Q1 2025 Realty Income Corp Earnings Call

In This Article:

Participants

Kelsey Mueller; Vice President, Investor Relations; Realty Income Corp

Sumit Roy; President, Chief Executive Officer, Director; Realty Income Corp

Jonathan Pong; Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President, Treasurer; Realty Income Corp

Smedes Rose; Analyst; Citigroup Inc

Brad Heffern; Analyst; RBC Capital Markets

Ryan Caviola; Analyst; Green Street Advisors

Haendel St. Juste; Analyst; Mizuho Securities Co Ltd

Ronald Kamdem; Analyst; Morgan Stanley & Co LLC

Greg McGinniss; Analyst; Scotiabank

Michael Goldsmith; Analyst; UBS

Richard Hightower; Analyst; Barclays Capital Inc

Jana Galan; Analyst; Bank of America Securities

Jay Kornreich; Analyst; Wedbush Securities Inc

Wesley Golladay; Analyst; Robert W. Baird & Co

Linda Yu Tsai; Analyst; Jefferies Group LLC

Upal Rana; Analyst; KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc

Anthony Paolone; Analyst; JPMorgan Chase & Co

Omotayo Okusanya; Analyst; Deutsche Bank

Presentation

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Realty Income first-quarter 2025 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) Please note this event is being recorded.
I would now like to turn the conference over to Kelsey Mueller, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Kelsey Mueller

Thank you for joining us today for Realty Income's 2025 first-quarter operating results conference call. Discussing our results will be Sumit Roy, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Jonathan Pong, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer.
During this conference call, we will make statements that may be considered forward-looking statements under federal securities laws. The company's actual future results may differ significantly from the matters discussed in any forward-looking statements. We will disclose in greater detail the factors that may cause such differences in the company's filing on Form 10-Q. During the Q&A portion of the call, we will be observing question limit. If you would like to ask additional questions, you may reenter the queue.
I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Sumit Roy.

Sumit Roy

Thank you, Kelsey. Welcome, everyone. Realty Income's first-quarter results reflect the strength, consistency, and resilience of our business model anchored by a highly diversified global portfolio. Our ability to deliver reliable performance through varying market conditions remains a hallmark of our platform. Over our history, we have strategically diversified our business model across client types, asset classes, and geographies, an approach that proves to be an increasingly valuable in today's uncertain macroeconomic environment.
Our portfolio is comprised of 65% US retail, which includes high-quality clients that have demonstrated resilience through economic cycles. To that end, given the strength of our client base and our proactive portfolio management, we expect a negligible portion of our client base to be meaningfully impacted by tariffs, which has already been incorporated into our updated credit assumptions. The diversification and quality of our portfolio, combined with our proven stability as an operator, position us to navigate potential external pressures effectively, as we have consistently done.
Moving to the details of the first quarter. We delivered AFFO per share of $1.06, representing a year-over-year growth of 2.9%. This marks a continuation of our long-standing track record of positive AFFO per share growth in all but one year over our 30-year history as a public company.
This growth, combined with our 6% dividend yield, resulted in total operational returns of 8.9% for the quarter, underscoring the value of our platform. We leveraged our diverse sourcing avenues to focus investment activity where we saw the most compelling opportunities, notably in Europe.
In total, we invested $1.4 billion at a 7.5% weighted average initial cash yield, equating to a spread of 204 basis points over our short-term weighted average cost of capital. Importantly, 72% of our investment volume came from five transactions over $50 million, illustrating one of the many ways our size and scale drive value creation.
We continue to benefit from a meaningful portfolio discount when competing for high-quality net lease investments in the marketplace. In the US, we invested $479 million at an 8.3% weighted average initial cash yield. And in Europe, which accounted for 65% of total investment volume this quarter. We deployed $893 million at an average initial cash yield of 7%. The region continues to offer compelling opportunities as we scale our business and seek to capitalize on the attractive dynamics of this large fragmented market. Our international presence and capabilities differentiate us from most of the net lease platforms.
Importantly, it offers us geographic diversification, which helps navigate concrete specific uncertainties. This expansion into Europe demonstrates how our entrance into new verticals can create immediate value and achieve scalability in a relatively short time. We believe our investments in talent combined with the portability of our deep access to global capital markets have enabled us to achieve scale without adding incremental risk to the enterprise.
Turning back to the quarter. We continue to deliver strong operational results across our diversified portfolio, which now comprises over 15,600 properties, spanning 91 industries and almost 1,600 unique clients. We consider our clients to be well positioned through various economic cycles, given the inherently defensive nature of our top industries, including grocery, convenience stores, and wholesale clubs.
Of our client base, over 34% are investment grade with average rent coverage of 2.9x. As a reminder, over 90% of our retail rent comes from clients that we consider to offer one or more of the following: nondiscretionary goods, low price points or a service-oriented component for consumers.
Over our long operating history, we have consistently found these types of businesses to be highly resilient during economic downturns. Combined with the significant diversification of our portfolio, we believe this provides investors with relative safety as reflected in our long-term operating results.
We ended the quarter with 98.5% portfolio occupancy, approximately 20 basis points below the prior quarter and ahead of the historical median of 98.2% from 2010 to 2024. Our rent recapture rate across 194 leases was 103.9%, with 92% of leasing activity generated from renewals by the existing client. Consistent with our historical experience, these results were accomplished with minimal lease incentives, which totaled less than $700,000 during the quarter on over $46 million of rent of new annual rents signed.
And we remained active in our approach to optimizing the portfolio. We sold 55 properties for total net proceeds of $93 million, of which $63 million was related to vacant properties. Overall, we believe our results reflect that we are operating from a position of strength as we continue to leverage our structural advantages, including a well-capitalized balance sheet, enhanced liquidity, and unmatched scale.
These characteristics allow us to stay agile, work to capitalize on opportunities across our addressable market, and maintain discipline in our capital allocation decisions. Above all, the platform we have built is a direct reflection of the talent and experience of our dedicated team members.
Looking at the balance of 2025, we remain confident in our ability to deliver on our expectations, despite the current market uncertainties, benefiting from our diversified platform that spans multiple geographies, asset types, and funding sources.
As such, we're maintaining our outlook for 2025 AFFO per share in the range of $4.22 to $4.28. Consistent with last quarter's update, our 2025 forecast includes the expectation for 75 basis points of potential rent loss with the majority stemming from properties acquired through prior M&A transactions. There have been no material surprises or incremental headwinds to our business as a result of recent geopolitical uncertainties. And while we remain vigilant, we believe our resilient time-tested business model positions us well to navigate potential challenges.
Additionally, we remain on track to deploy approximately $4 billion in investments throughout 2025. Given the advantages of our platform, we are well positioned to increase our capital deployment should attractive opportunities materialize. Despite market-wide uncertainty, our short-term weighted average cost of capital is actually lower today than it was when we introduced our 2025 investments guidance in late February.
Before turning the call over to Jonathan, I'd like to share a brief update on our move into the private capital business, Realty Income's U.S. Core Plus Fund.
This initiative represents a natural next step in the evolution of our platform and a strategic opportunity to broaden our capital sources and investment capabilities. We began formal marketing efforts in the first quarter and are pleased by the early interest and positive reception from large, well-known institutional investors. We consider this a clear indication that the differentiation of Realty Income's platform, scale and long track record is clearly resonating in the market.
We continue to expect this will be a methodical process that will enhance our access to meaningful sources of capital over time. We look forward to updating the market on our progress at the appropriate time.
With that, I'd like to turn it over to Jonathan to discuss our financial results and outlook in more detail.