Earnings Labs

Getty Realty Corp. (GTY)

Q4 2016 Earnings Call· Thu, Mar 2, 2017

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and welcome to the Getty Realty Fourth Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Joshua Dicker, SVP, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. Please go ahead, sir.

Joshua Dicker

Management

Thank you, operator. I would like to thank you all for joining us for Getty Realty’s fourth quarter and yearend earnings conference call. Yesterday afternoon, the Company released its financial results for the quarter and year ended December 31, 2016. The Form 8-K and earnings release are available in the Investor Relations Section of our website at gettyrealty.com. Certain statements made in the course of this call are not based on historical information and may constitute forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management’s current expectations and beliefs and are subject to trends, events and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statement. Examples of forward-looking statements include our 2017 guidance, and may also include statements made by management in their remarks and in response to questions including regarding future company operations, future financial performance and the company’s acquisition or redevelopment plans and opportunities. We caution you that such statements reflect our best judgment based on factors currently known to us and that actual events or results could differ materially. I refer you to the company’s annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016 as well as our other filings with the SEC for a more detailed discussion of the risks and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements made today. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements which reflect our view only as of the date hereof. The Company undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statements that may be made in the course of this call. Also, please refer to our earnings release for a discussion of our use of non-GAAP financial measures including our revised definition of AFFO and our reconciliation of those measures to net earnings. With that, let me turn the call over to Christopher Constant, our Chief Executive Officer.

Christopher Constant

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Josh. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our call for the fourth quarter and year ended 2016. With Josh and me, on the call today are Mark Olear, our Chief Operating Officer, and Danion Fielding, our Chief Financial Officer. I'll begin today's call by providing an overview of our 2016 performance and our 2017 business prospects and we'll pass the call to Mark to discuss our portfolio in more detail, and then Danion will discuss our financial results and our 2017 guidance. We produced solid results for the fourth quarter, which closed out a strong year for us in 2016. I am pleased that the quarter continued its trend of stable growth for the company, which demonstrated the earnings capability of our net leased portfolio. We reported quarterly AFFP of $0.43 per share, which represent meaningful growth over the prior year's quarter even when adjusted for certain nonrecurring notable items which Danion will discuss. Excluding notable items, our normalized AFFO per share was $0.41 for the quarter ended December 2016, as compared to $0.36 per share for the quarter ended December 2015, representing growth of 14% quarter-over-quarter. For the year ended 2016 we reported AFFO of $1.69 per share, which also included several items which had a positive, but nonrecurring impact on our reported figures. After removing notable items in both 2016 and 2015, our AFFO per share was $1.64 and $1.39 respectively, which represents growth of 18% year-over-year. Moving to our portfolio, we ended the year with a portfolio of 829 properties of which 808 are subject to triple net leases, six are actively being redeveloped and 15 are vacant. More importantly, I am pleased to report that with the disposition and leasing activity completed during the year, we have essentially completed the repositioning of former transitional…

Mark Olear

Chief Operating Officer

Thank you, Chris. I'll start by reviewing our investment for the quarter. During the quarter, we purchased two racetrack properties in the Houston Texas Metro area for $5.8 million in the aggregate with an initial cash yield of approximately 7%. For the year, we completed $7.7 million of acquisitions including one parcel of land adjacent to an existing property for a redevelopment project. The weighted average initial return on investments was 7.2% and the sites have averaged initial remaining lease term of 11 years. While the acquisition market continues to be very competitive in the gas sector, we remain disciplined in our underwriting criteria, our pipeline of actionable opportunities continues to grow and we are in the process of reviewing and pursuing several growth opportunities. To that end, we have acquired three properties subsequent to yearend for $3.4 million with an initial weighted average return of more than 8%. Moving to our redevelopment platform, we ended the year with 13 signed leases and LOIs, which include six active projects and seven properties, which are currently included in our net leased portfolio. All leased projects are continuing to advance through a development process. We expect substantially all of these projects will be completed over the next two years. And further we've invested approximately $1.7 million in a redevelopment projects to date and we expect to have rent commencement at several of these projects in late 2017 and 2018. As these redevelopment problems become a bigger part of our portfolio, we will look to help you better understand our progress. To that end, we've added a new disclosure regarding our current pipeline of signed redevelopment projects in our latest Investor Presentation, which you can find on our website. We remain committed to transforming certain sites in our portfolio and look forward to updating everyone as we make progress. Turning to dispositions and leasing, during the quarter, we sold four properties for $2.2 million in the aggregate and for the year, we sold 14 properties for $5.4 million. We entered into eight leases for community gas properties during the year, which generated $300,000 of incremental rental income. As a result of our activity, we ended the year with 808 net leased properties, six active redevelopment sites in 15 vacant properties. Our weighted average lease term is approximately 11 years and our overall occupancy is approximately 98.2% as compared to 97.3% at the start of the year. With that, I'll turn the call over to Danion.

