Four Corners Property Trust, Inc. (FCPT)
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Earnings Call: Q2 2022

Jul 27, 2022

Operator

Hello everybody and welcome to the FCPT second quarter 2022 financial results conference call. My name is Sam and I'll be coordinating your call today. If you would like to ask a question during the presentation, you may do so by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I will now hand you over to your host, Jerry, to begin. Jerry, please go ahead.

Jerry R. Morgan
CFO, FCPT

Thank you, Sam. During the course of this call, we will make forward-looking statements which are based on beliefs and assumptions made by us. Our actual results will be affected by known and unknown factors, including uncertainty related to the remaining scope, severity, and duration of the COVID-19 pandemic that are beyond our control or ability to predict. Our assumptions are not a guarantee of future performance, and some will prove to be incorrect.

For a more detailed description of potential risks, please refer to our SEC filings, which can be found at fcpt.com. All the information presented on this call is current as of today, July 27, 2022. In addition, reconciliation to non-GAAP financial measures presented on this call, such as FFO and AFFO, can be found in the company's supplemental report, also available on the website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Bill.

Bill Lenehan
President and CEO, FCPT

Thank you, Jerry. Good morning. Thank you for joining us to discuss our second quarter results. I am going to make some introductory remarks. Patrick will review some details around acquisitions in the pipeline, and then Jerry will discuss the financial results. The existing portfolio continues to perform exceptionally well, with collections at 99.9% for the quarter and occupancy remaining at 99.9%.

We reported second quarter AFFO of $0.41 per share, which represents an 8% increase year-over-year. We grew cash rental revenues over 12.5% on a year-over-year basis, including the benefit of rental increases and $274 million of acquisitions over the trailing twelve months.

This included the acquisition of 26 properties in the second quarter for $54 million at an initial cash yield of 6.4%, reflecting rent credit to closing and near-term rent increases, or 6.1% on rents in place as of June 30. 100% of the acquired properties are corporate operated, and we remain highly confident we are aligning our portfolio with best-in-class operators at attractive rent levels.

We've built the portfolio since inception to be conservative and not stretch on credit underwriting. We believe we are well-positioned, even in this challenging macro environment, to continue to execute on our strategy. Patrick will discuss the investment environment in more detail, but we are seeing a structural change. Pricing has started to improve in response to higher costs of capital and more economy sellers, which will lead to a busy second half of the year.

In the quarter, we also sold three properties for a combined sales price of $12.8 million, representing a 4.7% weighted average cash cap rate. The strong demand for our properties provides us an alternative source of capital and validation of our portfolio quality. Moving on to our tenants' performance. Restaurant operators continue to have strong results in the most recent quarter.

Quick service restaurants are operating at approximately 115%, and casual dining is operating in line with 2019 weekly sales levels, according to Baird's most recent weekly restaurant survey reported on July 18th. Of course, all of our operators are experiencing the effects of inflation on food, labor, and other input costs, which is pressuring margins. Interesting, inflation in grocery and at-home food prices has outpaced inflation in restaurants for the past nine months.

We've added a slide from Baird Research to this quarter's investor presentation to highlight this trend. Baird estimates inflation in grocery stores of 11.6% in Q2, compared to 7.4% in restaurant. Consumer behavior is difficult to predict, but generally a faster rise in grocery prices should provide restaurant operators flexibility to increase prices as well. We note that June's 1% increase in consumer spend at restaurants marks the fifth consecutive month of increased restaurant spending.

Turning to the balance sheet, we have raised over $186 million of capital year to date to support our investment program. This included the closing of $125 million private note that funded in March, but was priced last December at a 3.1% coupon and $61 million of equity via forward sale agreements.

We settled $4.6 million of this forward in the second quarter and expect to settle the remaining $56 million over the next period of time to fund acquisitions. Additionally, the $13 million of dispositions helped fund our pipeline in the quarter at accretive rates. Finally, a few important comments on the team.

Over the last three months, we have hired two additional investment analysts to the acquisition team, a new associate general counsel, an HR manager, and an operations director, and have added new roles in property management. Along with additional investments we are making in our financial and property systems that improve automation and efficiency, this staffing sets us up well to support continued portfolio growth. With that, I'll turn it over to Pat.

Pat Wernig
Managing Director of Acquisitions, FCPT

Thanks, Bill. I'd like to start by discussing the cap rate environment and our acquisition mix for Q2. We spoke on the last call in April about the tightening cap rates we observed in 2021, and how that trend had held steady in the first four months of 2022. We also stated that we were seeing the initial signs of that momentum slowing and our expectation that cap rates would moderate as borrowing costs rose.

