Broadstone Net Lease, Inc. (BNL)
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Earnings Call: Q4 2022

Feb 23, 2023

Operator

Hello and welcome to the Broadstone Net Lease Q4 2022 earnings conference call. My name is Bruno, and I will be the operator of today's call. Please note this call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Michael Caruso, Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance Investors Relations at Broadstone Net Lease. Please go ahead.

Michael Caruso
SVP of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations, Broadstone Net Lease

Thank you, operator. Thank you everyone for joining us today for Broadstone Net Lease's Q4 2022 earnings call. On today's call, you will hear prepared remarks from Chris Czarnecki, John Moragne, and Ryan Albano. Kevin Fennell will also be available for the Q&A portion of this call. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that the following presentation contains forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties that can cause actual results to differ materially due to a variety of factors. We caution you not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements and refer you to our SEC filings, including our Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2022 for more detailed discussion of the risk factors that may cause such differences. Any forward-looking statements provided during this conference call are only made as of the date of this call.

With that, I will turn the call over to Chris Czarnecki.

Chris Czarnecki
CEO and President, Broadstone Net Lease

Thank you, Mike, and good morning, everyone. As this will be my last earnings call before stepping down from my role as CEO at the end of the month, I want to open the call by acknowledging and sincerely thanking all of the BNL employees, directors, and capital providers for their support during my leadership tenure. I'm incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to serve BNL stakeholders for the past 13+ years and to have served as CEO since 2017. I'm also very pleased with our board's decision to elevate our current Chief Operating Officer, John Moragne, to the role of CEO upon my departure. Having worked closely with John for more than a decade, I'm extremely confident that there is nobody better suited to lead BNL into its next chapter.

John knows our business inside and out and is beloved by our employees for his service-oriented leadership mentality. He serves all with grace, humility, and intelligence. John is an exceptional leader of the company already, and he will make a phenomenal chief executive. I'd also like to congratulate Ryan Albano and Kevin Fennell on their new roles as President and Chief Financial Officer, respectively. Both are highly deserving of these new roles and responsibilities and are excited for what is to come. I want to welcome Jessica Duran and Laura Felice to the BNL board. Both are exceptional individuals with impressive professional backgrounds that will help support and guide the company for years to come. Jessica has a deep background in retail and private equity from her current role as CFO with TSG Consumer and REIT tax matters from her days at Deloitte.

Laura's background is also in retailing with her 10 years at Clarks and now as CFO at BJ's Wholesale Club, along with a deep audit background from her time at PwC. The entire board is very excited to be able to welcome these impressive individuals to an already strong group. I'll turn the call over to John and the rest of the executive team here today.

John Moragne
EVP and COO, Broadstone Net Lease

Thank you, Chris, good morning to all of you who are joining us today. Before we jump into BNL's Q4 full year 2022 results, I would like to begin by thanking Chris for his immeasurable and innumerable contributions to the company over the past 14 years, in particular during his service as our CEO since 2017. BNL would not be what it is today without Chris's humble leadership and selfless dedication to all of our stakeholders. Chris's vision as CEO and steadfast commitment to our growth were the foundational blocks for BNL that have guided us ever since. He believed in small ego, big shoulder leadership that taught us all how to contribute to the greater good, pursue continuous improvement, create a service-oriented and fulfilling culture, and did so in a way that was never about him.

I am immensely grateful to Chris for his mentorship and friendship. I am confident that Chris's enduring legacy at BNL will be felt through our deep commitment to stewardship, transparency, and value creation. The foundation Chris has laid will help support BNL's bright future for many years to come. I am also grateful to both Chris and our board of directors for their confidence and support in me as I look to continue to deliver exceptional results alongside the same talented team I have worked closely with since joining the company. Now turning to our results. I am pleased to report a strong Q4 to close out 2022. I'm incredibly proud of all that we accomplished during the year and the results we were able to deliver for our shareholders despite facing a challenging market backdrop.

