The Macerich Company (NYSE:MAC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Craig Mailman: Great. And just on the financing side, you guys had mentioned Scottsdale. The new loan there is progressing. Are you guys looking at the same type of costs that you were at the Investor Day? Is there anything positive or negative on that front to report?

Scott Kingsmore: Yes, Craig. During Investor Day, at that point in time, the market was pretty locked up. As we’ve started ’22 — or excuse me, 23, there’s certainly a fresh allocation of capital. So bond investors are back in the game. Investment banks are starting to form pools, transactions are getting done. Generally, we think it’s going to be a slow first half of the year. And while things have improved, it will take a little while for things to start to get back to normal. All that said, we’ve seen a pretty significant rally in credit spreads over the last, say, 4 to 5 months versus the fall. You’ve obviously seen benchmark rates, 10-year treasury, 5-year treasury, bounce all over the place, including over the last couple of days with the recent employment report.

But net-net, I think rates have improved to the extent the refinancing markets are open for certain assets. I think generally, rates have modestly improved, but it’s very volatile still, and that could change on a dime. The good news is transactions are getting done. We’ve got 1 refinance complete. We’ve got 1 finance expected within the next few weeks. And more to follow as we look at the balance of the year, we do think that the second half of the year should be much better than the first half.

Operator: What do you think is a good placeholder for timing and rate on that loan?

Scott Kingsmore: On the Scottsdale loan? We’ll close — that will close in the first quarter. And if I were to guesstimate rate, it’s probably going to be in the low to mid-5% range.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Ronald Kamden with Morgan Stanley.

Ronald Kamden: A couple of quick ones. Just going back to some of the targets on levers at the Investor Day at the end of ’23. Just trying to tie those comments with sort of the sources and uses. You talked about sort of $315 million and operating cash flow. You take the dividend out, that gets you to $160 million. After you sort of put development spending in, you don’t really have a lot sort of left over. Just trying to get a sense of if that — how we get to that leverage target? Is it just basically contingent on an equity raise or how to think about it?

Scott Kingsmore: Yes. We — if you look at that chart that we talked about on our Investor Day, we did have a placeholder for a nominal equity raise. That doesn’t mean we’re committed to raising equity at $13 a share. But that was a placeholder in there, if you look at the footnotes. In addition, NOI growth certainly is an important component to us, ultimately getting our target leverage below 8% — or excuse me, 8x over the course of the next year or 2. So those are the primary factors. We think that we’re certainly headed down the right path of achieving reasonable NOI and EBITDA growth between now and next year.

Ronald Kamden: Got it. And then going back to sort of the refinancing question, just on Washington Square, some of the paydown for that loan, only $15 million. But just curious for commentary, both generally in terms of what the servicers are asking for? And more specifically on Danbury Fair or Fashion Outlets of Niagara, if there’s any updates there?