Q3 2024 Tanger Inc Earnings Call
Good morning. I'm Ashley Curtis, Assistant Vice President of Investor Relations, and I would like to welcome you to Tanger, Inc.'s third quarter 2024 conference call.
Yesterday evening, we issued our earnings release as well as our supplemental information package and investor presentation.
Please note this call may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties and actual results could differ materially from those projected. We direct you to our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a detailed discussion of these risks and uncertainties.
During the call, we will also discuss non-GAAP financial measures as defined by SEC Regulation G. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are included in our earnings release and in our supplemental information.
This call is being recorded for rebroadcast for a period of time in the future.
As such, it is important to note that management's comments include time-sensitive information that may only be accurate as of today's date, November 7, 2024.
At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Following management's prepared comments, the call will be opened for your questions. We request that everyone ask only one question and one follow-up question. If time permits, we are happy for you to reach you for additional questions.
Speaker Change: On the call today will be Stephen Yalof, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Michael Bilerman, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Investment Officer. In addition, other members of our leadership team will be available for Q&A. I will now turn the call over to Stephen Yalof. Please go ahead.
Stephen Yalof: Thank you for joining us today. I'm pleased to share that Tanger has delivered another quarter of strong results and we are increasing our full year guidance.
Stephen Yalof: Core FFO for the quarter reached 54 cents per share, an 8% increase from the prior year period, supported by a 4.3% increase in same-center NOI.
Stephen Yalof: This growth is attributed to the continued execution of our strategic plan to drive rents, add new retailers and uses, and operate more efficiently, leveraging our scale and our talented team.
Stephen Yalof: These results are especially encouraging because they reflect the sustained demand for space in our centers.
Stephen Yalof: our success in curating an exciting and new mix of retailers and restaurants that resonate with our shoppers, coupled with effective marketing that focuses on connecting with our shoppers both on center and off through our enhanced digital channels.
Stephen Yalof: We continue to successfully elevate the shopper experience by attracting sought-after brands while diversifying our tenant mix, which is helping drive consistent traffic to our centers.
Stephen Yalof: We've also seen positive momentum in sales, as average tenant sales productivity has remained steady at $438 per square foot for the trailing 12 months.
Stephen Yalof: Additionally, we continue to replace less productive stores with newer and more productive ones, and we anticipate positive sales momentum as their sales annualize.
Stephen Yalof: I'd like to expand on how we're positioning our centers to meet evolving consumer preferences and demand.
Stephen Yalof: Our center remerchandising efforts are aimed at attracting a broader, younger, and more affluent demographic while maintaining our value proposition.
Stephen Yalof: A leasing team continues to sign leases with aspirational brands, many that are new to our channel, as well as grow our base of food, beverage, and entertainment uses.
Stephen Yalof: Further, our targeted digital marketing capabilities and community engagement initiatives allow us to communicate more directly to a younger generation of shoppers who are seeking their favorite brands at the best possible price and have demonstrated their desire to shop in our open-air centers.
Stephen Yalof: The success of this strategy is evident in our leasing activity and occupancy growth ending the quarter at 97.4%
Stephen Yalof: Our leasing team executed 543 leases totaling 2.6 million square feet over the trailing 12 months.
Stephen Yalof: Importantly, we achieved our 11th consecutive quarter of positive rent spreads, delivering a blended increase of 14% on comparable space. This consists of re-tenanting spreads of 46% and renewal spreads of 12%.
Stephen Yalof: I want to take a moment to address our response to the recent hurricanes in the Southeast.
Stephen Yalof: Several of our centers were in the past of Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
Stephen Yalof: I'm thankful that our team members and their families remain safe and that we experienced only minor physical impacts across our portfolio.
Stephen Yalof: Our Asheville Center did close temporarily due to utility disruptions from Hurricane Helene.
but it's since fully reopened.
Stephen Yalof: During the center's closed days, Tanger Asheville immediately became a crucial staging location for first responders and relief organizations who literally camped out on our site providing life-saving support to the surrounding community.
