David Gladstone
Analyst · Singular Research. Your line is open
Okay. Thank you, Michael. Before I get started on the details of the event of the quarter, I’ll just give a brief overview of the nature of our business. This company invests in farmland which is often called an alternate asset and that's because these assets that we buy are considered to be relatively illiquid. And while the assets the company owns are relatively illiquid, your investments are in our stock and it's not since its traded on NASDAQ. So we think the company is essentially a natural resource company and we think the company has a low correlation to the overall stock market which is one of the benefits. Our business consists of owning high-quality farm land and leasing it to farmers. We typically don't farm any of the land ourselves but rather lease the farms to farmers and though we're currently operating one farm that we took over when two of the principal owners of the farmland operation passed away, the business began and that business began in bankruptcy. We typically don't do the farming. Our primary investment focus on the farms growing variety of high value fresh produce these are vegetables and berries, and annual row crops and with the secondary focus of farms growing more permanent crops such as almonds, blueberries, pistachios, wine grapes, and a few apples and cherries. These are permanent crops which are planted wants and then farmed for many years as they harvest the produce from those trees and grape vines. We like the fresh produce segment because it usually provides a greater return and has less volatility than other crops types. We look to buy crop land that's irrigated and has good access to water and we also look for ground that's excellent in soil. Soil has many attributes. Most people just look at it as dirt but you could wax and wane for a long time about all the ingredients in farmland. And the farmers we lease to are typically among the well established farmers in the growing regions wherein we prefer to keep the same farmer on the property for as long as possible because they know the nuances of operating that particular farm. So our objective is to be the long term real estate partner for all of the farmers so long as they want to be on the farm. Currently about 85% of our revenue comes from farms that are growing the types of foods you can find in either the produce section of the nut section or the local grocery store. We consider these foods to be among the healthiest type foods and we're seeing a growing trend toward organic among these groups. We do have some large organic farms. For example, we have a large organic potato farm in Colorado. About 45% of the fresh produce acreage is either organic or in transition to become organic and about 30% of the permanent crop is of the tree crops and those kind - that organic - that has about 30% organic. U.S. government has strict definition of organics, so we feel fairly comfortable that all of our farmers are following the strict definitions. We believe the organic section will continue to be a strong growth area. In addition, just so you know about 90% of our farms grow food that are GMO-free. We currently own about 63,000 acres of farmland, 75 farms in nine states across the United States. The value of these farms is about $537 million. Across our farmland holdings, we now have 19 different growing regions. We're growing about 40 different crops and we have leases on 53 different tenants, all but one of whom is unrelated to us. Diversification as you can see we're very heavy in diversification, is extremely important. We believe that a well diversified portfolio of farms growing lots of different types of crops in different locations provide additional security to our stockholders and their value of the stock and also our dividend. We still have only a few farms growing grain crops, like corn weeds, soybean because the U.S. grain prices are just too low to make a reasonable profit. There is just too much grain in the world today and as a result growers of these grain crops are continuing to have difficulty. We own a few farms in the Midwest for a majority of those who are growing things like the organic potatoes that I mentioned. The trend we continue to see in most of our growing regions is a steady decrease in the number of farms as the farms are being sold and converted to suburban and urban uses, and that's probably the main thing is I point out regarding the factors continuing to drive up the long-term values of most of the farmland. The amount of farms in these regions is relatively finite especially in California in the West, and there are no new farms being developed because there are no trees to cut down, no more land can be converted to farms. So all the arable land in many of these regions is already being farmed but now some of these farms are being converted to other uses such as housings, schools and factories and once they are converted to urban or suburban usage, it's almost never going back to farming. Water availability is another factor that drives rental rates and land values. Farmers are seeking farmland with water. It's not too difficult to get or too expensive to obtain and this is driving up rents as prices of land with a good wells and access to multiple sources of water is in high demand and that's why whenever we buy a farm we're always spending a huge amount of time and effort and due-diligence phase determining the water conditions to make sure the farms will have plenty of water for the long-term. We want to know that the water availability is sufficient enough to withstand extraordinary situation such as what happened in the drought in California a few years ago. And just a note about that, we didn't