Realty Income Q1 2025 Earnings Report

Realty Income EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $1.06
• Consensus EPS: $1.06
• Beat/Miss: Met Expectations
• One Year Ago EPS: $1.03

Realty Income Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $1.31 billion
• Expected Revenue: $1.28 billion
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$28.38 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: +9.50%

Realty Income Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q1 2025
• Date: 5/5/2025
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Monday, May 5, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 5:00PM ET

Realty Income (NYSE:O), Inc is a US-based investment company focused on the commercial retail market. The company is structured as a REIT and pays 90% of its income in the form of dividend payments. The company hails itself as The Monthly Dividend Company, a name it has trademarked. It is a member of the S&P 500 and the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrat index having increased the payment 117 times since its IPO in 1994. Since its inception and as of December 2022, the company has paid 629 consecutive monthly dividends.

Realty Income, Inc is focused exclusively on free-standing commercial properties in the US, UK and Spain. Unlike some commercial REITs, Realty Income operates on a triple-net lease basis which means its tenants pay for taxes, maintenance and utilities. The company is incorporated in Maryland but has its headquarters in San Diego, California. As of Marcy 2022 the company owned 11,281 properties enclosing more than 213 million square feet of space making it the 7th largest REIT in the US and internationally. At the time, it was worth nearly $40 billion in market cap making it the world's 425th most valuable company.

The company’s top 10 tenants are Walgreens Boots Alliance, 7-11, Dollar General/Dollar Tree, FedEx, LA Fitness, Sainsbury’s, BJ’s Wholesale Club, CVS and Walmart. This lineup of tenants ensures a steady stream of monthly income that allows the company to pay its monthly distribution. The company's CAGR runs in the range of 15% since the IPO and that is boosted by the dividend and its history of growth as well.

The company was founded in 1969 by William and Evelyn Clark. Their first target was a Taco Bell and since then they (and the company) have expanded into all aspects of commercial real estate. The strategy was to target the real estate needed to operate a commercial business and then lease it back to the business. These deals are attractive to businesses because they provide needed capital while guaranteeing long-term occupation of existing facilities.

Some notable milestones in the company’s history are 1994 when it IPOd and then 1997 when Mr. Clark retired and a new era began. In 2013 the company made its first major acquisition with the purchase of Realty Capital Trust and then in 2015 it was added to the S&P 500 index and the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats index in the same year. In 2019 the company made its first acquisition outside the US with the sale and leaseback of some Sainsbury’s properties in the UK and in 2021 it purchased Vereit.

 

Realty Income Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Realty Income delivered AFFO per share of $1.06 in Q1 ’25, marking a 2.9% year-over-year increase and driving total operational returns of 8.9% including its 6% dividend yield.
• The company invested $1.4 billion at a 7.5% weighted average initial cash yield, with 65% of volume in Europe (7% yield) and $479 million in U.S. net-lease assets (8.3% yield).
• Its diversified portfolio now spans over 15,600 properties with 98.5% occupancy, a 103.9% rent recapture rate and 92% of leasing activity from renewals, all achieved with minimal incentives.
• A robust balance sheet was reinforced by a $600 million 10-year bond at 5.34% and expansion of its unsecured credit facility to $5.38 billion, yielding a net debt/EBITDA ratio of 5.4x and a fixed charge coverage of 4.7x.
• Full-year guidance remains intact: 2025 AFFO per share of $4.22–$4.28, assuming 75 bps of rent loss, with ~$4 billion planned investments and the launch of a U.S. Core Plus private fund to broaden capital sources.

Presentation

[Operator]

Good day, and welcome to the Realty Income First Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen only mode. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Kelsey Mueller, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

[Kelsey Mueller, VP - Investor Relations at Realty Income]

Thank you for joining us today for Realty Income's twenty twenty five first quarter operating results conference call. Discussing our results will be Sumit Roy, President and Chief Executive Officer and Jonathan Pong, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. During this conference call, we will make statements that may be considered forward looking statements under federal securities 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 filing on Form 10 Q.

[Kelsey Mueller, VP - Investor Relations at Realty Income]

During the Q and A portion of the call, we will be observing a two question limit. If you would like to ask additional questions, you may reenter the queue. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Sumit Roy.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Thank you, Kelsey. Welcome everyone. Realty Income's first quarter results reflect the strength, consistency and resilience of our business model anchored by a highly diversified global portfolio. Our ability to deliver reliable performance through varying market conditions remains a hallmark of our platform. Over our history, we have strategically diversified our business model across client types, asset classes and geographies, an approach that proves to be an increasingly valuable in today's uncertain macroeconomic environment.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Our portfolio is comprised of 65% U. S. Retail, which includes high quality clients that have demonstrated resilience through economic cycles. To that end, given the strength of our client base and our proactive portfolio management, we expect a negligible portion of our client base to be meaningfully impacted by tariffs, which has already been incorporated into our updated credit assumptions. The diversification and quality of our portfolio, combined with our proven stability as an operator, position us to navigate potential external pressures effectively as we have consistently done.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Moving to the details of the first quarter. We delivered AFFO per share of $1.06 representing a year over year growth of 2.9%. This marks a continuation of our long standing track record of positive AFFO per share growth in all but one year over our thirty year history as a public company. This growth, combined with our 6% dividend yield resulted in total operational returns of 8.9% for the quarter underscoring the value of our platform. We leveraged our diverse sourcing avenues to focus investment activity where we saw the most compelling opportunities, notably in Europe.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

In total, we invested $1,400,000,000 at a 7.5% weighted average initial cash yield, equating to a spread of two zero four basis basis points over our short term weighted average cost of capital. Importantly, 72% of our investment volume came from five transactions over $50,000,000 illustrating one of the many ways our size and scale drive value creation. We continue to benefit from a meaningful portfolio discount when competing for high quality net lease investments in the marketplace. In The U. S, we invested $479,000,000 at an 8.3% weighted average initial cash yield.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

