Kimco Realty Corporation (KIM)
NYSE: KIM · Real-Time Price · USD
23.80
-0.08 (-0.34%)
At close: Apr 28, 2026, 4:00 PM EDT
23.75
-0.05 (-0.21%)
After-hours: Apr 28, 2026, 5:03 PM EDT
← View all transcripts

Citi’s Miami Global Property CEO Conference 2026

Mar 3, 2026

Nick Joseph
Head of US Real Estate and Lodging Research Team, Citi

2026 Global Property CEO Conference. I'm Nick Joseph here with Craig Mailman with Citi Research. Pleased to have with us Kimco and CEO Conor Flynn. This session is for Citi clients only, and disclosures have been made available at the corporate access desk. To ask a question, you can raise your hand or go to liveqa.com and enter code GPC26 to submit any questions. Conor, we'll turn it over to you to introduce your company and team, provide any opening remarks, tell the audience the top reasons an investor should buy your stock today, and then we'll get into Q&A.

Conor Flynn
CEO, Kimco Realty

Thanks very much for having us. With me today is Glenn Cohen, our CFO, and David Bujnicki, our Head of IR and Strategy. Thank you for having us. We really appreciate your time. 2025 was a breakout year for Kimco and a clear validation of our strategy. We delivered record operating performance, strengthened by the durability of our earnings profile and further enhanced by our balance sheet and financial flexibility, all while navigating a period of elevated market volatility and uneven REIT sentiment. At a high level, our results reflect the combination of strong fundamentals, disciplined capital allocation, and a portfolio positioned in the right locations for long-term growth. From an operating standpoint, performance across the portfolio was exceptional. Leasing demand stayed strong all year, with over 12 million sq ft leased.

The fourth quarter alone saw the highest new leasing volume in more than 10 years. We achieved all-time highs in portfolio occupancy, finishing the year at 96.4%, while small shop occupancy also reached a record of 92.7%. Anchor occupancy finished at 97.9%, up 90 basis points and marking our best quarterly increase ever. That leasing activity translated directly into embedded future growth. Our signed but not open pipeline expanded to a record level, representing approximately $73 million of future annual base rent. This gives us clear visibility in NOI and earnings growth through 2026 and beyond, and even with portfolio occupancy already near peak levels. Financially, we delivered strong earnings growth.

FFO per share increased nearly 7%, marking our second consecutive year of growth exceeding 5%. Same-Side NOI grew 3%, supported by accelerating rent commencements, limited new supply, and sustained tenant demand. Importantly, tenant credit quality across the portfolio remains solid. Exposure to challenged retailers is limited. Retention continues to hover at all-time highs around 90%. All of this reinforces a key point. While public market sentiment around REITs fluctuated throughout the year, the underlying fundamentals of our business remained extraordinarily strong. Capital allocation was another important driver for value for us in 2025. We were active and opportunistic across multiple fronts. During periods of market dislocation, we repurchased shares near 52-week lows at an implied FFO yield of approximately 9%, reflecting our confidence in the durability of our cash flows and the disconnect we saw between public and private market valuations.

At the same time, we advanced our capital recycling initiative, monetizing low-growth assets at attractive private market pricing and redeploying that capital into higher growth opportunities at a positive spread. A meaningful component of this strategy is our portfolio of long-term ground leases, which represent roughly 9% of pro rata base rent and are highly valued by private buyers given their credit quality and stability. Recycling that capital into grocery-anchored centers with stronger growth profiles enhances both our current yield and our long-term's earnings power. Our structured investment program continues to differentiate Kimco. By providing mezzanine capital while securing rights of first refusal or offer, we generate attractive current returns and gain proprietary access to high-quality assets. Investments realized to date have generated an average unlevered IRR of nearly 12%. The platform continues to serve as a recurring source of off-market acquisition opportunities.

