Good morning, welcome to Kimco's first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star and one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star and two. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to David Bujnicki. Please go ahead, sir.
Good morning, and thank you for joining Kimco's first quarter earnings call. The Kimco management team participating on the call today include Conor Flynn, Kimco's CEO, Ross Cooper, President, Chief Investment Officer, Glenn Cohen, our CFO, David Jamieson, Kimco's Chief Operating Officer, as well as other members of our executive team that are also available to answer questions during the call. It is important to note that we will need to keep this call focused on Kimco's first quarter earnings results and outlook as a standalone company, with more information forthcoming when the merger proxy statement is filed with the SEC.
As a reminder, statements made during the course of this call may be deemed forward-looking, and it is important to note that the company's actual results could differ materially from those projected in such forward-looking statements due to a variety of risks, uncertainties, and other factors.
Please refer to the company's SEC filings that address such factors. During this presentation, management may make reference to certain non-GAAP financial measures that we believe help investors better understand Kimco's operating results. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures can be found in the investor relations area of our website. Also, in the event our call was to incur technical difficulties, we will try to resolve as quickly as possible, and if the need arises, we'll post additional information to our IR website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Conor.
Good morning, thanks for joining us today. Today, I will focus my remarks on our leasing results, the supply and demand dynamics surrounding those results, and the exciting strategic direction we are taking the organization. Ross will cover the transaction market, and Glenn will cover the quarterly numbers and our updated guidance. 2021 is off to a refreshing and good start with robust demand for space in our last mile open air grocery-anchored portfolio coming from both well-capitalized omnichannel tenants seeking more market share, as well as from smaller businesses that have regrouped and are prepared to reinvest in their business models.
The largest leasing demand categories include restaurants, personal care, fitness, and dollar stores. We also see healthy activity and have consummated multiple leases with grocery stores, off-price, and pet supply retailers. Our leasing volume continued to build from the record-setting trend last quarter.
Our new lease count was 121, totaling 586,000 sq ft. This exceeds both last quarter and the prior year quarters. Of particular note, the 586,000 sq ft of volume surpassed our five-year first quarter average for new lease GLA of 506,000 sq ft, and new lease spreads finished at a positive 8.2% pro rata. We closed the quarter with 237 renewals and options, totaling 2.2 million sq ft, with GLA exceeding the quarter sequentially and the prior year quarter.
Renewals and option spreads finished at 6.4% pro rata. These spreads continue to reflect the recovery underway and the pricing power inherent in the quality of our portfolio. Conversely, our ability to have withstood the impact of the pandemic reflects the defensive nature and strength of our recurring cash flows. From a supply and demand perspective, the reality is that due to the speed of the recovery, pandemic-induced vacancies were short-lived.
With limited new supply, market rents never adjusted down in any meaningful way. When the demand snapped back, we generated positive spreads. While our occupancy dipped slightly from year-end to 93.5%, it strengthened as we moved through the quarter. It is our intent to continue expanding occupancy, and we are encouraged by multiple demand factors playing to the strengths of our last mile locations. Our job is clear: focus on the blocking and tackling of leasing, work with best-in-class retailers, enhance the merchandising mix, and let the numbers speak for themselves as we strengthen the resiliency of our cash flows.
Our first, second, and third priorities are leasing, leasing, and we continue to believe we are in the early innings of this reopening and recovery. In addition to leasing, we are prioritizing our smaller redevelopments that average double-digit returns to create an additional organic growth driver. Long-term, we believe our entitlement program will continue to create shareholder value as we unlock the highest and best use of our real estate. The pandemic has both validated and strengthened our conviction in our strategic vision to concentrate our open air grocery anchored and mixed-use portfolio in the top MSAs across the country.
Tenants no longer look at the last mile store as simply a retail destination. Rather, its value to retailers is now viewed holistically, providing distribution, fulfillment, and retail. In valuing a location, retailers assess their ability to integrate e-commerce and bricks and mortar to give the customer what they demand. Convenience, value, and a fulfilling experience continues to point to the last mile shopping center as mission critical for both consumers and retailers, up to further gain market share and to make Kimco even more valuable to all of our tenants.
In closing, Kimco's open air and grocery-anchored portfolio, diverse tenant mix, targeted geographic presence in the strongest growth markets in the country, and improving balance sheet provide us with a long runway for growth as we move ahead. Needless to say, the entire organization is genuinely energized by our efforts to build shareholder value. With that, I'll turn the call over to Ross.
Thank you, Conor. Good morning. What a difference a quarter makes. With continued recovery from the pandemic, vaccination rollout, and reduced capacity restrictions across the country, we have seen optimism building from retailers, consumers, and real estate investors at the highest level since the pandemic began almost 14 months ago. Specific to the transaction front, industry volume, while still off nearly 40% in the first quarter of 2021 compared to 2020, has seen a meaningful uptick from the back half of 2020. The conviction in the stability of property rent rolls, and by extension, cash flows, has grown beyond only the essential retailers and now includes other categories that were much less clear previously. There is no doubt the grocery-anchored shopping center is still the most in-demand category of retail and continues to command the most aggressive pricing and lowest cap rates.
