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Realty Income Corporation (O)

Q4 2010 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 10, 2011

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Realty Income fourth quarter 2010 earnings conference call. During today’s presentation all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation the conference will be open for questions. (Operator instructions) This conference is being recorded today Thursday, February 10, 2011. I would now like to turn the conference over to Tom Lewis, CEO of Realty Income. Please go ahead.

Tom Lewis

CEO

Thank you, Douglas, and good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our call where we will review our operations for the year and for the fourth-quarter of 2010. I have in the room with me today Gary Malino, our President and Chief Operating Officer; Paul Meurer, our Executive Vice President and CFO; John Case, our Executive Vice President and Chief Investment Officer and Tere Miller our Vice President, Corporate Communications. As always, I must say during this we will make certain statements that may be considered to be forward-looking statements under Federal Securities Law. The company’s actual future results may differ significantly from the matters discussed in any forward-looking statements. We will disclose in greater detail on the company’s Form 10-K, the factors that may cause such differences. As we usually do, Paul will start with an overview of the numbers.

Paul Meurer

Management

Thanks, Tom. As usual, let me give a few highlights of our financial statements and results for the quarter and for the year, starting with the income statement. Total revenue increased 13.4% to $92.2 million this quarter versus $81.3 million during the fourth-quarter of last year. This increase in revenue reflected a significant amount of new acquisitions over the past year, as well as some positive same-store rent increases for the quarterly period of 1%. On the expense side, depreciation and amortization expense increased by $2.35 million in the comparative quarterly period, naturally, as depreciation expense increases our property portfolio continues to grow. Interest expense increased by approximately $3.75 million. This increase was due to the $250 million of senior notes due 2021, which we issued in June of last year. On a related note, our coverage ratios remained strong with interest coverage at 3.3 times and fixed charge coverage at 2.7 times. General and administrative or G&A expenses in the fourth-quarter were $5,785,000, up from last year on a comparative quarterly basis, but down about $400,000 from the third-quarter of this year. As we have mentioned over the past year, the increase in G&A this year is due largely to recent hiring and our acquisition in research department. We had reduced G&A in each of 2008 and 2009. During 2010, our G&A expense increased as our acquisition activity increased, and then we invested some more in new personnel for future growth. Our current projection for G&A for next year 2011 is approximately $28.5 million, which will still represent only about 7% to 7.5% of total revenue. Property expenses were $1,925,000 for the quarter. These expenses are primarily associated with the taxes, maintenance and insurance expenses, which we’re responsible for on properties available for lease. Property expenses increased about 10%…

Tom Lewis

CEO

Thanks, Paul. What I will do is just run through kind of each facet of the business and then talk how we see 2011 shaping up. Let me start with the portfolio. The portfolio continued to perform very well during the quarter and for the year. I think operations continued to prove pretty much across portfolio and I believe that’s mostly true for not only us and the properties, but most of the tenants that are in the portfolio. We did not have any significant tenant issues that rose during the quarter and we have nothing on our radar currently relative to tenant issues. It seems to be a fairly stable portfolio that’s increasing modestly, as we move along. At the end of the quarters, our largest 15 tenants accounted for a little over 54% of our revenue, that’s down about 40 basis points from what it was in the previous quarter. The average cash flow coverage for those tenants is about 2.4 times, so very healthy overall, and all of them have positive cash flow coverage. Relative to occupancy, we ended the quarter 96.6% occupancy at 84 properties available for lease out of the 2,496 properties. That’s up 20 basis points from the third-quarter and down about 20 basis points versus the same period a year ago. During the quarter, we had 11 new vacancies that we leased or sold 11 properties. And since we added 163 properties to the portfolio, that’s how you get to 20 basis point increase to 96.6% occupancy. And I think going forward, looking at the first-quarter, I think we’ll see small but probably continued improvement in occupancy and I would say, flat to up another 10 or 20 basis points would be my best guess as of now, but very healthy. Same-store rents…

Operator

Operator

(Operator instructions) Our first question comes from the line of Lindsay Schroll with Bank of America. Please go ahead. Lindsay Schroll – Bank of America: Hi, guys. Can you discuss some of the reasons for increasing the capacity in the line of credit?