And in Europe, which accounted for 65% of total investment volume this quarter, we deployed $893,000,000 at an average initial cash yield of 7%. The region continues to offer compelling opportunities as we scale our business and seek to capitalize on the attractive dynamics of this large fragmented market. Our international presence and capabilities differentiate us from most other net lease platforms. Importantly, it offers us geographic diversification, which helps navigate country specific uncertainties. This expansion into Europe demonstrates how our entrance into new verticals can create immediate value and achieve scalability in a relatively short time.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

We believe our investments in talent combined with the portability of our deep access to global capital markets have enabled us to achieve scale without adding incremental risk to the enterprise. Turning back to the quarter, we continue to deliver strong operational results across our diversified portfolio, which now comprises over 15,600 properties spanning 91 industries and almost 1,600 unique clients. We consider our clients to be well positioned through various economic cycles given the inherently defensive nature of our top industries including grocery, convenience stores and wholesale clubs. Of our client base, over 34% are investment grade with average rent coverage of 2.9 times. As a reminder, over 90% of our retail rent comes from clients that we consider to offer one or more of the following: nondiscretionary goods, low price points, or a service oriented component for consumers.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Over our long operating history, we have consistently found these types of businesses to be highly resilient during economic downturns. Combined with the significant diversification of our portfolio, we believe this provides investors with relative safety as reflected in our long term operating results. We ended the quarter with 98.5% portfolio occupancy, approximately 20 basis points below the prior quarter and ahead of the historical median of 98.2 from 2010 to 2024. Our rent recapture rate across 194 leases was 103.9% with 92% of leasing activity generated from renewals by the existing client. Consistent with our historical experience, these results were accomplished with minimal lease incentives, which totaled less than $700,000 during the quarter on over $46,000,000 of rent of new annual rents signed.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

And we remained active in our approach to optimizing the portfolio. We sold 55 properties for total net proceeds of $93,000,000 of which $63,000,000 was related to vacant properties. Overall, we believe our results reflect that we are operating from a position of strength as we continue to leverage our structural advantages including a well capitalized balance sheet, enhanced liquidity and unmatched scale. These characteristics allow us to stay agile, work to capitalize on opportunities across our addressable market and maintain discipline in our capital allocation decisions. Above all, the platform we have built is a direct reflection of the talent and experience of our dedicated team members.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Looking at the balance of 2025, we remain confident in our ability to deliver on our expectations despite the current market uncertainties, benefiting from our diversified platform that spans multiple geographies, asset types and funding sources. As such, we're maintaining our outlook for 2025 AFFO per share in the range of 4.22 to $4.28 Consistent with last quarter's update, our 2025 forecast includes the expectation for 75 basis points of potential rent loss with the majority stemming from properties acquired through prior M and A transactions. There have been no material surprises or incremental headwinds to our business as a result of recent geopolitical uncertainties. And while we remain vigilant, we believe our resilient time tested business model positions us well to navigate potential challenges. Additionally, we remain on track to deploy approximately $4,000,000,000 in investments throughout 2025.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Given the advantages of our platform, we are well positioned to increase our capital deployment should attractive opportunities materialize. Despite market wide uncertainty, our short term weighted average cost of capital is actually lower today than it was when we introduced our 2025 investments guidance in late February. Before turning the call over to Jonathan, I'd like to share a brief update on our move into the private capital business, Realty Income's U. S. Core Plus Fund.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

This initiative represents a natural next step in the evolution of our platform and a strategic opportunity to broaden our capital sources and investment capabilities. We began formal marketing efforts in the first quarter and are pleased by the early interest and positive reception from large well known institutional investors. We consider this a clear indication that the differentiation of Realty Income's platform, scale and long track record is clearly resonating in the market. We continue to expect this will be a methodical process that will enhance our access to meaningful sources of capital over time. We look forward to updating the market on our progress at the appropriate time.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

With that, I'd like

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

to turn it over to Jonathan to discuss our financial results and outlook in more detail.

[Jonathan Pong, Executive VP, CFO & Treasurer at Realty Income]

Thank you, Sumit. Fostering meaningful relationships is quarter our ethos as a company and we are grateful for the long standing support of all of our stakeholders. Before diving into our first quarter financial metrics, I wanted to highlight two announcements we made in April that we believe are a testament to the trust our investors and lenders place in the durability of the franchise. In early April, we successfully closed on a $600,000,000 10 year unsecured bond offering, which priced at a 5.34% semiannual yield to maturity.

[Jonathan Pong, Executive VP, CFO & Treasurer at Realty Income]

We are grateful for the sponsorship from a very high quality group of fixed income investors who participated in the transaction, which was well subscribed amidst a volatile and uncertain economic backdrop. Last week, we announced the recast expansion of our multi currency unsecured credit facility to a total size of $5,380,000,000 which compares to our prior facility of $4,250,000,000 The facility consists of a $4,000,000,000 revolving credit facility for realty income bifurcated equally into $2,000,000,000 tranches, which initially mature in 2027 and 2029 respectively. Based on our current A3A minus credit ratings, borrowings will accrue interest at 72.5 basis points over SOFR. In addition, including the recast of the $1,380,000,000 unsecured facility for our U. S.

[Jonathan Pong, Executive VP, CFO & Treasurer at Realty Income]

Core Plus Fund, which as Sumit mentioned, is in its initial marketing phase. The facility for the fund will be comprised of a $1,000,000,000 unsecured revolving line of credit with an initial maturity date in 2029 and a $380,000,000 delayed draw three year unsecured term loan. Establishing a robust source of liquidity for the fund provides meaningful debt capacity to pursue investment opportunities in the second half of the year. From a balance sheet standpoint, we are well positioned to remain active capital allocators with ample liquidity and modest leverage as we finish the quarter with net debt to annualized pro form a adjusted EBITDA of 5.4 times. Our fixed charge coverage ratio of 4.7 times remains consistent with the 4.5 times to 4.7 times range delivered over the last two years.

[Jonathan Pong, Executive VP, CFO & Treasurer at Realty Income]

Our exposure to variable rate debt remains limited, representing just over 6% of our outstanding debt principal at quarter end. As we look towards the balance of the year, we consider our long term and permanent capital needs manageable and our liquidity and access to diverse sources of capital to be strong. We are confident in our ability to lean into opportunities should this period of economic uncertainty continue. I would now like to hand it back to Sumit to complete our prepared remarks.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Thank you, Jonathan. In closing, we remain focused on methodically executing our strategy supported by a resilient portfolio, strong balance sheet and a talented team across the globe. As the monthly dividend company, we have consistently returned capital to our shareholders throughout our history underscoring our commitment to delivering predictable reliable income streams. We are continuing to thoughtfully grow our business and create durable long term value for our shareholders. I would now like to open it up for questions.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Operator?

