Essential Properties Realty Trust Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
July 23, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Essential Properties reported a strong second quarter, with AFFO of $110.1 million and AFFO per share of $0.50, up 9% year over year, supported by better-than-expected portfolio performance and investment execution.
  • Positive Sentiment: The company raised 2026 AFFO per share guidance to $2.01-$2.05 and increased its investment volume guidance to $1.2 billion-$1.5 billion, citing a strong pipeline and healthy operating trends.
  • Positive Sentiment: Second-quarter investment activity totaled $332 million at an average initial cash yield of 7.8% and a GAAP yield of 9.1%, with roughly 84% sourced through sale-leasebacks, which management said continues to offer attractive growth capital opportunities.
  • Neutral Sentiment: The portfolio remained highly resilient, with 99.6% occupancy, rent coverage of 3.5x, and only 2.3% of annual base rent expiring through 2028, while diversification remained strong across tenants and industries.
  • Neutral Sentiment: The balance sheet remained in good shape after a $400 million 10-year unsecured bond offering, leaving the company with $1.7 billion of liquidity and 3.5x pro forma leverage; management also expects some forward equity settlements later in 2026 and plans to address the 2027 term loan before maturity.
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Earnings Conference Call
Essential Properties Realty Trust Q2 2026
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Essential Properties Realty Trust second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. This conference call is being recorded. A replay of the call will be available three hours after the completion of the call for the next two weeks. The dial-in details for the replay can be found in yesterday's press release. Additionally, there will be an audio webcast available on Essential Properties website at www.essentialproperties.com, an archive of which will be available for 90 days. On the call this morning are Peter Mavoides, President and Chief Executive Officer, Rob Salisbury, Chief Financial Officer, Max Jenkins, Chief Operating Officer, AJ Peil, Chief Investment Officer, and Sheryl Kaul, Director of Financial Planning and Data Analytics. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Sheryl Kaul.

Sheryl Kaul
Sheryl Kaul
Director of Financial Planning and Data Analytics at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for Essential Properties second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. During this conference call, we will make certain statements that may be considered forward-looking statements under federal securities law. The company's actual future results may differ significantly from the matters discussed in these forward-looking statements. We may not release revisions to those forward-looking statements to reflect changes after the statements were made. Factors and risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations are disclosed from time to time in greater detail in the company's filings with the SEC and in yesterday's earnings press release. In our earnings release last night, for the quarter, we reported GAAP net income of $74.5 million and AFFO of $110.1 million. With that, I'll turn the call over to Peter.

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Thanks, Sheryl. Thank you to everyone joining us today for your interest in Essential Properties. In the second quarter, we accretively invested $332 million, reflecting the strength of our deal sourcing engine and the deep relationships we have built with middle-market operators in our targeted industries. As transaction activity accelerated through the quarter, our team effectively converted a strong pipeline of opportunities into closed sale-leaseback investments, demonstrating our execution capabilities and the competitive advantage of our relationship-driven origination platform. Cap rates came in slightly better versus prior quarter at an average initial cash yield of 7.8% and a GAAP yield of 9.1%, preserving a meaningful spread to our cost of capital that is a key driver of our earnings growth. This also reflects our ability to consistently source and close attractive opportunities, even in a dynamic transaction environment.

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

84% of our investments were structured as sale-leasebacks. Sale-leaseback liquidity continues to be a compelling source of growth capital for middle-market operators across our targeted industries. Our capital position remains robust with pro forma leverage of 3.5x and $1.7 billion of liquidity, which was bolstered by our unsecured bond issuance during the quarter. With our capital needs largely addressed for the balance of 2026 and well into 2027, we are well funded to continue to execute on our growth strategy and drive durable and compelling earnings growth. Investment activity and portfolio operating trends are tracking ahead of budgeted expectations, allowing us to once again increase our 2026 AFFO per share guidance to a new range of $2.01-$2.05, and our investment volume guidance to a range of $1.2 billion-$1.5 billion.

