W. P. Carey Inc. (NYSE:WPC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

W. P. Carey Inc. (NYSE:WPC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript February 10, 2023

Operator: Hello and welcome to W. P. Carey’s Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Donna and I will be your operator today. Please note that today’s event is being recorded. After today’s prepared remarks, we will be taking questions via the phone line. Instructions on how to do so will be given at the appropriate time. I will now turn today’s program over to Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations. Mr. Sands, please go ahead.

Peter Sands: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning for our 2022 fourth quarter earnings call. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that some of the statements made on this call are not historic facts and maybe deemed forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from W. P. Carey’s expectations are provided in our SEC filings. An online replay of this conference call will be made available in the Investor Relations section of our website at wpcarey.com, where it will be archived for approximately 1 year and where you can also find copies of our investor presentations and other related materials. And with that, I will pass the call over to Jason Fox, Chief Executive Officer.

Jason Fox: Thank you, Peter and good morning everyone. 2023 marks several anniversaries for W. P. Carey. It was 50 years ago that Bill Carey founded the company, 25 years ago that we became a public company. It was also 25 years ago that we began investing in Europe, where we pioneered sale-leasebacks. Company has evolved considerably over the last 50 years. The most recent development being our exit from the non-traded REIT business, culminating in our merger with CPA:18. The completion of our transition to a pure-play net lease REIT in 2022 reflects our focus on real estate AFFO growth, driven by accretive investments and rent escalations. And despite the challenging market backdrop in 2022, we generated real estate AFFO growth of 6.3% per share for the year.

This morning, I will focus my remarks on our recent investment activity and outlook and Toni Sanzone, our CFO, will cover our results, the 2023 guidance we announced this morning and our balance sheet positioning. We also have our President, John Park and our Head of Asset Management, Brooks Gordon, on the line to take questions. Starting with externally driven growth, over the course of 2022, the U.S. 10-year treasury rate rose over 200 basis points, while cap rates lagged well behind as sellers were slow to adjust their expectations. Buyers fought to preserve spread with transactions often take longer to negotiate and close, especially sale-leasebacks tied to corporate M&A. Overall, our investment volume for the year totaled $1.4 billion at a weighted average cap rate of 6.3% and a weighted average lease term of 20 years.

In addition to the more than $2 billion of real estate, we added at a cap rate in the mid-6s through the CPA:18 merger. With interest rates moving another leg higher in October, we actively exerted our pricing power during the fourth quarter, requiring higher yields and willing to be patient as cap rates began to move, creating opportunities to transact at more attractive spreads. As a result, I am pleased to say we executed investments at meaningfully higher cap rates during the fourth quarter, although on investment volume that was lighter than we anticipated, totaling $159 million. Overall, these investments blended to a weighted average cap rate of 6.8%, primarily reflecting warehouse and industrial investments with going in cap rates in the high 6s and into the 7s.

While interest rates have fallen somewhat since the fourth quarter, the large majority of the investment opportunities we are evaluating today also have cap rates in the high 6s and into the 7s resulting in investment spreads that are considerably more attractive than they were for most of 2022 and at levels where we are comfortable transacting. Looking ahead, we are well positioned to take advantage of the current market environment. Our diversified approach gives us the ability to invest across property types, both in the U.S. and Europe and ensures we have the widest possible funnel of opportunities with companies across a variety of industries. And while we currently see more actionable opportunities in the U.S. where cap rates have adjusted more quickly, we do expect cap rates in Europe to catch up with higher interest rates.

Furthermore, the environment for sale-leasebacks is as favorable as we have ever seen it as high-yield debt and leveraged loans remain very expensive. Companies are increasingly exploring alternative sources of capital, including sale leasebacks. In fact, private equity firms that we previously never saw use sale leasebacks are now looking at it as a source of capital, enabling us to develop new sponsor relationships. We expect these market conditions to continue for the foreseeable future and that we will be the major beneficiary of the increased deal flow as the market leader in sale leasebacks. And of course, the strength of our balance sheet including significant liquidity, gives us a competitive advantage with sellers who remain concerned about execution risk.

Our competitive position is especially compelling compared to bidders who rely on asset-level debt, which has either become prohibitively expensive or unavailable, particularly for tenants just below investment grade that we target. Currently, we have a strong near-term pipeline with over $500 million of investments at advanced stages or under letters of intent. This in conjunction with about $156 million of capital investments or commitments scheduled to complete in 2023 and the deals we have closed year-to-date gives us a visibility into at least $700 million of deal volume a little over a month into the year. Overall, given what we are seeing today, we expect to close meaningfully higher investment volume in 2023, totaling roughly $2 billion at higher cap rates and wider spreads.

