Urban Edge Properties Q3 2025 Earnings Report

Urban Edge Properties EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.36
• Consensus EPS: $0.35
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.01
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Urban Edge Properties Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $120.13 million
• Expected Revenue: $117.85 million
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$2.28 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Urban Edge Properties Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q3 2025
• Date: 10/29/2025
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, October 29, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 8:30AM ET

Urban Edge Properties (NYSE:UE) is a publicly traded real estate investment trust (REIT) that specializes in owning, operating and developing grocery-anchored shopping centers. The company was formed in January 2017 as a spin-off from Regency Centers Corporation, establishing an independent platform focused on urban and densely populated markets. As a fully integrated REIT, Urban Edge oversees the acquisition, financing, leasing, redevelopment and management of its retail properties.

The company’s portfolio comprises predominantly open-air shopping centers anchored by national and regional supermarket operators. Urban Edge works closely with tenants across grocery, dining, fitness, personal care and services to enhance property performance and create community-oriented retail destinations. Its asset management team pursues selective redevelopment and expansion projects to modernize existing centers, improve tenant mix and capitalize on evolving consumer trends.

Urban Edge Properties concentrates its operations in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Florida and Chicago metropolitan areas, where it maintains strong relationships with major regional and national retailers. By focusing on densely populated, high-density trade areas, the company seeks to generate stable rental income and long-term value creation. Urban Edge’s strategic approach combines targeted acquisitions, proactive property management and selective redevelopment to serve growing urban communities and meet the needs of its retail partners.

Urban Edge Properties Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Raised full‑year 2025 FFO as adjusted guidance by $0.01 at the midpoint to a new range of $1.42–$1.44, with Q3 FFO as adjusted of $0.36 and same‑property NOI up 4.7% for the quarter.
• Positive Sentiment: Strong leasing momentum — 31 deals (347k sq ft) in Q3 with outsized new‑lease spreads (driving a ~40% YTD average on new leases and ~10% on renewals) and high occupancy (anchor ~97.2%, shop ~92.5%).
• Positive Sentiment: Active capital recycling and accretive acquisitions, including the $39M Brighton Mills buy in Boston and ~$600M of acquisitions at ~7% cap versus ~$500M disposals at ~5% cap, which management says has upgraded portfolio quality and growth.
• Positive Sentiment: Healthy balance sheet and liquidity — over $900M total liquidity (including $145M cash), a new $123.6M non‑recourse mortgage at 5.1%, 100% non‑recourse fixed‑rate debt and net debt/EBITDA of 5.6x.
• Negative Sentiment: Some 2025 upside reflects nonrecurring items (management cited ~$2M of old receivable collections and ~$1.5M of CAM recoveries) and acquisition competition is intense, which may limit near‑term deal opportunities or require paying up for assets.

Presentation

[Operator]

Greetings and welcome to the Urban Edge Properties third quarter 2025 earnings call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. Should anyone require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Areeba Ahmed, Investor Relations Associate. Thank you. You may begin.

[Areeba Ahmed, Investor Relations Associate at Urban Edge Properties]

Good morning and welcome to Urban Edge Properties third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Joining me today are Jeff Olson, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Jeff Mooallem, Chief Operating Officer; Mark Langer, Chief Financial Officer; Heather Ohlberg, General Counsel; Scott Auster, EVP and Head of Leasing; and Andrea Drazin, Chief Accounting Officer.

[Areeba Ahmed, Investor Relations Associate at Urban Edge Properties]

Please note, today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements about the company's views of future events and financial performance, which are subject to numerous assumptions, risks, and uncertainties, and which the company does not undertake to update. Our actual results, financial condition, and business may differ. Please refer to our filings with the SEC, which are also available on our website, for more information about the company. In our discussion today, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these measures to GAAP results are available in our earnings release and our supplemental disclosure package. At this time, it is my pleasure to introduce our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Jeff Olson.

