CTO Realty Growth, Inc. (CTO)
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Earnings Call: Q3 2022

Oct 28, 2022

Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by, and welcome to CTO Realty Growth, Inc. Q3 2022 earnings call. At this time, all participants are on a listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Matthew Partridge, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Matthew Partridge
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, CTO Realty Growth

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for the CTO Realty Growth third quarter 2022 operating results conference call. With me today is our CEO and President, John Albright. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that many of our comments today are considered forward-looking statements under federal securities law. The company's actual future results may differ significantly from the matters discussed in these forward-looking statements, and we undertake no duty to update these statements. Factors and risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations are disclosed from time to time in greater detail in the company's Form 10-K, Form 10-Q, and other SEC filings. You can find our SEC reports, earnings release, supplemental, and most recent investor presentation on our website at ctoreit.com. With that, I'll now turn the call over to John.

John Albright
President and CEO, CTO Realty Growth

Thanks, Matt, and good morning, everyone. I'm very pleased with our team's strong execution during the third quarter across all phases of our business. We opportunistically sold several legacy properties, including our multi-tenanted office property. As we discussed during our last earnings call, we invested it into our first Publix anchored asset, Madison Yards in Atlanta, Georgia. We also completed a number of capital markets transactions that fortified our balance sheet, continued to have good success with our leasing initiatives, and drove more than 36% year-over-year AFFO growth during the quarter. On top of it all, we had a nice start to the fourth quarter with our acquisition of West Broad Village in Richmond, Virginia, which is a very high quality property that we believe has great long-term upside.

If you look at our transaction activities over the past four months, we found some excellent grocery anchor opportunities as we continued our portfolio repositioning efforts by taking advantage of the disruption in the market and executing on strategic asset recycling. During the quarter, we sold 245 Riverside, our lone remaining office property in Jacksonville, Florida. We also sold two single tenant assets in our master lease property outside of Miami in Hialeah, Florida, for a total disposition volume of $57 million at a 6.3% blended exit cap rate. These dispositions' proceeds and the proceeds from our asset sales during the first half of the year effectively match-funded our purchase of Madison Yards.

As we've highlighted in the past, the 162,500 sq ft property sits on a great infill location along the BeltLine in Atlanta, Georgia, and was an opportunity to enhance our portfolio's tenant quality while also improving our geographic exposure by further investing in Atlanta, which we believe is one of the best markets in the country. The asset has excellent stable cash flow, a terrific customer draw in Publix, and represents a great core property that is set to benefit from the rapid pace of growth of the Inman Park and Reynoldstown submarket and the long-term prospects of the broader Atlanta area.

West Broad Village, which is our most recent acquisition that we acquired two weeks ago, spans more than 392,000 sq ft on 33 acres and has some similar characteristics, including a very strong grocer in Whole Foods, as well as a great complementary retail tenants in REI, Dave & Buster's, and HomeGoods. We acquired this property meaningfully below replacement costs with 17% vacancy, which we believe provides us upside as we emphasize value added leasing and look to reposition the asset as a dominant lifestyle property in the high-end Short Pump submarket of Richmond, Virginia.

Overall, if we take a step back and look at how our portfolio has evolved since the beginning of the year, we've been able to trade out of office and single tenant assets and reinvest into properties anchored by tenants such as Whole Foods, HomeGoods, Publix, REI, Ross Dress for Less, and Best Buy, while further diversifying our overall tenant exposure and giving our portfolio more long-term upside through lease up of acquired vacancy and re-tenanting units that currently have below market rents as they become available. We've been able to drive attractive net investment spreads while also more than doubling our grocery anchored asset exposure to nearly 30% of the portfolio and increasing our overall retail and mixed-use portfolio makeup to nearly 90%.

