Realty Income Q4 2022 Earnings Report

Realty Income EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.36
• Consensus EPS: $0.98
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$0.62
• One Year Ago EPS: $0.94

Realty Income Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $888.65 million
• Expected Revenue: $840.57 million
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$48.08 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: +29.70%

Realty Income Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q4 2022
• Date: 2/21/2023
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, February 22, 2023
• Conference Call Time: 2:30PM ET

Realty Income (NYSE:O) is a real estate investment trust (REIT) that owns and manages a diversified portfolio of commercial properties. The company primarily uses long-term, single-tenant, net lease agreements, under which tenants generally assume responsibility for property-level expenses such as maintenance, insurance and taxes.

Its portfolio includes retail, industrial, distribution, office, gaming and other commercial properties. Realty Income serves a broad range of tenants, including convenience stores, grocery stores, pharmacies, home improvement retailers, restaurants, logistics operators and other established businesses. The company is known as “The Monthly Dividend Company” because of its long-standing practice of paying monthly shareholder distributions.

Founded in 1969 and headquartered in San Diego, California, Realty Income has expanded beyond the United States into international markets, including the United Kingdom and several countries in continental Europe. The company became publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange in 1994 and continues to focus on acquiring and managing properties that can generate recurring rental income over extended lease periods.

Realty Income Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Record growth: 2022 AFFO per share grew 9.2% (highest since 2013) alongside record $9 billion of acquisitions and ending occupancy at 99%, its strongest in over 20 years.
• Realty Income expanded into new verticals, closing its first gaming lease with Wynn’s $1.7 billion Encore Boston Harbor Casino and acquiring a $520 million, 224-property dental practice portfolio to tap a $1.8 trillion consumer medical real estate market.
• The company launched an AgTech alliance with vertical farm operator Plenty, funding a $42 million indoor farm in Virginia with optionality to invest up to $1 billion in future developments.
• Exposure to Cineworld’s bankruptcy (1.4% of rent) led Realty Income to reserve an additional $13.7 million in Q4, bringing total allowances to $35.6 million and leaving $15.6 million of receivables unreserved as negotiations continue.
• For 2023, Realty Income guides AFFO per share of $3.93–$4.03 (≈1.5% growth), forecasts a ~6% total return including dividends, and plans to deploy over $5 billion in new investments.

Presentation

[Operator]

Good day, welcome to the Realty Income's fourth quarter 2022 operating results conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the Star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press Star, then one on a touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press Star, then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Julie Hasselwander, Senior Manager of Investor Relations at Realty Income. Please go ahead.

[Julie Hasselwander, Senior Manager of Investor Relations at Realty Income]

Thank you all for joining us today for Realty Income's fourth quarter operating results conference call. Discussing our results will be Sumit Roy, President and Chief Executive Officer, Christie Kelly, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Treasurer, and Jonathan Pong, Senior Vice President, Head of Corporate Finance. During this conference call, we will make certain statements that may be considered forward-looking statements under federal securities law. 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 Form 10-K. We will be observing a two-question limit during the Q&A portion of the call in order to give everyone the opportunity to participate. If you would like to ask additional questions, you may re-enter the queue. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Sumit.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Thank you, Julie. Welcome, everyone. 2022 was a year of significant growth for our company. I would like to express my gratitude and appreciation to the Realty Income team, who have worked tirelessly to execute on our strategic objectives and all of our investors for their support. The result of our team's collective efforts was reflected in our 2022 results, highlighted by AFFO per share growth of 9.2%, the highest annual growth rate for our company since 2013. Additionally, we closed on approximately $9 billion of high-quality investments in 2022, including $3.9 billion in the fourth quarter. Both the annual and fourth-quarter investment volume set record highs for the company. Underpinning investment activity, transaction flow remains robust. We sourced $17 billion in the fourth quarter, bringing 2022 sourcing volume to $95 billion.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Finally, we ended the year with occupancy of 99%, our highest occupancy rate at the end of a reporting period in over 20 years. At Realty Income, we strive to provide stability and sustainable growth on behalf of our investors. During periods of economic uncertainty, like we find ourselves in today, the resilience demonstrated by our business model is important to highlight. During our 28-year history as a public company, our combined total return, consisting of AFFO per share growth and dividend payments generated by our operations, has not experienced a single year of downside volatility in the form of negative total returns. We believe we are in very limited company among companies in the S&P 500 who can make that claim.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

This is a testament to the durability of our underlying cash flows, which is supported by a diversified portfolio of properties under long-term leases with clients that are leaders in their respective industries. We are constantly working to incubate new swim lanes for growth that offer attractive risk-adjusted returns. Since the start of 2022, we have expanded our new verticals to our platform. In October, we completed our debut transaction in Italy, acquiring seven wholesale clubs operated by METRO AG, an investment-grade Pan-European leader in the wholesale club industry. As we discussed in 2019 when we purchased our first property internationally, we are intentional about consolidating the fragmented commercial real estate market in Europe, and Italy represents the third country abroad in which we now have a presence.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

In December, we closed our $1.7 billion acquisition of Encore Boston Harbor Resort and Casino from Wynn Resorts, which represent our first transaction in the gaming industry. The property is a good example of our strategy to partner with best-in-class operators to acquire high-quality real estate. It was purchased at a discount to estimated replacement cost. It's subject to a long triple net lease of 30 years with attractive annual rent escalators and is located on prime real estate with structural barriers to competition. As anticipated in August 2022, Massachusetts partially legalized professional and collegiate sports wagering for the state, unlocking an estimated $850 million of gross annual gaming revenue and further supporting the strategic importance of this asset.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

In addition, we are pleased to announce a significant investment in what we are calling the consumer center through the acquisition of a 224-property portfolio of dental practices during the fourth quarter. We expect this $520 million transaction to be just the start of additional investments we hope to make in a sector that we estimate has a total addressable market in the U.S. of nearly $1.8 trillion in real estate. We believe the consumer-centric medical industry shares many of the same attributes of the non-discretionary service-based uses that make up much of our portfolio and that have proven resilient throughout our company's long history. These locations offer essential goods and services in and around the major thoroughfares in which our assets are.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

