Gladstone Land Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
February 25, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Management reported a strong 2025 harvest—particularly for pistachios—with resilient nut markets and a processor-announced $0.50/lb pistachio bonus that could boost participation rent and drive additional revenue in 2026.
  • Positive Sentiment: Gladstone Land highlights abundant California water supplies and is opportunistically buying and investing in water delivery/storage at low prices to strengthen long‑term water security across its ~99,000 acres portfolio.
  • Negative Sentiment: Lease restructurings that shifted revenue from fixed base rents to crop‑share participation materially reduced fixed cash rents (down ~$19.8M for the year) and contributed to timing-driven declines in AFFO and a net loss to common shareholders for the year.
  • Positive Sentiment: Corporate finance moves: the company sold six farms for ~$95M (realizing ~ $21M in gains), redeemed the Series D preferred to avoid a coupon step‑up (funded via ATM issuance and the line of credit), and reports ~ $85M of immediately available capital with most debt at a 3.39% fixed rate.
  • Negative Sentiment: Operational risks remain: nine farms are wholly or partially vacant (some undergoing redevelopment), five leases representing ~3.6% of 2025 revenue will expire in the next six months, and management is deferring acquisitions because elevated cost of capital limits accretive buying today.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Gladstone Land Q4 2025
00:00 / 00:00

Transcript Sections

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Operator

Greetings, welcome to the Gladstone Land Corporation year-end and fourth quarter earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance, 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, David Gladstone, President and Chief Executive Officer. Thank you. You may begin.

David Gladstone
David Gladstone
Founder, Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO at Gladstone Land

Well, thank you for that nice introduction. This is David Gladstone. Welcome to the quarterly conference call for Gladstone Land. Thank you all for calling in today. We appreciate you take time out of your day to listen to our presentation. Hopefully, we give you some indication of where we're going. Now, we'll hear from Catherine Gerkis, our Director of Investor Relations, to provide a brief disclosure regarding certain regulatory matters concerning this call and this report. Catherine, go to it.

Catherine Gerkis
Catherine Gerkis
Director of Investor Relations and ESG at Gladstone Land

Mm-hmm. Good morning. Today's call may include forward-looking statements which are based on management's estimates, assumptions, and projections. There are no guarantees of future performance, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in these statements due to various uncertainties, including the risk factors set forth in our SEC filings, which you can find on the Investors page of our website, gladstoneland.com. We assume no obligation to update any of these statements unless required by law. Please visit our website for a copy of our Form 10-K and earnings press release, both issued yesterday, for more detailed information. You can also sign up for our email notification service and find information on how to contact our investor relations department. We are also on X @gladstonecom, as well as Facebook and LinkedIn. Keyword for both is The Gladstone Companies.

Catherine Gerkis
Catherine Gerkis
Director of Investor Relations and ESG at Gladstone Land

Today, we'll discuss FFO, which is funds from operations, a non-GAAP accounting term defined as net income, excluding gains or losses from the sale of real estate and any impairment losses on the property, plus depreciation and amortization of real estate assets. We may also discuss core FFO, which we generally define as FFO, adjusted for certain non-recurring revenues and expenses, and adjusted FFO, which further adjusts core FFO for certain non-cash items, such as converting GAAP rents to normalized cash rents. We believe these metrics can be a better indication of our operating results and allow better comparability of our period-over-period performance. I'll turn it back over to David Gladstone.

David Gladstone
David Gladstone
Founder, Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO at Gladstone Land

Well, thank you, Catherine. Folks, we sold a few more farms during the fourth quarter, which brought us to six property sales for the year, totaling $95 million in proceeds, and we recognized an aggregate gain from these sales of about $21 million. Your company is in good shape today. After these sales, we still own nearly 99,000 acres across 144 farms, so about 56,000 acre-feet. In case you forgot, I'll translate that to 18 billion gallons of water that we've got stored in aquifers, and so we're in good shape for that part of our work. Our farms are in 14 different states, and our water assets are all in California. Right now, there's plenty of water in California, so we're in all in good shape from that perspective.