Overlaying all this is a balance sheet that we believe is a true competitive advantage. In 2025, we received an A-level credit rating upgrade from both S&P and Moody's, placing Kimco among a small group of REITs with an A-/ A3 level credit ratings from all three major agencies. We ended the year with more than $2 billion of immediate liquidity, net debt to EBITDA of approximately 5.4%, and strong and growing free cash flow, around $165 million in 2025 after dividends and leasing costs. This financial flexibility allows us to invest through multiple cycles while maintaining discipline and protecting our downside risk. We're also continuing to evolve how we operate the business. In 2025, we established the Office of Innovation and Transformation to enhance enterprise integration and improve execution.

This group is focused on increasing data visibility, streamlining processes, and leveraging technology, including artificial intelligence and advanced analytics, to improve leasing insights, capital allocation decisions, and overall operating efficiencies. These tools are already helping our teams move faster, allocate capital more effectively, and reinforce margin durability over time. We continue to strive for ways to become more efficient and remove costs. In early 2026, we announced the transition to a more functionally aligned asset-centric operating model. This evolution is designed to flatten the organization, clarify accountability at the asset level, and enable faster decision-making across Leasing, Asset Management, and Capital Deployment while still maintaining strong local market expertise. As we look ahead, we believe Kimco is exceptionally well-positioned.

We're entering 2026 with strong operating momentum, clear visibility into embedded growth, limited new supply in our core markets, and multiple internal and external growth levers to drive earnings and value creation. Our portfolio remains anchored by essential grocery-anchored retail and first-ring suburban locations, markets characterized by dense populations, strong household incomes, and significant barriers to new supply. Supported by a strong balance sheet and disciplined capital allocation, we believe Kimco is designed to perform across multiple cycles while compounding value over time. With that, we're happy to take a deeper dive into the opportunity and further answer any questions you might have. I think the top three reasons for buying Kimco stock today, number one would be valuation. We've been a top performer in terms of earning s growth the last two years, and we sit at the very bottom of our sector in terms of multiple.

Number two would be multiple levers for growth. Our earnings growth is compounding year-over-year. We did, as I mentioned, 5% in 2024, over 6% in 2025, and we have multiple drivers of growth for this year and beyond. As I told you about our recycling of flat ground leases, the entitlement program that's starting to bear fruit, as well as a huge SNO pipeline that we plan to bring online fast to drive earnings growth. Third is the capital allocation differentiators that I outlined. We have showcased that we will buy back stock when we think it's the best risk-adjusted return of our capital.

We have $160 million of free cash flow that we can use to focus on where we can accretively invest that, in addition to the $300 million-$500 million of dispositions that we plan to take to market this year to showcase the disconnect between public and private valuation and use it the best way possible to make the best risk-adjusted returns. With that, I'll turn it back to you.

Craig Mailman
Director and Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Great. Thank you. In your opening remarks, you touched on AI and Kimco's deployment of it and some of the opportunities that you've seen thus far. You know, where's the opportunity from here? You know, how are you thinking about either on the top line or expense savings, and how do you actually go about finding those solutions? Is it building it internally? Is it buying? Is it partnering? You know, how are you thinking about that?

Conor Flynn
CEO, Kimco Realty

It is a good question. I think when we saw the opportunity set, that's why we transitioned and really put a leader in place that understands the Kimco workflows. When you have a leader of operations in that position, you can make capital allocation decisions and buy both off-the-shelf and self-developed tools that are really going to automate and create major efficiencies in the organization going forward. That's why we thought we really had to make that change early to really start identifying where there's a real case study and a return on investment that we can justify. Thus far, what we've found the clear wins for us have been on the marketing side when you use the AI tools to really self-generate. We do a lot of entitlement work, as we've talked about. We now have 14,000 units entitled.

When you go into municipalities, you can really deliver a wonderful marketing package by using AI to showcase what the shopping center can look like in the future. We use AI agents to procure new leasing opportunities, specifically with small shops using social media. It's generated a lot of leads for us, and that's what's really, I think, helping us drive all-time highs in small shops. We also use it in legal for documentation and really sort of using it to expedite the construction approval process. There are tools that you can use now to really sort of condense how long it takes to get construction approvals.

As you know, we have a lot in our SNO pipeline that we have to build out, and as soon as we can get that done faster, the sooner we can have better earnings. Those are really sort of the, the wins on the operating side. Glenn, do you wanna talk a little about the accounting side?