For properties leased to clients in the consumer-centric medical industry is extremely fragmented, which creates consolidation opportunities we believe we are well suited to address. We believe this industry will continue to move towards a patient-centric model. The trend towards the outpatient model has been ongoing for decades, but we expect this shift to occur in an accelerated fashion post-pandemic and will manifest in several ways that support our investment in the industry. First, the convenience of having care delivered closer to the patient will increase accessibility to the patient and reduce costs for all, including patients, payers, and providers. Second, existing clients of ours, like Walgreens and CVS, will continue to disrupt the status quo as they gain an increasing share of primary care over time.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Third, we believe these industry dynamics will help lower the per capita spend on healthcare in the US and help improve the quality of outcomes. It is also important to note that the adjacency and fungibility of these assets are a strong fit with our existing footprint from a real estate standpoint. As we underwrote this industry, we conducted a study analyzing over 30,000 variables and found that our portfolio had a 90% similarity with the data set of assets in this industry, and we look forward to increasing our exposure over time. Moving on. As we announced earlier this week, actually yesterday, we have entered into a strategic alliance with Plenty, an emerging leader in vertical farms operations, to support the development of Plenty's indoor vertical farms.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

As the initial transaction of the alliance, we will fund the development of an indoor vertical farm asset near Richmond, Virginia, located adjacent to an Amazon distribution facility. Plenty's highly automated farming architecture efficiently harnesses scarce natural resources to generate production yields that it believes are up to 350x greater per acre than conventional farming. We regard Plenty at the forefront of a structural evolution in crop production, and growth plans. In summary, these distinct new verticals are representative of the growth opportunities we expect to unlock over time to create value for our shareholders. Moving on to our portfolio.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

In addition to our record occupancy at year-end, we are proud to have delivered a rent recapture rate of 103.8% during the fourth quarter on properties renewed or re-leased, bringing our full-year recapture rate to 105.9%. We attribute these results to our proactive asset management efforts, the underlying quality of our real estate, and our rent levels in the portfolio relative to market. Despite our recent accomplishments, we are still working through the impact of the pending bankruptcy on our Cineworld exposure, which is 1.4% of our total portfolio annualized base rent. As a reminder, we own 41 assets, 17 of which are subject to a single master lease agreement, and 22 of which have been accounted for under cash basis accounting since the third quarter of 2020.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Following the announcement of the Cineworld bankruptcy in September 2022, we have collected 100% of contractual rent in each month from October 2022 through February 2023. As resolution on the bankruptcy has not yet materialized, we deemed it appropriate to revisit we've had on our Cineworld receivables balance as we continue to evaluate the collectibility of these amounts. As a result of this analysis and in an abundance of caution, in the fourth quarter, we recorded $13.7 million of additional reserves associated with nine Cineworld properties previously on accrual accounting. In total, we now have $35.6 million of cumulative reserves on 31 properties that are on cash basis accounting, representing approximately 70% of our outstanding receivables from Cineworld.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

As a result of these changes, our unreserved receivable outstanding from Cineworld was $15.6 million at year-end, excluding straight-line rent receivables and including both deferred contractual rent and deferred expense recoveries. The 31 properties on cash basis accounting currently account for approximately $2.6 million of monthly contractual base rent. Based on public information and our proprietary analysis, we continue to believe our portfolio of Cineworld assets is generally comprised of the stronger performers in the operators portfolio, and we will provide an update on the outcome of our negotiations when appropriate. In January, we were pleased to welcome Greg White as Chief Operating Officer. The COO role has been vacant since 2018 when I assumed the role of CEO.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Having known Greg for many years, I believe he has the experience, leadership qualities, and business acumen to add immediate value to the management team. Most recently, Greg served as a senior advisor in the real estate and lodging investment banking group at UBS Securities. I admire Greg's extensive knowledge of the commercial real estate space, and his thoughtfulness and integrity will mesh well with our culture at Realty Income. I will now pass the call off to Christie, who will further discuss results from the quarter.

[Christie Kelly, EVP, CFO, and Treasurer at Realty Income]

Thank you, Sumit. Moving on to the balance sheet. As publicly disclosed, we've been quite active on the capital market front. During the fourth quarter, we raised approximately $2 billion of equity proceeds, primarily through our ATM program. When including equity sold in the first quarter of 2023, we currently have approximately $850 million of unsettled forward equity available for future issuance. Throughout 2022, we raised over $4.6 billion of gross equity proceeds at a weighted average price of $67.04, almost entirely through our ATM program. We ended the year with net debt to annualized adjusted EBITDAR in our targeted range at 5.5x or 5.3x, giving effect to the annualization. Please note that these ratios do not reflect the outstanding equity forwards I referenced previously.

[Christie Kelly, EVP, CFO, and Treasurer at Realty Income]

Our capital market activities in the fourth quarter and in January were aimed at striking the right balance between terming out our short-term borrowings while providing us the flexibility to participate in a lower rate environment over the next three years. In addition to the 10-year, $750 million senior unsecured bond issuance we priced in October at an effective yield of 3.93%. In January, we executed a dual tranche, $1.1 billion senior unsecured bond offering. The offering consisted of $500 million three-year notes callable after one year and $600 million of seven-year notes. In conjunction with the three-year notes, we capitalized on an attractive window to swap our interest payments from a fixed to variable rate structure, which we expect will replace a portion of our existing variable rate exposure in the capital stack.

[Christie Kelly, EVP, CFO, and Treasurer at Realty Income]

After giving effect to the interest rate swap, we effectively locked in a variable rate spread of negative 3.5 basis points to SOFR, which represents estimated savings compared to our credit facility of over 85 basis points. It is important to note that the $500 million of variable rate exposure is expected to be in lieu of variable rate borrowings we would otherwise have outstanding on our revolver or on our commercial paper program. Lastly, in January, we closed on a new $1 billion multi-currency unsecured term loan with an initial tenor of one year and with two 12-month extension options. In conjunction with closing of the term loan, we entered into a variable to fixed rate swap, resulting in an all-in effective yield of 5%.