Stephen Yalof: Our common areas became the home for canine rescue teams which provided vital early assistance to our community members in distress.
Stephen Yalof: We continue to support the Asheville community's recovery efforts through our fundraising and volunteer efforts across our enterprise, exemplifying our core value to consider community first.
Stephen Yalof: Looking ahead, we're confident in our strategy and excited about the opportunity we see to further enhance our portfolio and drive sustainable growth.
Stephen Yalof: We remain focused on growing the value of our open-air centers through our in-place portfolio, as well as potential external opportunities.
Stephen Yalof: The robust demand for space in our centers combined with our strong balance sheet, operational execution and strategic initiatives gives us confidence in our ability to continue delivering solid results.
Stephen Yalof: We are very excited to welcome Sonia Singhal to the Tanger board. For nearly 30 years of retail industry experience and leadership.
Stephen Yalof: including her term as CEO of GAP Inc. will strengthen the capabilities of our board as we look forward to her many contributions in the years ahead.
Stephen Yalof: I'd also want to thank our dedicated team members, particularly those who have worked tirelessly in response to the recent weather events.
Stephen Yalof: as well as our retail partners and shareholders for their continued support.
Speaker Change: I'll now turn the call over to Michael to discuss our financial results and outlook in more detail.
Michael Bilerman: Thank you, Steve. Today I'm going to discuss our positive third quarter financial results, our well-positioned balance sheet, and our increased guidance for the year.
Michael Bilerman: In the third quarter, we delivered core FFO of $0.54 a share compared to $0.50 a share in the third quarter of the prior year as we saw continued core growth along with the contributions from the three new centers that we added in the fourth quarter of last year.
Michael Bilerman: Same Center NOI increased 4.3% for the quarter, driven by higher rental revenues and modestly lower operating expenses.
Stephen Yalof: On the revenue side, we continue to see strong retailer demand and robust leasing activity. And our team continues to push total rents with higher base rents and increased expense recoveries.
Stephen Yalof: Our balance sheet remains well positioned to support our internal and external growth initiatives with low leverage, a largely fixed-rate balance sheet, full availability in our lines of credit, essentially no debt maturities until late 2026,
Stephen Yalof: and ample free cash flow after dividends given our low dividend payout ratio.
Stephen Yalof: Our net debt to adjusted EBITDA pro-rata share was five times.
for the 12 Months Ended September 30th.
Stephen Yalof: down from 5.8 times at the end of last year, which reflected the late-year funding of our acquisitions and development without the full-year benefit of EBITDA of those assets.
Stephen Yalof: As we indicated last year, our pro forma leverage would have been 5.2 to 5.3 times versus that 5.8 level, assuming a full year of EBITDA from those assets.
Stephen Yalof: As we disclosed in our release last night, we estimate that our pro forma leverage at September 30th would be 4.8 to 4.9 times versus 5 times at September 30th, which reflects
Stephen Yalof: the continued positive same-center growth, retention of free cash flow, and capital markets activities.
Stephen Yalof: to that end during the third quarter and subsequent to quarter end.
Stephen Yalof: We sold 1.3 million shares under our ETM program at $31.59 per share, generating gross proceeds of $41 million, which reduced all of the borrowings on our lines of credit and put us in a modest net cash position.
Stephen Yalof: At quarter end, we had $1.6 billion of ProRata net debt with a weighted average interest rate of 4.1% and full availability on our 620 million lines of credit.
Stephen Yalof: In October, our board declared our quarterly dividend, which is 5.8% higher than last year on an annualized basis, and our quarterly cash dividend remains well covered, with a continued low payout ratio, providing free cash flow to support our growth.
Stephen Yalof: Now turning to our increased guidance for 2024, we are raising and narrowing our core FFO per share expectations to a range of $2.09 to $2.13, from a prior range of $2.05 to $2.12.
Stephen Yalof: and now representing core FFO growth of seven to nine percent.