[Operator]

Our first question today is from Smedes Rose with Citigroup. Please go ahead.

[Smedes Rose, Analyst at Citigroup]

Hi. Thank you. I guess I wanted to ask you a little bit about the activity that you were able to execute on in the first quarter. It looks like the bulk of it was in Europe. I'm just wondering if you could maybe talk a little bit about what you're seeing in Europe at this point and maybe how that contrasts with opportunities available in The U.

[Smedes Rose, Analyst at Citigroup]

S?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Great question. Thanks, Smedes. So what's very compelling about Europe for us is obviously the investments we were able to make. 65% of the total volume came from Europe. We are targeting retail parks in The U.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

K. As well as in Ireland that made up the bulk of the portfolio. And what was very compelling to us about that particular set of transactions was the fact that the rents that we were underwriting were well below what would be deemed as market rents. And we were getting these assets at replacement at well below replacement cost. And the fact that we are controlling a very wide swath of retail footprint is already starting to manifest itself in calls that we are getting from very large retail operators like Lidl and a few others that are very interested in helping us reposition some of these retail parks and give them a presence to continue to allow them to grow as is their stated objective in these markets.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

And this backdrop is obviously very favorable for investment purposes for us and that was the reason why we had the bulk of the investments coming in from Europe. Having said that, we saw plenty of opportunities here in The U. S. As you probably heard me mention, we sourced about $22,000,000,000 worth of product and more than 60% of it was here in The U. S.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

But when you look at some of the credit that we were being asked to underwrite on the higher yielding side of the curve, we just couldn't get comfortable with the downside risk, the tail risks if you will on some of those credits. But we are seeing plenty of opportunities. It's finding the right risk adjusted opportunity that's compelling us to invest more in Europe today. And you should kind of expect that to be the run rate for the first half of this year.

[Smedes Rose, Analyst at Citigroup]

Okay. Okay. And can I just ask you one more thing? You noted that the rent recapture was 103.9%. But on the same store or the same list of clients, I guess, re leasing was down about 50 basis points, but it offset by other items.

[Smedes Rose, Analyst at Citigroup]

Is there anything going on there in your negotiations with re leasing to the same tenants that was driving that down a

[Smedes Rose, Analyst at Citigroup]

little bit? Or is that normal?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

No. It's look, we obviously, if you look at the last few quarters, the renewals have been far superior with existing clients. So this is a bit of a one off.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

But we tend to look at this in totality. We give you the breakup so you can see that the vast majority of the renewals does come from existing clients. But I would chalk this off to a one off, but I believe it was still 99.7%. And the vast majority of the renewals was well north of 100%. But we did have, I want to say, three theater assets, three or four theater assets that dragged it a little bit below the 100% mark, but still a very favorable outcome.

[Operator]

The next question is from Brad Heffern with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

[Brad Heffern, Director at RBC Capital Markets]

Thanks, everybody. Assuming that you're 35 of the way to the guidance for the year on investments, and the first quarter is typically one of the lighter quarters too. You obviously left the guidance unchanged. I'm curious, is that just reflective of the level of uncertainty right now? Or was the first quarter just particularly full to how the pipeline looks?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

That's a great question Brad. Look I think we are very cautiously optimistic. What we didn't want to do was try to extrapolate what we have achieved in the first quarter for the remainder of the year. There is a fair amount of uncertainty. There is a lot of transactions in the market as our sourcing volumes would suggest.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

But it is finding the right deals for us. And given the exogenous factors of a potentially higher interest rate environment for longer and allowing for some of the geopolitical trade driven conditions to play out, we just wanted to be a bit more cautious. So that's really the reason for not wanting to be overly aggressive in changing guidance etcetera at such an early stage. We want to be very deliberate. We want to be very focused on making sure that if we are going to use equity that we use it in a very appropriate fashion.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

And so that's the primary reason why we chose to leave the volume numbers unchanged.

[Brad Heffern, Director at RBC Capital Markets]

Okay. Got it. And then on the tariff impact, you talked through some of the factors that you thought would be well inflated. I'm curious, is there anything in the portfolio that you would call out as potentially actually seeing an impact?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

No. No different than what we had highlighted. I believe it was in February when we were expecting some of these things to play out. I'd gone through a list of clients that we felt like were more exposed to what would happen if tariffs were introduced. We feel like that's fully reflected in the numbers that we've shared with you with regards to our guidance, with regards to our bad debt expense.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

We feel very confident and I think ZiPS is a perfect example of a situation where we got 100% renewal and we had a recapture rate of 94.3%, which was slightly better than what we had forecasted out in the beginning of the year. So look, we feel like we did a good job of underwriting what the potential impact of some of these exogenous factors were into our portfolio. And so we don't expect anything new at this stage.

[Operator]

The next question is from Ryan Caviola with Green Street Advisors. Please go ahead.

[Ryan Caviola, Associate at Green Street Advisors, LLC]

Thank you for taking my question. Just on the U. S. Corp. Plus fund throughout this sort of economic volatility, do you view this uncertainty as keeping other private buyers out or competition on the sidelines and it's helpful with realty income size and scale?

[Ryan Caviola, Associate at Green Street Advisors, LLC]

Or how does the private fund work in an environment like this?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Brian, thank you. That's actually a very good question. Under normal circumstances, I would say that the backdrop that we are all experiencing today wouldn't be a conducive to raising private capital. But this is where I think we set ourselves apart. I don't know of any other company within our sector that can do what we are doing.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

And based on all of the conversations that we are having with these potential investors, we feel very optimistic about meeting the objectives that we have for raising capital at a point in time where for most others I would say even on the private side who have a history of raising private capital this would be a difficult environment to raise capital. But look we feel very optimistic. We look forward to sharing with you the results later this year. And so far so good is how I would play it. With respect to and I don't know if that's what you were asking Ryan, private investors investing in our domain, we've seen a plethora of them coming in and wanting to create a net lease sleeve to their investments.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

But they also tend to use higher leverage. And one could make the argument that our product lends itself to higher leverage in the private domain. But given the cost of debt and given the elevated interest rate environment that will continue to impede their ability to make investments in our space. Our investment profile tends to be core, core plus. And so in order for them to generate the kind of returns that they usually try to generate on their equity this is not a conducive environment for them to invest.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

So I think for a variety of reasons it really does lend itself to what we bring to the table, our history, our reputation and we are very hopeful of having a successful raise by the end of the year.

