Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to the CurbLine Properties second quarter 2026 call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Stephanie Rouse-Duperez, VP of Capital Markets. Stephanie, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to CurbLine Property's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Joining me today are Chief Executive Officer David Lukes and Chief Financial Officer Connor Fenerty. In addition to the press release distributed this morning, we have posted our quarterly financial supplement and slide presentation on our website at CurbLine.com, which are intended to support our prepared remarks during today's call. Please be aware that certain of our statements today may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from our forward-looking statements. Additional information may be found in our earnings press release and in our filings of the SEC, including our most recent reports on forms 10-K and 10-Q. In addition, we will be discussing non-GAAP financial measures on today's call, including FFO, OFFO, and same property net operating income. Descriptions and reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in today's quarterly financial supplement and investor presentation. At this time, it is my pleasure to introduce our Chief Executive Officer, David Lukes.

Thank you, Stephanie. Good morning and welcome to CurbLine Properties' second quarter conference call. Second quarter results highlight the strength of the platform that we have constructed in less than two years since our spinoff. We acquired $374 million of properties in the second quarter alone, and we have now acquired $564 million year-to-date. We raised almost $550 million of equity, including $350 million in our June offering. And importantly, we continue to see elevated demand for space with the vast majority of our SNO pipeline expected to commence over the next three quarters. These factors in aggregate are driving significant earnings growth with our raised guidance representing over 17% growth, which is among the highest in the sector. I'd like to thank everybody at CurbLine for their contributions that have positioned the company for outperformance. We continue to lead in this unique capital efficient sector with a clear first mover advantage as the only public company exclusively focused on acquiring top-tier convenience real estate assets across the United States. I'll start with an overview of investment activity and shift to operational highlights before handing it off to Connor to walk through quarterly results, the 2026 guidance increase, and the balance sheet in greater detail. Beginning with investments, as I mentioned, we've acquired over $560 million of real estate year-to-date and are raising our full-year investment target to $1 billion of acquisitions from $850 million. I've spent no shortage of time previously discussing the drivers behind the acceleration in acquisition opportunities, and there's really no change as to what we are seeing today. First, it's a fragmented industry, and we have the largest team with an incredible network of relationships across the major metros of the country. Second, our reputation and track record are real assets as we look to expand our portfolio to almost 6 million square feet of convenience real estate. And third, the platform and scale that we've constructed allow us to be simply more efficient than local competition, and we continue to fine-tune our processes to underwrite better and close faster. And finally, fourth, opportunities continue to be boosted by what we believe to be the long-term tailwind driven by a transfer of wealth and real estate to the next generation of owners, many of which who are seeking liquidity. The net result of each of these four factors is an increase in opportunities that meet our criteria, primary vehicular corridors, strong demographics, high traffic counts, and creditworthy tenants, and importantly, are additive to our future growth rate. And it highlights the unique and significant addressable convenience market that provides an opportunity for us to scale our curb line business. Moving to operations, we signed over 167,000 square feet of new leases and renewals this Trailing 12-month spreads remain consistent with our five-year averages, as the shortage of space in the affluent markets where we operate continue to lead to attractive leasing economics. We invest in simple, flexible buildings that are at the nexus of consumer behavior. These straightforward rows of shops can support a wide variety of uses and this flexibility drives tenant demand from an extremely wide pool of tenants. The result for our portfolio is a highly diversified tenant base, with only seven tenants contributing more than 1% of base rent and only one tenant of more than 2%. We now have over 1,300 unique tenants in the portfolio, including over 500 unique national tenants, which represents approximately 70% of our base rent. To this point, all 15 of our new leases this quarter were with different tenants, including FedEx Office, tropical smoothie, and a variety of other health and service users with a similar national mix as the overall portfolio. In terms of same property growth, year-to-date growth of 2% decelerated as we expected, with Connor providing more details on this later. But our capital expenditures also remain well below 10% of NOI, placing us among the most capital-efficient operators in the entire public REIT sector, an important hallmark of the convenience asset class. In summary, we remain incredibly optimistic about the opportunity ahead for CurbLine as we exclusively focus on scaling the fragmented convenience real estate sector in an effort to deliver compelling relative and absolute growth for stakeholders. And with that, I'll turn it over to Connor. Thank you, David.

