So again, that was part of the kind of coming out of the other side. From the retailer's perspective because they were forced to do a lot of e-commerce and deliver to homes and they very quickly realized that they were -- it wasn't profitable. And the most profitable way for them to deliver their goods to their customers is to have the customer walk in the door. So they began -- they started to invest more in the in-store experience, so making sure they were refreshing their stores and then also expanding the store base. And then the second most profitable means of getting their goods to the customers is actually to buy online, pick up in store or to even use the store network as their distribution network. And Target is the best example of that. Target fulfills nearly every online order from their stores, whether it's the customer coming in to pick it up or if it's even being delivered from there through a third party. So that's really what has happened and why there's this renewed appreciation for the bricks and mortar.

I just have one more quick one that I'd ask and then we'll set it down despite the red blinking light. Just on the Urstadt Biddle portfolio, what do you see as the revenue-enhancing opportunities from that.

This is going to be a boring answer for those that have followed us because it's unchanged. What we loved about Urstadt Biddle is it looked just like us and really aligned well with our portfolio, our properties, our strategy. It was less well leased, so it was a leasing exercise. So the ability to increase occupancy and percent leased at a greater rate than our own portfolio actually is additive, but that's more short term, medium term in nature and expect over the long term, it's going to look just like Regency and it's now part of Regency.

Well, thank you, Lisa and Mike and Alan, really appreciate it.