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Citi’s Miami Global Property CEO Conference 2026

Mar 2, 2026

Nick Joseph
Global Head of Real Estate Research, Citi Research

Welcome to Citi's 2026 Global Property CEO Conference. I'm Nick Joseph here with Eric Wolfe with Citi Research. We're pleased to have with us Sun Communities and CEO Charles Young. This session is for Citi clients only. 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 questions. Charles, we'll turn it over to you to introduce the team and company, provide any opening remarks, tell the audience the top reasons an investor should buy your stock today. Then we'll get into Q&A.

Charles Young
CEO, Sun Communities

Very good.

Nick Joseph
Global Head of Real Estate Research, Citi Research

Can you just press the... Yeah, it needs to be red for-

Charles Young
CEO, Sun Communities

Red, red is talk?

Nick Joseph
Global Head of Real Estate Research, Citi Research

Red is talk.

Charles Young
CEO, Sun Communities

All right.

Nick Joseph
Global Head of Real Estate Research, Citi Research

Surprised me too.

Charles Young
CEO, Sun Communities

Threw me off on that one.

Nick Joseph
Global Head of Real Estate Research, Citi Research

Me too.

Charles Young
CEO, Sun Communities

All right, I'll start back over. Thank you, Eric and Nick. To my right, we have John McLaren, our President. Directly to my left is Aaron Weiss, our Head of Strategy and Business Development, and Fernando, who is our Chief Financial Officer. I'll do our comments. We'll jump into kind of overall, if that's okay. Good afternoon and welcome, everyone. It's glad, great to be here. I'm pleased to be at the conference, new in the seat. If those of you who listened to our last earnings call, you know, 2025 was a transformational year for Sun. The sale of the marinas marked an important milestone for the company. It, you know, frankly, it simplified our business.

We had a chance to strengthen our balance sheet and, you know, as seen by our net debt to current EBITDA, reposition Sun, frankly, as a pure play MH RV company. Over the past year, with all of that, we've had a chance to reduce leverage, which resulted in credit upgrades from both Moody's and S&P, enhanced our financial and strategic flexibility, and returned more than a billion and a half of capital to our shareholders. I'm excited as we come into the year with that foundation. We're operating from a position of strength and couldn't be more excited about what's in front of us. Our core manufactured housing and annual RV businesses continue to demonstrate durable fundamentals.

We operate in sectors supported by strong demand, limited new supply, and compelling affordable advantage, relative to other, you know, the, you know, housing sectors, if you will. Manufactured housing provides a high-quality living experience at a cost meaningfully below alternatives. Our RV communities, frankly, offer accessible short-term and long-term vacation options that resonate with today's consumer. These segments generate recurring, predictable rental income streams. Our MH and annual RV is highly occupied. We can get into those details if you want it. We continue to see the benefit of the long-term resident engagement and retention across our asset class. Coming from where I came from, it's kind of great to see that low turnover that's in our portfolio.

To that point, I've had a chance over the last several months, opportunity to spend time with our communities in multiple states, meeting with team members, meeting with residents, and guests. You know, what stands out, the strength of our portfolio and operations is the sense of community that you feel when you're in one of our communities, so I encourage everybody to try to visit if you can. This is a compelling value proposition for our residents and guests. As we look ahead, our strategy is focused and practical. It builds on what's worked, what this team has built before I showed up, and we're really focusing on sharpening our execution to drive long-term value. As I talked about on the call, I see three core pillars that's guiding this approach. First is disciplined capital allocation.

That includes maintaining a strong, flexible balance sheet while pursuing value-enhancing growth opportunities. Number two is continued optimization of our operating platform to drive greater consistency, accountability, and efficiency across the organization. There's a great foundation laid. How do we build upon that? Third is strategic investment in our communities, in our infrastructure, and in our digital capabilities to enhance the resident and guest experience and enable faster, better data-driven decision-making going forward. We believe, you know, this focused approach positions Sun to deliver steady earnings growth, margin expansion over time, supported by durable cash flow characteristics of our core business. We're pleased to be here today with you. As I said, we got the whole team here. I'll pause there and open it up for questions.