David Gladstone
David Gladstone
Founder, Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO at Gladstone Land

Regarding the 2 sales we completed during the quarter, 1 was a small blueberry farm down in North Carolina. The tenant had fallen behind in his rents, and it was a tough property for us to get to new tenants. While we took a small loss in the sale, we thought it best just to get rid of that farm since it was out of the normal territory that we're in. The other sale was a really nice farm in Colorado, where the lease was set to expire at the end of the year, and we were likely facing a downward rent bump and reset. We took the opportunity to sell the property for more than we had in it originally and paid up. It was decided to go ahead and take the gain and move from that area farms.

David Gladstone
David Gladstone
Founder, Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO at Gladstone Land

We may consider selling some additional farms. In fact, we've got several that we're talking to buyers over the next few quarters, and this part of ongoing portfolio review. If we're able to complete some of those, we'd like to use most of the proceeds to pay down debt and also to buy back some of that more expensive preferred stock that we have and trigger a gain there. We're still evaluating the opportunities, and at this point, we're hopeful of a good transaction that will come and show how good we are in buying and holding these properties. On the acquisition side, financing costs, which seem to be slowly moving closer to where we like them to be, but we're not quite there yet.

David Gladstone
David Gladstone
Founder, Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO at Gladstone Land

We're hoping interest rates will continue to move in the right direction, that is down, so we can get back to growing the portfolio as we've been out of the business for quite a while. We've got a lot of land that we own, but it'd be nice to pick up some now because prices seem to be moving in the right direction. We're still taking a disciplined approach to any new investments. Interest rates and our overall cost of capital remain elevated, and the capital rates on most row crop farmland is still too low to make it economically work for us today if we have to use a lot of debt to buy it. On the leasing side, first, we've talked about...

David Gladstone
David Gladstone
Founder, Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO at Gladstone Land

On prior calls, due to the market conditions affecting certain permanent crops, particularly nuts and wine grapes, we adjusted the lease structure on a handful of properties to help our growers reduce their fixed costs. As a result of re-doing that reduction, in essence, we're taking a larger percentage of the gross crop sales instead of fixed rent payment. We also decided to direct operation of 2 properties ourselves with the help of third-party operators. A lot of the farms in the United States are just set up like that, so people bring in farming expertise as we are. Well, I'll let Bill and Lewis, the 2 next speakers, talk about that. Overall, we had a successful harvest, particularly with almonds and pistachios.

David Gladstone
David Gladstone
Founder, Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO at Gladstone Land

We're still expecting significant amounts of revenue from the 2025 pistachio harvest to come during 2024, so they're not in there yet. We won't know the exact amount until the processes of those nuts have their finalized, their settlement with us. I wanted to remind everyone about this modified structure that we're using because we're simple approach to most of these farms for 2024 crop year is going to be exactly the same as we used last year. I think it's also important to, again, highlight the role of crop insurance. In these cases, one of the reasons we feel so confident in taking this approach, which is a little bit like gambling on these special farms, is their strong history of high production. Since insurance coverage is largely based on historical yields, we're able to secure relatively high levels of insurance.

David Gladstone
David Gladstone
Founder, Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO at Gladstone Land

To give you an example of this, if one of our crops was, that's insured, is, wiped out by some strange disease or whatever, the insurance allows us to recover the amount of capital that we put into these farms, and that's nice to know that the downside is covered. Our goal is still to eventually transition these leases back to more traditional structure with fixed base rents, but our ability to do so will depend on many factors, actually, external factors such as crop productions, crop prices, interest rates, input cost of growing the nuts or whatever, strawberries, and water availability. We've kind of got that last one covered to some degree, water availability, as you've probably read in the newspapers and reports.

David Gladstone
David Gladstone
Founder, Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO at Gladstone Land

Water is plentiful in California, and the amount of snow in the mountains, which will melt during the summer and run off, is pretty good shape. In other leasing activity, we executed five renewals during the quarter. We saw a modest increase of about 7% on two of these row crops as a renewal. For three permanent crops, we reduced the fixed base rent in exchange for additional crop share component, which is what we've done a lot of times. We should have roughly flat compared to those of prior leases on those farms. Looking ahead, we have five leases scheduled to expire over the next six months. In total, this represents about 3.6% of our total 2025 lease revenue.