[Jeff Olson, Chairman and CEO at Urban Edge Properties]

Great. Thank you, Areeba, and good morning. We delivered another strong quarter with FFO as adjusted increasing 4% over the third quarter of last year, bringing our year-to-date growth to 7% compared to the first nine months of last year. Same property net operating income increased by 4.7% for the quarter and 5.4% year to date. Last week, we completed the $39 million acquisition of Brighton Mills, a 91,000 sq ft grocery-anchored shopping center located less than one mile from Harvard Business School. The property is situated in a highly desirable infill neighborhood of Boston that has experienced significant growth driven by new multifamily developments. The 3-mi trade area comprises 449,000 people with average household incomes of $170,000. The purchase was funded with proceeds from the sales of Kennedy Commons and MacDade Commons, both structured as 1031 exchange transactions.

[Jeff Olson, Chairman and CEO at Urban Edge Properties]

Those two properties were sold at a 5.4% cap rate with a five-year forecasted NOI growth of only 0.4%. We acquired Brighton Mills for a similar cap rate in the mid 5s, but we expect annual NOI growth will exceed 3% primarily through contractual rent increases. The property also has tremendous demand for residential and commercial development as several parcels with the same zoning have been approved or are already under construction. It is one of the few shopping centers in the market with surface parking. Our price of approximately $5 million per acre is well below the $9 million-$10 million per acre land values in the immediate area, making this a textbook covered land play that delivers solid current returns and meaningful growth as we wait for the leases to expire so that we can eventually extract even more value from the land.

[Jeff Olson, Chairman and CEO at Urban Edge Properties]

Our Boston portfolio now includes seven properties with a value approaching $500 million, representing about 10% of our company's value. Five years ago, this region accounted for less than 2% of our value. Over the last two years, our capital recycling strategy has resulted in nearly $600 million of acquisitions of high-quality shopping centers at an average 7% cap rate while disposing of approximately $500 million of non-core assets at a 5% cap rate. A disciplined approach that has meaningfully upgraded our portfolio quality and long-term growth rate. The acquisition market remains highly competitive, driven by more institutional capital on the equity side and tighter spreads from traditional banks on the debt side.

[Jeff Olson, Chairman and CEO at Urban Edge Properties]

Given our better than expected results, we are raising our 2025 FFO as adjusted guidance by a penny per share at the midpoint to a new range of $1.42-$1.44 per share, representing 6% growth over 2024 at the midpoint. Looking ahead, we expect shopping center fundamentals to remain strong, driven by favorable supply demand dynamics and record low vacancy rates. This strength is already evident in our year to date leasing spreads, which average 40% on new leases and nearly 10% on renewals. In closing, I want to recognize our exceptional team. Their dedication and focus continue to drive our success. I'm grateful for their commitment to delivering another quarter of strong results. I will now turn it over to our Chief Operating Officer, Jeff Mooallem.

[Jeff Mooallem, COO at Urban Edge Properties]

Thanks Jeff and good morning everyone. We continue to make meaningful progress across leasing and development, reinforcing the strength of our portfolio and our ability to drive long term value creation. Leasing activity in the quarter totaled 31 deals aggregating 347,000 sq ft. This included 20 renewals totaling 265,000 sq ft at a 9% spread and 11 new leases totaling 82,000 sq ft at an outsized 61% spread. That spread was primarily driven by new anchor leases with HomeGoods and Ross. These national retailers took spaces that were previously leased to now bankrupt companies, reinforcing what we have been saying for the past several quarters. When we have an opportunity to get boxes back in our portfolio, we are usually able to generate very strong rent spreads.

[Jeff Mooallem, COO at Urban Edge Properties]

Our overall same property lease rate now stands at 96.6%, a 20 basis point decline from last quarter, and our anchor lease rate is at 97.2%, also a 20 basis point decline. We anticipated this decrease due to the lease rejection of our At Home store at Ledgewood Commons. The At Home vacancy alone had a 60 basis point impact on leased occupancy, but its impact on NOI is much less as it was a single digit rent that we expect to replace with a strong renewal spread. To put it another way, the deals with HomeGoods and Ross signed in the third quarter will contribute almost twice as much base rent as At Home did from this box in 60% of the sq ftage. We also executed nine new shop leases in the third quarter totaling 27,000 sq ft, achieving a same space cash spread of 42%.