While we're excited about these new investments, we're also highly focused on maximizing value of our existing portfolio through active asset management leasing in our capital investments program. We're starting to see the benefits of the leases we've signed over the past few quarters, with new leases beginning to open at a number of our properties. The most notable gains have occurred at Ashford Lane, where nearly a dozen new tenants have opened or will open over the next few months. The property is currently 78% occupied and more than 85% leased. With the progress we've made on the line, we have a strong tailwind to fill the remaining unleased vacancy to drive additional revenue in the next 12-24 months. The operational gains are not just through revenue growth. We're also finding ways to operate the properties more efficiently.

The combination of the two resulted in year-over-year store NOI growth of 12% in the quarter and is up more than 20% year-to-date. From a leasing perspective, we signed seven new leases in the quarter, totaling 43,000 sq ft at an annual average rent of over $36 per sq ft. More than half of this leased square footage is for existing vacancy acquired when we purchased the property, and the largest of the new leases signed at our property in Winter Park, Florida, where we now lease the entire top floor. Two of the new leases were in locations where the tenant either vacated the property or relocated them to a previously vacant unit. In these instances, we grew expiring rents by 47%.

Of our nine renewals and extensions during the quarter, we experienced nearly 8% growth in comparable new per square foot lease rates as we continue to benefit from meaningful tenant demand for our high-quality locations. Within our structured investments portfolio, we anticipate the borrower of Water Star Loan to fully repay the outstanding balance before the end of the year, which will allow us to pay down debt until we find new additional opportunities for reinvestment. All of our successes are not without some challenges. We've been notified that the WeWork location at our Shops at Legacy property in Plano, Texas, will be going dark before the end of the year. We have a corporate guarantee in place that should make the anticipated plan needed to find a replacement tenant.

While we recognize it will take some time and effort to find the right tenant, we believe we can find a productive backfill that will benefit the property given the strength of the market. Additionally, we do have one Regal T heater in the portfolio at our Beaver Creek Crossing property outside of Raleigh, North Carolina. We've been in dialogue with their representatives, and there are currently no indications that our lease will be rejected in bankruptcy. However, given that the box is separately parceled and the Raleigh market is one of the fastest-growing, most in-demand markets in the country, we believe we have an attractive set of alternatives available to us should they decide to vacate the space.

Finally, on the capital investment side of things, the lawn at Ashford Lane is largely complete, and we expect that the space to be fully operational and activated as we head towards the holiday season. I'll now pass it over to Matt to talk about our performance in the quarter, capital markets activities, and increased guidance.

Matthew Partridge
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, CTO Realty Growth

Thanks, John. With the inclusion of West Broad Village, our income property portfolio consists of 19 properties comprising approximately 3.1 million sq ft of rentable space across 15 markets. Our largest markets are now Atlanta, Georgia, Dallas, Texas, Richmond, Virginia, and Raleigh, North Carolina, where we've seen strong tenant demand, excellent population growth, and above-average wage growth. Fidelity continues to be our largest tenant exposure, but with the shift in portfolio makeup that John talked about, we've added a number of high-quality retail tenants to our top 20 tenant list, and we've nearly finalized our transition to retail and mixed-use assets. At quarter end, our portfolio was 92% occupied, and we reported lease occupancy of more than 94%. Total revenues for the third quarter increased nearly 40% to $23 million, and year-to-date total revenues have increased by 31% to $60 million.

Of the $6.5 million year-over-year increase in quarterly revenues, $4.5 million was driven by income property and structured investment revenue gains, while the other $2 million was from mitigation credit and subsurface sales. Our year-over-year same property NOI growth for the quarter was 12%, with Crossroads Town Center in Chandler, Arizona, The Strand in Jacksonville, Florida, and our restaurants in Daytona Beach representing the largest contributions to the growth. Our same property NOI statistics only include assets owned for the entirety of the measurement period in both 2022 and 2021, so the effects of the properties we acquired in the fourth quarter of 2021 and year-to-date 2022 do not impact these results for the quarter. Third quarter 2022 Core FFO was $0.47 per share, representing a 38% increase compared to the third quarter of 2021.

