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Realty Income Corporation (O) Q1 2013 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

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Realty Income Corporation (O)

Q1 2013 Earnings Call· Thu, Apr 25, 2013

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Realty Income Corporation Q1 2013 Earnings Call Key Takeaways

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Realty Income Corporation Q1 2013 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Realty Income first quarter 2013 earnings conference call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we’ll be conducting a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Mr. Tom Lewis, CEO of Realty Income. Please go ahead, sir.

Thomas Lewis

Management

Thank you, Tager and good afternoon everyone. Thank you for joining us on our call today to discuss the first quarter operations for Realty Income. Before I start, in the room with me is Gary Malino, our President and Chief Operating Officer; John Case, our President and Chief Investment Officer; Paul Meurer, our EVP and Chief Financial Officer; and Mike Pfeiffer, our General Counsel. As always I must read and say that during this conference call we will make certain statements that may be considered to be forward-looking statements under Federal Securities Law and the company's actual future results may differ significantly from the matters discussed in any forward-looking statements. We will disclose in greater detail on the company's Form 10-K the factors that may cause such differences. Also in the room with me today are some spring allergies so if we go radio silent for a second or you hear a loud noise I would appreciate your understanding. Paul, as we always do, if you’ll start by running through the numbers for everybody.

Paul Meurer

Management

Thank you, Tom. As usual, I will comment on the financial statements, provide a few highlights of the financial results for the quarter and start by just walking briefly through the income statement. Total revenue increased 52.9% for the quarter. Our current revenue on an annualized basis today at 3, 31 is approximately $718 million. This increase reflects some positive same-store rent of 1.5% in the portfolio, but more significantly it obviously reflects our growth from new acquisitions over the past year. On the expense side, depreciation and amortization expense increased significantly to just under $70 million in the quarter. Of course that depreciation expense increased with our portfolio growth. Interest expense increased in the quarter to $41.5 million and this increase was primarily due to the $800 million of bond that were issued last October as well as some credit facility borrowing during the quarter. On a related note, our coverage ratios both improved and remain strong, with interest coverage at 3.7 times and fixed charge coverage at 3.0 times. General and administrative or G&A expenses in the quarter were approximately $11.6 million dollars. Our G&A expenses naturally increased this past year as our acquisition activity increased and we added some new personal to manage a larger portfolio. Our employee base has grown from 86 employees a year ago to 92 employees at quarter end. However, our total G&A as a percentage of total revenues has decreased to only 6.7%. Historically our G&A had a run rate at about 7.5% to 8% of revenue. Our current projections for G&A for all of 2013 is about $45 million. Property expenses were just $3.8 million for the quarter, these expenses historically have been primarily our carry cost associated with properties available for lease. However, as we noted last quarter, our 2013…

Thomas Lewis

Management

Thanks Paul. I’ll start with just the general comment that was in the release which is obviously the first quarter was the best quarter I think operationally in the company’s history and each facet of the business had solid results. So we’ll keep the commentary here a little shorter than usual because I think the results speak for themselves. But let me start with the portfolio which continued to generate very consistent cash flow in the first quarter and general accounts pretty much all of the tenants are reporting doing pretty well. There are no issues that arose with any tenants during the quarter and we believe that will be the case here in the second quarter. So very smooth. At the end of the quarter, our largest 15 tenants that are listed in the release accounted for 42.6% of our revenue. That’s down 680 basis points from the same period a year ago and down 450 basis points from the fourth quarter. So the recent acquisition efforts continue to help us reduce any concentrations in the portfolio. And we made continuous progress on this over time. In 2008 the top 15 accounted for 54.3% of revenue and we’re now down to 42.6%. We ended the quarter with 97.7% occupancy and that’s 81 properties available for lease out of the 3,525 that we own. That’s up 50 basis points from the fourth quarter and 110 basis points from the same period a year ago. And here in the second quarter we would anticipate occupancy remaining very strong, likely to be flat or up slightly again this quarter and very pleased with that. I mentioned in the past there are three ways you can do occupancy. The one we use in the release is to take just the number of properties…

