Regency Centers Corporation (REG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Audio Gap] Regency and CEO, Lisa Palmer. This session is for Citi clients only and disclosures have been made available at the corporate access desk. [Operator Instructions]. So Lisa, we'll turn it over to you to introduce your company and team, provide any opening remarks, tell the audience to top reasons investors should buy your stock today, and then we can jump into Q&A.

[indiscernible] Thank you -- from the -- what I believe to be the best team in the business, and most importantly, a truly differentiated development platform that is providing visibility to earnings growth and, again, really importantly, true value creation. We're coming off another outstanding year in which we delivered solid NOI earnings and dividend growth, driven by healthy tenant demand and accretive capital allocation, supported by continued strength, as you all know, in tenant sales and foot traffic in the sector and specifically across our centers. Leasing remains a true highlight. Demand is strong across both anchors and shops and limited new retail supply continues to support rent growth. We're seeing high-quality tenants expanding within our portfolio, allowing us to grow occupancy while further enhancing merchandising across our centers. And as I just opened, importantly, development continues to be a key differentiator and our primary external growth engine. Over the past year, we advanced our pipeline through both starts and completions, positioning us for meaningful NOI contribution in 2026 and beyond. In today's truly supply-constrained environment, our ability to execute, ground-up development at the attractive returns that we are able to achieve really does reinforce our competitive advantage and the differentiation. Our balance sheet remains a significant strength with A-level credit ratings, low leverage, strong liquidity. We have the flexibility to fund this development internally while also remaining opportunistic on acquisitions, which both will then -- and the NOI sustainable study, same property NOI growth, supporting a reliable and growing dividend. As we look ahead, we see continued momentum. Our leasing pipeline is active. Executed leases are supporting future growth and development deliveries will contribute meaningfully to earnings. So taken together, our portfolio quality, the value creation platform, balance sheet strength, an experienced team position us to deliver durable growth through any and all cycles. And with that, we're happy to take your questions.

That was great. And Lisa, you mentioned the leasing environment being strong, a number of times. As you look, though, across your tenant base, are there any segments to call out as being significantly stronger maybe surprisingly strong durability of that. Any segments that you're seeing more recently, maybe tail off a little bit? Just any trends that you're discerning as we go from '25 into kind of almost through the first quarter of '26 at this point?

So our sector or property type, mostly grocery-anchored, service, convenience, value doesn't change that rapidly. But over time, you do see evolution. So you've heard us say this before. One, we have and continue to see an increase in health and wellness and even ancillary uses related to that. It could be food and beverage that are more focused on health and wellness or specifically primary care. The consumer wants to stay close to their home and close to their neighborhood and to the extent that they're able to service all of their needs within 10 to 15 minutes, that's a benefit. So we're seeing a lot of those medical uses come into neighborhood shopping centers. We continue to see -- and again, this is going to sound like a broken record to many of you that have followed us for a very long time, new concepts in food and beverage. And food and beverage restaurants are our second largest use combined versus grocery. And every year, the most failures and the most move-outs fall in the restaurant category and the most new leasing and new concepts fall in the rest category. And that is just -- it is the nature of the business. I believe our team does a fantastic job in truly vetting the operators and that our track record is better than most. But beyond that, there's nothing -- there's, again, more health, more entertainment. But for our use, it's pretty concentrated on grocery, service, convenience value.

It feels like every quarter, you guys are putting the press release record highs again in shop occupancy and the lease rate there. The one thing we always talk about is the backdrop of strong demand, coupled with minimal new supply. And I get the question a lot, I'm sure you guys do as well of why aren't market rents and spreads even higher, right? And so maybe talk about, number one, how much higher the shop occupancy could actually trend? How much -- I don't want to call it structural vacancy, but just a limit to how much you could have occupied at once. And then just also, as you guys have these discussions with tenants, right? And you're looking at the algorithm of OCRs and nonmonetary concessions and all the things that go into negotiation. What really the limiter is on you guys being able to continue to push rent even more aggressively as you get to that mid-90s and above potentially on shop?

There's a lot to unpack in that question.

I gave you a few questions at once.

