Brixmor Property Group Inc. (NYSE:BRX) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Brixmor Property Group Inc. (NYSE:BRX) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript February 13, 2024

Brixmor Property Group Inc.  isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Greetings, and welcome to the Brixmor Property Group Inc., Fourth 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce, Stacy Slater, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Capital Markets. Thank you. You may begin.

Stacy Slater: Thank you, operator, and thank you all for joining Brixmor’s fourth quarter conference call. With me on the call today are Jim Taylor, Chief Executive Officer; and Brian Finnegan, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer; and Steve Gallagher, Senior Vice President, Chief Accounting Officer and Interim Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. Mark Horgan, Executive Vice President and Chief Investment Officer will also be available for Q&A. Before we begin, let me remind everyone that some of our comments today may contain forward-looking statements that are based on certain assumptions and are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties, as described in our SEC filings, and actual future results may differ materially.

We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Also, we will refer today to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Further information regarding our use of these measures and the reconciliations of these measures through our GAAP results are available in the earnings release and supplemental disclosure on the Investor Relations portion of our website. Given the number of participants on the call, we kindly ask that you limit your questions to one or two per person. If you have additional questions regarding the quarter, please re-queue. At this time, it’s my pleasure to introduce, Jim Taylor.

Jim Taylor: Thanks, Stacy, and good morning, everyone. We are very pleased to report yet another strong quarter and year reflecting not only the strength of our value-added execution, but the depth of tenant demand to be in our transform portfolio. That transformation is evident in every observable stat from our record occupancy to record rate to sector leading new and renewal spreads to outperformance in growth. During the quarter as Brian will discuss, we signed 800,000 feet of new leases and at an average cash spread of 37%, bringing our total new ABR signed for the year to a record 65 million. We also achieved record retention of 86% and renewal spreads of 13.3% for the year, once again demonstrating the mark-to-market opportunity within our portfolio.

Our current sign but not commenced pool of leases represents another 64 million of ABR and other record that will commence over the next several quarters as Steve will detail in a moment. For the year, we drove same-store NOI growth of 4% despite headwinds from Bed Bath, Tuesday Morning and others of 120 basis points. FFO per share increased from $1.95 to $2.04 or 4.1%, when excluding the gain on debt extinguishment. With our all weather strategy for growth, we once again demonstrated an ability to deliver consistent growth and an always dynamic retail industry. We have proven given our attractive rent basis that tenant disruption is an opportunity to create value. Speaking of value creation, during the year, we stabilized 157 million of reinvestment projects at an average incremental return of 9%.

Our pipeline now stands at 429 million at an average incremental return also of 9%, importantly, in projects that are pre-leased, and nearly half of which we expect to deliver this year, that’s the power of our value-added program. It’s lower risk, shorter duration, and attractive incremental returns. We’ve now impacted 40% of the portfolio, also creating tremendous value not only on delivery, but follow-on value down the road, as we benefit from higher rates and occupancy and also highly accretive future phases. I’m pleased to report thanks to Bill Brown and the California team’s effort, we moved the Davis collection in Northern California into the active pipeline in the fourth quarter, located literally on the front step of one of the nation’s fastest growing universities, with 41,000 students.

We will completely transform this Trader Joe’s anchored center with the addition of Nordstrom Rack, PetSmart, Alta, Urban Places, The Melt, Mendocino Farms and more to serve this vibrant collegiate community. We continue to be opportunistic, but discipline from a capital recycling perspective. Harvesting 190 million in proceeds through the sale of lower non growth assets. This activity provides us ample dry powder, in ’24 to deploy capital into external growth opportunities that fit with our value-add strategy. We also maintain a strong flexible balance sheet in ’23, ending the year with our debt to EBITDA 6x and over 1.2 billion upon drawn capacity. We also received an upgrade to BBB from S&P reflecting the transformation of our portfolio and improvements made to our balance sheet.

Before turning the call over, I wanted to provide an update on our CFO search process. We are well underway and narrowing down our list of candidates and are pleased with both the quality and the interest to join our team. We expect to announce our decision by the end of March or early April. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Brian.

Brian Finnegan: Thanks, Jim, and good morning, everyone. As Jim highlighted in his remarks, our team ended 2023 with another outstanding quarter on the leasing front, as demand for space to be in our centers remains incredibly robust. The work our team has done in transforming our portfolio is enabling us to capitalize on that demand, leading to record occupancy rate and retention, while upgrading the underlying merchandising mix and credit profile of our tenancy. This quarter we executed on 357 new and renewal leases totaling 1.7 million square feet at a combined blended cash spread of 19.6% as our team continues to capture the upside embedded in our below market leases included within this activity were new leases with core open air retailers such as Ross Dress for Less, Sierra Trading Post, Planet Fitness and Five Below in addition to first the portfolio leases with Connor Steak & Seafood, [HoneyGrow] [ph], Tatte Bakery and a new 60,000 square foot Tony’s Fresh Market location in suburban Chicago.