Glenn Cohen
CFO, Kimco Realty

Sure. We've been using for the last several years a tool where we actually enter our leases into this RPA process, where it's actually reading 150 different fields from the lease without any human touching it, and it's automatically getting entered into our ERP system. It's really super efficient. It's cut down on thousands of hours of lease abstraction, and then we just have checks and balances around it. It's been very efficient, and it's just a fast way to get, you know, the leasing done in a much more efficient manner.

Conor Flynn
CEO, Kimco Realty

I think it's both. I think it's operational efficiencies. I think it's output. I think it's condensing the leasing timeline, 'cause all of those things are real KPIs for us, and that we can use to really drive the business. You know, I think everyone has probably experienced some level of chatbot already. They're gonna get better, and they're gonna get better in terms of interfacing with retailers that are already tenants in our shopping centers, that we have all of our data now organized, and we can utilize in a way where we can share whatever the data, once it's protected, on what we need from that data.

In essence, if you're a retailer in a shopping center, at some point in the near future, I could see a chatbot being able to interface with every single tenant we have and answer their questions without really any time on the Kimco side. The other piece of it is probably gonna be you'll see the chatbots really sort of focus on leasing as well. As I mentioned, they're very good at finding lead generations and using sort of the tools and giving them directions of what we're looking for. When you think about the CAD drawings we have for every single space in our 550+ shopping centers and the thousands of leases we have, we have a lot of data.

Once we get that data organized in a position where we can utilize it, I think scale is gonna be a massive advantage, especially when you think about the leasing side of it. In essence, once we have it correctly identified and organized, that chatbot will be able to answer any leasing question you could possibly have on any space across the entire portfolio.

Craig Mailman
Director and Equity Research Analyst, Citi

What are you hearing from your tenants and retailers broadly about the, either the potential disruption or the opportunity that they're seeing from it?

Conor Flynn
CEO, Kimco Realty

Yeah. The, you know, they're taking an approach very similar to ours. When we talk to Walmart, and we talk to Target and Costco and Home Depot and others is it's very. In terms of, like, system automation, that's really sort of the low-hanging fruit that everyone is very focused on. You know, the accounting side obviously has some opportunities and I think the operations side as well. You're seeing it sort of ripple through maybe the commercial more, you know, the services side of the business, as more of that gets automated. I think there's a lot to see how effective it is. I think you still need a fact checker. You still need someone to screen and make sure your data is proprietary.

There's a lot of use cases that we've been testing, and a lot of them have shown early wins.

Glenn Cohen
CFO, Kimco Realty

I would just add, you know, we use Copilot pretty well through the entire organization. Everyone has access to it, which has been really, really helpful. We're also developing some things for, you know, that are really internal. It's a combination of looking at, you know, bolt-on tools that exist, as well as developing certain tools internally, which really help through the workflow, especially as we can, you know, have all the data that we have is being spread across the organization. It's just being able to read all of that. I mean, you're able to look at, like, co-tenancy clauses amongst leases, you know, tenant by tenant. There's so much application for it.

Craig Mailman
Director and Equity Research Analyst, Citi

To stay on the topic a little bit, and I don't want to, you know, overstay our welcome on AI, but, from the products that you've seen and the database that you're building internally and the structure that you've changed outright with more re-regional kind of pushing it higher, do you ever see a scenario where, like, all your CAD drawings are in there and a tenant could just go in and take their prototype and have AI decide, well, we could actually shoehorn it into this and, right, almost cutting out the relationship piece of this? Or is that really giving AI too much credit? Which is kind of, it feels like where the headlines are going.

Glenn Cohen
CFO, Kimco Realty

No.

Craig Mailman
Director and Equity Research Analyst, Citi

That it's gonna be there tomorrow. I'm just kind of curious from your standpoint, realistically having kind of the back end side of it with what tenants have. Like, how hard is it to replace going to ICSC and sitting down with Walmart or Costco or Home Depot and walking through different site plans?

