Conor Flynn
Analyst · Compass Point. Please go ahead.
Sure. Happy to start, Floris, and we can pass the mic around, but you're spot-on. We're obviously encouraged by the supply and demand dynamic that we're experiencing in our portfolio. We're using a lot of data analytics to understand that there's virtually no new supply on the horizon and that we feel like our portfolio is well positioned for growth as the signed, but not open pipeline continues to build, as you saw expand further this quarter, which indicates future NOI growth. And we're trying to maintain a portfolio and strategy that allows us to grow regardless of the environment that we're facing. And so keeping leverage levels at all-time lows for us is important. You saw us be proactive and really sort of push out any near-term maturities with our recent bond offering. We continue to think that the small shop occupancy is going to be a bright spot for us as we've just reached all-time highs and we're continuing to think there's more to push there. The demand drivers are multiple, and they're more, as I mentioned earlier, there's traditional and there's non-traditional. And you continue to see the use cases for shopping centers evolve, because it's all about value and convenience. And almost everything you can think of benefits from value and convenience. And so that's why the shopping center continues to evolve to be, I think, the place of choice for whether it's a service use, whether it's a medical use, whether it's a pure retail use, you name it, it continues to evolve as the spot where people want to start businesses. And that's why I think it gives us a lot of encouragement, as well as the fact that we have all of this underutilized parking that we think has future outside in the long-term. So we always want to think long-term. We entitled over 800 units this quarter alone in the portfolio. We continue to think that the shopping center will evolve to include multiple uses, primarily multifamily for us. But we position the portfolio for long-term growth. We've been on a roller coaster of retail. As you know, there's been retail apocalypse. There's been the COVID pandemic. There's been all things we've faced in terms of challenges. And we feel right now we're in a really good spot, hopefully be the bright spot of commercial real estate, because Kimco is well positioned, I think, to be opportunistic and showcase that when times when people are nervous, if you have the capability to execute, you should be able to make generational deals. And we feel like that's what we're intending to do at Kimco going forward and into the future.