Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Alpine Income Property Trust First Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. At this time, all participant lines are in listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a Q&A session. To ask a question during this session, you'll need to press star then one on your telephone keypad. Please be advised today's conference may be recorded. If you require operator assistance during the call, please press star then zero. I'd now like to hand the conference over to your host today, Matt Partridge, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Treasurer. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for the Alpine Income Property Trust first quarter 2022 operating results conference call. With me today is our CEO and President, John Albright. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that many of our comments today are considered forward-looking statements under federal securities law. The company's actual future results may differ significantly from the matters discussed in these forward-looking statements, and we undertake no duty to update these statements. Factors and risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations are disclosed from time to time in greater detail in the company's Form 10-K, Form 10-Q, and other SEC filings. You can find our SEC reports and our earnings release, which contain reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures we use on our website at alpinereit.com. With that, I'll now turn the call over to John.
Thanks, Matt, and good morning, everyone. We have had an eventful start to the year, acquiring 16 properties during the first quarter of 2022 for just over $65 million at a weighted average cap rate of 6.9%, and most recently selling our last remaining office property in Hillsboro, Oregon. The office sale completes our strategic shift to a 100% retail portfolio and now positions Walgreens as our largest tenant. The bulk of our acquisition volume was concentrated in a nine-property Walgreens and CVS occupied pharmacy portfolio, which we purchased via a reverse 1031 exchange in anticipation of the office property sale. This portfolio allowed us to maintain the investment grade credit exposure we were losing with the Wells Fargo sale, while also improving the geographic diversity and more than doubling the remaining lease term of the sold property.
In total, our 16 newly acquired properties are located in 12 states, have a weighted average lease term of nine years, and included seven different tenants operating in the pharmacy, grocery, auto parts, dollar stores, specialty retail, and convenience store sectors. With a 6.9% initial cap rate, the first quarter saw our acquisition yields return to a more normalized level, which is more consistent with where we expect to acquire throughout the year. Although with the year-to-date acceleration in interest rates, we're hopeful we'll start to see incremental cap rate expansion as we prudently look for opportunities to add to our pipeline. In terms of markets, we continue to favor infill locations that benefit from population density and higher barriers to entry. With more than two-thirds of our Q1 acquired rents coming from larger MSAs with more than 1 million people.
Along these lines, we were able to add exposure to the New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C. markets at attractive per square foot valuations and assets that sit at the hard corner of well-trafficked intersections. As of the end of the quarter, our portfolio was once again 100% occupied and consisted of 129 properties totaling 3.5 million sq ft, with tenants operating in 26 sectors within 35 states. With the majority of our Q1 acquisition volume coming from the pharmacy and most specifically Walgreens, I'm pleased to say our investment grade credit exposure reached 50% at the end of the quarter. Walgreens is now our portfolio's largest tenant exposure, and pharmacy is our largest sector. Following the sale of the office property earlier this month, today our top tenants include Walgreens, At Home, Hobby Lobby, Academy Sports, Dollar General, Walmart, and Lowe's.
Obviously, the largest change to our top tenant list, the removal of Wells Fargo, when combined with our Hilton office property sales in the fourth quarter and our office dispositions, generated more than $16 million of gains, which we reverse exchanged into our Houston ground lease portfolio in the first quarter Walgreens and CVS pharmacy portfolio. We're confident the recent changes to our portfolio improve our overall profile for investors, and given that we are trading at just over an implied 6.9% cash cap rate, we're hopeful they drive better valuation as the investment community can now more easily compare our portfolio to our largest net lease peers. Furthermore, we've increased our disposition guidance for 2022 as we look to sell properties where we can generate strong net investment spreads and book gains on our assets, which will highlight our portfolio's intrinsic value.
By selling at low cap rates and buying at higher yields, we'll be able to incrementally de-lever our balance sheet, and because we anticipate being able to redeploy proceeds into comparable or stronger credits, we're optimistic our disposition program will further improve our overall portfolio metrics and drive higher quality FFO per share. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Matt to talk about our first quarter performance, balance sheet, capital markets activities, and revised guidance.
