CTO Realty Growth, Inc. (NYSE:CTO) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

John Albright: So ideally, we would ground lease it to one or two users. But as you know, we don’t like to spend a lot of development money and – but we’re already having some dialogue with tenants. And a lot of them want to purchase the land rather than doing a lease structure. So we’re working through that. But for modeling purposes, it takes a long time and so forth. I would say kind of end of fourth quarter next year would be kind of – we’d probably have something figured out there, for sure.

Rob Stevenson: Okay. That’s helpful. And then last one for me. John, how are you and the Board thinking about capital deployment and the sort of trade-off between making a $15 million first mortgage during the quarter and buying back stock at $15, $16? How are you sort of balancing that and thinking about that going forward in terms of capital uses?

John Albright: Yes. So I mean, obviously, we find the stock very – and the preferred very attractive here. So we certainly discuss that every quarter. But we are hopeful to find some deployment and some opportunities. And where we think that the pricing right now isn’t as favorable as you might expect, given the macroeconomic backdrop, and so we’re waiting to kind of find that good opportunity to reinvest in investments. But we’re being patient. So we’re – so at the same time, we’ll take advantage of depressed stock prices, but waiting for more of an investment opportunity.

Rob Stevenson: Okay. I guess, as a follow-up to that, Matt, are you guys getting any benefit from the preferred in terms of credit pricing? Or is it basically just being treated as debt?

Matt Partridge: It is being treated as equity from a leverage ratio perspective. But obviously, the fixed coupon payment gets picked up in our fixed charge coverage ratio. So it depends on which covenant we’re talking about within the facility agreement on how it gets treated.

Rob Stevenson: Okay. So there is some sort of trade-off by buying that back versus equity – versus the common equity, I should say?

Matt Partridge: That’s correct, from a leverage ratio perspective, yes.

Rob Stevenson: Okay. All right, guys, thanks. I appreciate the time. Have a great weekend.

Matt Partridge: Thanks, Rob.

John Albright: Thanks, you too.

Operator: One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Matthew Erdner with JonesTrading. Your line is open.

Matthew Erdner: Hey, guys. Good morning. And thanks for taking the question. What kind of opportunities are you seeing the most of right now? Is it land financing or just physical properties themselves? And I guess, what are you looking at the hardest at the moment?

John Albright: Yes. I mean, we’re not really seeing a lot of good opportunities right now. It’s a kind of a quiet market. People that want to sell assets don’t think that this is a great time to be selling an asset. And so we’re waiting for some of the sellers that need to sell an asset, whether they have debt maturities or they have a fund life issue or something like that. So the market is fairly quiet right now. We’re not looking to buy additional land. The 10 acres next to Collection was unique in expanding the campus and controlling the site. But on the financing side, we’re not really searching out financing opportunities. If they come to us, we’ll certainly consider them. And it would be more – if we do a financing deal, we’ll probably recycle out of some of our existing investments, and so just keep the size neutral.

But yes, we expect probably first quarter, there will be better opportunities out there on the investment side, and so we’re being patient.