Conor Flynn
CEO, Kimco Realty

The way we're thinking about it, and again, self-serving, so full disclosure, like we think about that the relationship is the most valuable piece. Owning the hard assets is gonna be critical because in essence, the margin expansion, if you're able to cut out fees, enhances your margin, right? If you have the relationship direct with that retailer, and you've seen us do package deals as really a focus of ours to go out, sit with that retailer, sit with that partner, which we know has new store opening plans for 2027 and 2028 and showcase that we can, at Kimco, we can deliver what they need faster, you know, cost-effective and with a partner that they trust.

In essence, showcasing that, do the lion's share, allow Kimco to take market share by doing the most of your new leasing with us and using our tools and our effective platform to allow you to hit those new store opening plans. You know, Sprouts is one that we've done a lot of package deals with, and we think they're a great operator. You've seen our redevelopment really focus on grocery because we think as we've gotten to 86% grocery anchored, a lot of what we can do is use those relationships to create a grocery anchored shopping center versus going out and outbidding someone for a grocery anchored shopping center.

Craig Mailman
Director and Equity Research Analyst, Citi

You have to thread the needle between cost savings but not disintermediating your most valuable asset, which is a relationship.

Conor Flynn
CEO, Kimco Realty

You know, re-retail has always been a relationship business. you know, your relationship with these retailers are super important. The trust factor is super important. I think their data is gonna get better. Their capital allocation decisions are gonna get better. They're gonna decide where they need to fill in the white space and where their customer lives. I do think that there's a relationship trust factor that goes into their decision-making on who, in essence, who they're gonna partner with to launch this new store. Many of them have been burned through different cycles with, you know, aligning themselves with undercapitalized partners that can't deliver on their promises.

Craig Mailman
Director and Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Just circling back to sort of the fundamental piece. You mentioned you guys are doing more package deals with tenants, but at the same time you're hitting record lease rates, right? As you try to upgrade tenancy with some of these national retailers, get to the mark to market, how much of an opportunity is there to do some of those deals that can really kind of hit at it quickly versus the reality of your long-term leases can't get tenants out, right, and the usual obstacles?

Conor Flynn
CEO, Kimco Realty

Yeah. It's a combination. I think for the benefit and the negative, we have a weighted average lease term of around seven years. We don't have as much volatility in, you know, sort of the, our rental streams as maybe other sectors do. When you think about the mark to market on the Kimco portfolio, the anchors are somewhere between 30%-50% below market. That's a lot different in other sectors where maybe they're at or even above market rents when leases roll. The beauty of having no new supply is there's virtually nowhere for them to go.

If there's nothing being built that they can relocate to, and there's no better economic deal than the store that's profitable and proven, when you get that mark to market opportunity on a lease that's at the end of its life, the likelihood is the retailer wants to stay because it's the best bet they can make. That's where you're seeing those incremental lease spreads of 30%-40% where we're really starting to be able to push pricing power. If you remember, most of my career has been when the retailer has had the negotiating leverage. The vintage of most of these leases are when the retailer has dominated the conversation. It's changed.

We're showcasing that in our numbers, and we're taking advantage of that where we can because in essence, these stores are extremely profitable. When you layer on the e-commerce sales that are coming in and out of the store, the stores continue to generate the best risk-adjusted return for these retailers. That's why you're seeing everyone, including Amazon, reinvest in their store fleet with Whole Foods and others being, like, launched as new store formats.

Craig Mailman
Director and Equity Research Analyst, Citi

On that with the success you guys have had and where the lease rate has gone, I'm curious, I know Glenn, you've talked about it a bit, but right, when do we peak out and the SNO pipeline peaks, and then you start to actually get the tailwind from commencements? What is an ideal spread between lease and occupancy once you hit that sort of frictional level of vacancy?

Glenn Cohen
CFO, Kimco Realty

Yeah, I mean, we obviously have been doing an enormous amount of leasing, you know, coming off of, you know, the vacates of whether it be Party City, Joann, Big Lots from last year. A lot, almost all of that space has been released. It's brought our SNO pipeline to $73 million. It's the largest it's ever been. At the same time, our occupancy level is at an all-time high. It represents 390 basis points. We actually see it growing a little further through the year, and I think it'll peak towards the end of 2026, and then you'll start to see it compress as we go into 2027.

