Postal Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:PSTL) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Postal Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:PSTL) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript May 8, 2024

Postal 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: Ladies and gentlemen, greetings and welcome to the Postal Realty Trust First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the prepared remarks. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Jordan Cooperstein, Vice President of FPNA Capital Markets. Please go ahead, sir.

Jordan Cooperstein: Thank you and good morning everyone. Welcome to Postal Realty Trust first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. On the call with me today we have Andrew Spodek, Chief Executive Officer; Jeremy Garber, President; Robert Klein, Chief Financial Officer; and Matt Brandwein, Chief Accounting Officer. Please note the company may use forward-looking statements on this conference call, which are statements that are not historical facts and are considered forward looking. These forward-looking statements are covered by the Safe Harbor provisions for forward-looking statements contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements and will be affected by a variety of risks and factors that are beyond the company’s control, including but not limited to, those contained in the company’s latest 10-K and its other Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

The company does not assume and specifically disclaims any obligations to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Additionally, on this conference call, the company may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures, such as funds from operations, adjusted funds from operations, adjusted EBITDA, and net debt. You can find a tabular reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most currently comparable GAAP measures in the company’s earnings release and supplemental materials. With that, I will now turn the call over to Andrew Spodek, Chief Executive Officer of Postal Realty Trust.

Andrew Spodek : Good morning and thank you for joining us. I’m pleased that our success in 2023 has continued into the current year. Our first quarter acquisition pace and weighted average cap rate were slightly ahead of the same period last year. We added 29 properties for $19 million at a weighted average cap rate of 7.8%, and our year to date activity has us on track to achieve our full year 2024 acquisitions guidance of $80 million at or above a 7.5% weighted average cap rate. While our transaction market is not immune to the current volatility and interest rates, I believe the Postal real estate sellers are less focused on movements in the 10 year treasury as they are in more heavily brokered sectors. I’m encouraged by our active pipeline sourced from existing relationships and many new prospects, some of which we have tracked for many years.

Postal Realty has demonstrated time and again that we remain disciplined in managing our balance sheet to ensure we are well positioned to pursue attractive opportunities as they arise. We raised almost $14 million of equity capital from a combination of common stock and operating partnership unit issuances, keeping our leverage well within our target range while maintaining ample availability on our evolving credit facility. Despite the uncertainty of the macro environment, our entire team remains focused on what we do best, acquiring Postal real estate and improving the cash flow from assets under management. When sellers exchange property for operating partnership units, which they have done every year since our IPO, they’re demonstrating that they trust we are the premier owner and operator in this niche space.

This currency allows sellers the opportunity to maintain exposure to Postal real estate and eliminate the day-to-day responsibilities of property management while deferring the potential taxable gains. Relationships are the backbone of this business. One of the many ways we stay in front of owners of our target asset is by developing strong long lasting connections. Last month, senior members of Postal Realty and I attended the 2024 Annual Association of United States Postal Less Source Conference. I personally have attended this conference for most of my life. It’s an opportunity to cultivate new relationships as well as maintain our long running dialogue with owners. Due to these efforts, along with many others, roughly 75% of our acquisitions of the past few years have been sourced internally and as the natural buyer, we believe we see all important assets that come to market.

We are confident in both our business and our tenant as we continue to collect a hundred percent of our contractual rents and maintain high retention and occupancy rates. Exemplifying the importance of this irreplaceable network with no significant near term debt maturities, predictable cash flows, industry leadership As the largest owner of Postal properties and a committed team, we are positioned for a successful 2024. I’ll now turn the call over to Jeremy.

Jeremy Garber : Thank you, Andrew. The first quarter was business as usual at Postal Realty as we remain focused on acquiring, well utilized, attractive last mile and flex Postal properties. Our acquisitions during the quarter added 112,000 net leaseable interior square feet to our portfolio inclusive of 26,000 square feet from 16 last mile properties, and 86,000 square feet from 13 flex properties. Subsequent to quarter end, the company acquired six properties for 4.1 million and placed an additional 11 properties totaling 3.5 million under definitive contracts. As stated on prior calls, company’s business model generates consistent cash flow each quarter, as our business remains stable and reliable through economic cycles.

We have a long runway of opportunity ahead of us and are encouraged by our growth prospects as the largest owner in this space. We have maintained a 99% historical weighted average lease retention rate over the past 10 plus years, which reflects this strategic importance of these properties to both the Postal Service and Communities they serve. This validates our due diligence process in identifying locations that are vital to this crucial logistics network. We continue to work hard with the Postal service to execute the expired leases and hope to provide an update on our next earnings call. I’ll now turn the call over to Rob to discuss our first quarter 2024 financial results.

Robert Klein: Thank you, Jeremy, and thank you everyone for joining us on today’s call. During the first quarter, we raised approximately $14 million of equity and continued to accretively acquire assets. We delivered funds from operations or FFO of $0.20 and adjusted funds from operations or AFFO of $0.25 per diluted share. We’ve maintained low leverage and minimized our exposure to variable rate debt. At the end of the first quarter, our debt outstanding had a weighted average interest rate of 4.22%, a weighted average maturity of four years, and no significant debt maturities until 2027. The company’s $150 million senior unsecured revolving credit facility had $16 million outstanding and fixed rate debt comprised 94% of all borrowings.

