Spirit Realty Capital, Inc. (NYSE:SRC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 3 of 11

Michael Goldsmith: No, I appreciate that, Jackson. And you kind of led into the second question. Just as we think about ’23 and the concentration of where you’re going to be dealing, like can kind of this makeup continue through this year? Or is it going to be a little bit more balanced? Like is 75% industrial sustainable? Or is it just going to be kind of a mix or where the just — where there’s opportunity overall?

Jackson Hsieh: Yes. I mean I could say like in the first quarter, it’s going to probably look similar to that. As we project out through the course of the year, obviously, it’s harder to predict that. I think a lot of our success is because of where the financing markets are corporately and in the mortgage market as well. That’s having a positive impact for us, the challenge over there in that market. I think as those markets improve; it just will be more competitive for us to be able to keep increasing at this space. So look, I think like we believe that we’ll be able to do more in the industrial area. We’re certainly going to do it in the first quarter. It’s hard to predict the rest of the year. But we have the flexibility to invest in both areas, industrial and retail. So we feel like given our guidance and how we’re thinking about the business plan this year, we feel very comfortable that we’ll be able to achieve these results.

Operator: Our next question comes from Greg McGinniss with Scotiabank.

Greg McGinniss: So just looking at Q4, where you acquired at a 7.2% cap 30 basis points higher than where it’s generally been. Could we see higher cap rates this year than there given the current financing environment and tenant demand for sale leasebacks? And then, just curious if you could give us some details on where you’re seeing more or less competition for assets and whether you’re feeling more constrained by capital availability or compelling transactions at this time?

Jackson Hsieh: Well, on the cap rate side, I think in the first quarter, you’re going to see our acquisition cap rates continue to drift higher. I’d say it’s probably going to look somewhere in the 7.25% to 7.5% range that’s probably a good assumption in 2023. And one of the reasons I think we’re seeing that success is as I said, corporations are looking at their real estate, especially in industrial companies, monetizing it for long-term financing, just given kind of where non-investment-grade companies get trade today. So I think that’s going to continue to play out positively for us. Obviously, there’s more competition for these types of assets. Some of our public peers do the same investment strategy. So I think we’ll see that going forward.

And I think the other thing that you’ll see this year for us, if you look last year, we did about 100, I think it’s like 114 million of CapEx in development. This year, that number will be probably similar, if not a little bit higher and it’s going to be at least a 50-basis point premium to the cap rate I just described, the 7.25%, 7.5%. So it’s going to be priced more appropriately. And we’ve already got a nice pipeline of, I’ll call revenue, capital expenditure opportunities that are in the guidance for this year. So we’ll continue to evaluate the market. And then, the last piece to your question, Greg, we’ve been very active on the disposition market. And if you look at the number of transactions that we sold last year, part of it was reshaping, part of it was risk mitigation, part of it was just proof-of-concept in some ways to how we’ve invested.

So we feel like we’ve got a very good handle on sort of where the market is trending right now. 40% of those sales like in the fourth quarter that we completed were 1031 buyers, 60% what I call private sort of institutions or individuals. So we’ll continue to monitor the markets as we are buying and selling as part of the plan dictates for the operating plan for 2023. So I think we’ve got a good handle on where pricing is right now.

Page 3 of 11