Over the past three months, we've witnessed upward movement in cap rates. We're seeing transactions come back to us where other potential buyers cannot secure accretive debt financing. The decrease in competition is allowing us to increase our pipeline for the coming quarters while also being more selective in our asset screening.

We're very pleased with the state of our pipeline and in particular, how the opportunity set has grown for us over the past month. FCPT maintained price discipline over the past several years and avoided any real cap rate compression in the assets we acquired. As a result, our investment spreads continue to be positive. We will continue to exercise price discipline with what we introduce to the pipeline.

We've also seen increased engagement from mall and shopping center owners on outparcel transactions. A great example of this is the 11-property, $33 million outparcel transaction that we announced in June with PREIT. The portfolio includes eight restaurant properties. We also announced a seven-property outparcel portfolio in Texas earlier this month for $17 million, which includes six restaurant properties.

We expect the $50 million of combined outparcels will close mainly in the third quarter, and we are actively engaging other parties to continue building out the outparcel pipeline. For the quarter, auto service accounted for 63% of our investments, medical retail for 23%, and the remaining 13% consisted of casual dining and well-located investment-grade bank branches.

Turning to our pipeline for the rest of the year, we built out a stable of properties with high-quality tenants in well-located retail corridors. The pipeline sector mix for restaurants, auto service, and medical will shift to be more in line with past years in the second quarter as deal timing led to a higher number of auto service transactions closing in Q2. On the disposition front, as Bill mentioned, we completed the sale of three properties in the quarter.

These were comprised of a Bob Evans and an Olive Garden, both at 4.5% cap rates, as well as a franchisee-operated Outback at a 5% cap rate. Each of these stores' sales volumes underperformed the brand average, and so removing them from the portfolio at such attractive pricing was particularly compelling. Just one final reminder, historically, Q1 and Q2 have been lower acquisition volume quarters in the second half of the year.

For example, in 2019, 2020, and 2021, each year's first six months represented approximately 31% of total closings for that year. While we don't provide acquisitions guidance, as we look to the pipeline, we do expect the dynamic of higher volume in the second half of the year to continue. Now turning to Jerry for discussion of our portfolio and financial results.

Jerry R. Morgan
CFO, FCPT

Thanks, Pat. We generated $46.8 million of cash rental income in the second quarter after excluding $1.1 million of straight-line and other non-cash rental adjustments. As Bill mentioned, we reported 99.9% collections for the second quarter with no material changes to collectibility or credit reserves or any balance sheet impairments.

On a run rate basis, our current annual cash base rent for leases in place as of June thirtieth is $181.2 million, and our weighted average five-year annual cash rent escalator is 1.45%. Cash G&A expense, excluding stock-based compensation for the quarter, was $3.7 million, representing 7.8% of cash rental income for the quarter.

For the second quarter, we estimated tenant rent coverage was maintained at 4.6 times for the 75% of our tenants who report financial results, which continues to highlight how low FCPT rents are. On the capital front, as Bill mentioned, we have entered into equity forward agreements in the first half of the year totaling $61 million based on the initial average forward price of $27.28 per share. We settled the $44.6 million in the second quarter and will expect to settle the remainder in the second half of this year to fund acquisitions. Net debt to EBITDA for the quarter was 5.7 times.

Pro forma for settling and deploying the remaining equity forwards, we estimate our leverage is 5.6x and well within our range of 5.5-6x for our leverage target. In May, we received a second investment-grade rating of Baa3 from Moody's, in addition to the upgrade in Q1 from Fitch to BBB flat. This second rating allows us to decrease the credit margin on our existing term loans and our revolver by 25 basis points.

This will lead to at least $1 million in annual interest expense savings on the term loan, incremental savings when we use the revolver, and will benefit future private note and bond offerings. We ended the second quarter with over $267 million in liquidity, comprising $17 million of cash and full availability on our $250 million revolver.

We remain focused on maintaining a conservative balance sheet, extending and layering our debt maturities, and thinking thoughtfully about our repayment obligations. Our next debt maturity of $50 million is not due until November 2023. With that, I'll turn it back over to Sam for investor Q&A.

Operator

Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your line is unmuted locally. Our first question comes from Sheila McGrath of Evercore. Sheila, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Sheila McGrath
Senior Managing Director, Evercore ISI

Yes, good morning. Bill, I was wondering if you could help us understand the differential on cap rates on acquisitions versus the assets sold. I see the acquisitions lease term was, like, just under six years, and the assets sold was 12 years. Would you say that a lot of the differential in cap rate is driven by the remaining lease term?

