Q2 2022 Radius Global Infrastructure Inc Earnings Call
Greetings and welcome to RADIUS Global Infrastructure second quarter 2022 results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A brief question answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Jason Harps, head of IR. Thank you. You may begin.
Thank you, operator, and welcome everyone to the RADIUS Global Infrastructure second quarter 2022 earnings call.
In a moment, Bill Berkman, our CEO and co-chairman, will provide an overview of our second quarter 2022 results, followed by a more detailed update from Glenn Brisen, our chief financial officer.
After these comments, we will open up the call for your questions.
Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that many of the comments made today are considered forward-looking statements under federal securities laws. As described in our earnings release and filings with the SEC, these statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause future results to differ from those expressed.
These statements speak as of today's date and we undertake no obligation publicly to update or revise these forward-looking statements. In addition, on today's call we may discuss certain non-GAAP financial information. You can find this information, together with reconciliation, the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure in yesterday's earnings release and the supplemental financial information available on our website at www.radiascorbal.com. Bill?
Thank you all for joining us today for our second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. As a brief reminder, we buy high quality, long dated, long duration assets in increments over long periods of time, which we believe helps mute the effects of periodic headwinds from currency volatility, as well as variations in asset pricing, competition, and churn by borrowing in local currencies, redeploying local cash flows, and averaging these effects over time. Thank you.
The growing base of our business is cash flow generated from some of the world's most critical data infrastructure.
Even amidst the current global economic and political environment, I'm pleased to report the continued resiliency and stability of our business as we continue to deliver what we believe to be downside protected attractive returns. This is evidenced by strong growth in the second quarter where we now own over 8,500 community streams on over 6,500 digital infrastructure sites in over 20 countries.
These assets generated record quarterly gap revenue of 32.6 million, up 30% year over year, which is net of the impact of recent volatile foreign exchange rates.
Leases in our large pool of high-quality triple net rents underlying mission-critical digital infrastructure assets enjoy the benefit of a largely untapped inflation-adjusted escalator, and this quarter's results show continued enhanced organic growth from these valuable lease provisions.
As you will hear shortly, our rent portfolio had net organic annualized growth of approximately 3.7% in the second quarter, and we expect that organic growth to continue to rise to an annualized run rate of approximately 4% by next quarter as contractual inflation adjustments in our leases continue to kick in over time. As noted in our supplemental disclosures as of the end of June , 74% of our portfolio escalates annually.
5% escalates every three years and 18% escalates every five years.
During the quarter, we invested approximately $180 million to acquire 12 million additional rent.
annualized rent, increasing our total annualized in-place rents to a run rate of approximately 132 million, representing a 29% year-over-year increase.
Total acquisition capex of $254 million for the first half of 2022 puts us on trajectory to exceed our previously stated annual guidance of deploying $400 million plus of acquisition capex for the current calendar year. As we have previously noted, there will be quarterly variability in the amount of capital deployed.
After making these investments, we now have over $600 million of cash on the balance sheet to be used for incremental value-accreted acquisitions and investments, which was raised both from equity-issued as well as from debt facilities that are 100% fixed rate or capped, only and with no near-term maturities.
I say this every quarter, but it really bears repeating. I'm extremely proud of our global team for producing record results and meeting our high underwriting standards and our target returns, especially in this macro and economic environment. With the pace of capital investment into global digital infrastructure, supporting communication networks as well as data storage, processing, and delivery continue to grow to meet demand, our addressable market of potential acquisition continues to grow, and our range of asset types we believe will continue to broaden.
which provides our team of originators with a vast total addressable market of potential properties to acquire where a substantial amount of these assets are owned by a highly fragmented set of landlords.
While no business is free from the impact of macroeconomic forces, whether inflation, interest rates, FX or other factors, the fact that we're able to continue to grow both organically from our own yielding portfolio of rents, combined with new origination, continues to reinforce our conviction in our business model.
Glenn Breicher, our CFO , will now provide an overview of our current holdings and financial results in more detail. Glenn? All right, Glenn.
Thanks, Bill.
We continue to grow the portfolio in the second quarter, taking advantage of investment opportunities
across our expanding global footprint to deploy capital.
as of the end of June .