[Christie Kelly, EVP, CFO, and Treasurer at Realty Income]

I would like to take a moment to say thank you to each of our lenders that participate. I would also like to make special mention of Jonathan Pong and Steve Bakke for their tireless efforts and leadership in delivering upon our capital market strategies. Moving on to guidance for 2023. We are initiating AFFO per share guidance of $3.93-$4.03, representing 1.5% growth at the midpoint of the earnings range. Including our current dividend yield, a total operating return profile of circa 6%. Though the annualization of higher interest rates has moderated our expected growth rate for 2023, there is much to be optimistic about. The investment pipeline remains active. We continue to source investment opportunities across our target markets at accretive cap rates in the mid six to mid seven range.

[Christie Kelly, EVP, CFO, and Treasurer at Realty Income]

As a result, we are introducing 2023 investment guidance of greater than $5 billion. We will of course revisit this guidance each quarter as we gain incremental visibility to our transaction pipeline. Finally, as the monthly dividend company, an increasing monthly dividend remains central to our business model. We were pleased to have announced a dividend increase of 2.4% last week, which represents a 3.2% growth rate over the year ago period. We remain proud to be one of only three REITs in the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats Index for having raised our dividend every year for over 25 consecutive years. With that, I would like to pass the call back to Sumit.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Thank you, Christie. In summary, our 2022 results demonstrated the capabilities of our platform and the competitive advantages afforded to us, given our size, scale, and access to capital. Over the long term, we believe stockholders will continue to benefit from the stability of our cash flows as we have proven with our track record of consistently positive total returns. We believe there is significant runway for further growth in untapped industries, geographies. Forward to unlocking these opportunities over time. At this time, we can open it up for questions. Operator?

[Operator]

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star and then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Josh Dennerlein with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

[Josh Dennerlein, Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America Corporation]

Yeah. Hey, guys. Thanks for the time. I wanted to ask about the Plenty indoor farm deal. I guess, you know, this is a new industry for you guys as well as it seems like a relatively new industry in general. I guess, how did you guys get comfortable with underwriting the risks and outlook for indoor farming?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Thanks for the question, Josh. Indoor farming as part of the revolution that we are seeing in agtech is something that we've been looking at for the better part of a year now, and specifically working with Plenty to try to understand their technology and how they're gonna play in the ecosystem in terms of delivering crops in a much, much more efficient manner than traditional farming. If you look at, you know, agtech and you look at vertical farming within the space, this is estimated to be a $50 billion industry over the next few years. Plenty has a very established position within this particular vertical. If you look at some of the sponsorship that they have, it's with companies like Walgreens, Albertsons, and Driscoll's.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

These are some of the largest grocers and providers of end product to grocery stores. Walmart has also invested directly in this company, along with from which they're going to be served the end product. They have a lot of, you know, institutional sponsorship. We've gotten to know the company very well. At the end of the day, it's a $42 million investment in a very well located industrial location. Happens to be very adjacent to an Amazon box. We felt very comfortable based on the risk-adjusted return profile across various different scenarios, that this was going to be a solid real estate investment.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Having said all of that, you know, one of the phrase that was used internally, the cherry on the top, was the fact that this aligns with our value system as well. The value of giving more than we take. We genuinely believe that agtech and vertical farming specifically, is going to have a big role to play in a world that continues to be resource-constrained, yield-constrained, water-constrained, and continued deficiency of arable land going forward. So, for all of those reasons, we got very comfortable with Plenty as an operator, and more importantly, this particular vertical within agtech as an industry to pursue.

[Josh Dennerlein, Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America Corporation]

Could you maybe elaborate a little bit on, like, the returns and maybe the outlays? I know it's a $1 billion pipeline. Like, is that something you expect to kinda put out the door all this year or over the next two, three? Are you guys financing the equipment inside the warehouse? Just trying to get more color on the deal.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Sure. We are real estate company, Josh, first and foremost. That's all we are gonna be investing in. Any equipment, all of the technology, et cetera, that is Plenty's responsibility. None of the $42 million will go towards that. The $1 billion is a number that we hope to be able to invest with this name, which if we do, would mean that this technology has become a success, and more importantly, its position as one of the leaders in vertical farming. The investment itself has a much longer horizon. I would say potentially the next five years. Keep in mind that any subsequent investment beyond the $42 million is at our option.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Obviously we are going to approach this partnership from a purely real estate perspective, but a perspective, that we do believe needs to partner with these types of technologies in order for these technologies to be successful. But ultimately, the real estate needs to work for us on a risk-adjusted return basis. And if that does, we are happy to help a company like Plenty continue to establish itself as a front runner in this space.

[Josh Dennerlein, Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America Corporation]

Great. Thanks for the time.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Anthony Paolone with JPMorgan Chase & Co. Please go ahead.

[Anthony Paolone, Executive Director and Senior Analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co.]

Great. Thank you. Sumit, can you expand a bit on the consumer medical vertical that you talked about in terms of what are the types of service offerings that are most interesting to you right now? What do those boxes look like? Types of operators, so forth, yields maybe?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

When we are talking about consumer-centric medical, we are talking about stuff that we are already currently exposed to and adding a few more areas around the edges. What are those areas? Like, we are already exposed to drugstores. Drugstores of yesterday is not the drugstore of tomorrow. What you've probably heard in the press, both Walgreens and CVS are investing very heavily to continue to take share of, you know, the physician, the general physician services. This is an incredibly fragmented area of the business. They are investing multi-billion dollars in their HealthHUB, MinuteClinics, et cetera, to be able to provide those services. That will continue to be an area.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Infusion centers, dialysis, eye care, dental care, pediatric care, behavioral facilities, urgent care. Those are all concepts that have gained tremendous momentum, especially post-pandemic, and will continue to gain momentum as a method of delivering healthcare to the end consumer. The belief here is that, you know, the per capita healthcare cost that we in this country experience is essentially 2x the average of what an OECD company... country experiences. How do we continue to bring that down? Factors like convenience, you know, being closer to the consumer, making sure that there is, you know, a relationship that can be established, so issues can be addressed on the front end rather than when it becomes an issue, you know, later on in life.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

I mean, today, if you look at the U.S. healthcare, only 30% of the population actually has a, you know, a general physician that they can identify as their own. 70% don't have one. This goes back to preventative care as being a precursor to reducing the cost of healthcare. That is the business model that we have embraced, that we believe will be in addition to the, you know, traditional ways of delivering healthcare, will be a very important step in helping reduce cost. Anything that sort of any concept that lends itself to this will be, you know, open season for us. What we have then looked at it is to try to analyze the actual boxes that, you know, these types of facilities are housed in.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

What we found was that there's a 90%, I mentioned this in my prepared remark. There's a 90% overlap with locations and boxes that we have in terms of size, in terms of et cetera. There were a whole slew of variables that we looked at, and these assets that lend themselves to consumer-centric medical. There are a lot of synergies. It is incredibly fragmented. It's a $1.8 trillion market today, expected to grow to $2 trillion by 2027. You know, it's all about increasing our total addressable market using our core strengths that we bring to the table to help consolidate the market and continue to sort of redefine what net lease investing is. This is a perfect example.