I'll start with second quarter earnings and operating metrics before shifting to the company's revised 2026 guidance and then conclude with the balance sheet. Second quarter results were ahead of budget largely due to higher NOI, driven in part by higher-than-forecasted occupancy and recoveries, along with higher-than-forecasted acquisition NOI was up 12% sequentially and over 50% year-over-year, driven by acquisitions along with organic growth. Outside of the quarterly operational performance, there are no other material variances for the quarter, highlighting the simplicity of the curb-line income statement and business plan. You will note that in the second quarter we recorded a gross up of $1.8 million of non-cash G&A expense, which was offset by $1.8 million of non-cash other income. This gross up, which is a product of the shared services agreement and nets to zero net income, will continue as long as the agreement is in place and is excluded from any G&A figures or targets. In terms of operating metrics, the lease rate was up 20 basis points sequentially to 96.5%, despite an almost 20 basis point headwind from acquisitions. Occamcy was also up sequentially to 94.3%, which represents the highest level for the portfolio since the spinoff. Leasing volume in the second quarter accelerated from the first quarter, driven by an uptick in renewals, though quarterly volumes and figures remain volatile given the lack of available space in the portfolio. As David noted, we remain encouraged by the amount of activity and depth of demand for available space. As expected, same property NOI decelerated in the second quarter due to lower forecasted recovery revenue, which acted as a 260 basis point headwind. The second quarter also included $370,000 of expense related to storm damage at a property North Carolina, which is an additional 100 basis point headwind. Pro forma for these, same property NOI growth would have been 3.1%. Yet despite these headwinds, same property NOI was ahead of budget and base rent growth was up over 2.3%. Importantly, this growth was generated by limited capital expenditures with trailing 12-month CapEx of 8% of NOI. Moving to our outlook for 2026, we are increasing OFFO guidance to a range between $1.24 and $1.26 per share, which at the midpoint represents just over 17% growth. We believe that this level of growth will be the highest certainly in the retail space and among the highest in the entire REIT sector. Underpinning the midpoint of the range is $1 billion of full-year investments, a roughly 3.5% return on cash, with interest income declining over the course of the year as cash is invested, CapEx at percentage of NOI of less than 10%, and G&A of roughly $32 million, which includes fees paid to site centers as part of the Shared Service Agreement. Those fees totaled $1.2 million in the second quarter. In terms of same property NOI, we continue to forecast growth of 3% at the midpoint in 2026, following 3.3% in 2025, and 5.8% in 2024. As I have noted previously, the same property pool is growing, but small, and it includes only assets owned for at least 12 months as of December 31st, 2025, resulting in a large non-same property pool, which we expect to grow at a similar rate to the same property pool over the course of the year. That said, we expect a meaningful acceleration and base rent into the fourth quarter, driven by lease commencements, with almost 90% of the S&O pipeline expected to commence by March 31st of next year, and the entire pipeline to commence by the end of the third quarter. The speed of the deliveries speaks to the simplicity of the buildings that we buy and operate, and differentiates curb line from other purpose-built retail formats. For moving pieces between the second and the third quarters, as a result of the timing of equity settlements in the second quarter, the quarter-end share count was higher than the weighted average. Assuming no additional settlement activity, the third quarter share count would average about 114 million shares, which is a good starting point to layer on additional share settlements, which will be the primary funding source for second-and-half acquisitions. Additionally, below-market revenue is expected to decline sequentially by about $300,000 due to the write-off of below-market leases in the second quarter. Finally, G&A is expected to total about $8 million in the third quarter and $32 million for the full year. Additional details on 2026 guidance and the moving pieces that I just outlined can be found on page 10 of the earnings slides. Ending on the balance sheet, CurbLine was spun off with a unique capital structure aligned with the company's business plan. In the second quarter, and including the shoe from the June offering, CurbLine sold 18.1 million shares on a forward basis with $541 million of expected growth proceeds, which we expect to use to fund acquisitions. Including cash on hand at quarter end of $155 million, along with total unsettled equity proceeds of $696 million, CurbLine has over $800 million of immediate liquidity available to fund the roughly $500 million of remaining investments included in guidance. The net result of the capital markets activity since formation, as the company ended the quarter with a leverage ratio of approximately 20%, providing substantial dry powder and liquidity, continue to acquire assets and scale, resulting in significant earnings and cash flow growth well in excess to read average. With that, I'll turn it back to David.