John Case

President

As Tom said, we remain active on the acquisitions front. During the first quarter we made $128 million in property level investments in 27 properties at an average yield of 7.9%. These properties had a weighted average lease term of just under 14 years and 22% of these assets are leased to investment grade tenants. The properties are leased to 14 different tenants and 11 different industries, so well diversified. Two of the tenants are new to our portfolio and the most significant industries represented were transportation services and [health] business. Properties are located in 16 states and about 80% of the investments are comprised of our traditional retail properties. Of course this activity was in addition to our $3.2 billion acquisition of American realty capital trust which added 515 properties and closed in January. So our combined total investment in real estate for the first quarter was just under $3.3 billion and 542 properties. This was clearly our most active quarter in our company's history by a significant margin. Let me spend a moment here and talk about the market environment today. I’ll start with transaction flow. Tom just alluded to that. We continue to be very busy. So far in the first quarter we sourced $4.3 billion in acquisition opportunities. So transaction flow continues to remain strong. We continue to work on a number of these opportunities and we’re expecting another active year for transaction flow. While investment opportunities are fairly abundant, competition for these acquisitions is also abundant. There are plenty of well capitalized buyers in the market today led by private and public lease REITS, but we’re also seeing some other private institutional buyers seeking yield in our space. These buyers are using more leverage with the CMBS market in our space that has gained strength…

Thomas Lewis

Management

Thanks, John. John likes to use the term to get our fair share. I would prefer us giving our disproportionate fair share. Either way, we are pleased with the start here for the year and very pleased where spreads are in the marketplace. It's a very good time due to acquire. Obviously, the recent acquisitions have certainly contributed to our revenue earnings and dividend growth, and that is very visible in the numbers here in the first quarter. But the other thing we are doing, they also and equally important to have, continued to help us adjust the makeup of our portfolio where we are focused on moving the portfolio up the credit curve and obviously we have made very good progress on that throughout this quarter, with investment grade tenants now making up around 35% of the portfolio. As I talked to it bit about last quarter, over the last 36 months or so, we have now acquired about $6.2 billion of property including RT. About $3.7 billion of that is in retail and really pointed towards sectors that we think should continue to do well in what we anticipate is a somewhat more sluggish retail environment over the next 15-20 years than it had been in the past. And so we are really happy to get that invested and focused in the areas we want. About $2.5 billion of what we acquired are in areas outside of retail that we think will do well for us, all with investment grade tenants. And of that total $6.2 billion, about $3.9 billion or 63% of what we acquired over the last 36 months have been with investment grade tenants. And what's interesting is a good measure of the rest of the tenants and acquisitions while not investment grade, are also…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from the line of Emmanuel Korchman with Citi. Please come ahead, sir.

Emmanuel Korchman - Citigroup

Analyst · Citi. Please come ahead, sir

John, if we can go back to your previous comment of I guess acquisitions [since] you’re hanging that, let’s call it 7.25% range. What was the driver of such a higher cap rate in the first quarter?

John Case

President

Yeah. It was primarily the percentage of non-investment grade assets we closed. We closed 22% in investment grade which was a bit lower than we had been closing in the previous quarters and certainly 64% in investment grade investments we did in 2012. So that’s the main driver, Manny.

Thomas Lewis

Management

Yeah. There was one transaction we did in the first quarter with a tenant we like a great deal and it had a very attractive yield for what is a non-rated company. But if they were rated it would certainly be considered investment grade. So we were able to secure a good deal there and it just happened to be where what came in this quarter versus what may come in next quarter.

Emmanuel Korchman - Citigroup

Analyst · Citi. Please come ahead, sir

And then maybe Tom you could tell us a little bit more about how competition has been split between the investment grade product and maybe the stuff that looks less perfect on paper but at the end of the day is all good property.

Thomas Lewis

Management

You mean the transaction flow that’s come in the door?

Emmanuel Korchman - Citigroup

Analyst · Citi. Please come ahead, sir

And maybe just the competitors that are looking at those types of assets.