Nick Joseph
Global Head of Real Estate Research, Citi Research

Perfect. Well, you touched on the three pillars that you're focused on. You know, if you think about the company over the past few years, there's been a lot of change. I guess, how do you think about implementing more change from here? Obviously you're seeing opportunities to do so, but how do you make sure that it is actually implemented in the right way so that there's not, you know, either missteps or kind of challenges that aren't foreseen right now.

Just given what we have seen, you know, with the rollout of the new ERP system or others, how do you think about the pace of change versus making sure it's done, correctly?

Charles Young
CEO, Sun Communities

It's a great question. You know, the strength that I've seen spending my time here is the culture, and I wanna make sure that we are preserving and building off that strength of the culture. There has been a lot of change. Much of it has been for the better in the last year and a half in terms of the simplification that I referred to. In terms of the ERP specifically, you know, there were some challenges along the way, but ultimately we have more access to data now than we've ever had. With that, all that I said, the culture, the team, the systems, we wanna build off of that and be thoughtful in terms of how we implement, how we build off of it.

you know, when John gets a chance to speak, there's been a lot of focus since he came back to the company around fundamentals and execution. We're gonna build off of that and continue to add elements and information that allows us to be thoughtful in our decision-making. part of why I didn't rush in here, you know, making a lot of different changes, doing my listening, learning, engaging, is that so the organization can understand who I am, what my approach is, what my background is, how I think about it. They understand that I'm here to just win as a team. It's not about me, it's about all of us. It's about the we. with that attitude in place, we got a lot of great things to do.

The plan, the core pillars, and the strategic priorities that I've rolled out to the organization so far this year have ultimately been putting a mirror back to the company. They've told me what we wanna do, they're looking for these things that we're implementing, and we'll be thoughtful about how we do that and conscious of the risks that come with it.

Eric Wolfe
VP and Equity Research Analyst, Citi Research

Maybe, apologize, I'm losing my voice here a little bit, so bear with me. You talked about rebuilding, I think, the sort of data architecture of the company. Can you just describe what that means in sort of more detail and sort of what the opportunity would be like? What are you looking to accomplish from that? Because I think, you know, we hear these things, and we kind of wanna try to measure sort of tangible goals. What sort of tangible goals should we be looking toward over the next couple years when you say things like, "Oh, we're gonna rebuild the architecture"? What is that gonna do for the organization?

Charles Young
CEO, Sun Communities

Yeah, I think, you know, as we think about it, this is not an overnight change, right? I would say, hey, be patient as we think through building this infrastructure and this unified digital backbone, as I'm calling it. There are some things that we're doing this year, and I'll let John speak to that specifically, that we think are gonna have an impact specifically in our RV portfolio. The long-term approach is building off the foundation as I spoke about with our ERP. What systems are we connecting to it? The data that we have, where does that data go? Is it clean data?

Are we able to put some data scientists on top of it to look at it and make sure that we're running it through with the proper either finance look, asset management look, or operational look, marketing look to make sure that we are driving the right decision, being more effective and efficient with our decisions. Again, doesn't happen overnight. There are a couple things that we're doing this year in terms of booking channels, in terms of our customer journey, in terms of the centralizing some of our contact center opportunity and putting new data on top of that new systems on top of that data then gets put into a data lake and a database that ultimately gets to be mined and that we can look at it kind of cross-functionally to come up with the answers.

Not able today to put numbers on it. We'd look to try to do an investor presentation in the future. We can start to quantify some of that. In the meantime, you know, for the short term, there are some things that we're doing that I think are gonna help enhance our guidance and where we're trying to go this year in terms of how effective we are. You wanna jump in with any of this, John?

John McLaren
President, Sun Communities

Yeah, sure. Yeah, Eric, I think if you recall last year when we were here, we talked about, you know, just getting back to our execution, something that everybody was very familiar with in terms of how Sun operated. Obviously, the ERP implementation that happened in 2024, I think everybody probably know that, you know, after being on a different ERP system for 20 years, that's a heavy lift, okay, to go through that process. Really unlocking that, 2025 sort of represented the first step of that. I talked a lot about transparency and ranking, okay. All that came from data, okay.