With over $900 million of accretive investments, more than 99.9% rent collected, minimal vacancies, and proactive capital markets execution, we were able to deliver full year 2022 AFFO of $1.40 per share, representing 6.9% growth over the prior year. Closing out 2022 with a conservative leverage profile of 5.2 times net debt to annualized adjusted EBITDAre and ample liquidity, we are well-positioned to continue to selectively pursue attractive investment opportunities in 2023. For me, 2022 was the perfect distillation of what makes our diversified investment strategy so dynamic and, frankly, undervalued by the market. Throughout 2022, our broadly diversified buybox provided us with unparalleled flexibility. In Q1, we invested $210 million in 27 properties, with 87% of the ABR coming from restaurant and retail assets.

Now, fast-forward to Q4, a significant period of macroeconomic uncertainty, rising interest rates, dislocation between cost of capital and asset pricing, and a transaction market struggling through price discovery as sellers are slowly forced to adjust their expectations. Responding to all this disruption, we shifted our focus to industrial assets, where we saw cap rates expand at a more accelerated pace due to sector specific supply and demand characteristics as many private leverage centric buyers who rely on asset level financing exited the market due to rising debt costs. With this shift, we finished the year with 72% of our total investment activity concentrated in our industrial vertical as we were able to transact at higher cap rates and achieve better risk adjusted returns for our shareholders.

During 2022, our weighted average acquisition cap rate expanded 100 basis points from Q1 to Q4, representing the largest expansion of any net lease REIT. Having a buy box that spans multiple core property types and taking a disciplined but nimble approach to where we allocated capital allowed us to maintain accretive investment spreads without compromising our underwriting standards. During the Q4, we invested approximately $310 million in 17 properties at a weighted average initial cash cap rate of 6.7%. The leases for new acquisitions include a strong weighted average lease term of approximately 20 years and solid 2% rent escalation, translating into an attractive weighted average GAAP cap rate of 8%. As discussed on our previous earnings call, Q4 acquisitions were largely driven by the single largest sale-leaseback transaction in BNL history.

An opportunity directly sourced from an existing relationship to acquire 7 mission-critical industrial facilities leased to a food manufacturer with a long-standing and successful operating history. As our new single largest tenant exposure at 4%, we feel confident that the tenants focus on defensive end user products, deep industry relationships, and a strong track record uniquely positions the tenant to perform across all market cycles. In addition, the 7 locations are master leased, well located and represent 100% of the company's production capabilities. While Q4 represents the largest quarter of activity for 2022, we intentionally slowed our acquisition pace during the quarter as it became clear to us that additional price discovery and expectation resetting needed to occur to properly reflect an appropriate risk-reward tradeoff.

Predominantly, all of our Q four transactions were closed by early November and had been underwritten and signed up in late summer. Solid capital markets execution earlier in the year allowed us to lock in a favorable cost of capital that translated into accretive investment spreads on all acquisitions completed during Q four. Heightened selectivity in the second half of the quarter translated into full year investment activity just above the low end of our guidance range, has positioned us to continue to prudently grow in 2023. We will continue to employ this more measured approach to external growth in the near term as price discovery persists. As always, we remain focused on only pursuing opportunities where risk and return are appropriately calibrated.

As stewards of our shareholder capital, we do not believe in growth for growth's sake and will take a disciplined, prudent and selective approach to deploying our capital. We are currently focused on deploying available dry powder in hand that supports accretive spread investing at prevailing market cap rates. Since quarter end, we currently have $5.2 million of investments under control, which we define as having an executed contract or letter of intent. We currently have $30.6 million in commitments to fund revenue generating capital expenditures with existing tenants. We continue to seek creative ways to partner with our existing tenants in an effort to supplement our routine sourcing efforts. We will continue to accretively recycle capital through strategic dispositions in 2023.

During the Q4, we sold three properties for net proceeds of $39.2 million at a weighted average cash cap rate of 5.8%. Subsequent to quarter end, we executed a simultaneous lease buyout and sale of an office asset for total proceeds of approximately $39.5 million, translating into an all-in exit cap rate of approximately 6%. Opportunistic asset sales such as these not only provide additional dry powder to be accretively recycled, but also help to mitigate both residual and credit risk in our existing portfolio. With this sale and on a pro forma basis, we have reduced our office exposure to 5.9% of our ABR from 6.5% at year end, and will continue to look for opportunities to reduce our standalone office exposure further in ways that generate strong returns for our shareholders.

