Aaron Halfacre
Analyst · Alliance Global Partners
So yes, on a go-forward basis, the recycling will -- as I mentioned in January, we will start to pick up in earnest. I'd say the stuff that's happened in the last 2 or 3 weeks might -- is going to cause -- it's hard, right? It's hard for pipelines. It's hard for dispositions because you've got rates just gyrating all over, and that just really stings confidence for buyers and sellers in general. And I think appetite is always there, but it's hard. It's just hard. If you're a buyer, you're pricing in a huge margin of safety because you could be wrong. And if you're a seller, you don't want to sell and do a deal that you would regret literally 30 days later, right? And so the landscape has changed a lot. So I think -- the near term, it's a little bit harder, a little bit cloudier, but it's not -- candidly, it's not any different than before. But let's assume that the trend long term, barring $200 barrels of oil is that we will eventually find REITs returning to favor. I think all of us here on the call probably presume this at some point. It's certainly been long in the tooth, and we would have liked to see it sooner, but this is the narrative we have. So we will continue to honor our recycling. I think the way we're thinking about the recycling and this is a couple of different phases. The first phase is really looking at like we have some noncore assets, particularly office. Those are going to get -- we're going to get rid of those, right? There's only 2 office properties we have. One is Solar, which, as you know, went -- or not Solar. It's the property in San Diego that was formerly leased to solar turbines. They left at the end of September. That's why we had a little bit of falloff, which is inevitable in rents in the fourth quarter. That property is a great property to sell to an owner user. We've actually had quite a bit of interest for it. The interest has been above the appraised value of the property. The reason why we haven't sold it yet or the flip side, the reason why we haven't leased it is that it was or it is on the same technical parcel as our WSP property. So they're right next to each other. This is a property that was acquired by the prior legacy team. We've had it. We have been working through the bureaucratic process that is not uncommon in any county or city since 2021, 5 years now trying to get that parcel split in -- so that it has its own parcel and we can sell it separately. We are so close to that. We are at a final very detailed scrutiny like filing -- refiling parcel maps. I mean there could be little things like ADA slopes on things. All that stuff is done. We're super close to that. Once we have that in hand, then we will take that property to market. The reason why we haven't leased it is because, look, I think the owner -- the right user of that is an owner user or some sort of tenant who might want a 5-year lease or might want a gross lease or -- we want long-term industrial manufacturing tenants on that lease basis, you can't -- that's not going to fit that box. That box has a better use. So we will sell that one. That's an office property technically. It's really a flex space. If you look at it now from when it was before, it's like completely open, clean shell, it's ready to go, right? So that will get sold. My guess right now, if you were to put a gun to my head, that's like, call it, $7 million to $8 million, right? So it's not a huge number. The other office property is OES. OES has this purchase option. We're talking to them. They -- like it's a blue -- I mean that's an investment-grade tenant, but it's a government, right? That's got -- we think that's a super sticky asset, but it's not a net lease manufacturing asset. So we're going to -- and it is office. It's a balancing act we've waited. We don't -- if we sold it 2 years ago, I'd probably sell like a 10 cap. I mean who wants to do that when you've got really good rent that's coming in. And so we have to be patient. But at some point, you're like, okay, you got to should or get off the pot. And so we'll clean that one up. And that's -- that will happen ideally by the end of the year. I don't -- we're going to be thoughtful about the timing. We're not going to force it, but it's moving forward so no longer to wait. So that's the obvious part. People ask about the Kia dealership. It's a noncore asset. That one is -- the conundrum of that one, that is a layup to recycle, right? We've seen interest in that one, not offers, but interest at or below the cap rate that it's appraised at. It's a very attractive asset, but it's a big one. It's $70 million, call it, property. That was a 1031 -- I mean excuse me, an UPREIT transaction from about 5 years ago. So we have a really low tax basis on that one. So it's super sensitive. And so if you're going to sell it, you have to make sure you already know what to buy. And to buy, I don't