You know, we're 180 basis points from our all-time high economic occupancy, there's real room to continue to push, and as that comes online, we feel pretty good. You know, 60% of the SNO pipeline is anchors. As those anchors come online, we feel really good and confident about being able to continue to push the small shop occupancy as those anchor boxes get filled up. We think there's really room to grow. You know, our anchor occupancy today is at 97.9%. Our peak was 99%. We know there's room there, and although the small shop occupancy is at 92.7%, we don't see why that can't continue to grow. Again, there's been a lot of activity on that side. You know, I think that you'll see it again.

The SNO pipeline will expand a little bit further, in 2027 it'll start to compress. Historically, we've been under 200 basis points, you know, having it at 390 basis points, you can see that there's a lot of compression still to come.

Craig Mailman
Director and Equity Research Analyst, Citi

When you think about sort of the FFO growth that people want, but really the underlying cash flow growth is the most powerful piece. As that SNO pipeline peaks and compresses and you have, you know, 69% of that pipeline is anchors, how do you guys think about the CapEx spend and how that trends and how that should we expect AFFO to really start to accelerate in 2027, 2028, assuming we don't have a, another wave of bankruptcies? Then that gives you that flywheel with cheaper retained capital to either you have to raise the dividend or you can do other things with it.

Like, as we assuming the cycle stays as it is, no more new supply, good demand, the way that you guys have the trending with commencements, like how powerful is that CapEx savings and cash flow growth and then the reinvestment?

Glenn Cohen
CFO, Kimco Realty

Yeah, I mean, it's very powerful to your point. I mean, you know, today it's around 20%-21%. As we go through this year and get everything online from the SNO pipeline, I think as you go into 2027, 2028, you're gonna see that number come down into the, you know, the upper teens towards the mid-teens over time. You know, it'll definitely come down. We're pretty focused on that. You know, again, if there's no major issue, you're gonna see, you know, record level highs of occupancy and, you know, compressing, you know, CapEx costs as we go through time.

Craig Mailman
Director and Equity Research Analyst, Citi

I'm curious, I've asked some of your peers about this, and I know that, and we've been part of this too, the whole industry's pushed lower leverage safety post GFC, but one of the pushbacks for retail has always been, well, it's very stable, but you don't get the excess growth because it's stable, right? You guys are running at low leverage, you had the investment grade balance sheet, but you do have this tail of improving cash flow, lower CapEx.

From your standpoint, to the extent I know you guys are recycling capital as well, so you're not capital constrained by any means, but just the thought of running towards the higher end of your leverage level to juice FFO growth to kind of get out of the basement of the multiple towards the top again, knowing that you're gonna have that cash flow to start paying it down over time as EBITDA hits.

I'm just kind of curious internally, just the thought process on leverage and the benefits of being so strict to be within the rating agencies, you know, highest level and the pricing there versus you guys have the size and scale, and so if you're a serial issuer, maybe going down a notch doesn't matter as much from a pricing perspective versus the earnings growth you can get from the deployment of that.

Glenn Cohen
CFO, Kimco Realty

Yeah, I mean, look, we spent a lot of time de-leveraging the balance sheet. We used, you know, the bulk of our Albertsons gains that we had. You know, we had an $150 million investment that we turned into $1.2 billion and used a, you know, a large portion of that to de-lever the balance sheet to where it is. We don't need to de-lever any further. We're operating in the, you know, mid-5s net debt to EBITDA level. We think that's the appropriate level for us to operate. You know, we did get upgraded this year by both S&P and Moody's to A- /A3. We're one of the only retail REITs that has an A- rating from all three rating agencies. We do think that gives us some advantage.

We just put in a commercial paper program, which allows us to borrow at a, you know, a pretty attractive level. We just renewed our $2 billion revolver, which you are part of, thank you. You know, again, at a, at a lower rate. There, there are a lot of advantages, we think, to having that A- level rating. And we're operating the business that way.