John Case

President

I’ll take that Manny. We’re seeing a fairly broad group of competitors on both sides. I would say there are a bit more on the traditional retail product on the institutional larger buyers than there are on the non-retail product. And on the investment grade side, there’s good competition out there, but primarily from the higher quality companies with lower capital cost that can pursue this type of product. So it's probably not quite as extensive as on the non-investment grade. Is that what you were looking for?

Emmanuel Korchman - Citigroup

Analyst · Citi. Please come ahead, sir

Yeah, perfect.

John Case

President

And there is plenty of people looking to buy properties in both sectors, Manny.

Emmanuel Korchman - Citigroup

Analyst · Citi. Please come ahead, sir

And maybe just to dig in a little bit deeper on what you were saying earlier, Tom, that it sounds like you have kind of stuck to you guns in the retail space, though I guess [RT] was the biggest mix of retail and non-retail. What can we expect for the rest of the year? Are you guys kind of literally going to look at things just on what comes through or is there a goal to diversify more out of retail?

Thomas Lewis

Management

You know it's, we are willing to do either, what we are really focused on is taking a look at the retailers and the consumer they serve. And it's discretionary goods and services or what they sell and there target markets better be the upper middle income or the upper income, because it it's lower middle or lower, we don’t want to buy it. So focus there. And then on the non-discretionary type goods and services, if that’s what the retailer is selling then we are pretty good at the upper and middle income, but if it's lower we want to make sure that there is very deep value proposition and that’s why we have gotten into the Club Stores and Dollar Stores and others. And that is a big focus when we are in retail. And then generically moving up the credit curve, and in retail there are investment grade credits but there is a limited number. And so to get the portfolio up to credit curve, we are more than willing to look outside of retail. But it really has to be the Fortune 500, maybe Fortune 1000 and investment grade and what we think is property that they would consider it very very important to their business. So whether it comes in an either basket, we don’t really mind. And we are happy to have both sides expand a little more so if retail went up a little bit, it wouldn’t bother us as long as it was hit right where we wanted to go and generally up the curve. But we would be happy if retail, which I think in the quarter was around 79, if that falls to 75 or 4, or 3 or 2, that’s fine too. But I don’t have a numerical target on either one of those. It's really just those boxed we are trying to hit in terms of what we want to acquire and what we want to stay away from.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from line of Joshua Barber with Stifel Nicolaus. Please go ahead.

Joshua Barber - Stifel Nicolaus

Analyst · Joshua Barber with Stifel Nicolaus. Please go ahead

Quick one, can you tell us what the disposition cap rate was on your assets during the quarter?

John Case

President

That is a great question and let me see if I have that sitting here in front of me, which I may or may not have. Well, for the year, Manny, our estimate for call it a 100 million plus, it's going to be 8.75%, if that’s okay.

Joshua Barber - Stifel Nicolaus

Analyst · Joshua Barber with Stifel Nicolaus. Please go ahead

Do you know what it was in the quarter?

Thomas Lewis

Management

Disposition cap. No, we have got it here, I am sorry. It was a little, actually lower than what we were planning for the year. I do know that because the one larger multi-tenant sale was substantially lower than that. Do you remember the cap rate on the transaction? Yeah, it was like a 7.5, and that was a big piece of it. So I would guess it is probably is closer to the 7-7.5 range but we will try to....

Paul Meurer

Management

I think we will do better than the 7.5, we tend to model that conservatively depending on what we chose to sell later in the year.

Joshua Barber - Stifel Nicolaus

Analyst · Joshua Barber with Stifel Nicolaus. Please go ahead

Okay. Maybe there is a broader question, but you guys have been very clear over the last few that you are trying to minimize the retail and get more investment grade, get slightly different property types. Is that a trend that you expect to [give in] or do you think that there will be some other move that you would like to make to really reshape the portfolio over the next couple of years?

Thomas Lewis

Management

Yeah, I do think we will continue doing what we are doing. And as I said in the last question, we were happy to be in retail and we haven’t moved away from it and we are happy to buy. We are just going to be more particular in terms of who the tenants are, who they serve and what their balance sheet looks like. And so if we think they are investment grade or close so there is not a big refinance risk when interest rates go up, we are happy to do it. And as long as we are staying away from consumer discretionary to just kind of lower income is who they market to, then we are happy to do it. And we would be just (inaudible) retail space right where it is. However, we are also focused on generically moving up the curve. And so if it's out to do that, we are happy to do it. We don’t have a target. It's right now 78 or 79, 21-22 is the mix, and over the course of the year if I had to guess, we will probably see a little more outside of retail, but we’re probably in the year where retail is still over 70% of the portfolio.