Third quarter 2022 AFFO was $0.49 per share, representing a 36% increase over the third quarter of 2021. Year to date, Core FFO was $1.41 per share, and AFFO was $1.47 per share, representing a year-over-year per share growth of 55% and 41% respectively when compared to the first nine months of 2021. The third quarter was the first quarter our convertible notes on an if-converted basis under Accounting Standards Update 2020-06 resulted in a dilutive impact to our earnings per share.

As a result, we adjusted net income per share and Nareit-defined FFO per share to remove the interest expense associated with our convertible notes, and we added approximately 3.1 million shares to our diluted weighted average share count to reflect the impact of our convertible notes as if they were converted at the current conversion ratio as of the end of the third quarter. We reversed these adjustments for our calculation of Core FFO per share and AFFO per share in order to reflect the actual incurred interest expense and current basic share count as reflected on the face of our P&L. We did not make this adjustment for our year-to-date net income per share and Nareit-defined FFO per share because the effects of the adjustments would be anti-dilutive.

We'll continue to evaluate whether or not the adjustments required under ASU 2020-06 will be dilutive or anti-dilutive in each subsequent quarter, and we'll adjust our net income per share and Nareit-defined FFO per share accordingly. Because we removed the effects from our Core FFO per share and AFFO per share, the impact does not influence our guidance or the comparability of those quarterly and year-to-date results to our guidance. As previously announced, the company paid a third quarter regular cash dividend of $0.38 per share on September 30th to shareholders of record on September 12th.

Our quarterly dividend represents a 14% year-over-year increase over the company's Q3 2021 cash dividend and a 1.8% increase over our Q2 2022 quarterly cash dividend and a current annualized yield of approximately 7.6%. This represents a Q3 2022 AFFO per share cash payout ratio of 78%. On the capital markets front, it was an active quarter. As we previously discussed, in July, we completed our three-for-one stock split effective July 1st. Within the quarter, we issued approximately 566,000 shares of common stock through our ATM program for total net proceeds of $12.3 million at an average issuance price of $22.02 per share.

We refinanced our credit facility, extending the maturity date of our revolver to January 2027, and increased the commitments by $90 million to a total size of $300 million. We also entered into a new $100 million term loan with an expiration date of January 2028, and we fully swapped the term loan, effectively fixing SOFR for the life of the loan. We had terrific support from the bank market during these two transactions, so I'd like to acknowledge and thank all of our banking partners for their commitment to our strategy and our team. Finally, we repurchased approximately 86,000 shares of common stock for $1.6 million at a weighted average gross price of $19.17 per share.

We ended the quarter with approximately $47 million in cash and restricted cash and approximately $262 million of undrawn commitments under our revolving credit facility. Net debt to total enterprise value at quarter end was approximately 43%, and our net debt to EBITDA was 6.4x. Looking at the balance of the year, we revised our full year 2022 guidance to account for our Q3 2022 results and revised expectations for transaction and leasing activity in current capital markets environment, a steepening yield curve, and other influential assumptions. Our new Core FFO per share guidance range is $1.71-$1.74 per share, which is an increase of $0.13 per share at the low end and $0.10 per share at the high end.

Our new AFFO per share guidance range is $1.79-$1.82 per share, which is an increase of $0.09 per share at the low end and $0.06 per share at the high end. Our revised guidance assumes no additional acquisitions or structured investments for the balance of the year. Furthermore, we have revised our disposition guidance to a range of $81 million-$83 million of property sales at an exit cap rate of 6.2%. With that, I'll turn the call back over to John for his closing remarks.

John Albright
President and CEO, CTO Realty Growth

Thanks, Matt. This was a great quarter of execution, regardless of some of the challenges at hand. We believe our rock-solid balance sheet, strong markets, high-quality portfolio, and embedded same-store NOI growth from our year-to-date and future leasing activity have us well positioned to continue delivering outsized earnings and cash flow growth through the end of the year and for the foreseeable future. We appreciate all of our team's hard work, and I wanna thank our investors and partners for their continued support. With that, we will open it up for questions. Operator?

Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you'll need to press star one one on your telephone. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. One moment for our first question. Our first question comes from Gaurav Mehta from EF Hutton. Your line is now open.

Gaurav Mehta
Managing Director of Equity Research, EF Hutton

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I was hoping if you could provide some color on what you guys are seeing in the transaction market as far as cap rates?

John Albright
President and CEO, CTO Realty Growth

Yeah. You know, it's kind of interesting. There's not a lot of activity going on right now with regards to transactions because there's a little bit of a standoff between buyers and sellers. People that, you know, obviously, it's a challenging environment if you're looking to sell a property, because there's really no debt market for secured debt. If you're out in the market trying to sell something, you probably, you know, have to sell something. I would say that roughly on those sort of situations, you know, kind of like us, you know, people only want a really good deal. I'd say cap rates are out like, you know, 100 basis points, or more, depending on the kind of quality of the property.

Right now, there's not a lot of transactions happening. There's probably less inventory out there being sold because people are determining this is not a great time to be selling an asset.

Gaurav Mehta
Managing Director of Equity Research, EF Hutton

Okay. Maybe a second question. I think in your prepared remarks, you mentioned a few times about the strong tenant demand. I was hoping if you could maybe provide some color on, you know, have you seen any sign of weakness or softness from your tenants, or demand continues to remain strong for your properties?

John Albright
President and CEO, CTO Realty Growth

Yeah. We keep on. You know, we expect it to soften up. It hasn't softened up. The only softness we've seen and heard about is really from local tenants in the markets where our properties are located. The more national, regional tenants, the demand is still strong.

Gaurav Mehta
Managing Director of Equity Research, EF Hutton

Okay. Thank you.

John Albright
President and CEO, CTO Realty Growth

Sure.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Rob Stevenson from Janney Montgomery Scott. Your line is now open.

Rob Stevenson
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Janney Montgomery Scott

Good morning, guys. John, can you talk a little bit about where the rent is on the WeWork space versus market and how much term is left on that lease?

John Albright
President and CEO, CTO Realty Growth

Yeah. Roughly, you know, there's definitely, you know, eight or nine years left on term, and the rent is probably $2 above market. The opportunity there will be, you know, going after the guarantee and what's owed, and then, you know, bringing in another tenant. There's been the word's already kind of gotten out in the market, even though they haven't really done any sort of official notice. We've had a bunch of operators that wanna take over the space.

Rob Stevenson
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Janney Montgomery Scott

Of sort of similar co-working type of thing?

John Albright
President and CEO, CTO Realty Growth

Correct.

Rob Stevenson
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Janney Montgomery Scott

Okay. Given your comments on Regal at your Raleigh location, I mean, do you want them to stay? Is it better for you longer term if they go, if they turn back in the lease and you could do something else with the space? I mean, how far down the road have you guys gotten in terms of, you know, game planning, what winds up happening if Regal leaves?

John Albright
President and CEO, CTO Realty Growth

I mean, I would say that, look, I think Regal in that location is a really nice use because it's a very neighborhoody kind of a community center, and it was very activated for families that live around there. I think it's a nice complement. You know, if they decide that this doesn't work for them, we do have great alternatives. You know, it's just a lot more work to make that happen because it's not gonna be using the theater box, or at least we wouldn't pursue another theater. We'd pursue an alternate use, which is better credit and that sort of thing. Those uses would be nice complements as well, but I just think the theater, you know, actually works pretty well for the center.

Rob Stevenson
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Janney Montgomery Scott

Okay. How is AMC doing in the new Atlanta asset and any of the other movie theaters that you guys have? Are you know, concerned about at this point?

John Albright
President and CEO, CTO Realty Growth

Yeah. AMC at Madison Yards, I mean, that's one of their newest theaters probably in the country. I mean, it opened up right before pandemic, and it's not super large. They've been very consistent, at least when the new shows like Top Gun and everything came around, you know, it was very strong. I suspect, you know, without any kind of banner sort of movies coming out right now, it's probably slipped off a little bit.