Thanks, John. Jumping right into Q1 results. First quarter 2022 FFO was $0.49 per share. A $0.07 per share or 16.7% increase compared to the first quarter of 2021. First quarter 2022 AFFO was $0.48 per share, a $0.04 per share or 9.1% increase over the first quarter of 2021. The most notable variance between our FFO and AFFO year-over-year performance is the $248,000 of net non-recurring COVID rent deferral repayments that totaled $271,000 in the first quarter of 2021 and just $23,000 in the first quarter of 2022. I'm very pleased to say next quarter will be the last quarter of scheduled COVID rent deferral repayments, marking the completion and full recovery of all of our previously deferred rents.
On the operating side of things, our portfolio remains 100% occupied, and as we have monitored the corporate performance of our tenants through the first quarter of the year, we've largely seen continued improvement in corporate-level operating trends or a demonstrated ability to maintain strong, consistent performance across nearly all of our tenant sectors. Our general and administrative expenses for the quarter, which includes $936,000 in management fees to our external manager, totaled $1.4 million. This was a year-over-year increase of 39%, largely driven by increases to our management fee from our 2021 equity capital markets activities, and was positively offset by a revenue growth of more than 83%.
G&A as a percentage of revenues in the first quarter was 13.3%, a year-over-year decrease of nearly 425 basis points, which, as I've highlighted in the past quarters, continues to reflect our improving organizational scale and efficiency. For the first quarter of 2022, the company paid a cash dividend of $0.27 per share, representing a 12.5% year-over-year increase over the company's Q1 2021 cash dividend and a current annualized yield of approximately 5.7%. FFO and AFFO first quarter payout ratios were very healthy at 55% and 56% respectively, and we anticipate announcing our regular quarterly cash dividend for the second quarter towards the end of May.
On the capital markets front, we issued 315,000 shares of common stock through our ATM program during the first quarter for total net proceeds of $6.1 million at an average issuance price of $19.65 per share. We ended the quarter with net debt to total enterprise value of 56%, net debt to pro forma EBITDA of 8.8x, and a very healthy fixed charge coverage ratio of 5.6x. Subsequent to quarter end, we exercised the accordion options on our 2026 and 2027 term loans, closing on an additional $60 million of proceeds. These proceeds were used to pay down our unsecured revolving credit facility.
When combined with the proceeds from the Wells Fargo asset sale, which were also used to pay down our unsecured revolving credit facility, we increased our potential liquidity to approximately $100 million through available cash and overall borrowing capacity on our revolver. In consideration of our Q1 performance and the current capital markets backdrop, we did increase full year guidance to account for a lower weighted average share count for the year, increased acquisition and disposition guidance, expectations for increasing near-term and long-term interest rates, as well as revisions to a number of other influential assumptions. We began the second quarter of 2022 with portfolio-wide in-place annualized straight-line base rent of $41.6 million or $40.5 million of in-place annualized cash base rent, and this number is before the sale of the Wells Fargo that occurred during the second quarter.
Our increased full year 2022 FFO guidance range is $1.55-$1.60 per share, and our full year 2022 AFFO guidance range was increased to $1.53-$1.58 per share. Consistent with our comments last quarter to our 2022 per share guidance, we are forecasting a de-levering of the balance sheet when compared to our current Q1 2022 credit metrics, which is accomplished through our increased disposition guidance and from our revised projections for capital markets activities throughout the balance of the year.
On the transaction front, we now expect to acquire between $215 million and $250 million of retail net lease properties during 2022, which is a 7.5% increase to the bottom end of our range, and subject to other market conditions, which we believe these acquisitions will occur at similar or better blended yields to our current 2021 full year acquisition cap rates. Finally, as John noted earlier, we increased our disposition guidance in order to provide real-time valuations of some of our larger tenant exposures, generate accretive net investment spreads, and incrementally de-lever our balance sheet, all of which we expect will improve our overall portfolio metrics and drive higher quality FFO per share.
Our revised disposition guidance forecast between $75 million and $100 million of asset sales throughout the year, up by $35 million at the low end and $50 million at the high end. Our guidance includes the already completed sale of the office building in Hillsboro, Oregon. With that, I'll now turn the call back over to John for his closing remarks.
