William Lenehan
Management
Thank you, Gerry. Good morning. Thank you to everyone for joining us to discuss our fourth quarter results, which we are very pleased with in terms of continued strong collections, high acquisition volumes, meaningful equity capital raised, and the continued growth of the FCPT team. While this pandemic period has been one of the most challenging operating periods for the restaurant industry overall, it is important to distinguish between different restaurant types, and specifically the kind of properties that Four Corners owns. Our buildings are typically suburban and are not located in central business districts of large cities. They are not one-off concepts, but instead are a part of large, branded companies who are often publicly traded enterprises. These restaurant operators have proven resilient in adjusting their business models. Our casual dining tenants remain in rebound mode, but our QSR tenants are often reporting results above pre-COVID levels. We are watching with interest the stimulus discussions, in Washington, that could result in the significant federal support in the restaurant industry as well as the end consumer. As we have seen with our Kerrow Group, Garden, and other casual dining operators, EBITDA margins have improved because of simplified menus, lower levels of dining room staffing, higher profitability for to-go businesses, investment in technology, and a significant focus on overhead efficiency. Our collections at quarter end, we had collected 99.7 of scheduled 2020 rents, that is an impressive accomplishment for our tenet operators and for our team who had worked hard engaged with our tenants this year. We continue to see strong collections in this range for 2021 to date. We are working with tenants in three locations representing less than 0.2% of portfolio rents to either modify their lease or terminate and then release the building. Otherwise, we are not seeing rent deferral requests from our tenants, but instead are spending time with them on potential expansion opportunities in connection with our joint venture. Our Kerrow subsidiary in San Antonio, which operates the six Longhorn Steakhouses, continues to also be impacted by COVID restrictions. Kerrow provides a wonderful window and real-time understanding into what our tenants are doing to adapt. The Kerrow team's hard work resulted in return to profitability in the third quarter, with positive EBITDA of $110,000, and an increase in profitability in the fourth quarter, to positive EBITDA of $244,000. My thanks to Carol Dilts and her team, who run these restaurants, and have shown this year how skilled and committed they are.