You know, the center is so packed with people that, you know, if there's a good theater and there's so many people live around, or a good show and there's a lot of people live around there, it would be a hassle to go to a movie somewhere else just because of, you know, the traffic in Atlanta. It has a nice captured audience there. Again, it's only, you know, eight screens, so it's not an enormous project.

Rob Stevenson
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Janney Montgomery Scott

Okay. Matt, is there any material delay in terms of some of the leases that you signed and when they start flowing through the top line? Just trying to reconcile a little bit you know the difference between third quarter FFO or Core FFO and the fourth quarter implied guidance.

Matthew Partridge
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, CTO Realty Growth

Yeah. There is. I mean, there's about $2.3 million-$2.4 million of rent that's been signed that hasn't commenced, and that's all on space that is currently not cash flowing. So there's some pretty good tailwind heading into next year that'll come online probably late fourth quarter, whereas maybe originally we thought it was early fourth quarter. There's been some timing delays on certain things. We had a few pull up into the third quarter as well, they're constantly moving around.

Rob Stevenson
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Janney Montgomery Scott

Okay. Thanks, guys. Appreciate the time.

John Albright
President and CEO, CTO Realty Growth

Thanks, sir.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Matthew Erdner from JonesTrading. Your line is now open.

Matthew Erdner
Research Associate, JonesTrading Institutional Services

Hey, guys. Matthew on for Jason. Congrats on the good quarter. Could you provide an update of the leasing efforts at Ashford Lane?

John Albright
President and CEO, CTO Realty Growth

Yeah. Ashford Lane has been incredibly busy. We're in a great situation there in that we've signed a restaurant tenant for the last remaining space at The Lawn. We'll be moving that tenant that's there now to the second floor office space. We've upgraded that use in a much higher paying tenant, and then we're leasing a office vacancy with relocating the existing tenant. You know, we've had another lease signed this week, kind of smaller tenant. We have two or three other leases in the works right now.

It feels really good that, you know, this one's gonna be kind of fully stabilized, you know, by the end of the year or, you know, first quarter next year. You know, there could be a situation where we just kind of wait for the right tenant on some of the spaces that are left. Yeah, everything's been very strong there.

Matthew Erdner
Research Associate, JonesTrading Institutional Services

Yeah, that's awesome. In terms of asking rents, what are the expectations on increases, I guess, there, and then for next year, if you guys have any coming online?

John Albright
President and CEO, CTO Realty Growth

Matt, do you wanna?

Matthew Partridge
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, CTO Realty Growth

When you say expectations of increases, are you talking about relative to replacing existing rents that might be expiring?

Matthew Erdner
Research Associate, JonesTrading Institutional Services

Yeah. Correct. Yep.

Matthew Partridge
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, CTO Realty Growth

Yeah. I mean, in the quarter, we only had two new leases that we signed that were replacing existing tenants, and those were up 47%. That's probably not a good expectation for next year, but that gives you a sense of the strength of the market and the quality of the assets and where rents are headed.

John Albright
President and CEO, CTO Realty Growth

I mean, there's some that are doubles, because, you know, the tenants that have been there for a while, and that sub-market has, you know, just gotten so much denser. You know, that's anything that has a tenant that's been there a while, their uplift on it is pretty strong.

Matthew Partridge
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, CTO Realty Growth

Awesome. Thank you, guys.

John Albright
President and CEO, CTO Realty Growth

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Craig Kucera from B. Riley Securities. Your line is now open.

Craig Kucera
Managing Director of Real Estate Equity Research, B. Riley Securities

Yeah, thanks. Good morning, guys. John, given the challenges that developers are finding in the debt markets, in particular, are you seeing more opportunities that you might move forward on, in your structured investment portfolio?