Tom Lewis

CEO

First, we wanted to redo the line of credit early just because we thought it was a good time, we wanted the capacity. But as we got into the second half of the year and started seeing the volume of opportunities increase and some of them being a little larger, we thought it’s prudent given the size of the Diageo earlier in year and then we were already working on the SuperAmerica and knew that if something else came around, it would be very helpful to add more capacity. So, the $425 million was a decent guess of what that size should be and then the $200 million of quoting on it I think gives us good flexibility to be working on a couple of things if we needed to do it and be able to close them and not be forced into the marketplace or to go after the term loan very quickly. Lindsay Schroll – Bank of America: Okay, great. And what are you seeing in terms of large portfolios in the marketplace?

Tom Lewis

CEO

As I mentioned, there is more and more, I think as you see more and more M&A activity, that’s really what it’s going to key off up and there were probably three, four or five in the second half of the year really moving later into the year that we were looking at, of which we were able to do some, and that volume is similar today. And they range in size anywhere from $50 million to $300 million, $400 million. And typically if you get 10 of those through the door, we’ll end up closing on a couple of them, but it’s hard to see how much. But it’s fairly active and M&A driven and just as I said earlier a few people who had some good size portfolios they have accumulated over the years, whether a developer or an institutional holder and if they hadn’t gone to market in the last few years because of the state of the economy and not a lot of people investing I think they are seeing it open up and thinking maybe it’s a good time to go. Lindsay Schroll – Bank of America: Okay. And last question. You mentioned I think that net triple net lease investments are becoming more mainstream from investor standpoint. So, do you think the level of competition is increasing or remaining the same? How do you see that playing out in 2011?

Tom Lewis

CEO

Yes, it’s very competitive out there. I wouldn’t want to say it any other way, there’s a lot of capital floating around trying to find a home. I think as long as I’ve been in this business, there’s always been ourselves or maybe one other people out actively buying. And then there is usually, every few years, a marginal buyer that needs to put capital out and they’re out there being very aggressive. I can’t think of a time when that wasn’t the case, and it’s a case today. And then I think you’re seeing more of some institutional players that might not have been doing triple net that are today. So, there’s a lot of capital out looking at it. Each of these companies have different characteristics. So, I think it will be very competitive this year, but I think we’ll be able to hold our own given our cost to capital. Lindsay Schroll – Bank of America: All right. Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jeffrey Donnelly with Wells Fargo. Jeffrey Donnelly – Wells Fargo: Good afternoon, guys.

Tom Lewis

CEO

Hi, Jeff.

Gary Milano

Analyst · Jeffrey Donnelly with Wells Fargo

Hi, Jeff. Jeffrey Donnelly – Wells Fargo: Tom, how do you think net lease, I guess initially yields will respond to the prospect of rising interest rates over the next few years. Do you think they will resist some degree of increases or you think it’s going to be sort one for one rise?

Tom Lewis

CEO

That’s a great question. Traditionally, when interest rates moved to some degree one way or the other, there was generally a pretty good lag before the property started moving cap rates, and that’s whether they were going up or down. I think that would be the case. But if you look maybe six months to 12 months beyond interest rates really starting to move, you’ll see cap rates starting to move also. But having them through this now a number of times, if you saw 100-odd basis points increase in interest rates, I think you’ll see cap rates go up 10 or 20 basis points for six months and then start catching up. I think they would eventually. Jeffrey Donnelly – Wells Fargo: How do you think about your own cost of capital in that scenario, because right now you enjoy a fairly widespread versus where private market initial yields are on net lease. Have you look at sort of how Realty Income has made its average cost of capital response to changing interest rate?