[Anthony Paolone, Executive Director and Senior Analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co.]

Am I still here? Did I cut out?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

If you were saying something post the end of my answer, we missed all of that. You're back on.

[Anthony Paolone, Executive Director and Senior Analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co.]

Okay. Sorry about that. Thank you for the color Sumit. Just my second question relates to yields and thinking about just nearer term, like the first and second quarter. I think you mentioned mid-sixes to mid-sevens. You did 6.1% in the fourth quarter. Just, you know, should we expect that it moves up into that range here in the near term? Is that a number that you might get to over the course of the year? Just trying to think through what you're seeing on the ground today.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Yeah, Tony. We actually put out some numbers on January 9th. We put out a prospectus when we were offering the unsecured bonds, where we shared the pipeline with you. The pipeline included, you know, transactions under contract and accepted LOIs. That was circa $1.3 billion worth of transactions at a 7.1% cash cap rate. Clearly, you know, what we are talking about in terms of, you know, finally the cap rates moving, is now manifesting itself in the pipeline that we have created, or we had created till that point. Stepping back and more generally speaking, we have seen about 100 basis points, you know, plus, minus, movement in cap rates.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Which we expected, given that, you know, if you look at even, you know, 14 of the top 20 clients that we have, who have, you know, bonds that are trading. You look at what their spreads have done over the last, call it eight months, nine months, those have gapped out about 100 basis points. Not that that, you know, symmetry is perfectly congruous, but it seems to have been at least, you know, in terms of how cap rates have played out. You should be expecting to see those numbers being realized starting in the first quarter of 2023.

[Anthony Paolone, Executive Director and Senior Analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co.]

Okay. Thank you.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Sure.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Greg McGinniss with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

[Greg McGinniss, Equity Research Analyst at Scotiabank]

Hey, good afternoon. Sumit, regarding M&A, is that more or less likely in this environment with these opportunities you're finding in other verticals and portfolio discounts like we saw in CIM at 7.1% cap? I mean, does paying a premium for public peer make sense at this time?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Greg, that's a great question. You know, look, if you look at the organic market, and you've mentioned CIM and some of the other transactions that we've talked about already, there are very good transactions to be had at incredibly good risk-adjusted returns. Having said that, if there's an opportunity on the M&A front where you're able to realize similar economics, I don't see that as being mutually exclusive, to be able to pursue both avenues of ultimately what we are chartered to do, which is grow the business. It does have that backdrop to compete against as an opportunity cost when we are looking at M&A. I don't see, you know, there being less M&A because of the environment we find ourselves in.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

It's just the question of, are we going to have partners who are willing to see the big picture, who are willing to see that being part of a, you know, of a particular pro forma company is better for the outlook than not. I think those are the elements that need to sort of play out on the seller's behalf in order to perpetuate M&A transactions. Look, we are very happy going down the path that we have that we are going down. We did $9 billion of acquisitions last year. I would say that that's probably, you know, if you look at companies in our sector, that takes care of 80%, 90% of what companies are in terms of their total size. We don't have to do M&A in order to continue to grow our business.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Self, it makes sense for us to pursue that. We are not gonna shy away from that either.

[Greg McGinniss, Equity Research Analyst at Scotiabank]

Okay, that's reasonable. Just for a second question here, have the higher cap rates started to bring some of the private and private equity buyers off the sidelines, or is competition for assets still limited?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

You know, they're certainly out there. You know, the debt capital markets continues to be a constraint for them and their ability to react quickly in this market. I think certainty of close over the last six months has taken on a very different focus for potential buyers who, for a variety of reasons, want to monetize their real estate. You know, somebody like us, especially when it comes to bigger deals that can have that certainty of close, that does not rely on the debt capital markets to finance their deals, I think has a distinct advantage, which, truth be told, has played out in our favor over the last few months. Yes, private equity will obviously start to sniff around given, you know, the higher cap rate environment.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

I still don't think that their cost of capital is as competitive as ours, and our ability to close still, I believe, stands out, you know, when potential sellers have to evaluate who to partner with.

[Greg McGinniss, Equity Research Analyst at Scotiabank]

Great. Thank you.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Spenser Allaway with Green Street Advisors. Please go ahead.

[Spenser Allaway, Senior Analyst at Green Street Advisors]

Thank you. As it relates to cap rates, we've heard that the bid-ask spread has compressed faster in the U.S. versus Europe. Is that consistent with what you've seen, and do you think that will dictate how you deploy capital in 2023 as you look across both geographies?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Yeah, that's a great question, Spenser. It's, doesn't have a perfect answer, you know. If you look at the fourth quarter, we didn't do a lot of volume in Europe, you know, circa $350 million, but they had a substantially higher cap rate. The dynamic that played out there was essentially redemption issues that a lot of funds started to face towards the end of the year. That sort of precipitated, you know, monetizing their real estate portfolios to help meet those redemption issues, which obviously created an opportunity for somebody like us, who, again, does not rely on the debt capital markets, is able to, you know, do transactions fairly quickly and that's what resulted in that much higher cap rate.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

For the longest time in Europe, you know, things were not moving. That's the reason why the volume was only $350 million. Essentially happened towards the later part of the year and happened very quickly because of the specific dynamics. In the U.S., the trend has been slowly moving in this direction. Again, I think I mentioned this during our third quarter call, much faster than it had traditionally moved, when you have a rising interest rate environment. That's just because so much of the capital was pulled out of the market that it pushed, especially sellers who were, you know, inclined to monetize their real estate, you know, continuing going down that path, has allowed for the cap rates to move.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Having said all of that, I do believe that where we find ourselves today is more of a, you know, bottoming out of that continued movement of expanding cap rates. It's settling in this 6.5%, 7% for some of the products. Of course, there are still products that's trading in the high 5s. There's still some one-off assets that's trading in the low fives, maybe even in the high fours. We, in fact, sold one of our QSR assets with a 4% in front of it in terms of cap rate. Those markets we will ignore because those are the tail areas of the cap rate environment. By and large, we've seen this movement in cap rates play out, and it's now starting to.