So first, let me start with peak occupancy, if you will. I wish Alan was here because he would love to say, records are made to be broken, and I agree with him. And each quarter, I think he's had the opportunity to say that. And we do continue to push that shop percent leased and growing the percent commenced with it. And there -- but there is some frictional vacancy. I don't know that you can -- especially on both shops and anchor side. I don't know that we can just come up with a quantitative answer because it's going to depend on -- so approximately, a really good retention rate, which you all know, so I'll use round numbers, would be 80%, which means one out of every 5 tenants are going to move out at the expiration of their lease. And that's not a bad thing all the time, right, in order for us to be able to upgrade our merchandising, put a better operator into the space. Then we also often need to take space down for redevelopments. Which for long-term value creation are accretive and do create value for our shareholders. So I'm not saying that we've reached our peak on shop space. I believe we still -- can still push it. but we're probably approaching it. And then with regards to anchors, we definitely have more -- we have some room there and have some runway to continue to push that. We are not at historic peaks anchor percent leased and percent commenced and do have room there. I anticipate that we'll continue to have success in new leasing. That's one. Two, in terms of why can't rent basic, why is there no -- why is there a ceiling, if you will, it feels on rents. We -- it has to be win-win. We succeed when our tenants are able to produce and generate good sales from their locations. And they are limited by what they can afford. And the tenants have been squeezed in operating margins with inflation. They passed a lot on to the consumer. Our trade areas are able to absorb that more, which is a positive. But at the same time, you've heard retailers speak publicly that they're reaching their limits as to what they believe that they can continue to pass on. And so as a result, it starts to squeeze their margins more. I personally believe, and I imagine we may get to this later in the discussion that with technology with artificial intelligence, that tenant's business models will change and evolve. And perhaps what used to be typical occupancy ratios or health ratios for tenants can begin to rise. And rent becomes a larger percentage of their cost structure because they're able to generate cost savings in other parts of their business. That's what I believe. And I think that the dynamics of our sector with the supply/demand in the landlord's favor today, will help support that. But that -- again, I started with our business doesn't change that rapidly. It evolves over time. And I would expect over time, we'll probably begin to see this. And you are seeing that, right, with Regency's success in rent growth in double digits as well as throughout the sector.

Can I -- I'm going to add a little bit to that on the lease spread question. we did have a phenomenal 2025, 11% cash on cash lease spreads. But importantly, what we like to look at our GAAP rent spreads and those are 21% on the year. And I think that's a better reflection of the way we're attacking our leasing activity where we're embedding really healthy annual contractual increases into our leases. So using that midpoint over midpoint comparison, we believe, is a better reflection of the pricing power we have in today's market.

That was a good. You hit all the questions. I think that was a 20 parter.

You are testing my listening skills.

Yes. And Mike, last night was joking how I can pivot to the AI topic, but Lisa open the door. So it's smooth for this one. But you guys have a little bit of a different portfolio makeup tenant-wise, agent to commerce is one of the big topics and does that create winners in the e-commerce space and impact physical retail needs going forward. Kind of as you guys look, I know you have the personal views about technology and how it could help margins of tenants, but do you also have views about how it could impact tenant behaviors and how you guys are positioned if there are kind of pivots towards how consumers continue to shop, given the ease that may be agentic commerce can make for them. And the companies that have that investment capability tend to be the larger either omnichannel with like a Walmart versus a pure Amazon.

While there's no question that this is coming and coming pretty fast, I don't believe it's any different than what we've been experiencing with regards to the ability for a consumer to literally sit at home and order buy, have delivered anything they want, essentially, right? Only services can't. But you can also have somebody come to your house, I guess, to cut your hair, if you want it. But generally speaking, it's only the services that they have to leave their house for. And so this makes it easier, but they're still the -- one, the consumers -- and this was validated throughout the period of time when they were forced to stay home. They like to shop. And online and delivery and whether it's agentic or whether it's just how we -- how a lot are ordering today, will continue to grow and gain market share. We believe that. But at the same time, the physical store is just as important for the retailers, for the tenants to service the customer in and -- you use the word omnichannel, in an omnichannel fashion. And again, the consumer likes to leave their home, it's social, it's interactive. And it's -- the retailers and the tenants, the merchants, as we like to call them, are the ones that are going to continue to invest in their business to make it a desirable visit for their consumer to incentivize them to come into the store. And why that's important is it also remains incredibly expensive to get any goods or services delivered to someone's home. And again, the merchants, the tenants, the retailers also realize that, recognize that and are incentivized to bring consumers into the store. And that's going to continue to change, and it will evolve. Our -- we have wonderful tenant relationships, and we continue to have dialogue with them. So for us to understand what their needs are, we have a portfolio of over 500 shopping centers across the country. We can help -- we can work with them if there are physical design changes that will help us generate more traffic in the shopping -- into the shopping center, which will help them generate more sales. So we're prepared, and we're constantly looking and monitoring and it will evolve.

