Jim Taylor: I think it’s interesting because if you think about the timing of Bed Bath and others, we had much higher visibility on that during the year, and we had a similar amount of cushion, if you will, in the top line assumption going into that year. As we look at 2024, we believe, we’re adequately provisioned to handle a wide variety of outcomes and continue to deliver what we think is pretty compelling growth, 2.5% to 3.5%. So that kind of gives you a little bit of perspective and puts us in a position, I think, to continue to outperform.
Jeff Spector: And then the second question is on the 60% of ABR from, as you know to commence ratably in ’24. Can you talk a little bit more about the store opening process today, are you still seeing delays, are there ways to improve that process, like you’re meeting with any new vendors or anything to help with the store opening process? Thank you.
Brian Finnegan: Yes, it’s a great question. I think one of the things that’s come out from a best practice standpoint the last few years, and we’ve talked about it, is tenants’ flexibility in utilizing existing conditions. Whether there were supply chain delays a few years ago, tenants really had to hit that store opening pipeline. So whether that was keeping the bathrooms in place, not making dramatic changes to the facade, utilizing existing HVAC. And we’ve seen that, and in terms of what we’ve been doing, our operating teams have been partnering with their counterparts with national retailers seeing how we can get ahead of plans moving forward quickly after tenants approve things in their committee, and then ultimately seeing how they can utilize existing conditions.
And you could definitely see that, Jeff, in the deals that were purchased at the auctions last year, how quickly those stores open. So as we’re in discussions with tenants, we really have a great understanding of our existing conditions. We can talk to them about that. We can negotiate that upfront and get ahead of those. So that’s really helping to accelerate time frames across the portfolio. And then from a lease negotiation standpoint as well, we’ve got conforming leases with all these tenants our legal team does a great job in terms of establishing relationships on the legal side with their partners at retailers and we call it owning the relationship. Our national account team isn’t just connecting with their business partner. We’re connecting on the legal side.
We’re connecting on the operating side. We’re connecting on the management side from a go-forward perspective as well. So all these things are really paying off. And also the environment too in terms of tenants wanting to get stores open quickly, allowing them to take more of those existing conditions. So it’s really all those things combined.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Dori Kesten with Wells Fargo.
Dori Kesten: I know you mentioned a March, April time frame for the CFO announcement. But specifically, what’s needed in the CFO in 2024 Brixmor versus the 2016 Brixmor?
Jim Taylor: We need somebody who is a good strategic partner, somebody who has some experience across the capital markets and potentially in the seat. We also need somebody who’s a good cultural fit. And as I mentioned in my opening remarks, we’re very encouraged by both the breadth and depth of demand and interest we’ve had in the role and I think we’re going to have a great candidate.
Dori Kesten: Perfect. And your retention rate was around 86%, I think up slightly from last year. Would you expect this to continue to move up over time and what would you view as a normalized level of retention for your portfolio over the medium term?
Brian Finnegan: This is Brian. Again, we were encouraged by the retention rate trends last year. We continue to be that, hit a record for us, as Jim mentioned. You would expect that to continue to trend higher. Tenant with the improvements that we’ve made across the portfolio with the anchors that we’ve brought in, tenants want to stay, great tenants want to stay, and they’re staying at higher rents. It’s not going to prevent us though from being opportunistic to take space back. If we see the ability to upgrade our portfolio and we want to take space back from tenants, we’re not just doing it from an occupancy perspective, but I think you can expect those trends to go higher. You may see some fluctuation in a given quarter but everything we’ve done around the portfolio as well as what you’re seeing in the macro environment would lend us to expect those trends to continue to grow.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Floris Van Dijkum with Compass Point.
Floris van Dijkum: So actually, two questions, I guess. Number one, the size of your SNO pipeline, again, it’s one of the highest in the space. It’s impressive. The critique we sometimes hear is that your SNO pipeline is always large. And is there leaking that happens when you fill stuff up or maybe if you can touch a little bit upon the outlook for that pipeline and can it continue in this scale going forward?
Jim Taylor: Well, I think the important thing to think about is where that build occupancy is going, which is also moving up. So we’re maintaining that great spread between build and leased through the great marginal activity that we’re leasing. So the strength of that pipeline demonstrates itself in terms of how we drive outperformance in growth, how we deliver more revenue per quarter successively. And it really gives pretty darn good visibility on how we’re going to grow, not only through ’24, but ’25 and beyond.
