Joel Agree
Analyst · Raymond James
Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Agree Realty's First Quarter 2019 Earnings Call. Joining me this morning is Clay Thelen, our Chief Financial Officer. I'm pleased to report that we're off to a strong start to the year as we continue to capitalize on opportunities across all faces of our business. During the quarter, we further strengthened our portfolio through strategic investment activity and proactive asset management, while continuing to fortify our balance sheet through capital markets activity. Subsequent to quarter end, we commemorated our 25th anniversary as a public company by ringing the closing bell of the New York Stock Exchange. Our compounded average annual total shareholder return since the IPO is 13.2%, an impressive accomplishment that touched the bar for our future performance. Before we move on to our traditional update, I'd like to take a couple of minutes to clarify and expand upon our investment philosophy and underwriting standards, given some of the recent discussions we've had with investors during this busy conference season. I think the simplest place to start is what we're avoiding. First, private equity backed and other retailers with over-leveraged balance sheet that lacks the capacity to adapt to a dynamic retail environment and invest in an omni-channel future. Second, retailers that are overly susceptible to e-commerce due to commoditization and consumer price leverage. Third, retailers at traffic and highly discretionary and luxury goods that are susceptible to recessionary pressures. Fourth, we avoid an overemphasis on a store-level performance as a barometer for real estate and tenant quality. It is a data point, not a driver of our underwriting. In today's omni-channel retail world, store-level performance is becoming increasingly difficult to measure using traditional methods, such as store sales, EBITDA and rent coverage. Retailers today are increasingly favoring locations that nail them to penetrate a market through a variety of distribution methods, including BOPUS, home delivery, in-store returns, as well as maintain a physical presence. The market penetration that a retailer can achieve through these methods is often misrepresented by historic four-wall performance metrics. The most successful 21st century retailers have effectively blurred the line between these different distribution channels. And lastly, we avoid nonfungible single purpose boxes that have limited residual value, a very narrow retenanting options that inhibit the future value of the real estate. This includes larger boxes where the tenant has entered into a traditional turnkey lease. Our risk mitigation here is best demonstrated through our ground lease portfolio, where we own the land and the tenant has paid to construct their own improvements. The tenant's investment and the improvements decreases the likelihood that are looked to relocate, increases the probability of renewal as well as drive residual upside through retenanting or outlot creation at a variable basis. As usual, I will discuss our ground lease portfolio in more detail shortly. Now that I've addressed what we avoid, let's focus on our continued acquiring and developing of the highest quality retail net leased assets in the country. Today, our proverbial sandboxes comprise primarily of 30 to 35 in the country's strongest retailers that have a comprehensive omni-channel strategy of value-oriented business model for a strong service-based component. We think about quality as the unique combination of industry-leading tenants, lease structure and strong underlying real estate. With almost 50 years of development expertise, our emphasis is on fundamental retail real estate characteristics, rather than simple spread investing or contract structure. With that allow me to return to our standard update. During the first quarter, we invested approximately $145 million in 57 high-quality retail net lease properties across our 3 external growth platforms. Of those 57 investments, 48 properties were sourced through our acquisition platform, representing aggregate acquisition volume of more than $141 million for the quarter. The properties were acquired at a weighted average cap rate of 7% and had a weighted average remaining lease term of 12.8 years. The acquired properties are located in 22 states and are leased to leading operators in 16 different retail sectors, including off-price, convenience stores, auto parts, tire and auto service, home improvement, health and fitness, grocery and craft and novelties. Notably, we're very pleased to add our first Trader Joe's, HomeSense as well as CarMax to our portfolio during the quarter. Other properties acquired during the quarter include O'Reilly Auto Parts, AutoZone, Bridgestone, NTB Tire and Service Centers, Hobby Lobby, T.J.Maxx, Ulta, Tractor Supply, 7-Eleven and Gerber Collision. Our focus on industry-leading tenants is evidenced by the continued increase in our investment-grade concentration. More than 71% of annualized base rent acquired during the quarter was derived from investment-grade retailers. At quarter end, our total investment-grade exposure was 52.4%, representing a year-over-year increase of approximately 680 basis points. Based on the high-quality nature of our current acquisition development pipeline, we anticipate our investment-grade concentration to continue this upward trajectory. Given our strong acquisition volume in the