David J. Gladstone
Analyst · Hilliard Lyons
That was a good report, Danielle. Thank you. We encourage all of the listeners to read our press release and our quarterly reports that was filed yesterday with the SEC and it's called Form 10-Q. And there's a lot of good information in there. I hope you all take a chance to read that, and you can find them all on our website at www.gladstonecommercial.com and also on the SEC website. To stay up-to-date in the latest news involving Gladstone Commercial and our other public companies, please follow us on Twitter, using the name, "GladstoneComps," C-O-M-P-S at the end, and also on Facebook, keyword, "The Gladstone Companies," and you can go to our general website and see more information about all the Gladstone Companies at www.gladstone.com. I think the main news report for this quarter is that we are able to acquire 4 more properties and issue some long-term debt to fund these acquisitions, and so a very positive news for our shareholders. We've built up a nice pipeline of potential properties that we're interested in acquiring and are in due diligence phase on those. And because of that pipeline, we hope to be able to grow the assets in the portfolio even more during the second half of 2012. And with the increase in the portfolio of properties comes greater diversification for all shareholders and we believe we will get better earnings as well. We're still selling some of our senior common stock and sold over $1 million worth today. Momentum is building there. We've made monthly dividend payments to those folks, and that program continues to get stronger. I think the company's in a great position to increase its assets and to increase the income on those assets during 2012. I think it's going to be a great year. On another note, I've been able to find some attractive long-term mortgages. And the group here has been able to find mortgages in the marketplace from banks and getting much better, and I think it's almost as robust, in some cases, as it was 4 or 5 years ago. And we now have long-term mortgages on 68 of our 77 properties and the remaining properties are pledged on the collateral on our line of credit or there, the 2 of them, obviously, the ones we don't have mortgages on or have mortgages on, but are not paying rent these days. We also continue to look at properties with mortgages already on them but we can assume and have that for -- therefore, we don't have to go find mortgages for them or we can -- those we can secure financing and close simultaneously with the acquisition as we did with 3 of the properties acquired in 2011 and 2 of the properties thus far, in 2012. If we don't close debt simultaneously, we have to use our successful obtaining debt on the properties a few months later. Then we use our line of credit and get there. The marketplace for us is still divided into these 3 major areas. They are the tenants who have AAA or BBB rating that are located in high-quality real estate that's being sought after by large real estate investment trusts and insurance companies and some pension funds. The cap rates on those continues to move around. I don't know where they will stop but they continue to go lower. And that's just a cap rate that we can't possibly handle. Small real estate portfolios are another group that we look at. These are properties like fast food locations or pharmacy chains. They're being purchased by individual investors with cap rates between 6.5% and 7%. And that's moved down a bit more as people have moved into that marketplaces. They do this for income. Instead of doing a bond, they buy the real estate. We purchased 2 of those last year that was somewhat out of the normal marketplace for these kind of properties and got them at very substantially higher cap rates. As most of you know, who follow us, the area that we like to invest in is the middle market, where we see non-rated tenants and small and medium-sized businesses for commercial and office and industrial properties, as well as some medical properties. We like those because we have a great underwriting staff for the tenants and we can underwrite them the same way we would if we were lending money to them or buying their businesses. And so our competitive advantage is the expertise that we have to underwrite the non-rated business tenants in conjunction with the acquisition of the real estate. So we're in a good position to see a lot of opportunity this year. Cap rates for these groups are in that 8%, 9% and sometimes a little higher. And after leverage, the rate of return is in the 11% to 15% range return on equity, so good opportunities for us there to continue to do what we're doing. We are focusing our efforts on finding good properties with long-term financing and match those long-term leases with long-term debt, and being able to lock in for the long-term financing is wonderful for us. We are much more optimistic that things going to be positive for us in this next 12 months. So while we will proceed cautiously as we always do, we're expecting some real beneficial transactions in the near term. Much of the industrial base that rents industrial and commercial properties, which we like, remains pretty steady. Most of them are paying their rents as agreed. We still have some businesses that have problems. But in my way of thinking, we're still better off this year than we were last year. So things continue to get better. However, it's worth noting that economic growth has stopped in this country. We seem to be slipping not perhaps into recession, but we're certainly going sideways because there's so much uncertainty about what government may do. And past [indiscernible] haven't worked. And so as a result, we're just wondering where the economy is going at this point in time and just being very cautious. And while I'm optimistic that this company will find future transactions very good, nevertheless, we continue to be very cautious on the acquisitions as we've done in the past. We made it through the last recession without cutting dividends or having a lot of problems from tenants. And if there is another recession coming, in my way of thinking, I think our portfolio will continue to stand the test again. We are successful in raising common equity twice in 2011 and we did raise preferred stock in 2012. I think we can raise new equity if we need to in the future years. So at this point in time, we're in pretty good shape. July 2012, the board voted to maintain the monthly distribution of $0.125 per common share for July, August and September or at the annual rate of $1.50 per share per year. This is a very attractive rate, such well-managed REIT like ours. We've now paid out 96 consecutive common stock dividends since inception and we went through the recession without cutting our dividends. Because the real estate can be depreciated, we are able to shelter the income from -- for each of our shareholders. The distribution in 2011 for example was 83% return of capital. And as all of you know, that's tax-free. This is a very tax-friendly stock in my opinion and I think it's one that can go into a lot of personal accounts. This return on capital is due to the depreciation of the real estate assets and other items that's caused earnings to remain very low after the depreciation. And that's why we talk about FFO because that means you've added back the real estate depreciation. Depreciation of a building is a bit of a fiction. It's a tax accounting thing. It's a fiction since at the end of the depreciation period, the building's still standing. While you may have to put some money in the building, it's not worth 0. So if you own a stock and it's a non-retirement account as opposed to having say, an IRA retirement plan, you don't have to pay me taxes on that part that is sheltered by the depreciation. However, the return of capital does reduce your cost basis on the stock, which may result in a larger capital gains when the stock is sold. With stock price at about $17.29 close yesterday, the distribution yield on the stock is about 8.7%. The REITs are trading at much lower yields. I just read the entire REIT universe is trading at about a 4% yield, I think if we were trading a 4% yield, would be -- a stock price of $37. And all of the triple-net REITs, which are similar to us, are trading at about a 5.4% yield. If we were trading at that today, it would be a $27.70 per share. And there's really no reason we can't get this into the 20s because of such a stable and strong portfolio that we have today. We've traded there in the past. We've been in the 20s in the past and it's just going to take some folks waiting into the stock and bidding it up, so that the yield goes down. We will vote in early October during our quarterly board meeting to declare monthly distributions for October, November and December. And before we go to questions, let me mention that Lindsay's here as our Investor Relations person and she can answer many of your questions. So if you have a question that comes up after this, please call Lindsay. She has the answer to most of the questions. But if she doesn't, she can always find some of us in the office to get that question answered. So now, we'll stop and have some questions from our loyal shareholders and analysts out there who follow this wonderful reading. Would the operator come on and please help us listen to some of those questions and see if we can answer them.