NNN REIT Q1 2026 Earnings Call: Complete Transcript

NNN REIT (NYSE:NNN) reported first-quarter financial results on Thursday. The transcript from the company's first-quarter earnings call has been provided below. This content is powered by Benzinga APIs. For comprehensive financial data and transcripts, visit https://www.benzinga.com/apis/. Access the full call at https://www.webcaster5.com/Webcast/Page/2178/53800 Summary NNN REIT Inc reported a strong Q1 2026, closing 15 transactions for 41 properties with a total investment of $145 million and an initial cash yield of 7.5%. The company raised its 2026 AFFO per share guidance to $3.53-$3.59, citing strong portfolio performance and effective growth strategy. Occupancy increased to 98.6%, with lease renewals at 85% and rental rate increases of 2% above previous levels. NNN REIT Inc maintained a robust balance sheet with $1.2 billion in liquidity and a debt maturity average of nearly 11 years. The acquisition pipeline remains strong, with the company trending toward the high end of its $550-$650 million acquisition guidance for the year. Management highlighted proactive portfolio management, with no significant credit concerns currently on the watchlist. The company expects cap rates to remain stable despite some modest compression, supporting transaction activity. NNN REIT Inc continues its self-funded, disciplined capital allocation strategy, aiming for mid-single-digit earnings growth plus dividend increases. Full Transcript OPERATOR Good day everyone. Welcome to The NNN REIT Inc. First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen only mode and the floor will be open for your questions and comments after the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Steve Horn. The floor is yours. Steve Horn (Moderator) Good morning. Thank you for joining NNN REIT's first quarter 2026 earnings call. I'm joined today with our Chief Financial Officer Vin Chao. NNN REIT's disciplined, efficient and self funded growth strategy continues to deliver results. Our proven long term operating platform and consistent capital allocation focused on sufficiently accretive acquisitions remain central to our approach. We are committed to long term value creation, navigating market conditions with discipline and capitalizing on opportunities that support that durable growth. As detailed in the press release this morning, NNN REIT delivered a strong quarter. We closed 15 transactions comprising of 41 properties for a total investment of $145 million with an initial cash yield of 7.5. At the same time, we maintained significant balance sheet flexibility, ending the quarter with $1.2 billion of total liquidity and the industry leading weighted average debt maturity of nearly 11 years. Reflecting on our consistent performance and visibility into the remainder of the year, we are raising our 2026 AFFO per share guidance to a range of 3.53 to 3.59. This increase underscores the strength of our portfolio and effectiveness of our multi year growth strategy. Just one additional item before I get into the operations. If you haven't reviewed our updated investor presentation, it was released during the quarter. I encourage you to visit the website and take a look. Turning to Operating Performance Our portfolio of approximately 3,700 freestanding single tenant properties across all 50 states continues to perform well. During the quarter we renewed 36 of 43 lease expirations consistent with our historical renewal rate of approximately 85% and rental rates 2% above prior levels. Additionally, we leased seven properties to new tenants at rent rates about 10% above previous levels. It's demonstrating the continued demand of our assets and the outstanding job our asset management team is executing at high levels. Our tenant base remains healthy with no material credit concerns. Currently, occupancy increased sequentially by 30 basis points to 98.6 now above our long term average. This improvement reflects the strong execution of our leasing and disposition teams who are actively repositioning vacant assets to maximize value. In several cases, the team has secured high quality investment grade tenants, further enhancing asset value and contributing incremental value creation. With only 53 assets remaining and active solutions underway. Combining with the solid overall performance of the portfolio, we expect occupancy to continue trending upward in the near term. On the acquisition front, as I said earlier, we invested 145 million, 41 properties properties with a cash cap rate of 7.5. More importantly, with a weighted average lease term of 19 years, the sale-leaseback nature of our transactions continues to provide accretive risk adjusted returns long duration predictable cash flows. Regarding market conditions, cap rates in the first quarter remain largely consistent with recent quarters. While we