Joshua Barber - Stifel Nicolaus

Analyst · Joshua Barber with Stifel Nicolaus. Please go ahead

Last question. When you’re looking at some larger scale acquisitions, given that you have significantly [priced] your enterprise value than you have in the past, do you think you have a little bit more room today to take on secure debt from another company, from another portfolio? Would you have a little bit more ability to do that or would that be something that you just don’t want to risk the balance sheet on?

Thomas Lewis

Management

We have done that. We’ve got over $700 million of secured debt naturally come from buying portfolio. So we’re willing to do it. But when we do it we try and pay off anything we can that doesn’t have significant prepayment penalties and is an economic payoff. And then we will even place if there’s one, two, three, four year debt and see and pay that off as soon as we can. So it is our preference not to have any secured debt, but given size to buy portfolios I think that that will be the case from time to time. But it’s going to remain a very small part of our balance sheet. And it is something we could consider, but as soon as we get it on the books the purpose is get it off.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Tom Lesnick with Robert W. Baird. Please come ahead, sir. Tom Lesnick - Robert W. Baird & Co.: I’m just standing in for Paula. I just wanted to follow up on an earlier question about the competition. I know you guys talked about competition across the credit spectrum already, but are you seeing increased competition in certain industries relative to other industries that you’re looking at acquiring?

John Case

President

Not really. There’s pretty strong competition across the board and we’re not really seeing it vary by the industry of the tenant.

Thomas Lewis

Management

Yeah. There’s enough people that are broad in terms of what they’ll look at, whether it’s investment grade or non-investment grade, but I don’t think there are any sectors that are just standing there with gaping holes with nobody investing in them. And we look through all the industries we’re in. we buy convenience stores. Other people do. We buy theatres. Other people do and you can go right across it. We’re not buying casual dining, sit down dinner house restaurants, but other people are. So the fact we’re out of that doesn’t mean I think there’s a gaping hole. It’s competitive throughout. The performance of the net lease companies obviously has been relatively good for most of just the last few years and with the demand for yields, both institutionally and retail, given the yield characteristics in that lease it’s pretty much across the board everywhere. We’re fortunate that we have done this a long time. We have the experience and size and so the deal flow has been equally good. But it’s competitive all the way across. Tom Lesnick - Robert W. Baird & Co.: And then secondly, I just wanted to hone in again on the disposition guidance. I know you mentioned $100 million plus. In your comments you said well over $100 million potentially and it could accelerate through the year. Could you ballpark that as maybe $100 to $150 or $100 to $200? How much of a disposition pipeline or backlog do you guys have that you’re trying to get through?

Thomas Lewis

Management

That’s a good question and let me take a little time here and give some clarity how we look at it. First the number of saying 75 to 100 and that’s up from 50, it was up from 25 or so the year before. So I now would be surprised if we didn’t hit over 100, but I don’t have this backlog of stuff that I really feel I need to get out because I’m very much worried about it. The objective is just generally sell if it will increase the cash flow, if it materially increases credit quality or if it reduces concentration. Bu the primary area is where we’ve gone through the portfolio really parsed it and seen where we see risks. And that’s what we’re trying to sell and we originally targeted, if you recall I spent some time on a previous call and maybe it’s a good time to talk a little bit of that now, focusing around what we’re trying to do and changing the portfolio. I think you know that will do it quick and then related to because of that we look at dispositions. As I mentioned, we’re trying to go up the credit curve and really trying to hit retailers that hit the consumers in certain way and stay away from the rest of them. That’s just a function of how we see the economy going forward and interest rates. A few years ago, what we did is we sat down and reenter the whole portfolio and it was 67 tenants that do 83% of revenue. And we rerated all the industries based on our views and then the consumer they serve. And then there were 24 different metrics which were a lot of debt, fixed charge coverage and margin and the…

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Todd Stender with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead, sir.