[Jeff Mooallem, COO at Urban Edge Properties]

Our shop occupancy rate remained flat from the prior quarter at 92.5%, in part because we continue to look for ways to create new shop space where economics justify it. For example, this quarter we split a vacant 11,000 sq ft space in Millburn, New Jersey and turned an underperforming anchor space into more desirable shop space. We've already executed a lease on about 40% of this space at a very healthy spread and we expect a similar return on the remainder of the space. On the development front, we stabilized one project with the opening of Bob's Discount Furniture at Newington Commons 2/4 ahead of schedule, bringing our rolling 12 month total to $49 million of projects stabilized at a blended yield of 17%. We also activated three new redevelopments this quarter with a gross investment of $8.4 million.

[Jeff Mooallem, COO at Urban Edge Properties]

Our active redevelopment pipeline now totals $149 million with a strong 15% projected yield. We continue to convert our signed-not-open pipeline, which now stands at $21.5 million and represents 7% of NOI, into rent commencements. This quarter we commenced $5.6 million of annualized gross rents from tenants like Starbucks, Sweetgreen, Dave's Hot Chicken, and our first Tesla service center. Today we are adding to the rent roll our second Trader Joe's location in Woodbridge, New Jersey, which opened for business this morning. I want to wrap up by sharing some insight into the overall leasing market and the health of our national retailers. In the past 45 days, Scott Auster and I have been out on the road. We have visited eight different national retailers in their offices to discuss overall sales trends, capital plans, store performance, and opportunities to do more together. The takeaway has been extremely positive.

[Jeff Mooallem, COO at Urban Edge Properties]

We heard good news about operating metrics and good news about the strength of our Northeast Corridor market versus other parts of the country. Nearly all are in clear expansion mode and are prepared to pay the rents needed to make that happen. With a shortage of good space available for these retailers in our markets, they are encouraging us to take back space that may be under-leased where we can, and we're busy studying the best ways to do this at some of our bigger properties like Bergen, Yonkers, and Cherry Hill. This has always been and continues to be a business of both short-term results and long-term value creation. We believe today's economic climate allows us to achieve both. With that, I'll turn it over to our CFO, Mark Langer.

[Mark Langer, CFO at Urban Edge Properties]

Thank you Jeff and good morning everyone. We're pleased to report another excellent quarter, underscored by strong earnings growth and sustained leasing momentum. In the third quarter, FFO as adjusted was $0.36 per share, and same property NOI including redevelopment increased 4.7% year-over-year. This growth was driven by rent commencements from new tenants, higher net recoveries, and higher collections on past due receivables. FFO as adjusted also benefited from lower recurring G&A. On the financing front, we secured a new $123.6 million four-year non-recourse mortgage on Shoppers World at a fixed rate of 5.1%. A portion of the proceeds was used to pay off our $90 million line of credit, which carried an interest rate of 5.5%. The remaining proceeds are expected to be used towards capital investment and general corporate purposes.

[Mark Langer, CFO at Urban Edge Properties]

Debt markets for retail assets continue to strengthen as capital flows from CMBS, life companies, and especially banks have increased, which has resulted in spreads compressing 30-40 basis points since the first quarter. That is in addition to the 20-30 basis point decline in base rates. Our liquidity position remains very strong at over $900 million, including $145 million in cash and no amounts drawn on our line of credit. Outstanding indebtedness consists of 100% non-recourse fixed rate mortgage debt. Our net debt to annualized EBITDA was 5.6x at the end of the quarter, which provides us with the flexibility to capitalize on future growth opportunities. Looking ahead to the remainder of 2025, we are raising our FFO as adjusted guidance by a penny a share at the midpoint, implying fourth quarter FFO of $0.36 per share.

[Mark Langer, CFO at Urban Edge Properties]

This guidance increase reflects better than expected results year to date from new tenant rent commencements, year-end CAM reconciliations, and lower G&A. Our expectations for same property NOI growth, including redevelopment guidance, have also been increased to a new midpoint of 5.25%, up from the prior midpoint of 4.6%, implying growth in the fourth quarter of approximately 4.5%. As Jeff mentioned, our $21.5 million S&O pipeline will continue to contribute to future growth, with $5.6 million in annualized gross rent already commenced in the third quarter and another $300,000 expected in the fourth quarter. In summary, we are pleased with the track record of execution we have generated over the past three years. We now expect that our FFO as adjusted CAGR will be nearly 6% during this time, driven by generating average same property NOI growth of 4.3%.