Thank you, Connor. Operator, we are now ready to take questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question is from Ronald Camden with Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hey, great. Just starting with some of the KPIs, I think, you know, the occupancy, obviously, you gain occupancy despite sort of the drag from the acquisitions you mentioned. I'd just love to hear what you say, how much more upside of occupancy there is. event on the same storefront. I'm just wondering if the desal ratio was maybe a little bit greater than anticipated, and is this sort of 3%, the right run rate we should think about going forward? Thanks.

Sure, Ron. It's Connor. I'll go in reverse order. So, our budget for the quarter was for a 100 basis point decline in same property, and so we outperformed that. And so, in a worst-case scenario, it was in line with our expectations, but to my comments, we were better than expected. we've talked about this ad nauseum. Our same property pool is larger than it was last year, but still pretty small relative to the asset base. So it's going to lead to a lot of volatility in operating metrics, which I've called out on a number of occasions. So we reported 4.8% growth in the first quarter, obviously to your point, a deceleration in the second quarter. And then we're expecting a pretty large acceleration in the back half of the year, just given the S&O pipeline that both David and I mentioned and the timing of commencements into the back half of the year. So as I mentioned, the two other call-outs, the same property pool is only about 56% of NOI in the second quarter. So you have a significant piece of the company's not captured. And then the second piece is CapEx percentage NOI remains well below 10%. So the capital needed to generate that 3% plus growth over the course of the year is about a third of other retail companies. We've said, again, on other calls that we think this is a 2.5% to 4% business. Just given the supply-demand imbalance today, it's probably closer to four. And again, there's no change to our expectations for growth over the course of the year. And then just help me remind me on the first question, excuse me.

Just showing the occupancy upside in the portfolio.

Ron, I think part of the challenge...

Morning, Ron. It's David. I would say part of the challenge of that question is that it really depends on what we're acquiring. Sometimes we're acquiring with vacancy, and that would have a negative impact as it did this quarter. In other cases, we're acquiring assets where we might want to replace a tenant. I would say that I would point you to page 13 of our supplemental. You'll note that the relationship between new leases versus renewals is four to one. So there's four times as many renewals as there are new leases. And this is generally renewals business. So I would say as long as the economy is strong, I would expect that occupancy is going to stay at the higher end over the course of time, which I would put as a traditional 97% or so, but it really depends on when we select to replace tenants as opposed to renew them. Great.

If I could just sneak in my follow-up, just all the acquisitions, obviously pretty impressive volumes here. We'd just love to hear what you guys are seeing in terms of cap rate and return expectations for this vintage of acquisitions versus maybe 12 to 24 months ago. Thanks so much.

Well, as of where we sit today with the pipeline, you know, of a billion dollars expected to purchase this year, the cap rates are still hanging in the low sixes. As I've said on previous calls, just bear in mind that the assets that we're buying are somewhat small, which means that the internal growth rate of those assets can have a pretty big impact on going in cap rates. So we've bought assets in the low fives and we bought assets in the high sixes, and it really depends on occupancy levels, mark to market. I would say the better way to look at this asset class is unlevered IRR, which are around an eight. And I think for us, that's a pretty attractive trade for that type of unlevered IRR, given the fact that most of that IRR is coming from cash flow, simply because of the low cap tax profile. Thank you. Thanks, Ron.

Your next question is from the line of Craig Mailman with Citigroup. Your line is not open. Please go ahead.