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Our revised AFFO per share guidance implies a growth rate of over 7% at the midpoint and over 8% at the high end. Turning to the portfolio, we ended the quarter with investments in 2,493 properties that were leased to over 500 tenants. Our weighted average lease term is over 14 years. Our weighted average lease escalations are 1.9%, and just 2.3% of our annual base rent is expiring through 2028. With that, I'll turn the call over to AJ Peil, our Chief Investment Officer, who will provide an update on our portfolio and asset management activities. AJ.

AJ Peil
AJ Peil
EVP and Chief Investment Officer at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Thanks, Peter. Overall, our portfolio fundamentals remained healthy during the quarter and continued to perform in line with our expectations. Same story, rent growth improved sequentially to 1.5%, while occupancy remained strong at 99.6%, with only nine vacant properties. Portfolio rent coverage was stable since last quarter at 3.5x, and the percentage of ABR with rent coverage below 1.5x declined 50 basis points sequentially, reflecting continued improvement in credit quality. During the quarter, we disposed $54.3 million of assets at a weighted average cap rate of 7.3%. The dispositions were largely driven by ongoing proactive asset management decisions during the quarter. Going forward, we expect our disposition activity to moderate for our trailing eight-quarter average.

AJ Peil
AJ Peil
EVP and Chief Investment Officer at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Our portfolio benefits from broad diversification as our top ten tenants represent just 15.2% of ABR at quarter end, while our top 20 tenants account for only 25.4%, reflecting our continued focus on partnering with a broad base of middle-market operators and limiting concentration risk. We also reduced our top industry exposure by 40 basis points during the quarter to 12.6% of ABR. As a result, our portfolio construction remains healthy with our top three industries, car wash, medical dental, and early childhood education, each now representing approximately 12% of ABR. With that, I'll turn the call over to Max Jenkins, our Chief Operating Officer, who will provide an update on our investment activities and the current market dynamics.

Max Jenkins
Max Jenkins
EVP and COO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Thanks, AJ. On the investment side, activity picked up over the course of the second quarter, culminating in $332 million of investments at an average initial cash yield of 7.8%. Notably, pricing remained stable, with cap rates coming in modestly better than our expectations. Our investments in the quarter had a weighted average initial lease term of 16 years and a weighted average annual rent escalations of 1.9%, generating a strong average GAAP yield of 9.1%. Our capital deployment during the second quarter was broad-based across most of our top industries as we completed 36 transactions totaling 103 properties, with approximately 84% of investment volume sourced through sale-leaseback transactions. One of our sale-leaseback transactions this quarter in the early childhood education sector was partially funded in a tax-efficient execution through the issuance of operating partnership units.

Max Jenkins
Max Jenkins
EVP and COO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

This is the first OP unit transaction for EPRT, and while such deals tend to be episodic, it represents another tool in our toolkit for servicing our valuable relationships. Our average investment size was $3.1 million per property during the quarter, which continues to reflect our focus on acquiring granular, highly fungible assets that provide attractive risk-adjusted returns. Pricing in our forward pipeline continues to produce cap rates in the mid to high 7% range, and with over $1 billion of closed plus identified opportunities year-to-date, we are well positioned to execute on our increased full year investment guidance range of $1.2 billion-$1.5 billion. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Rob Salisbury, our Chief Financial Officer, who will take us through the financials for the second quarter.

Rob Salisbury
Rob Salisbury
EVP and CFO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Thanks, Max. Overall, we delivered another quarter of strong financial performance supported by a large, diverse portfolio of leased properties, disciplined capital deployment, and continued balance sheet strength. Our AFFO per share was $0.50, representing an increase of 9% versus the second quarter of 2025. While nominal AFFO increased 18% year-over-year to $110.1 million. This AFFO performance came in modestly ahead of our expectations, driven by stronger than underwritten portfolio performance and better investment volume and pricing. This offsets slightly later timing of closings during the quarter, allowing us to increase both our investment guidance and AFFO per share guidance for the full year. Total G&A in the quarter was $10.9 million.