[Mark Langer, CFO at Urban Edge Properties]

This growth was achieved while improving our balance sheet as acquisitions were funded primarily with the sale of low cap rate low growth assets. We have significantly improved the quality and durability of our cash flow as the addition of strong credit, highly desired anchor tenants have come online and we have increased shop occupancy to nearly 93%. As we look ahead, we remain focused on driving long term growth while maintaining a strong track record of prudent capital allocation. With that, I'll turn the call over to the operator for Q and A.

[Operator]

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment please while we poll for questions. The first question is from Michael Goldsmith from UBS. Please go ahead.

[Jeff Olson, Chairman and CEO at Urban Edge Properties]

Good morning, Michael.

[Michael Goldsmith, US REITs Analyst at UBS]

Good morning, guys. Thanks a lot for taking the question. Maybe starting with this acquisition sounds like there's some better opportunity for growth and is also opportunity for redevelopment over time. You know, just to get a better sense of the timeline for that. Are you able to kind of size when the leases expire so that you could start to monetize some of the opportunities at that site?

[Jeff Olson, Chairman and CEO at Urban Edge Properties]

Yeah, literally we see over the next 10 years there's term on a lot of the leases. I think all the leases expire in 22 years, so we definitely have some time. Over that 22 year time period we feel very confident that we'll exceed 3% NOI growth based on everything in place. Maybe we'll get to it sooner if we're able to negotiate a deal with the current tenant. I think I said in my comments, it's a textbook covered land play. Indeed it is. If we could own 72 properties like this, I think we'd all be very happy here. By the way, I'm very happy to see you covering the stock. Michael, when I read the report this morning, UBS. As you know, I was a former analyst at UBS so I was looking for my name on the report.

[Jeff Olson, Chairman and CEO at Urban Edge Properties]

I have to chuckle because my name tied to a neutral rating on Urban Edge Properties wouldn't happen. Anyway, we hope to get you there someday.

[Michael Goldsmith, US REITs Analyst at UBS]

We'll work on that. As a follow up, just as we look forward, can you provide a breakdown of some of the one-time items you recognize in 2025 so that we could strip that out of the 2026 run rate? I think real estate tax and G&A have been benefits this year. How can we think about those as we look forward?

[Mark Langer, CFO at Urban Edge Properties]

Yeah, I think, Michael, the things that we've talked about on some prior calls, and to answer your question in terms of some items that we don't see recurring at the same levels, we had some one-time collections that related to some very old receivables, including, as you heard in my prepared remarks this quarter, we had some. I think for the full year we believe that's about $2 million, and then probably about $1.5 million related to some of the CAM recovery billings that we've had that related to some old prior periods as well. I think those are the two biggest things I would highlight.

[Michael Goldsmith, US REITs Analyst at UBS]

Anything on real estate taxes and G&A going forward?

[Mark Langer, CFO at Urban Edge Properties]

No real estate taxes. I feel good. You know, our run rate, we have a repetitive process in place where we challenge and appeal those where we believe it's warranted. To the extent we had anything that was really material or outsized, Michael, we would call your attention to it. I don't see that on the G&A front. I can tell you we've worked very hard over the last few years to continue to do everything we can, whether it's right sizing the enterprise, looking at efficiencies. You are seeing a downward trend. That is what's tied to our guidance. There will be some reversion next year just because headcount will stabilize. We'll have normal inflationary increases. I don't see it having any material move.

[Michael Goldsmith, US REITs Analyst at UBS]

Thank you very much. Looking forward to working with you guys, and good luck in the fourth quarter.

[Jeff Olson, Chairman and CEO at Urban Edge Properties]

Great. Thank you, Michael.

[Operator]

The next question is from Michael Griffin from Evercore ISI. Please, go ahead. Great.

[Michael Griffin, Director at Evercore ISI]

Thanks, Jeff. Maybe you can talk about the opportunity set within Shoppers World. I know you recently got the mortgage refinance there. If I remember correctly, Kohl's box that you could be looking to do something with, whether it's redevelopment into other uses or things like that, but maybe give us a sense of what the opportunity is there and what we could be seeing in the hopper for that property.

