Okay, welcome everybody, and thank you for joining us today. My name is Brendan McCarthy. I'm an Analyst here at Sidoti, and I'm very pleased to welcome NewLake Capital Partners to our January Micro Cap Conference. Leading the discussions from the firm will be CEO Anthony Coniglio, and before I hand it over, a quick reminder that the Q&A tab is located right at the bottom of your screen. Feel free to type in any questions throughout the presentation, and we can save time for a Q&A at the end, but with that said, I will hand it over to Anthony.
Thank you, Brendan, and thank you everybody for joining us today. We have a presentation I'll be speaking to. We intend to take Q&A at the end, so I encourage you to ask any and all questions. You could read through the safe harbor at your convenience. What I want to get to you in the next 20 minutes is talk about the team that we've assembled for this opportunity, talk about the growth-oriented focus that is the cannabis industry, talk about the portfolio, talk about our financial position, and then get to your Q&A, so very quickly, what is NewLake? NewLake is a net lease REIT, a real estate investment trust focused exclusively on the cannabis industry. We purchase buildings from and for the cannabis industry, and when I say that, please think about a cultivation facility or a dispensary.
Cultivation facility is typically a 50,000 sq ft-100,000 sq ft industrial building that's been retrofitted for indoor cultivation of cannabis, and dispensaries are your retail outlets on the space. We acquire those properties from and for them, and we lease them back on a long-term basis to the operator at rates that are typically above market, given the variations in the industry and the nascency of the industry, and also given the credit risk profile. We were founded nearly seven years ago. We've deployed almost $500 million into the sector, and today we own 34 properties across 13 states. Excuse me, across 12 states with 13 different tenants. We have a weighted average yield of our portfolio of 13%. If you think about that from a real estate perspective, that is way above market in terms of what you would find for industrial and retail real estate.
We're nearly an unlevered REIT with only $7 million of credit out on our credit facility. We're in a net cash position, which is very unusual. In fact, we haven't been able to find another REIT that's as lightly levered as we are. But we also have a long duration on our portfolio. I talked about the above-market yield, but look at the duration. Over 12 years of remaining average lease term. And so we have a higher-yielding portfolio with a longer duration, which drives significant value for our shareholders. And as you can see in the lower right, we've delivered nearly 80% dividend growth since our IPO in 2021. And so cannabis real estate is a very difficult industry to focus on, and it's been important to assemble a team of people that have what we think are the requisite skill sets to be successful here.
That would be real estate, of course, given we're a real estate investment trust, but also cannabis and financial services. And so very briefly, if you look at the folks that we have involved, for example, Gordon DuGan, who is our chairman, over 30 years, over three decades of commercial real estate experience, having been at the helm of companies like W. P. Carey and Gramercy Property Trust, he brings a tremendous amount of wealth of real estate knowledge to our business, among others in the management team and on the board. From a cannabis perspective, we have individuals involved in our business and on our board that have been in and around cannabis since the beginning of the industry, quite frankly, state legal industry. And so what we've done is institutionalize the knowledge of the cannabis industry in order to make better decisions.
For instance, from the outset, we focused on states where there's limited licenses, and we think that drives significant value for our shareholders that we'll talk about in a few minutes. So let's focus on this growth industry that is the cannabis sector. And as you could see, cannabis has been growing for the last five years. In 2025 estimates, that will be around a $34 billion-$35 billion state legal industry. Now, you could see by the map that there are a number of states, and depending where you're sitting, you may be familiar or not familiar, a number of states that have implemented either a medical use program or an adult use program. But there continues to be growth opportunities because you have states such as Pennsylvania that is a medical-only state that we're waiting for that conversion to an adult use marketplace.
Florida would be another example where it's medical today, and we're looking for adult use. Even within the medical-only states like Texas or Georgia, historically, those have been very, very small medical programs. And with reform and with the advent, particularly in Texas, of some enhancements to that medical program, we expect to see that, in particular, the Texas program grow significantly over the next couple of years. And so when we talk about growth, we're talking about these medical programs evolving into more robust medical programs. We're talking about medical states converting to adult use states, and there still remain a number of states that don't have any medical program at all.
And so while most organizations believe that the cannabis industry as a whole is over $100 billion, if you include the illicit market, with the state legal market being only a third of that, there's still plenty of room to grow for the state legal marketplace. And we think we'll continue to see that growth for years to come. And a lot of that growth is going to be fueled by the changing dynamics, particularly around the younger cohort, the changing dynamics around alcohol and cannabis as a replacement for alcohol. And while 92% of our country sits in a medical market today, only about half of the country sits in an adult use market.