want to buy a $70 million industrial manufacturing facility. I would be better served buying sort of 3 $23 million industrial manufacturing facilities and rolling it into it, right? And so that will be an accretive transaction because we'll talk about the forward pipeline here in a bit. But that cap rate that it's selling at, we would sell the Kia is at least and if not more, 100 basis points tighter than what we can redeploy it. So that would be generated. But we have to line that up because you can't just take it to market. You would get bids undoubtedly. A lot of those bids would be fast closing bids. And then you would be left with a short window to 1031 designate. So we're -- we'll be patient on that one in terms of noncore. That will happen when we find the right target to roll it into. So setting that noncore aside, obviously, we move the office. And then from there, we have a lot of short WALTs. And our short WALT philosophy is that we will do our darnest to see if they will extend. We will have conversations with them. We are starting to have those conversations if they're willing to extend and not just extend like 2 years, like they can really give us something that makes us decide we might want to keep it for longer term or if they don't, realizing that let's just clean up the WALT. Even though they're great tenants, I think our goal is -- our vision is let's get to a rock-solid portfolio long term. We understand that as leases get shorter and you see this in sort of O and W.Carey, that you get down to the option periods and CFOs and things like that typically just -- they just exercise 5-year renewals, 5-year renewals, they exercise their option periods. That's normal. But we have a period of time right now that we can positively -- have a positive arb by selling certain assets, even if they're shorter WALT and creating more AFFO by reallocating them into longer WALT and having a more solid portfolio. So we'll spend time this year looking at -- Northrop was one of those properties -- we got an unsolicited offer that came in. It was worth our time. It was worth our energy. We gave them -- we were patient with it. We were not in rush for them to do their due diligence. We were not in rush for them to close because we do need to roll it into a replacement property ideally. There's other uses for it, too. I won't get into that, but we could use that money fungibly, but that was one that is an example. That's a property that it's a short WALT. We got an offer that was compelling and we took it. So that's on the plate. We will see more of that activity. Separate from that phase is we have a few industrial credits that I would probably like to recycle through. There are nothing wrong with them. They're perfectly fine. They're just smaller. They're less institutional. And so they would -- I think recycling those at the right time, and that might be this year, it might be early next will allow us to just clean ourselves up that much more. And when I say clean up, it doesn't mean more dirty. It just means I want to polish it as best we can because I think the process that we've been through with these offers and the interest and -- it's helped us say, hey, if we do these things and extract the value for our shareholders, then we're going to be in a really solid position. Outside of that, we have a few -- and I mentioned this before in January, sort of some opportunistic assets that are great assets. They may not be manufacturing assets. They are certainly lower cap rate assets that at the right time, if we got ready or we had clearly identified things to buy, we would roll those as well, right? And so you will see more activity over the course of the year, barring something bigger and strategic happening, you'll see more activity in the course of this year. And yes, we're not -- those weren't just words, those were actions that we're going to take. I think the interesting thing about all this is they're all -- as I mentioned before, they're all tax sensitive in terms of we have low basis. If we don't redeploy them in 1031, investors are going to have taxable events. And we just -- that's not how you're supposed to manage the REIT. So we're trying to be thoughtful about that. But -- so the selling of the assets is actually pretty easy. You can happen pretty quickly and you -- a lot of brokers ready to go. If you put a property on there, you probably are sold in 60 days if you really wanted to, but comfortably 90. The problem is finding replacement properties that line up. And I'd say over the course of our journey, I've gotten and the team has gotten a lot more selective in the terms of you want really good manufacturing products. So the product that they're manufacturing has got to be really good. We've gotten that right. You want to make sure that the lease structure is really good. You want to make sure that the financials of that tenant are really good. You