Thanks, Matt. We're pleased with our solid start to the year, driven by our strong investment activity and the completion of our portfolio strategic shift to becoming 100% retail. While there has been a lot of volatility in the market this year, we intend to keep selectively pruning our portfolio to demonstrate the attractive and resilient value of our investments while driving towards a higher quality earnings. We have a strong operational roadmap in place to help us outperform over the long run, and we appreciate the continued support of our shareholders as we execute on our plan. I want to thank our team for all of their accomplishments. At this time, we'll open it up for questions. Operator?
Our first question comes from Rob Stevenson with Janney.
Good morning. John, the Walgreens leases, are those the standard flat, no bumps leases? If so, what does that do to your bumps for the portfolio as a whole now that that's your largest tenant? What also made that, you know, portfolio attractive to you guys at this point in time, given the sort of hyper-growth phase that PINE is still in at this point?
Yeah. Thanks, Rob. So, kind of on your, on the latter question, on the attractiveness, it was a portfolio deal. It was the sellers were motivated, not tax driven or what have you and, you know, just wanted to kinda get it done. It was kind of a smaller portfolio. They weren't, you know, too price sensitive, so we feel like we got a really good price for the quality portfolio. To answer your question on the Walgreens lease, yes, it's a standard lease situation that Walgreens has across the board. With regards to rent bumps on what that does to the portfolio, I'll let Matt kind of opine on that.
Yeah. Hey, Rob. Post-acquisition of the Walgreens and post-sale of the Wells Fargo, about half the portfolio has either annual or periodic rent bumps in the existing terms.
What is that average now?
In terms of annual growth?
Yeah.
It depends on the year, but it's somewhere between 75 and 125 basis points per year on average.
Okay, perfect. Matt, while I've got you here, you know, you guys expanded your debt capacity here, but in talking with your bank group, if you had to go out there and access new debt today or replace parts of your stack, where would that price versus the beginning of the year? It seems like, you know, over the last five, seven years, every time rates have gone up, the spread has gone down in the REIT space. I assume that some of that's happened, but some of that big jump in rates over the last three, four months would be transmitted into your cost of borrowing. How significant is that for you guys as to these days if you had to access new debt rather than expanding existing?
Yeah. I would say spreads have largely hung in there on the unsecured side, and I think they've moved out a little bit on the secured front, which we don't do a lot of. Really where it's widened out is on the forward swaps. The five-year forward swaps, last we checked about a couple weeks ago, they had moved out to over 2.5%. You know, so from a spreads perspective, we're all in between 135 and 195, which has been attractive for us. Obviously with where new swaps are, you're in the 4%+ range to do new fixed rate five-year debt.
Okay. Last one for me, John. Any sense, you know, in looking out there at your own pipeline or in the conversations that you're having in the early stages on deals that, you know, anything is happening yet in terms of either pricing for assets or the size of the amount of properties being brought to market these days? Any, you know, changes of note that you would say between now and, you know, three or six months ago?
As I mentioned on our last earnings call, we're certainly have expanded out our acquisition interest as far as cap rates and have bid wider than the market. I can give you some, you know, obviously real data point color that, you know, as you've seen, we have expanded our disposition guidance because we're still seeing very strong low cap rates on smaller type assets. We're, you know, feeding more of our properties into the sell market because we can reinvest those at higher spreads, higher yields. We're gonna do that. Right now we're seeing the pricing very strong for smaller assets, and I think that's really because what you're seeing is people wanna get out of the way of the bond market.
If you're a fixed income investor and you know that bonds are gonna be a bad deal, you'd rather basically swap into a strong real estate asset with a long lease at a higher yield, and you have the inflation protection of the real estate. I think you're seeing that sort of movement where capital is moving out of bonds and into real estate for better yield and asset protection. We're basically gonna take our time on the acquisition side, and we're not seeing anything right now. We're not seeing any good deals right now that may come later in the year, so we're kind of being patient about it.
On the multi-tenanted side, since we're active on that at CTO, you are seeing, you know, a buyer hesitancy, so maybe that will come on the net lease side, but we haven't seen it yet.
Okay.
For the long-winded.
No, no, that's helpful. Thank you, guys. Appreciate the time.
Thanks, Rob.
