Independence Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:IRT) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Independence Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:IRT) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript April 25, 2024

Independence Realty Trust, Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: My name is Dee and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Independence Realty Trust First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions. I would now like to turn the call over to Lauren Torres. Please go ahead.

Lauren Torres: Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us to review Independence Realty Trust first quarter 2024 financial results. On the call with me today are Scott Schaeffer, Chief Executive Officer; Mike Daley, EVP of Operations and People; Jim Sebra, Chief Financial Officer; and Janice Richards, SVP of Operations. We also have a special guest joining us today, Lily Schaeffer, Scott’s grandchild, as is bring Your Child to Workday. Welcome, Lily. Today’s call is being webcast on our website at irtliving.com. There will be a replay of the call available via webcast on our Investor Relations website and telephonically beginning at approximately 12 PM Eastern Time today. Before I turn the call over to Scott, I’d like to remind everyone that there may be forward-looking statements made on this call.

These forward-looking statements reflect IRT’s current views with respect to future events and financial performance. Actual results could differ substantially and materially from what IRT has projected. Such statements are made in good faith pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Please refer to IRT’s press release, supplemental information, and filings with the SEC for factors that could affect the accuracy of our expectations or cause our future results to differ materially from those expectations. Participants may discuss non-GAAP financial measures during this call. A copy of IRT’s earnings press release and supplemental information containing financial information, other statistical information, and a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to the most direct comparable GAAP financial measure is attached to IRT’s current report on the Form 8-K available at IRT’s website under Investor Relations.

IRT’s other SEC filings are also available through this link. IRT does not undertake to update forward-looking statements on this call or with respect to matters described herein, except as may be required by law. With that, it’s my pleasure to turn the call over to Scott Schaeffer.

Scott Schaeffer : Thank you, Lauren, and thank you all for joining us this morning. During the first quarter, we made notable progress on our initiative to grow occupancy and increase resident retention, execute our portfolio optimization and de-leveraging strategy and deliver on our plan value add improvements. We are pleased with the results of our efforts in the first quarter as we delivered an increase of 120 basis points in average occupancy to 94.4%, lease renewal at 65.4%, and resident retention at 54.3% all above first quarter of 2023, and we continue to see sequential improvements in April with same store occupancy today at 95.4% with lease renewal at 66.7% and total resident retention at 55.7%. Year to date, our lead volume is up approximately 17.4% year over year due to our enhanced marketing initiatives.

This lead volume, along with the improvement in occupancy puts us in a position of strength to drive growth in the coming months and keeps us on track to deliver our full year operating guidance. Last October, with the view that interest rates would stay higher for longer, we announced our portfolio optimization and de-leveraging strategy in which we identify 10 non-core properties for sale. I’m pleased to report we have closed on the sale of nine of these properties, exited four single asset markets and paid off $489 million of debt, thereby extending our maturity profile and eliminating all of our exposure to floating rate debt. The 10th and final property targeted for sale under this program is currently under contract with a hard deposit, and we expect it to close on April 30.

This puzzles on track to achieve our six times net debt to EBITDA target in the fourth quarter of this year. To that end, we received an investment grade credit rating from Fitch ratings in early March. This is the significant milestone for IRT and reflects our efforts to fundamentally reset our leverage profiles through profitable growth with lower leverage. With this rating, we can further improve our cost of capital and gain access to additional capital sources to implement our business plan and invest in our portfolio. Additionally, as part of our regular capital recycling initiative, we have identified an asset in Birmingham, Alabama as held for sale and may use the proceeds to purchase one of our new construction joint venture assets in Nashville.

Jim will discuss this in more detail during his remarks, but the Birmingham property is now under contract and is expected to close in the third quarter of 2024. With respect to value-add renovations, our program is well received by both current and prospective residents as we seek to improve the quality and value of their rental experience. We now continue to see significant premiums as compared to unrenovated comparable units, despite current market dynamics that are impacting new lease rates. With that, we completed renovations on 320 units during the first quarter and achieve the weighted average return on investment of 18% when compared to unrenovated comps. Throughout the rest of 2024, we expect to complete renovations at approximately 2,100 additional units.

Please note, this number could vary depending on resident retention. In addition, we currently own over 12,000 additional units that are appropriate for renovation over the long term. We believe these efforts to address strong demand and attract value driven residents seeking an effective alternative to newer Class A communities at a lower price point. We continue to believe in the strength of our portfolio and our team’s ability to manage through difficult operating environment in 2024. While the Sunbelt region continues to see elevated levels of new supply, IRTs predominantly B Class portfolio is somewhat insulated from the resolving effects, and we are confident in our ability to navigate these headwinds. Before I wrap up my remarks, I also wanted to highlight that we recently published our 2023 sustainability report, which details the progress we have made on our sustainability strategy over the last year, and the initiatives we have in place to continue building a sustainable and inclusive future for our business and all of our stakeholders.