Furthermore, open air is valued at an even higher premium. Recent transactions with more specialty and lifestyle components, in addition to traditional power centers, have given transparency to the value and stability that our approach provides. Multiple grocery anchor deals have transacted at sub 6% cap rates in Dallas, South Florida, California, Philadelphia, and Seattle, to name a few.
There are also no signs of investor demand waning for that product type. We anticipate bidding to become even more aggressive as the spread of cap rate to interest rate remains wide for our asset class, particularly when compared to industrial, multifamily, self-storage, and others. More recently, aggressive bidding extending beyond the bread-and-butter neighborhood product is starting to emerge. Two recent deals that have a grocery store, but also a significant restaurant and entertainment component, saw bidding wars with multiple rounds of offers and pricing well beyond initial expectations.
These properties, located in Dallas and Denver, have the mix of grocery traffic, restaurants and entertainment, last-mile infill locations, and future densification opportunities that investors are excited about. On the financing side, an equally important observation is the reemergence of the traditional lender in the space. While the down-the-fairway grocery anchored assets have been financeable throughout the pandemic, lenders were requiring significant holdbacks and structure around deals with perceived risk.
As positive trends continue to emerge, that is having direct impact on the transaction market, with more deals getting across the finish line at superior pricing and terms. With renewed optimism and conviction comes a vibrant transactions market in which we will remain a disciplined player, and we expect to see deal velocity continue to accelerate, which is a great sign for the continued recovery of our in dustry. Now on to Glenn for the financial results for the quarter.
Thanks, Ross. Good morning. The positive results we drove in the fourth quarter last year continued into the first quarter of 2021. With the backdrop of an improving economy and strong leasing velocity, our solid performance was highlighted by improved rent collections and lower credit loss relative to the fourth quarter last year. Our balance sheet metrics also were strengthened. We continue to benefit from all the capital markets activity we undertook the past 24 months to enhance our financial structure. For some details on first quarter results. NAREIT FFO was $144.3 million, with $0.33 per diluted share for the first quarter 2021, as compared to $160.5 million, with $0.37 per diluted share for the first quarter of the prior year.
The reduction was mainly driven by lower pro-rata NOI of $13.6 million due to COVID-related rent abatements and credit loss, as well as the impact of lower occupancy on net recovery income for low market rent recaptures and straight-line rent. These NOI reductions were offset by a $5.5 million one-time benefit from lease terminations. Also impacting NAREIT FFO was $5.4 million of higher G&A and interest expense due to lower capitalization from development and redevelopment projects that have been placed in service. Our operating portfolio is continuing to perform effectively. All our shopping centers are open and over 98% of our tenants are operating. With the strong leasing velocity, as Conor discussed, our lease versus economic spread has increased to 230 basis points, representing a total of $27 million of pro-rata ABR, which is an excellent indicator of future cash flow growth.
As expected, same-site NOI decreased 5.7% for the first quarter as it comped against a largely pre-COVID first quarter in 2020. It also marked significant progress from the prior sequential quarter, which was down 10.5%. The improvement was mainly attributable to lower credit loss. We collected 94% of pro-rata base rents billed during the first quarter of 2021, up from 92% for the fourth quarter last year. Our cash basis tenants represent 8.9% of ABR, and we collected 70% from these tenants during the first quarter. In addition, our deferred rent payments have been strong as we collected 84% of deferred rents billed for the first quarter, with $34.1 million of deferred rent remaining to be billed. Turning to the balance sheet, our metrics continue to improve and our liquidity position is in excellent shape.
At the end of the first quarter, consolidated net debt to EBITDA was 6.7 x, and on a look-through basis, including pro-rata share of JV debt and preferred stock outstanding, the level was 7.4 x. This represents further progress from the year-end 2020 levels of 7.1 x for consolidated net debt to EBITDA and 7.9 x on a look-through basis. In addition, Moody's has affirmed our Baa1 unsecured debt rating with a stable outlook. From a liquidity standpoint, we ended the first quarter with over $250 million of cash and the full availability on our $2 billion revolving credit facility. In addition, our Albertsons marketable security investment is valued at over $750 million. Our debt maturities remain minimal as we have only $125 million of consolidated mortgages maturing this year, which will be repaid in the second quarter. As a result, we will be unencumbering an additional 23 properties.
Our weighted average debt maturity profile stands at 10.7 years, one of the longest in the entire REIT industry. Based on the first quarter results and expectations for the remainder of the year, that includes same-site NOI turning positive in the second quarter, along with further improvement in credit loss during the second half of the year, we are raising our NAREIT FFO per share guidance range to $1.22 - $1.26 from $1.18 - $1.24 previously. As a reminder, our increased guidance range is on a standalone basis and does not incorporate any impact from the pending merger with Weingarten. In addition, the guidance range assumes no transactional income or expense and no monetization of our Albertsons investment. With that, we are ready to take your questions.
