Kite Realty Group Trust (NYSE:KRG) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 8 of 15

Alexander Goldfarb: And then just following up on that, so Heath, as you think about the risks to this year and next, is it more from unforeseen future retail closings or is it more just getting the backfill tenants open? So I’m trying to get at, are you more concerned about tenants closing? Or are you more concerned about the downtime that’s needed between replacing the previous tenant with the new better tenant?

Heath Fear: Alex, obviously, not sure. I mean in terms of the downtime, I will say that we have an amazing construction team and getting tenants open is what they do best. We were ahead of schedule, ahead of budget last year. So to the extent there €“ we sign a lease up, I’m very confident in our abilities to hit our budgeted time in order to get that open. In terms of additional fallout, listen, I think we’re in a in what I’d say, is a more normal cycle. We’ve got a few players, Bed Bath & Beyond and Party City. And so I’m not looking at 2023 or 2024 and saying to myself, wow, we’re in for this incredible deluge of additional bankruptcies. It doesn’t €“ it’s not how it feels at all. It’s more back into the normal pace. So I don’t think that I’m biased either way and being worried more about downtime or worried about fallout.

John Kite: Yes. I mean, Alex, from my perspective, again, it’s just too early to handicap how the year is going to play out. I think the most important thing is that we built in a very flexible plan. We assumed that we would have more fallout than we did last year. And our €“ everything in our model, our balance sheet, everything is very capable of handling whatever might occur. But it certainly doesn’t feel as though at this point in time, there’s going to be, as Heath said, some additional deluge of tenants. It’s just hard to underwrite early on. So I think €“ look, let’s get through this first, we need to be through the €“ into the first half of the year to have a better feel for all that but we’re clearly positioned to handle it very, very thoroughly.

And I think, look, downtime is always your biggest issue on the anchor side. Downtime on the shop side is much more manageable. So it’s really €“ hopefully, we’ve identified the anchors that are at risk. There’s a couple of others out there, I’m sure. But right now, it feels €“ doesn’t feel tremendously different other than these isolated cases.

Alexander Goldfarb: Thanks, John.

John Kite: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Anthony Powell from Barclays. Your question, please.

Anthony Powell: Hi, good afternoon. It’s a question on your base rent assumptions for 2023. If I look at your NOI growth of 2% to 3% and some of the headwinds from bad debt, it seems like you’re at 3% to 4% growth for 2023. Is that fair?

Heath Fear: Yes. I’ll give you the components, Anthony, for the same store at 2.5% at the midpoint, you’re looking at contributions from minimum rent growth of 300 basis points, recoveries of 100 basis points, partially offset by the Bed Bath & Beyond, Party City reserve of 100 basis points, overage rent of 30 basis points and bad debt of 20 basis points. So we add that all together, and that’s your components of your 2.5%.

Page 8 of 15