David Gladstone
David Gladstone
Founder, Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO at Gladstone Land

We're currently in discussions with existing tenants and prospective new tenants about leasing each of these farms, so I'm pretty optimistic about getting those rented. Now take a quick update of some of the ongoing tenancy matters that we're working through. We currently have 9 farms that are wholly or partially vacant, and we're growing crops on some of these. Encompassing 4 of the farms, we've been direct operators under management agreements with unrelated third-party growers. We also recognize revenue on a cash basis for leases with 3 tenants who collectively lease about 5 of our farms. That should be okay. We are actively working towards solution for each of these situations. We think we are close to having a resolution in place for a few of these farms soon. Hopefully, we can get some of them off of this list over the next few months.

David Gladstone
David Gladstone
Founder, Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO at Gladstone Land

I'm going to stop here. We've got Bill Reiman on the call, and Bill is the man who really understands that since he's been working in the farming area for most of his career. Bill, take it away.

Bill Reiman
Bill Reiman
EVP of West Coast Operations at Gladstone Land

Thank you, David. Good morning to everybody. Yeah, much of our current management focus right now is on the properties that are being operated under these modified lease agreements or farmed directly utilizing third-party farm operators. We've completed harvest for 2025, and we're pleased to report that the overall yield objectives that we had in our budgets, we exceeded all of that, and so really good results there. We're renewing some of these modified lease arrangements, particularly on five of the eight farms. Two of the remaining three are redevelopment projects. The last one, our wine grape vineyard in Napa, is now leased to a local grower. We're happy to have that done.

Bill Reiman
Bill Reiman
EVP of West Coast Operations at Gladstone Land

The 5 farms that we ended up, that we're renewing agreements on, were really our top performers from this group last year. We're expecting another really strong year of results. The winter, David touched on a little bit about some recent weather. The winter for us has been about average for precipitation, with a couple of our wettest months left to come. Recently, we've had some major storms that really boosted the snowpack levels, so there's significant optimism that the surface water allocations for 2026 will be very strong. Those reservoirs, both state and federal water projects, are above historical averages, so for the short term, there's plenty of supply. chilling hours, we're projecting a low to medium level of chilling hours this winter in California.

Bill Reiman
Bill Reiman
EVP of West Coast Operations at Gladstone Land

It means we should meet all chill requirements in all of our permanent crop locations, so that's very good news. Almond bloom, as of today, we're probably two-thirds complete. The bloom's been a bit uneven. There's been reports of flash bloom in many locations around the valley, Central Valley. With the cold and rainy weather, the bee activity, it's been somewhat limited in quite a few areas. This could possibly cause almond yields to be lower across the state. Pistachios, wine grapes, of course, are still in dormancy, so they've actually reaped the benefit of some of this colder, wet weather and haven't had that bloom exposed yet. Markets, tariff drama, trade tensions still exist, as we all read the headlines.

Bill Reiman
Bill Reiman
EVP of West Coast Operations at Gladstone Land

However, crop markets seem to have settled in and accepted this uncertainty to a large degree. Nut crop markets continue to show notable resilience and strength, particularly for pistachios. Important story lately is the fact that the supply chain seems to be pretty light. There's minimal product in both almond and pistachio buyer side supply chains, which we think is providing upward pressure on pricing. As a result, our base guarantee price for the current crop remains consistent with 2024, and we believe there's a strong likelihood that the final price for 2025 crop will actually be higher than our final 2024 pricing.

Bill Reiman
Bill Reiman
EVP of West Coast Operations at Gladstone Land

One of our processors, in fact, recently announced an extra $0.50 per pound bonus to be paid with our scheduled April crop payment for pistachios, so for the 2025 crop, so that's really good news. This momentum could also result in a higher base price for the 2026 crop when that gets announced in July of this year. Things are looking up in pistachios. Almond prices dipped in January, but since then they've rebounded quite a bit and climbing again as we move through bloom season. We don't expect these prices to vary too much, as there's strong demand and confidence in the market.

Bill Reiman
Bill Reiman
EVP of West Coast Operations at Gladstone Land

There'll be some slight bouncing around as projections for the 2026 crop start to come out, and we get to this point in bloom and everybody has an opinion on what the crop's going to do, so we will definitely see that reflected in the market. The market is, in general, severely underbought and the supply chain is light. Those are things, and growers are reluctant to sell right now. Those are all things that continue to put upward pressure on almond prices. Wine grape market continues to underperform, but we're beginning to see some varietals, particularly some white grape varieties, that are showing up short in supply.