Todd Stender - Wells Fargo Securities

Analyst · Todd Stender with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead, sir

The same-store growth you highlighted was 1.5% in the quarter. It’s historically only been about 1%, maybe a little bit better than that. Is this a rate we should expect the rest of the year and what do you contribute this a little bit above the average growth to?

Thomas Lewis

Management

It’s funny. I think it was a little above average and if you want a run rate I think 1% is a good one to use. Interestingly enough if you go back a few years ago in the recession you’ll recall we had a few tenants out of our very large group of tenants that went through some chapter 11s and one of the things we did when we set some rents lower for them, we were also to build in some recapture if their business rebounded and their business has now rebounded and so strangely enough a good part of that comes from the restaurant industry and it comes from tenants that there was a problem and their rent accelerated over the last few months as their business was better and our leases had been changed to capture part of that. But we think going forward and particularly with the RT coming into the numbers over time, I think 1% is a good run rate.

Todd Stender - Wells Fargo Securities

Analyst · Todd Stender with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead, sir

And then you guided for 7.25% for 2013 acquisitions. And the average lease term was up around 14 years in the quarter. What’s the fair lease term average for the remainder of the year? You think it will be that long or closer to the in-place average of about 11?

John Case

President

I think it could range from 11 up to 15, 16, right in there. It’s hard to tell at this point. But they are all pretty much initial terms above 10. You see some 20. You see a fair amount of 15. It just depends on how much you end up doing at each lease side.

Thomas Lewis

Management

And then it could be impacted if one of the larger transactions come through and that can change the cap rate up or down depending on who the tenant is. Those numbers John gave you are the ones that we’re using for modeling.

Todd Stender - Wells Fargo Securities

Analyst · Todd Stender with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead, sir

And just to stay on that theme, if a good portfolio of assets was presented to you with an investment grade tenant roster, would you deemed an attractive price, what would be the shortest average lease time you would consider?

Thomas Lewis

Management

Interesting. I would never say never and I think that’s smart to do. But when you get inside of 10 years it starts growing some concern from us and you would have to be able to get in and establish that the rents were at or substantially below market before you want to go much inside 10 years I think. And that’s in a chunky one or two tenant acquisitions something that could be done, but in a broad M&A type situation it becomes a bit more challenging. So on any granular acquisition 10 years is where we just draw the line and if it was an M&A situation we’d like to think 10 years subject to review of where rents are verse market.

Todd Stender - Wells Fargo Securities

Analyst · Todd Stender with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead, sir

That’s helpful Tom. And Paul, I assume you used a line to meet your March debt maturity?

Paul Meurer

Management

That’s correct.

Todd Stender - Wells Fargo Securities

Analyst · Todd Stender with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead, sir

Is that factored into guidance and how long would you assume if that would sit there and how long is that factored in and I guess how much is factored in the guidance?

Paul Meurer

Management

Well, that was factored in the guidance. We just planned since it was only $100 million to do it on the line and then let the line balance run up a bit before we would consider a more permanent financing activity in concert with the acquisition deal flow run rate and what happens there. So we sit here today in very good shape in terms of what that line balance is and no imminent capital needs. But that would really at this point be dependent upon the acquisition deal flow and when that stuff closes.

Thomas Lewis

Management

We also when we were looking at whatever financing we do next and plugging in what it would cost us, tried to use a rate substantially higher than where debt is sitting today and then that gives us the option of doing equity preferred without materially moving the model. And if we decided to do debt it would have an impact.

Paul Meurer

Management

Yes. We basically modeled it where we could do anything if you will at that time, equity preferred or debt.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of [Daniel Dowling with Landenberg Dowling]. Please go ahead, sir.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Just real quick on the 7.9% acquisition cap rate. Is that (inaudible) cash?

Paul Meurer

Management

Yeah.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

So on a GAAP basis, what would that be?

Thomas Lewis

Management

More.

Paul Meurer

Management

It would be probably 8.10%, in that area.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. And then what is the interest rate -- what is the average interest rate on the 700 million that you guys (inaudible) that ARCT?

