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Getty Realty Corp. (GTY)

Q3 2016 Earnings Call· Thu, Oct 27, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and welcome to the Getty Realty Corp. Third Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. Today’s conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Joshua Dicker, Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. Please go ahead, sir.

Joshua Dicker

Management

Thank you. I would like to thank you all for joining us for Getty Realty’s quarterly earnings conference call. Yesterday afternoon, the Company released its financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2016. Form 8-K and earnings release are available in the Investor Relations section of our website at gettyrealty.com. Certain statements made in the course of this call are not based on historical information and may constitute forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management’s current expectations and beliefs and are subject to trends, events and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statement. Examples of forward-looking statements include our 2016 guidance, and may also include statements made by management in their remarks and in response to questions including regarding lease restructurings, future Company operations, future financial performance and the Company’s acquisition or redevelopment plans and opportunities. We caution you that such statements reflect our best judgment based on factors currently known to us and that actual events or results could differ materially. I refer you to the Company’s annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015 as well as our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and our other filings with the SEC for a more detailed discussion of the risks and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements made today. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements which reflect our view only as of the date hereof. The Company undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statements that may be made in the course of this call. Also please refer to our earnings release for a discussion of our use of non-GAAP financial measures including FFO and AFFO and our reconciliation of those measures to net earnings. With that, let me turn the call over to Christopher Constant, our Chief Executive Officer.

Christopher Constant

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Josh. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our call for the third quarter of 2016. With Josh and me, on the call today are Mark Olear, our Chief Operating Officer, and Danion Fielding, our Chief Financial Officer. I will begin today’s call by reviewing our performance for the third quarter of 2016 and then pass the call to Mark to discuss our portfolio in more detail, and after Mark, Danion will was discuss our financial results. The third quarter of 2016 was another excellent quarter for the Company and continued our positive performance in 2016 which demonstrates the Company’s earnings capability now that we have a strong core portfolio of properties leased to healthy and growing regional and national tenants. These results demonstrate the steady progress we continue to make on repositioning our portfolio to higher quality tenants and more productive sites. We delivered quarterly AFFO of $0.45 per share, which represents meaningful growth over the prior year’s quarter even when adjusted for certain notable items which will be not expected to recur on a consistent basis. When we exclude those items, our normalized AFFO was $0.43 per share for the quarter ended September 2016 as compared to $0.38 per share for the quarter ended September 2015, representing growth of more than 13% quarter-over-quarter. While our rental income for the quarter was relatively flat, the key drivers of the Company’s performance were $300,000 reduction in property cost excluding tenant reimbursement and $900,000 of G&A savings coming from reduced personnel, legal and professional costs. We also made progress on several of our strategic initiatives this quarter. As Mark will discuss, we completed $1.9 million of investments, which we expect to produce above market returns. We also signed six redevelopment leases, bringing our total redevelopment leases to 12 year-to-date. Our…

Mark Olear

Chief Operating Officer

Thank you, Chris. I will start by reviewing our investments for the quarter. During the quarter, we purchased a leasehold interest in Westchester County, New York for $1.7 million. The property is currently part of one of our unitary leases and a net result that we expect our rent for that lease to increase by 9% of our additional investment. We also purchased an adjacent parcel to one of our properties in Pennsylvania. Purchase of the land was required in order to complete one of our redevelopment projects and we expect the return for the entire project to be in line with our current criteria for this project. While the acquisition market continues to be very competitive in the convenience and gas sector, we remain disciplined in our underwriting criteria. Our pipeline of actionable opportunities continues to grow and we are in the process of reviewing and pursuing a number of growth opportunities. Moving to our redevelopment platform, we signed six leases during the quarter for properties, which will eventually be redeveloped into non-gas, standalone retail stores. Through the first nine months of the year, we have entered into 12 leases in total. The tenants in many of these leases include high-quality national and regional branded retailers. In total, we have invested approximately $1.5 million in various projects thus far and we expect to have rent commencement at several of these projects in 2017 and 2018. We remain quite enthusiastic about the opportunity to transform our own real estate and look forward to discussing future projects with you as they develop. We also continue to make progress in our transitional prosperities. During the third quarter of 2016, we completed three sales for $425,000 and commenced two long-term triple net leases. These efforts resulted in approximately $60,000 at annualized incremental rental income. In addition, we added two properties to our transitional list during the quarter as a result of these sites becoming severed from existing unitary leases. The net result is that we ended the quarter with 35 transitional properties of which we presently expect to dispose of 20 and redevelop or lease 15. The cumulative result of our transaction and leasing activities is that we ended the quarter with 800 net leased properties and 35 transitional properties. Our weighted average lease term is approximately 11 years, and our overall occupancy is approximately 97%. With that, I will turn the call over to Danion.

