ToniAnn Sanzone
Analyst · BMO Capital Markets
Thanks, Jason, and good morning, everyone. Starting with earnings. AFFO per share was $1.30 for the first quarter, which represented a $0.13 or 11.1% increase compared to the first quarter of last year. Accretive investment activity continues to drive our year-over-year growth, having closed $2.8 billion of investments since the start of 2025 at accretive cap rates and healthy spreads to our funding sources. As Jason mentioned, given the pace and volume of our investment activity to start the year as well as the strength of our pipeline, we've raised our expectations for both full year investment volume and AFFO per share. As outlined in our earnings release, we've increased our investment volume guidance to a range of $1.5 billion to $2 billion, which, together with lower estimated potential rent loss results in an aggregate $0.03 increase to our AFFO per share guidance at the midpoint. For 2026, we therefore currently expect AFFO per share to total between $5.16 and $5.26, implying 4.8% growth at the midpoint. Turning to our portfolio, starting with dispositions. First quarter asset sales generated gross proceeds totaling $163 million. This included the sale of the 11 remaining operating self-storage properties in our portfolio for $75 million. With that, we've now completed our exit from operating self-storage, further simplifying our business and generating aggregate proceeds of approximately $860 million at an average cap rate just below 6%, which we've recycled accretively into higher-yielding investments. Contractual same-store rent growth for the quarter was 2.4% year-over-year with both fixed and CPI-linked rent escalations averaging 2.4%. For the full year, we continue to expect contractual same-store rent growth to average in the mid-2% range. We continue to achieve strong rent escalations on our new investments. About 3/4 of our investment volume during the first quarter had leases with rent increases tied to CPI, while the other 1 quarter had fixed rent escalations averaging 2.8% annually. Comprehensive same-store rent growth for the quarter, which takes into account the impacts of re-leasing, rent collections, vacancies and lease restructurings was 1% with the variance to contractual driven largely by the impact of vacancy during the quarter. Given the nature of this metric, comprehensive same-store rent growth can vary from period to period. often due to onetime items or properties moving in and out of the same-store pool. Historically, our comprehensive same-store rent growth has trailed contractual by approximately 100 basis points on average and we believe that's a reasonable estimate for the portfolio over the long term. Portfolio occupancy at the end of the first quarter was 98.1%, up slightly from the fourth quarter and is expected to improve further as we continue to retenant or dispose of vacant assets. Our portfolio continues to perform well with no new material changes in credit throughout the portfolio so far this year. We've, therefore, lowered the potential rent loss assumption embedded in our AFFO guidance to between $8 million and $12 million or about 50 to 75 basis points of ABR, down from our prior estimate of $10 million to $15 million. And based on what we see today, we would still characterize our revised assumption as conservative. Our first quarter re-leasing activity resulted in the overall recapture of 103% of prior rents. On 1.4% of portfolio ABR and added just over 5 years of weighted average lease term. Other lease-related income for the first quarter was $10.5 million in line with our expectations and includes termination income related to redevelopment work that commenced this quarter. Based on our current visibility, we expect other lease-related income for the second quarter to be in line with the first quarter. and to total in the low to mid-$30 million range for the full year as we continue to proactively manage our portfolio. Non-reimbursed property expenses totaled $14.6 million for the quarter. which includes approximately $1.2 million of demolition costs related to redevelopment work, as we discussed on our last call. We expect to incur additional demolition costs in the second quarter which would increase nonreimbursed property expenses further before resuming to a more normalized run rate in the back half of the year. For the full year, we continue to expect nonreimbursed property expenses to total between $56 million and $60 million. G&A expense totaled $27.3 million for the first quarter, in line with our expectations since the first quarter tends to be the highest of the year for G&A given the timing of payroll taxes. For the full year, we continue to expect G&A to total between $103 million and $106 million with the second quarter resuming a more regular run rate. Moving to our balance sheet. We were very active in the capital markets during the first quarter, accessing close to $2 billion of capital across a variety of sources, taking proactive steps to further strengthen our balance sheet and ensure we're well positioned to fund our projected investment activity. In February, we issued EUR 1 billion of senior unsecured notes, comprising to EUR 500 million tranches with coupon rates of 3.25% on a long 5-year maturity and 3.75% on a long 9-year maturity. We executed during a particularly attractive window with proceeds used to address our April Eurobond maturity, which we repaid in March to rehire EUR 215 million term loan and to increase our overall liquidity to support externally driven growth. In March, we amended our credit agreement, replacing the euro term loan I just mentioned with the new Canadian dollar term loan at a current all-in rate of approximately 3.1%, with proceeds used to fund our Canadian investment activity. At the same time, we were able to improve our overall revolver pricing grid by 5 basis points at all levels, incrementally lowering our cost of debt. We also successfully executed in the equity markets during the quarter, selling 6.9 million shares on a forward basis, representing total gross proceeds of $497 million. This, combined with the forward equity we sold under our ATM program in the second half of 2025. And gives us enough runway to execute investment volume above the top end of our current guidance range. At the end of the first quarter, we settled 3.45 million shares under forward sale agreements for net proceeds totaling $247 million, leaving us with 9.7 million shares remaining to be settled, representing anticipated net proceeds of $653 million as of the end of March. Driven by our capital markets activity, we ended the first quarter with substantial liquidity totaling approximately $2.8 billion, including availability on our credit facility, cash on hand and unsettled forward equity. Our remaining debt maturities this year are minimal, primarily comprising the $350 million of U.S. bonds we have maturing in October. The weighted average interest rate on our debt remains low at 3.1% for the first quarter and is expected to remain in the low to mid-3% range for the full year after taking into account our recent bond issuances. Net debt to adjusted EBITDA ended the quarter at 5.3x, inclusive of unsettled forward equity. Excluding the impact of unsettled forward equity, net debt to adjusted EBITDA was 5.7x, down from 5.9x at year-end and well within our target range of mid- to high 5x. Lastly, on our dividend. In March, we increased our quarterly dividend 4.5% year-over-year to $0.93 per share, maintaining a healthy payout ratio of 72%. Based on our current stock price, that equates to an attractive annualized dividend yield of over 5%. We expect our dividend to continue to grow in line with our AFFO growth, while maintaining a conservative payout ratio. And with that, I'll hand the call back to Jason.