Before we start the Q&A, I just want to offer a reminder that this call will focus on our first quarter results and request that you confine your questions and comments to these results and not the announced merger with Weingarten. To maintain an efficient Q&A session, you may ask a question with an additional follow-up. If you have additional questions, you're more than welcome to rejoin the queue. Operator, you may take our first caller.
We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your questions, please press star and two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Rich Hill from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead, sir.
Hey Glenn. Thanks for the disclosure and the prepared remarks. I just wanted to make sure I was clear on the percent of rent collections for the cash-based tenants. I know it's 8.9% of ABR. You collected 70% of those tenants. Is there any way you could tell us what same-store NOI would be ex those collections, just so we can get a better sense of the core portfolio?
Just going back a little bit, the cash basis tenants, there was about $7 million collected that related to a prior period from last year. Those came in during the first quarter. If you didn't have those, that would have an impact on same site of about 320 basis points.
Got it. That's really helpful. I appreciate that. Just a quick, maybe nuanced question, but I think it's important. Could you maybe walk us through what percent of tenants are in bankruptcy, and then what percent of rent you collected on those bankruptcy tenants?
Hey, Rich, it's Kathleen. I can actually help you out with that one. If you recall, in the end of 2020, several of our tenants actually emerged from bankruptcy. We ended the year at about 70 basis points of our ABR being related to BK tenants. Actually, as of Q1, it's down to 20 basis points. It's a small portion of what we have in our ABR at this point.
Got it. Hey, Dave, is that one question or two questions? Can I ask one more?
You got one more. That seemed like it was a follow-up.
Just a quick question on the 2025 outlook. In the same-store NOI, I guess the question I would have is, why can't you grow faster than the + 2% that you referenced? It would seem like given the tailwinds to the retail sector, maybe some of the e-commerce trends that are emerging, seems like maybe you could grow above inflation. Any context there would be a little bit helpful.
Yeah. Hey, Rich, it's Conor. We definitely think that that's an achievable goal in the near term, again, this is a long-term goal. The way we look at it is there's obviously going to be an uptick in terms of same-site NOI through this pandemic-fueled recovery. If you noticed, we did put 2.5% +. Our goal is to beat that metric. We clearly see a lot of levers for growth as we outlined in the call, in the remarks, and our job is to beat that number. Obviously, we think we're in a good spot to do that in the near term.
Great. Thanks, guys.
The next question comes from Katy McConnell from Citi. Please go ahead.
Hey, this is Chris McCurry on with Katy. Just on the grocery leasing front, how sustainable do you view this elevated level of grocery demand if there's more pent-up consumer demand to return to, say, restaurants or other venues post-pandemic?
This is David Jamieson. Right now, we're seeing obviously very strong demand, and we anticipate that some level of demand will sustain longer term. I think what you're seeing is people starting to adapt and innovate to what the consumer needs, and proximity to the end customer is critical. That last mile distribution element, we don't really see changing in the future. Yes, there will be a reversion of some sort of new normal where people will start to go back to restaurants and some of those dollar spent will be diverted to that category. When you listen to some of the grocers, public companies that are observing how their customer is reacting and responding as a new normal start to take hold, they are still seeing a net gain to market share and shopping at home.
I think people have adapted to not only going in store, but obviously utilization of omni-channel vehicles for accessing those groceries. When you throw that all together, we still see the demand drivers being very strong. Based on where we're located in those first-ring suburbs where there's been a lot of net migration out through the pandemic starting to take hold, we still see the demand being strong in the future.
The only thing I would add to that is it's great to have a diversity of demand that's not sort of pigeonholed in one square footage category. Grocers right now spread from the bigger boxes to the junior boxes to even the mid-size boxes of 10,000 sq ft-12,000 sq ft with Trader Joe's and others. It's really remarkable to have a growth driver that spans all the major categories in terms of square footage needs, which is really, I think, again, why we're so confident that we can continue to drive that driver for us.
Yeah. Got it. Helpful color. A quick follow-up, could you comment on your strategy around some of the Albertsons investments? Just comment on some of the lockup provisions and maybe your intentions to monetize that investment.
Sure. It's Glenn. As it relates to Albertsons, the lockup burns off 25% each six months. The first 25% did burn off at the end of December. The next 25% would happen at the end of June. There still are other requirements related to our partners around it, and as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we're not anticipating monetizing anything in Albertsons this year. As we've talked about, we do see real opportunity in 2022 to start monetizing it and using it towards debt reduction or redemption of our perpetual preferreds that become callable in 2022.
Got it. Thanks, guys.
The next question comes from Derek Johnston from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi, everybody. Good morning, and thanks. On private markets, Ross, can you discuss how pricing and cap rates are holding up in the Northeast versus the Sun Belt or the markets you mentioned in Dallas and Denver or South Florida? Look, guys, I'm not asking for updated disposition guidance, right? Given the merger, there are likely some non-core dispos that you may be able to take advantage of. Any enhanced color by geography would be helpful.