Can you hear me?

Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Can you hear me, guys? Yes, thanks, Craig. Oh, good morning. Sorry, the operator keeps throwing me off. Following up a little bit on Ron's question and maybe asking it a different way, I know you guys don't get quarterly guidance, But just given the ramp in 2Q acquisitions and, you know, a little bit of the drag you saw in occupancy from this crop and you kind of bought, you know, a third of it towards the end of the quarter, I know you guys don't give quarterly guidance. But could you help us think a little bit about the net benefit that should accrue to 3Q sequentially, you know, from these acquisitions kind of offset by, Connor, your commentary on where the share count could be just to give us – I know that we always talk about low six caps, but there is that range in there. I don't know if there's some kind of goalpost you could give to help us out.

Yeah, Craig, it's Connor. Good morning. Just a couple of things. I don't want to make a mountain out of molehill about the lease rate and the accuracy of what we acquired. You know, portfolio is 96.5% leased, and the assets we bought had a lease rate in 95s. So it's not like we're buying stuff in the 70s or 60%. There's this huge lease up. It just happened to be modestly dilutive to our overall portfolio lease rate. We give the timing of each acquisition to kind of the genesis of your question in the sub to help with the cadence. But if you use effectively a low six cap rate on those assets that were acquired in the second quarter, you'll get to a really good run rate for the third quarter in terms of kind of an apples and apples comparison. And then as you think about the cadence over the course of the year for remaining acquisitions, there's about a half billion dollars left to hit our target. If you assume, you know, roughly a 50-50 split over the course of those two quarters and with a similar level of funding or settlement timing, you should get to a really good spot in terms of the guidance range and how we're thinking about the business for the course of the year.

That's helpful. Appreciate it. That is, we just think about the opportunity set. I mean, you guys are now at almost double what you initially thought you could do when you spun off from an annual acquisition pace this year. Can you just talk about if this level is sustainable for how long you think it's sustainable before you get institutional competition and how you guys are now staffed to either handle this or how much more you could kind of do in a year without having to hire more people?

Sure, Craig. It's David. I'll give that a shot. You know, as you know, our initial expectations when we spun out was to do 500 million of acquisitions in the first year. We ended up the first year way above that in the kind of 780 range. I would note that there were three kind of small to medium sized portfolios within that first year. Portfolios in this business tend to be episodic. I don't think that they're something that can be counted on in kind of like a normal quarterly run. So if you look at that first year, our acquisitions of one-off assets were around $550 million. As we sit here today in the second year, we've got a target of a billion, and that is exclusively one-off acquisitions. So what's happening, I think, are a couple of factors. Number one, there is definitely a transitioning of generational real estate to the next buyers. And that either happens through resolving estates or, as we've seen in the last six months, and I think I mentioned on the last call, we've seen a lot more sellers that are seeking liquidity to plan for their estates. And to us, that's a very good sign that deal activity seems more likely to increase than decrease over the next decade. In terms of the total addressable market, even where we stand today, having effectively doubled the size of the portfolio, we're still about 60 basis points of the total U.S. inventory of this asset class. So I do feel like there's a very credible long-term runway. The second component that I would say is unique, and I've mentioned this in the prepared remarks a number of times, is that we have been trying to find every avenue and sleeve we can to unlock more inventory in this country. If you've got a business you like and you're only 60 basis points, it's our job to figure out how to attack those sleeves. We've done that from cold calling, from mass mailers, from wealth advisors, from accounting firms and law firms. We've driven up and down streets and knocked on doors. At this point today, John has a team that is working on acquisitions in some form, whether it's diligence, sourcing, or legal, we've got a 26-person department. That size of a transactions team is far larger than any other institution or non-institution in this country. So I think we're just able to get at more of the deal flow. And I personally have a pretty high confidence that that'll continue for years to come.

