Jeff Edison: Yes. They’re under control or contract or towards closing. And some of them are firm. So, I’d say, we have a strong degree of belief in them closing. So, Todd, you gave me a great opportunity to advertise for our investor day, we are going to go through a lot of this stuff in a lot of detail in December, and we hope that everybody on the call can be there for that. And we will give you, I think, the types of clarity that you’re looking for. To just give you a little bit of color, the projects have — that we are looking at, they fit that number one or two grocer in the market concept that we have, they have vacancy. And they also have, in our mind, below market rents in the existing base where we think we can grow those.
So, I think, those will be the two biggest opportunities. There are some development opportunities in these assets that we will take advantage of. And there’s some adjacency opportunities where we may be able to buy some additional land to expand them as well. But they fit, they’re very much fairway in terms of having all the pieces of growth that we traditionally have in our portfolio. Only they’re a little bit — there’s more of it because we completed that on a lot of the centers that we have. So I think there’s more upside through that. And we will definitely go through some — the case studies on these assets in December at the investor meeting.
Todd Thomas: Is there any appetite for ground up development today aside from the outparcel program? It seems like there’s a lot of demand from smaller format grocer, specialty and discount. Does development pencil at all, and is there any appetite for some smaller scale developments?
Jeff Edison: Yes. I would say, it’s very anecdotal. There are — the answer is no. But there are examples where there is some happening, but it’s such a small piece that it’s not real. And it’s just — it is really hard. I mean, we are buying these projects at $260 a foot, less than that. So if you — to do new development, I mean, to get anything in the $300 a foot range in new development is really, really hard. I mean, it’s much more likely to be in the mid-4s terms of — so the answer is it doesn’t pencil in the vast majority of the cases. There are exceptions, but in terms of any real impact, we don’t see a window to ground up development. And as you know, we’ve done that throughout our history a lot of different times.
But we are — I would say that that opportunity is very slim and it is a tremendous amount of work for what is probably a marginal return from our perspective at this point, and no return in a lot of the things that we are seeing. So, as you can tell, we are not really pro ground up development at this point, thinking that it creates an opportunity for us, other than outlot stuff where we really are doing a triple net lease kind of business and that that continues to be very profitable for us.
Todd Thomas: Okay. And John, just last question, what was the $3 million non-cash charge related to the investment in the third-party company. What was that related to?
John Caulfield: Sure. So, in the quarter, we recorded a non-cash impairment on an investment that we made several years ago. There was a neighbor that was seeking a high capital investment to open in several of our shopping centers. And as part of the deal, we negotiated for an investment interest in the company with those funds to be invested in our centers. Unfortunately, that operation was not successful in our centers. And as such, we wrote off our interest in the company this quarter. This is the first and only time we have invested in a neighbor. So we don’t have other instances of this. I would note that that’s where we do talk to our core FFO guidance, which we did affirm and tighten that range, which we use the metric that best highlights our ongoing recurring business.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] We will move next to Floris van Dijkum at Compass Point Research and Trading.
Floris van Dijkum: Hey. Thanks. I will also wish Devin much success in his new venture. And hopefully, you will not lose his advice if he is going to join the Board. He is well-respected throughout the industry. So congrats, and congrats to the new guys. Question for you guys. I mean, obviously, issuing equity, I think, makes a lot of sense. If you issue it at 35, you could issue it even today at the current share price, it would appear. That is something that nobody else in the shopping center sector has to be able to tap the equity market. So, I would encourage you to look at that to fund those acquisitions going forward as well. My question is on the growth. Obviously, the underlying growth was down a little bit. I know there were some one-off events, higher bad debt obviously being a big part of that.
Maybe if you can give a comment a little bit on the underlying growth expectations. Clearly, it seems like the fourth quarter could also be slower than what has occurred so far this year. Should people be concerned about having — you having reached peak growth and growth slowing down from where we are today?
Jeff Edison: Floris, thank you. And yes, we’re not going to let Devin go. He’ll still be around helping us as he has for the last 10 years. So I don’t think that’s going to be anything — any obviously major transition for us. But on the — John, maybe you can help on the growth side, but what — I want to make sure we don’t miss it. We’re still in an unbelievably strong operating environment. I mean, and there are no like cracks that are saying, this is about to happen or that — I mean, it will — I assume it will happen at some point when we get — when we end up in a recession. But we’re not seeing any of that right now. I mean, if you look at our retention rates, you look at our retention spreads, I mean those are really, really strong numbers.
And I think we’ll continue to be able to drive really good internal growth through that. And less of it will — more of it will come through spread than from occupancy increases. But it’s still in a really good spot. And as you can see from our guidance, I mean we do believe that there’s also a really good external growth possibility for us or opportunity there. And we’re taking advantage of that while being careful to make sure we manage our balance sheet to where we’re sort of match-funding that opportunity. And as John pointed out, I mean, these are accretive, not only initially accretive to us, they have really good growth potential for us. So we’re very optimistic about what this — our external growth is going to be able to help us drive.
And if you want to — John, I don’t know if you want to go through the pieces of that and how we’re seeing that. Would that be helpful, Floris?
Floris van Dijkum: Sure.