Our next question comes from Wes Golladay with Baird.
Hey. Good morning, guys. I'd like to dig in more on this asset recycling you're gonna do in the second half of the year. What type of spread are you looking between what you're buying and what you're selling? Will this be a big part of the strategy going forward?
You know, it'll be a big part of the strategy if we still see great opportunity to sell properties at lower cap rates than we would be a buyer and the ability to reinvest at higher spreads. We'll do that all day. In general, I would say it's about 100 basis point spread between what we're selling and what we're buying. Could be a little higher.
I guess what type of friction would you have from transaction costs? How much would that eat into that?
I don't know. It's not. I mean, it's not material given. I mean, you know, material maybe in the eyes of the beholder. It's not bad. I wouldn't think that would be a gating issue.
Okay. Then when we look through the leverage, maybe towards the end of the year, once you're done with the asset recycling, where do you think that can get to?
You know, based on current guidance, we're projecting it to be at or below 7x net debt to EBITDA.
Okay. Last one for me. With the office sale now complete, would you have any more OpEx or reimbursements in the income statement?
No, we don't have any operating expenses beyond what existed in the first quarter. There is a little bit of leakage in there, not much, that'll continue on some assets that we own, but with specifically the Hilton property from Q4, the higher leakage asset is now out of the portfolio.
Great. I'll hop back in the queue. Thanks, guys.
Thanks.
Our next question comes from Anthony Hau with Truist Securities.
Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question. John, how would you describe the assets that you're planning to sell this year, and where do they rank in terms of quality within the portfolio?
Well, I think you know my view is that the investors and maybe research analysts don't view some of the assets that we're looking to sell as being high quality. We know that the locations are such high quality that they will get premium pricing. We're looking to you know just impress our investors and with the fact that you know PINE has a very strong portfolio and people may wake up one day and be surprised at the valuations we get on the disposition side. Not to dodge your questions with names and so forth, but it'll probably be not core type names as far as credits.
Just, you know, really it's just more pruning the portfolio with, you know, locations that are not getting properly, appropriately valued in the public markets.
Gotcha. Is there a certain sector that you're planning to reduce your exposure given the hyperinflation environment?
You know, look, we were early on in selling casual dining. You know, we sold Outbacks over the last couple of years. We didn't have a lot of them. We had two. That was kind of before inflation started going crazy, but labor costs were going up. We felt like casual dining would be really in the bull's eye of labor costs and if inflation took off. You know, we're kind of there on both of those issues. That's one that we've kind of went away from. You know, we only own one car wash. You know, that could be a disposition kind of candidate.
You know, that's kind of a discretionary spend item in our view, and certainly not an ESG-friendly type of asset, but we only have one of those.
Gotcha. Last one for me. Matt, given where rates are headed, what's the plan for the variable debt exposure? Should we assume that 90% of the balance sheet will be fixed by year-end?
Yeah, we're gonna be opportunistic on fixing the existing variable rate debt. You know, we wanna have some balance on the revolver because as we sell assets or in the event that we raise additional equity, we want the ability to pay down that floating rate debt versus having it locked in and having the equity drag. But I would tell you my strong preference is to have fixed rate debt versus variable rate debt over the long term. There's a lot of volatility with the forward curve and where forward swaps are pricing. Depending on market headlines and what's happening in the world, if we see a point where we can lock in at a reasonable forward rate on the existing variable rate debt, we'll look to do that.
Okay. Gotcha. Thanks, guys.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Michael Gorman with BTIG.
Yeah, thanks. Good morning. John, I know you mentioned that you're not seeing much change in terms of the buyer behavior and on the net lease side of things, but obviously a solid first quarter in terms of deal volume and in terms of yields. I'm just curious, kind of what you're seeing out there on the volume side that's allowing you to source the strong first quarter and then to give you the confidence as you go through the year in a relatively volatile environment, that you'll have kind of the offset acquisitions for the dispositions that you're planning.
Yeah. I would say, look, you know, with the volatility, that's gonna be in our favor. That's gonna kick out the marginal buyer. I have no issues, no problems with being able to find acquisitions or, you know. So I think, you know, we have a great deal team, small deal team with great relationships and whether we get, you know, kind of, you know, hit with a special situation where somebody needs to close by a certain time, and they really need a group that can focus on it, you know. We are, you know, we're very confident that we can kind of dial up the volume when we need it.