Danion Fielding

Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Mark. Now turning to our results. For the quarter, our total revenues from continuing operations and revenues from rental properties which exclude tenant reimbursements and interest income were $28.5 million and $24.3 million, respectively. Our rental income for the quarter was in line with the same period in 2015. On the expense front, property costs excluding tenant reimbursements improved by 14% for the quarter to $1.8 million from $2.1 million. This reduction can be attributed to declines in rent and maintenance expenses. Our environmental expense decreased by $700,000 for the quarter relative to the same period last year. The reduction was primarily due to $700,000 decrease in environmental mediation cost. It is worth noting that there are several non-cash items flowing through this line which cause the reported amounts to vary from quarter to quarter. For the quarter, G&A was down by $900,000; the decrease was primarily due to decreases in legal and professional fees and employee-related expenses. As Chris mentioned earlier, our goals for the quarter ended September 30, 2016 were impacted by several notable items which cause our reported amounts to differ from recurring operations. Results for the quarter ended September 30, 2016 included environmental insurance reimbursement, recoveries of uncollectable account and other non-recurring income which resulted in a net benefit to the Company of $800,000 or $0.02 per share in the aggregate. Our reported FFO per the quarter was $16.2 million or $0.47 per share as compared to $14.2 million or $0.42 per share for the same period last year. After taking the notable items into account, our normalized FFO for the quarter was $15.5 million or $0.45 per share, which represents an increase of 70% [ph] from the prior quarter. Our reported AFFO for the quarter was $15.4 million or $0.45 per share as…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We’ll go first to Peter Lunenburg at JMP Securities.

Peter Lunenburg

Analyst

Hi guys, great quarter. I guess this one is more for Mark, but is there any change -- are you guys seeing any change in the transaction market dynamics today or kind of what’s making you guys more comfortable? And then any commentary on the pipeline change quarter-over-quarter?

Mark Olear

Chief Operating Officer

Is that specific to -- which pipeline, the acquisition activity we mentioned or…?

Peter Lunenburg

Analyst

Yes, acquisition.

Mark Olear

Chief Operating Officer

We’re seeing a healthy activity of offerings various sizes and various geographies that at least meet our initial screening feasibility. And so, the pool of opportunities continues to grow. And keeping in line with our underwriting discipline we’re getting closer to portfolios and individual deals that might make sense for us.

Peter Lunenburg

Analyst

Okay. And then any additional info on the six new leases signed during the quarter or kind of the tenant mix you guys are looking at going forward?

Mark Olear

Chief Operating Officer

Yes. It’s mix of national and regional more traditional retail tenants. They range from automotive uses to quick service restaurants, in those categories. They’re coming online and they’re advancing through our development process with regard to the feasibility and entitlements and we hope to get those in service and late 2017 and early 2018.

Peter Lunenburg

Analyst

Great. Thanks so much.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We’ll go next to Brett Reiss at Janney Montgomery Scott.

Brett Reiss

Analyst

Good morning, gentlemen. Could you give us some more color of how the pipeline of redevelopment projects look going forward? I mean, how many do you have on the plate for 2017 and how many do you think you can complete?

Christopher Constant

Chief Executive Officer

So, Brett, we’ve done so far this year is the 12 leases we’ve signed plus the one project that we’ve put in the service beginning in the year. What we’ve said publicly about the overall scope of our redevelopment is that we think over time we can redeveloped somewhere between 5% and 10% of our portfolio by number of properties. And I guess last thing I would say to that is that as I think you can observe from the progress we’ve made this year, development projects take time. So that it will be multi-year plan on our part to redevelop that 5% to 10%; it’s not going to be felt in the near-term.

Brett Reiss

Analyst

Okay, great. If the infrastructure gets built out for battery recharging stations, is that an opportunity or threat to Getty?

Christopher Constant

Chief Executive Officer

The electric vehicle charging world certainly approached a number of operators in our sector including some of our tenants; it is yet another avenue for the operators to drive traffic into the stores and inside the store is where the higher margin product is. So, I would say it’s more of an opportunity for them.

Brett Reiss

Analyst

The navigation of that is -- it’s really the tenant that handles that or is there any help or aid that you would give or it’s really left up to the individual tenant operator to figure out?

Christopher Constant

Chief Executive Officer

It starts with the operator, Brett, but obviously if there is a way for us to invest and improve our profits, we would evaluate that.

Brett Reiss

Analyst

Okay. And the trends on environmental costs of lat have trended down. Do you think that that can carry through -- can I extrapolate that out into the future?

Christopher Constant

Chief Executive Officer

If you recall, couple years ago, we put a fairly sizable reserve for future environmental liability on our balance sheet. And what I think you are saying is that we were somewhat accurate in terms of the amount that we put on the books. And that’s why you’re seeing environmental liability trend downward.

Brett Reiss

Analyst

Great. Good quarter. And thank you for fielding my questions.

Christopher Constant

Chief Executive Officer

No problem.

Operator

Operator

And there are no further questions at this time. I’ll turn the conference back over to management for any concluding remarks.

Christopher Constant

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you. Well, thank you everybody for joining us for the third quarter. We look forward to talking to everyone again in 2017 when we report our results for the fourth quarter and year-ended 2026.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And that does conclude today’s conference. Again, thank you for your participation.