are seeing some modest compression early in the second quarter, we expect relative stability going forward. As always, our platform is designed to operate effectively across many macroeconomic environments. We do benefit from stable interest rate backdrop and the 10-year has remained fairly range bound which continues to support transaction activity. We've had an elevated volume in 2025 and we are seeing a good amount of investment opportunity for the first half of the year. During the quarter we sold 25 properties including 16 vacant assets generating $36 million in proceeds for redeployment. Dispositions of income producing assets were primarily non core and we were executing approximately 30 basis points below our acquisition cap rate. As we discussed previously, we expect to take more of a proactive approach to asset sales in 2026 to further optimize portfolio quality for the long term. As you know, tenant credit involves market shift and consumer behavior changes which results in active portfolio management becoming essential to maintaining high quality durable cash flow. Our balance sheet remains one of the strongest in the sector. We ended the quarter with just 80 million drawn on our credit facility and maintain a weighted asset debt maturity. As I said before, nearly 11 years. NNN REIT is well positioned to fund the remainder of 2026 acquisition pipeline and support continued growth. With a robust pipeline, strong financial position and proven leadership, we are confident in our outlook. We remain committed to our self funded model, disciplined capital allocation and delivering sustainable long term value for our shareholders. Targeting a mid single digits earning growth plus a dividend which we have increased for 36 consecutive years. One of only three REITs. With that, I'll turn the call over to Ben to give more detail on the financial results and updated guidance. Ben Thank you Steve. Let's start with our customary cautionary statements. During this call we will make certain statements that may be considered forward looking statements under federal securities laws. The Company's actual future results may differ significantly from matters discussed in these forward looking statements and and we may not release revisions to these forward looking statements to reflect changes after the statements are made. Factors and risks that could cause actual results to differ from expectations are disclosed in greater detail in the company's filings with the SEC and in this morning's press release. Turning to results this morning, we reported Core FFO of $0.86 per share and AFFO of $0.87 per share each flat over the prior year. As Disclosed on page 8 of today's earnings release, we we booked $739,000 of lease termination fees this quarter versus $8.2 million a year ago, representing a 4-cent headwind without which AFFO per share growth was a solid 4.8%. Results were modestly ahead of our internal projections, with upside driven primarily by lower than expected bad debt and net real estate expenses. Bad debt represented about 15 basis points of quarterly ABR, which was better than our 75 basis point assumption. Our NOI margin was 95.9% in the first quarter, reflecting the efficiency of our triple net lease structure. G&A as a percentage of total revenue was 5.9% in line with our expectations, while our cash G and a margin was 4.2%. Annualized base rent grew 7% year over year to $935 million driven by our strong acquisition activity, while free cash flow after dividend was about 52 million in the first quarter. Regarding our watch list, as Steve mentioned, we are not currently tracking any significant near term credit issues in the portfolio and we are optimistic that we can outperform our bad debt assumptions for the year. That said, we remain proactive portfolio managers and will continue to look for ways to derisk the portfolio ahead of potential future issues without incurring unwarranted dilution. Included in this quarter's dispositions was one AMC as well as an entertainment property. Our occupied dispositions had only three years of remaining lease term and despite the de risking nature and shorter term of the properties sold, we are still able to generate an economic gain of over 6% on the sales given our low cost basis in the assets, which is a key component of our risk controls. Turning to capital markets during the quarter, we drew down the full $300 million available to us on our delayed draw term loan. The rate on the term loan has been swapped to a fixed automatic rate of 4.1%. We also sold roughly 1.7 million common shares on a forward basis through our ATM at just under $45 per share. We did not settle any forward equity, leaving us with expected Future net proceeds of 74 million as of March 31st. Our next debt maturity is our $350 million unsecured note due in December of this year. As a reminder, we have