As for the health of our existing portfolio, as of year end, all but 3 of our 804 properties were subject to a lease. Our properties were occupied by 221 different commercial tenants across 55 industries. The portfolio's weighted average annual rent escalation remains at 2%. The weighted average remaining lease term was 10.9 years. With significant ongoing economic uncertainty that may persist for an extended period of time, we have increased the scrutiny of our internal portfolio review process and credit stress testing in light of the current backdrop. Of note, the new operator at Santa Cruz Valley Regional Hospital, now known as Green Valley Medical Center, continues to work through their licensing and accreditation process and is on track to complete these steps and begin accepting patients later this year.

We are monitoring Carvana's situation closely and remain confident in the mission critical nature of the industrial asset we lease to them and its underlying residual value. We sold 3 of our Red Lobster properties in 2022 for gains at attractive cap rates and will continue to look for opportunities to decrease our exposure over time. We currently own 19 of the original 25 properties we acquired in 2015 and 2016 at high 6 cap rates, all of which are subject to a master lease and are located in strong retail corridors and large population centers.

Despite those areas of increased attention, our collections continue to pace the net lease industry with more than 99.9% collected for the year, which, with the exception of 2020 during the COVID pandemic when our collections were still top tier in the net lease space, continues a seven-year track record of 99+% rent collections since becoming a public reporting company. With some of the lowest tenant concentrations in the net lease space, our highly diversified operating model creates a lower risk profile than a simple investment grade rated percentage would otherwise indicate. Geographic, tenant, brand, and industry diversification provides a defensive hedge against any singular tenant credit event. I am confident that our thoughtfully constructed portfolio is built to perform across all market environments, including the one we find ourselves in today.

With a disciplined, prudent, and selective approach to growth this year, no material debt maturities until 2026, our conservative leverage profile, robust liquidity, and solid portfolio performance, I believe BNL is well positioned to capitalize on 2023 and build momentum throughout the year for differentiated growth in 2024 and beyond. With that, I will now turn the call over to Ryan.

Ryan Albano
EVP and CFO, Broadstone Net Lease

Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. I'd like to first start with an overview of our current balance sheet positioning and recap some of the capital markets activities we completed during 2022 that have positioned us to operate in a period of economic uncertainty while also pursuing selective growth in 2023. Proactive balance sheet management and capital markets execution throughout 2022 have positioned us for success both in the near and long term. During the year, we judiciously raised capital focused on creating near and intermediate term financial flexibility via many of the capital markets tools available to us. This approach allowed us to lock in an attractive investment spreads on all acquisitions completed during the year.

Build dry powder that can be creatively deployed during this period of ex-extended pricing discovery, lengthen our debt maturity profile to provide greater flexibility in light of capital markets volatility, hedge our interest rate exposure in response to aggressive Fed monetary policy, and provide ample cushion to operate during the economic uncertainty that lies ahead. As I outlined on our previous earnings call, we entered into two new unsecured bank term loans in August, which allowed us to extend our debt maturity profile and lock in attractive relative cost of debt. We currently have no major debt maturities until 2026, and while we intend to be repeat issuers in the investment grade bond market in the future, the actions we took during 2022 provide us the flexibility to access the long-term debt markets when conditions normalize.

During the year, we sold a total of approximately 10.5 million shares of common stock at a weighted average sales price of $21.66 per share for net proceeds of $223 million under our ATM program. We did not use the ATM during the Q4, opportunistic use of the program in the first half of the year fueled most of the accretive acquisitions completed during the last two quarters of 2022. The ATM has been and will continue to be a core component of our overall capital market strategy. As of year-end, there was approximately $145 million of capacity remaining on the current program.

As I outlined on our previous earnings call, we completed a forward settled public offering of 13 million shares of common stock at a price of $21.35 per share in August of last year. We settled all outstanding forward equity during Q4 on December 28th for total net proceeds of approximately $273 million. Following settlement, we ended the quarter with leverage of 5.2 times on a net debt to annualized adjusted EBITDARE basis. As of year-end, we had approximately $825 million of liquidity. As John stated, we are focused on selectively deploying this available dry powder on opportunities that are not only accretive, but are appropriately priced on a risk-adjusted basis. Retained earnings coupled with strategic asset sales will continue to bolster available dry powder while also strengthening our balance sheet.