Bill Reiman
Bill Reiman
EVP of West Coast Operations at Gladstone Land

At the moment, this isn't causing any increase in prices or really providing any incentive for wineries to contract for supply. It is the very first encouraging sign that we've seen in a couple of years. Vineyard removals are continuing at a rapid pace in California and really around the world. We're hopeful that this pullback in supply will soon bring the market back into balance, likely flipping it the opposite way and will be underproduced. The weakening dollar, you know, as long as the dollar continues to weaken, that works in our favor, making our products more attractive to international buyers. Kind of circling back to water, you know, we're experiencing, like I mentioned, we're experiencing a normal to potentially wet year as far as precipitation is concerned.

Bill Reiman
Bill Reiman
EVP of West Coast Operations at Gladstone Land

This is really good news in that we're continuing to experience an extended wet period. four out of the last five years or five out of the last six years have been average or wet. Full reservoirs, good rainfall, snowpack, these are all key factors for the water market to be full of water, for sale at prices that are attractive for our water banking activities. We've been working hard to identify the best water deals for our properties and looking for infrastructure improvements that will yield us the best return on those capital expenditures. Our goal, as always, remains to further strengthen that overall water security of the entire portfolio through long-term and short-term strategic water purchases. We're looking to continue investing in water delivery, storage, infrastructure, pipelines, water banks, and then identifying opportunities to create synergies across the farm assets.

Bill Reiman
Bill Reiman
EVP of West Coast Operations at Gladstone Land

Now I'll turn it over to our CFO, Lewis Parrish.

Lewis Parrish
Lewis Parrish
CFO, and Assistant Treasurer at Gladstone Land

Thanks, Bill. Good morning, everyone. I'll start with a brief update on our recent financing activity. During the quarter, we repaid a $4 million note that was secured by a property that we also sold during the period. Subsequent to year-end, we redeemed our Series D term preferred stock to avoid a step up in the coupon from 5% to 8%. That redemption was funded through a combination of common stock issued under our ATM program and a draw on our line of credit. Since the beginning of the fourth quarter, we've raised about $50 million of common stock through our ATM program, with the majority of those proceeds used to fund debt redemption.

Lewis Parrish
Lewis Parrish
CFO, and Assistant Treasurer at Gladstone Land

Turning to our operating results for the fourth quarter, we recorded net income of about $4.2 million and a net loss to common shareholders of $1.8 million or $0.05 per share. For the year, we recorded net income of $13.5 million and a net loss to common shareholders of $10.5 million or $0.29 per share. Adjusted FFO for the fourth quarter was $14.4 million, or $0.38 per share, compared to $3.4 million or $0.09 per share in the same quarter last year.

Lewis Parrish
Lewis Parrish
CFO, and Assistant Treasurer at Gladstone Land

For the year, AFFO was $14.4 million, or $0.39 per share, compared to $16 million or $0.47 per share last year. The decreases in AFFO were primarily driven by the recent changes to lease structures on certain farms, timing differences in revenue recognition related to crop sales on certain direct operated farms, lost revenue from farm sales over the past year, and ongoing tenancy issues that have led to vacancies, resulting in both lower revenues and higher costs. Year-over-year, fixed base cash rents decreased by about $1.9 million for the quarter and by about $19.8 million for the full year.

Lewis Parrish
Lewis Parrish
CFO, and Assistant Treasurer at Gladstone Land

This is primarily driven by the reasons just mentioned, mainly the lease modifications on certain properties where we reduced or eliminated fixed base rents, or in some cases, provided cash lease incentives in exchange for significantly increasing the crop share per components. Partially offsetting that, largely for the same reason, participation rents increased by about $9.3 million on a quarterly basis and by $10.6 million for the full year. This increase is further driven by stronger pistachio pricing compared to last year. Net profit from crop sales in our direct operated farms was about $2.6 million for 2025, which is our first harvest year. However, the full impact of this 2025 harvest is not yet reflected in our financial results.