[Spenser Allaway, Senior Analyst at Green Street Advisors]

Okay. That was extremely helpful. Thank you. There have been headlines regarding a EUR 600 million-EUR 700 million portfolio being marketed for which O has been cited as a bidder. Is there anything you can share on the portfolio in terms of the general makeup or geography of those properties?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Yeah. I wonder what your sources are, Spenser. We really don't want to talk about transactions that we don't have under contract. We may or may not be involved in the transaction that you've mentioned. We can't speak to anything, you know, which is a hypothesis or, you know, just a rumor in the industry. Sorry about that.

[Spenser Allaway, Senior Analyst at Green Street Advisors]

Understood. Thank you.

[Operator]

Our next questioner is Haendel St. Juste with Mizuho. Please go ahead.

[Haendel St. Juste, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Mizuho Securities]

Hey, Sumit. Good morning. I guess good afternoon out there. Just curious on an updated perspective on your investment grade philosophy here. Noticed again in the fourth quarter, the share was below your portfolio average even when you back out the Encore. In the past, I know you've mentioned expire. You have experience in acquiring higher yielding assets and you're focused on the best risk-adjusted returns. Yet again, it's another quarter where your share of investment grade is far below the portfolio average. Maybe can you kinda give us some updated thinking on how we should think about that dynamic maybe going forward? Thanks.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

I think you sort of answered the question that you asked, Hendel. Ultimately, this is a game of finding the best risk-adjusted returns, just like you said. You know, the fact that something tends to be investment grade is an output of that underwriting. It's not something that we seek out. You know, the counter to what you're seeing in the fourth quarter is the CIM transaction, for instance. You know, here we have an $894 million transaction with 48% of, you know, the rent coming from investment grade. We were able to, you know, get healthy cap rate. That number is going to continue to move.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

In fact, if you were to just look at the $3.9 billion we did in the fourth quarter, and like you did, exclude the Wynn transaction and, you know, A couple of the larger portfolio transactions that we did, that particular investment grade number would be right up in the, in the high 40s. That's going to fluctuate quarter by quarter. What we need to get comfortable with is based on the risk that we are assuming, and part of which is the credit risk, are we being appropriately compensated? If the answer comes back yes, based on expected outcomes, then we are very comfortable, you know, continuing to pursue those transactions.

[Haendel St. Juste, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Mizuho Securities]

Thank you. That's helpful. Wanted to ask about Italy for a moment. With the investment in the quarter, basically the $350 million in Europe that you mentioned in one of your earlier remarks, then maybe can you talk a bit about the relative risk profile, how you're underwriting there versus perhaps the rest of Europe or the United States? What's the, I guess, investment appetite for Italy? Thanks.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Yeah. Look, Italy as a country definitely has more risk. Again, just like when we invested in the grocery business during the midst of Brexit, we were very particular about the industry and more importantly, the operator within that industry that we were partnering with. If you look at METRO AG, it's an investment grade, very profitable, very well-established business, which is Pan-European. I believe it's headquartered in Germany, it controls 26% of the, you know, wholesale business in Italy. You know, they've been established since the early 1970s in some of our locations. This is a business that we feel very comfortable with. Think of METRO AG as a combination of Costco and Sysco. Costco is very much retail-oriented, Sysco is much more, you know, professionally-oriented.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Both those types of businesses is served out of METRO AG, and that's not going anywhere, despite some of the additional, you know, country-specific risk that might exist in Italy. There are structural advantages as well that I'm not gonna bore you with, which makes Italy a very interesting place to invest. We are going to be very particular, just like we were in the U.K. and we were in Spain as to, you know, who we partner with, what are the concepts that we are going to be exposing ourselves to. At the end of the day, you know, what does the risk-adjusted return profile look, taking into account, you know, some of these risks, in some cases, additional risk that one takes going into these new countries.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

We feel very good about the investment that we've made with METRO AG in Italy.

[Haendel St. Juste, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Mizuho Securities]

Just if I may, the follow-up is it $350 million in the quarter? Ballpark, what are the going-in cap rates or sense of returns? Thanks.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

No, it wasn't all of $350 million. $350 million was the total investment that we made in Europe. I believe the METRO AG was EUR 165 million, or EUR 165 million, was the METRO AG investment. Most of the other investments were in the U.K.

[Haendel St. Juste, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Mizuho Securities]

Cap rate?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

You got the blended cap rate, I believe, in the supplemental. It was 100 basis points north of, you know, what we did in the U.S., 7.1% cap rate.