We see continuing opportunities to further enhance our sustainability, practice and look forward to continuing these initiatives which will support our long-term success. In conclusion, our results demonstrate the strength and resiliency of our portfolio and the ability of our team during a challenging economic climate. I’m confident these results will drive further growth throughout 2024, and we look forward to continuing to build on these successes going forward, and I’ll now turn the call over to Mike.

Mike Daley : Thanks, Scott. The priority of IRT heading into this year was to increase retention and reduce unit vacancies. We accomplished this in the first quarter, delivering a resident retention rate of 54.3%, which represented a 610 basis point improvement versus a year ago and a 330 basis point increase on a sequential basis. Similarly, our same store average occupancy rate increased 120 basis points year over year to 94.4% for the quarter. For April to date, same store average occupancy is 95%. Improving another 60 basis points on a sequential basis as compared to the first quarter, which reflects our ongoing efforts to drive occupancy. At our non-value add communities, average occupancy was 94.6% in the first quarter and is 95.2% for April to date.

Our same store portfolio average rental rate increased 1.5% in Q1, contributing to 3.4% year over year property revenue growth for the quarter. As mentioned on last quarter’s call, we are reducing the use of concessions. In the first quarter, 15% of leases signed had a concession, and the average concession was two weeks. On April to date, concessions are even lower at 10% of lease assigned, again with an average concession of two weeks, while new lease spreads remain negative in the first quarter due to lower seasonal demand and supply pressure, we are seeing a pick-up in April improving 190 basis points on a sequential basis due to more favorable demand of the reduced use of concessions. The benefit of higher occupancy is helping to mitigate the pressure on rents from the impact of new supply I mentioned earlier.

Also, renting continues to be more attractive than owning for many people with persistently high interest rates and inflation continuing to make home ownership less affordable. In our top 10 markets, owning a home is approximately 104% more expensive than renting when factoring in all the costs of home ownership, including a mortgage payment, property taxes, and insurance. Lease over lease effective rent growth for renewals in the first quarter was 4.4%, and for April today is 3%. We’ve also signed 86% of our expected May and June renewals with an effective rental rate increase of 3.5%. As mentioned on our prior calls, we continue to utilize technology to increase our operational efficiency and performance. One example of this is enhanced ID screening, which was fully implemented across the portfolio earlier this year.

We have seen a meaningful positive improvement in our ability to identify potential fraud. This technology, in addition to the enhanced income verification technology currently being rolled out, will not only improve business results, but also deliver a better applicant experience and help drive efficiencies for our teams on site. These technologies are key drivers to improve our bad debt this year from about 2.1% last year to our interim goal of 1.5% by year end 2024. Before handing it to Jim, I would like to thank our team for driving these results in progress on our key initiatives. We’ve made notable advancements over the past year despite the industry pressure we’ve described. The improvements we’ve made are systemic and sustainable, and we expect to continue driving strong results and high efficiency for 2024 and into the future.

I will now turn the call over to Jim.

Jim Sebra : Thanks, Mike, and good morning, everyone. Beginning with our first quarter performance update, net income available to common shareholders was $17.6 million up from $8.6 million in the first quarter of 2023, primarily due to gains on the sale of real estate during this quarter. Core FFO was $61.5 million and Core FFFO per share was $0.27 per share. IRT same store NOI growth in the first quarter was 2.4%, driven by revenue growth of 3.4%. This growth was led by a 1.5% increase in average monthly rental rates to $1,551 per month and 120 basis point increase in average occupancy to 94.4%, both as compared to Q1 of 2023. On the operating expense side, IRT same store operating expenses increased 5% during this quarter.

This increase was primarily driven by higher property assurance expenses due to the notable increase last year, as well as higher advertising and personnel expenses, as we increased our efforts to drive occupancy. Contract service expenses was flat in the quarter while repairs and maintenance expenses decreased 11% due to timing of repair and maintenance projects and a continual focus on managing expenses. Regarding property management expenses and G&A, our Q1 results were in line with the guidance we previously provided. Turning to the balance sheet as of March 31st of the liquidity position was $412 million, an increase of approximately $124 million from year end 2023, we had approximately $21 million of unrestricted cash and 391 million of available capacity through our unsecured credit facility.

