Paul Pittman
Analyst · Janney. Please go ahead
Thank you, Luca. So, I am going to go through several important highlights of the operations this quarter and talk through a couple of specific acquisitions and projects that we have recently done. We have closed yet another good quarter in Q2. Our revenues have reached $6 million which is a new high and a 109% year-over-year improvement. We also are heading for a total of $24 million or a little better in total revenue for the year which again is a significant growth from prior periods. Our EBITDA reached $4 million this quarter that is adjusted EBITDA. Actual EBITDA was $3.6 million. Both of those numbers are new highs for this Company. So an important take away from that is that we are continuing to aggressively grow our scale and the size of the Company, trying to set us up to be the low cost provider of ownership and management services in the farmland industry. Our AFFO at $1.2 million for the quarter frankly suffered a little and is lower than we would hope for, although that is really a function of our effort to continue to build an infrastructure for a bigger and stronger and more efficient Company. It is also a function of the timing of some of our acquisition activity and whether it slips right into the end of one quarter or the beginning of the next quarter. In terms of our effort to continue to build our infrastructure, we now have a total of 16 employees, up from approximately 13. We've recently added a new General Counsel named Erika Borenstein. We have added a Vice President of Business Development with a special focus on specialty crops, Cortland Barnes. And we have made a significant enhancement of our accounting and finance department with the addition of a gentleman named Simon Dexter who is a 15-year veteran of PriceWaterhouse. This effort is a continuation of our now nearly 2.5 year effort to build the largest public REIT focused on the farmland space and the most efficient operating REIT focused on the farmland space. We believe that the markets and outside observers are now beginning to recognize this success. We were happy to see our inclusion into the Russell indexes. Our stock price is trading at or near a 52-week high. And we have got significantly increased volume since our addition to the Russell. All of those are indicative of the fact that the market is beginning to understand our story and accept and understand our strategy. Turning to a couple of specific projects and acquisitions that we have either completed or soon will complete. I wanted to talk about really sort of development projects and how we approach development projects, because we do this frankly differently than I think many others. When you engage in an agriculture property development exercise the good news is that you can end up with a property with very strong cap rates once stabilized going forward. And you can get very substantial appreciation in the underlying asset value. The bad news is that the normal development process measured in the matter of a year or two, sometimes even longer, you will have a negative cash flow during that development. Our strategy when we do development is to basically avoid any of that negative cash flow. The development projects we have done to date, and the two I'm going to describe today, we have been able to execute on that strategy. So we have been able to get the tenants to pay us a modest rent during the development cycle, which then increases materially once the farm is in full production, but it avoids for us and our investors that negative cash flow period that troubles so much development. So turning to a couple of very specific examples. We have acquired the Ironwood Farm in Florida. This is an approximately 2,400 acre piece of property that has been in -- a quail hunting plantation was its prior use. We are taking that land and turning it into row crop production for the purpose of growing forage for the dairy industry in Florida. Our tenant is one of the major dairies in Florida. During that development phase which will take between a year and two years, we will receive an approximately 4% return on that farm and then following that we will receive approximately a 5.75% return and a bonus. So, we will end up with a property that is returning approximately 6% to us after development based on the full investment we made in that land. We will not suffer the negative cash flow during the development phase and the appreciation of the property should be quite substantial when we have it reappraised following development cycle. The farms of that nature in Florida are very, very productive. It will be a farm that produces somewhere between three and possibly as many as four crops of forage for the dairy farm each year. It also gives us tenant exposure fundamentally that is tied to the livestock and the protein industry in a very direct way as opposed to purely commodity row crop production. A second deal which is similar but in a different part of the country that I want to talk about is we have bought a feedlot in Northern Colorado. And this feedlot is, again sort of a demonstration of our creativity and our ability to diversify and expand our portfolio. This project is fully developed, there is no development cost. We bought a feedlot from a long-term operator of this property and included in the feedlot were of course all of the facilities as well as the water rights. And in fact in this particular property there is some additional oil and gas rights that come with the property. In this case we will end up getting in the neighborhood of a 6% return on the $5.5 million total investment, that is a monthly return in that case or a rent that is paid monthly the annual return of course. But again, this is an example of our ability to make investments in agriculture properties that are a little bit different and a little bit unusual but still have long-term value enhancement and upside for our investors and for our Company. So to summarize, if you look at those sorts of transactions, that is the placement of capital of approximately $20 million, $21 million that is going to have returns that are in the neighborhood of 6% or better when they are fully up and operational which is a substantial increase in the cap rates we get in traditional row crop agriculture. However, it is of course a slightly riskier strategy. But in the context of our overall portfolio today that is about $600 million of Farmland assets, we think it is prudent and acceptable to get out a little bit further on the risk curve on a portion of our portfolio to enhance the cap rates and the profitability that we should get from those farms. And so, we are gradually beginning to do this; this is all a function of us continuing to grow the Company. I mentioned Cortland Barnes, our new hire, the VP of Business Development. We're also beginning to explore specialty crop investments in a more significant way than we have in the past. As I have expressed in prior calls, we are under weighted in specialty crops today. We will begin to expand our specialty crop portion of the portfolio, again, taking slightly higher risk but also getting a higher cap rate. But again, it is a portfolio approach. You never should expect us to have more than 20% or 25% of our portfolio in specialty crops because we think much beyond that you are adding additional risk to the overall portfolio and not necessarily getting appropriately compensated for it. Turning to the state of the markets and the state of the farm economy. I am sure there will be some questions on this, but I want to address it in my prepared remarks. What is going on when you look at the marketplace today, for the fundamental commodity prices, corn, soybeans, wheat, etc.? What you have got is a tug-of-war between demand on one side and crop yield or crop size on the other side. And we are talking about a relatively large crop here in the United States for both corn and soybeans. The crops in the countryside look incredibly good and are likely to be relatively high yielding for our tenants as well as every other farmer out there. But at the same time demand is rapidly ramping. So, if we were a commodity trader I would be possibly concerned about the size of this crop, but we are not a commodity trader. We are an acquirer of farmland and the driver of farmland value is the long-term demand side for global food demand in the face of land scarcity. So, the fact that this demand continues to increase -- and you've got to look under the hood a little bit, you can't just look at the headline. But that is a very, very powerful fact leading to medium- and long-term increases in farmland values and ultimately increases in our rents and our revenue stream. This is a time to invest in this asset class, not a time to pull back because when the farm economy is a little bit tough it slows down farmer buying which are the big drivers of the market. But it is time for us as an institutional provider of capital to agriculture to continue to invest and build our Company so we do truly create that largest farmland REIT available in the United States, at least in the public markets. A couple of other comments about the market overall. Not seeing really any stress amongst farmers. You read these bad headlines but, again, if you really go to the facts you are not seeing any significant declines in land values, you are not seeing any fire sales. You have seen a volume of farm transactions go down which basically means you have a disagreement amongst buyers and sellers as to what fair value is. That would be typical at this point in time. We make the assumption that this fall will be a good opportunity because there will be an occasional property, sell at a good value, but we do not expect any sort of overarching material decrease in the land values. As I think I have said in prior calls, we will stay flat to slightly down until we see farmer profitability turn the corner and start to go back up. Exactly when that happens of course I can't predict, but I am confident that it will happen. So with that I'm going to turn the call back over to Luca to walk through some financial highlights. Luca?