Tom Lewis

CEO

That’s an equation with multiple inputs and outputs. But it’s interesting if that increase in interest rate is due to higher inflation, in anticipation of inflation, as you know, capital flows adjusted that and real estate is one of the places they go to, so you could see an environment where maybe a debt cost might be rising, but on the equity side for a while at least you might get the benefit of some additional flow. But overall, when I look at it, I think cost to capital will probably go up and would probably go up a little faster than cap rates would and that would be margins would come in or spreads would come in. I mentioned today, our equity cost of capital were about 175 to 200 basis points spread, and I think that gets narrowed because if you look at the last 16 years, it’s only been 105 basis points. So, taking the opportunity now to acquire if you can find the right thing, this is the time to do it, but there is enough spread out there right now that you could see the spread close between our cost of capital and smart cap rates and it still be pretty good time to acquire for a while.

Gary Malino

Analyst · Jeffrey Donnelly with Wells Fargo

The other thing, Jeff is on the expense side obviously, we have no variable rate debt, so we would not get hurt from a standpoint of any current cost on the debt rising that might not be the case for others. And then our property expenses are naturally going to not be as affected because we’re triple net. So in terms of the existing portfolio and our existing cost structure, rising inflationary environment does not hurt us. And then as Tom mentioned, if debt rates go up a little bit, we think that (inaudible) product could be more competitive as long as they don’t rise dramatically, we like the debt market to be alive and well for our tenants and for folks out there doing transactions.

Tom Lewis

CEO

Jeff, one other thing too is, given spreads got as wide as they did this year, I wouldn’t say it was a campaign, but I would say one of the things we’re looking at is, saying, this is a good chance to move up to credit curve, add some diversity to the portfolio relative to some investment grade tenants, and give them a large spread, still have a good spreads to grow their earnings. If you saw interest, if cost of capital going up, it probably causes to do less of that and return more to our traditional things. So we may be able to maintain the spreads a little bit for a while, but ultimately interest rates go up, cap rates will lag it and I think everybody participates in them. Jeffrey Donnelly – Wells Fargo: That’s helpful. I guess one last question is, after you did the Diageo deal last year, you talked a little bit about being more open to, I would call hard assets where I guess I’ve characterized this and I will (inaudible) may be just not detail-oriented, but where you felt like the EBITDA from those assets was inseparable [ph] from the properties operation itself, like farm land or factories and vineyards and things of a such. Have you guys made any headway on assets like those, if you have to target for what I guess I just maybe call them non-retail assets in your portfolio?

Tom Lewis

CEO

We wouldn’t mind, and I really look at this over a period of 10 years, kind of widening out the net of it in the portfolio, so very slowly, we start looking at some other areas. Let me kind of go on for just for a minute. It’s interesting. We have six industries and we went public, we are in 32 today and I’d like 40 or 50 if I could, because the real game is allocating capital where people need it and as time goes on, different industries, different need more or less money. While retail will continue to be huge, I think the consumer maybe a little less positive in future years than they were in the past, given they levered up their balance sheets pretty well. And there was a huge amount of new store growth, and we just see a more moderate environment kind of looking into the future, and given that net leases become a little more mainstream, it probably make sense to widen that out, if you can find investments in other areas that have very similar characteristics to support your underwriting. So, I think really forward is if you look at what we’ve done, traditionally, we’re looking for tenants that have multiple cash flows and retailers with multiple stores. If you look at Diageo, it’s somebody with 65 consumer brands in 105 countries. So, the same word owning is not really relying on that fit. That’s the one cash flow stream they have. If you look in other areas if they are not large owners of real estate as a very critical part of their business, probably doesn’t make sense, but when you get the key for us is that the real estate is absolutely necessary in generating the revenue and EBITDA and…