As noted earlier, we’re pleased to have received our investment grade credit rating from Fitch, assigning IRT a long-term issuer default rating of Triple D flat with a stable outlook. This is yet another example of our strong underlying fundamentals, and as Scott mentioned, opens up additional sources of capital for IRT as we seek to operate, grow, and be a leading apartment company in the United States. For Q1 2024, our leverage was 6.7 times on a net debt adjusted EBITDA basis. This is down from 7.3 times in Q1 of last year. Clearly, we are beginning to see the impact of our portfolio optimization and de-leveraging strategy. On trailing 12 month basis, our leverage is 6.5 times and we are still on target to be closer to six times net debt adjusted EBITDA in Q4 of this year.

We still have only about 7% of our pro forma debt maturing through year end 2025, with only $20 million of maturities in 2024. We also have adequate hedges in place at an effectively converted our floating rate debt to fixed rate debt, such that our debt as of March 31st is a hundred percent fixed and or hedged. Before I discuss our 2024 guidance, I’d like to provide an update on our portfolio optimization and de-leveraging strategy. During the first quarter, we sold five properties that were included in our portfolio optimization plan for a combined sales price of $296.1 million, and we recognized a net gain of $25.6 million. In total and as of the end of the first quarter, we sold nine of the 10 properties, which were part of our plan for a gross sales price of $496.8 million.

The proceeds from these sales were used to repay 488.9 million of debt, including $218 million paid back on our credit facility to date from this plan. As part of our initial plan, we have one remaining asset to sell in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which we expect to close next week. The sales price for that asset is $28.5 million, which when aggregated with the other nine sales achieves our targeted gross sales proceeds of approximately $525 million. As mentioned by Scott in connection with our capital recycling program, we have also identified a legacy steadfast asset in Birmingham, Alabama, as held for sale and recognized a loss on impairment of $15.1 million. This property is now under contract at an economic cap rate of 5.2%. The sale expected to close during Q3 2024, and the proceeds may be used to acquire one of our properties developed by our joint venture partner in Nashville, Tennessee.

This capital recycling transaction will reduce our exposure in Birmingham while adding to our Nashville portfolio, and allows us to realize the benefits of our joint venture and preferred equity investment strategy. With respect to our full year 2024 outlook, we are reaffirming our FFO and core FFO per share guidance that we provided on our year end conference call in February, but we are updating our EPS guidance range given the planned sale, the Birmingham community and the associated impairment loss we recorded in Q1 2024. Our revised EPS range is $0.34 to $0.38 per share. Relatedly, we also updated our same store portfolio to be 108 properties down from 109 properties as we updated our transaction volume guidance. The midpoint of our 2024 core flow per share guidance remains at $1.14 per share.

As mentioned last quarter, when thinking about our core fulfil per share guidance for this year, the bridge from our $1.15 per share starting point at the year-end 2023 would include $0.04 of accretion from additional NOI growth in 2024, offset by dilution of $0.03 from our portfolio optimization strategy and $0.02 from increased expenses, bringing us to a guided midpoint of $1.14 per share for 2024. While our same store portfolio has changed, there is no impact or operating guidance as we are reiterating our previous outlook for same store revenue and operating expenses. Our guidance range for same store revenue growth in 2024 remains at 3% to 4.5%. And on the expense side, our guidance range for full year 2024 total operating expense growth continues to be between 5.4% and 6.4%.

Controllable operating expenses are expected to be up 5.4% at the midpoint with non-controllable operating expenses for real estate taxes and insurance to be up 6.6% at the midpoint. As a result for 2024, we continue to expect net property NOI growth will be between 1% and 4% or 2.5% at the midpoint. Moving to our full year guidance is acquisition volume, which reflects our potential plan to acquire a property in Nashville that was developed by our joint venture partner and where we exercised our right of first offer. We are also increasing our disposition volume guidance to reflect the additional asset health for sale in Birmingham. Scott, that’s it. Back to you.

Scott Schaeffer : Thanks, Jim. Our performance in the first quarter gives us a solid foundation to drive further growth of our business in 2024, which includes supporting increased occupancy, which in turn will give us the ability to drive rent growth in the coming quarters, and allows us to remain confident in delivering our full year guidance and completing our portfolio optimization and de-leveraging strategy by selling the 10th and final property, fundamentally resetting our leverage profile and reducing our exposure to non-core markets. As we focus on these initiatives throughout the organization, we also maintain our commitment to delivering shareholder value and returning capital to our shareholders. We thank you for joining us today and look forward to seeing many of you at BMO’s Annual Real Estate Conference in May and may reach re week conference in June. Operator, you can now open the call for questions.

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Q&A Session

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Austin Wurschmidt from KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Austin Wurschmidt : Mike, you highlighted in your prepared remarks that you’ve signed, I believe 85% of the renewals for May and June at 3.5% increase. What’s the retention related to that 85% figure and what’s sort of the thinking on the remaining 15% as it relates to what you think you can achieve on the renewal rate growth? Just wondering how that changes the 3.5% figure.