Conor Flynn
CEO, Kimco Realty

Yeah, I think when you look at the earnings growth that we've driven over the past two years, we haven't levered up, right? We've been at the top of the sector for the past two years in terms of FFO growth, and we've gotten the balance sheet upgraded, which was sort of amazing to think about, like, every KPI was hitting, like a historic, like, high, and yet our stock was hitting a 52-week low, all while cap rate compression was going on in the private market for our asset base. There was this major disconnect between public and private pricing, and that's where you saw us really lean into the share buyback and buying below $20 a share.

you know, when you look at, like, the opportunity to lever up and really juice earnings, that probably would have happened when rates were 0. At Kimco, when rates were 0, we did 30-year bonds. We didn't do short-term floating rate. you know, because this is a cyclical business, because we think longer term, because we know that this balance sheet is going to be tested in different parts of the cycle, we often try and think, what's the best long-term play that's gonna make us the most durable? Kimco was one of the highest levered REITs for a moment of time. We had to make it a strategic priority, in my opinion, to get to the A-/ A3, because that's a differentiator.

That's one that you can point to and say, "If you think we're over-levered, the rating agencies don't." In my opinion, this business is capital-intensive, it's cyclical, and you need to have a really strong balance sheet in order to weather all the storms, and we've seen many black swans, and we potentially might be in another one. Like, we're in a situation where the business is really firing on all cylinders, and I think the balance sheet is a strength that we plan to keep.

Craig Mailman
Director and Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Any questions from the audience, by the way? Okay. Going back to the disposition program, you know, Ross isn't here to get the credit for it, but you guys have done a nice job of identifying sort of non-income producing assets, selling them off. What's been the buyer appetite for that? Where are you seeing kind of bidding pools? How deep are they? Just where have cap rates trended on some of the assets you're selling? Or maybe a better way to ask it, where do you think IRRs have trended if you back into kind of underwriting?

Conor Flynn
CEO, Kimco Realty

For the 2026 year, we've outlined a disposition program of $300 million-$500 million. The low end of that guidance range, the $300 million, is really earmarked for flat ground leases. Those are the ones that in essence have a compound annual growth rate of 1% or below. We see that as opportunity to accretively recycle because these are the Target, the Walmart, the Costco, the Lowe's, the Home Depot that trade at very low cap rates. We've sold a number of them in the mid to low fives, and we think there's a real nice accretive trade there where we can take that capital, go and buy a shopping center at 6%, 6.5%. The compound annual growth rate spread is significant.

The sub 1 versus 3+ is a pretty meaningful compounding effect if you're able to do it year in and year out. We've identified that 9% as really something we can go after year in and year out. There's some, there's some operational things we need to do to get it ready for the market. Sometimes you have to separately tax parcel it. Sometimes you have to get the right length of the lease term to get over 10 years to really have it compress in terms of pricing. In essence, it prices like a bond of that credit. We feel like that's a real nice flywheel for us to jump on because we can do it again year in and year out and really start to showcase the embedded growth that we can generate from that trade.

The other piece of the dispositions is we've taken, you know, some assets to market from the mixed-use portfolio. Some of the pricing appears that might be very aggressive for some of the multifamily we've built. We have yet to crystallize it, but we've never, in our opinion, gotten credit for the 14,000 units we've entitled. We've built 3,000, so there is some units that are cash flowing. What we plan to do is really start to crystallize that value creation, that IRR, and take those proceeds and invest it back in the business in the most risk-adjusted, best accretive way possible. It could be buying back stock. It could be our structured investment program. It could be our redevelopments that are earning about 10%-12% on invested capital.

These are multifamily units that we continue to think we can generate about $100 million of proceeds each year going forward and take those 14,000 units and really drive them through a program that activates about two per year so that it'll generate about $100 million of proceeds to Kimco over the next three years per year, and we can rinse and recycle that again and again and again. That would be on top of our $165 million of free cash flow because we're contributing the land with the entitlements as our marked-up basis, so as our capital.

In essence, it's not earning anything today, the multifamily partner will come and develop it, lease it, stabilize it, sell it, and then we'll get that cash flow to go back and do whatever is the most accretive thing to do with that capital. It's a nice opportunity for us to start crystallizing it, showcasing it to investors, and saying, "This is going to be something that's recurring, you should start to give us value for it.