[Haendel St. Juste, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Mizuho Securities]

Thank you.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Sure.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Ronald Kamdem with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

[Ronald Kamdem, Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Can we just touch on tenant health really quickly? You know, obviously occupancy is at 99%. I see the EBITDA coverage is up slightly quarter-over-quarter. In the past, you sort of talked about sort of stress testing the tenants and feeling pretty good. Just outside of the movie theaters, just where is your head at in terms of potential recession and tenant health? Thanks.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

That's a great question, Ron, especially entering into 2023 with so much uncertainty. Look, our biggest focus right now is on Cineworld and what that resolution is going to look like. I do believe that whatever that outcome is, it's gonna play out within the next few months. It's been in bankruptcy now for the better part of four months. We have been in negotiations with them, and we, you know, we leave it at that. Outside of that, you know, if you look at our overall and again, this is something we share in the supplemental. Our cash flow coverages, four-wall cash flow coverages, those have continued to trend up. Largely a function of some of our existing clients continuing to outperform.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

You know, companies like Albertsons, et cetera, have continued to, you know, generate EBITDA growth on a four-wall basis, and therefore, those coverages have continued to improve. Some of the new transactions that we have entered into have very healthy four-wall coverage ratios. This is again, it very much ties in with the comment that I think it might have been Handel who was talking about, you know, why are we doing so many non-investment-grade? You know, if you look at it from a real estate perspective, and you suddenly have coverages north of 4x, 5x in sound businesses, you know, but they don't have an investment-grade rating given their size, those are businesses that we will pursue.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

That's the reason why our four-wall coverage ratios is now close to 2.9x. You know, it was in the 2.5s about a year ago. The health continues to be fairly good. If you look at what is there on our watch list, it's about 4% of our, you know, of our rent is on the tenant watch list. As you can imagine, a lot of it is driven by the theater business. A lot of the theater assets are on our watch list.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

In some cases, we also have, you know, assets that may not have a credit issue, but there is a location risk associated with what will happen at the end of the lease term, you know, given the changing demographics, changing competitive landscape, et cetera, et cetera. That constitutes our 4%, which is slightly higher than what it was, you know, a few quarters ago. It's largely a function of, you know, what's happening in the theater space and what we expect will happen in a continued high interest rate environment.

[Ronald Kamdem, Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Great. My second question, just touching on gaming. You know, obviously the Encore deal closed. You know, how is that going now that you have the assets? More importantly, what's the pipeline look like? How are you guys thinking about doing more acquisitions in the gaming space? Thanks.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Yeah. We were very proud to own, you know, this beautiful asset in Boston. We just had a demonstration internally about, you know, our presence on LinkedIn and Twitter. When we posted the news release around, you know, closing on this asset, we had a huge jump in followings. Clearly it was appreciated by the audience following Realty Income. We are very proud to have this partnership with Wynn. They are great operators. They are, you know, very good to sort of continue to understand and learn about this particular industry and, you know, we hope to grow this industry. We didn't do this as a one-off opportunistic transaction.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

you know, it's very much in line with looking for the best operators and, you know, trying to get assets that are going to be, you know, icons for the given operator, even outside of that, I think we have checked all of those boxes on the Boston asset. you know, finding those types of assets will continue to be we are focused on, and as you can imagine, we have received several inbounds. For a variety of reasons, we haven't, you know, chosen to pursue them because they don't meet all of the attributes that we are looking for. We will be selective in this industry, but we would absolutely love to grow it over time.

[Ronald Kamdem, Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Great. Thanks so much.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Sure, Ron.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Wesley Golladay with Baird. Please go ahead.

[Wesley Golladay, Senior Research Analyst at Baird]

Hey, everyone. I hope everyone's doing well. There's been a lot of M&A activity in the value-based care. I was wondering if this is the industry you're referring to, where you see all the opportunity. If so, would you get the parents credit on some of these deals?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

End up looking at, you know, Oak Street Health, for instance, that CVS ended up buying, and they wanna monetize some of those real estate, then yes, you know, by default, we are going to ask for CVS's credit, you know, on this $10 billion transaction that they just consummated. You know, Walgreens has done a similar transaction. Amazon just announced that they did a similar transaction. Yes, it is precisely what we are talking about. We are calling it consumer-centric because we are approaching it from a pure real estate perspective and trying to find, you know, what are the alternatives of the locations that we have already, and you know, what are the synergies with this new vertical that we are pursuing.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

It's certainly not looking at what traditional healthcare companies are focused on. That's not our forte, that's not our strength, that has really no interest to us today. It is the value-based healthcare that a lot of forward-thinking healthcare companies, operators, healthcare operators are pursuing. You know, the derivative of that will be the real estate. It could be, you know, our existing, you know, pharmacies that are going to be repositioned to HealthHUBs and MinuteClinics, that's already happening. There's continued enhancement, there's continued, you know, higher impediments to switching costs that are getting created. Those are all perfect for us, you know. That's embedded value that doesn't get realized day one, we love to see that happen.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

We also want to be intentional about growing the portfolio by doing the types of transactions that we did in the fourth quarter in this particular area, because we do believe in it.

[Wesley Golladay, Senior Research Analyst at Baird]

Got it. Would you have, I guess, a lot of ground up development opportunities? Also sounds like you'd have some redevelopment opportunities. Have you ever done redevelopment funding before, or is that a big part of the business now?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

We've certainly done redevelopment funding, Wes. If you look at our pipeline dollars today, and, you know, some of that is repositioning of our existing assets, and we've done some in-house. We've done a lot of it with partners, national partners that we have. Those have been some of the best recapture rates that we have achieved in our portfolio. You know, when we talk about this 90% overlap in terms of real estate characteristics, of the locations that we currently own and, you know, some of these consumer-centric medical concepts, that certainly lends itself to, you know, repositioning some of our assets for highest and best use.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

We define highest and best use in terms of, you know, rent per square foot that we could recapture for a given location that we already own. Yes, I'd hope to be able to, you know, partner with these operators, show some of our, you know, existing vacancies, potential vacancies that are gonna come down, the pike and reposition these locations to help provide these types of services. Yes, that is absolutely a value enhancing proposition that we're going to explore.

[Wesley Golladay, Senior Research Analyst at Baird]

Okay, thanks for the time.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Sure.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Michael Goldsmith with UBS. Please go ahead.

[Michael Goldsmith, Analyst at UBS]

Good afternoon. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. Can you talk about your view on interest rates in the capital markets based on your recent capital raising activities? Seems that Jonathan and Steve were busy with several, you know, less traditional items with the term loan, with multiple extensions and the callable unsecured. Just trying to get a sense of what you're trying to achieve based on the laddering with these instruments.

[Jonathan Pong, SVP and Head of Corporate Finance at Realty Income]

Hey, Michael, it's Jonathan. I would say the activities that we did in January, early January, it's all about financial flexibility. you know, we, if you noticed, did a three-year non-call one, giving us that flexibility after one year to call it par. We also did a one-year term loan, but with two one-year extension options. you know, what we're trying to avoid, especially since we went long on the curve earlier in 2022 with our debt capital raising efforts, was to lock in rates that, you know, at these levels aren't very attractive to us. you know, we would like to think that over the next three years, there will be a more advantageous window for us to tap into the debt capital markets to term these amounts out.