Jerry R. Morgan
CFO, FCPT

I think, Sheila, there's some of that, but what I would say is, the assets that we sold, we are relatively reactive. We don't sell many assets. We get incoming inquiries, and we only accept those at very strong pricing. Then what we've been purchasing have had moderate lease terms, but we score the properties holistically, and they score quite well because the rents are low. In many cases, they're ground leases, and they have good corporate credit.

Sheila McGrath
Senior Managing Director, Evercore ISI

Okay, great. Then on the PREIT and the other outparcel transaction that you mentioned, are most of those ground leases, or are they improvements?

Bill Lenehan
President and CEO, FCPT

Yeah, they're mostly ground leases.

Sheila McGrath
Senior Managing Director, Evercore ISI

Okay, great. I guess last question for Jerry. Oh, sorry, go ahead.

Bill Lenehan
President and CEO, FCPT

Sheila, so much about these outparcel transactions is the low rents and the corporate operated tenants. We look on those very favorably.

Sheila McGrath
Senior Managing Director, Evercore ISI

Okay, great. This one's for Jerry. On the investment grade rating, that helps the pricing of the line of credit, I believe, and maybe the term loan. Can you provide a little bit more detail on interest savings, and did you get any benefit of that in 2Q?

Jerry R. Morgan
CFO, FCPT

Great. Thanks, Sheila. Yes, we get with the second rating and with the BBB rating from Fitch, we qualify on a pricing grid that reduced our margin on all of our term loans by 25 basis points and also the revolver. We started to benefit from that roughly the middle of the second quarter on our term loans. We didn't have any usage on our revolver in the second quarter, and so you'll see that continued benefit on the $400 million of term loans for all of the third quarter and beyond.

Sheila McGrath
Senior Managing Director, Evercore ISI

Okay, thank you.

Bill Lenehan
President and CEO, FCPT

Thank you, Sheila.

Operator

Our next question comes from Anthony Paolone from JP Morgan. Anthony, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Anthony Paolone
Executive Director, JPMorgan

Great, thanks. I guess, Patrick, you mentioned some cap rate movement in the last few months. Would you be able to put, you know, maybe some brackets or numbers and, you know, maybe by product type, kind of what the order of magnitude's been? Also, maybe if you think that's, you know, we're done or there's more to go there.

Pat Wernig
Managing Director of Acquisitions, FCPT

Yeah, sure. I think, you know, it's hard to place an exact amount because there are so many variables as Bill was alluding to earlier. You know, certainly, you could be comfortable saying 15 basis points, maybe 20 basis points.

But I think there's more of a dynamic of what this allows us to do from a quality filtering perspective and making sure that we can be even more stringent in what we're introducing to the portfolio versus just taking incremental 10 or 15 basis points. On your second question, yes, our view would be that there's more to come, but, you know, we're waiting what the Fed does today, what the Fed does the rest of the year, and a lot of other factors in the macro environment.

Bill Lenehan
President and CEO, FCPT

The only thing I'd add.

Anthony Paolone
Executive Director, JPMorgan

Okay

Bill Lenehan
President and CEO, FCPT

is that there's a delay, you know, between identifying a property, doing due diligence, getting it under LOI purchase and sale agreement, further due diligence, and closing, very easily takes, you know, several months. What we do is reiterate exactly what Patrick said, that we're seeing higher cap rates that allows us to be a little bit more selective, but it will take months for that to filter into the announced results.

Anthony Paolone
Executive Director, JPMorgan

Okay. You know, Bill, you mentioned or talked to this a little bit to Sheila's question, but just wanted to revisit the shorter lease lengths that you did this past quarter, and you've done some of that in the past. Any way to you know, give us a sense as to you know, what you kind of get in return, like either your IRRs, where you think yields go by doing some of these shorter duration deals versus if you were to you know, do something like 10 years or something more down the fairway like that?

Bill Lenehan
President and CEO, FCPT

Well, I think it really is something you can do when you finance at the corporate level. We're not putting property mortgages on the individual properties, which lenders are very focused on having lease duration well past their mortgage maturity. We don't finance that way. What I would say is you want to be very careful that you're selecting good credits with low rents so the renewal probability is very high.

We've had very good success in having high renewals. In the very unusual circumstance where a tenant hasn't renewed, we've backfilled with other tenants, in some cases at much higher rents. Maybe more of that, and these are, you know, one or two properties per annum, but we've had very good results so far.