[Ryan Caviola, Associate at Green Street Advisors, LLC]

Great. That's it for me. Appreciate it.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Thank you, Ryan.

[Operator]

The next question is from Haendel Sanjusi with Mizuho. Please go ahead.

[Haendel St. Juste, Managing Director at Mizuho Financial Group]

Hey, guys. Good afternoon. A couple of quick ones from me. First, wanted to talk about the balance sheet here a bit and your liquidity. You settled a lot of ATM in the quarter, think $631,000,000 60 9 million dollars I think is remaining.

[Haendel St. Juste, Managing Director at Mizuho Financial Group]

So curious how you're thinking about the various funding sources available to you here and the capital required to meet your full year acquisition guidance?

[Jonathan Pong, Executive VP, CFO & Treasurer at Realty Income]

Hey, Haendel. When you look at our guidance of $4,000,000,000 on the investments front, you're right, we do have $265,000,000 of outstanding forward equity. We do have about $650,000,000 on a run rate basis of free cash flow, which of course is equity like in nature. And so and then debt to finance that remaining, call it, 2,600,000,000.0, and to take care of about $1,300,000,000 of refis that we have for the rest of the year, that's about $2,200,000,000 of debt And obviously, given the sponsorship that we've been lucky enough to receive from the fixed income investor base, we feel very confident across currencies that we can do that.

[Jonathan Pong, Executive VP, CFO & Treasurer at Realty Income]

So the missing element, of course, is the new public equity that we would have to raise to fill that gap. And so if you do that math, you're looking at $750,000,000 to 800,000,000 of new equity that we might have to raise for the balance of the year. However, that doesn't take into account any disposition activity that we might do. So we feel very good about where the balance sheet is and sources and uses of cash from here on feels very, very reasonable and modest in terms of what we need to go out and get from the public markets.

[Haendel St. Juste, Managing Director at Mizuho Financial Group]

Got it. That's helpful color, John. So one more, maybe on the other investment in the quarter. Looks like a loan on the development project yields around 10% term just under four years. So maybe some color on who or what you're lending to perhaps the risk profile and then your appetite for perhaps doing more of this type of activity in the near term?

[Haendel St. Juste, Managing Director at Mizuho Financial Group]

Thanks.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Good question, Haendel. Yes, this was a opportunistic loan that we've provided to a private global developer in the data center space. This is a data center park that's being developed in Virginia. The ultimate client that we have is one of the large hyperscalers with very high investment grade rating. And our hope is that this will lead to the ultimate ownership or a path to ownership of these assets.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

And so we are very excited about this relationship. Again it speaks to who we are, our size and scale and the willingness of these very well established highly reputable private developers to work with us directly.

[Operator]

The next question is from Ronald Kamdem with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

[Ronald Kamdem, Managing Director & Head of US REITs and CRE Research at Morgan Stanley]

Hey, just two quick ones. If you could just comment a little bit more on the cap rates in the quarter and more importantly just what you see for trends going forward as we go into this uncertain environment?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Sure, Ron. So the cap rate that we were able to establish even absent this loan was just slightly north of 7%. I think you should expect cap rates to be in that zip code And it's largely being driven by a fair amount of the uncertainty that exists at least in the near term. Once we have a settling out of what's actually going to impact future capital raising and what does the environment look like from an interest rate environment perspective, you can start to feel you can start to see some pressure potentially on the cap rates. But right now we were expecting to see that at the beginning of the year to be very honest and we have not.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

And so it's a bit of a wait and see. And as the market becomes clearer around like I said where these policies are going to land, I think the cap rate environment is going to be a lot clearer. Having said all of that, this is actually benefiting us in some ways. Our cost of capital has improved throughout the year. And so the fact that cap rates are going to remain in the zip code that I've just mentioned, it allows us to create these outsized spreads, which obviously is a benefit.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

And it doesn't come without risk, which is why here in The U. S. We chose not to pursue certain transactions. But I do think that it will help create more opportunities going forward and we look forward seeing how things settle out.

[Ronald Kamdem, Managing Director & Head of US REITs and CRE Research at Morgan Stanley]

Great. And then my second question was just strategically as you're thinking about sort of increasing the rent escalators of the entire portfolio. Can you talk about some of those other buckets like gaming, like Europe and like the data centers and just the updated thinking there about getting the overall rent escalators in the portfolio up? Thanks.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Yes. Again a great question Ron. Look I think the way we are trying to address rent escalators is twofold. One is the organic rent increases that we are targeting and you're exactly right. There are certain asset types I.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

E. Industrial and data centers that tend to have more inherent rent escalators. But the second is the strategy that I was trying to highlight that we are deploying in Europe where we are buying assets that we feel has rent that's well below market rent. And we feel like we can capture that mark to market on the rents come renewal times. And so if you see what we've done in Europe for the first quarter, I think the Walt was just right around four years.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

And it is with an intent to capture that upside that we are inheriting or that we are underwriting is another way that we want to grow the top line without necessarily having to rely just on pure investments to drive growth.

[Operator]

The next question is from Greg McGinnis with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

[Greg Mcginniss, Director at Scotiobank]

Hey, good afternoon out there. I just want to dig into the retail parks a bit. Sumit, you mentioned that those were acquired with below market rents. And I'm curious what the yield would be once those are at market? And then how much have you invested in retail parks to date?