Moving to our capital markets activities, despite sharply higher interest rates in a turbulent capital markets backdrop throughout much of 2022, our stock price held up extremely well. We ended the year as one of the top performing REITs. The relative strength of our stock has enabled us to raise well-priced equity capital and we currently have about $560 million of equity available for settlement under forward sale agreements, raised at an average price of about $84 per share. On the debt side, we were one of a relatively small group of REITs to issue attractively priced debt in 2022, with our inaugural €350 million private placement bond offering in September at an interest rate in the mid-3s. And I am pleased to say that the improvement in our credit profile was recognized by the rating agencies, with Moody’s upgrading us to Baa1 in September, followed by S&P upgrading us to BBB+ a few weeks ago.

These upgrades incrementally improve both our access to debt and cost of debt, which is currently among the best price in the net lease sector. Our ability to raise well-priced capital in 2022 in conjunction with our revolving credit facility has ensured we have entered 2023 exceptionally well positioned with more than enough dry powder to execute on our near-term pipeline on a leverage-neutral basis. Given where this capital was raised, we are very comfortable with our ability to deploy it accretively through the deals currently in our pipeline and into new investments given that transaction cap rates appear to be stabilizing around current levels. We are also comfortable with our ability to continue investing accretively at tighter cap rates than our current targets, if we see interesting opportunities, given where we expect to be able to raise capital in 2023.

Lastly, I want to touch briefly upon the quality of our portfolio amid concerns about inflation and the potential for at least a mild recession. We remain uniquely positioned within net lease with best-in-class rent growth and proven resiliency, be on a well-diversified portfolio of critical real estate leased to large companies on long-term leases with a weighted average lease term of just under 11 years. It also remains healthy, with occupancy at 98.8%, fourth quarter rent collections of over 99% and a benign watch list. Before I hand over to Toni, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank our employees, past and present who have helped shape W. P. Carey over the past 50 years into the company it is today. All of the milestones we are celebrating this year and the solid results we have achieved would not be possible without our dedicated and talented team.

And I am proud that we have been included in the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index for the third year in a row, one of only a handful of REITs selected this year, highlighting our longstanding commitment to gender equality and an inclusive culture. And with that, I will pass the call over to Toni.

Photo by Taha Sas on Unsplash

Toni Sanzone: Thank you, Jason and good morning everyone. This morning, we reported AFFO per share of $1.29 for the fourth quarter, bringing full year AFFO per share to $5.29 and real estate AFFO per share to $5.20, an increase of 6.3% over the prior year, reflecting the accretive impact of both new investments and our merger with CPA:18, which closed in August as well as the strength of our rent growth. During the fourth quarter, we continued to benefit from inflation protection built into our portfolio. Overall, contractual same-store rent growth remained at a record 3.4% year-over-year, which is up 160 basis points versus the year ago quarter. Given the timing lag on which our inflation-based leases escalate, we expect contractual same-store rent growth to remain elevated throughout 2023 and well into 2024, even if inflation comes down.

We estimate that it will increase to around 4% in the first quarter when roughly 40% of ABR with rent increases tied to inflation will go through scheduled rent bumps and remain around 4% for the full year. Comprehensive same-store rent growth for the fourth quarter, which is based on the pro rata net lease rent included in our AFFO, was 1% year-over-year, primarily reflecting elevated rent recoveries in the prior year period. Normalizing for these recoveries brings comprehensive same-store above 2%, which is about 100 basis points below our contractual same-store and in line with historical trends. Comprehensive same-store in the 2022 fourth quarter also included downtime on vacant assets, the large majority of which are in the process of being repositioned or expected to be sold during the first half of this year.

Fourth quarter leasing activity comprised 9 renewals or extensions. And overall, we continue to achieve positive rent recapture totaling 110% of the prior rents driven by warehouse and industrial and adding 8.3 years of weighted average lease term. Other lease-related income for the fourth quarter included the $5 million settlement of a claim on the guarantor of a prior lease the timing of which was accelerated, bringing the full year total for this line item to $33 million, just above our expectations for the year. For 2023, we are currently assuming that other lease-related income remains relatively consistent with 2022 levels. Non-operating income for the fourth quarter primarily comprised realized gains from currency hedges totaling $6 million, down from almost $9 million for the third quarter.