John Albright
President and CEO, CTO Realty Growth

The answer is yes, Craig. I mean, there are some good opportunities that seem starting to percolate. You know, we can earn equity-like yields being in a first mortgage or mezz situation. We don't have anything kind of, you know, right in front of us that we're gonna be, you know, printing a ticket anytime soon. I will say that area should be very active for the rest of the year.

Craig Kucera
Managing Director of Real Estate Equity Research, B. Riley Securities

Got it. Matt, your G&A expense was a little higher this quarter, I think higher than it's been in some time. I'm just curious, were there any one-time expenses associated with the corporate move to Orlando? You know, should we expect that to be more of a recurring level due to some staffing increases and maybe some additional office expense?

Matthew Partridge
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, CTO Realty Growth

Yeah, no one-time items. Just continuing to build out the team as we bring on more managed assets, and you know, build out the infrastructure.

Craig Kucera
Managing Director of Real Estate Equity Research, B. Riley Securities

Got it. Can you give me some color on the I think you have about a 350 basis point delta between what you've leased and economic occupancy. How are you thinking about, you know, the pace of when those leases will take occupancy and start paying cash over the next year or so?

Matthew Partridge
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, CTO Realty Growth

Yeah, I think, there's a handful of them that'll come online between now and the end of the year, and then, there's another handful that'll come online in the first quarter. Some of these will take a little bit longer, into the, I'll call it, the middle of next year to come online, just because the tenants have to do their build out, so there's a free rent period and things like that.

Craig Kucera
Managing Director of Real Estate Equity Research, B. Riley Securities

Got it. Just one more for me. I'd be curious, you had some success selling mitigation credits and monetizing some of those types of non-core assets. You know, were those utilized by standard developers? Can you talk about sort of the market for sales right now in that piece of your business?

John Albright
President and CEO, CTO Realty Growth

Yeah. That was for, you know, basically, development projects that are still going forward. We expect some additional sales to happen probably at the very end of the year or maybe slip over into January. It seems like everything's kind of slipping. You know, projects, we haven't heard of projects kind of being shelved because of the environment. I think, you know, Florida, you know, has that unique kind of, you know, tailwind for needs for the development. So far, so good.

Craig Kucera
Managing Director of Real Estate Equity Research, B. Riley Securities

Okay, thanks.

John Albright
President and CEO, CTO Realty Growth

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from RJ Milligan from Raymond James. Your line is now open.

John Paul Austin
Director of Investor Relations, RLJ Lodging Trust

Hey, good morning, guys. This is John Paul Austin on for RJ. You guys did $0.47 of Core FFO in 3Q, which comes out to around $1.88 annualized, which is above consensus for 2023. Just curious if there are any one-time items in that 3Q number and how we should think about the run rate going forward?

Matthew Partridge
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, CTO Realty Growth

Yeah. Good to hear from you, John Paul. I think in Q3, you know, we had the interest expense from some of the structured investments that'll get paid off this quarter and then as we head into the first quarter of next year. Either those proceeds will get used to pay down debt or to John's point, we might find some other opportunities on the financing side to put that capital back to work. It's a little uncertain on the redeployment side for that capital. Then we had some accrual true-ups and some percentage rent in the third quarter, which, you know, we're hopeful the percentage rent will continue, but it'll obviously be performance driven by the tenants.

I think, you know, we're not in a position yet to provide formal guidance for next year, but the $88 run rate certainly seems appropriate, as a starting point.

John Paul Austin
Director of Investor Relations, RLJ Lodging Trust

Got it. That's helpful. Thank you, Matt. My other question was on leverage. It looks like it ticks down to 6.4x this quarter. Just wondering if you could remind us of your leverage targets and how you expect to kind of manage the balance sheet moving into next year.

Matthew Partridge
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, CTO Realty Growth

Yeah. It did tick down, but I'll remind everybody that we did bring it back up a little bit to fund a portion of the West Broad acquisition in October. I think you can expect us to run it in that 6x-7x range, but we could end up below or above it just given.