Turning to our financial results. During the quarter, we generated AFFO of $65.6 million or $0.36 per share, which represents 6% growth over per share results from the same period last year. Q4 AFFO per share results represent approximately 3% growth quarter-over-quarter, largely due to early quarter acquisition closings. Given our heightened selectivity during the second half of Q4, we do not expect to benefit next quarter from the tailwinds we typically experience from late quarter acquisition closings. For full year 2022 results, we generated AFFO of $252 million or $1.40 per share, which represents 6.9% growth over our 2021 results. Full year AFFO per share results landed at the top end of our final guidance range and at the midpoint of our initial guidance range.

We incurred $7.8 million and $32.1 million of cash G&A expense during Q4 and for the full year respectively. Total cash G&A expenses incurred during 2022 landed just below the midpoint of our guidance range. Strong and consistent operating results during 2022 translated into two dividend increases during the year. Our Board of Directors has maintained a twenty-seven and a half cent dividend per common share and OP unit to holders as of March 31st, 2023, payable on or before April 14th, 2023. This represents an increase of 3.8% over the annualized dividend amount from the first quarter of 2022. The dividend continues to be well covered with AFFO payout ratio in the mid to high 70% range and represents an attractive dividend yield relative to many of our net lease peers.

We will continue to evaluate additional future increases to our dividend with our board on a quarterly basis. Finally, we are introducing initial 2023 guidance today with an AFFO range of $1.40 to 1.42 per share, which represents an implied growth rate of 1.4% at the midpoint. This more modest estimate of year-over-year growth is driven by the strength of our 2022 results and reflects our patience and highly selective view on growth opportunities in 2023. We hope to revise our guidance upward as we progress further into the year and gain more clarity into both the pace of asset repricing and conditions in the capital markets. For now, we are providing a conservative guidance range that reflects the following key assumptions. Acquisition volume between $300 and 500 million.

Disposition volume between $100 and 150 million. Total cash G&A between $32 and 34 million. As a reminder, our per share results for the year are sensitive to both the timing and amount of acquisitions, dispositions, and capital markets activity that occur throughout the year. With that, I will turn it over to Chris for closing remarks.

John Moragne
EVP and COO, Broadstone Net Lease

My time at Broadstone has been an incredible experience that far surpassed any expectations I had when joining the company. I'm deeply grateful to have had the opportunity to serve for many years and in many roles. The best has always been being part of the team at BNL and living our one Broadstone mentality with them. The board and I have the utmost confidence in John, Ryan, and the entire management team who have a long history of working together. They will continue to uphold our track record of success in delivering long-term value for all of our shareholders. I look forward to cheering on all of their successes. Thank you everyone. Operator, you can now open the line up for questions.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you'd like to cancel the question, press star followed by two, and please do also remember to unmute your microphone. Our first question is from Ronald Kamrdem from Morgan Stanley. Ronald, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Ronald Kamdem
Managing Director, Head of US REITs and CRE Research, Morgan Stanley

Hey, couple of quick ones. You know, first congrats to both of you on the management changes. Just curious, as you're sort of thinking about taking the helm, anything that we should expect different, or is it just more of the same? Anything organizationally, strategy-wise? Thanks.

John Moragne
EVP and COO, Broadstone Net Lease

Thanks, Ron. From a strategy standpoint, I think the way we're thinking about 2023 as an opportunity to look for a, you know, a differentiation for us, a catalyst for the type of growth and the multiple expansion that we believe this portfolio deserves, would be the same whether Chris was staying or we were in the position that we are today. There's been no daylight between Chris, Ryan, and myself, the entire time we've been working together. The strategy and the way that we're thinking about evaluating portfolio, evaluating our opportunity set, and looking to provide the type of long-term shareholder value that we have and we believe that this portfolio can provide, would be the same.

Similarly, the type of or the sense of stewardship, the transparency, and the commitment to growth and the commitment to value for our shareholders that Chris has instilled in us over his years at Broadstone, and particularly as CEO, we absolutely hope to be able to continue and to honor him in that way. You know, that's what you should expect to continue to see from us going forward.

Ronald Kamdem
Managing Director, Head of US REITs and CRE Research, Morgan Stanley

Great. Then what about organizationally, in terms of, like, the reporting structures or anything like that?