And maybe for Regency specifically, like what are you guys looking at internally in the use cases of AI, kind of what's the -- how quickly do you want to move forward? Or are you going to be sort of a -- let's -- let other people be the first movers and we'll kind of come after them. Where do you sit in that debate as you guys look and maybe where are the -- either for Mike or Lisa, like as you're looking at the business, right, where are the efficiencies where there's really a return on that investment, at least in your eyes today?

Let me start. Again, I'm going to move it back a little bit even beyond just AI and just in data and technology and analytics. So there's no question that we have a focus internally. In fact, we have a foundational strategy, enterprise intelligence. I know Mike likes to say fast follower. But if we say fast, I want to literally be on the heels. We know what our core competency is and it's not writing code for artificial intelligence. But what we do have is we have scale, which is important because, one, we have cash flow and the ability to invest and to experiment. Two, we're large enough that the people that are -- that is their core competency will talk with us, and we're able to try and test different things. And that is absolutely happening. There's no question that the culture within Regency, and again, it starts with data analytics technology. I -- You've seen it happen over the last 5 years that we are leveraging the tools that we have, some that we have built, they're not AI, but just tools internally from an analytics standpoint. Leveraging those tools to make faster, better decisions. And so while it may be really difficult to have an absolute return on investment, it's just time is your -- our most precious resource. And to the extent that our leasing agents, our revenue generators that we're able to get a lease, to rent commenced sooner as a result of leveraging technology and in the future, perhaps artificial intelligence, that's going to have a true return on investment. So there's no question, our focus has been on back office that supports that revenue generation and expect that that's where we're going to see the first real cases how we're able to implement. But again, it is going to evolve. And I expect that we will not be a leader, we will not necessarily be writing the code and developing our own. But we have the ability to truly be like right on the heels of that.

Yes. I would just add, 100% agree with what Lisa said. The front end of the business is B2B, right? So it's not a B2C strategy for the company. So our focus has been internally and finding efficiencies. The focus of the company over the last 24 months has been preparedness. So making sure our data is prepared and warehouse for this future and then also process standardization because what we have learned is, without those two elements, you're not going to be able to take advantage of the technologies that are available to us. So our primary focus has been there. And then along the way, experimentation, finding opportunities to see success, and we are having those opportunities. We'll we will largely partner with those who are on the forefront. If it -- there are simple solutions that we can implement ourselves, we will do that on our own.

Who are the primary partners you guys are leaning on today? Is there one another or...

I'm not going to call out the winners in that space, but the big technology providers in the space that the vast majority of even large companies outside of REITs, corporates are using are on the forefront of helping companies become more efficient.

And so -- and maybe this is a self-preservation comment, but it feels like real estate is always going to be a people business. And so there's -- should be some longevity in people with relationships. But as you guys look at the corporate structure, like is there room to make it leaner from a head count perspective? Or is this, as you had mentioned, really just a productivity enhancement to free up your leasing folks or finance teams to focus on higher-level strategy and not focus so much on the paperwork aspect.

I think the real advantage is the ability to continue to scale more efficiently. And that's I -- what we're prepared we're not looking to reduce in place. We're looking to prepare us to scale efficiently as we grow.

And I think that's pretty consistent across -- when I speak to peers, not necessarily in the real estate industry, but in the Jacksonville market or in the Southeast, you hear that pretty consistently. That's -- the expectation is we're going to be able to continue to grow the business, not with reducing headcount, but not necessarily adding as much as maybe you would add it 10 years ago. And that is the benefit. It is productivity gains and efficiency.

Anyone in the audience have a question? So I had mentioned the constant question about the rent piece. The other question I get and you guys get is in a backdrop of very difficult development environment, you guys just always seem to find new projects. And so maybe talk a little about what you guys have brewing. I know you talked about on the fourth quarter call, but more in depth about the pipeline for maybe '26, '27 and what you guys are doing to backfill the pipeline as we get beyond '27 today? And how hard it is or maybe easy for you guys to find these opportunities.