John Case

President

That’s part ARCT and parts other we have taken.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Right. So the total portfolio of mortgage is 729 million then?

John Case

President

Yeah. As a weighted average and straight right now of 5.4%.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. All right. And then as we look at kind of the rent increases or decreases, I guess you could say, on the subsequent expirations versus your initial lease expirations. Who should we look at that, would you expect to see higher rent growth on the initial expirations and then less on the subsequent or does it...?

John Case

President

We do better on the subsequent then we do on the initial. And traditionally, the subsequent has done very well and is up and the initial is down. Roll overs, this year so far and the ones we have done are up about 3.3%. Modeling for the year will kind of just assuming that they will be pretty much flat. Traditionally, and this gets back very historical, we had rolled down. And the roll down, I think back in 2002, was about 24% in that peak. And one of the things that we did, started seeing in the mid-90s, is that roll down at the end of the lease was really starting to hit us, and this is in the mind-90s. And we dramatically changed how we acquire. Previous to that, everything we acquired was a new store, and we didn’t have cash flow coverages, and they were all less than investment grade. And we found they did pretty well throughout the lease, but at the end of the lease if we bought a bunch of new stores, about a third of them were below average, a third average and a third above. So we totally changed our underwriting in retail to pre-select those with high cash flow coverage and profits. So we would not preselect the one-third that were underperformers. So over the years what's happened is the burn that we get in lease rollover keeps declining pretty substantially. And yet the portfolio that’s rolling over is stuff that was bought still quite a bit ago, particularly the subsequent. So the last year there was a roll down of about 4%. And so far this year it's up 3% and we are thinking it will be closer to zero. And I think that’s a good way to think of it.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. I appreciate that. And then just two quick housekeeping items. What is the amortization of net mortgage premiums that you guys recognize in the AFFO line? What's the run rate there, (inaudible)?

Paul Meurer

Management

Yeah, obviously, that’s associated with any portion of the mortgages that we assume that are above market. And the projections for the year is about $9.2 million. You see the quarterly amount, just trying to grab the AFFO page, indicated in here, just under $2 million that occurred in the quarter. But the projections for the year, right now based on the mortgages that we currently own is about $9.2 million. And that is an amount that we reduced from AFFO, in order to arrive a real bottom line cash flow amount for us.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. And the capitalized interest in the quarter?

Paul Meurer

Management

That’s a pretty small number. I don’t really have that handy. You don’t mean capital expenditures?

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

No, no, just capitalized interest. I was just curious if you guys are doing any, funding up developments and what not. I know you have done that back in the past, so.

Thomas Lewis

Management

We are, and I don’t know, John, if you have the number handy, but we definitely have some development commitments underway. But it's a pretty small amount. And total for the currently...

John Case

President

Let me give those numbers, Tom.

Paul Meurer

Management

Yeah, in the first quarter of our activity, 11 million of that was in development funding and funding of expansions on existing assets. And we have $21 million in development funding or banking. So it's a pretty small number relative to our overall size. But I don’t have the capitalized interest associated with that.

Thomas Lewis

Management

And (inaudible) those numbers and is not looking for capitalized interest but thinking about development risk. All of those are on existing properties where a lease has been placed so there is no lease-up risk on that. It's just expansions or we bought the land and we are funding the development, but we have the lease in place from the tenant already.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Todd Lukasik with Morningstar. Please go ahead, sir.

Todd Lukasik - Morningstar

Analyst · Todd Lukasik with Morningstar. Please go ahead, sir

Just a quick one on property site distribution. I know that healthcare is now on the roster. It’s just under 2% of revenues. I just wonder if you could explain a bit more about what that is and then in general if you could talk about your attitude toward triple that lease healthcare and whether or not you expect that to be an area that grows in the portfolio.