Data and a look that we had that we hadn't had before, okay, and making it visible to our team, okay, so that we could focus on the things for 2025 that we felt like were most important and could move the needle the farthest, you know, not just on the expense side, but on the top-line side. When we walk into 2026, and we've talked about 2025 being really a setup for that. When you ask, like, what are some of the things you can do to make sure that you are successful in the movement forward that we have, some of the things that we're doing today, for example, Charles alluded to opening up to new booking channels that are specific to RV, okay?

This is something that happened later in 2025 that we haven't even realized the benefit from in 2026. We look to that to be something that's gonna be meaningful insofar as a step forward. Additionally, we talked about digital booking enhancement, and that's really leveraging the tech that we have in place with the ERP, the unified data lake that Charles is talking about, and applying the nimble booking window that we have and aligning that with the revenue management capabilities that are well built at Sun.

When you sort of bring those things, those two things together, and then on top of that, on the RV side specifically, and you think about just the guest journey, if you will, okay, which is how does a guest, a potential guest find us, okay. How is the process for them in their booking? What is the ease of that process? What is the experience on the ground? The things that I've shared with you before, and more importantly, how do you capitalize that in the form of a rebooking? How do you capitalize that in the form of an extension of an existing stay? How do you capitalize on that in terms of referral, okay, and bringing people to the community? The data is central to all of it, okay.

One of the things that we have now, just like I was saying last year about things I had then that I hadn't had before, what we have now with the data is, you know, marketing folks like to talk in terms of clicks, and likes, and impressions, and then those sorts of things, really what matters is the transaction, okay? Does it ultimately get from A to Z, okay, with the result that you wanted? We now can track all the different channels that we have and be able to align those in a more targeted approach rather than like the broad-based approach that we might have taken in the past in terms of the marketing spend.

We're more efficient with the spend that is delivering, you know, a better return on those dollars because we're being targeted in terms of our approach. That's just some of the examples.

Charles Young
CEO, Sun Communities

Yeah, short term, the revenue management optimization, just it's already a great system, but what more data can we add, especially on RV side? I'd also say over time as we build this, where are there efficiencies in the organization to be thoughtful based on, you know, what we're doing in terms of how we run the business, whether it's on the procurement side, utilities, and otherwise that can flow through to how we operate, and the efficiencies, and the experience that we're creating for our residents. This is an ongoing effort, and we're building a good foundation now, but each year we're trying to build on that because that's the long-term benefit of focusing on this side of the business.

Eric Wolfe
VP and Equity Research Analyst, Citi Research

Got it. Then on the annual RV side, you mentioned on the call that what you're doing is working, and you put out lower rates this year. I think you said that you were ahead in terms of acceptance of those renewals. Can you just talk about that? If possible, could you quantify it to say, you know, this is how far we are ahead of last year? Just trying to understand, you know, to what degree we might actually see occupancy build or some beneficial impact from being ahead of.

John McLaren
President, Sun Communities

I think the way that I'd frame that, Eric, is yes, like I said on the call, we focused our attention in much of 2025 on retention because it's obviously a lot simpler for us to have a customer or a guest stay at the property rather than having them leave and ultimately have to go through the bandwidth to refill that site with a new guest. We were focused on that, which is why we had a tempered approach to our 4% rent increase on the annual RV side. We're very open about that. I think it was the right approach, and it has led to being ahead of our renewal pace this time versus actually ever since we launched the process, we've been ahead.

What that really translates into is if you look sort of broader, you know, we had good success in 2025 in terms of our net leasing of annual sites, which adding another 600 coming off of three straight record years that we had. I think it's also led to, I think what we've shared with everybody has been that we would guide to a similar sort of 600-ish range in net conversions for 2026. All that, you know, makes me feel good in terms of where we sit today to achieving that. I will add that I think one of the things that has, you know, sort of emerged in this process and thought about retention has been optimization across RV, okay.

Which is to say, you know, if you look at certain individual communities and you really look at the business from the ground up, there's a good question to ask them, what sites should actually be converted versus not. Okay. We've sort of graduated to that point now where because of our success, because of the continued success, we can actually do that, okay, differently than we could before. You know, I've put out a number around 600. Could be plus or minus that, but it would be a result of optimization that might affect that outcome is what we believe.