an accordion feature that allows us to expand our existing term loan by 200 million and IG credit spreads have recently revisited historical lows following a brief widening in the immediate aftermath of the Iran conflict. This gives us multiple options with which to address our pending maturity as well as financing our investment plans on a leverage neutral basis. Moving to the balance sheet our Baa1 rated balance sheet remains a competitive advantage that provides us with the flexibility to fund future growth while protecting against downside risk. At the end of the quarter we had no encumbered assets, $1.2 billion of available liquidity and just 1.6% of our debt tied to floating rates, including the impact of our unsettled forward equity pro forma, Net debt to EBITDA was 5.6 times unchanged from last quarter. Our debt duration remains the highest in the net lease space at 10.5 years and is well matched with our lease duration at 10.1 years. On April 15, we announced a 60 cent quarterly dividend representing 3.4% year over year growth and equating to an attractive 5.7% annualized dividend yield and a conservative 69% AFFO payout ratio. I will end my opening remarks with some additional color on our updated 2026 outlook. Based on our better than expected first quarter performance and our growing pipeline of investment opportunities, we are raising the midpoint of both our AFFO and core FFO per share guidance by $0.01 to new ranges of $3.53 to $3.59 and $3.48 to $3.54 respectively. The Midpoint of our increased AFFO per share guidance represents an acceleration of year over year growth to 3.5% from 2.7% last year. Line item guidance, which is summarized on page three of our earnings release, remains unchanged, although I would highlight that we are tracking to the low end of the $14 to $15 million range for net real estate expenses and towards the high end of our 550 to 650 million acquisition guidance. Based on our near term pipeline visibility. With expected free cash flow of about $212 million, $130 million of expected dispositions and $1.2 billion of available liquidity, we are well positioned to fund our acquisition plans for the year. From a credit loss perspective, we are lowering our bad debt assumption for the full year from 75 basis points to 60 basis points which reflects the outperformance in the first quarter. Our assumptions for the balance of the year are unchanged. But as I mentioned earlier, given year to date trends, we are hopeful we can outperform our bad DEB projections in the coming quarters. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Kelly for questions. Kelly, Kelly Can you hear me? Yep, we can hear you, Kelly. Okay. Sorry about that. Certainly the floor is now open for questions. If you have any questions or comments, Please press star 1 on your phone at this time. We ask that while posing your question. You please pick up your handset if listening on a speakerphone to provide optimum sound quality. Please hold just a moment while we poll for questions. Your first question is coming from John Chielikowski with Wells Fargo. Please pose your question. Your line is live. John Chielikowski (Equity Analyst) Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question, Vin. Very helpful color in the opening remarks on the funding for the acquisition guide. If I think about the incremental $74 million that you've raised and the term loan, it sounds like you have capacity to go well above the acquisition guide here and you are trending up. What's keeping that acquisition guide sort of consistent here in one Q. Steve Horn (Moderator) Hey, John, Steve, I'll take that. We have a very robust pipeline and opportunity set that we're looking at currently. But you know the old adage, you don't want to count them until they're done. We're actively in negotiations trading paper, but until they're well advanced, closing stage. We don't want to get above our skis here. Vin Chao (Chief Financial Officer) Yeah, but John, you are correct in the sense that 75 or 74 million of equity does give us a little bit of additional capacity. So at our typical 60, 40 equity debt mix, it would be about 125 million of additional capacity. John Chielikowski (Equity Analyst) Very helpful, thank you. And then the second one is just on the credit loss guide. Appreciate the updated color on the 60basis points of that. What is pure conservatism versus what is something you feel like you have an outlook on? And maybe an extension of that would be the 7-Eleven headlines on store closures. Have you had any discussions with them? Is there any impact to you that would be in that guide? Vin Chao (Chief Financial Officer) No, from 7 11, but I'll let Steve opine a little bit more on that. But as far as the credit loss assumption, there's very little in terms of embedded or something that we expect to happen other than there was a small amount 15 basis points in the first quarter. Beyond that, there's really nothing material that's known that we would put into that number. Steve Horn (Moderator) As far as the 7-Eleven, we've never done, quote business. 