Stephen Yalof: up from 3.25% to 4.75% due to the better than expected performance in the third quarter and our outlook for the fourth quarter.
Stephen Yalof: For additional details on our key assumptions, please see our release issued last night. And now I would like to open the call up for your questions. Operator, can we take our first question, please?
Speaker Change: Certainly. When I'll be conducting a question-and-answer session, if you'd like to be placed to the question queue, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue.
Speaker Change: You may press star Q if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing star 1. One moment please while we poll for questions. Our first question is coming from Jeff Spector from Bank of America. Your line is now live.
Jeff Spector: Great, thank you, and congratulations on the quarter. My first question, it might be tough to answer, but Stephen, given all your years of experience in retail...
Speaker Change: The market is panicking here on tariffs, lower U.S. consumption. I don't know if you have any thoughts here on that. I know you've seen a lot in your career.
Stephen Yalof: Obviously, the business is cyclical and we've survived many cycles, Jeff.
Stephen Yalof: but you know the early read on it, week holiday shopping, you know I don't know if you've been out but we haven't as of November 1st, the holiday decorations are up.
Stephen Yalof: And people are shopping, and people are shopping early. And what we're hearing, what we're reading, and particularly speaking to a lot of our retailers, is that the discount channel is going to probably be a big contributor to their sales this year across a lot of the retailers that we're working with.
Stephen Yalof: So, that being said, I think we're probably well-positioned, if not better positioned than anyone, to enjoy customers coming through our centers to get, you know, what they're looking for. And that's, you know, great brands at great value every day. So, we fit right into that sweet spot.
Speaker Change: Thank you. And then I know for, you know, this past year and you touched on it in your opening remarks on the retening efforts.
Speaker Change: bringing in aspirational brands. Can you talk a little bit more about the progress you've been making in 24, what you've learned, and then your thoughts heading into 25? Thank you.
Speaker Change: Sure, let's use Sephora as a case study because I think it's a really important really important one. You know we announced last quarter that we've done a number of leases with Sephora which is a brand new brand to our shopping centers.
and you're excited about the...
a number of prospects for that brand. First of all,
Speaker Change: They drive a much younger customer, which I talked about in my opening remarks being one of our goals. Number two, an aspirational customer. You know, they carry high loads as far as their brand and their merchandising is concerned. So not only do they attract our core customer, but I think they bring a new shopper into our centers.
Speaker Change: Also, you know, we talked about our local initiatives, so I take a look at a brand like a Sephora again and think, wow, they're going to be a great resource for a lot of the folks that live in the local community, but also for that tourist that comes and visits our shopping center.
Speaker Change: And then we talk about our marketing and our marketing initiatives and how important that is to leverage off of some of these new aspirational brands that we're bringing to the centers.
Speaker Change: And so, I believe it was two weeks ago, we did a day of beauty across our portfolio where we highlighted, not only Sephora, but Ulta and cosmetics companies are the best.
Speaker Change: cosmetic and health and beauty retails we have in our portfolio and it was one of the great traffic days leading up to the holiday shopping season.
Speaker Change: So I think the mix of strategy of bringing in these brands coupled with going after that local catchment with our marketing efforts
Speaker Change: getting that tourist and not alienating our core customers, which is so vital to our success.
Speaker Change: Now, this strategy seems to be working in the early stages, and we're optimistic about rolling this out further with other brands that we're currently working with. And you know, we sign leases, but we don't talk about the new deals that we've done until they put their sign up on the door and they're ready to open.
Thank you.
Speaker Change: Thank you. Next question today is coming from Todd Thomas from Key Bank Capital Markets. Your line is now live.
Speaker Change: Hi, good morning. This is Intara Natchadori on for Todd Thomas. I just had a couple quick ones. In terms of leasing spreads, do you expect to be able to generate similar blended leasing spreads in 2025 and is this a pace you expect to be able to maintain?
Thanks for the question. There are leasing spreads.
Speaker Change: which we are reporting, we continue to be in a low OCR at 9.5%.