Sure. Happy to respond to that. We are seeing robust demand across the country. There's no doubt that there's significant demand in the Sun Belt, other parts of the country that have been open more so than others throughout this pandemic. When you look at the essential-based retailers throughout the country, they have been operating and doing well throughout. We are still seeing a significant amount of demand in the Northeast, whether it be the New York suburbs, Boston, Philadelphia, et cetera.
When you think about the migration demographics, obviously there's a lot of headlines about the Sun Belt in Florida and the Carolinas and Texas. You're also seeing it here in the New York metro area where we're based, is that a lot of people that are leaving the cities here are moving to the suburbs in Long Island, Westchester, Connecticut, et cetera.
There is an uptick still happening in those suburbs, and we think that there is something to take advantage of there, and investors are certainly doing that. It relates to future dispositions for us, we'll continue to look at our portfolio. We think that we're in great shape. We do have some non-income producing land parcels that you'll continue to see us chip away at. Again, when we think about the lift that we've done over the last five to seven years and where the portfolio stands today, we feel very good about those markets, those opportunities that we have, and the go-forward portfolio that we'll be operating.
Okay. Great. Given the pandemic washed out a lot of weaker retailers, how does your watch list stand today as we hopefully move past the pandemic, and are elevated bankruptcies possibly in the rearview mirror, at least for a while?
This is David. In terms of our watch list, obviously the categories that are most greatly affected through the pandemic, the theaters, the fitness, et cetera, we continue to watch, and they stay there. There hasn't been much change beyond that. Obviously Q1 was a muted bankruptcy season. Historically, that's usually where it is a bit elevated. When you look at those that went into bankruptcy in 2020, a lot of those reemerged with better balance sheets. They were able to recapitalize, come out, trim their portfolios, and start to take advantage of some of this reopening trade. We'll continue to closely watch and monitor the health of all of our tenants.
Really looking two years out, as we start to get to a new normal and stabilize and this surplus of cash that some did receive throughout the pandemic, it's more a matter of where they made those investments and the operators that really started to innovate through this and stay ahead of the curve of what the expectations are for consumers. That's what we're really going to start to watch very closely. You'll start to see sort of who the winners and losers are downstream more so than they are today.
The only thing I would add to that is clearly some of the tenants that reorganized have not necessarily gotten their footing underneath them quite yet. They are still maybe in those categories that have capacity constraints. We're watching that closely as they obviously have done a debt for equity swap, but there's still some opportunities, I think, there for us to upgrade tenancy in the long term, and we're watching those tenants closely.
Thanks, guys.
The next question comes from Alexander Goldfarb from Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning. Hey, sorry about that. Two questions here. First, on the ESG front, I'm not just talking solar panels on roofs, but it would seem like shopping centers are really well-positioned on the ESG front. Not only they're supporting local economies, small business, et cetera, but also just from the benefit of centralized procurement, right? People drive to the shopping center, they can return items rather than throwing them out. You don't have individual boxes. You don't have individual trucks driving in neighborhoods. What are you guys thinking around this, either individually or collectively as an industry to really showcase the benefit that physical retail has in promoting ESG?
It's a great question. I think you have to take into consideration all the different constituents that go into making up the shopping center. It's obviously the end shopper, the customer, the retailers, and ourselves as the landlord. For us as a landlord, we've always looked at ourselves as the conduit to bring all these retailers to the customer and vice versa and try to find ways in which we can service everyone collectively.
When you think of curbside, what we did in 2020, the intent there was to build a program and infrastructure that was agnostic to the retailer so that everyone can take advantage of it to avoid having a separate approach for each individual retailer. That we saw as being very successful. That said, every retailer has their own defined strategy in which they're trying to solve for their own unique problems.
There do become challenges when you try to consolidate them all into one central vision. That's our job is to continue working with each of these retail partners to find the best way forward. As we look to continue to innovate within our common areas and the way we work with our retailers, our goal is to try to find those uniform strategies that do work for all or at least solve for that 80%. With the customer, obviously the closest we are to the home. As you mentioned, it does provide that opportunity for them to return or to revisit and to cut down the travel time and the shipping costs. Obviously, we see that as a clear advantage for retailers with buy online, pick up in store. More and more retailers are taking advantage of that today.
This is going to be an evolving process. I think the pandemic did accelerate some of those trends, i.e., with curbside, that helped pull it forward a couple of years, something that we've been talking about for a while. It's our job to continue to stay on top of that and to innovate where we can to provide those suite of services.
Yeah, it would just seem like you guys have a benefit, especially as more investor funds have ESG mandates to really showcase the true impact rather than just, as I say, cursory things like solar panels.
Yep.
It would just seem that there's a lot of untapped data that you guys can provide to the investment community to really highlight the benefits of physical. Second question is?
Yeah. We agree, by the way. The only thing I would add is that I think we're going to coordinate with ICSC and others to I think the voice is louder when we can combine all of our efforts. I think there's a lot of public and private landlords that can come together, and we can help facilitate that to really make that point, because I agree with you, Alex.