This activity led to record occupancy of 94.7%, a record 80 basis point sequential gain and a 90 basis points year-over-year gain despite a drag of 120 basis points from space we recaptured during the year due to tenant disruption. The strength of the bricks more portfolio in the broader leasing environment is not only evident in the speed in which our team is addressing the space, but the rents we have been able to achieve. Bankruptcy is proving to be an opportunity across our portfolio, as our team delivered rent growth of 60% on the recaptured space we executed leases on in 2023. And while we don’t expect the bulk of this income to come online until late 2024, later, we are encouraged by the quality of the retailers we have been able to quickly re merchandise these spaces with.

In addition, even with the record overall and small shop occupancy results during the year, we still have more room to run with a strong pipeline of reinvestment projects projected to open over the next several quarters, including a new Whole Foods opening in suburban Philadelphia, a new Sprouts Farmers Market outside of Los Angeles, and a new Trader Joe’s in the New York metro area. These projects are just a small sample of the dramatic reinvestment upgrades our team is making across the bricks and mortar portfolio. As we look forward this year, we remain encouraged by the overall strength of the retail environment and the demand from great operators to be in our centers. We’re grateful for the efforts of the entire Brixmor team to position our portfolio to take advantage of this environment and to continue to find the opportunity and disruption to make our centers the centers of the communities we serve.

With that, I’ll hand the call over Steve for a more detailed review of our financial results. Steve?

Steve Gallagher: Thanks, Brian. I’m pleased to report on the strong 2023 as we continue to deliver on our value added business plan and set the stage for long-term growth. NAREIT FFO was $0.51 per share in the fourth quarter driven by same property NOI growth of 3.1%. Base rent growth contributed 280 basis points of same property NOI growth this quarter, overcoming a top line revenue drag of approximately 150 basis points related to recent bankruptcies. For the year same property NOI growth was 4%, which resulted in a NAREIT FFO per share of $2.04 which represented a 4.1% increase from the prior year when adjusting for the gain on debt extinguishment. As Brian highlighted, our operational metrics continued to reflect robust, broad base leasing demand as well as the momentum generated by our successful portfolio transformation initiatives.

The spread between leased and build occupancy ended the period at 410 basis points and assigned but not yet commenced pool total 64 million which includes 56 million of net new rent. The size of the pool is up approximately 9 million since last year end. Despite commencing approximately 58 million of annualized base rent this year. In addition, the blended annualized rate rent per square foot undersigned but not yet commenced pool is currently $21.16 approximately 25% above our portfolio average, we expect approximately 44 million or 60% of ABR and assignment documented pool to commence ratably in 2024. These tailwinds set us up for healthy growth in 2024. We have introduced guidance for same property NOI growth of 2.5% to 3.5%, comprised of a 350 to 400 basis point contribution from base rent.

Our same property NOI range reflects capacity to absorb tenant’s disruption and includes approximately 100 basis points of drag at the midpoint related to potential 2024 National attendant disruption. As mentioned on our third quarter call, we expect revenues deemed uncollectible to return to our historical run rate of 75 to 110 basis points of total revenue as we move beyond the benefits of prior period collections. As Brian highlighted our ability to do incredibly recaptured spaces coupled with our significant time but not commence pool sets up the portfolio to deliver strong brand growth and 24 and beyond. We have also introduced guidance for 2024 NAREIT FFO at a range of $2.0 to $2.10 per share. Our FFO guidance reflects a strong same property on a wide group and the portfolio despite an interest expense headwind of $0.03 due to higher interest rates on the bonds we issued in January, and the replacement swaps for the 300 million term loan.

We expect the proceeds from our 400 million, 5.5% bonds will repay 300 million of our 3.65% bonds when they mature in June. In the interim, we are holding excess cash and stable high yielding accounts. As of December 31, we had total liquidity of 1.2 billion and debt to EBIT of six times which leaves us well positioned to execute on our business plan and without a turn to call over to the operator for Q&A.

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Q&A Session

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Juan Sanabria with BMO Capital Markets.

Juan Sanabria: I was just hoping you could talk a little bit about the bad debt assumptions in the forecast and any timing around that big lots? One of your tenants, I know it’s a little bit smaller, but in the news, just curious if there’s anything you could share with regards to timing of specific bankruptcies and how that may evolve throughout the year and how we should think about that?