Speaker Change: We feel that there's still opportunity to grow that to low double digits.
Speaker Change: which reflects the fact that we believe that our current tenants are under market and those that are coming to join us in the portfolio from the re-merchandising and re-tenanting efforts which you can see on a trailing 12-month basis, those spreads were very positive.
Speaker Change: So we believe that we'll continue to see positive lead spreads as we continue to move forward.
Speaker Change: Got it and in terms of your acquisition pipeline are you seeing any more opportunities and if you are are they more non-outlet or outlet in nature?
Speaker Change: So say on the investment front there continues to be both marketed transactions as well as off-market transactions.
Speaker Change: across both outlet as well as open-air lifestyle centers as well as adjacencies around our assets and that continues to be active overall.
Got it. Thank you.
Speaker Change: Thank you. Next question is coming from Hong Zhang from J.P. Morgan. Your line is now live.
Speaker Change: Yeah, hey, so expense recoveries have been a pretty strong contributor to both NOI and same-store growth this year. I guess looking toward next year, how do you expect the dollar amount to trend from 3Q?
Speaker Change: Thanks for the question. So, you know, the expense recovery rate has got two factors going on.
Speaker Change: The numerator, which is us driving rent, and the denominator, which is our total operating expense load. So the first part is our leasing strategy, when we are signing leases, is to drive, and
Speaker Change: all of the elements of revenues. And so we are getting increased base rents and we are getting increased expense recoveries from our tenants, largely on a fixed-cam basis.
Speaker Change: So that's why you're seeing the growth on the revenue side in both base minimum and in fixed-term.
Speaker Change: level in the second half of the year. A lot of that's in the fourth quarter just given the timing of marketing, the timing of holiday, the cost of that marketing, the cost of operating our centers relative to last year.
Speaker Change: Senate recovery rate this year we talked about being in the mid 80s we may be a tad higher than that mid 80s level for the year a big part of that is just continuing to drive the leaf spreads which we talked about in the last question and continuing to operate as efficiently as possible and we expect that to continue into next year
Thank you.
Speaker Change: Thank you. Next question today is coming from Caitlin Burrows from Goldman Sachs. Your line is now live.
Speaker Change: Hi, good morning everyone. Maybe another one on the retenanting kind of process or pipeline. Could you give some details on the amount of new brands you're bringing in, kind of the outlook for increasing that further and how deep they're going in the portfolio?
Speaker Change: Morning, Caitlin. Thank you for the question. This is Justin. So, you know, every day that we wake up
Speaker Change: These things are focused on four things, it's driving rents, it's diversifying the assortment.
Speaker Change: It's increasing our occupancy and activating our peripheral land. And when it comes to...
Speaker Change: diversifying the assortment and we talked about a lot of the new brands that have entered our portfolio and what we found in a great example is a tenant like Birkenstock.
They started with us in two centers.
Speaker Change: They've been extremely successful out of the gate, and now we're working on stores 3 and 4 with them. And so, as tenants enter our channel, as they enter our portfolio, and as we prove success with them, partnering with them, not only on the leasing side, but the marketing side of the business, and they're successful, we see that opportunity to grow throughout all 40 of our assets.
Speaker Change: All right. Okay. And then, Jocelyn, there, you brought up the activating land point. I'm wondering if you or somebody else can talk a little bit more about that. I know it's something you guys have been focused on for a while. So, would you say that it's kind of at a steady state now or is that still growing? Or what are the kind of near-term opportunities there, medium-term?
Speaker Change: We had mentioned that probably half of our properties have opportunity. Again, it's really capital allocation. So as we see opportunities or brands or restaurants or other uses that are looking to take
Speaker Change: take our peripheral lands, and we're looking at the return on that investment.
Speaker Change: So there's plenty of opportunity out there, but feel free to make sense. That said, we do have a team of people that are only focused on monetizing that lab.
