Kimco Realty Corporation (NYSE:KIM) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Floris van Dijkum: Morning guys. Thanks for taking my question. I had a question on your small shop. Obviously, the €“ very nice pickup in occupancy there. Maybe if you can talk about the spread between occupied and leased and also maybe where your peak small shop occupancy was previously and where do you think you can get it to this cycle?

Conor Flynn: Sure. Floris, Happy to take that. So just to reconcile for us, on the lease economic overall, we’re at 260 basis points that was compressed down from 280. So we’re down 20 basis points there, which shows two things. One, we’re able to get these tenants open and operating, which was a huge achievement considering some of the activity in the environment right now. So we had a lot of openings in Q4. Outside of that, too, with all the gains in occupancy that you saw as well as in Q4, gaining 40 basis points overall and bringing our small shops up to 90%. As it relates to small shops, specifically, we are at 340 basis point lease economic spread just around $23 million or so baked into that. So there is a huge opportunity there to actually bring those tenants online.

Obviously, you see that growth in the coming quarters, which we’re excited about. As we move forward. So, we feel pretty good about that. And then finally €“ yeah and then our high watermark on small shops was at 91.1%. That was in Q4, I believe it’s 2-19. So our goal is always to meet and exceed our high watermark levels and we’ll continue to do our best to achieve that.

Operator: Our next question comes from Craig Mailman from Citi. Please go ahead.

Craig Mailman : Just a question on the leasing environment. I know everyone is pretty focused on the sustainability of it. As we look at the economic weakness coming relative to previous cycles, it’s a little bit more telegraphed, maybe and maybe expected to be more garden variety. So I am just kind of curious, as you think about tenant behavior, maybe between anchored and small shop, right, and the timing of where we are today versus maybe the coming is at the end of the year? And how these tenants look at when they need to lease stores for store openings. I mean, is there any thoughts around whether just the timing of a potential recession, relative to when people need to open stores that the leasing demand could continue at a level maybe above expectations just because the space needs for €˜23 were already leased previously and if the recession is not so deep.

Key parts you are going to look out for ’24 and ’25 openings. I’m just kind of curious your thoughts there and whether there’s any big difference between anchor and small shop behavior?

Conor Flynn: Yeah, a great set of questions. All rolled into one. So I think you first start with the fundamentals, right? And the fundamentals here on €“ there is no new development supply on the horizon in the coming years. The COVID inventory that we’ve talked about in past quarters and continue to talk about now is really the inventory that’s available. Some of that inventory may increase as a result of any bankruptcies, Party City, Bed Bath being the two obvious ones right now as potential to get some space back. But that still is representing a very limited amount of inventory to actually backfill. When you look at us, we’re at 98% on the anchor is 90% on the small shops. For high-quality retail, it’s really, really hard to find.

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