Eric Wolfe
VP and Equity Research Analyst, Citi Research

On the transient side, it looks like you're calling for a little bit more stability this year. We've seen a number of sort of down years over the last couple of years. I guess what gives you the confidence that this year will be a little bit more stable? I think it's still down a little bit per your guidance, but I think that's sort of after conversions. Correct me if I'm wrong. Either way, it's calling for a more stable year. What gives you the confidence in that?

John McLaren
President, Sun Communities

I can start.

Charles Young
CEO, Sun Communities

You want to start.

John McLaren
President, Sun Communities

I think the main thing is just when you look out into our booking window and what we see, Eric, I mean, that's the straight answer in terms of what we see in the form of reservations going out into 2026. Obviously, you know, the meat of the year usually is in the second and third quarters, and that will become clearer into focus as we get closer to those quarters as well. You know, I will share that, you know, you sort of characterize that, you know, it's been challenging on the RV transient side the last couple of years. It's true, okay. 50%+ of that is a result of the great success that we had with the conversion program, okay. That's a big piece of that.

I also think that frankly, COVID, you know, had a pretty big effect as you saw us spike in terms of transient revenue during that two year period of time. If you really looked at that over a longer stretch of time, you would see a more steady growth curve, okay. You know, that would be something you would expect. This is why I feel like besides what we're seeing in our data at this point in time and sort of like stretching out that curve with COVID, why I feel like that and the fact that we were 9% down on transient revenue last year, we're guiding to down 1.5%

I mean, that's a clear signal in our guidance how we feel in terms of how things are stabilizing.

Charles Young
CEO, Sun Communities

Yeah, I'll just come over the top as, you know, I've had an opportunity to go visit many of our RV sites, more to see, again, just five months in. If you step back and you look at the in the medium to short term, what I've seen is many of the strategic changes that the team has made, whether it's strategic dispositions of some of those assets, whether it's the conversion from transient to annual, we've gotten to a place where it feels pretty balanced and pretty healthy. To John's point, it's more of an optimization effort going forward. As I look at it and have seen these assets, this is an unrivaled portfolio on the RV side. You know, this was if, you know, I'm gonna anticipate a question. What's been a surprise for me?

I'm surprised to the upside of the quality, and the energy that we have on many of these communities and the opportunity in front of us long term to really unlock the value that's here. Yes, there was kind of a steady growth and a little bit of a pop during COVID, and things have normalized, but I think the work that's been done is gonna set up this portfolio to have an opportunity to continue to have steady growth and ultimately, an opportunity with all that we're doing around asset management and data and the rest of it to kinda unlock it and create some value on that side of the business. I'm excited about what's ahead. A lot of work to be done, more that I need to do, but there's a real opportunity in my mind.

Nick Joseph
Global Head of Real Estate Research, Citi Research

Makes sense. Maybe, if we turn to the U.K., I think on the call you mentioned that you'd evaluate it, like all other capital allocation decisions. Is there an active market to sell it today? Are you seeing a lot of assets trade in the U.K.? You know, how about kind of from a portfolio perspective, what would you how would you characterize the acquisition market there?

Charles Young
CEO, Sun Communities

Let me go high level, then I'm gonna ask Aaron to weigh in on the market. You know, overall, I again, I've had a chance to spend time with that team, get over and make sure I understand the business. Great asset, great operating platform, best in class team. It's a challenging macro, but ultimately the best thing we can do is just execute and support the team. We've done some work with the ground leases that create operational flexibility and optionality, as we evaluate the broader market. You know, just so everybody hears from me, I'm always as capital allocator looking at all sides of our business. RV, as we just talked about, U.K. being no different. We're spending time making sure that we are understanding what the options are.

In the meantime, we're going to execute best we can. With that, to answer your question specifically on the market.

Aaron Weiss
EVP of Corporate Strategy and Business Development, Sun Communities

Yeah, good question. To speak about the U.K. generally, we do have the best team in the market. They've been operating incredibly well through a very difficult backdrop, so hugely supportive of what they've been doing, and again, continue to deliver results despite the backdrop that has been challenging. From a transactional perspective, not dissimilar from the U.S. market, things have been muted since we announced our acquisition in late 2021 and closed in 2022. There haven't been a lot of large scale institutional transactions broadly in this asset class in the U.K.. We've seen incremental transactional activity more on the single assets, more portfolio side. There is institutional investment in the space broadly among sort of the large global private equity firms, so we would expect they'll continue to look at the space.