Thomas Lewis

Management

Most of that came from the RT acquisitions. The tenants there are DaVita which most people know is one of the largest in the dialysis area an also Fresenius. There’s also a few express scripts properties, actually a few leased to GE Healthcare and then like four MOBs I believe they are that are at the Saint Joseph’s. So it’s fairly limited. It is not an area we’re targeting. If it grows it would surprise me as of now. I guess it could a little bit. But those are mostly that came out of that area and I don’t think I have a formal attitude towards it outside that it’s an area and an industry that is very well financed by some very smart folks. And if we find something at the margin time but it’s not anything we’re pointing to.

Todd Lukasik - Morningstar

Analyst · Todd Lukasik with Morningstar. Please go ahead, sir

And then just wanted to see if you could update us on rent escalators related to inflation across your portfolio. I know a few years back you guys were trying to get more of those written into your leases. I was wondering if you could tell us what percentage the portfolio now has escalators specifically related to something like CPI and whether or not you have better success today than you did in the past on new sale lease back transactions, getting something like that written into the initial leases.

Thomas Lewis

Management

Today the number is 15.61% of like real inflation percentage sale, that type of stuff going into it. And that’s up substantially from a few years ago and I would give us a C to D grade at best in getting that done. It is extraordinarily difficult. It is not the norm in the industry and is really an out wire and is probably one of the more frustrating things in the management of the business and something that we really continue to work on. And as we drop back into a strategic planning mode which we’re going to do this year, that is something that we’re really going to think about where we could go to try and accomplish that. But today in the net lease business it’s C&O. it’s the fountain of youth that comes daily on but nobody ever finds. And I really think that’s the case and you have to really parse how you ask the question because if you say do you have CPI accelerators in your leases? Well yeah. It would be a massive number for us, but they’re capped. So what they really are is fixed increases. So, it really does need to be asked, but it’s unrestricted and that’s about 15.6% for us and very unusual to get.

Todd Lukasik - Morningstar

Analyst · Todd Lukasik with Morningstar. Please go ahead, sir

And then just last question with regards to the assets for divestiture. I know you had an industrial property in there I guess you said this quarter. Going forward, is it reasonable to assume that those are pretty much going to be all retail or are there any other property sectors that you guys have invested in more recently that have properties that are falling into that bucket for divestiture?

Thomas Lewis

Management

I think the bucket is going to be retail and I think it’s going to be the ones that have fallen down in that category. And tenants that are very levered and it will probably be dominated by restaurants and there may be some convenience stores and then a smattering of other things.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Rich Moore with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Richard Moore - RBC Capital Markets

Analyst · Rich Moore with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead

Right now about a third of your portfolio is investment grade and that’s obviously up substantially over the last couple of years. As we listen to the call, Tom, I’m wondering, the ultimate goal clearly is 100% investment grade even though you keep moving up the investment grade curve and during the quarter you had below one third investment grade tenants come up. And I’m wondering, has big move in investment grade change to the portfolio occurred and 35% is about right for the total? Or is there much more to go from this point?

Thomas Lewis

Management

I hope it hasn’t occurred and I hope there is much more to go because I’d like that number to be substantially higher. But I want to modify it in that it’s not just buying investment to buy investment grade. The reason we want to do it, is over the last 30 years the tenures quite frankly have just gone from 15% to 1.7% when I looked at it this morning. And that has made a lot of very levered business strategies that involve a lot of financial engineering work. And should interest rates go up, which were really low, I want to focus on companies that would really have trouble refinancing their balance sheet. Now that means generally investment grade companies are going to be less impacted. There are tenants who are not investment grade. Who don’t have a lot of debt but they are not investment or a even a [shallow] rating might be less than investment grade because of their size. But if they are size and they don’t have big refinance risk exposure and the customer they serve doesn’t, then still interests us very much. Even though they are not investment grade because we are really for that lack of risk relative to refinance. However, the bigger the entity, the lower the default rate. The rating agencies will tell you, all your research tells us that. But I don’t want to say always, but I would like it to continue to increase. But we are happy to have some of the tenants not being investment grade. But even those that aren’t, I will tell you, have moved up the curve where they are closer to investment grade substantially then they were a number of years ago. Much less of the highly levered private equity M&A type of stuff.