7-Eleven, they acquired a lot of our large regional operators that we did business with year over year. Our average cost basis in our 7-Eleven portfolio is about 2.2 million. We just did a significant renewal in 2025 with 7-Eleven. And our average lease term with 711 is about 8 and a half years. So we're very confident. We haven't had any discussions or none of our stores are on the closure list. John Chielikowski (Equity Analyst) Got it. Thank you. Jana Galan (Equity Analyst) Your next question is coming from Jana Galan with Bank of America. Please pose your question. Your line is live. Dan beyond Morning. This is Dan beyond on Variana. Following the recent ATM issuance, could you characterize your current overall Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC) and your investment spreads today? Vin Chao (Chief Financial Officer) Yeah, look, the WACC, it does change on a daily basis. But I'd say if you're talking about just the near term sort of AFO yield and debt math, you were probably in the six high 6s at 6.8, maybe 6.75 in that area. Dan beyond And then for my next question, last quarter you expected cap rates to Compress more in 2Q and 3Q. Is that still your view or is the higher rate environment and reduced competition? Yeah, go ahead. Steve Horn (Moderator) No, no, my view's the same on cap rates as it was. You know, the first quarter is coming into reality, that our first quarter cap rates were in line with the many previous quarters and we expected second quarter, some compression. I do still expect that for the deals that I see being priced and then I kind of see them being at that compressed level as of right now, things change for modeling purpose at that lower level. Dan beyond Thank you very much. Spencer Glimcher (Equity Analyst) Your next question is coming from Spencer Glimcher with Green Street. Please pose your question. Your line is live. Thank you. You mentioned proactive portfolio management several times, but also you noted that you have. You don't have anything active on your watch list. So if there are no imminent credit issues, can you just, you know, share some color? Walk us through kind of what you're leaning on to guide your asset management decisions today. Vin Chao (Chief Financial Officer) Hey, Spencer, good to hear from you. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say we don't have a watch list. We're watching a lot. We always watch tenants. So we do have a watch list. Case in point. AMC is on our watch list. We've talked about that before. We were able to sell one in the quarter, and I think we were pretty pleased with that outcome. Given the nature of AMC sales,, we're still able to, on net for the quarter, come out with an economic gain, not a gap gain for our occupied properties. So that's the kind of thing that we're looking at. So, yes, in the near term, meaning the next for this year, we're not seeing any material concerns that we think are worth calling out. That doesn't mean we don't have tenants that we think are maybe medium to longer term are ones that we are watching a little bit more carefully. And so we'll look to try to address some of those as we can. Steve Horn (Moderator) I'll just add one more thing to it. When we're doing active portfolio management, it's not just focusing in on credit. You have credit risk, always credit changes, but more importantly, you might have real estate risk and the probability of that being renewed at the end of the term. So we're trying to get ahead of that, looking years out and making the portfolio a more stable platform because things do change. Spencer Glimcher (Equity Analyst) Thanks for the color. And then you also mentioned that you have, you did, I think some deals with seven new tenants in the quarter. Are you able to share details on what industries these tenants operate in? Steve Horn (Moderator) It was a combination primarily quick fast food restaurants and convenience stores. And I think there was one car wash in there. Spencer Glimcher (Equity Analyst) Okay, great. Thank you. Smedes Rose (Equity Analyst) Your next question is coming from Smedes Rose with Citi. Please pose your question. Your line is live. Nick Kerr (Equity Analyst) Hi, this is Nick Kerr on for Smedes this morning. Thanks for taking the question. So I guess the first one is just are you seeing or hearing anything from any of your tenants that might suggest any changes underlying consumer spending habits, maybe across the restaurant or more of the experiential type spaces? Steve Horn (Moderator) Many of our tenants, 61% are public, so we do get those reads and we also have our own conversations privately with our tenants. But