Rob Salisbury
Rob Salisbury
EVP and CFO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Our cash G&A was $7.2 million, which is trending toward the bottom half of our guidance range of $30 million-$34 million for the year, and represents just 4.4% of total revenue, down from 5.2% in the same period a year-ago. We declared a cash dividend of $0.32 in the second quarter, which represents an AFFO payout ratio of 64%. Our retained free cash flow after dividends totaled $43 million in the quarter, equating to approximately $170 million on an annualized basis, representing a substantial source of internally generated capital to support our future growth. Turning to the balance sheet, our financial position remains robust. During the quarter, we successfully completed a $400 million 10-year unsecured bond offering with a coupon of five and three-eighths.

Rob Salisbury
Rob Salisbury
EVP and CFO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

This transaction supports our growth plan for 2026 while further extending our weighted average debt maturity and creating more liquidity in our bond complex. We have been modestly active on the equity side in support of extending our equity runway, raising approximately $85 million of equity during the second quarter and subsequent to quarter end through the ATM program and the OP unit transactions that Max discussed earlier. Given the excess liquidity generated by our bond offering, we did not settle any forward equity during the quarter, leaving us with approximately $575 million unsettled forward equity at quarter end. As a result, our pro forma net debt to annualized adjusted EBITDAre remained low at 3.5x at quarter end, and total available liquidity increased to $1.7 billion, providing us with ample capacity to execute on our investment pipeline well into next year.

Rob Salisbury
Rob Salisbury
EVP and CFO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

At quarter end, income-producing gross assets totaled $7.8 billion, and the continued growth and diversification of our portfolio further strengthened our credit profile. Our AFFO per share guidance continues to incorporate a conservative assumption for treasury stock method dilution on our unsettled forward equity balance, totaling approximately $0.01-$0.02 for the full year. Even after incorporating this potential headwind, we increased our AFFO per share guidance, underscoring the strength of our operating performance and investment execution year-to-date. As we noted earlier, we increased the low end of our 2026 AFFO per share guidance by $0.01 to a new range of $2.01-$2.05. This reflects a growth rate of over 7% at the midpoint and over 8% at the high end. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Peter.

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Thanks, Rob. In summary, we are happy with our second quarter results. The diversified portfolio and ample balance sheet capacity, we remain confident in our long-term growth trajectory and our ability to deliver. Best in class total shareholder return. Operator, please open the call up for questions.

Operator

Certainly. At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your keypad. To leave the queue at any time, please press star two. We'll take our first question from Greg McGinniss with Scotiabank. Your line is open. Greg, you may be on mute. Your line is open.

Greg McGinniss
Greg McGinniss
Analyst at Scotiabank

Certainly was. Sorry about that. Good morning. I was hoping you could touch on the utilization of OP units in Q2, whether you plan on doing more of those, whether that's a type of tenant you're trying to bring into the portfolio more so. Any details would be appreciated.

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Sure. It was a traditional sale-leaseback with an operator who had owned real estate on balance sheet that they were looking to monetize. There was not a cash out or a business need for the cash. It was tax efficient for them to take OP units and participate in the OP and have ownership in EPRT going forward. It was a valuable currency in the transaction. It differentiated us from competitors, and it was an efficient way for us to close that transaction without tax leakage for the seller. There's not a lot of situations where that comes to play. They come in from time to time, and we like to utilize that currency and the tax efficiency of it. To the extent that there is further opportunities, great. I'm not optimistic that there are. It takes a pretty unique seller.

Greg McGinniss
Greg McGinniss
Analyst at Scotiabank

Okay, thanks. Just looking at the category exposure, early childhood education ticked up 1% this past quarter. Is that an area where you're having more increased focus, or was this a single one-time kind of transaction that looked attractive? Obviously, you've done a good job in terms of diversification of the top three. Just curious where you're seeing the best opportunities for investment right now.

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Yeah, I wouldn't read too much into that, Greg McGinniss. We maintain and seek investments across all our industries. Obviously, as you've seen, they ebb and flow. There was a larger opportunity in the childcare space during the quarter. We'll seek to maintain that diversity going forward.