It is definitely not easy. And I don't remember if it was the last call, if you'll listened to our earnings call or the call before, when Nick answered a question, and he said, there is no secret sauce. And I jumped on top of them and said, there is a secret sauce. And the secret sauce is the combination of what we have at Regency. And it starts with our people and the experience and the talent and the track record of the team that we have on the ground, you can't build that overnight. And you can't turn it on or off. It is something that Regency has been committed to. I've been at the company, it will be 30 years in September, and we've been committed to it for as long as I've been there and before. So with that, you also then have really strong tenant relationships, and the one -- the tenants that are driving the growth and then really strong relationships with master plan developers. Again, a lot of what is driving the growth. There is limited new supply in our sector, and we have had tremendous success in that environment as a result of all of that plus our balance sheet and the cost of capital advantage that we do have. And so I do expect that we're going to continue to get more than our fair share of what may be limited new supply as a result of that combination of the differentiated factors that we do have. Looking into 2026, we do have a pretty -- we have visibility into being able to start a number similar to what we've done in the past 2, 3 years. And importantly, and I said it in my opening remarks, we're starting to see those come online and deliver NOI that is contributing to our total NOI growth also. And that also will continue because of the success of $825 million over the last 3 years that is now going to begin to be delivered. And so it's a lot of what a lot of what we've done in the past and it's spread across the country. I think you all have probably read about one of the largest one that we're going to start 2020, but we just had our groundbreaking a couple of weeks ago, which is in Jacksonville. It's a master planned community, it's public-anchored shopping center, and it's going to be a fantastic project.

And as you guys look at -- I know you guys are -- you have different geographies in the portfolio. You have California, you have New York. I'm just kind of curious, the political environment, the tax environment, on some of these places and New York City at least wants to pass proper tax increases or maybe a business tax increase to fund spending. I just -- I'm curious, you have a Jacksonville, Florida is a much more business-friendly place to operate than California or New York. Like how much does that go into the calculus of, oh, there could be a great project in California or I don't want to keep hitting on New York, but more politically [ oppressive ] tax regimes, put it that way. What -- is the hurdle that much higher for that versus like doing something in Florida or a Sunbelt state where it's just they want businesses and people to come in versus feels like pushing people out.

So a reminder that we're a trade area business, which is extremely important. The major metro markets, demographics trends and then also the regulatory environment. They matter. Our jobs are to underwrite risk when we are allocating capital. And so there's no question that, yes, that's -- again, that's something that we need to talk about and that we address. But it's in the underwriting of the properties that won't necessarily you just saw -- I mean, last year, we acquired the port -- Southern California portfolio, so we added to our California exposure. If the investment meets all of our criteria, which starts with trade areas. So quality of the actual shopping center itself and then finally being what can we fund it accretively. And if it checks all the boxes, accretive to quality, accretive to growth, we can fund it accretively. And we're able to believe have visibility to underwriting the risk, we'll move forward. And that's how we think about it. I don't see -- since you kept hitting New York, I don't see the population of New York going to 0. So I think they're still going to be a really strong trade areas where we own shopping centers that are continued to perform exceptionally well.

No. And that's fair. I didn't mean to pick on New York. I live there, right? So maybe that's why I'm a little bit more sensitive to the talk of it. But I guess you guys are more trade area focused. But as maybe there's movement even within those trade areas of income levels, which sometimes takes a little bit longer to see in the data, like how much variability in your trade market over the last -- as you look at cycles, how quickly does some of that move as taxes change. And today, money is more mobile because of digital, the ability to log in remotely to a job, right? And you're seeing that movement. I guess I'm just curious, is the risk on trade area is higher today and harder to underwrite in some of these places than it has been in the past? Or is it just the same old and the headline news is noise sometimes that we all get kind of focused on.

I believe with our focused and disciplined strategy and in the trade areas in which we operate, I don't want to say that we're immune to that. But if you think, we own 500 shopping centers, there's 30,000 shopping centers in the U.S. Maybe more, right? So I mean, if you -- so if you think about that, I mean, we have we have the best of the best. And as a result of that, we're certainly a lot more resistant to those major changes, and they would happen a little bit more slowly. And speaking about my experience, I'm not saying it's perfect and trade areas never change. But when you think about how we're structured and the fact that we have 24 offices across the country, we've got local people on the ground. They know these neighborhoods, these trade areas extremely well. And we are typically able to get ahead of it because it doesn't move that fast. And we are -- as for those that have followed us for a very long time, we're not afraid to dispose of properties if we believe that it's going to fortify our future NOI growth. It's something that we've remained committed to for -- again, for the history of the company. So yes, we track it, we watch it. I believe we're really well positioned in the trade areas in which we operate.