there's nothing, I would say that's a broad strokes takeaway. Obviously certain restaurant tenants are doing better than others on net to the extent that there is continued pressure on the consumer than you would expect that to pressure some of the more cyclical businesses, but nothing's bubbled up. That is sort of a meaningful broad stroke kind of takeaway, more specific to tenants. Nick Kerr (Equity Analyst) Got it. That's helpful. Thank you. And then you mentioned you're trending towards the high end of your acquisition guidance. Could you just remind us what your visibility into your pipeline is like from today or how long that is and then just if you have any color on what that quarterly cadence of acquisition volume would look like through the balance of the year, that would be useful. Thank you. Steve Horn (Moderator) Yeah, you can't really look at it. I encourage you to look at it kind of overall on an annual basis when you're looking at volume because quarter to quarter, it could be very volatile. But as I said in the opening remarks, our acquisition opportunity set is, is really healthy currently. And as VIN mentioned, we're trending to the high end of our range currently. If everything closes. Nick Kerr (Equity Analyst) Got it, thank you. Ronald Camden (Equity Analyst) Your next question is coming from Ronald Camden with Morgan Stanley. Please pose your question. Your line is live. Jenny Hey, good morning, this is Jenny on Varan. First question on seller leaseback. I think you talk about a lot of the acquisitions from long standing relationships. Just curious your current relationship conversation. Is there any accelerating salary spec given the current macro environment and so forth? Steve Horn (Moderator) Yeah, I think that's reflective in our, you know, the pipeline. We've talked about it a couple times on the call that there's a big opportunity with sale leasebacks. Currently it's elevated, you know, this year than it was in 2025 and we did have record volume in 2025.. But it feels like there's a lot of sellers out there that are using the sale-leaseback for debt refis, balance sheet management. Jenny That's helpful, thank you. The second is can you confirm the latest status for Frisch's and Badcock? Are they all cleaned up? Just what's the current status on that? Steve Horn (Moderator) So the current status, all our Badcock stores are currently accounted for and cleaned up and we had near 100 recovery. So really in great shape. With regard to Badcock and Frisch's, we have a, you know, we're well on our way for frishes. All, you know, all the frishes are in our 53 vacant assets and we're working all the assets currently and have a tremendous amount of interest in those assets and I'm expecting some real good positive outcomes as we move through the year. Vin Chao (Chief Financial Officer) And Jenny, are they thinking a shift with occupancy back to 98.6 above our long term averages? I mean there's not really a strong pressure to fire sale anything or do anything that quickly. I think we're in a good position at this point and so we can be a little bit pickier. Choosier. Jenny Gotcha. Thank you. Alec Fagin (Equity Analyst) Your next question is coming from Alec Fagin with Baird. Please pose your question. Your mind is live. Hey, thanks for taking my question. I guess first one would be what's the term income currently assumed in guidance? Vin Chao (Chief Financial Officer) Yeah, so Alex, we don't give lease termination fee guidance per se. What we have commented on that is that we think that this year will be a normalized year which is typically between 3 to 4 million. Again, not guidance per se, because again, these things are Episodic. And if the right thing to do for the business is to take a lease termination fee, because we can solve a future problem and we can get a fee on top of it, we'll do that. So we don't want to set artificial guideposts, but historically I think 3 to 4 million is about what we averaged, maybe a little bit less than that. And so we're expecting this to be more of a normal year. And if you look at what we did in the quarter, it's pretty consistent. Alec Fagin (Equity Analyst) Got it. And second for me would be, are there any categories that are currently seeing a bid from private market participants where you can be opportunistic in asset sales? Less so from a real estate or credit perspective, but just seeing a high bid? Vin Chao (Chief Financial Officer) No, there's not a particular segment and the amount of money they need to deploy, I wouldn't be, you know, I mean, obviously the pricing is super attractive. We would do something. But no, right now we're looking to sell 130 million of assets in the market and there's no big private capital market bid for those. Alec Fagin (Equity Analyst) Got it. Thanks, guys. Michael Goldsmith (Equity Analyst) Your next question is coming