In the last few years, there just hasn't been that level of transactional activity. We think with a more benign market backdrop, we have seen, as I said, some more of the single assets, more portfolio deals transact. We've been a seller of a few of those assets to that market, we can't point to sort of broader institutional transactions. Again, not dissimilar from the U.S., where it's been pretty muted over the last few years. Again, we're a public company, so we certainly hear from folks, and we'll engage in constructive dialogue alongside what Charles indicated vis-à-vis our bigger picture strategic capital allocation strategy.

Eric Wolfe
VP and Equity Research Analyst, Citi Research

I was gonna say, and when you... Sorry, go ahead.

Charles Young
CEO, Sun Communities

No, no. I'm trying to save your voice here.

Eric Wolfe
VP and Equity Research Analyst, Citi Research

I know. You know. It's gonna go one of these sessions. I was just gonna say, when you say that the ground leases, you know, enhancing your, you know, your flexibility, I mean, does that just effectively mean that there's just certain buyers out there that if you were to ever sell at some point just wouldn't consider owning it if they didn't have control of the ground lease? Like, what does it mean?

Aaron Weiss
EVP of Corporate Strategy and Business Development, Sun Communities

Good question regarding the ground leases. When we acquired the business, it came with in-place ground leases. They've been in our numbers since we acquired the business. We had a unique opportunity to acquire them. I think, frankly, as a real estate owner globally, you wanna own freehold underneath your real estate. We had a unique opportunity to do that. The team there was hugely supportive of it. There are some dynamics day-to-day in terms of having a landlord, information sharing, single asset sales. If you wanna sell single assets, you need to work through substitution rights. I think first and foremost, it was an attractive use of capital. We had the financial flexibility thanks to the Safe Harbor sale to effectuate that over the course of 2025.

Additionally, certainly having freehold investment in real estate could provide more flexibility from a bigger picture financing perspective, were we to finance something directly in the U.K. to the extent we wanted security or from a strategic perspective for ourselves or however the business plays out in the future. It was a pretty compelling opportunity set regardless of the larger strategic opportunities that may avail themselves. We're really happy to be a primarily freehold owner. Post those deals, 90%-95% of our NOI in the U.K. comes from assets we own freehold, very compelling from a strategic and financial flexibility perspective.

Eric Wolfe
VP and Equity Research Analyst, Citi Research

Remind me, do you have any U.K. debt?

Aaron Weiss
EVP of Corporate Strategy and Business Development, Sun Communities

We do not.

Charles Young
CEO, Sun Communities

No.

Aaron Weiss
EVP of Corporate Strategy and Business Development, Sun Communities

Okay.

We do not have U.K. debt. It's all at the corporate parent.

Charles Young
CEO, Sun Communities

Just on the operating side in the U.K., when do you lap the tougher expense comps on the minimum wage increase?

Aaron Weiss
EVP of Corporate Strategy and Business Development, Sun Communities

I mean, I can answer that. From the operating expense perspective, the national minimum wage, the U.K. operates on an April fiscal year. There was a raise in April 2025, which was incorporated. There is another one coming up in April 2026 for that fiscal year from April through the first quarter of 2027 that is incorporated into our OpEx guidance for 2026.

Charles Young
CEO, Sun Communities

Can you What was the 25 and 26?

Eric Wolfe
VP and Equity Research Analyst, Citi Research

What are the 2025 and 2026 raises?

Aaron Weiss
EVP of Corporate Strategy and Business Development, Sun Communities

They depend on where you sit from a National Minimum Wage. They're pretty public, but there's a increase for full-time employees. There's also raises based on ages, and what would primarily impact our U.K. business are the seasonal employees you'd see in the summer. It varies depending on the employee and type of FTE or part-time employee.

Eric Wolfe
VP and Equity Research Analyst, Citi Research

Looks like we're getting a couple questions here on the MH side. I'll try to ask them. I guess maybe just stepping back, you know, I get a lot of questions on your all-age versus age-restricted portfolio. Would you say the two of them operate any differently, from one another? I mean, is your all-age portfolio more exposed to, like, lower job growth and other things that are impacting the apartment market right now? Or would you say that the fundamentals are very similar? We had a question, from an investor sort of along the same lines, which is like, you know, your growth here has been great, but at what point, you know, is there gonna be increased regulation if you're growing, you know, at 5% every single year?