[Jeff Mooallem, COO at Urban Edge Properties]

Hey, good morning, Michael. It's Jeff Mooallem. I'm going to try to take that one if I can. Yeah, I mean, Shoppers World, we acquired it in October of 2023. It was our first sort of really meaningfully large acquisition in Boston. We were very excited to get our hands on it. As you know, it's kind of one of the most unique and irreplaceable properties in that trade area.

[Jeff Mooallem, COO at Urban Edge Properties]

We acquired it all cash at the time, which was a wise move because two years later, or a little less than two years later, we were able to secure the financing that Mark referenced. Important to note that in that financing the Kohl's parcel is not included. We do have some flexibility to work with the Kohl's parcel alone without it impacting the mortgage that we took on the main Shoppers World parcel. As we get into the Kohl's conversation, you know, we'll let you know we do have an agreement with Kohl's where we have the ability to get that back early if we want to. We have been studying some different ways to work with the building. We've looked at some mixed use opportunities. We've looked at retenanting it to other tenants.

[Jeff Mooallem, COO at Urban Edge Properties]

We feel confident that we're going to be able to do something accretive and positive there, not just economically, but for the overall benefit, the asset. I would say that we're very excited for this sort of next generation of Shoppers World. There's good demand for some of the other space as well. We don't have any more space left at the moment, but we're trying to find ways to increase the main Shoppers World parcel as well. On the Kohl's piece itself, stay tuned. I think hopefully early next year we'll have something cool to announce there.

[Michael Griffin, Director at Evercore ISI]

Thanks, Jeff. That's some helpful context there. Maybe you can give a little bit of color around the rent spreads in the quarter, particularly as it relates to the new leases. Looks like it was up about 60% year-over-year. Was one lease skewing that? Maybe absent that, it's probably in the 20% or 30% range, or is that really indicative of, I guess, the demand that you're seeing within the new lease part of the leasing pipeline?

[Jeff Mooallem, COO at Urban Edge Properties]

I would love to tell you that 60% rent spreads are a consistent run rate going forward, but we did have a unique situation. First of all, with our software, the data set is somewhat limited, so you got to take that into account. In the third quarter, though, we did sign anchor leases with one with HomeGoods and one with Ross in spaces that were previously occupied by Big Lots and buybuy BABY. They were sort of the byproducts of those bankruptcies. If you recall, we've been saying now for a couple of years, boy, if we get some of this space back, we're pretty sure we can make a lot of money on it.

[Jeff Mooallem, COO at Urban Edge Properties]

That's the proof right there. I mean, you're talking about rent spreads on those two boxes alone that really drove that 60% number. There was some positive shop leasing spreads as well, but those two deals in particular were what got us into that 60% range. Going forward, I think it's reasonable to assume that we'll be comfortably in the double digits, and we like to be north of 20%, but probably not 60% every quarter.

[Michael Griffin, Director at Evercore ISI]

Jeff, just real quick, what is the expected time frame between executing those leases on those backfilled anchor boxes versus when the new tenant is going to commence occupancy?

[Jeff Mooallem, COO at Urban Edge Properties]

That's part of the reason Scott and I were out on the road the last 45 days was to try to reiterate to our retailers how much we'd like to get them open as fast as possible. What I would tell you is when both parties are motivated, it can happen pretty quick. We'd love to get HomeGoods and Ross in those cases, both open for business in 2026. We're confident that one of them will open probably in the first half of the year and the other one hopefully in the second half of the year.

[Michael Griffin, Director at Evercore ISI]

Great. That's it for me. Thanks for the time.

[Operator]

The next question is from Floris van Dijkum from Ladenburg. Please go ahead.

[Floris van Dijkum, Managing Director at Ladenburg]

Hey, morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Jeff. Jeff Mooallem, that is, I had a question on a comment you made about splitting an anchor box. Can you talk about the opportunity to create more shop space in your portfolio? How many more opportunities are there available to take anchor and split it? What are the returns for that kind of capital?