[Greg Mcginniss, Director at Scotiobank]

And do you see a ceiling to that investment?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Well, to anything in life, Greg, there's going to be ceilings. But I'll tell you this is something that the team has done a phenomenal job on. And we decided to go after retail parks because we started to see what the sum of the parks analysis was. We were targeting grocery. We were targeting home improvements like B and Q.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

And we were essentially getting the rest of the parks for next to nothing. That's how it started. And it was at yields that was well north of 8%, even 9%. A couple of factors contributed to that. One was that these assets were being held by institutional investors who were going through a natural capital recycling or their investment time horizon had was coming to an end that created these opportunities for us.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Since our initial investment, which I would say was around three years ago, Fast forward today, we have seen a massive cap rate compression. And now these same assets are trading in the mid-6s. So there's at least been a two fifty, three hundred basis points of compression from when we initially started buying these assets. And the rents that we were underwriting to are also based on our initial analysis anywhere between 5% to 6% below what the current market rents are. The other dynamic that we are starting to see is our ability because we control so much of this retail space, our ability to go to some of these retailers, brand new retailers, IKEA, I already talked about little, etcetera, these are names that are coming to us and saying, in order for us to execute on our growth plans, we would like to be in these locations that you now control.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

And we are having holistic conversations on not only forming these relationships with these growing retailers but potentially creating a value uplift by having them in our retail parks. And so it's along with that I mean I'm so excited I can keep going. We also have repositioning opportunities with extra land that we have inherited through this strategy. And so these are ways that we are trying to create growth top line growth by executing on this strategy that we embarked upon three years ago. And it has been super, super successful.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

I would say in The U. K. We are in the middle innings seventh to eighth inning of well not the eighth but seventh inning of a nine inning investment cycle in retail parks. But in the rest of Europe and we're thinking best in Western Europe for the similar strategy, it's still early days. The only other country where we own retail park is Ireland where we just did a large portfolio.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

And again, it has similar dynamics. And it's accelerating our relationship with some of these very pristine retailers who want to grow and want to grow in the locations that we now control. And so the value uplift is tremendous.

[Greg Mcginniss, Director at Scotiobank]

Okay. Thanks. And as a follow-up, can you just remind us on the potential vacancy risk that you take when acquiring these assets as well as the CapEx needs they may have?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Yes. That's a great question. So what we have underwritten is a certain amount of vacancy that comes with not all parks but a couple of parks that we I would say it's 1% to 2% in that ZIP code of vacancy if you were to look at all of our retail parks. And that's where you're starting to see when we are renewing either with the existing client or releasing to a new client, we are seeing a tremendous amount of uplift. Case in point, last quarter, the first quarter of twenty twenty five, we had a positive 7% recapture rate on these vacancies that we have backfilled.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

And the CapEx involved is not substantially different from what we have been spending here in The U. S. And I think in my prepared remarks I shared that with you. So we feel very good about the strategy that we've implemented in The U. K.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

And now in Ireland. And it's the flow through is tremendous. We were doing the analysis. It has a very similar flow through to a net lease investment circa in the 95%, ninety six % ZIP code and that's essentially our EBITDA margin.

[Operator]

The next question is from Michael Goldsmith with UBS. Please go ahead.

[Michael Goldsmith, US REITs Analyst at UBS Securities LLC]

Good afternoon. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. First question, Sumit, in your prepared remarks, you made a comment about some of the some opportunities that you look in The U. S. That you passed because of the tail risk.

[Michael Goldsmith, US REITs Analyst at UBS Securities LLC]

So I was just trying to I was just curious, did you bring that up just to talk about your underwriting process? Or is that more just to compare The U. S. Versus Europe and just the opportunity for the new market?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

It was a combination of both those points, Michael. Obviously, when we are underwriting a particular lease term, you're taking into account the credit exposure to that particular lease and the ability of that operator to pay the rent for the duration of the lease. If you come to a conclusion that that duration is going to get disrupted that in and of itself is not a disqualifier as long as we have a very high level of confidence that we are going to be able to backfill that position. But that is not inherent to net lease investing in our opinion. Any disruptions that we underwrite to create a timing delay in recapturing the value and a disruption in the value creation process.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

And that's really what whether it's here in Europe I mean here in The U. S. Or in Europe, we are trying to figure out what is the total expected return profile for any investment that we are making. And we are pursuing the ones that yield the best outcomes, which in our case, we are finding them to be in Europe.

[Michael Goldsmith, US REITs Analyst at UBS Securities LLC]

Got it. Thanks for that. And as my follow-up, the occupancy is up 20 basis points. It sounds like you also sold some vacant properties, which include you had decreased exposure to $51 to Dollar General and Walgreens and CVS in the quarter. So can you just kind of walk through some of the moving pieces on the dispositions and the occupancy stepping down slightly during the period?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Yes. Look, we had this is very expected. If you see what we had shared Michael about where we would come out on occupancy, we had mentioned in the Mid 90 8 Percent zip code. That is still our expectation. We did have some outsized vacancies in the first quarter which we have largely resolved.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

You talked about Family Dollar and Dollar General. Yes, there were a couple of Family Dollar assets that we did sell vacant. But I'll also share with you that we have 38 Dollar Generals that came up for renewals and we captured over 109% on those renewals. We had about five Dollar Tree Family Dollar renewals. Thereto, it was over 108.3% or 4%.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

These businesses are continuing to hold on to their assets and are continuing to perform very well, especially with the backdrop that we are all experiencing. Family Dollar is a bit of a question mark. We'll see how it all settles out. But in terms of Dollar General, Dollar Tree, those are going to continue to do well in my opinion.

[Operator]

The next question is from Rich Hightower with Barclays. Please go ahead.

[Rich Hightower, Managing Director, U.S. REIT Research at Barclays]

Hey, good afternoon guys. Just a couple for me. I guess sticking to the theme of underwriting for a second. As far as the maybe the less creditworthy or higher yielding opportunities that you had foregone in the first quarter and maybe that's kind of the strategy you're sticking to. I mean could help us understand, is it more related to the industry vertical of those assets?