Jim Taylor: Yes. As Steve talked about in his remarks, we really think about that tenant credit exposure in 2 places as we’ve consistently done. One is at the top line, which at the midpoint of the range, we’ve assumed about 100 basis points of potential tenant disruption. And then, the second is in our allowance for doubtful accounts, where we assume 75 to 110 basis points of potential credit loss.

Brian Finnegan: Juan, this is Brian. As it relates to just tenant disruption as a whole, we continue to monitor our watch list. I think our team has demonstrated the ability to quickly capitalize on any tenant disruption. And as Steve and Jim touched on, we feel as though we’re accounted for a range of outcomes in our forecast this year from tenant disruption. We don’t typically like to get into tenant names. I would say Big Lots has been a good partner. I will comment on the real estate though. The real estate is, the rents on those spaces are less than $8. We’ve been signing anchors at a record last year of over 15. We’re opening a Sprouts location in a former Big Lots outside of Los Angeles. We leased the Big Lots space in the fourth quarter in Naples at close to double the rent. So we feel as though we’re well positioned for some tenant disruption this year, which is in our forecast, and well positioned to backfill it accretively at much higher rents.

Juan Sanabria: Great. Thank you. And then just on the occupancy, how should we think about that over the course of the year? Is there an assumed dip for seasonality in the first quarter? Not sure if you can provide kind of a year-end range of occupancy and sorry —

Brian Finnegan: No, no, no. Sorry, Juan. Yes, you’re correct in that. Typically, you see a dip both in build and lease occupancy due to seasonal move outs. Even though normal course move outs remained at historic lows, off historic lows in ’21 and ’22, when we do have those move-outs, they typically happen at the beginning of the year and then it starts to ramp up in terms of build occupancy at year-end. We expect a typical trajectory this year. You may see some fluctuations with that due to tenant disruption as we saw last year as well. But the interesting thing, if you look at last year, despite the drag that we took back from bankruptcy, we were able to grow build occupancy year-over-year. So normal course trajectory, you’re spot on. You’ll see a small dip at the beginning of the year and that growing towards year-end.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Todd Thomas with KeyBanc.

Todd Thomas: Just first question, I guess, just following up a little bit there on Big Lots. Perhaps, Brian, are there any lease expirations during the year in that portfolio? And if so, any expected changes to that exposure just in your property level budgeting throughout the course of the year?

Brian Finnegan: Sure. I did mention the one location that we proactively took back. It was an expiration coming up in January. I think we have 1 or 2 more in the first quarter. If you look at overall, that Big Lots exposure, it’s down 20% from where we were pre-pandemic. And again, those rents are below $8. We feel really good about our ability to backfill that space accretively should we get a handful of boxes back. But we only had a handful of normal course expirations, which have already happened in the first quarter.

Todd Thomas: Okay. How would you compare and contrast that real estate relative to Bed Bath? You mentioned the rents. They were, I think, meaningfully lower than the Bed Bath rents, but the average box size is larger. Can you just help us understand, the real estate may be relative to Bed Bath & Beyond, and implications for leasing that space to the extent that you do recapture some of it?

Brian Finnegan: Sure. So I just think about the overall box supply environment, right? I mean we’re at the lowest box vacancy that we’ve ever had in the portfolio. I think a data point, again, for the supply dynamic is how aggressive retailers were in bidding on that Bed Bath & Beyond space last year. As you look at our Big Lots portfolio, in addition to the spaces I mentioned, in Naples in Los Angeles, we’ve got boxes in Dallas and the Philadelphia area as well. So I’d say, generally, we feel pretty good about the real estate, feel pretty good about the overall demand from box tenants in our core retailers that have been looking to expand, whether that’s in the off-price category, whether that’s in specialty grocery, home. So the depth of demand from a box standpoint remains very strong, and again, we feel pretty good about the upside in those spaces.

Todd Thomas: Okay. And just a clarification, just around the reserve itself. Is there any portion of the credit reserve that amounts to known events today, whether lease rejections or otherwise or should we think about that reserve as a cushion against anything that may happen just going forward in the remaining 10 months of the year?

Steve Gallagher: It’s Steve. Yes, the 100 basis points I referenced is really thinking about 2024 disruption. Any disruption associated with prior bankruptcies is already sort of reflected in the results.

Todd Thomas: Okay. So it’s just a cushion against anything unknown at this time going forward?

Steve Gallagher: Correct.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Alexander Goldfarb with Piper Sandler.