John Moragne
EVP and COO, Broadstone Net Lease

Sure. I mean, the biggest changes are, you know, the two that you've got on the phone with you right now beyond me. Shifting Ryan into his new role as President and Chief Operating Officer and sitting over our real estate functions. That's an area that Ryan has leaned into more and more over the years and really is, sort of at the heart of how his brain works. We're excited to have him as a part of that and bringing his deep experience as our CFO over the last six or seven years into that role, and really providing sort of a, you know, forest level, big picture of view of the market, the industry, how our real estate investments and full asset life cycle fit into the broader capital markets and investor relations picture.

That's an exciting area for us. Then elevating Kevin into the CFO role. Really deep capital markets expertise, from his time previously with us with BMO, as well as, in the last three or four years that he's been with us. We're excited to have Kevin step into that role. Those are the two major reporting changes that you all would see. Then otherwise, we've got a really incredible team of people that I believe is the smartest group that we've got in the industry and working incredibly hard to provide value for our shareholders.

Ronald Kamdem
Managing Director, Head of US REITs and CRE Research, Morgan Stanley

Excellent. For my second question, if I could just switch to the acquisition pipeline. You know, obviously the acquisition guide of $400 million. Maybe can you give a little bit more color in terms of where you guys are seeing cap rates trending, and what sort of the sweet spot that you guys wanna be executing at? Clearly high 6s, maybe low 7s to get to the spreads. I'd love to hear a little bit more commentary on the ground. Thanks.

John Moragne
EVP and COO, Broadstone Net Lease

Yes. You sort of nailed it. We're looking at high sixes, low sevens. You know, it's sort of a triangulation among a number of different things, including the spread, how we're thinking about risk-adjusted return, trying to match up what the opportunity set is with our cost of capital and still making good, prudent selective decisions. That discipline, that prudence that we're bringing, I think is evident in sort of the first quarter pipeline numbers you're seeing. You know, we've got $5 million under control at the moment. There are a handful of things that we're looking at, including one, fairly significant large, off-market opportunity that we're evaluating right now that could shift those numbers. It's not at a point yet where we felt comfortable including it in the under control numbers.

The place that we've spent a lot of our time focusing on is the opportunity set in the space generally. Right now, the top of the funnel is in line with what we would consider more normalized net lease volumes. You know, 2021 and 2022 has much heavier volumes than what you had seen in this industry on a normalized basis pre-COVID. In terms of the sort of routine volume that we're seeing in the first quarter, it works out to, you know, $20 billion-$25 billion in opportunities on an annualized basis that we would review.

Definitely a slower start to the year than what people have been used to the last couple of years, but there's still plenty of good opportunities that are out there, heavily weighted for us in terms of what we believe is actionable towards industrial. But there's been a lot of retail that's been on the market this year as well. The cap rates in industrial, as everyone saw last year, moved much further and faster than the other areas that we invest in. Retail and restaurants are coming along. Certainly, the investment grade space has stayed in that high fives, low sixes. So that's not something that we're spending much time on right now. Healthcare hasn't moved as much.

We're currently in a little bit of a place where it feels like the heavier movement you saw on cap rates, throughout that sort of, last 9-month period of 2022 has maybe slowed or plateaued a bit. At the same time, you know, there's still lots of opportunity that are out there where we feel like price expectations are still getting reset, price discovery is continuing, and the risk-reward trade-off on these assets, there's still a little bit of room to grow. We're cautiously and carefully monitoring these things. With our $400 million midpoint of guidance on acquisitions, it certainly will be more back-end weighted than what it was last year when we were a little bit more smoothed out with, you know, roughly $200 million every quarter, with $300 million in the Q4.

We're completely open to reevaluating that guidance as the year goes on. If the opportunity set or our cap rate, excuse me, or our cost of capital changes in a way where we believe that we can increase that acquisition guidance, we absolutely will.

Ronald Kamdem
Managing Director, Head of US REITs and CRE Research, Morgan Stanley

Great. That's it for me. Super helpful.

Ki Bin Kim
Senior Managing Director, REIT Equity Research, Truist Securities

Our next question is from Ki Bin Kim from Truist. Kim, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning, congratulations, John, and best wishes, Chris. First question on the new top tenant, Roskam Baking Company. Can you just help us understand the deal and the operator a little better just given the tenant concentration? I noticed that they were bought out by a private equity company like 1 year ago or 2 years ago. Just trying to better understand the credit quality and potential risks with the company.

