Andy Blocher
Analyst · Raymond James
Thank you, Mark, and once again, thank you all for joining us on today’s call. In our earnings release published yesterday after market close, we reported net income of $0.03, core FFO of $0.28 and AFFO of $0.30 per diluted share for the third quarter. The portfolio’s annualized base rent grew to $92 million in the third quarter, up 55% from September 30, 2021. Interest expense increased to $3 million from $895,000 in third quarter 2021, due to higher borrowing costs and increased debt balances. G&A increased to $4.6 million in the third quarter, compared to $3.8 million from third quarter 2021, primarily due to building out our team to 32 employees. As Mark stated in his opening comments, we had an active third quarter with regards to our financing activities, opportunistically completing over $800 million of capital raising and refinancing. We completed a forward equity offering for 10.35 million shares in August. Similar to our last two offerings, the deal was upsized and underwriters exercise the shoe, demonstrating the continued support from investors on our strategy and execution. Following our equity deal, we completed a new $600 million sustainability linked credit facility. The new credit facility includes a $400 million revolver that matures in August 2026, subject to an extension option and replaces our previous $250 million revolver. The credit facility also features a new $200 million, five and a half-year term loan, set to mature in February 2028, which is fully hedged at 3.88%. If we were to hedged term loan today, the all-in rate would be above 5%. As part of the recast, we have made some notable enhancements to our credit facility. Our cap rate utilized for valuing our asset base decreased from 7.25% to 6.5%. Covenants have been adjusted to offer greater flexibility for our various approaches to acquisitions. And we added an investment grade pricing grid to reflect continued progress to becoming an investment grade unsecured borrower. In addition, we would like to highlight that in the lending environment where banks are being significantly more selective, NETSTREIT was able to secure three new banking relationships, giving further credence to our strategy and growth initiatives. Finally, we included an innovative sustainability feature as part of our credit facility, which allows us to benefit, if certain key performance indicators are met. If year-over-year improvements are made to the percentage of our annualized base rent from tenants with science-based target initiative commitments, as determined by our sustainability agent, we can see up to a 2.5 basis point reduction in pricing. The structure of this KPI is an innovative approach for retail net lease landlord to participate in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, as determined by science-based target initiatives and hopefully empowers more of our tenants to make reduction commitments as well. On September 29th, we settled all 4.5 million remaining shares from the January forward equity offering. We see net proceeds of $93.5 million. We did not settle any of the 10.35 million shares from our August forward equity offering and did not make any sales under our ATM program during the quarter. As a result of our latest financing activities, we have raised over $1 billion of capital this year and increased our liquidity position, allowing us to remain opportunistic in the current environment. At quarter end, we had total debt of $413.5 million outstanding, of which $375 million is from our fully hedged term loans, with an additional $30 million on our revolving line of credit and $8.5 million from the fixed rate secured mortgage we assumed as part of the Winn-Dixie acquisition. At September 30, 2022, our net debt to annualized adjusted EBITDA ratio was 2.5 times after giving consideration to the remaining shares outstanding under the forward sales agreement, well below our target range of 4.5 times to 5.5 times and 93% of our debt is fixed. With regard to our dividend, earlier this week, the Board declared a $0.20 regular quarterly cash dividend to be payable on December 15th to shareholders of record as of December 1st. Our AFFO payout ratio for the quarter was 67%. As stated in our earnings release, we are narrowing our AFFO per share guidance range to $1.15 to $1.17 per share. The new guidance range includes the following assumptions. Cash G&A is expected to remain in the range of $14.5 million to $15 million, which is inclusive of transaction costs. Non-cash compensation expense is expected to remain in the range of $5 million to $5.5 million. Our cash interest expense expectation has been narrowed from our previously stated $7 million to $9 million to $8 million to $9 million. Non-cash deferred financing fee amortization, which is not included in our cash interest expense remains unchanged at $800,000 to $900,000. And lastly, a full-year 2022 diluted weighted average shares outstanding, which includes the impact of OP units is updated from our previously stated 50 million shares to 52 million shares to now be in the range of 50 million shares to 51 million shares. As we finished the last half of 2022 and enter into 2023, we believe we are in an extremely enviable position. Our capital structure has significant undrawn liquidity, especially considering our size and 93% of our debt is fixed through maturity. In addition, on an apples-to-apples basis, our acquisition team has consistently proven their ability to source and close high quality assets through a variety of sources at yields demonstrably better than our competition. With all the right pieces in place, we believe we are well positioned to continue our track record of success and remain excellent stewards of shareholder capital. With that, we will now open the line for questions. Operator?