[Rich Hightower, Managing Director, U.S. REIT Research at Barclays]

Is it the capital structure of the entity itself? Are they sponsor backed private equity style deals? Just maybe fill out the picture a little more in that sense if you don't mind.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Sure. Look, it's not any one of those things in isolation, Rich. When you're looking at for instance, if you're going to look at something in a very discretionary business like entertainment, given the backdrop that one is experiencing, given that discretionary spending may be impacted by higher inflation, higher tariffs, etcetera, it's and recognizing that a particular operator within the entertainment sector may have a balance sheet that is that can't sustain a disruption to the top line, that's what will keep us on the sidelines. That is the reason one of the main reasons why we try to look for certain characteristics especially on the retail side that we've highlighted, nondiscretionary low price point service orientation to their business. And then we go to the next level which says, okay, which particular sectors fall within these areas?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

That doesn't mean we won't look at an entertainment opportunity if we are getting paid for it. But if your total return is an 8% and you expect something to happen to this credit in the next four to five years, it's not really 8%. Your expected return is probably going to be in the low single digits in a good situation. So those types of assets we've stayed away from. Even on the industrial side when we are underwriting a particular industrial asset and we feel like it is very specifically being used for that particular client and the client's business is does not have the safety, the room of safety that one looks for, we are going to stay away from those very specialized builds in secondary potentially even tertiary markets.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

And we saw a lot of those that we could get higher yields on. And but it's a fool's errand in my opinion where if we all we are focused on is in today's yield and not underwriting to what the expected outcome is, it's not going to result in a good overall return thesis. So there are on the private equity side, are very good operators that actually come in and improve the operations of the business. We tend to stay away from operators who are pure financial operators where they lever the business and they run it very efficiently, they try to extract all of the cash flows. Those are the types of situations that we try to stay away from.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

But we have private equity operators who actually come in and are very focused on the operations of the business. And those we are far more comfortable with. So it's a variety of factors really.

[Rich Hightower, Managing Director, U.S. REIT Research at Barclays]

Okay. That's helpful color. And to shift gears for one second, not to put anybody on the spot, but I was hoping for an update on Realty Income's investment in Plenty, the, I guess, indoor farming business you announced a couple of years ago. I did notice that they are going through a restructuring. I'm just wondering how much capital is at risk from your balance sheet perspective?

[Rich Hightower, Managing Director, U.S. REIT Research at Barclays]

And what's the outlook there, if you don't

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Yes. And Rich, you're not putting us on the spot. It's a perfectly legitimate question. Look, we feel that plenty is going to emerge. They are and they will emerge a much stronger company.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

They had a particular location here in Compton that they walked away from. They needed to go through a bankruptcy process in order to be able to do that. And the main reason for that was that particular asset had they were producing leafy greens, which just couldn't get to the margins that they were expecting to get to. Our asset, if you might recall, Rich, has been created to produce strawberries. And today, two out of the 12 bays are in operation.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

And the goal here is to get the remaining 10 bays in operation. They already have a takeout agreement with Driscoll. And part of the process of going through a bankruptcy process was to again end up with favorable terms, etcetera, and emerge a much stronger operator, which is what we expect. And we believe that they've also been able to attract a fair amount of private capital from some of their existing investors, I. E.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

SoftBank and a couple of others, that want to see this particular business succeed. And so we feel like once they emerge, they're going to be a solid going concern. Having said all of that, let's assume the downside scenario that they don't emerge, which, by the way, is not our expectation based the relationship that we have with them and how they're keeping us in the loop on exactly how the process is unfolding. But if that were to happen, we control a very good piece of land. We have the ability to convert this, albeit with some level of capital spend, into a distribution center.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

It sits right next to an Amazon site. By the way, it also has a lot of power that is coming to this site. So could we consider a data center site? Possibly. But those are the things that one would start to look into.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

The capital at risk is circa $40,000,000 That's all we've invested and that's all we are planning on investing in this asset. But the upside potential remains very, very strong.

[Operator]

The next question is from Jenna Galen with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

[Jana Galan, Director at Bank of America]

Thank you. Hi, and congrats on a strong start to the year. I'm sorry if I missed it in the supplemental, but can you provide an update the weighted average and the median EBITDAR to rent ratio on the retail properties? I noticed the format changed a little bit.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Yes, Janna. And we'd love to get feedback from you and others on the supplemental. There was a lot of work done. And the idea was to try to make it a lot more user friendly. We hadn't touched on the design for the last ten, twelve years.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

And so we try to incorporate a lot of the comments that we received from folks along the way and this is our attempt at addressing those comments. So we'd love to get your comments. Anyway, sorry, I digressed. Coming back to your question, it was 2.9 times is the average rent coverage for our retail assets on the assets that we do get reporting. And it's 2.7 times I believe is the median rent coverage.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

So still very strong despite the environment that we find ourselves in.

[Jana Galan, Director at Bank of America]

Thank you. And then just jumping to the investment loan that you made. Just curious given the volatility in the capital markets, do you see more of those types of opportunities that you'd like to lean into?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Ana, the idea is that if it allows us to form a relationship which could then result in us ultimately owning these assets, That is the goal. And we believe that credit is a particular way to make headway in terms of forming relationships as well as finding a path to potentially owning the real estate. We also find that these investments that we are making have a they tend to be over collateralized with the actual real estate underpinning the collateral for these investments. They get better returns in terms of yield. And we have some level of protection in terms of the duration.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

And so it does help meet a lot of strategic objectives. And the idea and I think I've said this before is, yes, where it makes sense for us, we will continue to make credit investments to achieve the objectives that I just laid out.

[Operator]

The next question is from Jay Kornreich with Wedbush. Please go ahead.

[Jay Kornreich, VP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities]

Hi. Thanks. Good afternoon. Just wanted to follow-up on you mentioned the investment volume leaning towards Europe for the first half of the year. And so I'm curious as you look out towards the second half, I guess what are you anticipating to occur which will open up further opportunities in The U.

[Jay Kornreich, VP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities]

S. And do you expect opportunities in Europe to decelerate in the second half or just potentially have a more robust overall investment pipeline?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Yes. You're trying to unpack my words Jay. And look I am very hopeful that given the trend of what is happening to our cost of capital, which it is improving, we'll be able to do more here in The U. S. I'll tell you that of this volume that we sourced in the first quarter, there was about $2,000,000,000 that the only reason why we chose to pass was because we were not comfortable with the initial spread that we were making on that volume.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

The pricing was right for that type of product. The metrics from a real estate perspective were bang on straight. The operator that we had exposure to was ones that we've got an existing relationship with, but it was just that initial spread that kept us on the sidelines. So that's our hope that as the market stabilizes, our ability to do more here in The U. S.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Will get enhanced. And I think Europe is on its own track and we are continuing to be very optimistic in terms of what we can achieve there.