Gary Malino

Analyst · Jeffrey Donnelly with Wells Fargo

We started thinking about this about four years or five years ago. And the kind of first thing is, if you look at the company, we’ve kind of followed the baby boomers over the years. And so, you sit around and just off the top of your head, you go, okay, how old is this large group of demographics and what’s in the future, adult day care, drug stores, health and fitness, health food, medical equipment, that type of things you start thinking, but then it really happens slower than that. So, while I think it will happen, I don’t think it’s going to be anything way out there. We started looking at lines four years or five years ago, did the research, didn’t think we’ll get there, and then Diageo came up. We also did some additional Diageo in the fourth-quarter, about $30 million worth, but beyond that, I don’t know not else we do in wine. So, we really don’t have wine target. I think it’s just being open to two things that come across our desk that fit the characteristics. Jeffrey Donnelly – Wells Fargo: I’m sure you’d like to do due diligence on the golf course, so…?

Gary Malino

Analyst · Jeffrey Donnelly with Wells Fargo

I’d love to do the due diligence but I doubt I’d like to invest. Jeffrey Donnelly – Wells Fargo: Thank you, guys..

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Gregory Schweitzer [ph] with Citigroup. Please go ahead. Gregory Schweitzer – Citigroup:

Hi, guys.

Analyst

Tom Lewis

CEO

Hi, Greg.

Analyst

Gregory Schweitzer – Citigroup: I had a couple of questions on the SuperAmerica deal. Perhaps you could walk us through how you are comfortable and underwrite, any potential environmental concerns that went along with the same-stores and SuperAmerica (inaudible)?

Tom Lewis

CEO

As you know we’ve been in that industry for nine or ten years before we did that about 70% of revenue and done a lot of transactions. It really starts for us is the risk in that business changed a fair amount of number of years ago when everybody in America that operates a gas station or convenience store that sold gas had to replace their tanks and put in new double vault tanks with alarms and so I think that game changed a little bit. And then secondarily, a lot of studying over time to see how much environmental liability really comes out of gas stations to convenience stores, which is a lot less than you would think. The next thing then is working with a large enough entity that is going to basically take on that liability for you, which all of the tenants do their first responsible for it rather than us, so, as long as you have a viable tenant, it’s not you. You then go out and do phase ones, you look at the history, and then very often what we do is require the tenant most of the time or all the time to have environmental insurance above and beyond just indemnifying us. We also look very carefully at each state that we invest in and watch their situation. Do they have a fund, who would have access to it, under what circumstances, then we carry our over own environmental liability insurance which we’ve never had to use. So, if you work through all of that and you look at the history of convenience stores, particularly when they are leased to a larger entity there has been, we really haven’t had evidence of environmental liability in this industry. But that’s kind of how you got there. And in this particular case, this obviously was a spin-off the division at Marathon Oil, which included refinery and a pipeline and a very large support services and 160 plus convenience stores. So, a large public company like that particularly in these days of SarbOx has a lot of control. So, if you walk through all of that we get pretty comfortable and I don’t know if I left anything out, Paul? Gregory Schweitzer – Citigroup: Got it. Thanks. And apart from the locations, do you have any insights on what differentiated these (inaudible) Speedway brands that Marathon ended up keeping?