As Bill previously mentioned, we own real property interests in over 6,500 sites with over 8,500 lease streams.
Represented by a tenant base comprised of 37% tower companies.
and 63% mobile network operators, the vast majority of which are investment grade.
with respect to our 131.7 million evangelized in place rents as of June 30th, 49% are denominated in euros.
15% in braced pounds, 16% in US dollars.
3% in Australian dollars, 1% in Canadian dollars, and the remaining 15% in other global currencies.
Approximately 85% of our rents are located in developed markets with the remainder predominantly based in Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Colombia.
Importantly, nearly 80% of our portfolio has contractual uncapped escalators that are either directly or indirectly linked to local inflation indexes.
which provide us with meaningful protection against the impact of rising inflation, while also muting the impact of rising interest rates.
The other 20% of our portfolio has contractual escalators that are generally fixed at between 3 and 5% annually.
Geographically, these fixed escalator rents are located in the US, Canada, and Australia.
Cap revenues were up 30% year over year to $32.6 million in the quarter and gross profit, or what we refer to as ground cash flow, rose 25% to $30.5 million, resulting in a gross profit margin of approximately 94%.
Our ground cash flow margin has been impacted by expenses associated with fee simple interest acquired primarily for property taxes.
We deployed $179.5 million for acquisition CapEx in the second quarter, which represents a 43% increase from the $125.4 million we deployed in the second quarter of 2021.
This record pace of investment resulted in $12.4 million of additional annual rent across 223 new leased streams.
We anticipate that these new lease streams will generate a fully burdened initial cash yield of approximately 6.4% on a total growth spend basis.
which includes approximately 13.4 million of origination sG&A that we spent in the quarter.
Please note that this 6.4% when compared to previous periods does not reflect same store sales as each quarter we are acquiring assets from a different mix of countries that have different acquisition cap rates due to many factors that vary by jurisdiction.
In the second quarter, our existing portfolio rents on a constant currency basis, excluding rents we acquired in the quarter.
generated 4.7% revenue growth from the combination of our contractual escalators and organic revenue enhancements.
which was partially offset by approximately 1% of gross churn.
resulting in net organic revenue growth of 3.7% on a year-over-year basis.
This compares to 2.9% net organic revenue growth in the second quarter of 2021.
This increase is primarily due to our contractual inflation-based escalators, which are beginning to reflect a significant increase in inflation across all of our jurisdictions.
Turning to our balance sheet and liquidity, during the quarter, we refinanced our existing $103 million domestic senior secured facility, which was scheduled to mature in October 2023.
we enter into a new 165 million facility.
This loan accrues interest at a fixed annual rate of approximately 3.64% and is scheduled to mature in April 2027.
This compares to an interest rate of 4.25%.
under the previous credit facility.
As a result of the closing of the transaction, RATE is received an A rating from Fitch for the facility, which has a leverage cap of 9.75% eligible annual cash flow.
defined as annualized in-place rents less a servicing fee.
Inclusive of this recent refinancing, Radius now has approximately $1.6 billion of total gross debt outstanding and net debt of $953 million as of the end of the second quarter.
Again, all borrowed standing debt is interest only, fixed rate or capped, with a weighted average.
cash coupon of 3.6% and a weighted average remaining maturity of 6.0 years.
The company had approximately $615 million of liquidity, most of which is available for incremental investment as of June 30th.
Please refer to our supplemental materials posted to our website yesterday after the market closed for additional details.
Bill?
Thanks, Gren. Operator, please open the call for questions.
Thank you. We will now conduct a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad.
A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue.
You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Once again, that's star 1 at this time. One moment while we post our first question.
Our first question comes from Rick Prentice with Raymond James. Please proceed.
Hey Rick. Good morning everyone. Good morning.
Thanks for you guys.
Oh, it's great. Great to be a poo poo. Thanks for that. Couple questions, guys. First, obviously, as we look at your external growth aspect, we look at pacing, pricing, and funding. So the pacing was strong in the quarter. It can vary, as you point out. How lumpy was this quarter? When would you expect to actually update kinds as opposed to just say you could exceed it? So on the pacing side, that's the first set of questions.
You know, I think...