Greg McGinniss
Greg McGinniss
Analyst at Scotiabank

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Our next question will come from Caitlin Burrows with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Caitlin Burrows
Caitlin Burrows
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Morning, everyone. I was wondering if you could first talk a bit about your acquisition process from the standpoint of what was the industry mix of deals in 2Q and what drove that. Does it end up being yield driven, portfolio construction, why that mix in 2Q?

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

In the second quarter it was 36 individual transactions. The vast majority of those, 72%, were existing relationships. We maintain relationships and seek to build relationships in all our industry verticals and grow our portfolio radically. Each industry has different risk-return parameters, different competitive parameters, and we price deals in each industry in part based upon our credit performance and recovery experience within those industries. Investing as granular as we do in $3.1 million assets and 30 transactions in the quarter, it's going to be broad-based across all our industries, and we're pricing each deal based upon that individual risk profile of that opportunity. We're agnostic as to which industries we invest in. We want to service profitable relationships and ultimately maintain the diverse portfolio.

Caitlin Burrows
Caitlin Burrows
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Okay, got it. Then maybe from a coverage perspective, I think last quarter you mentioned that perhaps we could see some headwinds on the restaurant side. Wondering, A, if you've seen that play out, B, it looks like your exposure to the under one time bucket ticked up a bit, wondering if you could comment on that.

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Sure. Generally what we've seen in the restaurant space is the restaurant operators are flat. Same-store flat margins resulting in pretty flat coverage. I haven't really seen material drop-off in the coverage within that cohort. As it pertains to the under 1 bucket, as is the case most times, it tends to be pretty idiosyncratic and not industry related. There's just normal ebbs and flows within that bucket. Overall, the under 1.5x bucket came down 50 basis points. We think the portfolio is sitting in a good spot.

Caitlin Burrows
Caitlin Burrows
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Okay, thanks.

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Thanks, Caitlin.

Operator

Our next question will come from Haendel St. Juste with Mizuho. Your line is open.

Haendel St. Juste
Haendel St. Juste
Analyst at Mizuho

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Just looking at the volume you've accomplished in the first half of the year on acquisitions and what your updated guide is suggests a pretty meaningful decel or slowdown in volume in the back half of the year. I'm curious if that's conservatism. Is it something maybe that we're missing? Maybe can you shed some light on the pipeline, your expectations for cap rates amid the geopolitical macro volatility, and if that's impacting your conversation with counterparties at all. Thanks.

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Yeah, Haendel. The cap rates, as Max said in his comments, remain in kind of the mid to high sevens. Overall, the capital markets volatility that we're seeing helps our negotiating leverage relative to our counterparties and allows us to keep rates higher. I think you see that in the second quarter print. As it pertains to volume, Max had some commentary around that. In general, we've bumped our investment guidance for the year. The pipeline's in a really good spot.

Haendel St. Juste
Haendel St. Juste
Analyst at Mizuho

Okay. Fair enough. Maybe there's a little bit of upside. We'll see how the year plays out. Then secondly, I was hoping you could share some color on treasury stock method, kind of what's embedded in the updated guide versus prior quarter. Thank you.

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

It's on you, Robby.

Rob Salisbury
Rob Salisbury
EVP and CFO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Hey, Haendel. We traditionally have incorporated very conservative assumptions around the treasury stock method dilution, just so that we can put ourselves in a good position for conservatism on guidance. That hasn't changed this quarter. As we updated our modeling, the stock has moved up recently, which creates a little bit of incremental dilution. As we mentioned in my prepared remarks today, we see $0.01-$0.02 of headwind to AFFO per share this year from the treasury stock method dilution. I'd say we're probably trending closer to the high end of that range currently, whereas we were closer to the low end of that range last quarter when we gave you an update. We'll see how the rest of the year progresses on that front.

Rob Salisbury
Rob Salisbury
EVP and CFO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Not a massive headwind, relative to our guidance range, we would've been able to hike by more, but for a slight amount of headwind incrementally from that.