Okay
That I was just going to mention is ESG clearly is a benefit to our entitlement program. Because Kimco has been so focused on this for decades, when we come into a community and showcase that we're in it for the long term and that we want to work alongside the community to make sure that the asset or the downtown that we're providing evolves alongside the community, we can showcase our ESG initiatives and all the accomplishments that we've been making to give ourselves the opportunity to partner with those folks. It really does help when we look to try and focus on entitlements and how to unlock the highest and best use of the real estate.
Okay. The second question is just on rent collection. Almost all your categories have really rebounded. Fitness, personal services, and restaurants are still lagging. Restaurants are doing quite well, actually, but still looks like there's some more room to go. Is your view by sort of end of summer that really fitness and personal services will have fully rebounded to be something north of, call it, 85%? Are there some issues that you can see that's going to hinder the recovery of those two categories?
I think the biggest holdback is the capacity, right? Despite there being some great success stories in parts of the country where capacity levels have increased substantially, there's other parts of the country that are still a little bit behind, and they're just trying to manage through the spikes of coronavirus at a local level. We envision as those capacity constraints continue to get lifted more broadly across the rest of the country, that will clearly be a big boost and a tailwind for those other service categories that have been hindered by that. In the summer. The summer should show quite well for that, hopefully. There's also been, with those operators of fitness, there's a number of operators that haven't reopened or won't plan to reopen.
When you think of the supply levels coming down a little bit, we do anticipate the demand side to build people wanting to get out of their at-home gym or the garage, wherever they've been working out for the year, wanting to get back into some sort of facility where there is some social engagement and community. That should help as well.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Craig Schmidt from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Thank you. I was wondering, and this may be for Ross, where do you see class A grocery anchored shopping center cap rates, and how does that compare to the pre-COVID level?
Yeah, they continue to be extremely aggressive. Frankly, compared to pre-COVID, in many cases, the cap rates are even lower and more aggressive. We've seen lots of different examples in the low fives, in some cases sub 5%. A lot of that just has to do with some of the other dynamics of the demographics, obviously, which tenant is the anchor grocer there, what the lease looks like, where the rents are compared to market, and frankly, how much term is left, where you can actually look at recasting that lease and pushing rents a little bit. As you've seen from the collections, there's a lot of conviction in the rent roll outside of just the grocer. The small shops and some of the other ancillary tenants are coming back in a big way.
When you see the stability in the rent rolls, you see the stability in the cash flow and still a very healthy spread from interest rate to cap rate. There's more and more conviction in our space today than what we've seen in a very long time.
Yeah. My sense is just the resiliency the format showed during COVID increased its appetite to investors. With so much capital on the sidelines, it seems like cap rates could in fact be lower.
Yeah. It's not just your typical investors that we've seen in years past. We're seeing a lot of buyers and bidders today that have historically been buying in other asset classes that they're just sick of getting priced out or getting the cap rates compressed so low that there's not enough spread, and they see the risk-adjusted return in our space.
Great. Just maybe for David, I know you've been touching on this a bit, but which tenants are not participating in this reopening period?
When you say not participating, meaning those that have still remained closed?
Well, not only that, but they don't want to open. We're hearing the FOMO in the restaurant category that obviously had a rough time during COVID, but I'm just wondering if there are categories where there are people on the sidelines. I know that Conor mentioned some people are still through some reorganization, trying to get their feet on the ground. Not every category, I assume, is participating equally in the reopening period. I just wondered if you had some insights into which ones aren't.
Sure. No. All the industry sectors are reopening at some capacity. Even with some of the big flags, they're focused on trying to get as many stores open as possible or fitness or theater locations. AMC is effectively all open. Where there are constraints, it's either on a one-off basis, individual basis, where some locales and municipalities are inhibiting that or rolling back restrictions again. It's kind of on a one-off basis. Generally speaking, I think the reopening trade is starting to accelerate as the vaccine distribution does pick up. From an industry standpoint, we are seeing reopenings across the board.
Craig, the only one that I can think of that's probably tied a little bit to going back to work is the dry cleaners. They obviously got hit very hard as people were working from home, and they might be beneficiaries of going back to work in the summer when offices reopen.
Great. That makes a lot of sense. Thanks, guys, for the answers.
The next question comes from Juan Sanabria from BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Hi, this is Lili Peng with Juan Sanabria. Good morning, guys. I just have a question on inflation. Do you have any focus on leasing discussions to put the company in a better position should inflation accelerate from here? Do you have plan to change your lease breakdown? What's fixed versus CPI based?
We continue to work on a percent increase basis versus a fixed dollar amount increase. Typically, with those percent increases in base rent, that tends to trend well with inflation.
Thank you. Just a quick follow-up. I think you mentioned abatements this quarter were partially offset by some changes in reserves. Could you please break out these pieces? What's the amount reserved in the period?