Net debt to annualize adjusted EBITDA was 5.8 times well within our target of below seven times. During the first quarter, we issued approximately 576,000 shares of common stock through our ATM offering program at an average price of $14.25 per share, totalling gross proceeds of $8.2 million. Additionally, we issued nearly 412,000 common units in our operating partnership at a price of $14.05 per unit as part of consideration for a portfolio acquisition. Recurring CapEx was $150,000 within our anticipated range of $125,000 to $175,000. Looking forward to Q2, we anticipate the figure to be between $150,000 and $200,000 depending on the timing of projects. Cash G&A expense came in within our stated range for the first quarter. Just as in prior years, we continue to prioritize decreasing cash G&A as a percentage of revenue on an annual basis.

For the full year 2024, we expect total cash G&A expense to be between $9.5 million and $9.8 million. Our Board of Directors has approved a quarterly dividend of $0.24 per share, representing a 1.1% increase from the Q1 2023 dividend. During the first quarter, we collected 100% of our contractual rents. This predictability of cash flows remains a significant differentiator for our company in addition to our strong operations and proven track record of scaling the business. Thanks to our solid foundation and hard work, we continue to be the market leader in the Postal real estate space as we execute our business plan of acquiring new assets and improving the cash flow from existing properties. That concludes our prepared remarks, and now we’d like to open the line to take any questions you may have.

Operator?

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Q&A Session

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question is from the line of Anthony Paolone with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Anthony Paolone: Great, thanks. And good morning. I just wondering if you could update us on just how negotiations are coming along with the 90 some odd holdover leases and whether or not you anticipate new leases with contractual bumps the way you were able to achieve last year and or step up in starting rents on the new leases.

Andrew Spodek : Hey, Tony. This is Andrew. I wish I could say that we’re completed with the negotiations. This is still a fluid process. We’re working very hard with the full service to resolve them and to come to a mutually acceptable solution. Everything is going well. It’s just taking longer than what we would have anticipated. And we’re working towards getting those avenue bumps, even though I can’t commit to it actually being done until it’s completed. And we hope to have a better update for you in the next quarter.

Anthony Paolone: Do you think, Andrew, that like the process there is changing so that, like as we look out into future years, the negotiation than the process could just be a bit faster or smoother or do you think this will always kind of be a given the counterparty a tough process?

Andrew Spodek: So the answer is that we’ve had these type of situations in the past over my life of dealing with the post service where it takes longer than anticipated to resolve this. We are currently working with the full service to make it more efficient so that way in future years we don’t have these issues. And I’m hopeful that we’ll get to that place. But I can’t commit to it until it’s been resolved. But regardless, we’ve been collecting our rents. We will continue to collect our rents when we do resolve it, they do pay the difference in the rents that we negotiated and when the leases had expired. And so it’s just a matter of trying to complete them as quickly as possible.

Anthony Paolone: And then just last one for me, you mentioned that the CapEx in the quarter and also what you anticipated for 2Q, but if you get these holdover leases over the finish line, do you anticipate like in the back half of the year having to spend anything incremental that would come along with that process? That that would be outside of that kind of $100,000, $200,000 range that you outlined for a quarter?

Robert Klein: Yes. Thanks Tony. This is Rob. We don’t anticipate that the guidance change is based on acquisitions or on releasing really in the near term. So no that guidance will hold, the next quarter will come forward with the guidance for future quarters.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Stephen Dumanski with Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead.

Stephen Dumanski: Thank you. I know that the state of the transaction market was addressed earlier in the opening comments, so I just wanted to get more insight with the overall macro environment. How motivated are potential sellers currently and where do you project an increase or decrease in the velocity of the acquisition pipeline going forward?

Andrew Spodek: I appreciate the question. Sellers are maybe motivated, but they’re not motivated to the extent that they are adjusting their cap rates across the entire market. We’re still having to deal with sellers on a deal-by-deal basis to try to adjust cap rates to inch them up to places where we want to acquire them in an accretive way. I am hopeful that the velocity of deals will pick up and we are able to adjust our guidance as the year progresses. But as of right now, we’re maintaining our guidance of $80 million forward the year.

Stephen Dumanski: And just another one regarding I guess more of the macro environment is the higher for a longer interest rate environment and the pullback in bank financing impacting the ability for a small owner to refinance postal assets when their current debt expires, or is having the USPS on the lease still the golden ticket essentially.

Andrew Spodek: The Postal real estate market, at least on the flex and last mile facilities is not a very heavily financed space. With that being said, if sellers do have mortgages that are coming due, they’re able to refinance them, but obviously at a much higher rate. And so while that would normally be a motivating factor for people to consider selling because it’s not a heavily financed space, it’s not typically a major driver of deal flow.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question is from the line of Jon Petersen with Jefferies

Jon Petersen : Could you remind us what percent of your portfolio has annual escalators built in and where you expect that number to trend over the next as you renew all these leases over the next few years?

Jeremy Garber : It was the entire vintage of 2022 leases that expired, that we put an escalator in place. And we’re working on deals — and going forward right now.

Jon Petersen: So is the expectations, these are typically five year leases. So if we fast forward four years in the future, is the expectation you guys have that a hundred percent of the portfolio will have annual escalators or will there be kind of friction in future years and getting that in there now that inflation is coming down a bit?

Jeremy Garber : I think, it’s a fluid kind of conversation that really depends on inflation and the cost to operate the properties. And so I can’t commit to all of future leases having and escalator. But when it’s appropriate, that’s definitely something that we will be negotiating for.

Operator: As there are no further questions, I now hand the conference over to Andrew Spodek for his closing comments. Andrew?

Andrew Spodek: On behalf of the entire team, we thank you for your support and taking the time to join us today. We’re confident in our business model and the opportunity in the specialized market. The fundamentals of the business remain strong and we look forward to what the future brings. Let’s connect in the upcoming months. Thank you again for your time.

Operator: Thank you. The conference of Postal Realty Trust has now concluded. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.