Not to get off of development in case because we don't want to get off. It's an exciting part of the strategy, but maybe to bring in some acquisitions to this conversation, which I think is relevant. And you asked the question, is your hurdle different depending on the geography. We're seeing extraordinarily low cap rates in markets like Boston, in the Northeast, in California, in Seattle, in these markets, as you described, that may be a little more headwind to them from a headline perspective. But we're not seeing evidence of that on the ground, as Lisa suggested. And we will continue as a result to -- when we find development opportunities in those markets, taking advantage of creating real value over that spread to cap rates, we're developing at north of 7%, 7% are better yields ground up in an environment where cap rates are in the low 5s for high-quality grocery-anchored shopping centers and, importantly, as Lisa suggested, high-quality neighborhoods. And that -- the difference around the country, we're not really seeing any evidence of that.

We got a couple of questions that came in. I'm going to bring you back to development for a second. I know you want to pivot. But how much market rent growth are you underwriting in development starting today?

We're underwriting market rent growth consistent with our portfolio. So there's -- it's really a yield on [ cost ].Our calculus for doing the development is a yield on cost of 7% or better, and which is also at least 150 basis points spread to cap rates in the market. So using those 2 metrics is how we're thinking about allocating capital.

And then the other one Lisa, you mentioned there's a ceiling on rents driven by what tenants can afford. Where are occupancy cost ratios today for Regency's grocery, anchor, shop, tenants?

I mean there's no specific -- there's a range in groceries and grocers operate in our portfolio at the thinnest margin. So I think I can say that accurately. And they're going to be -- depending on the age of the lease because they tend to be flat for a period of time, depending on the age of the lease and their sales, it's going to be anywhere from -- they could be like 1.5 to up to 5 would be on the very high end. And then you move into your junior anchors and junior anchors are going to be 5 to 10, maybe 15 on the high end, if we're pushing hard enough. And then small shops, again, will depend on the business, but 15 to 20. And that has remained relatively steady because our tenant sales have been really strong and have continued to grow along with us pushing rents. I want to throw away the occupancy kind of ratio, health ratio calculus, and we need to look at it differently in my mind because there is limited supply. There is very little space for tenants to expand their businesses, and they still have growth plans. So at some point, it may break and we may be able to push through. But it has to be a win-win. We don't succeed if our tenants fail. That is -- bankruptcies are one of the -- you haven't asked about that yet. Bankruptcies tend to be one of the most challenging things that we -- it's a headwind that we face. And so to push a tenant towards bankruptcy isn't in anybody's best interest.

[ We said you'd ] bring it up. How is the watch list look? You stepped right into it.

The watch list is consistently low as it has been for some time, and we...

Just why I didn't mind bringing it up.

Yes, I think we do a remarkable job. The team does a remarkable job, as Lisa suggested, vetting tenant quality, ensuring that we're ahead of any pain that may evidence itself. So we're inside of 2 percentage points easily from a watch list perspective, which is historically kind of the same. It is that retail's evolutionary tenants will tend to fade. And our outlook for '26 is to have uncollectible lease income inside of 50 basis points, which is -- that's about our historical average, and that's what we're suggesting is our outlook for '26. 2025 was significantly below that. We were closer to 20 basis points from a bad debt expense perspective. So we find ourselves in a nice, healthy -- our tenant base, I think we can say, has never been as healthy as it is right now. You combine that with great trade areas within which they can operate, and we feel pretty good about that side, that risk element of our story.

And just moving over to the capital side. You guys just did the $450 million bond deal. Could you just talk about kind of sources and uses from here, are you good on the capital raise to pay off what you need to pay off for this year? Or are you looking at other things even to pay off for next year?

Sure. You're always refinancing your balance sheet. So that was -- for this year, that was our first phase of our annual refinancing activity, and we are very pleased with the execution. I appreciate you bringing it up. Lowest credit spread in the company's history and really putting that A-rated balance sheet to work. We will continue to have refinance work to do. We do have a tower in early '27 that will have to be refinanced and that's just regular course of business. From a funding of our growth perspective, it's free cash flow -- levered free cash flow is what we're using to fund this development pipeline that we have. And we have plenty of levered free cash flow to meet the needs of our development business. And then we'll raise that incremental capital to the extent we see opportunities, whether that be maybe hopefully an expanded development pipeline, maybe that is some acquisition opportunities. And well -- to Lisa's point, that third element, can we allocate that capital accretively? If so, and if the quality and the growth is there, we'll raise that incremental capital and move forward.

Right. Just enough time for the rapid fires left. So same-store NOI growth for the retail group in 2027.

3%.

And then our M&A question, in your property type, more, fewer or the same amount of companies this time next year.

Same.

Perfect. Well, thank you guys so much, and enjoy the rest of the conference, everybody.

Thank you.