And so again, get back to that concept of cannabis is starting to replace alcohol, particularly in the younger cohorts, and we have over half of this country that still doesn't yet have a thriving adult use market. And so that's going to be part and parcel to fueling the growth of the industry for years to come. There are a number of catalysts that are going on for the cannabis industry. It's actually a really exciting place to be in and around cannabis. And on December 18th, President Trump signed an executive order directing the Department of Justice to finish the first bullet point on this page, to finish the rescheduling of cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III. Why is that important? It's the most important federal action, reform action on cannabis in decades.
As we sit here today as a Schedule I drug, there's a lack of research, and there's a lack of advancement for medical purposes due to that research, but there's also some onerous tax consequences for operators in the space, most notably something called 280E. That is an IRS tax code rule that says that if you sell a Schedule I substance, you cannot deduct anything but cost of goods sold on your tax return. Therefore, cannabis operators that comply with the law are paying effective tax rates at the federal level of over 50% because of the lack of deductions. Excuse me, the move to Schedule III eliminates the applicability of 280E and enhances the cash flow profile going forward for all of this tenant base, which improves their credit quality, which, as a landlord, is really important to us, and so that's a real catalyst.
We also think that the completion of the rescheduling to Schedule III will be a significant catalyst for the middle part of this page, and those would be the legislative activities we've been focused on, SAFER Banking Act being one of them. We're really encouraged that with the move to Schedule III, that we could see greater support for SAFER banking. It's passed the House seven times over the last five to six years, never had a vote in the Senate. And we think this move to Schedule III allows that type of legislation to move forward. Why is that important for NewLake investors? It's critically important because with the right language for safe harbor, not just for banks, but also for custody agents of stocks and bonds, it would allow NewLake to get uplisted to New York or NASDAQ.
I want to remind those that might have not heard this for a while or those that don't know, new to our story, we run our business to comply in all respects with New York and NASDAQ listing requirements. We can't get listed on New York and NASDAQ because of the sector that we focus on. As an equity, we own our properties. There is one competitor that was grandfathered on, and I get some questions, "Why can they be on and you can't?" They have been grandfathered on because they went public before the rules changed. For us, SAFER Banking passing with that language for safe harbors for the custody agents would allow, excuse me, the exchanges would allow that uplisting to occur. We think we'd find ourselves on exchange with better liquidity and better appreciation for the story that is NewLake Capital Partners.
Let me keep moving. Talk a little bit about our portfolio. We're across 12 states. We have these 15 cultivation assets. No outdoor grow. Sometimes we get the question, "Do you own farms? Do you own outdoor farms?" No outdoor grow. Again, think industrial buildings. Our buildings can be found typically in a major industrial center. If you were to look at our property in Phoenix, Arizona, you'd see distribution centers across the street. We're up the road from Taiwan Semiconductor, massive new infrastructure project there, true industrial area for that building. Aurora, Illinois, would be another example, just off the highway, 40 minutes from Center City, Chicago in a large industrial park. When you think dispensaries, think the retail outlets. These are typically standalone pad sites where cannabis is sold in a regulated market.
So, quickly, I'd like to touch on our underwriting approach because that is the precursor to the portfolio performance. And I'd argue that our performance, I'd hold it up to anybody in the industry. Three major categories that we focus on in underwriting. First, tenant quality. Of course, we're a real estate business that leases out to organizations. Of course, we're going to focus on tenant quality. But for cannabis, it's focusing not just on the financials. It's understanding the states that they operate in. It's understanding that organization's ability to raise capital and be able to refinance the facilities that they may have today, whether that be bank facilities or institutional debt facilities. So, we're spending a lot of time focused on not just their financial profile, but the management team quality as well. The cannabis market is critically important for this type of real estate business.
We focus on limited license jurisdictions. So what exactly does that mean? If you're sitting in the Northeast, you might be familiar with how you would go and buy alcohol at a liquor store or state licensed store if you were in, say, New Hampshire. These activities are highly controlled, and so they've applied a similar approach to cannabis, and so when you have limited licenses, you typically get better margins. You typically get better credit quality by and large, and so that is a protection for us. That is an enhancement to the credit profile of the deals that we do.