[Jay Kornreich, VP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities]

I appreciate that. Thank you. And then maybe just one follow-up now. Looking at Europe, are there any kind of next frontier countries or marketplaces that present a significant investment opportunity for you that you're targeting to potentially expand to next?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

None that we haven't talked about already. We had I had mentioned Poland as a country that continues to be of interest. Obviously, it's a NATO country. There's a fair amount of investments. It's the second largest GDP growth country in all of Europe.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

With a lot more of capital in sourcing going on in Europe, again this is a phenomena that we have seen play out over the last couple of months. We expect there to be more opportunities. And we are for the right opportunities, we are very excited about our ability to grow into Poland at some point. So outside of that, I think we are already in six other countries in well, seven now in Europe outside of The UK. And we just want to establish our footprint even deep more deeper into these geographies.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

And I do think it will create opportunities for us given this capital in sourcing that we are starting to see play out.

[Operator]

The next question is from Wes Golladay with Baird. Please go ahead.

[Wes Golladay, Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co]

Hey, everyone. Just had a quick question on the funds. How are you thinking about assets that will go into the fund? Do you have a pipeline of deals that you're looking at? Any particular asset type?

[Wes Golladay, Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co]

Will you see that with some realty income assets? Just your latest thoughts.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Wes, I think we had talked about this, but I'll mention it again. Yes, there is a seed portfolio, which Realty Income owns 100%. And that's what's going to go to seed the fund. We are not planning to pay down or sell down our interest, our being the public shareholders' interest in this seed portfolio. But we are going to use that as a foundation to raise capital that we will then invest in new opportunities.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

And over time, we own 100% of the fund today and over time we will dilute ourselves down. But we will continue to be a meaningful owner in the fund. And that's where the alignment comes in. We genuinely think that the private capital is a complementary form of equity. Today, we have one source of equity and we've heard our investors loud and clear saying, look, you've got this amazing platform that has the ability to invest a lot of capital, but part of the downside of that is you're constantly in the public market.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

And so in order to create this alternative, we have decided to go down this path as a complementary form of equity capital that I believe we are the only one within our net lease space that can do that. And so, I don't really see a major conflict. I've mentioned that the initial yield is something that our public shareholders are very focused on as they should be, but it is of less importance to our private shareholders as long as we are able to meet the overall return profile that we are underwriting to. And so that in itself creates opportunities for us to continue to leverage our existing platform and invest capital and then have a bit of an asset light model for the public shareholders because without having to raise any public equity we're able to generate permanent fee income that goes to the benefit of our public shareholders. So that's how I see this playing in the future.

[Wes Golladay, Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co]

Yes. That makes sense. I guess looking at your European deal, this quarter you got both the high going in yield and then also the big pop later down the road. Could you talk about maybe how you've seen the unlevered return on that or I guess the stabilized yield on the European assets once you get that mark to market?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

I think that we could get 10.5%, eleven % uplift from just the mark to market on the cap rate compression and potentially higher than that on being able to mark to market the rent, which will take us time. But as these rents start to roll, as we are able to reposition these assets with more pristine retailers, I think the value is going to potentially go up even more. And one could make the argument, and I'm getting an indication from Neil, that we might be about 40% below what the valuation is in terms of when it's fully realized and fully repositioned with the right retail setup, that's the kind of value uplift that we could have on the retail parks.

[Operator]

The next question is from Linda Tsai with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

[Linda Tsai, Senior Analyst at Jefferies]

Hi. In terms of driving the top line growth in Europe to recapture mark to market, is this a strategy you've had in mind for some time or something you're verbalizing more concretely now?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

It's always been our strategy Linda. What we found was what started off as saying, hey, you do the sum of the parts and we're getting this retail parks at a massive discount to what we would be pursuing these clients on a one off basis. What started off that way soon morphed into the more lands we started to control, the kind of conversations that we started to have with the retailers who wanted to grow and wanted to grow in our location basically formulated this strategy that we originally had theoretically but now are starting to see play out. We've had situations where retailers like M and S have come in and have identified assets where they want to go and position themselves. And that in itself will be an immediate uplift in rent as well as in value, just given the given what M and S represents for these locations.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

So yes, initially it started off as, hey, we're getting great assets at well below replacement cost to this is a strategy we want to be much more aggressive on. And now that we do control the sites that we do, we are starting to see these strategies play out.

[Linda Tsai, Senior Analyst at Jefferies]

What percentage of your portfolio are retail parks right now? And then what is the TAM?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

In Europe, which represents about 10% actually it's primarily U. K. And Ireland, it's about 40%. And in dollar value it's about $12,000,000,000 13 billion dollars of total investments that we have of which I would say between The U. K.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

And Ireland it's about $10,000,000,000 I would say about $4,000,000,000 is retail parks in terms of our investment not in terms of the valuation.

[Operator]

The next question is from Upal Rana with KeyBanc. Please go ahead.

[Upal Rana, Director - Senior Equity Research Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets]

Great. Thank you. Sumit, you mentioned possibly being in a position to increase investment volume And given the ongoing market volatility and the advantage of Realty's platform, are you seeing any market dislocations across larger portfolio transactions that you could potentially take advantage of? Thanks.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

We are having discussions. And look we were able to do one in the fourth quarter of last year. And I do expect that in this environment this uncertainty continues to play out more and more people are going to find the sale leaseback product as a positive alternative to the debt markets that's available. And so I think that that sort of a backdrop could lead to larger transactions. But I just want to be very clear, Rupal.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

The $4,000,000,000 that we've talked about, this is basically our flow business. This does not anticipate any large scale $500 6 hundred million dollars portfolio transactions. If those happen, which we hope does, then that's going to be an uplift to our earnings guidance as well as our acquisitions guidance.