see any significant reduction in production or rents during that period of time in California. Finally, one other factor driving farmland values or to say it another way, to reduce value of the dollar is just continuing to go down in terms of value because it is printing so many dollars. And the government will tell you there's little inflation today but anyone buying food can tell you that food prices especially fresh produce prices have been going up steadily. Higher inflation in food prices is good for us and our farmers because they can make more money and this in turn is good for our land values because it allows us to earn more rents on our farms. Now about some recent activity. During the quarter we acquired two new farms 337 acres in two different states about $5 million, we’re about one small farm without a lease on it in place at the time of the acquisition which is the first time we've ever done that but we felt the value we were getting on the farm was too great to pass up and we expect to have a lease on debt on that farm during the second quarter. In fact it's pretty far along. Hopefully it signs soon. The other farm is a small blueberry farm in Michigan area. We know the area well and we know the tenant well. The initial yield or platform will be about 6.3%. As far as leasing activity during the quarter, we terminated lease on two of our farms in Arizona and immediately re-leased them to a new tenant. The current tenant is a much better than the one that we had on their - the one w had on their looks like it's going to go to bankruptcy, they’re heavy in corn. For these we changed the lease structure to get the new tenant onboard and the old leases were both fixed cash rent leases and the new leases are for lower cash rents on a current basis but they include revenue sharing component. That is when the harvest is finished and the harvest is done, we get a percentage of that revenue for the corn, that’s for all of most farms. So while our annual base rent on these farms will be a bit lower, we expect it in the annual proceeds from the participation will bring it back. I think that difference is about 200,000, is that right? The base rent effort. So we just have to make up the 200,000 with the participation. Each of these new leases is for one year which we believe will allow sufficient time to possibly reposition one of the farms from corn to a more profitable crop but if not it looks like the current farmer will keep farming and so we may be just fine. And I think it's important to note that we didn't incur any downtime on either these two farms during the re-leasing period, nor did we have to pay any tenant improvements which is pretty common in the business of REITs or leasing commissions. Looking ahead briefly only about 3% of the total minimum annualized rents from these leases that are expiring in 2018. I think we have about three of them. We've begun negotiation with attendance on all of these farms and expect to be able to renew the leases on all of them with the existing tenants and with no decrease in rent. We also are close to finalizing new lease on the strawberry farm in California that we think is currently - we're currently operating ourselves. So think we will be out of the farming business, come signing that lease in the near-term and given the nature of our farms, I think the future is strong and long-term for all of our properties that we have. Just to give you a quick update on the property we're farming ourselves. During the quarter we made about $2.5 million of revenue, crop sales and recorded an additional income of operations about 108,000. So a little bit below where we would have been had we continued to rent the farm out under the prior lease but we're hoping that the second quarter sales come in a bit stronger than plan. Berries sales are behind where we expected them in Southern California. We're also selling to the non-fresh marketplace. These are the companies that makes jams and juices, as well as freeze-dried berries for serial. The interesting thing about these buyers that we can give them all of the berries that we harvest not just the ones that go to the fresh marketplace. When you pick in strawberries for fresh marketplace, you can't pick the very ripe ones, they just thrown in the ditch because they’ll not make it to market but when you pick for the non-fresh market, you can pick the very ripe ones because it taken down the road to the processes, so there is no problem with that. On the equity side as you know, we launched a continuous offering of our new non-traded Series B preferred stock during the quarter. As we discussed on the last call, this is a very different from the typical overnight offering. These shares are going to be sold on the best efforts basis over the next five years so money will be coming in small manageable amounts. The ideas that this will allow us to invest the proceeds in new farms on a more real time manner as the money comes in. And after five years we will list the Series B preferred stock on NASDAQ so the shareholders will have liquidity. We look at this preferred security as a way to augment our long-term debt needs as it's a fixed coupon allowing us to lock in the spread, achieve the new investments that we've identified to acquire for these securities. However, getting the Series B preferred stock off the ground and onto a very selling platforms has been - well it’s just taken much longer than we ever expected so in the meantime we did a small common offering just about 1 million shares to pay down some of the debt and provide us with some more buying power. Well that's enough from my side. I’m going to change over to Lewis Parrish, he's our Chief Financial Officer talk about the numbers. Lewis?