Haendel St. Juste
Haendel St. Juste
Analyst at Mizuho

Got it. Thank you, guys.

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

You got it. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question will come from Michael Goldsmith with UBS. Your line is open.

Michael Goldsmith
Michael Goldsmith
Analyst at UBS

Good morning. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. First question is, as of May read, the acquisition volumes were pretty muted through the quarter but clearly picked up through the back half of June. Can you just talk a little bit about just the cadence of acquisitions and closings through the quarter? Is that typical of what you see? Did you push hard to get this volume in the period? Just trying to get a sense of what has changed through the quarter and to achieve this high volume of acquisitions.

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Yeah. I would say it's certainly not out of the norm. The total volume in the quarter is relatively consistent with past quarters, albeit the timing may have been slightly delayed. When you're thinking about 36 transactions with counterparties that we don't always control, we drive the process and try to make it as efficient as possible, but ultimately, we don't control the closing. Then you layer in a chunky, $50 million deal, that's really going to affect your weighted average close date. Nothing abnormal during the quarter. Generally, our closing team strives to be as efficient as possible and close deals as quickly as possible. We're often subject to the timing of the counterparty that we don't control. Nothing unusual. We'll continue to close deals as quickly as possible and be as efficient as possible.

Michael Goldsmith
Michael Goldsmith
Analyst at UBS

Got it. Thanks for that. As a follow-up, continue to push further into the health and fitness space. I think with Fitness Ventures kind of moving their way up into the top 10 tenants, you also have Undefeated Tribe, maybe with a little bit of a logo change in your deck. Can you just talk a little bit about that category, the opportunities there, and where you ultimately would like to get that as a category within the mix?

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Sure. Those two tenants are both tenants operating within Crunch Fitness franchise system. They're both great operators. We really like the Crunch model. Kind of a high volume, low price point, high-quality service, coupled with an investment that is not astronomically large. On average, anywhere between $7 million-$12 million for a gym, compared to some of the higher-end models, which can range up to $60 million. We really like Crunch. We like that system. We particularly like these operators. It provides us an opportunity. We generally invest through new development, which is typically repositioning of old boxes, with a nice mark to market on those boxes and attractive yield for construction financing. Ultimately, coverages that work and make a lot of sense for us. We like the space.

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

We don't see a ton of opportunity within the space, I would not expect it to grow disproportionately, it should continue to grow radically.

Michael Goldsmith
Michael Goldsmith
Analyst at UBS

Thank you very much. Good luck in the back half.

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question will come from Eric Borden with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Eric Borden
Eric Borden
Analyst at BMO Capital Markets

Hey, good morning, everyone. Understanding that you don't guide to bad debt, but just thinking about the restaurant vacancy in the first quarter and then maybe coupled with an increase in the sometimes one-time coverage in the second quarter, do you expect bad debt expense to remain near your long-term average of roughly 28 basis points, or is there a risk it trends modestly above that level? Thank you.

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Yeah. That really isn't necessarily bad debt. It's really just credit loss, lost ABR. We generally take a more conservative estimate relative to our historical average, as you would expect. We would expect the portfolio to perform relatively consistently. I would suggest there's probably a more conservative assumption supporting guidance. We do not see anything out of the normal in the credit performance of the portfolio that would suggest outsized credit performance or loss.

Eric Borden
Eric Borden
Analyst at BMO Capital Markets

Great. Thank you. My follow-up question is around the loan book. Just with loan repayments occurring at 9.3% yield, how attractive does that lending opportunity set look today? Can you replace those repayments with similar yielding loans, or would you rather redeploy that capital into traditional net-lease acquisitions?

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Generally, we do loans purely as an accommodation to the counterparty. Our preference is to do a sale-leaseback. We structure the loans with similar economics to our sale-leaseback transactions. Any cash flow from loan repayments will generally be redeployed into our investment pipeline, which generally has a percentage of loan consistent with the overall portfolio, which is right around 5%. Not a meaningful driver or a mover of the needle, but we'll continue to do loans as they come available and when we can't get true ownership of the real estate. Our focus will be continuing to build our owned real estate portfolio.