I think the best way to answer is it's
you're never rewarded by...
giving even more specific guidance, even though we have pretty good visibility and high confidence, I think it's just easier to leave it the way we left it. That being said, I'll go back and give it a hard think whether we should live on the edge and try to update it a bit. But right now I think you should take away from our statement that we're optimistic.
about substantially being highly optimistic, let me say that.
On the pricing side,
Cap rate came in as Glenn was pointing out.
6.4, I think we had modeled 6.2. So it seems like even in this interest rate environment, you're still bringing in attractive caps. You point out that it can vary by country. How should we think about as you look into the future where those cap rates are and how are seller expectations holding up in this kind of environment?
Well, I think it's always going to vary and there's not really a set pattern. Clearly, if we're competing with power companies, the seller is going to be benefited by that. When we're not competing with them, I think that at some point our expectation is that there'll be some adjustment for just the current macro environment in terms of what sellers' expectations are. It's still a little early to tell because every country's got a different dynamic going on.
I think it's always going to vary and there's not really a set pattern. Clearly, if we're competing with power companies, the seller is going to be benefited by that. When we're not competing with them, I think that at some point our expectation is that there'll be some adjustment for just the current macro environment in terms of what sellers' expectations are. It's still a little early to tell because every country's got a different dynamic going on. I hope that helps Rick.
It does. Also, the potential of recession in different markets out there, does that trigger a point, I know a lot of times the sale of an asset or a revenue stream, sometimes it's personal life involved, and a thought that recession could actually cause more people to say, maybe it's time to hit the, hit the bid on that offer?
Well, first of all, we hate to see people having to face some hardship, but that being said, yeah, our expectation is it's going to drive hopefully more sellers because at the end of the day, people typically sell, we've said this a lot, when they have a need for the capital or when they are afraid just of the macro environment or something happening with the carriers because they're on one particular site because it's so fragmented and we can of course take risks on.
because we are so diversified. So, long-winded way of saying, yeah, we think that that'll probably be a pretty helpful win in the sales. The question is just, when would it kick in? Is it a quarter from now, two quarters from now? That we don't know.
Makes sense. And then on the funding side, both you and Glenn point out the $615 million of cash equivalents left. How should we think about that as runway, three quarters, six quarters? And when and how would you think about kind of reloading on the on the funding side?
Well, I think and this is going to sound flippant and funny I mean we always hope to spend it all in a quarter that means we've done our job, and we're finding great opportunities Now all that being said you know we're in the business of Having an acquisition machines. We've constantly got to feed it so you always have initiatives going on that are you know originating new debt facilities or Refinancing what we have and adding on to the debt facilities and that I can say is in process
And then, you know, episodically, periodically, we'll raise equity capital because you've got to support your acquisition. You can't just do it on debt. You need to have equity as a base. And I think there's a lot of tools in the toolbox for us to do that, ranging from whether it's the overnight offering, if we like the price in which we can raise money at, forming JVs and bringing, you know, an investor into a JV type structure. I guess we could always think about recycling an asset and selling some of them. So, yeah.
But, you know, these are just tools in the toolbox and we'll face that as we project out what our capital needs are and what we actually think we're seeing invisibly for our pipeline.
Thank you so much everyone, stay well. Me too, have a good summer.
Our next question comes from Sammy Baudry with Credit Suisse. Please proceed. Hey, Sammy.
Hey there. Good morning, everyone.
Bill, I wanted to spend some time just talking about the escalators, and you've clearly made some progress with this, getting at contracted escalators of 4.2%, 2Q, 2022. You know, one thing that I guess a lot of us wanted to understand, given that a lot of your business is globally distributed, how do these negotiations really go? And how much more runway do you have to negotiate escalation in a world where...
inflationary dynamics begin to improve, right? So could you kind of give us how these negotiations go? You know, if there is a cap, when does the cap conversation come in?
How much longer do you guys have from a runway perspective to keep escalating? Just giving us like a little bit of a download on our dynamic would be very helpful.