[Jonathan Pong, SVP and Head of Corporate Finance at Realty Income]

It's really about, you know, maybe a little bit of barbell, given the activity we did earlier in the year, much lower long-term rates, but also, you know, terming out the revolver to an extent and creating that flexibility for us to participate in lower rates if they come.

[Michael Goldsmith, Analyst at UBS]

Thanks for that, Jonathan. My second question, we've talked about each of the new verticals in depth, but just wanted to talk about the big picture associated with this. You know, is this a function of, you know, something has fundamentally changed with kind of the traditional core retail assets or industrial assets that you are known for? I guess, do these new opportunities provide more confidence in your ability to consistently hit or exceed the $5 billion of acquisitions that you've guided to the last couple of years? Thanks.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

That's a very good question, Michael. It's a question that we've asked ourselves, you know. There is a traditional definition of what a net lease company does. Yes, we can certainly be mandated and dictated by that. There was a way for us to step back and say, "Look, if we look at Realty Income, what is our core strength today?" Our size and scale, which people have continued to point to as, you know, impediments to growth. If you look at the last four years, we've grown our business at 5% CAGR annually, you know. If you look at the business, This question has been asked for the last 10 years.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

We are gonna take what has been used by the street as an impediment and see if we can garner value for us shareholders. Let's just ask the question: What is it that we can do with the core strength of size, scale, cost of capital that will be difficult for other companies to follow? If the answer was, sorry, you know, you're constrained by your business model, and this is all you should do and this is all you can do, that would have been the answer. What we found once we started to ask the question around redefining this particular space, is that there's plenty for us to do, and we are only constrained by our ability to be creative.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Ultimately, if we continue to underwrite, you know, these verticals and look at it from the perspective of real estate and look at it from the perspective of a net lease, suddenly, you know, the answers that start to pop up are very different. It allows you to do things, and allows you to be very creative and create outsized returns for our shareholders that, you know, with due respect, a lot of our peers are going to struggle trying to mimic. You know, they just don't have the scale. If we can help consolidate real estate through a net lease structure, that is really the only governing principle that should be constraining us.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Ultimately be able to show to the shareholders that on a risk-adjusted return, these are as safe, if not in some cases safer, than investing in traditional retail net lease businesses, then it's a, it's a win-win. That's how we are thinking about the business, Michael. You know, you'll continue to see us be very creative. Like I've always done, and like this team here has always done, we will engage with you to share our thesis. I do highly encourage everyone to go to the new deck, the investor deck, where we've laid out our thesis in more detail, and you'll see some numbers around... This is, this is what I think people invest in Realty Income for, and we are just delivering on that promise.

[Michael Goldsmith, Analyst at UBS]

Thank you very much for that. Good luck in 2023.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from John Massocca with Ladenburg Thalmann. Please go ahead.

[John James Massocca, VP of Equity Research at Ladenburg Thalmann & Co. Inc.]

Good afternoon. Hello. Now reaching about the hour mark here, so I'll take us back to the beginning a little bit. As we think about the delta in the Plenty transaction between the $42 million committed for the Virginia project and the $1 billion headline opportunity, do you have some kind of, like, right of first refusal or a purchase option to kinda get to that higher number? Just trying to kinda figure out what's in the, you know, remaining amount beyond the $42 million for the actual project that's underway.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

John, the best way to answer that is, any real estate development outside of a carve-out for, you know, one particular client that I mentioned already, which is a user of their end product, we basically get to take a look at the opportunity. You know, then if we wish not to pursue it, we don't have to. We, as their real estate partner, will be given the opportunity to look at any real estate development that they enter into, you know, over the next five or six years. There's a timeframe associated with that.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Ultimately the goal here is to continue to invest because that would mean that they are becoming a more and more, you know, successful operator within vertical farming, and we are their real estate partner going forward. Yeah, it is a concept of the optionality lies with us in terms of how much more we invest.

[John James Massocca, VP of Equity Research at Ladenburg Thalmann & Co. Inc.]

Okay. Understood. Can you provide a little more color on the dental portfolio acquired in 4Q? What made that specific portfolio attractive? Can you provide some color on the credit behind those assets?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

It's not rated. It was a situation where you had, you know, the operator own both the operations as well as the real estate. You know, this was a mechanism for them to monetize their real estate and continue to invest in the operations of the business. You know, I think we are very constrained by what it is that we can share. This was a highly negotiated transaction, but it is one that we are very excited about. You know, this is, again, an advent into this consumer-centric medical real estate in a big way, and we felt like it was large enough for us to sort of engage in and talk about, but we can't be more specific than that.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

You know what our overall cap rate was for the quarter. You know, this was a very small component of it, given that it was a $4 billion dollar quarter. That's the extent of what we can talk about.

[John James Massocca, VP of Equity Research at Ladenburg Thalmann & Co. Inc.]

Yes, that's fair. Thank you very much.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Linda Tsai with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

[Linda Tsai, SVP and Equity Research Analyst at Jefferies]

Hi. What are some of the benefits you hope to achieve by filling in the vacant role of the COO?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

You know, Greg's sitting right here, you know, he's already, you know, he's been with us about a month and a half, and he's already added so much value to all of our discussions. He's a very bright mind, and now he's gonna start blushing, but, you know, he's somebody that I've respected. I've known Greg for the last, you know, I guess now it's almost 15 years. He has a perspective that he brings to the table that is very unique, and it's gonna be incredibly additive to all of us. Look, our business is becoming more and more complicated. We are becoming a bigger and bigger organization. We need talented people to continue to do that.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

The most important thing about Greg in my mind is his integrity and his ability and his leadership qualities and his ability to mentor. Those are all qualities that will be put to good use, especially with the next batch of leaders that we are cultivating internally. He will be a massive help in accelerating them to very senior leadership positions within the company, which, by the way, this company will need in order to continue to execute its strategy and plan.