The size of the company, it doesn't take a lot to move it. The other thing I'd highlight is that with the convertible notes, the conversion price is below the stock price today, and so that's $50 million of debt that will likely convert to equity in 2025. From sort of a pro forma leverage perspective accounting for that, we're pretty under-levered relative to our long-term targets.

John Paul Austin
Director of Investor Relations, RLJ Lodging Trust

Thanks. That's it for me. I'll turn it over.

John Albright
President and CEO, CTO Realty Growth

Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Michael Gorman from BTIG. Your line is now open.

Michael Gorman
Managing Director and REIT Analyst, BTIG

Yeah, thanks. Good morning. John, I was wondering, sorry if I missed it, but, you know, you talked about the pause in the acquisition markets, which certainly makes sense and something we're seeing across property types. I wonder what your sense is for kind of where the market would clear right now versus maybe 90 days ago or even six months ago, right? 'Cause we keep hearing there's a ton of dry powder on the private side. REIT balance sheets are in pretty good shape, certainly yours is as well, and are looking for opportunities. So, you know, I'm kinda curious your thoughts on what it would take for the market to start clearing in terms of price adjustments.

John Albright
President and CEO, CTO Realty Growth

Yeah. I think that, you know, again, it's probably 100 basis points. If you're talking about like a power center, it could be higher, it could be 125, 150 basis points to clear. But if you're talking about high-quality grocer anchored, you're probably talking about 50-75 basis points. You know, I just got back from ULI, and that was kind of the discussion around, you know, with a lot of, you know, different sort of owners and buyers and capital. And that was the consensus, is that if you have a really high-quality grocer deal, you know, you're probably seeing 50-75 basis points. But if you're kind of power center, you know, you're 100, 150 basis points, something like that.

you know, in this environment, you know, we're definitely kind of, you know, looking for those really good opportunities where you can take advantage of the dislocation. You don't wanna buy something that's just marginal. You really want something that's, you know, high quality, kinda like what we just bought in West Broad.

Michael Gorman
Managing Director and REIT Analyst, BTIG

Okay, great. That's helpful. That makes sense. Then either John or Matt, just talking about the share repurchases in the quarter, I understand it was relatively small amount and it was below where the stock is today, which is always a good sign. But I'm just curious how you balance that out versus the longer term growth trajectory of the company and the liquidity in the shares, balancing, you know, taking advantage of an opportunity where the stock is clearly mispriced versus that long-term liquidity and long-term capital base.

John Albright
President and CEO, CTO Realty Growth

Yeah, I mean, look, as we've been very active in share repurchases when it makes sense, you know, throughout the time I've been here. We're always, you know, really looking about always driving accretion to NAV. We don't worry about so much, you know, liquidity and growth of the company so much. We're just really about driving NAV and value. But we hope that we will get those opportunities to grow the company, and, you know, given the growth we have on these results and what we have, kind of the tailwinds we have with the portfolio, we feel pretty good about where the company's gonna be next year. Why not take advantage of the stock? The market for CTO has always been a bit of a laggard.

Just because we're just not as well covered. We're just, you know, we feel like we're, even though we've been around 115 years, we feel like we're still a new company 'cause some people haven't heard of us and they're starting to learn more about us and as we continue to upgrade our portfolio. I know I'm giving you a really long-winded answer. You know, we'll always take advantage of dislocations in the market when there's volatility and people are seeking liquidity and panicking. We'll, as you saw in the quarter also, we did, you know, issue some shares. You know, just taking advantage of dislocations when it presents itself.

Michael Gorman
Managing Director and REIT Analyst, BTIG

Great. Thanks. Appreciate the time, guys.

John Albright
President and CEO, CTO Realty Growth

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions. I would now like to turn the call back over to John Albright for closing remarks.

John Albright
President and CEO, CTO Realty Growth

Thank you very much for attending the call, and look forward to talking with you during the quarter. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

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