For the full year, non-operating income totaled $30 million, including $24 million in realized gains from currency hedges. Our 2023 guidance assumes currency rates remain at or around their current levels, which would result in expected gains from currency hedges of approximately $15 million. As a reminder, a strengthening euro would positively impact our cash flows and earnings with lower hedging gains as an offset. Non-operating income in 2022 also included $4 million in dividends received from our equity interest in Lineage Logistics. We have not received and do not expect to receive a dividend from our investment in 2023. Lineage continues to perform well and our investment now totals just over $400 million, including a $39 million mark-to-market gain during the fourth quarter based on its most recent offering valuation.

Disposition activity during the fourth quarter comprised 6 properties for gross proceeds of $68 million, bringing total disposition proceeds for the year to $244 million, a large portion of which were legacy CPA:18 assets whose disposition was contemplated in conjunction with the transaction. Operating properties generated NOI of $17 million during the fourth quarter, up from $12 million for the third quarter with the increase primarily reflecting a full quarter contribution from the operating self-storage portfolio we acquired as part of the CPA:18 merger. At year end, our operating assets comprised 84 self-storage properties, 2 student housing properties and 1 hotel. Separately, in January of this year, 12 of the Marriott hotels we own, which were previously net leased, converted to operating properties upon expiration of their master lease.

Marriott will continue to operate and manage these hotels under long-term franchise agreements and we expect their NOI contribution to be marginally higher than the $16 million of ABR they generated in 2022 as net lease assets. These are non-core assets that we plan to sell with the exception of 3, for which we are pursuing very attractive redevelopment opportunities. We will provide updates as we make progress with the Marriott sales, but for purposes of our 2023 guidance we are assuming they occur late in the year, recognizing they have the potential to move into 2024. For 2023, we expect NOI from all operating properties to total around $100 million, with roughly three quarters of that coming from self-storage, which is expected to achieve NOI growth in the mid to high single-digits as compared to 2022.

As a reminder, the same-store metrics I discussed earlier reflect only net lease assets and non-operating properties. Turning now to expenses, interest expense totaled $68 million for the fourth quarter bringing the full year total to $219 million, up 11% over the prior year. The weighted average interest rate on our debt was 3% for the fourth quarter and 2.7% for the full year. Our guidance currently assumes higher base rates will result in our weighted average cost of debt approaching the mid-3s, although this is dependent on the specific timing and execution of capital markets activity as well as further interest rate movements. Non-reimbursed property expenses were $14 million for the fourth quarter, bringing the full year total to $51 million.

The amounts for both periods were elevated as a result of higher vacant asset carrying costs, higher maintenance and legal expenses as well as real estate tax accruals. For 2023, we currently expect non-reimbursed property expenses to decline to between $43 million and $47 million for the full year as a result of anticipated vacant asset sales and lease up. The resolution of certain tenant-related back taxes and the timing of asset sales could move us to either end of that range. G&A expense was $23 million for the fourth quarter, bringing the full year amount to $89 million, in line with our guidance range. For 2023, we expect G&A to be between $97 million and $100 million, which includes loss of reimbursements from CPA:18 and reflects our larger asset base as well as inflationary increases.

Tax expense totaled $10 million for the fourth quarter on an AFFO basis, which is mainly comprised of foreign taxes on our European portfolio. We expect tax expense to total between $40 million and $44 million for 2023 driven by the inflationary impact on foreign rents as well as the addition of assets acquired in the CPA:18 merger. Turning now to the 2023 guidance we announced this morning. We expect to generate AFFO of between $5.30 and $5.40 per share, all of which will come from real estate given our exit from the non-traded REIT business, implying about 3% growth on real estate AFFO at the midpoint. This is based on expected investment volume of between $1.75 billion and $2.25 billion. And as Jason discussed, we currently have good visibility into at least $700 million of that.

For now, we are assuming investment volume occurs relatively evenly throughout the year. Disposition activity for the year is currently assumed to total between $300 million and $400 million, with the majority assumed to occur late in the year, reflecting our anticipated timing for the Marriott operating hotel sales, which I covered earlier. Moving to our capital markets activity and balance sheet positioning. We remain in a very strong capital position with significant dry powder, ample liquidity and moderate use of leverage, which is further supported by our capital raising activity. Towards the end of the fourth quarter, we settled just under 2.6 million shares of our outstanding equity forwards, which will, therefore, be fully reflected in our first quarter diluted share count.