[Linda Tsai, SVP and Equity Research Analyst at Jefferies]

Thanks for that. Then just in terms of recurring CapEx being less than 1% of Realty Income's NOI, does this vary whether the properties are domestic or international? Are your new verticals consistent with this threshold too?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

It depends on the type of leases that we have, you know? I will tell you that, for example, an industrial lease tends to have structural and roof responsibilities, you know, that's on the landlord. Obviously CapEx there, not maintenance CapEx necessarily, but just CapEx in general, is going to be higher. Now, some of it will be viewed as maintenance, some of it will be viewed as improving the life of the real estate. The categorization of that CapEx may be different, but it is very much a function of the lease. I would say that in the U.K., there is, even on the retail side, there is, not perfectly what we call quad nets assets.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

We do have a lot more leakage, but lot more leakage is a relative term to very little leakage here in the U.S. All said and done, you know, it's not a big part of our business. It's something that we share. It's part of the AFFO. Again, all of that is underwritten when we are thinking about the long-term return profile of investments that we make, obviously take into consideration on the front end before moving forward in transactions.

[Linda Tsai, SVP and Equity Research Analyst at Jefferies]

Thank you.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Omotayo Okusanya with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

[Omotayo Okusanya, Senior Research Analyst at Credit Suisse]

Yes. Good afternoon. Just a quick follow-up on Haendel's question. Again, doing a little bit more in the non-IG space, your watch list is a little bit bigger. On the flip side, your rent coverages are getting stronger and stronger. How do we think about just kind of credit provisioning on a going forward basis with all these kind of moving factors? What do you kind of look at as kind of adequate provisioning relative to historical levels, just kind of given the business backdrop?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Yeah, Tayo, it's not a perfect science. You've put forth 2 data points that we've shared with you that are polar opposites. You know, how in this backdrop of, you know, uncertainty do we have four-wall coverages that continue to improve? Yet, you know, we are doing less and less of investment grade. That goes back to the underwriting, you know? I already mentioned to you that there are a couple of retail names that, you know, are not investment grade, but have coverages, you know, north of 5x. You know, again, it's a question of, are these businesses that we are comfortable with?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

With the backdrop of this high interest rate environment, you know, we are not going to be doing transactions where, you know, you're gonna have an operator that doesn't have a business model that can sustain what we are going to experience, especially in the near term, because that would not be good. So I don't think we should over-index to investment grade. I know it makes the conversation so much easier with the outside world, but what we have to rely upon is where can we get return profiles is superior to alternatives. I think that's how we are thinking about our business. We clearly have provisioned because of this uncertainty. We clearly have provisioned in our, in our guidance, you know, a higher bad debt expense. You know, last year was a phenomenal year for us.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

We had a similar provisioning that we kept adjusting throughout the year and ended up actually having bad debt expense below what we have traditionally experienced in the business. Again, we expect the worst. We underwrite to what we expect and, you know, allow for the better outcomes to play out. That's really how we think about our business, Tayo.

[Omotayo Okusanya, Senior Research Analyst at Credit Suisse]

Got you. Could you share any specific numbers about the provisioning of like, you know, like 60 basis points or 75 basis points as a bogey?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

You mean in terms of what we have in the earnings guidance?

[Omotayo Okusanya, Senior Research Analyst at Credit Suisse]

In the guidance. Yeah, in the guidance.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Yeah. I don't think we're gonna give that level of guidance because guess what's gonna happen, Tayo? Every year subsequent to this, people are going to want to know that. Just take a look at our history. You've got, you know, you've got bad debt expense. It's an income statement, line item. You can take a look at the history, and you can see that, you know, historically speaking, we've been in this 20 to zip code. You know, last year was better than that. You know, you can now take that information, overlay what we expect to happen over the next 12 months, and that's how you should create your models.

[Omotayo Okusanya, Senior Research Analyst at Credit Suisse]

Fair enough. Thank you.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Sure.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Joshua Dennerlein with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

[Josh Dennerlein, Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America Corporation]

Yeah. Hey, guys. Just one more. Just on the tenant front, I don't think we touched the watch list. Saw some news on or the Red Lobster has been in the news. I guess they've closed a few stores. Any kind of updates on the watch list and maybe just Red Lobster in general?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

You missed it. Somebody else asked us about the watch list. It's right around 4%. You know, you brought up Red Lobster. There were rumors around that Red Lobster was trying to negotiate rents with landlords. I can unequivocally tell you that that is not the case. At least they haven't approached us. There certainly was, you know, assets that they have closed again, none of which impacted our portfolio. There are some challenges with that operation. It represents about 1% of our rent. Again, I do think that some of the missteps that they had made in the third, fourth quarter of last year have essentially been reversed. They were slow to make pricing adjustments. They have rectified that.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

You know, they are managing their inventory much better. All of those should result in, you know, better performance. I just wanted to make sure that we were talking about facts and not rumors that have, you know, percolated in the rumor mill.

[Josh Dennerlein, Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America Corporation]

Well, thanks for the update.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Of course. Thank you.

[Operator]

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference over to Sumit Roy for any closing remarks.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Well, thank you, Dave, for hosting us, and thank you everyone for joining in. I look forward to seeing you guys in the upcoming conferences. Take care.

[Operator]

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Christie Kelly, EVP, CFO, and Treasurer
• Jonathan Pong, SVP and Head of Corporate Finance
• Julie Hasselwander, Senior Manager of Investor Relations
• Sumit Roy, President and CEO

Analysts

• Anthony Paolone, Executive Director and Senior Analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co.
• Greg McGinniss, Equity Research Analyst at Scotiabank
• Haendel St. Juste, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Mizuho Securities
• John James Massocca, VP of Equity Research at Ladenburg Thalmann & Co. Inc.
• Josh Dennerlein, Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America Corporation
• Linda Tsai, SVP and Equity Research Analyst at Jefferies
• Michael Goldsmith, Analyst at UBS
• Omotayo Okusanya, Senior Research Analyst at Credit Suisse
• Ronald Kamdem, Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley
• Spenser Allaway, Senior Analyst at Green Street Advisors
• Wesley Golladay, Senior Research Analyst at Baird