I think the first thing you need to think about is just when does a lease expire and We don't know exactly if we disclosed. You know what our average weight of lease is so the only time you get to then have a negotiation is upon lease expiration and When we think about it I guess there's two approaches to lease renewal for us one is going to a higher level with some of our larger tenants and Having discussions whether or not it makes sense to do some type of master lease arrangement
because that's what our contracts permit us to have. Now they've had 20 years, 30 years, where inflation really was never a problem. So if you have a couple years where inflation went up, I don't think that it's, you know, we haven't seen them give them, we haven't seen it give pause to any of our tenants, because none of us expect inflation to meaningfully last for decades or anything like that. So that, um,
You know when leases roll off. They're simply a bucket of leases, and we typically Negotiate them one off with each of our tenants and someone you know who's basically local to that country where that asset is is Located hope that helps Annie
Yeah, so could there be a scenario where your escalators go up to, like, say, 7 or 8%, right? Assuming.
ongoing macroeconomic dynamics continue? Is there like a scenario for that to actually happen in this model?
Yes, absolutely, because we've got contracts, right? And so depending on when if the contract's got another eight or nine or ten years left to go, then yes, of course.
Got it. My other question is on adjusted EDI. So you definitely took a step up in the quarter. Was that management being more conscious or sorry, more cost conscious or was that there's the origination team being more productive? I'm going to defer to Glenn on this.
Go ahead. That's an origination team productivity, Sammy, for sure.
relative to the revenue generated and the cost to acquire them.
But you know, let me just remind you, I typically, personally, we probably dare ourselves a disservice in breaking out and calling attention to origination as G&A. Because to us, we don't need George Jackson. That's the wrong term.
Even though the accountants don't let us do it, it's all part and parcel of what we really do is our acquisition cost.
Right.
That's why we focus on annualized and placed rent. I mean, you know, all these things.
Absolutely. So my last question really is, you know, you guys managed to deploy a lot of capital in 2Q of 2022, and you're talking about being optimistic on going above your actual foreign land are guided range, and we are in this economic inflection type time period. Would it, you know, kind of be assumed that team origination productivity continues to increase and capital deployed opportunities also remain.
very significant and therefore like 3Q22 CapEx deployed or spend could be pretty significant as well, very comparable to 2Q.
So I think what I want to do is discuss with Glenn and perhaps we'll think about updating our guidance because I hear what you're asking and we want to be mindful and respectful to give as much information as we feel comfortable in doing. I'd rather just today say we're highly optimistic that we can find opportunities where we believe we can achieve the returns that we want given the risk requirement we have in our underwriting standards.
And remember, we're also always looking left and right to try to identify other similarly situated targets.
infrastructure assets tied to this digital revolution that gives us all the kind of attributes that you've heard us say in the past, meaning that they're essential, they're mission-critical, i.e. a long-winded way of saying they stand the test of time.
So, you know, hopefully that will also allow us to expand both our addressable market of what we can go after as well as you know achieving our short-term goals for originating.
Got it. Thank you.
Once again ladies and gentlemen to ask a question please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from Simon Flannery with Morgan Stanley please proceed.
Thanks, Paul. Good morning. Thanks, Paul. Good morning.
You talked about the importance of the escalators coming through. I think you said most of them are annual escalators. Is there a kind of a seasonality to them or is it fairly smooth through the years that really bunch up in at year end if there's any color there? Yeah, I think in our release we actually broke it up.
Yes, can you hear me? Yes, that's correct. So Simon, there is not really seasonality because you can imagine over this size of a portfolio we're acquiring assets.
various times that have various start and end dates on their in-place contracts. We did break out the escalation frequency.
And you can see that almost 75% of the people that were...
is annual, I would point out that in Q1 2021 that was 64%. So we're moving to more annual escalators and away from a three and five year term escalators based upon how we're acquiring assets.
Right. In our release, what were the actual breakdowns? Do you just want to let Simon know or are you pointing to it?
Yeah, so we've disclosed in our supplement here 75% or 74 and a half are annual. Obviously, we consistently described it to have no escalators, but we acquired the assets appropriately. Five-year escalators were 18% and three-year escalators were 5%.
appropriately means we you know it's priced in together for return we want of course.
Right and and obviously the currencies move pretty sharply year-to-date
How are you thinking about things like hedging and any other steps you can take to reduce the volatility around that?