Mike Daley: Retention 55% and we are continuing to focus very consistently on retention. In terms of our renewal rent growth. We do have, as I mentioned, some pickup in April in terms of our momentum on retention. And I expect our based on the renewals that are going out now, we’ve got our first batch of renewals for July have gone out at about 3.5%. So I do feel good about the strength of those renewals.

Austin Wurschmidt: Based on then the month to date for April, what you achieved in May and June, I mean, it feels like you think you can achieve that 55% retention target with renewals holding around the three to 3.5% range. Do you think that this gets offset by softer than expected new lease rate growth? Or could blended rate growth exceed the 2.1 that you assumed in your initial same store revenue growth guidance?

Scott Schaeffer: I don’t think we would want to say that the blended rent growth is going to exceed the guidance. I think the guidance is solid. The balance that we have taken between the two really is the way that we approached it was a balance between our retention focus, and the renewal rates for retained renewed leases as opposed to the new leases. Overall, our focus on retention is just that our focus on occupancy is just that. And I think that we’re comfortable with the guidance that is out there now.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Eric Wolfe from Citi.

Nick Joseph: It’s actually Nick Joseph here with Eric. Just want to dive in on some of the capital allocation, the additional asset sale. How are you thinking about additional asset sales from here? Additional, just trying to understand kind of the framework of what would make you want to transact. I don’t know if it’s either further de-leveraging or kind of non-core markets use of proceeds, kind of how you’re thinking about additional asset sales beyond what’s announced thus far.

Scott Schaeffer: Nothing planned at this point, Nick. The additional asset sale in Birmingham was part of our recycling strategy. We’re looking at our markets in the portfolio, long term and where does it make sense for us to be growing and or contracting? And we do have now two assets in our joint venture program in Nashville that are completed and our purchase options are in play. We decided that we would sell the asset in Birmingham. We are happy with the price at a 5.2 cap rate and reallocate that money if we can reach an agreeable price on the national asset. And when I say that agreeable price, it’s because the way the program is set up is that we exercise our right and then we get an appraiser, the developer gets an appraiser, those two appraisers pick a third appraiser, and then it’s the average of those three.

We then will decide we’re not committed if whether or not we want to buy it. And if we don’t the developer can’t sell it to anyone else for less than what that number was, what that appraised number was, and we have — and if he does or wants to, then we have a last look. This is all part of our strategy of focusing the portfolio where we want it to be long term. And frankly, we would rather be in Nashville than Birmingham.

Nick Joseph: And just from that portfolio strategy perspective, which other markets would you look to gain exposure to it, it doesn’t sound like in the near term, but as you look over the next few years, either from a job growth or population growth expectation, where could we expect you to kind of rotate in and out of?

Scott Schaeffer: I’m still a believer in the Sunbelt long term. I think that’s where you will see above average population and job growth. And we’re coming through a bit of a rough patch here because of all the new supply, but that’s coming to an end. And I believe you’ll see in continued above average growth in the Sunbelt markets. That’s where our focus will be. And we have a couple of markets where we have only one or two assets in the Sunbelt and we would look to expand there.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Anthony Powell from Barclays.

Anthony Powell : I guess a question in terms of your Midwest versus Sunbelt, I guess performance in the quarter, I guess how much higher were Midwest, I guess, lease spreads on the new side, both in the quarter and April, kind of given the lower supply growth there.

Janice Richards : This is Janice. Overall, we’ve seen probably relatively a 2% spread between the Midwest and the Sunbelt area. We continue to see sustainable opportunity in the Sunbelt now that we’ve stabilized occupancy is at 95.4. We will continue to maintain, but ultimately, it’s all about that balance approach. We’ll be rationing the levers of new lease and renewal to ensure that we’re able to maintain that occupancy through the rest of the year.

Jim Sebra : Anthony, this is Jim. On the NOI growth kind of between the Sunbelt and the Midwest. The Midwest, the outperformed at roughly 4.5% NOI growth in Q1 with the Sunbelt at roughly 2%.

Anthony Powell: Maybe on value add, I mean, there’s a pretty good results for lease spreads there. How are cost trending and the value-add program and what do you think about maybe adding more or less as you go forward this year next to the program?

Scott Schaeffer: Yes. I mean, we’ve given guidance that we were kind of targeting roughly 2,500 because retention has a little bit, been a little stronger there so far. That kind of numbers about 2,400. It’ll continue to kind of moderate, again, depending on what the ultimate retention is. We love the value-add program. We think it continues to provide great long-term value to IRT shareholders and we’ll continue to add there as appropriate, as we kind of talked about in our investor decks, we have 12,000 plus or minus additional units that are right for value add. That will continue to give us many years of runway.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of John Kim from BMO capital markets.