We also issued additional equity forwards through our ATM program, both during the 2022 fourth quarter and in January of this year. In conjunction with the existing equity forwards, we therefore currently have about $560 million of forward equity available to settle. We ended 2022 with $276 million drawn on our $1.8 billion revolving credit facility, which, in conjunction with our undrawn equity forwards, maintains an excellent liquidity position, totaling just over $2.2 billion, providing ample liquidity to execute on our near-term pipeline on a leverage-neutral basis and ensuring we continue to have significant flexibility in when we access capital markets. We currently have $430 million of mortgages due in 2023, a portion of which will be retired as part of our disposition plans and no bonds maturing until 2024, all of which we continue to view as very manageable, especially given the improving debt capital markets and our proven ability to access capital even during turbulent markets as was the case in 2022.

At year-end, our leverage metrics remained within our target ranges. Debt-to-gross assets was 39.8% at the low end of our target range of mid to low 40s and net debt to EBITDA was 5.7x relative to our target range of mid to high 5x. Cash interest expense coverage was 6.3x, which moderated compared to the 6.7x for the third quarter, largely reflecting rising interest rates. Lastly, we continue to provide stockholders with growing well-covered dividend income with a payout ratio of 80.2% for the year and an attractive dividend yield currently around 5.2%. In closing, despite the challenging market backdrop, we produced solid full year results, primarily reflecting the accretive impact of new investments and our merger with CPA:18 as well as the strength of our rent escalations.

And as we look ahead, we have a strong near-term pipeline, which we are well positioned to execute on given the strength of our balance sheet. And with that, I’ll hand the call back to the operator for questions.

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Q&A Session

Operator: Thank you. Our first question today is coming from John Kim of BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Unidentified Analyst: Hey, guys. It’s Derek on for John. I was just curious if you could kind of walk us through the puts and takes of AFFO guidance. What’s the per share impact from OpEx and then from interest expense? Thanks.

Jason Fox: Toni, do you want to take that one?

Toni Sanzone: Yes, I got that one. Thanks, John. So yes, I think we’ve highlighted a number of factors on the call. I think just to kind of summarize, we are seeing a fair amount of growth from the investment activity and from the embedded CPI-based increases in our portfolio, but we are seeing a number of offsetting factors. On the interest expense, I think that’s really the biggest headwind that we’re seeing, and that’s roughly about 3% growth on the offset. On the FX side, I’d say it’s less so in terms of what we’re projecting for 2023, just given kind of where rates are now, and where they settled in over the last part of the year. So I would say FX potentially could have a tailwind for us as opposed to the way it worked against us in 2022.

So I definitely would say the largest drivers on the interest expense side. But in addition to that, I highlighted some other points, which included leakage that we would expect from vacancy or downtime in certain assets and then a few smaller items, which are the dividend payments that we’re not receiving from Lineage and Walt that we received prior year as well as some higher G&A and tax expenses. So, all of that really aggregates against the growth that we’re seeing gets us to about 3% for the year.

Unidentified Analyst: Right. Appreciate that. And then I appreciate the color on cap rates kind of widening out as we move into the first quarter of the year. Can you just kind of walk through what the different cap rates are amongst the sectors and geographies? And where is the biggest spreads you’re seeing today?

Jason Fox: Yes, sure. Yes. So we think that cap rates kind of finally reached a bit of an equilibrium in the fourth quarter, and that has carried over to this year. Fourth quarter cap rates was about 6.8%, which was 50 basis points higher on average or higher than the full year average, I should say. I think that’s flowing through the transaction markets as well. In terms of regions, U.S. and Europe cap rates. I would say there maybe similar ZIP codes at this point in time. I think the U.S. has maybe stabilized a little bit more, I think, given where the cost of borrowers in Europe, we could probably €“ would probably want to see a little bit more cap rate increases to generate the type of spreads that we think we want to transact at in Europe.

And then across property types, I would say on the €“ maybe the low end of the increase is probably in U.S. retail that has proven to be a little bit stickier. And maybe that makes sense, it’s a bit more crowded in terms of competition within net lease and maybe there is still some 1031 trades lingering. I think on the high end, it’s where we’ve seen cap rates move would be in the industrial segment, in particular, sale-leasebacks. I think when you think about corporates and in private equity firms utilizing sale-leasebacks. They are really looking at what are their alternative sources of capital, and that would be mainly the leveraged loan market or the high-yield debt markets and those are still largely dislocated. So I think we have some pricing power right now within that market and cap rates are reflecting that.

Unidentified Analyst: Alright. Thanks, guys. Appreciate the time.

Jason Fox: You are welcome.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question is coming from Greg McGinniss of Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Greg McGinniss: Hey, good morning. Congrats on the anniversary.

Jason Fox: Thank you.