You can see in the center chart that if you were focused on Oregon or Washington, where there's well over 1,000 licenses, versus Pennsylvania, where there's just over 30, you could see that the economics of being in Oregon or Washington would be much more challenging, say, than the economics of being in Missouri or Pennsylvania or in Illinois, where they're much more limited. Understanding those dynamics really helps inform us on the durability of that asset. When you may have heard of defaults in the industry, many of those were occurring in, say, California or Michigan, where you have, or in Oregon or Washington, where you have a proliferation of these licenses, and it's a lot easier for operators to walk away from a business rather than trying to monetize the intrinsic value of a license. You get that generally in these limited license states.
Then the third category is obviously the real estate. Again, it seems obvious on the surface, but the way we focus on real estate is what can that property generate in terms of cash flow for the tenant base? It's not just about location, location, location. It's also in the cannabis ecosystem. Let's underwrite the cash flow of that property. Because we all know in a distressed situation, a tenant will focus on paying the rent for those businesses or those properties that are generating cash flow. And so you can see across our portfolio, we have a higher four-wall coverage than what you see in most other REITs and in most other industries. And that's across industrial and retail. And if you were to look to the REIT to our left, that is a pure retail.
You tend to get a higher four-wall coverage on the retail property. The mix of our retail and industrial is rivaling an all-retail portfolio. Again, that's important when you think about the credit quality of the portfolio and the durability of our rental cash flows. I want to jump to our portfolio. When you look at our tenant base, I do want to highlight that our top three tenants, which are over 50% of our portfolio, are some of the leading companies in the industry today. Curaleaf, Cresco , and Trulieve. Curaleaf is a truly international business having operations not just in the United States, but also Canada and Europe, countries across Europe. Cresco Labs, we have a large facility with them in Illinois. They are the leading operator in Illinois, number one in the state, and they put up some terrific numbers in the third quarter.
Trulieve, which is a very large Florida operator but has multi-state operations, they generated significant free cash flow in their most recently completed quarter. I think Kim Rivers has done a terrific job in running that business. Our top three tenants are some of the top operators in the industry. Let's hit on some numbers before we talk through some of your or get to Q&A. Again, I want to highlight that we only have $8 million of debt outstanding on our balance sheet. We're in a net cash position. We have $82 million of available credit capacity under our credit line, so ample capacity to fuel additional growth into the future. From a dividend perspective, you can see we've been at $0.43 a share, delivering a consistent dividend, having grown it significantly from our IPO in 2021.
Before I open it up for Q&A, I do often get the question from folks, "Well, wait a minute, Anthony, your dividend yield is pretty high." Usually for a REIT, when you see a high dividend yield, it means one of two things. It means you have a leverage problem, or it means you have a terrible portfolio, and you're on the verge of cutting your dividend. I want to address those points. Number one, clearly, it's not a leverage problem. We're in a net cash position. You can see here from a debt-to-equity perspective, we're probably one of the least levered REITs that you could find. In fact, we've not been able to find a REIT that is less levered than NewLake is today. It's clearly not a leverage problem. Maybe it's a quality of portfolio problem.
While others have had significant defaults and we certainly have had our share, like I think any net lease REIT will have vacancies from time to time, we, as a payout ratio perspective, and for those not familiar with REITs, AFFO, Adjusted Funds From Operations, is a key metric that we focus on. That's the measure of our free cash flow. Our payout ratio is representative of the portion of our free cash flow used to pay the dividend. The inverse, or 18%, in our case, it was 82% payout ratio. That means 18% of the cash flow we generated stayed inside the company. Our target is 80%-90%.
And so we have a lower payout ratio, which means if we have continued delinquencies or if we have additional properties that come back to us during that re-tenanting period, we can absorb that before potentially impacting the dividend. So we have significant cushion to be able to absorb any future vacancies that may occur while we're getting towards re-tenanting. And so people then say, "Well, wait a minute, okay, if it's not your balance sheet because you're unlevered and it's not a portfolio issue because you're not on the precipice of cutting your dividend, then what is it?" Well, I think it's because we're traded on OTC. And with no disrespect to OTC, I think when you look at the quality of the portfolio, when you look at the financial dynamics of our business, these are dynamics that institutional investors typically get very, very interested in.
Because of the lack of custody, because we're not on New York and NASDAQ, again, because focusing on cannabis, that chills or it really minimizes and eliminates that institutional bid. Therefore, we don't have that constant buying of institutions that can recognize these financial dynamics I just talked about. Therefore, that's the opportunity, I think, for some of the smaller organizations that can get custody for our stock or for some of the retail investors. You're typically chasing the institutions on opportunities. Here, because of the structural impediments for custody, I think retail and small institutions have the opportunity to lead and to be able to be in front of institutions before we get the catalyst of SAFER banking, before we get uplisted, and before we could see the demand for our shares from the more traditional institutional investors focused on real estate investment trusts.