Ryan Albano
EVP and CFO, Broadstone Net Lease

Sure. Hi, Ki Bin. It's Ryan. We're very pleased with this deal. It's in a defensive industry from a food processing perspective. Again, that's a place that we have talked about before and like to play. We acquired six assets that are basically the entire production of the company itself. They have, from a financial perspective, a defensive position in terms of their ability to pass through and protect margins, pass through costs and protect margins. You know, their leverage is generally moderate and calibrated very well to the private equity starting point. We feel good about the investment overall.

Ki Bin Kim
Senior Managing Director, REIT Equity Research, Truist Securities

Since it's the entire kind of production, for the company, you probably have a good sense of where the rent coverage ratio is relative to their kind of EBITDA. What does that look like?

Ryan Albano
EVP and CFO, Broadstone Net Lease

Yeah. We don't typically look at rent coverage for manufacturing sites themselves or food processing sites rather. We're looking at the credit profile of the tenant or the corporation as a whole, similar to how banks would underwrite it from a lending perspective. Primarily because the numbers that are going through the facilities themselves, aren't all that relevant from a coverage perspective. We spend more time thinking about how much manufacturing capacity they have at each site, how much of that they're utilizing, how much of that is open for additional production capabilities, where they would need to add new lines. Those type of things are the things that we focus on at the actual site level, but less so from a general coverage perspective.

Ki Bin Kim
Senior Managing Director, REIT Equity Research, Truist Securities

Just second question on Red Lobster, any updates you can share on recent conversations you've had with the operator and any updates on just, how their business is doing overall?

John Moragne
EVP and COO, Broadstone Net Lease

Even, I don't think it's a secret that they're going through some difficulties right now. You know, Thai Union has been very open about that publicly, as they've talked about their results for the year, and that's not a surprise to us or to anyone else. We've had routine conversations with them, since the Thai Union deal, ever since COVID, making sure that we're aligned in understanding how their businesses are operating. We continue to have comfort with our investment in Red Lobster. The sites that we have were specifically picked at the time that we did those deals in 2015 and 2016. These weren't sort of, you know, having to take a portfolio as is. We were able to go through and pick the ones that we thought were going to perform well over time.

As you heard during the prepared remarks, you know, these were located in strong retail corridors. You know, these are in the same strips as you're gonna see an Olive Garden, Walmart, LongHorn Steakhouse, Outback, Chick-fil-A, you name it. really good average five-mile population of about 150,000+. We feel really good about the real estate itself. understanding that Red Lobster is going through some difficulties right now, we're looking at this as how would we think about the investment overall from the time that we purchased these assets to today and through potentially exiting the position, as you heard. We originally had 25 sites. We've sold 6 of them over time, including 3 last year. The 3 we sold last year, were high 5 or flat 6 cap rates in terms of dispositions.

That compares against the high 6 weighted average acquisition cap rate for these back in 2015 and 2016. If you take the rents that we have received over time from Red Lobster, in addition to the disposition proceeds that we've received, we've already received back more than 75% or roughly 75% of our initial investment in these assets, with 19 of them still to go. We've looked at how do we continue to recoup our investment and get to a spot where we feel very comfortable that we're gonna have well more than our initial investment back in these. Understanding their difficulties, you know, we will look for opportunities to continue to reduce our exposure over time, they continue to pay their rent.

No indications otherwise, we feel that we can take a patient, methodical approach to that exposure for us. If you look at where it was at the beginning of 2022, today, we've dropped it 50 basis points in overall ABR exposure from 2.1 to 1.6. Headed in the right direction, but confident in our ability to manage that through to conclusion.

Ki Bin Kim
Senior Managing Director, REIT Equity Research, Truist Securities

Sorry to belabor the point, but any near-term rent cuts in the cards?

John Moragne
EVP and COO, Broadstone Net Lease

Not for us.

Ki Bin Kim
Senior Managing Director, REIT Equity Research, Truist Securities

Okay. Thank you.

John Moragne
EVP and COO, Broadstone Net Lease

It's something I know that is being discussed, but it's not something that we're currently interested in.

Ki Bin Kim
Senior Managing Director, REIT Equity Research, Truist Securities

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, to ask any further questions, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. Our next question is from Eric Borden from BMO Capital Markets. Eric, your line's now open. Please go ahead.

