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Q1 2025 Netstreit Corp Earnings Call

In This Article:

Participants

Amy An; Investor Relations; Netstreit Corp

Mark Manheimer; President, Chief Executive Officer; Netstreit Corp

Daniel Donlan; Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer; Netstreit Corp

Haendel St. Juste; Analyst; Mizuho Securities

Greg McGinniss; Analyst; Scotiabank

John Kilichowski; Analyst; Wells Fargo

Michael Goldsmith; Analyst; UBS

Smedes Rose; Analyst; Citibank

Michael Gorman; Analyst; BTIG

Wes Golladay; Analyst; Baird

Ki Bin Kim; Analyst; Truist Securities

Linda Tsai; Analyst; Jefferies

Daniel Guglielmo; Analyst; Capital One Securities

Jana Galan; Analyst; Bank of America

Upal Rana; Analyst; KeyBanc Capital Markets

Jay Kornreich; Analyst; Wedbush Securities

Presentation

Operator

Greetings. Welcome to NETSTREIT Corp. first-quarter 2025 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Amy An, Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Amy An

We thank you for joining us for NETSTREIT's first-quarter 2025 earnings conference call. In addition to the press release distributed yesterday after market close, we posted a supplemental package and an updated investor presentation. Both can be found in the Investor Relations section of the company's website at www.netstreit.com.
On today's call, management's remarks and answers to your questions may contain forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements address matters that are subject to risk and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ from those discussed today.
For more information about these risk factors, we encourage you to review our Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024, and our other SEC filings. All forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and NETSTREIT assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements in the future.
In addition, certain financial information presented on this call includes non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our earnings release and supplemental package for definitions of our non-GAAP measures. Reconciliation to the most comparable GAAP measure and an explanation of why we believe such non-GAAP financial measures are useful to investors.
Today's conference call is hosted by NETSTREIT's Chief Executive Officer, Mark Manheimer; and Chief Financial Officer, Dan Donlan. They will make some prepared remarks, and then we will open the call for your questions. Now I'll turn the call over to Mark. Mark?

Mark Manheimer

Thank you, Amy, and thank you all for joining us this morning on our first-quarter 2025 earnings call. During the quarter, we made additional progress on reducing our top five tenant concentrations, and we continue to see healthy performance from the stores that we own.
On the external growth front, our team continues to source attractive investment opportunities, but our investment pace remains more measured versus prior years. This deliberate stance is rooted in our desire to maintain a low leverage balance sheet and our view that our cost of capital needs to better reflect our portfolio strength and best in class operating performance, which I will discuss later in my prepared remarks.
During the quarter, we completed $90.7 million of gross investments at a blended cash yield of 7.7%. The weighted average lease term for these investments was 9.2 years, with investment grade and investment grade profile tenants representing 66% of AVR.
Additionally, more than half of our activity this quarter was accretively funded with loan payoffs and disposition proceeds, the latter of which totaled $40.3 million across 16 properties at a 7.3% blended cash yield.
While we have and will continue to maintain a measured approach towards net investment activity, we are currently seeing no shortage of great investment opportunities across various capital deployment strategies. As such, we stand ready to accelerate our investment pace to levels that are similar or above where we have acquired in the past, should we see a more sustained improvement in our cost of equity.
Turning to the portfolio, we ended the quarter with investments in 695 properties that were leased to 101 tenants operating in 26 industries across 45 states. From a credit perspective, 71% of our total ABR is leased to investment grade or investment grade profile tenants. Our weighted average lease term remaining for the portfolio was 9.7 years, with just 1.3% of ABR expiring through 2026.
Our focus on granular and fungible assets has led to continued demand for our properties when we decide to decrease our concentrations. This strong level of demand resulted in our top five tenant concentration declining 70 basis points to 28.2% of ABR, including a 50 basis point reduction in our top tenant, Dollar General to 8.1% of ABR.
While we have made tremendous strides towards our diversification goals, we are not slowing our efforts, as evidenced by our expectation for strong disposition activity at lower cash yields in the second quarter. We remain confident that we can achieve our previously articulated diversification goals, and we continue to see these sales being completed at accretive spreads to where we can invest, which is something we have done every quarter in our history.
From a tenant perspective, we continue to add new high quality and low risk tenants to our roster, including Gerber Collision, who is now a top 20 tenant, as well as many other large grocers, convenience store operators, quick service restaurants, and auto service chains.
We continue to avoid specialized real estate and large less fungible boxes given their limited reuse potential and expensive nature of repurposing the real estate. Similarly, we continue to have limited exposure to sectors that are more susceptible to distress when the economy slows.
In short, we believe our portfolio, which derives 88% of ABR from necessity, discount, and service-oriented industries, can weather any economic environment and avoid large losses should credit events test our real estate underwriting.
With that in mind, we were the only net lease REIT to report zero credit losses during COVID, and we have maintained best in class performance in this regard since coming public nearly five years ago. Our credit underwriting continues to prove out despite various negative headlines and store closure announcements.
As an example, our loan credit event with Big Lots resulted in just 20 basis points of credit loss, with seven of our eight locations being assumed by variety wholesalers or Ali Bargain outlet.
While we have always taken a less hyperbolic approach at that street, I'd be remiss to point out that our outcome as it relates to our Big Lots exposure draws a stark contrast to the impact felt by other landlords of Big Lots, that can only be explained by our strong underwriting and attentive asset management.
While we have had some of our larger tenant concentrations experienced negative headlines in the past, we have had virtually no impact to our in-place cash flow since inception. And while we expect this positive performance to continue despite two of our tenants, Family Dollar and Walgreens being subject to going private transactions, based on our understanding of the deal structures and associated EBITDA of the standalone entities, both companies intend to operate with low leverage.
Similarly, given that both companies closed a large number of stores well in advance of these announcements, it is our understanding that neither company intends to close many additional locations beyond what has already been announced.
Lastly, we see reasons for optimism on the operations front as the new leadership at Family Dollar plans to return the brand to the roots that made the brand successful prior to the merger with Dollar Tree, while Walgreens stands to benefit from a more focused team with a broader understanding of retail.
Before handing the call over to Dan, I wanted to reiterate a message that we have consistently provided in the past. We will not sacrifice our balance sheet for growth, nor will we grow for the sake of asset growth without an appropriate level per share earnings growth.
We will remain opportunistic as it pertains to new investments, and we are more than capable of ramping our investment pace should our investment spreads turn more favorable. Given the high quality and resilient nature of the portfolio that we own and manage and the various catalysts we see materializing from completing our tenant diversity goals as well as achieving an eventual investment grade credit rating, we are confident that our growth from a small-based narrative can gain further traction as we execute our strategy.
With that, I'll hand the call to Dan to go over our first quarter financials and then open up the call for your questions.