[Jeff Mooallem, COO at Urban Edge Properties]

Yeah. Good morning, Floris. It's a great question. I mean, it's something we're studying all the time. In this particular case, it was a relatively small box, only 11,000 ft, but qualifies as an anchor over a 10,000 sq ft threshold. It was a fairly logical and easy split. We were able to get a great national tenant fitness user to take the corner piece. That will really drive the leasing of the rest of it. If we had half a dozen or a dozen more of those, we would be doing them right now. A lot of the anchor space that we have left, given our high anchor occupancy, is somewhat more challenged space, whether it's single or mid-teen rent kind of space. If it's deep, it does make it challenging to turn it into shop space.

[Jeff Mooallem, COO at Urban Edge Properties]

A lot of our anchor space, like if you look at the At Home in Ledgewood, for example, which we talked about, probably gets cut up into two or three anchor tenants and not into a lot of shop space. Having said that, this is something we talk about literally every week in our development and our leasing meetings. Where else can we create more shop space? We have great demand for shop space across the portfolio. I mentioned some of the names of some of the shop tenants we've opened this quarter: Sweetgreen, Starbucks, CAVA, the fitness deal we just signed in Millburn. These are tenants who can pay rents in the $40s, $50s, $60s. The economics start to make sense to create shop space when we can.

[Jeff Olson, Chairman and CEO at Urban Edge Properties]

It's not just shop space, too right. It's also pad space, which.

[Jeff Mooallem, COO at Urban Edge Properties]

Pads are more valuable

[Jeff Olson, Chairman and CEO at Urban Edge Properties]

Because the rents are so much higher.

[Jeff Mooallem, COO at Urban Edge Properties]

Right. We're creating a pad, maybe two pads at two different shopping centers. We think that there's an opportunity set there. Maybe four or five of our assets could get additional pads for multi-tenant shops or even for a single-tenant food user.

[Floris van Dijkum, Managing Director at Ladenburg]

Great. Maybe a follow up question. Talk a little bit about the acquisition environment and also maybe the ability to fund acquisitions as well. I know that New York and Boston are pretty competitive markets. I would imagine it's pretty tough to find a product that fits your criteria. Maybe talk a little bit about what you're seeing what's out there and your appetite for transactions going forward.

[Jeff Olson, Chairman and CEO at Urban Edge Properties]

Look, Floris, it's a very competitive market. There are a lot of new players in the market, whether it's private equity, family offices, or institutions. Their recent interest is really driven by more and cheaper debt availability. As you know, shopping centers also offer higher cap rates than some of the other product types, including resi, industrial, and data centers. What's attractive to so many is that out of the gate shopping centers offer attractive leverage returns when you buy the asset and then durable and growing cash flows over time. The sector has a lot of interest from a lot of people. It's been building up over the last year or so. Now we're starting to see that in the bids. We're underwriting about $200 million of assets right now. We have nothing under control.

[Jeff Olson, Chairman and CEO at Urban Edge Properties]

I think we've lost three shopping centers in the last 90 days that we liked, but we were maybe the number two, number three, or number four bidder. We ended up losing probably by 25-ish basis points, which we're happy to do because we're going to be disciplined. We're also in the market with certain centers that we own, trying to test that market to see if we can achieve our pricing. If we do better in that regard, then maybe we're willing to pay up a little bit more for something else. We really want to pair most of our acquisition activity with disposition activity. I think we've been the leader in capital recycling within the space over the last 24 months, and we hope to continue that to the extent that we can.

[Floris van Dijkum, Managing Director at Ladenburg]

Thanks, Jeff. Appreciate that.

[Jeff Olson, Chairman and CEO at Urban Edge Properties]

Okay, Floris, thank you.

[Operator]

The next question is from Michael Gorman from BTG Pactual. Please, go ahead.

[Michael Gorman, Managing Director and REIT Analyst at BTIG]

Yeah, thanks. Good morning, Jeff. Maybe kind of continuing on with that right now. I'm kind of interested. When you think about Brighton and some of the other deals that you've done, they're a little bit nontraditional, right. Whether it's a covered land play, redevelopment opportunity. I'm curious, do you see the same level of institutional competition for those maybe nontraditional shopping center assets that have additional upside for a sophisticated operator? Or is that kind of the niche where you're finding more success right now because the institutional capital can't go there as easily?

