Farmland Partners Inc. (NYSE:FPI) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Paul Pittman: Well, we’re likely to continue to do both. The exact sweet spot, frankly, depends on interest rate outlook and stock price at the time. I think we’ve been running more like this most recent quarter, we put a lot more money to debt reduction than we did to stock buybacks. If you had to ask me to guess for the fourth quarter, it’d be a 50/50 split, something like that.

Rob Stevenson: And how much of that is determined also by the fact that some of these lines have a 50% max on the payment and wanting to get that done in calendar 2023 versus being doing something the first week of January of 2024.

Paul Pittman: Not — not a big — not a big impact. Although I’ll let James add to that.

James Gilligan: Yes. Yes, Rob, we’re generally paying our floaters off first, which are higher rate today. And should we find ourselves in a position with so much cash that we would want to make additional pay downs. There’s a lot that we can pay without any penalties. We have on our MetLife lines; the lowest amount we can pay in a year is about 20% and the highest is 50%. So that gives us quite a lot that we could choose to pay down should we find ourselves with a lot of cash.

Paul Pittman: And anything that’s at an interest reset date could be fully paid off without penalty. So we have a huge balance sheet flexibility should we suddenly find ourselves with substantial cash from asset sales.

Rob Stevenson: Okay. And James, while I have you, I missed your comment on the crop insurance and why the guidance went up about $400,000 from the prior. What was that in relation to?

James Gilligan: Yes. So some of that is kind of a mix between crop sales and crop insurance and generally just better visibility as we are in different products, as we are sort of into or through harvest, we have visibility as to what’s come off the trees and how that looks. And so we’ve just updated our guidance accordingly.

Rob Stevenson: Okay. And then last one for me, Luca, are there any known non-renewals in the 35% of the leases that you’re left to renew at this point?

Luca Fabbri: Not really. I mean, we tend, as always, to kind of work with our current stable of tenants, if certainly not, no renewals. I mean, we’re not expecting to end up with any farms not leased by the end of the year. That’s not what happens in this industry at all. Occasionally, we choose to kind of improve the quality of our tenant pool by cycling some tenants off and getting new ones, but no negative expectations along those lines at all.

Rob Stevenson: Okay. And you said that you expect that that 35% is going to be up similarly to the 65% in that sort of 18% to 20% range?

Luca Fabbri: Roughly, yes.

Rob Stevenson: Okay. Perfect. Thanks, guys. Appreciate the time this morning.

Luca Fabbri: Thanks, Rob.

Paul Pittman: Thanks, Rob.

Operator: [Operator Instructions]. There are no — oh, my apologies. We do have a question from the line of Tousley Hyde of Raymond James. Your line is open.

Tousley Hyde: Hey, guys, thanks for taking my question. I was just wondering if you could speak to the current environment or sentiment surrounding the renewable energy side of your business. With rates rising and companies kind of looking at areas that can cut costs, have you seen any pullback in demand from such a project?