Lewis Parrish
Lewis Parrish
CFO, and Assistant Treasurer at Gladstone Land

While we did expense a full year of growing costs, we have not yet recognized a full year of revenues, particularly on the pistachios. As David mentioned, the final marketing bonus payment for the 2025 pistachio crop will be recognized later in 2026, thus creating a timing difference compared to 2024, when this property was fully leased. We recorded about $4.4 million of termination-related revenue in 2025, including $2 million in the fourth quarter, compared to zero last year. On the expense side, our recurring cash operating expenses increased for both comparable periods. Total related party fees fell by about $200,000 for the year. That's primarily due to a lower base management fee resulting from recent farm sales, was offset by a higher administration fee during the fourth quarter.

Lewis Parrish
Lewis Parrish
CFO, and Assistant Treasurer at Gladstone Land

Property operating expenses increased for both periods, and it's mainly driven by the cost of supplemental water we were required to provide on one of our properties pursuant to the lease, as well as higher insurance costs and property taxes incurred on one of our direct operated profits. GA expenses declined in both periods, primarily due to lower professional fees incurred during the current year. One note on cash flows. Cash flows from operations declined largely due to timing differences between leasing versus operating farms, which is particularly true in the first year of operations. Again, for our direct operated farms, almost all the cash for growing costs went out during 2025, while most of the cash proceeds will be received in 2026.

Lewis Parrish
Lewis Parrish
CFO, and Assistant Treasurer at Gladstone Land

Regarding the increased participation rents from the lease and re-lease modifications, a significant portion of the cash payments was received in early 2026, creating another year-over-year timing difference in operating cash flows. Turning to liquidity, we have about $85 million in immediately available capital and over $185 million of unpledged properties that can be used as additional collateral. We are in discussions with a couple of lenders to add certain of these properties to either existing or new facilities. Currently, about 98% of our borrowings are at fixed rates, with a weighted average interest rate of 3.39% locked in for another 2.7 years. This has helped shield us from the interest rate volatility we've seen over the past few years.

Lewis Parrish
Lewis Parrish
CFO, and Assistant Treasurer at Gladstone Land

Looking ahead, we have about $17 million of scheduled principal amortization payments due over the next 12 months. We don't have any loans maturing over the next year, but we do have about $160 million of loans with fixed rate terms that are scheduled to reset over the next 12 months, though the loans themselves are not maturing. This includes $135 million of loans under the MetLife facility that are scheduled to reprice in January 2027. Finally, regarding our common distributions, in January, we declared a monthly dividend of $0.0467 per share for the first quarter of 2026. At our current stock price of $11.51, this represents a 4.9% annualized yield, which is above the REIT sector average.

Lewis Parrish
Lewis Parrish
CFO, and Assistant Treasurer at Gladstone Land

With that, I'll turn it back over to David.

David Gladstone
David Gladstone
Founder, Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO at Gladstone Land

Well, thank you, Lewis. Good report. Nice to know that we're in strong capital position. We are staying active in the market. We're ready to go if a good acquisition opportunity comes along. As mentioned earlier, we're still being cautious on the acquisition front because our cost of capital remains very high. Overall demand for prime farmland, growing berries and vegetables remains stable across most of our regions, partially, particularly along the coast. We also started seeing some signs of improvements in pricing and broader economics around those crops. We are hopeful that the worst may be behind us. It's still too early to say whether we are fully in the clear or not.

David Gladstone
David Gladstone
Founder, Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO at Gladstone Land

Overall, in the long run, we expect inflation, particularly in the food sector, to continue to move higher, and we're expecting the values of underlying farmland to increase over time as a result. We do expect this to especially be true with healthy foods, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, and nuts, like we grow for people, and we are a big producer these days. Now I'll open it up to some questions from those who are listening, and operator, would you come on, please, and show them how they can ask some questions?

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 to remove yourself from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up the handset before pressing the star keys.

Operator

One moment, please, while we pull for questions. Our first question comes from the line of Craig Kucera with Lucid Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Craig Kucera
Managing Director of Equity Research at Lucid Capital Markets

Yeah. Hey, good morning. I wanted to revisit your commentary regarding the five repositioned farms. Basically, are you saying that they're under similar leases where there won't be any base rents and you'll have, you know, a portion of higher participation rent expected in 2026, and then will some of that dribble into 2027 as we saw this past year? Or how should we think about that?