Speaker Change: So it's, you know, it's less of a rush to get it done, and more of a really thoughtful process making sure that we're in the right tenets. It'll be complementary to our shopping center.
Speaker Change: And so that we can execute this long-term growth, which we think will have a lot of opportunity and upside in the coming years.
Thank you.
Speaker Change: Thank you, next question is coming from Flores Van Dyckum from Compass Pointer Line, is that live?
Hey, good morning, guys.
Forrest and Justin, thank you for the question.
Speaker Change: How we focus, every center has its own market rent and that's driven by the demand within each center. What we've been able to execute to this year is occupancies in the 10, 11, 12 percent range as tenants come into our portfolio.
Speaker Change: So, Justin, just to make sure that I understand that correctly, your new lease spreads are plus 40 percent. I think they were 45 percent this past quarter. That means that those tenant sales, once they start to anniversary and you report them,
will be.
Speaker Change: 45% or greater than the average tenant sales you're reporting today. Is that the right interpretation?
Speaker Change: I don't think it's about sales floors, I think it's really about the rents that we're able to generate. You know, we're replacing tenants...
Speaker Change: based on the productivity of the center, our ability to continue to build occupancy in those centers.
Speaker Change: the center demographics, all of the ingredients that go into generating better market rents.
Speaker Change: You know, you've got to couple that with the fact that there's not a lot of new development that's happening in the country these days, and we believe that our real estate is becoming more valuable every day as more brands want to be in our space.
Speaker Change: More retailers, restaurants, and alternative uses want to populate our shopping centers. And because of that demand, we're able to raise our retail rates accordingly.
Speaker Change: Great. Thanks, Steve. If I can have one follow-up question. Maybe talk a little bit about the the acquisition environment. I know you haven't announced anything, but you're essentially getting a green light from the market to grow externally. Maybe talk a little bit about what you're seeing in terms of trends.
Speaker Change: Cap rates and you know there's an expectation that cap rates for retail are going to compress
Thank you.
Speaker Change: How do you think about investing dollars today and where do you see greater opportunities? Is it in lifestyle centers or is it in other avenues?
Of course. Thanks for the question.
We're looking at our acquisitions.
Asked, is where can we add value?
Where can we add value from our leasing?
Speaker Change: are operating in our marketing platform in the assets that we're buying that our hope is to bring assets in the portfolio that are both strategic and financially accretive to the platform. And I'd say, you know, to a comment earlier in the call and we're active on all fronts.
Speaker Change: It's a competitive market and we'll announce transactions as we close them.
Speaker Change: But there's certainly more product being offered in the market as well as things that we're chasing down on our own.
Thanks, Michael.
Speaker Change: Thank you. Next question is coming from Greg McGinnis from Scotiabank. Your line is now live.
Speaker Change: Hello, this is Victor Fedio on with Greg McGinnis. First of all, yeah, congrats on strong leasing quarters. And only a few centers experienced some noticeable occupancy decline. Hilton Head and Rehobo Beach were among those. So I just wanted to get some details about which tenants departed, why, and how is the tenting process going.
Speaker Change: I think, you know, some of the occupancy decline that you're mentioning is really frictional vacancy, so we've said it's beginning of the year, and even, we go back, it's beginning
Speaker Change: for the last quarter of last year. He said that we're going to strategically think about replacing retailers that are less productive with more productive retailers.
Speaker Change: What comes with that trade is some downtime and some frictional vacancy.
Speaker Change: So I think in those particular assets, which are really very strong assets in our portfolio, you're seeing some of that frictional vacancy as existing tenants leases expire and new tenants get ready to take delivery possession of those locations.
Speaker Change: Got it. And probably just a small follow up on kind of your capital deployment opportunities. So I was I wanted to ask about red development opportunities or greenfield development.
Speaker Change: Probably now they are not penciling for you, since you haven't started anything, but what needs to happen for this to be a viable option for you?
Speaker Change: If you look at the construction environment, construction costs still remain very high. And so we find today the opportunity to buy existing product at a substantial discount to replacement costs.
is much more attractive than new development.