[Jeff Olson, Chairman and CEO at Urban Edge Properties]

I think it depends on the deal. I mean, at Brighton Mills, there were lots of people that were interested. I think at least a dozen, because that one was fairly easy to understand. There are only five tenants there and the land values are what they are. We do have a platform that is seeking value add opportunities that does limit the buyer pool out there. I do think we're differentiated in that regard. Is it helping? Yeah, I think it's helping on the margin.

[Michael Gorman, Managing Director and REIT Analyst at BTIG]

Okay, great, that's helpful. Maybe just on the tenant environment for a minute, Jeff, you highlighted some of the small shop tenant demand and rattled off three food concepts. We saw a stat recently floating around that almost 50% of food spending now is outside of the home. I'm wondering how you balance the demand you're seeing from the restaurant side of the business with what you're seeing from your grocers, which also continue to have strong sales. I mean, how does that dynamic play out? Is there any end to the demand for the food concepts? I'm just curious how you see that trending in your portfolio.

[Jeff Mooallem, COO at Urban Edge Properties]

Yeah. Hey Michael, good morning. Good to hear you on this call. This is something we're constantly thinking about and talking about. At what point is too much with restaurant space? I'll give you an example of Bergentown Center, which, you know, we have a restaurant space that was a Sticky's Fingers that went Chapter 11 about six months ago, and we have lots of great conversation about how to re-tenant that space. We're actually thinking about re-tenanting it with a boutique fitness operator who's stepping up to a very aggressive rent because we are adding so many more restaurants at that center that we are sensitive to over-fooding our properties. It's something we're worried about as it relates to the grocers.

[Jeff Mooallem, COO at Urban Edge Properties]

I can just tell you that when you talk to Trader Joe's, when you talk to Wegmans, when you talk to Walmart, when you talk to certain Sprouts or Aldi, really all ends of the spectrum from traditional grocers to big box and discounters to the more specialty guys, they are still looking for stores and they're still in expansion mode. We're not seeing a lot of push-pull tension between adding grocers versus adding QSRs. What we are seeing and what we're very sensitive to is modifying and limiting the amount of QSRs to give everybody a chance to be successful. If you look at the data that's come out of CAVA and Sweetgreen and Chipotle and companies like that, we probably will see that business maybe slow down a little bit.

[Jeff Mooallem, COO at Urban Edge Properties]

I don't think they'll be opening stores at the same velocity they have in the last three years, but we're still very comfortable doing deals with all of those tenants.

[Michael Gorman, Managing Director and REIT Analyst at BTIG]

Great, that's helpful. Maybe just last one for me. Whether it's on the investment side or the discussions with tenants, has there been any shift in tone or demand or preference around the D.C. metro area? Understanding it's a long term business, but with some of the volatility here in the near term, that could continue for a couple of years. Has there been any shift there, like I said, either on the institutional capital demand side or on the tenant side in that MSA?

[Jeff Mooallem, COO at Urban Edge Properties]

I mean, I can tell you from the tenant side, there has not been any shift. Our centers in D.C. are performing, and we continue to see demand and good opportunities to add there. We recently added a CAVA at our property in Towson, Maryland. We don't have a ton of assets in D.C., but we'd like to have more. The ones that we have are all performing very well. We have a Safeway-anchored center outside of Annapolis that we could probably lease two times over if everybody vacated. I haven't seen it on the tenant side. As far as institutional capital, are you talking more about the buyer market for D.C. assets? Are you talking about lenders?

[Michael Gorman, Managing Director and REIT Analyst at BTIG]

The buyer side. Yeah.

[Jeff Mooallem, COO at Urban Edge Properties]

Yeah, I mean, those deals are frothy. I would say Boston and New York are probably more in demand, but that's not a new thing. Boston, because there's such a supply constrained market, and New York, because of all of the challenges with buying assets around here, are always generating a higher level of institutional interest than maybe Philly or D.C. traditionally have. I don't think that's necessarily a sign of where we are in the political cycle. More so just the way those markets trade.

[Michael Gorman, Managing Director and REIT Analyst at BTIG]

Fantastic. Thanks for the time, guys.

[Jeff Olson, Chairman and CEO at Urban Edge Properties]

Thank you.