John McLaren
President, Sun Communities

Yeah. I think, let me answer the first part of your question. I think that what we typically see in an all-age community is gonna be. You know, the growth that we've had, and typically as far as, like, rate increases as one of the pieces to it, we have seen typically between 100 and 150 basis points ahead of inflation for a very, very long time. I think that, what it boils down to, Eric, is really the community itself, okay? Is it being cared for? Do we have the continual reinvestment? Do we have? Is the sort of equity, if you will, spread across everybody, okay? That's what makes it go because we've always described our business as a marathon versus a sprint.

When you think about it from an affordability standpoint, and we've shared this before, in tougher times, the way that we've described Sun overall is if this is a more. My hand's up here for anybody who's not watching. If this is a more robust economy and below that is a more challenging economy, Sun sits in the middle of that, and that band moves around us. We may very well lose some people at the margin that move in with parents or family or something else. What we've seen, at least over the course of my 24 years with Sun, has been in those tougher times, many more come in at the top of the funnel, okay. They're getting pushed into our asset class.

I think because of the long-term approach, the reinvestment and everything we do, this is why we're so good at capturing those residents that live in our communities. This is one of the reasons why you see the very high tenure, okay, that we have in our communities that we've had for years as well.

Charles Young
CEO, Sun Communities

Yeah. I'll just add in going back to... I'll give it to you in a second, Fernando. Just going back to the regulatory question, I just wanna highlight that, you know, as we think about that discussion, it's mostly around affordability and affordability for housing for Americans. From Sun's perspective, we think we're part of the solution in support of affordable housing relative to other housing alternatives. The other thing I'd keep in mind. To that point, we're making sure that we're keeping an eye on all regulations that are out there and making sure that people understand exactly what we do. One of the things to highlight is you talked about, you know, the rent growth number. That's just on our site rent. We have a unique model here relative to other housing classes where, you know, we ultimately...

The resident ultimately owns the home, and they're paying rent in our community on that individual site. It's a small part of their overall number and part of why we've always been thoughtful. If you go back over the 40 years that we've operated, it's been kind of a steady growth. There hasn't been a lot of up and down because there's a shared model of making sure that we are being thoughtful about what that number is. People stay with us for decades. They stay a long time. That turnover is low because there's this kind of shared perspective. I'm gonna turn it to Fernando, who can talk a little bit around the equity value creation that happens.

Fernando Castro-Caratini
EVP and CFO, Sun Communities

I think it's important to note our residents have created significant value in the ownership of their homes in our communities. Over the course of the last six or seven years, the home prices or the equity value has increased at a high single-digit CAGR for residents in our communities that own their homes. That's a significant and very compelling reason for that home being and them owning a home in a Sun Community versus a competitor.

Eric Wolfe
VP and Equity Research Analyst, Citi Research

Another question come in, just on the regulatory side and changes to the HUD Code and what that ultimately could mean for manufactured housing, broadly, and if there's greater flexibility in home design and configuration, potentially drive obsolescence for some of the older MH stock.

John McLaren
President, Sun Communities

It's a great question. It's come up a few times. I think the chassis piece is really interesting. I think the manufacturers stand to benefit from that, okay? I think from our standpoint, you know, we're watching it closely. We think that it's a net positive, Nick, okay, in terms of, like, home design. We'll just say home design and affordability, okay, at the same time, okay, potentially because of how a house can be built, how it can be set up. It will be interesting to see what it means 'cause we don't know yet in terms of transport and setup of the homes in the communities, whatever's required from a foundation perspective. As we shared before from the regulatory front, you know, sometimes there'll be talk or federal mandates that happen.

The real linkage needs to happen between that and what actually happens locally, okay? You know, our hope, this could be positive from that standpoint because Sun, for one, has worked very closely with the manufacturers in our space for many years to develop the types of homes that we have today, okay? We have literally designed some of those ourselves with some of the manufacturers. I think that the chassis piece maybe.

Charles Young
CEO, Sun Communities

Just helps that whole discussion at the local level because you can provide a product that is, we'll just say, more like what they're used to seeing from a residential perspective.