would ideally like that tenant to only have one source of manufacturing, which is your thing or you have control all their manufacturing so that you can't get rejection, make sure you proceeding, God willing if it ever happens, but you're addressing that through credit. And you'd also really like to have good location as best as you can. And then on top of that, a good cap rate. Those are a lot of fine wish list, and you can't be the princess and the pea about it. You have to really be compromised in marginal areas if you have to, but we don't have to right now, and we've been patient. But the pipeline has been episodic. It's been erratic. We started to see pipeline come out in January. Some of it is just like we still -- sometimes we're still waiting for the OMs, right? They're like, and it's like the OEMs haven't come out. Well, why? Because the person on the other end is concerned about selling, right? We might want to be bidding with a margin of safety. They're wanting to sell with security. But they know they're going to get -- this is a stable ground and that they go and go out in the market, they're going to execute on what they think they are and in fact, they're going to just change on them. So it's a little bit of weird time in that regard. And so we're looking at our box, the buy box, making sure we're looking -- we're looking at a lot of things. I'd say price talk about overall is interesting. If you go look at the $22.19 NAV per share we have, which like everyone has an NAV, right? Some people use a street analyst NAV. Most REITs have an internal NAV of some sort. We have -- our internal NAV happens to be done by a blue-chip appraisal firm, Cushman & Wakefield, and they've been doing it for, I don't know, 6 years. there's consistent history if you go piece it together. And so you're like, appraisals are full of s***, right? They don't -- they're not real, but they actually are pretty indicative. I would tell you that we have -- I can think of 3 properties in our portfolio in the last 6 months where we have received unsolicited offers that are at or below the cap rate that is implied in our appraisals. So -- and we've all -- I think we all understand, particularly now in this environment that there's a fairly large disconnect between private real estate and public real estate and public real estate is just taking it on the chin repeatedly. So we understand that. So that $22.19 NAV, I think round numbers, it's an implied 6.8% cap rate. First, you think, well, you're not trading anywhere near that, and we're not. And price talk, we've seen and the price talk is maybe like an appraisal, it is indicative of something. It doesn't mean it's transactional, but it's in the range of possible. There's a $200 million portfolio going out there today. It has a tenancy that's very similar to our largest tenancy in terms of the sector. And it's got -- they're talking 6.75% on that one. We saw another property where someone was talking 6.75%. Now that's broker talk. They're leading a little bit. Do I think it's going to trade there? Probably it's going to trade wider than that, might be 7%, might be 7.25%. But clearly, you're seeing stuff between 6.75% and 7.5% right now. You just got to find the right thing. Sometimes you'll find something that might -- if something is 7.5% and it's just dog doodoo, you don't want to pay 7.5%. If something is great and it's a 7%, then you can do it. But sometimes there's dog doodoo that 6.75% too. Everyone is trying to do their own thing. But I would say that the pipeline right now, and it's a little bit of a strobic effect when you see it, sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not, like back on, it's tighter than it was a year ago. It does feel tight to me. Whereas a year ago, I was probably saying 7.5% to 7.75%, now the talk has gotten tighter. I think that might be a little bit of the optimism that we saw 3 or 4 weeks ago. And now I'm not really hearing calls for the last 2 weeks, but I think everyone is kind of holding their breath, right? I mean the first weekend with the conflict, we were like, oh, is this going to be like the last time where we just bombed them and then we went back to our business. And then no, it's not extended. And then we've gotten all as a collective, gotten ADHD. We're like, oh, no, it's been an 18-day war. I mean, historically, we had wars that lasted for years. So I don't know if you can hold your breath on this one. It might be over soon, it might not be. It's certainly volatile, and you certainly got to stick to your knitting. But it's a long-winded way of saying that we see opportunity. We're looking at it. We're just being extremely thoughtful. It takes an inordinate amount of patience, which is very hard to do. It's very hard to do. It's not fun. It's not sexy. It's -- I wish I was an AI company. That would be fun. But we're not. So sorry for the long-winded answer. I hope that helps.