With that, I'd love to hear and take your questions and open up a dialogue. So Brendan, let's come back to you.
Fantastic. Thanks for the overview there, Anthony. Very helpful. We can now open the floor for Q&A. Why don't we start off talking about tenant health? How has tenant health trended recently? Are there any points of stress in the portfolio at this point?
Yep. We had Ayr Wellness, which was a tenant of ours on two properties, did turn back those properties in the second half of last year. They are working through what is likely going to be a bankruptcy in the Canadian courts in the coming months. And so we've taken those properties back, cleaned them out, and we're in the process of working on re-tenanting those properties. In terms of other tenant health, I talked about our top three operators or number of the other operators that are in this mix that are private that we can't talk about their financial performance. But what I would say is their profitability and their free cash flow generating ability, I think some of the public companies would be excited to have that type of profile. I also want to say that this isn't a static portfolio.
We look at properties in the portfolio, and we try to be proactive in identifying where risk could be, and we work with our tenant partners to reposition those properties, and we had a couple of those examples in 2025. Examples where we had a dispensary last year with Curaleaf that when they opened the dispensary in the medical market, this was a great dispensary, but once that market converted to adult use, that particular town opted out of adult use, so that dispensary was subscaled, and as we looked at the financial performance, we worked with the tenant to say, "We realize this isn't performing optimally for you. Let's partner. We could sell this dispensary. We could move our capital to another dispensary." So we did a deed-for-deed swap.
We’re always looking at the portfolio, even with the top credits in our portfolio, to see where we can improve the risk profile of the properties that we have.
That makes sense. That's helpful. When you say the town stepped out of that business, can you elaborate on what happened there?
Yeah. State by state, the rules are different. So some states allow when they approve a new program, whether it be medical, whether it be recreational, sometimes they will allow a county or a town to opt out of allowing businesses to operate within their town line or their county line. And so in this particular case, that town wasn't allowing adult use sales. So all that could be sold through that storefront was medical sales. And that performed less optimally than if they were allowed to do adult use sales there. So why have that license be stuck only doing medical? They felt that they could move that license to another jurisdiction and get the benefit of selling medical and adult use out of that same license.
That makes sense. That's helpful. And when you look at the Ayr Wellness properties, how long does the typical releasing process take? And where are you positioned in that process currently?
Yeah. So we had a few months of security deposit. They vacated the premises at the end of August. There's obviously a month or so of cleaning out, preparing the property for re-tenanting. That's all been done. And we're now talking to various parties about trying to re-tenant those properties. That could be anywhere from a six-month to an 18-month process. I would say that we don't have a lot of experience with this from the perspective that we only took back our first property in July, which was in Massachusetts. So it's not like we've been sitting with properties vacant that we've had to re-tenant. But I would expect, based on the broader real estate dynamics and seeing how others, competitors have been dealing with their vacancies over the last couple of years, I'd expect a six- to 18-month process.
Got it. And more broadly, as you think about cannabis potentially being rescheduled to Schedule III drug and also maybe the SAFER Banking Act as well, how can we kind of think about the competitive environment, how that might change as maybe more traditional banks and lenders may look to step into the space?
Yeah. No, I'm thrilled you asked the question because you heard me talk about SAFER Banking, and a lot of people say, "Boy, if SAFER Banking passes, now the banks will be competing with you." We very much would love to see SAFER Banking pass for all the positive catalysts for NewLake I talked about. I don't see banks becoming a significant competitor of ours, and let me explain why. Number one, in the bill, the last one that was filed, there's a one-year rulemaking period for banks. I spent decades of my career in various banks. I could tell you one thing banks generally don't like to do is move into a sector before the rules are set. So it's going to take at least a year for the federal regulators to get the meeting and to actually think about it.
I think it's going to take more than a year to write rules for a business that's legal in some states and illegal in others. Some states it's medical. Some states it's recreational. So it's going to be a complicated process. So by and large, banks will wait. But when banks do come in, it's not really a competitive product for what we do since we're a sale-leaseback REIT. We focus on providing capital because we understand these cannabis cultivation facilities. We provide capital for the value that the operator is putting into it. Whereas banks will look, those that do operate in the space today will look at the non-cannabis value and provide 60% value on that non-cannabis value. So any organization that's proceeds-oriented will be looking to us as experts in that type of asset class to be able to maximize proceeds.