Eric Wolfe
VP and Equity Research Analyst, Citi Research

Maybe with the last four minutes here, talk about capital allocation. You know, you're sitting on, I think, around $550 million of cash. That's after some uses. Like, what would be ideal to be able to do with that? I think, you know, Let's just say your stock doesn't come back to the 125 range where you've typically been a buyer. You know, what are you gonna do with the cash? I guess in a, in a situation where you can't find good acquisitions or other opportunities, are you just gonna pay off your mortgage debt that's maturing in the middle of the year?

Charles Young
CEO, Sun Communities

Yeah. We talked about it a bit on the earnings call. We're in a really flexible and a lot of options in front of us given the cash that we have on our balance sheet, given our current debt levels. There's kind of three tools in the toolkit. You know, one, we've talked about it in the three pillars that I discussed, that we're gonna first invest in our communities, in a bit in our infrastructure to make sure that we're building an opportunity to get this kind of perpetual, long-term, durable growth for our shareholders. We're gonna be thoughtful on that spend, and there are opportunities in front of us, and we've spent some time looking at those. The data piece that we talked about will help us drive, like, where we put that.

That's some of the benefit long term that we're talking about. The other piece is we are looking. We showed that last year we bought almost a half a billion of core assets in our MH in annual RV communities. We bought 14 of these. We're gonna continue to look. The team historically has done an amazing job of being able to source these. We're continuing to look for creative growth opportunities in the markets that make sense, that are kind of tucked into our markets to create efficiencies. That's definitely a big part of our toolkit. As you mentioned, we'll be thoughtful around, you know, shareholder return, whether that's, you know, buying back shares at a compelling price that makes sense, and that's another tool that we use as we watch what's out there.

We're in this, what I call enviable position to be able to have some tools and some capital to be thoughtful about, and we will long term think about what we're trying to do on the debt side. I don't know if there's anything to add there, Fernando. These are all the things that we're paying attention to as our capital allocation or use of cash that we have on the balance sheet.

Nick Joseph
Global Head of Real Estate Research, Citi Research

Thanks. We do have a rapid fire in a minute. I just wanna quickly touch on how Sun is using or implementing AI, kind of where you're seeing the opportunity, where you're seeing the efficiencies, then how you're actually doing it. Is it buying? Is it building, partnering? You know, how you're thinking about that.

Charles Young
CEO, Sun Communities

Yeah. Again, within Sun, I'm still getting my head around kind of where we are. I think there's more of a buy and partner at this stage. Not as much of the build, although the tools, as you all know, are getting much more sophisticated, and all of that is moving very fast. You know, some of the basics that most companies have are in our systems, and we're going to use that, whether it's in the marketing side and other parts of the business, to make sure that we're pulling data out and being smart and being efficient with it. Longer term, as we talk about this data architecture, I think that's where you start to use this more and more. That's where there could be some build. At this point, it's more of a partner.

Make sure that we have the infrastructure in place and, you know, From there, we'll figure out, you know, what part do we buy on top of it, do ourselves, bring in data, folks or data scientists to get on top. It's gonna be a balance. Can't give you percentages. Right now it's about getting the data right and then utilizing the core opportunities that are out there that we can get off the shelf.

Nick Joseph
Global Head of Real Estate Research, Citi Research

Thanks. just on rapid fire, same store NOI growth for MH overall next year sector-wide in 2027.

Charles Young
CEO, Sun Communities

There's only two of us.

Nick Joseph
Global Head of Real Estate Research, Citi Research

Including the private companies.

Charles Young
CEO, Sun Communities

All right.

Nick Joseph
Global Head of Real Estate Research, Citi Research

Just sector overall.

Charles Young
CEO, Sun Communities

Yeah. For 2027, I'd say between four and five.

Nick Joseph
Global Head of Real Estate Research, Citi Research

Four and five.

Charles Young
CEO, Sun Communities

NOI growth.

Nick Joseph
Global Head of Real Estate Research, Citi Research

I guess this one, there is only the two of you, but will there be more, fewer, or the same number of public companies next year?

Charles Young
CEO, Sun Communities

Same.

Nick Joseph
Global Head of Real Estate Research, Citi Research

Terrific. Thank you very much.

Charles Young
CEO, Sun Communities

Thank you.

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