Lewis Parrish
Lewis Parrish
CFO, and Assistant Treasurer at Gladstone Land

Yes, that's exactly correct. Well, it's the same structure that, I mean, that they'll be either with no base rent or possibly with a lease incentive, but it will be the same structure as we had in 2025. With the 2025 crop, we had a good amount of the revenue recorded in 2025 and then a portion carry over in 2026, and we'll have the same thing. 2026 will be able to benefit from the carryover from the 2025 crop, plus the initial payment from the 2026 crop.

Craig Kucera
Managing Director of Equity Research at Lucid Capital Markets

Okay, great.

Bill Reiman
Bill Reiman
EVP of West Coast Operations at Gladstone Land

To add to that, it won't dribble into 2027. It'll be just like, you know, most of it. For most of 2026 crops, revenue will come in 2027. It won't be a little bit, it'll be just like this year.

Craig Kucera
Managing Director of Equity Research at Lucid Capital Markets

Okay, what was, I think at the time that you restructured those leases, you thought that, I want to say maybe 75% would come through in, you know, fourth quarter of 2025. When you kind of step back and I know you've still got some marketing with the pistachios, but as you think about that, what was sort of what would you say the percentage was that was recognized here in fourth quarter 2025 and kind of what you expect in 2026?

Lewis Parrish
Lewis Parrish
CFO, and Assistant Treasurer at Gladstone Land

It's really on a farm-by-farm basis. I think for the pistachio farms, it probably will be close between 65%-75% in the first year, but that is us estimating what the marketing bonus is going to be. It could turn out to be higher than that, and if that's the case, then it would push a higher percentage in the following year. Almonds, a bit of a different story because, you know, some of our properties we're in, and Bill can expand on this more, but we're in what's called a call pool, where we decide when to sell the crops or.

Lewis Parrish
Lewis Parrish
CFO, and Assistant Treasurer at Gladstone Land

For those, for example, we have one property for the 25 crop where we haven't pulled the trigger yet, because we're seeing prices trend in the positive direction, we want to wait and take advantage of that pricing. For pistachios, I think the percentage will generally hold true, assuming that bonus payment stays where it's been. I'll let Bill talk on this too, but we are seeing signs of that possibly being higher. That, again, that would push the percentage higher the subsequent year. Bill, anything to you want to add to that?

Bill Reiman
Bill Reiman
EVP of West Coast Operations at Gladstone Land

I mean, that's correct. You know, certainly on pistachios, we feel the likelihood of increased bonus payments, you know, that's increasing every day. We feel pretty strong about that. Lewis mentioned the almonds on the call pool. One particular farm, we decided to make the call on when we'll sell, and we're kind of holding out for some higher almond prices. In that particular farm, we did get crop insurance payout. We're already, you know, in positive territory as far as whether we made money or lost money on that farm. We still have a small amount of crop to sell, and we're just holding out for higher prices.

Craig Kucera
Managing Director of Equity Research at Lucid Capital Markets

Got it. Just one more on this topic. I guess, are you saying then, that you would probably recognize, more sort of variable payments throughout the year than you typically would because you have more control over when and at what price you sell the crop? Or should we think about this, that this will mostly be recognized in the fourth quarter as far as what was earned in the, you know, in 2025?

Lewis Parrish
Lewis Parrish
CFO, and Assistant Treasurer at Gladstone Land

I think we'll have a little bit more in the first half of the year than we typically do. Just as Bill mentioned, that we do have one pistachio processor who announced they will pay a portion of that marketing bonus early in April. We will probably be able to pull some of that into Q1. Other than situations like that or maybe further adjustments to almond pricing, we would probably see the most bulk of it come in Q3 and especially Q4 again.

Craig Kucera
Managing Director of Equity Research at Lucid Capital Markets

Okay.

Bill Reiman
Bill Reiman
EVP of West Coast Operations at Gladstone Land

Yeah. The other impact, if the pistachio market continues its current trend and our guaranteed base price goes up, then that will increase the amount that we are able to, you know, claim in, you know, within this calendar year. But we won't know that till probably the end of, usually end of July.