Sure. During the quarter, we recognized $8.9 million in abatements, and about half of that was related to prior periods for which there was a significant reserve on those abatements.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
The next question comes from Caitlin Burrows from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Sorry if I missed this, but I was wondering if you could give some color on your outlook for occupancy over the course of the year on the anchor and small shop side. I guess, given the leasing that you've done, the current watch list, and upcoming lease maturities, do you think occupancy may have troughed, or do you think there's still more downside risk?
That's a great question. We've been messaging previously that we anticipate Q2 most likely to be the trough of occupancy for 2021. We continue to make great progress and headway with our lease philosophy, obviously in Q1, and we started to see a net benefit of gaining back some of the dip towards the end of Q1, which was encouraging. We do have Dania that's going to be placed into service into occupancy in Q2, that is going to have a bit of an impact. On the flip side, it also will start to expand our lease economic occupancy. It'll help continue to fuel cash flow growth through the back half of 2021 and into 2022. We're continuing to be encouraged by the momentum that we're seeing on the lease side, and hope to see it start to level out shortly.
Okay. Separately, but kind of related, Dania Pointe and The Boulevard are obviously two large developments that you guys were working on for a while, and they should be ramping up NOI. I was wondering if you could give some detail on the amount of NOI currently being recognized by these properties versus what's still to come and kind of over what timeframe we should expect that to happen.
Yeah. The NOI you'll see the start ramp up towards the second half of 2021. For The Boulevard, it should stabilize towards the end of 2022. Dania, I would say also probably towards the end of 2022 you'll have stabilization of phases II and phase III.
Okay, thanks.
The next question comes from Ki Bin Kim from Truist. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Can you just talk a little bit more about the 2.8 million sq ft of leases that you signed this quarter? I'm curious how much of this is truly additive versus some shuffling of tenants around spaces or simply reducing space that might be currently occupied, but may be set to expire. If you can help us understand what type of tenants are actually driving this activity and the credit quality as it compares to like a pre-COVID environment?
Sure. Yeah. We did 121 new lease deals, that's just roughly about 570,000 sq f t of GLA. When you think of the type of credits or tenants, it's the off-price guys are obviously very aggressive. We did sign a few grocery deals as well. Five Below has been very active. Ulta. Small shop side restaurant operators are actually starting to come back. Franchisees, for example, seeing the opportunity of restaurants that are closed through the pandemic. These are fully fixturized units ready to go with a bit of capital and a bit of love to get them back open. You can do it relatively quickly.
What we're seeing is a lot of people anticipating the reopening trade and the stimulus funding flowing through the economy and wanting to be prepared in a position to take advantage of that. That's where we're seeing a lot of the great demand through our leasing.
I see. Just to recap that, is there much reshuffling of tenant spaces that makes its way into leasing activity in general?
There's always some movement. It's situational a lot of times in nature. The prototype of retail tenants does change. Some are expanding their footprint, others are contracting their footprint. If there's another opportunity within the center to create a better mousetrap for them, subsequently you have an opportunity to backfill that space at a higher rent. Net-net, there's a net positive to the cash flow for the center. You'll always want to consider that, because you want to make sure that that merchandising mix is fresh and relevant to the market. I wouldn't say that's anything that's new or different than what's normal course of business.
Got you. Just to follow up on the Dania Pointe question, the leasing stat didn't change much. I know it's just one quarter, and I don't want to be so myopic in this question, but just curious if you can talk about the demand you're seeing and expectations for lease up.
Sure. Yeah, no, the demand is really starting to build back as we're looking through 2021 here. We did have Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie that did open in March. They exceeded their plan on the opening, which was excellent. We do have the hotel operators, the two Marriott International flags that will be opening summer of this year. We're continuing to see active construction on a handful of new tenants as well. Regal targeting to open this fall and take advantage of the blockbusters that are scheduled to be distributed into theaters for the holiday season this year, and we anticipate that to be a big draw. On the new lease activity, it's really started to ramp. That's encouraging.
We did sign American Eagle Outfitters to take one of the other anchor spaces along Main Street. That will be a great complement and add to what Urban and Anthro are currently doing.
Okay, thank you.
The next question comes from Floris van Dijkum from Compass Point. Please go ahead.
Thanks for taking my question, guys. If you could, I'm interested. Obviously, you can't talk about the Weingarten thing, I'm going to ask you some questions on the leasing. I noticed you had $5.3 million of lease term, which is approximately $5 million more than it was last year. Maybe if you can give some color on that, what that represents, maybe also talk about some of the regional differences, perhaps?
Just wanted to clarify the first question, the $5.3 million. Can you just sort of restate that? I'm trying to understand.
Yeah. You recognized $5.3 million of lease term fee this past quarter. Last year, I think it was $400,000. You had basically a $5 million increase in lease. If you give some more color on that, what that represents, or is that, obviously, presumably, that's not a sustainable number, but just to get what drove that large increase? Maybe talk about some of the other regional differences in that lease term fee that you saw.