Right now, you know, as we've gotten a lot done early on, we're in a good position to kind of sit back and take our shot so when we, you know, see good value.
Okay. I guess maybe just on the supply side, have you seen any pickup in supply in the marketplace, whether it's rate volatility, having sellers concerned about future valuations or sellers that maybe have debt maturities coming up? Have you seen an increased amount of product out there?
What we've seen is we haven't seen a great deal of more product come on the market because of what you just said. I just got back from ULI in San Diego, a late flight last night. You know, brokers are definitely telling their clients that if you wanna sell something, you need to get it to market as soon as possible because who knows, you know, who knows what could happen. I do expect more supply to come on. If you're a seller this year, why wait? That sort of thing. I would expect more, but we're not seeing it yet.
Okay. That's helpful. Just last one for me, a little bit away from the transactions. Obviously, a lot of talk about inflation on the call, generally in the economy, labor shortages, cost of employees, all those things. You've kind of put a framework around how you think about internalizing management for PINE on a go-forward. Does the current environment and the rising costs on a G&A side change that kind of framework in terms of where you think the appropriate size is to look at internalizing the structure?
Not really. We've recently looked at the cost structure, and it was, you know, marginally higher than maybe we thought about, you know, at IPO. You know, someone like Matt doesn't come any cheaper these days, for sure. Maybe we'll have to, you know, have a cheaper CEO or something like that. You know, so I would say it's marginally gone up for sure. You know, it doesn't really change the dynamics of the size that we need to be for that. Clearly, we understand, you know, the value proposition in the market of an internalized structure. That isn't lost upon us. I think the timing is just really kind of, you know, size.
You know, we just need to get there. It's, you know, not a burdensome cost structure.
That's helpful. Thanks for the time, guys.
Sure.
Our next question comes from Jason Stewart with Jones Trading.
Thanks. Good morning. Most of the questions have been answered. I wanted to pull up a little bit and get your thoughts on sort of a medium-term outlook for cap rates in the net lease sector, given the move we've had in rates year -to- date.
I mean, as I mentioned, you know, we're still seeing very strong cap rates on things that we're looking to sell, and surprisingly so. We have talked with, as I mentioned on the call, I was at ULI, and people are really seeing the pricing, you know, gap out or expand out on more assets that had gotten really tight and had more of a financing component. If you think about it, you know, like multifamily, you know, that's, you know, the leverage there has been part of bringing down cap rates. Because leverage is so important to the multifamily side, that's where, you know, the market's seeing a lot of disruption right now, I think.
On the single-tenant net lease, since it's, you know, driven a lot by the 1031 with no leverage, we really haven't seen any kind of volatility that you might expect. We hope to see that volatility as you know a greedy investor and buyer of assets. We hope to see some disruption and opportunity. That's why we'll be patient to see if we get some of those shots.
Okay. I guess we'll wait to see what happens there. On the CTO ownership side, can you remind us of the plan, whether there are any limitations to how much CTO can own of PINE?
Hey, Jason. CTO currently owns about 15% of PINE. The limitation is really dictated by the REIT structure and some of the tax rules around that from an ownership perspective. CTO currently can own up to 11% of PINE's REIT shares, which would be in addition to the OP units that it currently holds.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Craig Kucera with B. Riley Securities.
Hey, good morning, guys. John, you had mentioned last quarter that you had some reverse inquiries on potential asset sales. Have those inbound calls continued or accelerated in the last few months?
We certainly get, you know, a regular stream of those calls. We really have, you know, with the market kind of like in disruption and our stock really not acting very favorably, we decided to be more proactive in hiring brokers and testing the waters, if you will, on assets. We have been very pleasantly surprised on the pricing and the amount of interest. We'll continue to keep on taking advantage of that sort of, you know, market environment. Then that will help us set up to be ready to redeploy at higher spreads after, you know, properties close. You know, that's kind of a three-month process at least. We're, you know, taking our time.
