Alexander Goldfarb: It’s Alex Goldfarb on for Mike [indiscernible]. So just — I’ll do the one question thing. I’ll help Stacy out. Jim or Brian, can you just talk about what you’ve been able to do since as you guys are beginning leasing levels? Basically, there’s a view that, hey, there’s a lot of great stuff going on in retail, but it’s not really showing up in the bottom line. But when we look at your leasing, you’re pulling back on renewals, you’re pulling back on use restrictions, co-tenancy. So some of those things won’t be realized until the end of leases, but some are immediate where you can affect change today. So can you just talk, Brian about some of the NOI that you’ve been able to add last year, this year, because you’ve been able to gain more leverage with the tenants in terms of what they used to command in lease leverage versus you guys versus now, you’re able to pull those terms back? Just want to be able to quantify an actual NOI benefit to Brixmor.
Brian Finnegan: Alex, I think I’d start with where Jim did in his opening remarks, that you can see it in every observable metric in terms of our rent growth, our retention. And then in terms of the intrinsic lease terms that you’re mentioning, we have been able to push rent bumps higher. We’re getting to 3% to close to 4% in some parts of the country with small shop tenants broadly across the board, we’re over 2% when you have growth rates in the portfolio of low to mid 1s. So we’re improving there. You look at our margins, you’re seeing an immediate impact there, as our team has been able to lift CAM caps to be able to get paid for the investments that we’re making across the portfolio. And then the other big thing that our team is laser-focused on is flexibility.
You look at the redevelopments that we’ve been able to bring forward, many of those need consents. Many of those consents, we freed up during the pandemic, but we’re also freeing up in renewal discussions today. You look at the great work our team has done in the outparcel segment. We’ve been freeing up a lot more outparcels across the portfolio as well. So you’re seeing this. You are seeing it come through in the reinvestment pipeline. You’re seeing it come through in our operating results, but you’re also seeing it come through in those intrinsic lease terms, which we’re making a ton of improvement on.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Samir Khanal with Evercore.
Samir Khanal: Talk about kind of what you’re seeing in terms of acquisition and opportunities. I mean you were net sellers last year. How should we think about sort of that strategy in ’24? Thanks.
James Taylor: You bet. So as always, we remain very disciplined, and we capitalized on liquidity that we found for smaller assets during the past year, raising about $190 million of proceeds at a pretty attractive valuation, which also puts us in a position to be more acquisitive as we look at the months and quarters ahead. But again, expect us to be disciplined. Mark?
Mark Horgan: Yes. Look, as we look at the transactions market for ’24, I mean, the first thing I’d say is that we continue to have very compelling opportunities to allocate capital at very high incremental yield into our existing assets. But as Jim mentioned, we do expect to be a net acquirer of assets as we try to use that liquidity that we raised over the last year or so, and we’re definitely starting to see a building pipeline in markets that were been putting capital to work like Texas, in Florida and other parts in the Southeast. And I do think, as we’ve seen the market move here, we’ll be rewarded with our discipline here by finding assets that have slightly higher going-in yields than we would have seen, say, a year ago.
The other thing I’d say is, as you think about our disposition program, we’re always very opportunistic when we look to sell assets. For example, in January, we just closed an asset in Detroit at a mid-6 cap. And we continue to mine adjacent land like we did back in ’22 in College Park for land where at very favorable zoning to achieve very low cost of capital to drive the business forward. In fact, working on a large parcel currently in Southern California for that exact strategy.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Greg McGinniss with Scotiabank.
Greg McGinniss: So congrats on the new highs in shop occupancy. Just curious where you’re expecting to continue pushing those as leasing has remained strong? We continue to get new records on occupancy each quarter. But obviously, as you fill up space, there’s less space to fill. So how should we think about where that number to go? And how does that balance against the kind of 100 basis points of top line that you’re talking about this year in terms of that risk?
Jim Taylor: Well, one of the things that we’ve really enjoyed, as a result of our value-added plan, is a continued improvement in our small shop tenancy from a credit perspective, traffic and overall vibrancy. And as we think about how these assets move as we reinvest in them, we get substantial follow-on benefit in terms of both occupancy and rate and the small shops. So we’ve talked about it for some time and have anticipated another couple of hundred basis points of run in terms of where small shop occupancy can go.
Greg McGinniss: Okay. And just a follow-up there. We’ve heard about some of the backfills for the larger tenants that might be filling the Bed Bath. But could you talk about some of the smaller in-line tenants or tenant categories where you’ve been having success?