Craig Kucera
Managing Director of Equity Research at Lucid Capital Markets

Okay. Changing gears, Lewis, what are your expectations for interest patronage here in the first quarter?

Lewis Parrish
Lewis Parrish
CFO, and Assistant Treasurer at Gladstone Land

I'd expect it to be anywhere from 10%-15% less than what we recognized in 2025, and that's assuming the percentage of interest that gets paid, that gets refunded is the same, but reflecting just a loan balance decrease over the past year as we've paid off some loans.

Craig Kucera
Managing Director of Equity Research at Lucid Capital Markets

You know, I see you raised $33 million in ATM this quarter. Was the remainder of the Series D funded with cash on the balance sheet or the line of credit?

Lewis Parrish
Lewis Parrish
CFO, and Assistant Treasurer at Gladstone Land

Line of credit. We currently have about $10 million outstanding on line of credit, and that's currently at a 5.69% variable rate.

Craig Kucera
Managing Director of Equity Research at Lucid Capital Markets

Got it. Okay. just one more for me. I know one of your competitors have been generating, you know, significantly higher returns through lending to farmers and is seeing decent demand there. you know, given this somewhat tougher farming economy, is that something you guys are looking at a little harder? I believe you've capped that type of activity to 5% of assets, but would just like to get your read on that situation.

Lewis Parrish
Lewis Parrish
CFO, and Assistant Treasurer at Gladstone Land

We've had discussions about getting a loan program started up. We haven't pulled the trigger yet. It's something that we may continue to discuss. At this point, we don't have any solid plans to put that program in action yet.

Craig Kucera
Managing Director of Equity Research at Lucid Capital Markets

Okay.

Bill Reiman
Bill Reiman
EVP of West Coast Operations at Gladstone Land

I'll add to that. I think... Oh, go ahead.

Lewis Parrish
Lewis Parrish
CFO, and Assistant Treasurer at Gladstone Land

Go ahead, Bill.

Bill Reiman
Bill Reiman
EVP of West Coast Operations at Gladstone Land

I was just gonna say, I would say long term, that's something we're really keeping an eye on. I think just current economic conditions, you know, we've been really... We've looked at some loan deals, but with current economic conditions, it's just something we haven't felt that the risk-return profile was really right for us at this time. It's something that we continue to look at, continue to get inquiries, and probably long term, something we'll want to, we'll eventually make some moves on.

Craig Kucera
Managing Director of Equity Research at Lucid Capital Markets

Okay, thanks.

Lewis Parrish
Lewis Parrish
CFO, and Assistant Treasurer at Gladstone Land

Other questions?

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of John Massocca with B. Riley Securities. Please proceed with your question.

John Massocca
John Massocca
Director, and Senior Equity Research Analyst at B. Riley Securities

Good morning. Kind of sticking with the variable rent questions from earlier. With the current season that just closed on pistachios, do you have kind of brackets as to what you think the amount remaining to be collected is? You have some color into the bonus payments. I was kind of curious if there was a range for what more to expect in 2026 you were seeing out there.

Lewis Parrish
Lewis Parrish
CFO, and Assistant Treasurer at Gladstone Land

As far as our direct operated farms go, we are expecting about hopefully at least $3 million to come in. It's certainly not guaranteed, but if we are to use prior year bonus payment as an estimate, as a proxy for this year, and all indications are pointing to the fact that the marketing bonus amount should be at least equal to last year. If that does hold true, then that would result in about $3 million more coming in during 2026. That could change, but signs today are pointing positive for that outcome.

John Massocca
John Massocca
Director, and Senior Equity Research Analyst at B. Riley Securities

Okay. Then maybe as I think about your, like, kind of truly vacant assets, not the ones that you're operating yourself, what are kind of brackets around the value of those those 5 properties? Would you... I guess, how expeditiously could you sell those if you wanted to?

Lewis Parrish
Lewis Parrish
CFO, and Assistant Treasurer at Gladstone Land

The, the ninth, I don't have the exact book value or fair value, but if I had to ballpark a figure, I'd say maybe $50 million. However, the largest of those properties, three of those vacant properties, we are close to putting together agreements that would get those back into an income-producing position. Again, nothing's finalized or fully guaranteed at this point, but we are hoping that those, the three largest of those farms will come off the list, hopefully within the first half of this calendar year.