Craig Mailman
Director and Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Of those kind of 14,000 entitled units, where does it make sense to build given some of the supply issues in resi right now?

Conor Flynn
CEO, Kimco Realty

Yeah, it's a good point. I mean, we definitely lean on multifamily experts to identify where there's a market and understand that, you know, there's a lot of supply that's been built over the last few years and that are still being absorbed in certain markets that are still pretty challenged. You know, for us, we've done a number of deals in South Florida. We've done a number in Virginia. We now have active ones in San Francisco as well as one in Suburban Square in Ardmore, Pennsylvania. The complementary use, in essence, our thesis was always the multifamily will be priced at a premium because of the amenity base that our shopping center provides.

If you live in an apartment tower, the best amenity package you can possibly dream of is nowhere close to what a shopping center can offer because we have, in essence, 50+ tenants that they would never be able to offer the same level of amenities. We've seen that in all 3,000+ units that we've built, we're charging premiums to market. We are generating this flywheel of a mixed-use community that we see resonating. Identifying where there is oversupply and making sure we don't green-light a project into a very tough market is super important to us. We also know that we are not the experts there, and rely on really the local partner to determine really what the supply side looks like over the next two, three years. 'Cause you've, if you remember the...

if you're green-lighting something today, you're looking at supply in 2028.

Craig Mailman
Director and Equity Research Analyst, Citi

On the acquisition side, you guys have had success recently either coming out of the structured finance program or, right, a marketed deal. What does the pipeline look like today in terms of competition and quality that fits the buy box?

Conor Flynn
CEO, Kimco Realty

It's very competitive. As you know, shopping centers have become sort of the private equity capital strategy of choice for a number of folks. If you think about Blackstone, their number two priority is open-air shopping center. If you think about Bain, if you think about GIC, if you think about even some of the other big sovereigns that are looking at the space, as well as Cohen & Steers doing direct JVs, GIC doing direct JVs, like, there's a lot of capital on the private side chasing shopping centers, and it has been like that for the past two years. Most of the publics have been sidelined because of the cost of capital was impacted. It is competitive.

The last two years, you've seen us really focus on where we have a little bit of an advantage, and usually that comes from a right of first refusal or an opportunity, a right of first offer. In essence, we've been very selective on not winning any bidding wars. What we like to do is really use those ROFRs and ROFOs to identify where we can match fund and make an accretive acquisition. The disposition program is going to be match funded because our dividend is on top of taxable income, we have to 1031 exchange those or we'll have to issue a special dividend. We are...

we're right at taxable income. There is going to be a lot of opportunities for us to match fund into acquisitions and use those proceeds to go and find acquisitions. You've seen us do, like, the grocery anchorages. You've seen us do sites where we can add a grocery anchor. You've seen us do sites where we can entitle for multifamily. I think our strike zone is much bigger than others that need sort of the perfect trophy and the perfect market. We've seen where we can acquire things and use our platform to create value, whether it's vacancy, whether it's redevelopment. We like the opportunity to use our platform to create value when we have the chance.

Nick Joseph
Head of US Real Estate and Lodging Research Team, Citi

With our rapid-fire questions to end the session, what will same-store NOI growth be for the shopping centers sector overall next year in 2027?

Conor Flynn
CEO, Kimco Realty

3.5% .

Nick Joseph
Head of US Real Estate and Lodging Research Team, Citi

Will there be more, fewer, the same number of shopping center REITs a year from now?

Conor Flynn
CEO, Kimco Realty

Fewer privatizations.

Nick Joseph
Head of US Real Estate and Lodging Research Team, Citi

One or, one or more than one?

Conor Flynn
CEO, Kimco Realty

More than one.

Nick Joseph
Head of US Real Estate and Lodging Research Team, Citi

More than one. Okay. All right. Thank you very much.

Conor Flynn
CEO, Kimco Realty

Yeah.

Nick Joseph
Head of US Real Estate and Lodging Research Team, Citi

All right. Thanks, guys.

Powered by