Acadia Realty Trust (NYSE:AKR) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Operator: Our next question comes from Todd Thomas with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Todd Thomas: Ken, first question, I just wanted to go back to your comments about acquisitions. Sounds like your cost of capitals not where you needed to be to make core investments pencil today. You have dry powder in Fund V, but you also mentioned exploring additional sleeves of capital. Can you just elaborate on that comment a bit, whether you’re talking about the funds platform or if you’re contemplating sort of joint ventures or some other strategic capital that would allow for investments in the core?

Ken Bernstein: Sure. And I’m glad you picked up on that, Todd, because the world has been evolving. If you think about that, five years ago when we launched Fund V, best practice standard operating procedure, whether you were larger platforms or certainly smaller focused vertically integrated fund platforms, was to have one vehicle. And I say over the last several years, you have seen that evolution, whether it’s the large folks or the other fund managers, where investors have a higher level of tolerance and expectation for multiple vehicles at the same time. Now our first responsibility is to put Fund V dollars to work profitably. And since our unlevered yield, and we’ve bragged about this on prior calls on Fund V is quite good because we were buying out of favor retail at very attractive yields, clipping a very attractive coupon.

Our responsibility is to continue that and get the balance of those dollars to work. So no one should think we are distracted from that. But as we think about the best way for Acadia Realty Trust to both serve the needs of outside investors, but most importantly create value for our shareholders. Every time we get to this juncture between one fund and the next, we say, has anything changed? And this time it has. And so maybe there will be multiple vehicles, multiple sleeves so that we don’t have a one size fits all. And those are conversations that we are undergoing. Some of this is driven by the fact that we acknowledge the fund business creates lumpiness. It can create complexity because we have to fully consolidate all our ownership. Sometimes it causes people on the shareholder investor side to get confused about our exposures.

One of our goals will be to simplify that but also continue to be able to be entrepreneurial and profitable because Todd, as you started this conversation, I think it is fair to assume that wholly owned rates, cost of capital may be higher than alternative structures over time. And we want to make sure, and we always have wanted to make sure we are not simply beholden to one source of capital to public markets if and when we see great buying opportunities. Good news, right now, there have not been great buying opportunities within our core competencies for the last one or two quarters. It’s going to change. And then we will make sure we have the powder available. We do right now in Fund V, and then we’ll continue to work that in terms of what that might look going forward and we’ll keep it posted.

Todd Thomas: Okay. I guess, similarly, along those lines a little bit you’ve been working with DLC and Fund V, seems like a 90:10, sort of JV format, within Fund V. Is that relationship just asset by asset or is there something more programmatic in Fund V with DLC? And can you talk about that relationship a little bit there, and sort of the terms who’s sourcing deals, asset management responsibilities and so forth?

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