[Operator]

As a reminder to ask a question, please press star one. Next question is from Paulina Rojas from Green Street. Please go ahead.

[Paulina Rojas, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Green Street]

Good morning. Hi. The industry is really highly leased. So.What do you think the retailers are seeing that is different and will allow perhaps to sustain these high levels of occupancy for some time instead of, as it has been more frequently, the case of peaks following almost like an inevitable slowdown in occupancy? Another metric.

[Jeff Mooallem, COO at Urban Edge Properties]

Hey, Paulina, it's Jeff Mooallem. Good morning. The biggest thing is the supply and demand metrics are not changing anytime soon. This country built 60-70 million sq ft of new retail a year up until 2008, 2009, 2010, and it has leveled off to the 10-20 million sq ft of retail a year being built and a lot of retail coming offline. Eventually that lack of supply, the demand catches up. We are in that moment right now. Traditionally, in most businesses, the way to change that moment and send it back towards a higher supply, lower demand market is to build more space.

[Jeff Mooallem, COO at Urban Edge Properties]

That's going to be very difficult to do in our product type and in our markets, and we've talked about this, but surface park single level retail centers, especially in the Northeast, there's just not going to be a whole lot more of them. We think we have pricing power with the ones we do own. Now, will there be short term fluctuations as certain tenants who have outdated concepts come out and other new tenants come in? Will some centers become functionally obsolete and turn into other things over time? Sure. The greatest tailwind we have as an industry, and what gives us the most conviction as an industry, is that the supply and demand metric should continue to stay in our favor for a long time.

[Paulina Rojas, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Green Street]

Do you think you're able to single out anchors that are leading the expansion in the Northeast, or it's really too dispersed to highlight a few names?

[Jeff Olson, Chairman and CEO at Urban Edge Properties]

Yeah, I mean, I think it is very dispersed, but certainly Ross is a new entrant to the market. You know, they're being very flexible. They're paying the rent that's required. That will give us a good return for putting them in our centers. That's helpful. You know, all the TJX concepts are expanding widely in the northeast. You have to remember the northeast market is so densely populated that most national retailers are generating the highest sales in these locations just because of supply constraint and they've run out of opportunities to find high quality spaces.

[Jeff Olson, Chairman and CEO at Urban Edge Properties]

There's almost an inverse relationship taking place where if you can provide a retailer with a high quality 25,000 sq ft or 35,000 sq ft box, that rent can be pushed a lot more than it used to just because there aren't many of those available as compared to the thousands of shop spaces that are out there that are more fungible.

[Paulina Rojas, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Green Street]

Thank you. My last question is you still clearly have a path of growth coming from the signed-not-open pipeline, but looking past that, what do you think is Urban Edge Properties' same property NOI growth on an occupancy neutral basis, given all these positive background that you have described.

[Jeff Olson, Chairman and CEO at Urban Edge Properties]

Look, I mean we still have a few years left of getting to this SNO pipeline, which as you know, represents 7% of our NOI. We have some tailwind there. We will certainly look to do some more capital recycling too. I think this is a small deal, but an important, important one of selling $40 million, $50 million of assets with relatively flat growth, replacing it with 3% NOI growth. I think as a goal, we're going to look to be a company that can generate sustainable 3%+ growth. I think we have some time to get there. Same property growth.

[Paulina Rojas, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Green Street]

Thank you.

[Jeff Olson, Chairman and CEO at Urban Edge Properties]

Thank you.

[Operator]

There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the floor back over to Jeff Olson for closing comments.

[Jeff Olson, Chairman and CEO at Urban Edge Properties]

Great. Thank you for your time and attention this morning. We look forward to seeing you soon.

[Operator]

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

Participants

Executives

• Mark Langer, CFO
• Jeff Mooallem, COO
• Jeff Olson, Chairman and CEO
• Areeba Ahmed, Investor Relations Associate

Analysts

• Michael Gorman, Managing Director and REIT Analyst at BTIG
• Floris van Dijkum, Managing Director at Ladenburg
• Michael Griffin, Director at Evercore ISI
• Paulina Rojas, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Green Street
• Michael Goldsmith, US REITs Analyst at UBS