Danion Fielding

Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Mark. Turning to our results, as Chris mentioned, we had a great quarter and a great year. For the fourth quarter, our total revenues from continuing operations and revenues from rental properties, which excludes tenant expense reimbursement and interest income were $29.7 million and $25.1 million respectively, which was consistent with the reported figures in the fourth quarter of 2015. During the fourth quarter of 2016, our results were positively impacted by a reduction in environmental and G&A expenses, which both declined by $1 million quarter-over-quarter. The decline in environmental expenses for the quarter was driven by decreases in legal and professional fees and a decline in G&A, which was primarily attributable to the increases in nonrecurring employee costs. Our reported FFO for the quarter was $17.9 million or $0.52 per share. Our results for the fourth quarter of 2016 and 2015 also includes several notable items, which we highlight as they are not part of the core operations of our company. For the fourth quarter 2016, notable items were $0.02 per share. For the fourth quarter 2015, notable items were $0.32 per share. For more information on notable items, please refer to last night's earning release. After removing these notable items for each period, our normalized FFO per share for the quarter increased 11% over the prior year's quarter. Our reported AFFO for the quarter was $14.9 million or $0.43 per share. Our moving notable items from each period, our normalized AFFO per share for the quarter increased by 14% over the prior year's quarter. For the year, our total revenues and revenues from rental properties were $115.3 million and $97.9 million, which represents growth of 4.1 and 5.4 respectively over annual figures in 2015. During 2016, our results were also positively impacted by reductions in property,…

Christopher Constant

Operator

Thank you. That concludes our prepared remarks. So, let me ask the operator to open the call for questions.

Operator

Operator

[Operator instructions] We'll take our first question from Peter Lunenburg with JMP Securities.

Peter Lunenburg

Analyst · JMP Securities

Hey guys. Congrats on the year.

Christopher Constant

Operator

Thanks Peter.

Peter Lunenburg

Analyst · JMP Securities

I guess just for us just how should we think about the key drivers of guidance for 2017, just looking at the normalized result over the year gets us to about $1.64, I get the moving parts, but what really gets us to the low end here?

Christopher Constant

Operator

Yes, it's really impacted primarily by the timing of when we choose to recapture properties for redevelopment. So as those properties move through the program entitlement and permitting etcetera, everything hits as planned as we recapture sooner in the year than later and that has a larger negative impact on the reduction over the course of 2017.

Peter Lunenburg

Analyst · JMP Securities

Right. Appreciate the new slides on that too by the way. Also, how should we think about what's left in that bucket? We see seven in various stages of the pipeline today.

Christopher Constant

Operator

Nothing has changed really in terms of what we think the overall program looks like, what we said is 5% to 10% of our portfolio by number of properties we think have potential for redevelopment. What we provided in this in the investor deck this morning, is properties that are -- either have signed leases or signed LOIs and are far enough along what we feel pretty good about the progress and the timing and the amount of total investment. So, I think what we hope to happen over time is we hope that slide becomes larger right and the number of projects we can publicly talk about will grow also in terms of the active projects and the pipeline project, but nothing has really changed in terms of our view of what the overall potential for the program is.

Peter Lunenburg

Analyst · JMP Securities

Great. Thanks. And final one for me just any color you can give us on pricing on the acquisition side. Do you guys think you'll still be most competitive on portfolios or anything out in the market that you're looking at today, thanks.

Christopher Constant

Operator

Yes, we're really focused on both what I'll call individual acquisition and portfolio deals. I think that pricing hasn’t moved a tremendous amount. Were still seeing that I think are in the high sixes to mid seven and where we certainly evaluate all transactions and put forth our best effort there. But I think that it is competitive but there are opportunities that are in our pipeline, which we feel pretty good about.

Peter Lunenburg

Analyst · JMP Securities

Great. Thanks so much.

Operator

Operator

[Operator instructions] We'll take our next question from Gene Nusinzon with JPMorgan.

Gene Nusinzon

Analyst · JPMorgan

Good morning, guys. Just a few questions on guidance and growth. How much do plan to spend on redevelopment?

Christopher Constant

Operator

Say that again. You broke up a little bit.

Gene Nusinzon

Analyst · JPMorgan

How much do you plan to spend on redevelopment in '17?

