Safehold Inc. (NYSE:SAFE) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Marcos Alvarado: I think it goes asset class by asset class and customer by customer. So I think it’s the sort of psychology of where you are in the arc of repricing. So I’ll take one out of the spectrum which is multifamily. There’s — as I mentioned before, there’s liquidity, both fee and leasehold liquidity. We’re actively looking at transactions. That market seems to have repriced for sellers who are willing to sell in that market and there seems to be decent demand on the buy side. So I expect some activity on those assets. And then obviously, as Jay sort of alluded to on the other end of the spectrum, you have office where there’s limited to no liquidity. And I think you’re going to see a fair amount of distress up at the equity level with assets being handed back to lenders. And that process is very early in its cycle.

Rich Anderson: In one of the pages, I think it was Page 5 of your slide deck. You have a footnote there discussing your protection against inflation and it mentioned fair market resets is one inflation protection mechanism. I know when you’re buying existing ground leases, you are making adjustments as you go and eliminate some of those vestiges of past ground lease in those that you’re purchasing. But are you more inclined to hold on to fair market resets now with this inflationary market still intact? Or are you still going down the road of eliminating a lot of those situations and taking a win-win for you?

Marcos Alvarado: So I would say we we’ll continue to be opportunistic when existing leases come to market that typically contain those fair market value or percentage rent provisions that you’re referring to. As I think about the last 5 years and the transition and effort to sort of reset and redefine an entire marketplace, part of that is getting rid of that ambiguity. I think we’ve proven out leasehold liquidity, financing liquidity, sales and liquidity and part of that is the design of this new moderate ground lease. So I think we would be taking a step back if we started to reintroduce those sorts of terms to our customers. So our current form of ground lease reflects the same form that we’ve been using economically for the last few years.

Rich Anderson: Okay, fair enough. And then last for me, on the CARET page, you talk about revesting 25% in terms of senior management. What are the — besides just staying employed by Safehold, are there other vesting conditions that would get you to that? I’m just curious if there’s more to it than just what it imply .

Jay Sugarman: Yes, Rich, this is really just a retention tool to make sure the team stays together over the next 2 years while we really ramp up the CARET side of the story; so really nothing more than a time waste . On CARET’s that had already been vested but we wanted to show to the market and senior management committed to revest on those to show how committed we are.

Rich Anderson: So it’s another 2 years.

Jay Sugarman: Yes.

Operator: Your next question for today is coming from Harsh Hemnani at Green Street.