Anthony Paolone
Executive Director, JPMorgan

Okay. Is it the sort of thing where, it, you know, as opposed to doing something with a 1% or 2% bump every year, you feel confident that if it works out, you know, a 6% yield goes to a 7%? Or what's kind of like, what are you kind of playing for there?

Bill Lenehan
President and CEO, FCPT

I wouldn't look at it that way. Most of the time the tenants do have renewal options. Not always, but very often they have five-year renewal options. It's not. We're not doing this to get a big jump on renewal. It's that you can find better tenants with better located real estate with low rents. With shorter lease term, the pricing is still pretty reasonable. You have to be confident in your ability to underwrite the renewal probability.

Anthony Paolone
Executive Director, JPMorgan

Got it. Understand. Last question, just any desire to increase dispositions, you know, just given the execution you showed relative to the stuff you're buying.

Bill Lenehan
President and CEO, FCPT

I think you'll see, you know, last couple of years we haven't sold anything. You've seen us do a couple sales this year. You'll see that continue through the second half of the year, and the theme will be very consistent, which is pruning the portfolio, but still getting very attractive cap rates.

Anthony Paolone
Executive Director, JPMorgan

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of RJ Milligan from Raymond James. RJ, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

RJ Milligan
Managing Director, Raymond James

Thanks, and good morning, guys. We've been hearing from some of your peers, not just in the net lease space, but maybe elsewhere in retail, that their expectations is that cap rates will continue to rise to the back half of the year. Maybe they're taking a little bit slower approach, at least in the very near short term on acquisitions. I'm just curious if that's something that you guys are considering or thinking about.

Bill Lenehan
President and CEO, FCPT

Yeah, it's a great question. You know, in the history of the company, we've always tried to have as large of a pipeline as we could, but being thoughtful about the quality. Going into this year, we felt like the second half of the year would be better and offer us, you know, fatter pitches to swing at. We were a little conservative earlier in the spring.

I think, and as Pat mentioned, we've seen cap rates go up 15, 20 basis points at least. In the last month or so, we have become more aggressive on acquisitions. We do agree that maybe the last seven months of the year will be better than the first handful. That dynamic is definitely the case with us.

As Pat said, it's not just pricing, it's quality of the portfolio. How difficult it is to source. Because we're well capitalized with low leverage and a favorable stock price, we do think this is the time to be a bit more aggressive, and build the pipeline and the acquisition cadence into the second half of the year.

RJ Milligan
Managing Director, Raymond James

Okay, that's helpful. Maybe you guys can talk about the competition out there. Four Corners obviously has a slightly different sandbox that they play in, given the smaller price points, more of a restaurant focus, at least on the restaurant side. I'm just curious what you're seeing out there, you know, given the move in interest rates. Has that impacted the 1031 market at all, or what does the competition look like out there for competing for assets?

Bill Lenehan
President and CEO, FCPT

Yeah, I think I would highlight on one hand, the one-off market, you know, individual buyers are going to their banks and finding that mortgages on properties are significantly more expensive than six months ago, given what's happened in rates. Folks whose business was to buy using a local bank mortgage, that's less attractive.

On the other hand, we had a lot of concern in the fall with new entrants from the private equity arena. Again, they use more financing, so their business is not nearly as attractive when the 10-year is at, you know, 3% and their borrowing costs are in the mid to high fives. We feel like the competitive environment is meaningfully more favorable. I would also say the sellers going into this year had extreme confidence, right?

They felt like if they didn't get exactly the price they want, they would just hold out and another buyer would come the next week, and their financing was attractive. They were cash flowing significantly. Now, financing has re-ratcheted to higher rates, so their incremental cash flow is lower. They've had buyers who are relying on the mortgage market walk away. We've actually, RJ, got a number of properties that we call rebounds, where they've fallen out of contract with someone else, and we've been able to acquire them at more favorable pricing.

RJ Milligan
Managing Director, Raymond James

Great. Thank you, guys.

Operator

Our next question comes from John Massocca from Ladenburg Thalmann. John, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

John Massocca
Senior Research Analyst, Ladenburg Thalmann

Good morning.

Bill Lenehan
President and CEO, FCPT

Mm-hmm.

John Massocca
Senior Research Analyst, Ladenburg Thalmann

Just a couple of quick detail questions from me. I guess first off, are cash G&A expectations still at around the $50 million mark for full year 2022?

Bill Lenehan
President and CEO, FCPT

I'm sorry, John, I missed the first part of that question.

John Massocca
Senior Research Analyst, Ladenburg Thalmann

I'm sorry. Cash G&A expectations for this year, are they still at around $15 million?