Speaker Change: That doesn't mean we're not looking at potential opportunities to find potential void markets or other ways. We just find that the acquisition environment today provides better risk-adjusted returns overall. There is a lack of supply in the marketplace.
Speaker Change: and the demand for space is high and so that makes it a good environment today looking at assets.
Thank you.
Speaker Change: Thank you. Next question is coming from Craig Mailman from City, your line is now live.
Speaker Change: Thanks, it's Nick Joseph here with Craig. Michael, just following up on that last comment, understand on the greenfield side, but how about on out parcel development starts?
Michael Bilerman: Sure, so on peripheral, we talked a little bit about that, you know, half of the
portfolio has some form of opportunity.
We're trying to find the right uses.
Michael Bilerman: to bring to the centers, you know, from a capital deployment standpoint. That's not a large endeavor because we already own the land. And typically, we'll look at a variety of different structures depending on the use that we're bringing. But it's something that we're focused on in terms of intensifying the real estate. And I think we're going to be doing this tour in Phoenix right after Navy.
Michael Bilerman: That, you know, it is examples of activating a lot of that out parcel, you know, a little while ago we had bought a parcel land from the Arizona Department of Transportation, which abuts
Michael Bilerman: our assets and we've begun to activate that. We had Texas Roadhouse which had opened last quarter and when you're there post Mayread and the investors that will join, I'll be able to see a lot of that activation emblematic of what's going on around our portfolio.
The End
Speaker Change: Thanks and then are there any early takeaways from either on dwell time or sales from the Sephora openings?
Speaker Change: Great question on dwell time. That's a new metric that we're starting to focus really heavily on.
Speaker Change: Our 12-time members have been anecdotal, but now with a lot of technology that's available to us.
Speaker Change: We're going to start to get a little bit more scientific around that, because we think the longer we keep people on the property, obviously, the more money they'll spend, and that will add a lot of value to our centers.
which, you know, in the old days, it outlets...
Speaker Change: in the same car shopping outlet, maybe it was once, twice a year, but when you're in the middle of the community, you serve as the shopping center for that community.
and we continue to bring in more sit-down restaurants.
Speaker Change: more entertainment uses and in this particular case Sephora or in Ulta we see that customer once again shop us far more frequently.
So our centers
Speaker Change: are starting to take on more of that category of sort of an open-air shopping center that is central to the geographies that they serve and ones that the customers are looking at and prefer to shop first when they think about a center that they're going to go visit in their community.
Thank you very much.
Speaker Change: Thank you, next question is from Caitlin Burrows from Goldman Sachs, your line is now live.
Speaker Change: Hi again. Just going back to the hurricanes, I know you guys mentioned that you have business interruption insurance, but wondering if there was anything in particular that we should be expecting for 4Q. Perhaps there's like a timing mismatch, but yeah, so anything we should be thinking for the model in 4Q and I guess going into 25 that might offset it, or is the timing coincidental and there should be no impact?
Yeah, there was nothing that stands out.
Speaker Change: We were closed for a few days in Asheville, about a week and a half, but retailers
Speaker Change: They were opening during the course of that time. In fact, Sportsbeat Warehouse, which is on the site in Asheville, that store never closed. So, as stores continue to open, retailers continue to pay rent, so I don't think there's anything that needs to go in their mind.
Speaker Change: okay got it and then maybe just another one on the kind of acquisition capital deployment side I don't think it came up recognizing that today leverage is under five times and you used your ATM I guess could you just remind us on your target leverage range or maybe the range that you're comfortable with
Speaker Change: Thanks Kaitlin, and we've targeted a net 50 with DAW five to six times and we'll float around that range depending on our deployment and being a little bit lower today with basically reducing
Speaker Change: The amount that was drawn on our line of credit at 6.30 through the modest equity raise that we did.
Thanks.
Speaker Change: Thank you. Thank you. We've reached the end of our question and answer session. Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's teleconference and webcast. You may disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.