I don't know if we can reduce quote-unquote volatility. I mean, we have, we constantly look at the hedging techniques that are out there, but we say to ourselves the following, which is because we run at a certain level of leverage, you're effectivelylaugh.
taking a lot of what would otherwise be equity in, you're taking it out. So you're running with less equity. So when you have the volatility, of course, your actual debt outstanding declines, because it's in local currency. The actual interest amount you pay also declines.
And so what happens then is when you really look on our levered recurring free cash flow, the impact actually isn't so meaningful. You know, a couple percentage points for any given quarter if the currency goes against us. Now, all that being said, we sit with a lot of cash in US dollars. So then, of course, we're using US dollars that are strong to then go buy assets in a currency that's declining. W
And we try to go even faster in those situations because if we have a view that the currency of the US is
It's going to remain strong or even get stronger if it moves us to continue to buy assets. So I guess when we looked over and stress tested it over a longer period of time, five to ten years, you know, this is not meant to simplify too much, but I guess we use the word muting because that duration sort of takes out some of the volatility you'll see quarter to quarter and it's really a dollar cost averaging type of approach and it today has worked very well for us.
That doesn't mean we wouldn't do hedging. We do look at a conflict.
Great. And then just coming back to the M&A, great to see the transaction volume this quarter. Can you just give us a little bit more insight into what you're seeing in the marketplace? Because I think if you look at the broader M&A market, there's been a significant reduction in deals. And I think others have talked about a mismatch between seller expectations and buyer willingness to pay. So there's been a little bit of a pause or a slowdown in activity, but that doesn't seem to have affected you. So.
How would you describe what you're seeing in the marketplace and how that's evolved over the last few months?
I think it goes to the core thesis behind our business, which is that we are willing to roll our sleeves up and to do so many discrete deals, you know, ranging from a size probably of 50,000, 100,000, you know, sort of as an average. And then we do some of the fiber aggregation points. Those can be a lot larger. And sometimes they come in portfolios where we'll buy a portfolio, which would make it a little more lumpy. Some buy somerated products, but not all our boxes. Some buy all three companies. Some buy three great higher standards.............................
and a little larger size, but when we say larger size, a $10 million deal, $30 million deal, it's not the same as probably the M&A that you're referring to because it's just a bigger scale and because we're willing to try to do many, many, many smaller deals and aggregate it all together. I think that and our team of originators across 20 countries gives us what we think is a real competitive advantage in the marketplace to put capital to work, but we're working hard.
Great. And just one lastly, on the sGNA side, how are you managing inflationary pressures there?
As labor is very tight. You know a big part of our SGA as you know is personnel, right? And so what we want to do is make sure that when people are really performing and doing a good job I'm all for you know paying them a lot and making sure we keep our team. You know really well-incented and You know rolling the overall in the right direction So I don't think and maybe I defer to Glenn that we've seen the inflation on pressures have had.
Too much of an impact, but I I probably am speaking too quickly. Is there anything I'm noticing?
No, you're not missing anything, but Bill, that's all appropriate. I would say this, right, Simon, if you think about the bulk of our SG&A spend is relating to acquiring the assets, and so it's effectively in our 6.4 cap rate.
which has been consistent. So, you know, it's incumbent upon us to look at any inflationary cost that we have in our SG&A spend to couple that with how we're pricing assets to make sure we get an appropriate return.
And one last thing I would add Simon, and you will laugh when I say this, but because we are putting all of that origination SG&A, and we view it as part of just the asset price, while we are not permitted to account for it and capitalize it probably the way we would like, the IRS of course, and you heard me say this, gives us the right to deduct that. And so every time we look at that part of the SG&A, it's like a $.21 reduction, because that's our corporate tax rate and we're holding company, clearly there are local taxes which we do have to pay.
periodically.
Great. Thanks a lot.
Okay, thanks man.
There are no further questions in queue at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to Mr. Berkman for closing comments.
Thank you, operator. Hey, thanks everybody for joining us today in August . I hope everybody has a great end of the summer. Again, I just want to repeat that I'm super proud of our team and what they've been able to achieve this quarter and I'm hopeful and both excited to...
have us generate increasing acquisitions that we think are compelling. Thank you very much everybody.
Thank you everyone. You may disconnect your lines at this time and have a great day.