Eric Borden
Eric Borden
Analyst at BMO Capital Markets

Great. Thank you very much, guys.

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

You got it. Thank you.

Operator

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, that is star one on your keypad to join the queue. Our next question will come from Jana Galan with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Dan Byun
Dan Byun
Analyst at Bank of America

This is Dan Byun on for Jana Galan. For my first question, looking at 2Q investments, it looks like master leases hovered around 50% in the last two quarters. Is this more of a function of deal mix, or does it reflect a broader evolution of the opportunities you're seeing today?

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Hey, Dan. Thanks for the question. I wouldn't read too much into it. It's just a industry tenant preference, we're pricing individual versus master leases into every transaction. Overall, the portfolio is pretty consistent, kind of around that 60%. Nothing meaningful there in Q2.

Dan Byun
Dan Byun
Analyst at Bank of America

Thank you. Just to follow up here. On your February 2027 term loan, is your nearest maturity at around 2.3%? Given current rates, how are you thinking about hedging or terming that out? Potentially maybe add color on the AFFO impact for 2027.

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Great.

Rob Salisbury
Rob Salisbury
EVP and CFO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Sure. Yeah. Thanks. Yes, that's the next maturity that's coming up on the ladder. We have a number of alternatives to address it. Yeah, as you pointed out, at a 2.26% all-in rate, it's already hedged at that rate. It'll very likely be dilutive under most scenarios that we would entertain. As we look to the bond market or the term loan market, when you look at current pricing today, the dilution would probably be somewhere in the order of $0.04-$0.06, depending on what we end up doing. In general, our preferred method is to go into the bond market. You saw that we just did a long-tenure, 10-year bond in June, and we would probably look to do something similar to that.

Rob Salisbury
Rob Salisbury
EVP and CFO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

When you look at our ladder, we do have some opportunities to do a five- or a seven-year as well. As you guys all know on the call, the rate environment changes by the minute. We'll see what the world looks like later this year. We would certainly look to address it well ahead of time, and we have plenty of available liquidity and resources between our credit facility, our forward equity balance, and of course, internally generated cash flow. A lot of options there. Certainly a manageable headwind, but important to think about that as we move into 2027.

Dan Byun
Dan Byun
Analyst at Bank of America

Got it. Thank you so much.

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question will come from Smedes Rose with Citi. Your line is open.

Smedes Rose
Smedes Rose
Analyst at Citi

Hi. Thank you. We were just wondering, it looks like the provision for credit losses in the quarter was maybe a little higher than what you typically book. I was just wondering if you could speak to anything going on there.

Rob Salisbury
Rob Salisbury
EVP and CFO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Hey, Smeds. It's Rob. Yeah. When you look at our loan portfolio, we have a balance today of approximately $400 million. As Peter mentioned earlier, just as a reminder, although these loans are characterized and accounted for as loans, they're generally the same structure as our sale-leaseback investments with long duration and annual escalators. Similar to our impairment review process that we undergo each quarter, we review these loan investments to assess their carrying value under GAAP accounting principles. The loan loss reserve was a little larger this quarter, reflecting some management conservatism, this reserve is a non-cash item in our income statement. Overall, the loan book is current today with nothing on non-accrual, and that's consistent with our broader commentary that tenant credit trends remain favorable in our portfolio overall.

Smedes Rose
Smedes Rose
Analyst at Citi

Okay. All right. Fair enough. Then I just wanted to clarify something. Maybe I'm not looking at the right numbers here, you've said a couple of times that the under one times bucket improved sequentially by 50 basis points. At least the numbers we're looking at, it looks like it went up by 50 basis points from 3.4% to 3.9%. Is that correct?

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

I was referring to the under one and a half times bucket, and we kind of

Smedes Rose
Smedes Rose
Analyst at Citi

I'm sorry. Okay

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

We had a look at these cohorts together.