Eric Borden
Equity Research Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I just may be following up on the guidance and the acquisition cadence. Just given the supply curve and the typical seasonality, you know, how should we think about acquisitions throughout the year and your assumptions for the expected move in cap rates?

John Moragne
EVP and COO, Broadstone Net Lease

We've looked at cap rates as I said, sort of plateauing a little bit. I think that's natural with the type of year-end activity that you usually see in the Q4, where expectations sort of settle in as people are sort of just putting their head down and trying to get through year-end activity, which is always heavier than otherwise. Couple that with what has been a slower start to the year, there's been a bit of a pause. At the same time, the information we're seeing from the market and from transactions that we're looking at from our brokers has been that there's been an uptick again in the type of repricing discussions with cap rate, you know, expectation settings that we believe, are all points as the cap would continue to move in the right direction.

That there's still a place where the assets are not quite completely given the risk/reward trade-off that we're seeing relative to, you know, the current macroeconomic backdrop. For us, that's part of the reason why you're seeing such selective approach in the first quarter and why we're sort of leaning more towards the belief that our acquisition pipeline will result in a heavier back-end weighted to the year. Our belief is that there's still some movement that needs to happen in the cap rates, but at the same time, we are going to be opportunistic.

If we find the right risk-adjusted return and the right spread against our in-hand dry powder or if we're in a position relative to the opportunity set or our cost of capital, where we can execute in a way that provides the same thing, then we will absolutely look to increase our acquisitions guidance if either of those things come to pass. Currently thinking on a conservative basis, more back-end weighted with a little bit of cap rate movement, but if opportunity set or cost of capital adjust in place, we'll adjust both of those forward in the year and look to increase it if we can.

Eric Borden
Equity Research Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Great. Thanks. Just on Kevin's last question about rent cuts, or could you just elaborate a little bit more on that? You know, what are the discussions you're having, you know, the type of tenants, the potential impact to ABR and, you know, any additional color there would be very helpful?

John Moragne
EVP and COO, Broadstone Net Lease

Yeah. We're not in active discussions or actively considering rent cuts for any of our tenants right now. I know those things get tossed around a lot given where people sit, and I think it maybe is a little bit more prevalent in the last couple of years as people think about the COVID environment or if they're thinking about movie theaters, the way that those have been handled since then. We're not actively considering giving rent cuts to any of the tenants. You know, there's nothing in the watch list that we think about as particularly thematic. That would lead us to a place where we think that those are coming. You know, the ones that are on there right now are the things that we talked about during the prepared remarks.

It's for Lobster, keep an eye on Carvana, keep an eye on Santa Cruz, which is now in Green Valley Medical Center, we feel confident in where all three of those are headed or our ability to manage those through what might be a difficult period.

Eric Borden
Equity Research Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Okay, thank you. Last for me on the development side, you know, the $30 million pipeline currently in place. Is that a for the quarter, or is that your assumption for the year? You know, what's the expected commencement period on those projects and the yields there?

John Moragne
EVP and COO, Broadstone Net Lease

Not a full year projection. This is just currently a spot number that we have. We've taken a pretty proactive approach in the last couple of years to sort of enabling our property management, asset management teams to spend more time working with our tenants to find revenue generating capital expenditures that we can have to supplement our existing sourcing efforts. This is just a spot number. It's comprised of a handful of different ones. There's different timelines on these different yields.

one of the reasons why we focused on it, which is probably an assumption that you're making in this question, but one of the reasons we focused on it is that by working directly with our tenants and finding ways to partner with them, for their success, we're gonna be getting better yields, with lower transaction costs than we do, out on the open market. This is an attractive area for us to be allocating capital, and we're gonna be looking to do as much of it as we can, this year and every year going forward, for those reasons.

Eric Borden
Equity Research Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

All right. Thank you.

Operator

We currently have no further questions. I will now hand back to Chris Czarnecki for final remarks. Please go ahead.

John Moragne
EVP and COO, Broadstone Net Lease

Thank you. Just wanted to again, thank all of the folks in the Broadstone universe, for all the support you've shown me over the years. I'm incredibly grateful. More importantly, I'm even more excited about the future of this team. I know they are locked and loaded and ready to continue to execute on your behalf. We'll look forward to seeing you soon at a number of industry events throughout the spring. Thank you and have a great rest of your week. Bye.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.

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