We're not, you know, trying to, you know, sell it super fast or what have you, but it's just a regular kind of, you know, methodical movement here. When we've talked about before when we had reverse inquiries, that kind of started us off on this where we do have some properties in the sell process that started with reverse inquiries. That got us saying, "Hey, you know, well, let's see if the market really prices, you know, such and such property at a, you know, extreme valuation." That's kinda a little bit of context behind it.
No, that's helpful. I appreciate it. Just stepping back, you guys have, you know, pretty much been on a tear from an acquisitions perspective for the last four quarters. It sounds like maybe we should expect, at least from an acquisition perspective, for things to maybe slow down here in the second quarter, as you kind of wait for things to settle down and then maybe re-accelerate in the back half of the year. Is that fair?
Yeah, that's fair. I mean, I've told the acquisition team we're in no rush to, you know, try to impress the market with acquisition volume. We know we can do it when we want to, but we want to really see what kind of pain is out there, if possible, and so we'll take our time.
Got it. Just one more from me. Are you making any update on the grocery development site in Jacksonville?
Yeah, good question. I do have an update, but we haven't discussed it. Let's just say it's basically back on track. The real timing, the reason why it's been delayed is the negotiating with Old Time Pottery and the new grocer and getting all that done just really took some timing. Everyone's been busy, I guess, in this environment. To get two groups together to figure out you know how logistics and how it all works out. That's all been done. Why don't you look, we'll give an update on next quarter on timing and so forth.
Okay. Thanks, I appreciate it.
Yep.
Our next question comes from Andrew Lavery, an individual investor.
Hi, everybody. How you doing?
Good.
Just had a question with regards to ESG. What does the board and senior leadership think about ESG and stakeholder capitalism as a whole?
We're very mindful of ESG. Obviously, we have a slide on our investor deck that you should take a look at. One thing we're very proud of is you know at CTO the manager of PINE we've planted 170,000 pine trees in Florida over the last couple of years and we have you know brought on diversity on our boards. We're you know as a small company we're you know basically very mindful of it and we're very proud of what the progress we've made. We obviously know that it's a big issue and keep on thinking of what we can do to keep moving that forward.
Okay. With a follow-up question, if I may. You said you mentioned how in the portfolio is one car wash property and how that's not very ESG friendly. I'm assuming it's not ESG friendly just because of the amount of water it uses, the wastewater it produces and such. Now, if you offloaded that property due to just kinda ESG kinda, I don't know, guidance, I guess, is a way to put it, I suppose. Do you feel you'd be assuming too, if that property is paying rent on time consistently, you know, it provides good value to the overall portfolio and you decide to sell it because of ESG, do you feel you're fulfilling your fiduciary responsibility to the shareholder?
We won't sell it if we don't get a really good price, we're not letting the tail wag the dog. We're very sure, you know, basically shareholder friendly as far as value. We think that we can basically do, you know, hit two birds with, you know, one stone, if you will. That we can, w e can get a very good price for that because of the ground lease, and it's a very strong market. You know, we'll let shareholders, investors, research analysts decide whether car washes are ESG friendly or not. That was just a commentary that, you know.
Okay.
It uses a lot of water, and people are concerned about water.
Well, I would say to that, you know, if you did sell it and it was for purely environmental reasons and, you know, you say you got a good price for it, but-
Yeah, I just answered the question, Andrew.
Yeah, but-
Yeah.
But-
We're not selling it because, you know, we wouldn't sell it at a high cap rate because it uses water.
Well, I'm just saying that you would. If someone else is gonna buy it, and it's still gonna use a lot of water. I'm not saying that's what I wanted to point out. Just one final comment. I noticed on the investor relations page, I believe we own 129 properties now. Is that correct?
It was 129 at quarter end. With the Wells Fargo sale after quarter end, it's dropped back down to 128.
Okay. I see. All right. Perfect. Yeah, 'cause I saw in the quarterly earnings report, it said 129, and then on the investor relations page, it said 128. I just wanted to make sure there wasn't a discrepancy there. That's all. Thank you.
Yep. Thank you.
That concludes today's Q&A session. I'd like to turn the call back to John Albright for closing remarks.
I just wanna say, thank you for attending the call and look forward to follow-up questions. Thank you.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.