Smedes Rose
Smedes Rose
Analyst at Citi

Okay.

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Yeah. We did

Smedes Rose
Smedes Rose
Analyst at Citi

Got you. Okay

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

There's some ebbs and flows there. Yep.

Smedes Rose
Smedes Rose
Analyst at Citi

The under 1 times bucket went up, you've talked about a little bit. Do you see that as just sort of the normal ebb and flow? I think you've talked before about sometimes newer tenants coming on, so their business is still ramping. Is that kind of what you're seeing, or is there anything else you can talk about in that category?

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

I would start, it's not material. It is certainly just the normal ebbs and flows of various businesses and various tenants, and there's certainly a component of that, which is sites coming online that are in the ramping period. Nothing out of the ordinary and nothing that's given us a credit concern. As we usually say, any sort of concerns would be baked into our guidance.

Smedes Rose
Smedes Rose
Analyst at Citi

Okay. Thank you.

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Thank you, Smedes.

Operator

Our next question will come from Spenser Glimcher with Green Street. Your line is open.

Spenser Glimcher
Spenser Glimcher
Analyst at Green Street

Thank you. As you guys continue to grow at a sector-leading pace, so double-digit expansion each year, how do you foresee headcount changing, if at all, over the medium term?

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Yeah, Spenser, we've grown the firm substantially since coming public in 2018. As we continue to invest in our investment volumes, sourcing and processing and underwriting deals takes incremental personnel, as well as managing additional assets. Our headcount will grow. We've tended to grow 5 to 10 professionals a year. I would anticipate that kind of tapering off as we get more efficient. We'll continue to grow, albeit our G&A will continue to rationalize, would be our expectation.

Spenser Glimcher
Spenser Glimcher
Analyst at Green Street

Okay, great. You kind of got to my second question, which was, is EPRT using AI at all to help with sourcing or vetting your acquisition pipeline, and/or on the asset management front? You noted that both obviously are people-intense right now. Just curious if you guys have leaned into that capacity yet.

Max Jenkins
Max Jenkins
EVP and COO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Hey, Spenser, this is Max. Short answer is yes. We're investing in our technology platform and our tech stack with AI across the board from the front end of sourcing through management, property management, asset management, utilizing it wherever we can, as Peter said, just to continue to be better investors and be as efficient as possible.

Spenser Glimcher
Spenser Glimcher
Analyst at Green Street

Awesome. Okay, thanks so much.

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Thanks, Spenser.

Operator

Our next question will come from Rich Hightower with Barclays. Your line is open.

Rich Hightower
Rich Hightower
Analyst at Barclays

Hi, good morning, guys. Really one for me this morning, to go back to the dispositions in the quarter. I know, AJ, you said it was more of an asset management, kind of idiosyncratic method there. Just tell us a little more about what were the situations, who's buying, what's the outlook for further dispositions, and does anything sort of change going forward? Thanks.

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Yeah. Listen, dispositions has always been a part of our business. We very deliberately have a fungible portfolio so that we can readily manage risks, whether it be concentration risks or individual credit risks. That was certainly what you saw during the quarter. As AJ said on the call, you should expect those to moderate back to a normalized level of call it $20 million-$30 million a quarter. We'll continue to prune the portfolio at the edges, manage forward credit risk and industry and tenant exposures as part of our normal asset management discipline.

Rich Hightower
Rich Hightower
Analyst at Barclays

Thanks, Peter. I guess just to follow up, is there anything about, it doesn't sound like it, but just to clarify, increasing prepayment or lease termination fees or anything like that that we should be modeling going forward, or does it all kind of move in a similar percentage to the overall, just on that particular point?

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Yeah. There's nothing abnormal or out of the norm going on in the portfolio that would impact earnings that you should be thinking about.

Rich Hightower
Rich Hightower
Analyst at Barclays

Okay. Thank you.

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Thank you.

Operator

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, that is star one on your telephone keypad. We'll take our final question from John Kilichowski with Wells Fargo Securities. Your line is open.