[Upal Rana, Director - Senior Equity Research Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets]

Okay, great. That was helpful. And then just on ZiPS, you mentioned that they were all re leased and were able to capture 94% of your prior ABR. Could you remind us of your original expectation with ZiPS and any details on who you re leased your locations to or if there will be any downtime there? And then are there any other tenants on your watch list that you want to highlight or give an update on?

[Upal Rana, Director - Senior Equity Research Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets]

Thanks.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Yes. Upal, just to be clear, we didn't have a single asset that was rejected. All 100% of our assets were they basically zips continue to operate it. Where we did have the reason why it went from 100% to 94.3% was we did negotiate the rent on some of their assets. And that's where it went from 100% to 94.3%.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

We did not end up having to go and find another client to step in as an operator on these assets. And as part of that, we negotiated higher internal growth on an annual basis. We negotiated a longer term lease on in aggregate and are very hopeful of them now having emerged, I believe they emerged last week with a balance sheet that is more conducive to their operations.

[Operator]

The next question is from Anthony Paolone with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

[Anthony Paolone, Executive Director at J.P. Morgan]

Yes, thanks. First one is just on bad debts. Think last quarter you said 75 basis points for the year. And so I was wondering kind of what of that you think you've used thus far or have visibility on kind of where it all sits?

[Jonathan Pong, Executive VP, CFO & Treasurer at Realty Income]

Yes. So I would say overall we're reiterating that 75 basis points for the full year. I think when you look at the footnote to the income statement, you did see that we recognized a little bit over $6,000,000 of that expense in Q1. And so trending a little bit lighter for Q1, but just to stay somewhat conservative, we are keeping that original forecast, which includes some unidentified cushion intact.

[Anthony Paolone, Executive Director at J.P. Morgan]

Okay. And then just on the deal flow, I mean, you kept the $4,000,000,000 The first quarter is obviously a stronger pace that would get you north of $4,000,000,000 Has much changed in terms of the flow and pipeline just in recent weeks or the last couple of months given the macro picture?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

No, I wouldn't say anything has changed in recent weeks. We just feel like we don't want to put ourselves in a box where we are extrapolating what we achieved in the first quarter and then find ourselves having to chase deals, which we would never do. We just feel like there is plenty of uncertainty right now and it is better for us to when we have signed contracts in place to come to you and say we are increasing our guidance versus increasing our guidance and then pursuing transactions that we expect will unfold. It's just how we've always done it Anthony. You've been following us for a very long time and I just think it's prudent.

[Operator]

The next question is from Omotayo Okusanya with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

[Omotayo Okusanya, Managing Director at Deutsche Bank]

Yes, good evening. The retail part, I get everything you guys have said so far about where you see upside on a longer term basis. But I am curious like could you just talk a little bit about is there a big difference between retail parks in The UK versus kind of traditional big box retail in The U. S. Because I think that probably the way most of us are thinking about it.

[Omotayo Okusanya, Managing Director at Deutsche Bank]

And with big box retail everyone's always worried about this intermediation from e commerce and things of that sort. So is there anything really different about the retail parks in The UK?

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Yes. I think the biggest difference is the net lease like characteristics of retail parks Omotayo. If you think about any capital spend that is required I. E. You want to do striping of the parking lot, so lighting or security, etcetera, that CapEx discussion happens upfront in any given year.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

And all of the retailers that are out there who are on that particular retail park agree to sharing in that cost. So the flow through mechanism that we are seeing in The U. K. Is very similar to what we would experience in a single tenant asset where the obviously the maintenance cost is all borne by the client. The only time it's different is when you have a vacant unit and you have business rates, etcetera, and that's the leakage.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

But that's no different than what you would have when you have a vacant unit or a vacant freestanding asset that we have because our client either the lease expired or there was an event and we are having to pay the insurance and the taxes as well as the maintenance of that building. So from that perspective, I think that it is very akin to what we see in the net lease business. That's why you haven't seen much of an impact to our margins given this strategy. Now if you see you mentioned omnichannel. A lot of what we've done is over the last two to three years.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

So all these concepts that we are exposing ourselves to including grocery by the way have already been experiencing the disruption elements of the omnichannel strategy. I mean the grocers that we have, if you look at the top four, top five grocers, they account for 75% of all Internet driven grocery expenses. And so these retailers in some ways have perfected their strategy to embrace omnichannel. Otherwise, they are no longer strong retailers today. And either they are basically surviving on their last leg or they no longer exist.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

So I don't see that as much of an impact. What we do see is reconfiguring these sites from more discretionary use to nondiscretionary uses. And that's some of the examples that I was sharing with you, which will actually result in a valuation uplift as well as rent recapture uplift. So that's really why we are doing this. So it is different in some ways from what you experience here in The U.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

S.

[Omotayo Okusanya, Managing Director at Deutsche Bank]

That's very helpful. Thank you.

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Sure.

[Operator]

This

[Operator]

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

[Sumit Roy, President and CEO at Realty Income]

Thank you all for joining us today. We look forward to speaking soon and seeing you at conferences in the coming weeks. Have a good evening.

[Operator]

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

Participants

Executives

• Kelsey Mueller, VP - Investor Relations
• Sumit Roy, President and CEO
• Jonathan Pong, Executive VP, CFO & Treasurer

Analysts

• Smedes Rose, Analyst at Citigroup
• Brad Heffern, Director at RBC Capital Markets
• Ryan Caviola, Associate at Green Street Advisors, LLC
• Haendel St. Juste, Managing Director at Mizuho Financial Group
• Ronald Kamdem, Managing Director & Head of US REITs and CRE Research at Morgan Stanley
• Greg Mcginniss, Director at Scotiobank
• Michael Goldsmith, US REITs Analyst at UBS Securities LLC
• Rich Hightower, Managing Director, U.S. REIT Research at Barclays
• Jana Galan, Director at Bank of America
• Jay Kornreich, VP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities
• Wes Golladay, Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co
• Linda Tsai, Senior Analyst at Jefferies
• Upal Rana, Director - Senior Equity Research Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets
• Anthony Paolone, Executive Director at J.P. Morgan
• Omotayo Okusanya, Managing Director at Deutsche Bank