David Simon: Well, I’ll take the last first. So I would say higher interest rates/inflation clearly is affecting a good portion of the consumer out there. So their affordability for — and we’re seeing this most on the consumer on what I’d call the kind of the more — the brands that are focused on the more moderate income consumer. So there’s no question that that’s having some impact. But the good news is you’ve got employment and you’ve got wage growth that is counter balancing that, but they’re definitely being more cautious. So that’s not necessarily affecting a higher income consumer to the extent that you might otherwise think, but it’s clearly affecting the lower or more moderate income consumer that they’re being more cautious.
And from our standpoint, from a retail point of view, demand, like I said earlier, we haven’t seen it affecting retailers too much in terms of their growth plans. But we obviously monitor that every day. So from our standpoint, our cost of capital is up. So any investment we make, as I mentioned earlier, is in the — is measured against return we would get from buying our stock back to return that we would get from redevelopment or development. And given that, that’s why we haven’t been active on the acquisition front. And I don’t expect that to really change. In addition, we’re always looking at monetizing our assets, whether it’s real estate or otherwise, and to the extent that we can make the math work and we create liquidity through asset sales, the math is very compelling for us to do that to buy our stock back.
And so you’ll see more of that trend continue.
Greg McGinniss: Great. Thank you.
David Simon: Thank you.
Operator: Our next question is from Mike Mueller with JPMorgan. Please proceed.
Mike Mueller: Yeah. Hi, just a quick one here. I know this is a bit of a hypothetical, but do you think you would have bought stock back if you didn’t issue the shares to Taubman?
David Simon: I think we would buy, I’m sorry, I think we’re looking — it’s a good question, a fair question, and let me say this, the way I’m thinking about it. So to the extent that we have additional liquidity events or in the case of Taubman, dealing with the dilution of issuing stock at this price, there’s no question we’re going to buy our stock back. To the extent that we don’t, I don’t have an answer for you yet on whether we would have done it absent the TRG issuance or enhanced liquidity from asset sales. But like I said, our development pipeline, redevelopment pipeline is very much, very much measured up against the stock buyback. And every asset I’ve got, I don’t have to own anything at this point. I’m happy to sell assets at the right price to buy our stock back. And I think you’ll see more of that from us over time. And that could be real estate and/or other stuff.
Mike Mueller: Got it. Okay. And real quick, and just in case I missed this, was there any change to the OPI guidance that’s embedded in your current FFO outlook?
David Simon: Yes, we’ve lowered it. We’ve lowered it. Other than the — you understand the $0.05 because we own less of SPARC. We have lowered it for the fourth quarter by roughly guys — for the fourth quarter it would be about $0.20.
Brian McDade: Yeah,
David Simon: Roughly $0.20 in the fourth quarter. Lower contribution — if you look in total for the year, and our share of that is roughly — if you take out the $0.05, we’ve lowered it about $0.15 cents.
Mike Mueller: Got it. Okay, thank you.
David Simon: Thank you.
Operator: Our next question is from Craig Mailman with Citigroup. Please proceed.
Nick Joseph: Thanks. It’s actually Nick Joseph here with Craig. David, you’ve talked a lot on the share buybacks and it sounds like in your answer to the last question, we’re open to asset sales and other monetization opportunities. What are you seeing in the transaction market today in terms of those asset sales? Where are cap rates? What’s the buyer pool like? Are you seeing an opportunity to try to crystallize some of that disconnect between the stock price and where you’d hope to sell an asset?