Tom Lewis

CEO

I think it was more of a geographic movement tied to the pipeline and the other operations, and over as you’ve seen in recent years it was kind of the trend from the major royal kind of moving out of retail and focusing on the other end of their operation. But I really don’t think there was a lot. If you look at these convenience stores, they are the poster child for what we look for in the industry. They are first of all, over an acre of land. And as you know, you want both the convenient store and gas station, so you can amortize to cash flows over one rent, and these averaged 1.14 acres. Second thing in that business is you could see a lot of convenience stores of maybe 800 or 1,000 square feet, but, until you get a closer to 2,000 square feet, it’s hard to really merchandise those stores effectively, and the industry about 30-year revenue and two-thirds of your profit book comes from the convenience stores. So, to the extent that you can get larger stores, they can be effectively merchandised and these average 3,500 square feet, which were on the large side of what we bought, and that 6.5 multi pump dispensers and the card readers and everything you would see. The other thing though is, there are not new stores, the average age is about 20 years old which is surprising given the size to that type of size is not typical back then. All of them have basically being reengineered and lot of money put into them over the last seven years to eight years. For us, if you look at Speedway, there are similar large stores and those that are kind of the most valuable I think because of the revenue stream that can be thrown out from a larger store that can be merchandise are what people look for the industry and these had them. I think it was more geographic. This one was unusual for us, and typically when we do a portfolio spread out around a lot of state. And in this one, there was I think 160 convenience stores that came with it, of which we bought 135 and the vast majority in one metropolitan area, which is Minneapolis. So, if you look at this size of store concentrated in a metropolitan area and we were able to get them at about $1.8 million per copy we felt very strongly that they were good stores. I don’t it was choice of these were Speedway for them, but I don’t know you’d have to ask them. Gregory Schweitzer – Citigroup: Okay. One more in that line. What are the gas gallons sold metrics versus the national average?

Tom Lewis

CEO

They are higher but as you know we really can’t report our tenants operating numbers nor their financials. They get to do that but they were substantially higher which is something that we really look at and same with merchandize. I think it is very good purchase for TPG and ACON. Gregory Schweitzer – Citigroup: Okay, thanks so much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Dustin Pizzo with UBS. Please go ahead. Dustin Pizzo – UBS: Hey, thank you. Tom, as you are looking at acquisitions today and then 2011 what you currently have either under contract or under LOI?

Tom Lewis

CEO

I respectively reported what we bought at the end of the quarter. The exception we do to that is, if we have something big that we have tied out and we know that’s going to close and we are not in that situation today. So, like last year when you looked at 27 million 260, 12 million 400 its very, very difficult for us to know quarter-to-quarter, but we don’t report what we have under contract and have tied up because how you define that really drives what those numbers are and until you absolutely have it under contract in your (inaudible) and you have completed your due diligence we don’t for close. Dustin Pizzo – UBS: In the guidance the way that the acquisitions are factored in that are you assuming that they inevitably occur throughout the year?

Tom Lewis

CEO

Generally, what we do is assume that the majority will close at the end of the quarter, as a lot of times they do, so, we’ve just divided it up pretty much at the end of the four quarters throughout the year.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Omotayo Okusanya with Jefferies & Co. Omotayo Okusanya – Jefferies & Co.: Just a quick clarification. You mentioned that the rent coverage ratio on the portfolio right now is 2.4 times.

Tom Lewis

CEO

Yes. Omotayo Okusanya – Jefferies & Co.: That number, if I remember correctly, used to be at highest 2.7, correct?

Tom Lewis

CEO

Yes. Actually, that’s a very good memory. It was about three, four years ago, 2.77 I believe. That’s the number in ‘06 and then came up and was lower a couple of years ago. I think it was like 2.47 a couple of quarters ago and 2.42 is what it came in this time. Omotayo Okusanya – Jefferies & Co.: Could you talk a little bit about which particular industries are driving that average a little bit lower?

Tom Lewis

CEO

Okay, now you’re really going to challenge me, Omotayo, because while I have that stuff, trying to remember off the top of the head. It’s interesting, during the recession, I will tell you that it was, if you recall, we talked a lot about the RB business and our tenant net industry. What’s interesting, they’re now in the upper half in cash flow coverage and RB sales were up 48%. So I know that one flip-flop big the other way. I think restaurant continues to be challenged. That’s the industry that I think hasn’t gotten a lot of traction. The fast food guys have done pretty well, but outside of that, restaurants, while they have made improvements and they’ve rationalized their business and kept capital costs, while a lot of them had a chance now to fix their balance sheet, their business in no way has come roaring back, so I think those are the ones that if you look across, are probably the weakest. After that, everybody is looking pretty good. Omotayo Okusanya – Jefferies & Co.: So, just because of restaurants are not such a big part of your overall portfolio, it really skews the mix?