Richard Moore - RBC Capital Markets

Analyst · Rich Moore with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead

Okay. Good. I got you. That makes sense. Then on the disposition just for a moment. How much of the portfolio is double net, non-triple net, maybe multi-tenants which I assume aren’t as attractive, that fall in not so much into a tenant category but fall into a tight category that you would want to divest. Is that part of the strategy as well?

Thomas Lewis

Management

Yeah, I mean you know the industrial property that we sold during the quarter was like 400,00 square feet with 375 small tenants. And so you start looking at a weak economic environment, you would worry there. But we are kind of pretty much done with that. We have sold most of what we had there. The double net that we might have is actually more up the credit curve with people and it's just that it’s 2.5 net where you may have some responsibility with it. But those aren’t things that we are really looking to get out of. We are looking at those when we underwrite them relative to the cap rate we get and try and amortize some type of expense ratio for them, even if the expenses are lumpy.

Richard Moore - RBC Capital Markets

Analyst · Rich Moore with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead

Obviously, so you didn’t get multitenant from RT that you are trying to get rid off?

Thomas Lewis

Management

No. No, that portfolio was almost all pretty straight net lease. You know if we get a bunch of grocery anchor centers, we will think about (inaudible).

Richard Moore - RBC Capital Markets

Analyst · Rich Moore with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead

Yeah, I got you. Okay. And then on the G&A front, it sounds like you are just annualizing this quarter pretty much for the year, which means that you have done the hiring and the additional infrastructure that you need to support things like RT. Is that true? So you are pretty much done with that sort of aspect of business?

John Case

President

Well, yeah. That’s part of the answer, and then the other part is we did have some G&A reduction because some of the employees who were associated with the large multi-tenant asset we sold, effects that employee count if you will. So that kind of offset the number a little bit but got ahead in the last one (inaudible).

Thomas Lewis

Management

Yeah. And I will tell you one of the reasons I don’t want to move the guidance right now, we feel very comfortable where it is, is I think it could get better but I also think we may do some more G&A this year. We are kind of doing a project in house from looking at, if the company was twice as large, what it would need to look like, how would reporting look, what would people be doing. And then we have identified a number of areas where we want to add staff and expertise. And there's probably a number of people and acquisitions where we are going to do that. A number of people in research, we want to do that. There has been some movement internally, so we need to do that portfolio management. And we will have a, I think a pretty good increase in employee count during the course of this year. We just kind of earned the midst of our recruiting and the undergrad out there and we will probably do a much bigger class this year then we have done in the past. So we have grown substantially and I think we need to add a few people for that even though this addition to the RT is very efficient, but we also want to plan for growth. And so we are going to need, I think a couple of more executives around here and a good group of professionals added in. So there will be more.

Paul Meurer

Management

And most of that won't affect the 2013 estimate too much, Rich. But it will certainly increase the annualized run rate as we add in people over the course of the year on a go forward basis.

Richard Moore - RBC Capital Markets

Analyst · Rich Moore with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead

Okay, I got you. So that’s all in the $45 million. So it sounds good. The last thing, Paul, the other income line items was, I think, substantially higher. What was that exactly?

Paul Meurer

Management

That’s always a mixed bag of interest income on cash if we do a capital raise and the cash sits around for a few days or a week if you will. Interest income in that sense also evenness in takings which are a normal part of the portfolio manager process. So if you have a situation where there’s an eminent domain or a portion of your parking lot, sometimes it doesn’t mean it affects the viability of the asset itself. It actually ends up being pretty positive proceeds that we receive in this situation. So that’s all that 1.4 is is a mixed bag of those items if you will. Nothing different about the normal business.

Richard Moore - RBC Capital Markets

Analyst · Rich Moore with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead

So that goes back down I assume most likely in 2Q?

Paul Meurer

Management

Correct. I don’t think 1.4 million is an appropriate run rate. No.

Operator

Operator

This concludes our question-and-answer portion of the Realty Income conference call. I would now like to turn the conference over to Tom Lewis for concluding remarks. Please go ahead, sir.

Thomas Lewis

Management

Thank you everybody for joining us for this. I know it’s a busy season, particularly a busy day and we appreciate the attention look forward to talking to you at one of the upcoming events. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today. You may now disconnect.