Sure. Yeah. Sorry, it's the lease termination agreements, the LTAs. A portion of those were related to tenants that wanted to vacate early. We're able to structure arrangements that were opportunistic to free them of their liabilities while getting the net benefit of LTA. We had the opportunity to backfill with other grocers for those spaces. Again, when you look at the net add, it made a whole lot of sense to proceed with those deal structures to take advantage of it. They are one-time events, which is why we wanted to make sure to call them out, and those do happen periodically throughout the course of our business. It just happened to be that we had a few opportunities that hit all at once in Q1.
When you look at those, it's always about what is the opportunity to backfill, how does that complement what you're already trying to do with the strategy of the site, and you want to be opportunistic at those times to take advantage of it. In terms of regional, it's not really regional in nature. It's situational, just dependent on the center. It could vary region to region, quarter- over -quarter, if they do exist.
Yeah, Floris, just to give a little bit more color on that. We did have a Lucky's grocery store, which was a ground lease backed by Kroger Credit. Kroger decided not to move forward with the Lucky's banner. What we did have was a lease termination agreement with Kroger to terminate the ground lease with us, which was in that number, and we were able to backfill that space with a Sprouts grocery store, and that's at Dania, actually. It was a net win for us there.
Great.
Hey.
Floris, this is Nicky. I'd also remind you that, as you pointed out, the LTAs are purely transactional, and so by no means would this first quarter be reflective of a run rate, just as you saw that the prior period was much less.
Thanks, guys. I guess my follow-up question here is in regards to leasing costs. Leasing costs appear to be pretty stable. Maybe if you can comment on what you're seeing and what you expect is going to happen to leasing costs going forward. As leasing demand potentially builds, are those going to trend up, down, in your view? Maybe if you can give us some more color on that'd be great.
Sure. As you mentioned, leasing costs were relatively stable. In terms of the scope and the demand and the requirements of the tenants, that really hasn't changed. It's more about material pricing that could have an impact on costs on a go-forward basis in the interim. Obviously, we're still working through some supply constraints in distribution as a result of the pandemic. You have seen some increase in pricings for material costs, whether it be lumber, HVAC, et cetera. That could be short-term in nature as the distribution channels start to relieve some of those bottlenecks that have occurred through the pandemic. We just have to monitor those closely. That could have some moderate impact in the near term, but we'd anticipate, again, that's a short period of time, and then hopefully would subside again.
In terms of deal costs in general, we haven't seen much change in terms of the demand of the requirements from the retailer side. If you net out any potential increase in the short term, you'd assume it to carry on as is. It's also dependent on the type of deals you do per quarter. If you're doing split box value creation opportunities, we had a couple of those this quarter that had elevated costs, while others are just a simple backfill. If you're going non-grocery to grocery, obviously our big focus is on grocery right now, so you could see some deal costs that are a little bit higher. It's because of that grocery conversion. Subsequently, on top of that, you're obviously seeing an increase in rent in some of those cases. In addition, you're getting longer term.
On a net effective basis, net-net, it's working out pretty well.
In summary, I guess one of the fears that investors had is during the downturn, heightened vacancies, less pricing power, tenants have greater demands or have greater ability to drive favorable lease terms and higher leasing packages. That's not actually occurring based on what you're seeing right now.
It's all dependent on quality, right? You have to start with that, the quality of the real estate, and that will drive demand. Different than what we saw in the Great Recession, where there was this prolonged recovery cycle. The impact of the pandemic was so extraordinary and so extreme so fast. The recovery has been almost just as quick, it's been more of this V shape. You haven't really seen an adjustment or a reset on market rents. What we're seeing, especially on the anchor side, is that there's this short window of opportunity for those retailers to upgrade the quality of their portfolio, they want to take advantage of that and step in. It's typically, if you have at least more than one person there at the table looking to negotiate a space, that helps level set the supply-demand side.
That's what we're seeing. We're seeing a lot of people wanting to upgrade, get closer to the customer, expand their last mile distribution efforts, take all the lessons learned from the pandemic and really capitalize on it because the anticipation is that those opportunities won't exist for very long.
Yeah. Floris, the only thing I would add is that the lack of supply, so it's been decades since we've seen any uptick in new supply, is really benefiting us when we're focused on these last mile locations. The density that surrounds our assets really inhibits a lot of new supply coming online, and we're seriously experiencing that as the demand has been robust.
Thanks, guys. Appreciate that.
The next question comes from Tammi Fique from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
Hello, good morning. Conor, you mentioned in your opening remarks about enhancing merchandising mix as an objective, and I guess I'm wondering longer term, where you see areas for improvement in your portfolio and once occupancy stabilizes, I guess what types of retailers you would like to target and what categories you could see lightening up exposure.
Sure. I can start and Dave and others can add some color. It starts obviously with our grocery initiative. We really do believe that that creates a halo effect on the surrounding retail because of the cross-shopping that it generates. You go from there and you start to continue to pick out the best in class of each category to make sure that you have an exciting merchandising mix. Clearly, we've benefited from curbside pickup through the pandemic, our mission is to make sure that the merchandising mix is so alluring that regardless of why you came to that shopping center in the first place, your eye catch is something that makes you want to come back. Whether it's a coffee or a bagel in the morning, you're always looking to drive traffic throughout the entire day.