John Kilichowski
John Kilichowski
Analyst at Wells Fargo Securities

Good morning, everyone.

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Morning, John.

John Kilichowski
John Kilichowski
Analyst at Wells Fargo Securities

I know we've talked probably more about your loan receivable book than any earnings call I can remember, but it seemed like a lot of the repayments were actually kind of prepayments. Is that something that's pretty extensive throughout that

John Kilichowski
John Kilichowski
Analyst at Wells Fargo Securities

kind of portion of your investment portfolio. I guess, how sensitive is that to moves we have in interest rates or maybe just timing as things maybe become pre-payable. Just kind of curious if we could see that bucket of kind of effective dispositions increase over time or even near-term.

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Most of our loans are multi-property loans supporting similar assets to which we own in the portfolio, those loans generally carry prepayment rights when an individual asset is sold. Those prepayments tend to come with prepayment penalties and tend to be constrained and limited to the extent that their rates go down and there's a very liquid market for retail disposition of properties. You might expect that to pick up. In general, I would expect it to be pretty consistent.

John Kilichowski
John Kilichowski
Analyst at Wells Fargo Securities

Maybe on the investment side, thinking back to kind of disclosure ahead of the Nareit conference, you said you had between acquisitions that were closed and stuff under LOI or PSA, roughly $430 million of transactions, you've kind of done 350 since the end of 1Q. We're just kind of curious, is that reflective of just purely timing, and we should maybe expect that delta to close over the coming months, or are there things that kind of fell out of the pipeline, understanding it includes a pretty broad deals and kind of a broad level of kind of where they are in terms of closing?

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Generally, when we flash our portfolio, it's a forward 90-day look, or our pipeline, excuse me. To the extent it's in our pipeline, I would say there's a 90+ percent chance of that transaction closing. We don't spend a lot of time working on deals or putting them in our pipeline if we don't think they're going to close. If we're flashing a number in the second month of a quarter, you can expect that there's going to be some hangover into the next quarter.

John Kilichowski
John Kilichowski
Analyst at Wells Fargo Securities

Okay. Lastly, given the amount of cash on hand today, how should we think about timing of forward equity pull-downs? Is that something you're going to wait till 4Q maybe to complete, or could that kind of restart here in the third quarter?

Rob Salisbury
Rob Salisbury
EVP and CFO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Hey, John, it's Rob. Good question. If you go back in the first quarter, we did a fair amount of settlement activity funding the investment pipeline. We had planned on doing more settlements in 2Q, we did our unsecured bond offering in June, which created excess liquidity. We ended the quarter with some excess cash. That meant there was no need for us to settle in 2Q. As we move through 3Q, Max mentioned earlier that we have a great pipeline heading into the summer. We'll start to consume that capital, I think you should expect some settlement activity later in 3Q. As we get to 4Q, we'll probably still have some unsettled forwards that are available to us.

Rob Salisbury
Rob Salisbury
EVP and CFO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

In addition to that, we'll also look to the bond market as we start thinking about taking out the 2027 term loan. That doesn't mature until February, of course, we could potentially prepay that as well. From a capital plan standpoint, I expect some settlements in 3Q, in 4Q, it should probably be a mix of bond and equity.

John Kilichowski
John Kilichowski
Analyst at Wells Fargo Securities

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

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Thanks, John.

Operator

It appears we have no further questions. I'll turn the program back over to Peter Mavoides for any additional or closing remarks.

Peter Mavoides
President and CEO at Essential Properties Realty Trust

Great. Thank you very much, operator. Good job today. Thank you all for your questions and participating in our call, and I hope you all have a great summer.

Operator

This concludes today's program. Thank you for your participation, and you may disconnect at any time.

Executives
    • Sheryl Kaul
      Sheryl Kaul
      Director of Financial Planning and Data Analytics
    • AJ Peil
      AJ Peil
      EVP and Chief Investment Officer
    • Max Jenkins
      Max Jenkins
      EVP and COO
    • Rob Salisbury
      Rob Salisbury
      EVP and CFO
Analysts
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