John Massocca
John Massocca
Director, and Senior Equity Research Analyst at B. Riley Securities

And, and is that because-

Bill Reiman
Bill Reiman
EVP of West Coast Operations at Gladstone Land

Those three largest, one reason that they're vacant and timing is a big factor, right? We lost, you know, the tenant left and trees needed to be removed, but because they were so big, it takes a while to get that done. A lot of that, you know, the big portion for those being vacant right now is because we've had to clean the farm, so we had to pull the trees out, and they're so big, it takes time. Yeah, we are as Lewis said, we're really close to getting those back into revenue production.

John Massocca
John Massocca
Director, and Senior Equity Research Analyst at B. Riley Securities

Okay. As a reminder, what is the crop type on those farms?

Lewis Parrish
Lewis Parrish
CFO, and Assistant Treasurer at Gladstone Land

They were almonds.

Bill Reiman
Bill Reiman
EVP of West Coast Operations at Gladstone Land

Those three biggest were almonds. Yep.

John Massocca
John Massocca
Director, and Senior Equity Research Analyst at B. Riley Securities

Yeah, switching gears a little bit, as I think about, you know, the Series D repayment, having been completed, you know, how are you thinking about ATM usage going forward? I mean, was the ATM, particularly ATM quarter to date, really tied to that repayment, or are you looking to kind of delever on a more kind of organic basis?

Lewis Parrish
Lewis Parrish
CFO, and Assistant Treasurer at Gladstone Land

Yeah, a lot of the ATM usage was for that redemption specifically. Now that that's out of the way, we would like to focus more on the other preferred securities. Right now, we can sell ATM at 5%. We could buy back preferred at 7.5%. If we're able to get a 2.5-point spread on transactions like that, then that's something that we would look on favorably and hopefully be able to implement.

John Massocca
John Massocca
Director, and Senior Equity Research Analyst at B. Riley Securities

Lastly, on the, on the water, how are you looking at kind of your own water kind of holdings, acquiring further water holdings, just giving, now since I've got a couple pretty strong seasons, in terms of precipitation out west, just kind of curious if that's impacting your strategy there at all.

Bill Reiman
Bill Reiman
EVP of West Coast Operations at Gladstone Land

Yeah, I mean, it's super positive, right? When there's plentiful supply, the price comes down. We, our driver on buying water is all about the cost, right? What we buy it for, what it costs to move it, and what it costs to hang on to that and hold it for use during, reuse in the future, in the next drought. As these prices come down, I mean, in fact, this week, there's some what we call Article 21 water release being released next week. That is like prices, you know, $50-$80 an acre-foot. This is, these are the opportunities that we jump on, and we try to grab as much of that as we can for the future.

Bill Reiman
Bill Reiman
EVP of West Coast Operations at Gladstone Land

It's all, you know, cost-driven for us, because that's your future, you know, water cost for some crop down the road. The lower we can get that, the better we are.

John Massocca
John Massocca
Director, and Senior Equity Research Analyst at B. Riley Securities

Okay. I appreciate that color. That's it for me. Thank you.

Lewis Parrish
Lewis Parrish
CFO, and Assistant Treasurer at Gladstone Land

We have any more questions?

Operator

There are no further questions, and therefore, I'll hand it back over to you.

David Gladstone
David Gladstone
Founder, Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO at Gladstone Land

Well, thank you very much, all of you, for listening to this, a little bit disappointed that we're not getting enough questions. We hope you'll mark them down during the year and ask us when it comes up in March or April, whenever we're talking to you again. Thank you all for calling in, and that's the end of this session.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your line at this time. Thank you. Have a great day.

Executives
    • Bill Reiman
      Bill Reiman
      EVP of West Coast Operations
    • Catherine Gerkis
      Catherine Gerkis
      Director of Investor Relations and ESG
    • David Gladstone
      David Gladstone
      Founder, Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO
    • Lewis Parrish
      Lewis Parrish
      CFO, and Assistant Treasurer
Analysts
    • Craig Kucera
      Managing Director of Equity Research at Lucid Capital Markets
    • John Massocca
      Director, and Senior Equity Research Analyst at B. Riley Securities
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