Our mission is to really create a vibrant community center that drives traffic for multiple different demand drivers. When you look at the demands of the different categories that are expanding right now, it's a really nice spot to be because it's very diverse, and we can really pick and choose and understand voids in trade areas that we can then backfill some of our vacancies with.
Okay, great. Thanks. One question for Glenn. You mentioned repaying upcoming mortgage maturities, and I was wondering if that's a function of your balance sheet and ratings upgrade goals or more a function of leverage on those particular assets and maybe lender caution on certain segments within retail.
We have historically paid off any mortgage debt that we can as soon as we can, as long as there's no real significant prepayment penalties. We had bought a portfolio of properties you might recall the Boston portfolio years back, and that portfolio had two large cross-collateralized pools, and they're prepayable without penalty in June, so we're going to just pay those off. With that, prior to the Weingarten transaction, we'll have very little mortgage debt that remains on the balance sheet. We very much focus on just really being a good borrower. It's a much better way for us to operate. It's much more efficient than having mortgage debt on individual assets.
Okay. That makes sense. Thank you.
The next question comes from Linda Tsai from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi. Sorry if I missed this earlier. When you're looking at the leasing demand, what percentage is coming from retailers looking to relocate, and what percentage is coming from retailers looking to expand store growth?
It really is a combination. I think it's very clear that there is a lot of net new demand for some of our best-in-class retailers across our major categories that are looking to take the windfall from clearly the pandemic-induced shopping that they've experienced and expand there. There is also, Linda, the playbook from retailers typically in downturns is again, try and take advantage of the increased vacancy, look to upgrade their fleet, and look to get into the best centers possible. We do constant portfolio reviews with our retailers to make sure that if there is a relocation opportunity, that the Kimco center is the best-in-class opportunity for them in that corridor, so to look at that as well.
I would say the lion's share is coming from net new stores, which really is exciting because it's a nice spot to be having limited supply and a lot of different demand drivers.
Thanks. Just a follow-up. The tenants looking to terminate early, you gave one example involving Sprouts. Was that the bulk of the $5.3 million? Do you expect elevated lease term fees for the remainder of 2021?
Oh, sorry.
Right. It was Lucky's that had terminated.
Oh, Lucky's. Sorry.
The replacement tenant will be Sprouts, I think as Conor mentioned, that was at Dania. We had two other lease terminations. Actually, two were with Lidl, then a bank pad as well. We don't really anticipate a whole lot more for the rest of the year. Maybe another $1 million-$2 million for the balance of the year.
Okay. Thank you.
The last question for today's call comes from Greg McGinniss from Scotiabank. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning. Glenn, for the $7 million of repaid rent/billable amounts from the cash basis tenants, are those tenants now fully current on rent, or is there more owed from those tenants? Obviously, I'm just trying to get a sense for additional one-time or non-recurring benefits that we might see this year.
No, there's still more owed from them. As I mentioned, we collected about 84% of the deferred billings that we sent out, but there's still more that is still due from those tenants. They're all not fully current yet. Then same thing if you look in the first quarter, again, as we mentioned, 70% of the cash basis tenants have paid. When you look at that total, that's about $8 million that's not been collected yet. We'll have to see how that plays out through the rest of the year and each quarter as we go forward.
Okay. I was more specifically talking about tenants that did pay back some of the rent. Right? I understand that some still aren't paying the full amount. I'm just curious if, of that $7 million, for those tenants that did pay back rent, if those tenants are fully current or not?
No, the bulk of those are fully current, yes.
Okay. Great. From an accounting standpoint, when might tenants start moving back to accrual accounting?
We go through a pretty in-depth process. There are certain parameters that we've kind of worked out. We want to see that those tenants are current for a certain period of time, and that they have no outstanding balances that are 30 days or over. We evaluate it on a constant basis. It'll take some time for some of them to move back into accrual basis. Even some of the tenants that emerge from bankruptcy, they still remain on cash basis until they really get their full footing back.
Okay. Final question from me. Guidance is up $0.03 at the midpoint, which largely seems to capture the non-recurring payments in Q1. In the opening remarks, you mentioned improvement in credit loss for the second half of the year. It seems to NOI turning positive. Becoming more positive in general, it feels like, and plus with the leasing happening. In terms of the guidance increase here, can we view that as a more conservative increase just based on what's happened so far, or do you really think that captures the potential back half benefit we might see?
I would say that it's still early in the year. We do expect that the second half of the year, that credit loss will be much better than the first half. In the guidance, there is still elevated credit loss for the second quarter. I would tell you that the revised guidance, that we're more biased towards the upper end of the range right now based on what's happened. We are feeling good, and we will take it quarter by quarter.
Great. Thanks, Glenn.
There are no more questions so far.
Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate everybody for joining our call today. If there's any follow-up questions, you could go to our website in the investor relations area for more information. Thank you very much. Have a nice day.
This concludes our conference call for today. Thank you for attending, and you may now disconnect. Goodbye.