W. P. Carey Inc. (NYSE:WPC) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Incremental to this, our guidance includes a normal course rent contingency of around 70 basis points of ABR. Other lease related income for the 2023 fourth quarter was $2.6 million bringing the full year total to $23.3 million slightly below our expectations as certain lease related negotiations were pushed into 2024. For the 2024 full year, we are currently this line item to total in the low to mid $20 million range with visibility into almost half of that based on negotiations currently in process. Our operating property portfolio currently comprises 89 self-storage properties, 5 hotels and 2 student housing properties, which are expected to generate between $85 million and $90 million of NOI in 2024 with approximately 80% coming from self-storage.

Our 2024 guidance assumes same-store NOI from our operating self-storage portfolio is relatively flat to the prior year. Asset management fees and reimbursements totaled $2.1 million for the fourth quarter, primarily reflecting a partial period as the external manager of NLOP. For 2024, we expect our administrative reimbursement from NLOP to total $4 million, which is fixed over time, while our asset management fees are expected to total between $5 million and $7 million, declining over the course of the year with asset sales. As a reminder, both of these items have no impact on our G&A expense. Non-operating income totaled $7.4 million for the fourth quarter, driven primarily by $4.6 million of interest income on cash and realized gains on currency hedges of $2.9 million.

For the full year, non-operating income totaled $21.4 million comprised of $14.5 million in realized gains from currency hedges and $6.9 million of interest income. Our 2024 guidance assumes non-operating income totaling between $32 million and $36 million, including interest income on cash totaling between $19 million and $23 million, which is expected to be higher early in the year and decline as we invest this cash. It also assumes that currency rates remain at or around their current levels, which would result in expected gains from currency hedges of approximately $10 million. Our 2024 guidance also includes a $3 million dividend from Lineage Logistics, which we received in January of this year and will flow through non-operating income in the first quarter.

Non-reimbursed property expenses for the fourth quarter were $13.3 million bringing the full year total to $44.5 million, which included a property tax accrual reversal approximately $6 million early in 2023. For 2024, we expect non-reimbursed property expenses to total between $41million and $45 million, reflecting a reduction in expenses associated with the office assets we have exited partly offset by an expected increase in carrying costs related to the vacancies, which I discussed earlier. G&A expense was $21.5 million for the fourth quarter, bringing the full year total to $96 million. For 2024, we expect G&A to fall between $100 million and $103 million, reflecting inflationary increases. G&A expense typically trends higher in the first quarter, given the timing of certain payroll-related items.

Tax expense on a cash or AFFO basis, which primarily reflects foreign taxes on our European assets totaled $11.2 million for the fourth quarter and $44.3 million for 2023. For 2024, we are anticipating these taxes total between $38 million and $42 million in our guidance. Turning now to our 2024 guidance. We expect to generate full year AFFO per share between $4.65 and $4.75, with the decline versus 2023, driven primarily by the full year impact of the NLOP spin-off, and the completion of the Office Sale program. Guidance assumes full year investment volume of between $1.5 billion and $2 billion and reflects the timing of investments and dispositions with volume expected to be more back-end weighted, while dispositions are more front-end weighted, driven primarily by the State of Andalusia office portfolio sale and the U-Haul purchase option.

Moving to our capital markets activity and balance sheet. We settled all outstanding equity forwards during the fourth quarter, issuing 4.7 million shares for net proceeds of $384 million shortly before the NLOP spin-off. In December, we completed the recast of our unsecured credit facility, pushing out the maturity on a significant portion of debt maturing over the next few years. We upsized our existing multicurrency revolver from $1.8 billion to $2 billion and pushed its term out four years to February of 2029. As part of the recast, we also refinanced our euro term loan and a pound sterling term loan, extending their maturities three years to February of 2028, with the option to extend for a further year subject to certain conditions. The extension and upsizing of our credit facility demonstrates the continued strength and flexibility of our balance sheet as well as the breadth of our valued banking relationships with 16 lenders participating.

It also enhances our liquidity, further supporting accretive external growth going forward. Turning now to the strength of our liquidity position. During the fourth quarter, the significant amount of capital came back to us, including the distribution we received as part of the spin-off of NLOP and from the settlement of all outstanding equity forwards. We ended 2023 with total liquidity of $2.2 billion, including $634 million of cash. We expect our liquidity position to further increase during the first quarter, driven primarily by proceeds from the office sale program and the U-Haul disposition. As a result, we will remain exceptionally well-positioned to both fund our acquisitions and manage our debt maturities in 2024, which, as Jason noted, gives us plenty of flexibility and allows us to be very opportunistic when we choose to access the capital markets.