Bill Lenehan
President and CEO, FCPT

That, that's correct.

John Massocca
Senior Research Analyst, Ladenburg Thalmann

Okay. Maybe just could you provide some color on the differential between the 6.1% cap rate at, you know, kind of June 30 and the 6.4% when all the kind of credits and rent escalations are factored in? I mean, don't need the exact details, but just kind of broad strokes what's going into that 30 basis points.

Bill Lenehan
President and CEO, FCPT

Yeah, we just had an unusual result this quarter. This dynamic happens, you know, all the time, but it was the 30 basis points was a little higher, well, much higher than it's been in the past. It's essentially when you buy a property, let's say in May, and there's a 10% rent bump that happens in August. If you use the May rent, it's a 6.1%. If you use the August rent, it's a 6.4%. We're very often getting credited at closing for the differential.

So I think, John, most folks would talk about it colloquially as a 6.4% cap, but we wanted to make sure we were being conservative in pointing out the difference. It's basically very near-term rent bumps and instances where we're credited for additional rent on the closing statement.

John Massocca
Senior Research Analyst, Ladenburg Thalmann

Okay. And then maybe in terms of kind of in-place tenant credit and even as you look at the acquisition environment, are you seeing any kind of, you know, conservatism, if you will, from tenants around some of these kind of recessionary concerns? I know obviously, you know, it doesn't seem like it from some of the public names in the portfolio today, they've reported pretty strong earnings. Just anything you're seeing out there about any kind of concerns about the health of the consumer and its impact and flow through to your tenants?

Bill Lenehan
President and CEO, FCPT

Yeah. We're definitely seeing it in the marketplace, just not in our portfolio. I mean, if you look at inflation, fuel prices obviously has impact on dollar stores, other, you know, retailers of goods. They also have supply chain issues. Obviously gas stations with very significantly fluctuating gas prices and the impact that has on demand, and therefore their C-store business.

You know, we're seeing it across the board, but our portfolio seems quite immune to it. And we feel like that's gonna put us in a position where from a time management standpoint, we can be, you know, very focused on acquisitions and not working out problem credits.

John Massocca
Senior Research Analyst, Ladenburg Thalmann

Okay. That makes sense, and that's it for me. Thank you very much.

Bill Lenehan
President and CEO, FCPT

Thanks, John.

Operator

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question today, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. Our next question comes from Wes Golladay of Baird. Wes, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Wes Golladay
Senior Research Analyst, Baird

Hey. Good morning, guys. I wanna look at the shorter-term lease deals that you're doing. Are there a lot of tenant options with those deals?

Bill Lenehan
President and CEO, FCPT

Yeah. Typically, there's multiple tenant options, usually two to three, five-year options with rent growth, continuing on in the option periods.

Wes Golladay
Senior Research Analyst, Baird

Gotcha. I guess maybe, Bill, quick question for you. You know, let's say we are in a little bit more inflationary environment, sort of like Fed can't get to 2%, it's more of a 3%+ environment. I guess how are you gonna approach the business if you get more conviction that that may be the case?

Bill Lenehan
President and CEO, FCPT

You know, it really doesn't have as much effect on us as you might think. We don't use much debt. If our stock price hangs in there where it is, it's still quite accretive for us to buy things. What we found is it makes it easier to procure acquisitions as owners of assets who finance at the property level are challenged to finance accretively. If you think about it, I think one of the really interesting dynamics right now is at a very high level, net lease capital competes against capital in the high yield market. It competes against mortgage capital. It competes against equity multiples.

You know, historically, when old economy retailers were trading to private equity firms at 15-18 times multiples, net lease is less attractive because the private equity firm will pay for your business at a very high multiple. When high yield was 4%, it was a very attractive source of capital versus doing a net lease sale leaseback.

If you could get a mortgage on your property at 3%, again, very attractive compared to doing a sale leaseback at 6.5%. I think we are quite excited that we're going into a period where net lease capital at a very high level is much more attractive on a relative basis than it has been in the last half decade, you know, post financial crisis.

Wes Golladay
Senior Research Analyst, Baird

Great. Thanks for the detailed answer.

Bill Lenehan
President and CEO, FCPT

Operator, are there any more?

Operator

There's no further questions, so I'd like to hand the call back to Bill for any closing remarks.

Bill Lenehan
President and CEO, FCPT

Thank you, Sam. Well, I hope you can tell that we're quite excited about the second half of the year, and we'd be more than happy to do any investor outreach. Please reach out to Drake, and thank you everyone for their time. Cheers.

Operator

Thank you, everybody. This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.

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