And quite frankly, get away from cannabis. It's really going to be no different than REITs that are focused on specialty sectors, whether it's gaming REITs or whether it's lodging REITs, timber REITs. We talked about retail-oriented REITs. All of these REITs compete on a day-in and day-out basis with the large money center banks and are very successful in their own right. And so we are not afraid of that type of competition. We think it'll be healthy. In fact, when you look at the competitive landscape today for NewLake, there are fewer competitors today than when we started the business seven years ago. And so no, we very much encourage SAFER Banking to pass.
Great. That's very helpful. Looking at the addressable market, how do you size up the current and potential market size as far as growth goes for both dispensaries and cultivation facilities?
Yes. And so the growth in the industry is really driven the growth for us will be driven by the growth in the industry. And so when I look at a map like this and I look at Kentucky as an example, Kentucky is a state that just started their medical sales in the fourth quarter. And the governor came out about a week ago and said he really wasn't happy with the way the program was going because the dispensary that did open in the state ran out of product very, very quickly. And so the governor wants that industry to accelerate its investment. And so in Kentucky, you have an entire industry that really needs to still be built out. That's dispensaries. That's cultivation facilities. Texas. Texas is a massive state.
They recently revised their program that we think is going to take what was, call it, 15,000-20,000 active patients. We think can move that up to a couple of hundred thousand active patients. There are, I think it's over 30 million people in the state of Texas. So you still have a very, very small medical marijuana business in Texas that's going to need significant build-out. All of this requires real estate, cultivation, processing, and dispensaries. So there's going to be significant need for real estate capital as you watch states like Texas or Kentucky, or maybe you get a program approved in North Carolina, South Carolina, with 50% of the country still not in an adult-use state. There's plenty of room for growth for cannabis.
Especially now that the federal government is reining in the hemp market, the hemp-derived market, that's going to, I think, bring a lot of those THC-oriented sales back into the state legal business, enhancing that growth profile over the next three to five years.
Got it. And in terms of your capital allocation, you mentioned the balance sheet is very strong relative to some peers and the peer group. How can we kind of think about your capital allocation as it relates to dividends? Are you buying back shares? Would you consider buying back shares? And then also tie in the growth outlook that you just talked about.
We have bought back shares in the past. When we look at our share price historically, we definitely have seen that there are opportunities for us to enhance shareholder value by buying back shares. So we and our board are always evaluating the opportunity to buy back shares. When we think about capital allocation, again, we have, as you can see in the lower left-hand corner, we do have an under-levered balance sheet. And so as quality opportunities arise, we're going to look to utilize our available cash and ultimately our credit facility to deploy into new investments. And so that question may also be asked from the perspective of, are you going to be diluting shareholders by issuing equity?
I see no reason for us in the near term to be issuing equity because we have ample capacity through our credit facility to be able to fund new investments for the foreseeable future, which would then grow our AFFO and enhance what is an 82% payout ratio at the end of Q3.
Great. And a final question here. How does NewLake really kind of size up to Innovative Industrial Properties? And maybe what are investors really missing from the NewLake investment thesis compared to the larger peer?
Yes. So again, there in the New York Stock Exchange, we do exactly the same thing in terms of the fact that we have sale-leasebacks focused on the cannabis industry. They've made a very large investment into life sciences. We don't have that. So that would be one difference there. In terms of portfolio, I think looking at the number of defaults, I think versus our portfolio, we very early on focused in on the limited license states. And I think that's really served our investors well. And I think that's what's allowed us to have a more robust tenant retention metric than some of our competitors, them included. And I think it's really been that focus not only on limited license states, but we talked earlier about property-level cash flows.
I think when you're underwriting limited license states and you're underwriting a property focused on the cash flows that that property can derive over time, it's not just at the point in time when you underwrite a transaction. For us, we're projecting out what happens in that marketplace from a pricing perspective. Because one thing that's clear is as these markets develop, pricing for cannabis, its commodity is always coming down. So we need to make sure that not just the tenant can withstand that margin compression, but also the property can still be profitable for the tenant as that pricing decreases. So I think it's the underwriting focus that we did years ago that's delivered an outsized performance.
Great. Well, Anthony, we'll conclude the conference there. We really appreciate the detailed overview.
Great. Thank you, Brendan. Thank you, everybody, for joining us today, and if you have any additional questions, please don't hesitate to check us out at newlake.com.
Thanks, everybody. Have a great day.