Tom Lewis

CEO

Bob about 17% and I was going to get the range, the cash flow coverage are somewhere around 1.5 and then go up in the high threes by tenant, so that’s kind of the range. Omotayo Okusanya – Jefferies & Co.: And then just given all the long competition you had mentioned increasing the available cash in the market. Are you so much surprised that 1031 transactions have not thought of coming back?

Tom Lewis

CEO

That’s a very interesting question and the answer is I don’t know if I’m surprised, but it’s a good observation that the money that’s floating around is in institutional hands and I think it speaks to the bifurcation that everybody is noticing in the economy that it’s very much have, have not society and those institutions that are large and can get access to capital out there and those that are smaller really struggle. So, given that’s the case, it’s kind of the same in our markets, so 1031 is soft but there is a number of institutional players with money.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Richard Moore with RBC Capital Markets. Richard Moore – RBC Capital Markets: Given all the capital time that you were talking about that is out there and then these other good ideas that you’d like to pursue for other sectors, other concepts. What do you think about selling some of your assets at a bigger pace than what you’ve done historically?

Tom Lewis

CEO

It’s interesting as we walk through there, if you get a let’s say an acquisition pipeline that’s very, very, very large then you can do it and it can be somewhat accretive and we haven’t really had the opportunity to do that too much in the past. It’s been modest sales. As we go forward looking in the portfolio, I don’t think it’s anything in the cards for this year, but it is something that we’re really thinking about relative to looking at various industries and lease durations and knew what opportunities are out there. But something that’s hanging in the back of our mind that, nothing that we see coming really for this year, unless all of a sudden we see a huge amount of acquisitions coming in. And then I think you can make some major move in the portfolio without upsetting the revenue stream too much. Richard Moore – RBC Capital Markets: I see, but even to take the opportunity to go up the credit curve a bit even with a little bit of loss of FFO or capital or cash flow it wouldn’t interest you to get rid some of these?

Tom Lewis

CEO

It would interest me, but after a very happily getting through the recession was stable FFO, I’d like to grow it a bit, get the payout ratio, down raise the dividends a bit, and that will give us a flexibility to start doing that. Richard Moore – RBC Capital Markets: And then this is the time of year went when retailers seem to have their difficulties if they’re going to have difficulties, how are you guys thinking about any troubled tenant exposure?

Tom Lewis

CEO

It’s interesting, you’re absolutely right, they go through the holidays. Of course, most of our portfolio is service-orient, not tradition or retail, the guys that are in the malls and really booking the huge Christmas sales. So, I think we’re less exposed to that, but we have seen January, February, March is the time, but there is really almost nothing going on in the portfolio. I did a scan of the major tenants out there and we have an absolute nothing come on our radar screen right now for this year, which is one of the reasons we’re fairly positive about things. Richard Moore – RBC Capital Markets: Last thing I had was there is obviously been some demand increase from the big box type retailers and others out there and I’m wondering how you’re coming on the 84 leases, obviously, you did some this quarter and it came back to 84. But what do you think going forward for the ones you have that are vacant that you’re trying to lease out?

Tom Lewis

CEO

We’ve actually made some good progress that it doesn’t show in the numbers because we had 11 in and 11 out, but one of things that’s happened is, you are right there is some demand on the larger size and so some other re-leases that we were able to do was on the larger space. As you know we calculate our vacancy by taking the number of vacant, 84 and divide it by the number of properties 2,496 and that gets you to the number. What we also track internally is the ones that are vacant is what percentage of the revenue they represented before they went dark. Generally they match up pretty evenly, but right now it’s 3.4%, just on a numerical from a vacancy standpoint, but it’s only 2.7 on a revenue side. So, we actually did, what we did move was some larger space, which helped us out in that. The numbers were actually little better than they look. Richard Moore – RBC Capital Markets: So the remaining ones ahead are smaller assets in general?