first quarter and our robust in high-quality pipeline, we are increasing our 2019 acquisition guidance to a range of $450 million to $500 million for the year. While increasing our full year acquisition guidance, I want to, again, reiterate that we remain intently focused on constructing the highest-quality retail portfolio in the country. Our acquisition team has done an outstanding job originating best-in-class opportunities with industry-leading retailers. While significantly increasing our investment-grade concentration, we've also grown our ground lease portfolio by 140 basis points year-over-year to almost 9% of annualized base rent at quarter end. 7-Eleven is the newest addition to the many leading retailers to comprise our ground lease portfolio, including Home Depot, Lowe's, Walmart, Wawa, Aldi, AutoZone, McDonald's and Starbucks. At quarter end, approximately 88% of our ground lease portfolio's rents were derived from retailers that carry an investment-grade credit rating and only 1% was leased to sub-investment-grade retailers. The remaining 11% of the portfolio was leased to leading retailers that are unrated, such as Chick-fil-A and Texas Roadhouse. We continue to seek to expand this portfolio and currently have under control a number of assets that are ground leased to the country's best operators. In addition to our ground lease portfolio, we also have several exceptional urban assets. One such asset is our Harris Teeter on West Sixth Street in Charlotte, North Carolina. Notably, Harris Teeter recently announced that the 18,000 square foot store will be the first in the chain to implement self-checkout to increase the number of lanes available to customers and reduced checkout times. We continue to look for similar opportunities to add unique urban assets to our portfolio. The strength of our portfolio is also evidenced by our changing tenant roster. During the quarter, we added TBC Corporation to our top tenant list via fixed property sale leaseback with National Tire and Battery Service Centers. Simultaneously, AMC was eliminated from our top tenant list during the quarter. Turning to our Development and Partner Capital Solutions platforms, we had 9 Development and PCS projects either completed or under construction during the quarter that represent total committed capital of approximately $30 million. 3 of those projects were delivered during this past quarter, representing total capital deployed of almost $8 million. The projects delivered during the quarter include the company's third and fourth developments with Mister Car Wash in Orlando and Tavares, Florida and our first completed project with Sunbelt Rentals in Maumee, Ohio. Subsequent to quarter end, the company delivered its second project with Sunbelt Rentals in Batavia, Ohio. In addition to our completed projects in Maumee and Batavia, construction continued during the quarter at our third Sunbelt Rentals and our first ground up project in Georgetown, Kentucky with them. Finally, we're pleased to announce that we commence construction in our fourth Sunbelt Rentals projects during the first quarter in Carrizo Springs, Texas. The project is anticipated to complete by the fourth quarter of this year, and we look forward to continuing to expand the relationship with Sunbelt in the future. In addition to the Sunbelt Rentals project in Georgetown, Kentucky, construction continued during the quarter on 3 other Development and PCS projects, with total anticipated cost of nearly $16 million. The projects consist of the company's first development with Gerber Collision in Round Lake, Illinois; the company's redevelopment of the former Kmart in Mount Pleasant, Michigan for Hobby Lobby; and the company's redevelopment of the former Kmart in Frankfort, Kentucky for Aldi, Big Lots and Harbor Freight Tools. While our year-to-date investment activity has improved the quality of our portfolio, we've also solidified and diversified our portfolio through proactive asset management and disposition efforts. These efforts continued during the first quarter as we sold 2 Walgreens assets for gross proceeds of approximately $10 million. As a result of our disposition efforts, our Walgreens concentration has been reduced to 4.6% at quarter end. This represents a decrease of approximately 300 basis points year-over-year. Similarly, our pharmacy exposure decreased 400 basis points year-over-year to 7.6%. We currently have an additional Walgreens asset under contract to sell, which is subject to customary due diligence, and we anticipate closing in the next few weeks. Our asset management team also continues to focusing on addressing upcoming lease maturities. As a result of these efforts at quarter end, we had only five remaining lease maturities in 2019, representing less than 1% of annualized base rents. During the quarter, we executed new leases, extensions or options on approximately 111,000 square feet of gross leasable sales. As of March 31, our rapidly growing retail portfolio consisted of 694 properties across 46 states. Our tenants are comprised primarily industry-leading retailers operating in more than 28 distinct retail sectors, again with 52.4% of annualized base rents coming from investment-grade tenants. The portfolio remains effectively fully occupied in 99.7% and has a weighted average remaining lease term of 10.2 years. Thank you for your patience. And with that, I'll turn it over to Clay to discuss our financial results for the quarter. Clay?