Christopher Constant

Operator

We haven’t put that figure out publicly. I think what you see is a total spend of $6.9 million. I think we'll expect to spend a great deal of that in 2017 in order to bring the projects on from the start to the end of 2017 and into '18.

Gene Nusinzon

Analyst · 2017 and into '18

Got it. And then you're guiding new acquisitions, but just given where your cost of capital is, how much do you think you could queue given the current environment?

Christopher Constant

Operator

We typically don't put out a range of acquisitions. Our acquisition volume over the last five to six years has been lumpy. We've done portfolio deals and then we've done one-off deals and when we're able to close on a portfolio deal, you'll see a spike in our total deal volume in terms of dollars spent. What I'll say is that we have a pipeline of both individual opportunities, which you can see the values of $1 million to $3 million on the high side, per individual site, but the portfolio deals obviously would create a spike in that figure. So, I think what we would like to say is looking at our last several years in terms of the recurring small volume and the spike with the larger type -- larger portfolio thank you, portfolio acquisition and we think we're going to be able to execute on some of those bulk types of opportunities during the year.

Gene Nusinzon

Analyst · JPMorgan

Got it. But do you feel more, your competitive position now has become very stronger than I guess the last couple of years given high six and seven capital target?

Christopher Constant

Operator

Yeah, I think a couple of things have helped us. Number one, we've kind of moved past the root positioning that we've got more resources dedicated to growth both in terms of development and acquisition. I think internally as we increased the operating results and make some moves in the capital market side that's positioned us to be more competitive, Again, the pricing where we're seeing just today I think is pricing that works for us. So yes, this is the short answer to your questions. I think we've a more competitive situation this year.

Gene Nusinzon

Analyst · JPMorgan

Got it. Thank you. And on the properties coming offline, did you have or do you have an option to execute renewals on those, are those bonds been taking off-line or…

Christopher Constant

Operator

The seven sites in the pipeline which are still included in the net lease portfolio, those leases have recapture provision is this. So, this is being done at our option where we think we can opportunistically invest in those properties and make an outsized return.

Gene Nusinzon

Analyst · JPMorgan

And the 10-plus yield that you've got in the Investor presentation, is that on top of the existing yield what those properties are generating?

Christopher Constant

Operator

That's incremental yield, that's correct.

Gene Nusinzon

Analyst · JPMorgan

And just on growth, the racetrack that you got in 4Q, what was that?

Christopher Constant

Operator

We bought two racetrack sites in the Houston Metro Area. I think that 11 years left on the leases and about a seven cap.

Gene Nusinzon

Analyst · JPMorgan

Got it. Thanks. And looking ahead with the repositioning of some of your assets, what other asset classes do you think could be added to the portfolio aside from just gas stations and convenience stores.

Christopher Constant

Operator

Yeah, I think our sites ran themselves to a standalone small retail shops fixed restaurant, bank branches or financial services really on three quarters to an acre of land, there are a number of different retail formats that can sit on there. So, we're looking at opportunities to redevelop or really going into it with locations driving what type of retailers are interested in being there.

Gene Nusinzon

Analyst · JPMorgan

Got it. Thank you. That's it for me.

Operator

Operator

[Operator instructions] We'll take our next question from Peter Lunenburg with JMP Securities.

Mitch Germain

Analyst · JMP Securities

Hey guys. This is Mitch here. I was curious you've been talking about being a little more competitive in the acquisition markets. Is that a function of just having less capital for may be larger deals, non-traded REIT capital also dried up a bit. Are you seeing any changes in the bidding pool?

Christopher Constant

Operator

I think it's still pretty competitive. When we're looking at acquisitions in addition to the REIT, you're seeing MLPs, you're seeing some large corporates that are out there. I think the absence in certain cases of the nontraded REITs have certainly helped pricing and makes us more competitive, but there's still other competitors out there that have fairly attractive cost of capital.

Mitch Germain

Analyst · JMP Securities

Got you and last for me, in terms of just the tenants, any concerns on the credit side?

Christopher Constant

Operator

It's a relatively good time to be in an operator in our business. I think right now you've got fairly strong consumer data coming out. So, the sites are still, volume is still holding steady. In store visits are still holding steady and when you look at four wall coverage for our tenants and that really hasn't changed. So, we think it's a pretty good time to be in the sector and we haven’t seen any major moves there.

Mitch Germain

Analyst · JMP Securities

Thank you.

Christopher Constant

Operator

You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

And we have no further questions in queue at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Constant for any additional or closing remarks.

Christopher Constant

Operator

Thank you all for joining us for our fourth quarter call. We look forward to reporting our results for the end of the first quarter of 2017 and thank you for your interest in the company.

Operator

Operator

This does conclude today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation and you may now disconnect.