At year-end, our leverage metrics remained well within our target ranges with debt to gross assets at 41.6%, which is at the low end of our target range of mid- to low 40s. Net debt-to-EBITDA was 5.6x relative to our target range of mid to high 5x, although we expect it to be in the low 5s during the first half of 2024 as disposition proceeds are redeployed into new investments before returning to our targeted range in the second half. Lastly, regarding our dividend. During the fourth quarter, we reset our dividend about 20% lower to $0.86 per share reflecting the impact of office exit strategy on AFFO and the lower targeted payout ratio, reducing our target payout ratio to a low to mid-70% range enables us to retain and accretively reinvest greater internally generated cash flow.

Going forward, the intention is to grow our dividend in line with our AFFO, which we anticipate will be our dividend growth compared to recent years. In closing, 2024 is a transitional year, primarily reflecting the execution of our office exit strategy and establishing a new baseline from which to grow our AFFO in forward. We believe we’re very well positioned to generate FFO growth over both the near term and long-term, supported by an improving investment environment, a strong balance sheet and an exceptional liquidity position as well as the embedded rent growth within our portfolio of high-quality, primarily warehouse and industrial net lease assets. And with that, I hand the call back to the operator for questions.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first questions come from the line of Brad Heffern with RBC.

Brad Heffern: On the guide, it seems like the offset to the investment volumes moving higher with these two credit issues and the warehouse lease expiration. I guess, first of all, is that correct? And is that the full extent of the offset? And can you confirm that those issues weren’t consulted in the prior guide?

Jason Fox: Toni, do you want to take that?

Toni Sanzone: That is correct. I got that. Brad, that is correct. The impact that I highlighted on the call was about $0.07 that was not contemplated in our preliminary guidance. And in terms of the offset, I think there were a handful of items. We went out with a fairly wide range three months ago. Things have come into focus since then. I’d say a handful of things aggregating to the delta there is probably better line of sight on releasing assumptions and rent recoveries. And then just generally a better outlook on interest-based rates since early November. So that in combination with the Lineage dividend, which we have not anticipated in our November guidance, really is largely offsetting that, keeping us at about the $4.77 midpoint.

Brad Heffern: And then I think your recent commentary on the watch list had been relatively unconcerned. I guess did these two credit issues largely come as a recent surprise? And is there anything else that we need to be keeping an eye on in addition to those?

Brooks Gordon: This is Brooks. So it’s really both. So one of them was on the watch list, and the situation with Hellweg that Toni described hadn’t been, that was really a very late in the year development. They now are on our watch list. And as we mentioned, we’re proactively addressing that situation, but the other tenant was on the watch list.

Brad Heffern: But nothing else notable in terms of movement in the watch list?

Brooks Gordon: No. The big story is really adding Hellweg outside of that, the watch list actually came down somewhat. So in total, that’s — it’s around 4.25%. So that’s certainly up, but the real addition there is Hellweg outside of that, the net reduction in ABR on watch list.

Operator: Our next questions come from the line of John Kim with BMO Capital Markets.

John Kim: So on the Hellweg rent reset down about $4 million. Is there an EBITDA rent coverage metric that you could look at that shows that this new rent is sustainable? The reason why I asked is you had also runs abatement on top of that. So it seems like a further rent cut may be necessary.

Brooks Gordon: Yes. So as I mentioned, we’re working in conjunction with their other landlords as well to really put them on a better trajectory. So a very sharp slowdown in our business towards the end of last year. The rent abatement, combined with the ongoing rent reductions across their real estate portfolio, we think puts them in a much better position. We will keep them on our watch list because we need to see real execution there. From a coverage basis, they’re coming off a very slow period, but we would expect this to be kind of in the 1.25 coverage range before they execute on what we think is a robust turnaround plan. But again, we’re going to watch them very closely, but we do think the proactive actions that we and other stakeholders are taking puts them in a much better place to operate through this.

John Kim: And how do you define your watch list? Is it — if the tenant starts paying their rents late? Or do you have any other visibility or metrics that you look at that provide some clarity on who may be at issue paying rent going forward?

Brooks Gordon: Yes. The watch list is really meant to be a tool for us to monitor tenants that we think could be at risk of default in a 12- to 18 months’ time frame. And so that includes tenants that are operating in bankruptcy, as well as tenants where we see a potential risk of default in the future. I’ll note that, that methodology has been consistent for a very long period of time to — And over that time frame, some of the tenants on the watch list actually do end up defaulting. It certainly does happen, but it’s really a management tool for us to track and monitor that. So it’s meant to be forward looking, and that’s really kind of the time frame we have in mind.