Tom Lewis

CEO

Yes, they are. There is a lot of child care hanging out in there on those numbers that we’re working on.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Todd Lukasik with Morningstar. Todd Lukasik – Morningstar: Just Paul quickly first, I don’t know if you got the lease termination fees for the quarter?

Paul Meurer

Management

Lease termination fees for the quarter, I’ll find it while we speak. Todd Lukasik – Morningstar: Other question I had followed it on with the interest rate question you guys fielded earlier. I’m just wondering what your expectations are with regard to inflation. If you want to hit on any other key points about how inflation impacts the portfolio performance and whether or not expectations of rising inflation rate would change? How you think about permanent capital between debt preferred and common?

Tom Lewis

CEO

Sure. I will let Paul answer that question you signed it and then I’ll come back.

Paul Meurer

Management

$350,000 for the quarter. Todd Lukasik – Morningstar: That’s quite a bit lower than run rate prior to that, right?

Paul Meurer

Management

Yes, I mean, let’s see, compared to quarter a year ago, that was about $80,000, but on a year-to-date basis, that’s actually down. We had that just under $500,000 this year for the year whereas we had over $700,000 in ‘09. One, it was stressed for some tenants, there was obviously some negotiations going on where they wanted to exit a lease early and that sort of thing. We’re not having as many of those discussions today.

Tom Lewis

CEO

Relative to kind of inflation and the impact on our thinking and capital structure and what we do? It’s interesting. I thought, we were going to have a major recession for about three years before we had one, so I think that there could be some inflation in the offering, but I’ve learned not to try and guess what it is. Just that we are more likely now to have it in the future perhaps than in the past, given monetary policy out there and what you’re seeing in commodities and some other areas. But it does. One of the things we’d like to do is really relates more to the impact than inflation might have on interest rates and higher interest rates, given how low we are and after 30 years of declining interest rates, trying to look forward long-term and assume that we’re more likely than not going to see increasing interest rates, given how low things are and so we have more of a prejudice even than we had in the past for utilizing equity, although I’m sure at some point, we’ll use debt. If you look into last few years, our debt on the balance sheet has started to decline. Debt-to-market cap like 26 something. And we’d like to bring that down further because I think in the next year or two or three, everything’s just fine. But if you start looking even in modestly levered balance sheet like ours and refinancing three, four, five years down the road higher interest rates, you can have some FFO pulled out of the numbers, and to the extent that you continue to have debt on, that could be sizable. So I think it really leads us towards trying to keep a very modest amount of leverage on the…

Tom Lewis

CEO

We’ve used preferred. If you look at the differential in price today, it’s substantial. If you do a kind of the forward FFO yield, grossed up for issuance on equity, you get a little over 6% today, not much and fall off your issue preferred. Todd Lukasik – Morningstar: We could do something inside of seven, but from an all in cost basis you are around 7.

Tom Lewis

CEO

So you give up 100 basis points today, but you kind of fix it. It could be attractive. We’d have to watch it, but I don’t think preferred will be a huge part of the capital structure, so I think we think equity first, preferred second and then debt when tactically it makes sense for us. Like Diageo, when it was a fairly large acquisition in the new area and we weren’t sure quite what the impact that marketplace was going to be, and we were able to finance first with debt and turns out the market was seem to be happy with what we bought, came back with equity and that’s kind of like we want to use debt, but we used both.

Operator

Operator

This does conclude Realty Income’s question-and-answer session. I’ll like to turn the conference back over to management for closing remarks.

Tom Lewis

CEO

Thank you everybody for taking the time today, and we’ll talk to you soon at one of the meetings out there, or hopefully at the next call. Thank you very much. Thank you, Doug.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today. We like to thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.