from Michael Goldsmith with ubs. Please pose your question. Your line is live. Good morning. Thanks a lot for taking my question. Touched a little bit on it before. When you're talking about expected cap rate compression from the first to the second quarter, is that just broad compression or are there specific asset categories where you are seeing that level of compression? Steve Horn (Moderator) It's broad. As far as our opportunity set, as you know, you know as well, we do a lot of mining of our portfolio. So it's kind of the auto service, the convenience store sectors primarily that we're seeing a lot of. Yeah, not a lot, you know, minimal amount of compression, you know, kind of that 15 to 25 basis points. And sometimes it's just anything specific. You think that's driving that? I think it's, as I always say, it's the first half of the year, people want to do deals so the competition gets a little bit more aggressive and is willing to compress their spreads. Michael Goldsmith (Equity Analyst) Got it. And then just in terms of specific categories, you mentioned that you bought a car wash. Can you just talk about your comfort level in that category? Then I think you mentioned that you sold in amc. Are you able to provide the cap rate on where theaters are trading right now? Steve Horn (Moderator) Yeah, no, we don't provide cap rates on the individual. I mean overall, our income producing cap rates for 30 basis inside our acquisitions. As far as. No, we didn't buy a car wash. I didn't say I bought a car wash. A car wash operator was one of the seven assets that we re leased. That being said, I'm very comfortable with our car wash holdings. We've done them since 2005. Our basis is extremely low and NNN didn't get into the pie eating contest when there was a lot of availability for car washes over the years. Michael Goldsmith (Equity Analyst) Thank you very much. Good luck in the second quarter. Thanks Michael. OPERATOR Once again, if you do have any remaining questions or comments, please press Star 1 at this time to enter the queue. Your next question is coming from John Masaka with B. Riley Securities. Please pose your question. Your line is live. John Masaka (Equity Analyst) Good morning. Maybe speaking of the theme around kind of the cap rate compression you're potentially seeing in the pipeline and on the horizon for the remainder of the year, is that changing at all based on any changes in the competitive environment? I guess with interest rates moving around and maybe some dislocation in certain other capital sources, are you seeing less competition outside of other REITs? And I guess if you are are other REITs kind of filling in that gap, I'm just kind of curious what the overall competitive environment is for your potential partners here. Steve Horn (Moderator) Yeah, I mean for the 20 plus years I've been doing this John, it's been a highly competitive environment. It's just the names have come and gone and then there's been a couple of us REITs that have been around for the 20 plus years and you know the private capital has always been involved. They were non traded REITs to now it's the financial institutions have been raising money and creating the REITs. But no, it's highly competitive. It always is. Names change. So I don't view it as competition that there's more competition. I view it that people just want to do more deals right now in the first half of the year. John Masaka (Equity Analyst) Have you seen any pullback in non REIT capital over the course of year to date? Steve Horn (Moderator) Just given some of the changes in that environment. Most of the non REIT capital are playing in segments we don't play in the large industrial. So they can deploy vast amount of money at one time. They're not buying a taco belt in Terre Haute, Indiana with a franchisee. John Masaka (Equity Analyst) Fair enough. I know you don't want to disclose the cap rate on the AMC asset sale, but can you maybe talk about who the buyer was? Was it another landlord, is it a tenant, is it someone looking to redevelop? But just kind of curious if this was a true kind of theater to theater transaction? Steve Horn (Moderator) It was somebody looking to redevelop the asset. John Masaka (Equity Analyst) All right, that's it for me. Thank you very much. Steve Horn (Moderator) Thanks, Jeff. OPERATOR There are no further questions in queue at this time. I would now like to turn the floor back over to Steve Horn for closing remarks. Steve Horn (Moderator) Again, thanks for joining us on the call. NNN REIT is in really good shape going forward. Optimistic. And again, I looked many of you, I guess, in the next few weeks at NAREIT. Thanks. Good day. Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company's SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants' and analysts' statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.