And in terms of GNA, Craig, we talked about the time of spinoff that we thought we could be as efficient as site centers. And If you recall CITE, the way we look at it, CITE's GNA as a percentage GAV was about 1.1%. We have since updated that framework to say we think CURB can be materially more efficient. And that's despite, to David's point, adding some folks and adding some more headcount. But we're just starting to scale our GNA load. And that's obviously starting to fall to the bottom line and leading to pretty significant flow growth. So on the GNA front, you're right, we are adding some more folks.

But in terms of the, I would say, significant fixed expense items, those are already in place, which, again, is allowing us to really scale our GNA, drive free cash flow, and drive pretty significant earnings growth. that's helpful if i could slip a third in um are you guys how do you guys think about as you're you know 500 or 1300 tenants are national are you guys close to or going to think about this as an avenue of having like a national accounts group now that you have i would assume one of the biggest, if not the biggest non-anchored strip portfolios in the country. How are you guys thinking about organizing to maximize the benefits from having the scale to drive up rent or occupancy or improved tenancy?

It's a really interesting point, Greg. I really think it's prescient, given you're right. We're suddenly on the map for a lot of tenants that we weren't on the map a year ago. In fact, I'm not sure the sector was really on the map a year or two ago. But this first started to come up in Vegas this year at the ICSC conference. You know, a lot of the tenants are looking for growth. And if we're buying assets that have a two thirds to one third national to local, the nationals can generate more four wall EBITDA from this real estate than the locals. And therefore, I think a lot of the nationals are seeing an opportunity to replace local tenants with national tenants. And so they started to get a lot more aggressive at Vegas with approaching us about how they can work with us on a portfolio basis. So I do agree with you that that's an interesting avenue, especially given the fact that we're targeting high traffic intersections and demographics, which is where a lot of the national chains want to be. So I would say it's an open question. It's a really, really good point. And you'll probably to get a lot more commentary on us over the course of the year as we develop those relationships and figure out how it's best to serve those tenants.

Great. Thanks, guys.

Thanks, Greg.

Your next question is from the line of Todd Thomas with KeyBank Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Hi. Thanks. Good morning. First, I just wanted to follow up on the discussion around cap rates and IRRs. I was just wondering, I guess first, it doesn't sound like it necessarily, but is the recent rise in the 10-year Treasury having any impact on more recent price discussions that you're having? And then is CURB changing its underwriting hurdles at all in the current environment, just given the improvement in the company's cost of capital, or has anything changed at all for the company's investment efforts as a result?

Good morning, Todd. Yeah, I wish I could say that the industry reacts very quickly to borrowing costs. It just seems like, you know, unlevered IRRs are probably the more dominant approach from even the competition that we have locally, even though a lot of them use debt. So I don't really think the cap rates have changed in the last couple of months. we're still seeing the same range. The averages have been about the same. In terms of our own underwriting, I would say that given the fact that we're looking at unlevered IRRs, a lot of that IRR is dependent on the mark-to-market and what we think market rents are growing at. And I think we're pretty conservative on both factors. And so I just don't think we've seen the need yet to kind of reconsider our underwriting assumptions.

Okay. And then, And, you know, Connor, in terms of, you know, scaling the platform and some of the commentary around G&A, can you just provide an update on the shared service agreement with site centers, just given where we are in the year today, you know, late July, what the latest is with regard to the agreement, and also, you know, the impact that we should be considering for G&A, you know, after taking into account, you know, the gross ups, which you've talked about that net out but also the the fees paid the site center and how we should start to think about that um you know as we focus on 2027. sure so um todd site has you know had the one-time option

to terminate the ssa by june 30th and they did not exercise that option so as a result absence of negotiation between the two parties the ssa would remain in place through the full length of the agreement which is which is october 1st of next year if you recall our budget for this year assumed status quo. So there's no impact to our budget or GNA this year. As it relates to 2027, you know, obviously as we get closer and provide guidance, we can give some more updates there. But we do have the pieces for you in our sub and in our, in our slides in terms of the breakout between the fee paid to site, which is $1.2 million this quarter, and what I'll call our core or other GNA, which is obviously just expenses related to curb line. So, you know, as we grow, that fee paid to site will grow. But if you recall, the structure of the SSA was that and the fees paid were meant to mirror the cost of the folks that the services that site are providing. So in layman's terms, or just to put it bluntly, we're not expecting material change to G&A once the SSA expires, whether that's today or whether that's, you know, over a year from now. So status quo for this year. But again, just given how we structured the agreement, There's no expected material change at G&A when that agreement does expire.

Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. Welcome.

Your next question is from the line of Flores Van Dyken with Ladenburg. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks. Morning, guys. I love the simplicity of your business, which I suspect a lot of the investors on the call probably do as well. I had a couple of questions. And the Sunbelt clearly is the biggest part of your portfolio with over 70 percent of your ABR coming from those markets. How do you think about growing in other key markets going forward? I think I looked briefly at your slide. I think you have only like two or three assets in the New York metro area. one in New Jersey, one in Long Island, as far as I could tell. Do you not see the opportunity to acquire there, or are cap rates lower, or is there more competition? And if you could maybe talk a little bit about that, you know, obviously you have a huge amount of assets in Atlanta. Is it just easier to acquire in markets like that because you already have a big presence? Maybe if you can talk a little bit about your acquisition strategy and how you expand into other key markets across the country, please.

Sure. Good morning, Flores. This is David. I would say that we've spent a lot of time together over the past number of years. I think you know that when we spun out CurbLine, it certainly had a base portfolio that did have quite a few assets in the Southeast as well as the Southwest. So if that was our departure point, we came with a concentration in those two markets, and we also came with a number of relationships that were longstanding in those areas. As we've grown over the past 18 or 20 months, we certainly have started to develop more relationships and get more deals done in the mountain states, Denver in particular, the Pacific Northwest, and the Midwest. So I think it's less of a desire to be concentrated. I think our desire is the opposite. We'd like to be as distributed as we can amongst the top 30 MSAs as long as it meets our hurdles of traffic and primary corridors and strong demographics. The laggards have definitely been you know the northeast corridor part of that is just because you know this real estate is generationally owned a lot of people have a very low basis and it's just going to take time to start to penetrate some of these older markets i would say the same thing about the pacific northwest that's also been an area that's been a little bit more difficult to ramp up but if you fast forward in a number of years i think we've proven that we're willing to allocate resources to build those relationships we're starting to make a dent and once we get into a market, I do think that buying deals in markets prompts a lot more deals to come.

So I would expect that that map is going to look a lot different in the next couple of And maybe my follow up, David, as you think about OP units, do you expect that those will become more prevalent, particularly as you talk about these generational and tax issues going forward? I note that one of your peers, who's been public for quite a while, did its first OP unit deal recently in Long Island. Do you think you're going to be more prevalent in using those to source and complete acquisitions going forward?

Well, that certainly is an open question. I mean, given how little the entire industry has used of OP units in the last decade or so, I think there's a reason for that. We certainly understand that from our perspective and from the seller's perspective, the math is better on an after-tax basis for using OP units. But it doesn't necessarily mean that the seller ends up wanting that type of tax-deferred structure. In many cases, you're talking about resolving in a state where there's a couple of different errors. There's other methods such as 1031 when people are planning. So we certainly love the structure. We think it makes sense for both parties, but it's not easy to get them across the finish line. I would expect it will be more than zero, but I don't really anticipate it to be a dramatic change from what you've been seeing in the last decade.

Thanks.

Thanks, Loris.

Your next question is from the line of Alexander Goldfarb with Piper Sadler. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, morning down there. David, just two follow-up questions. The first, just going back to the size and scale of the platform, the G&A comments that Connor mentioned on efficiency, couldn't you argue that, you know, perhaps you need more people if you're knocking sort of at every country club, every dentist office, every wealth management, et cetera, across the country. Would that require more people sort of like a sales force that have to be out there pounding the pavement for each individual deal? I'm just trying to understand how the platform can be more efficient if the deals individually are a lot smaller and you have to tease them out sort of one at a time.

Well, you're right. And good morning, Alex. You certainly could make the argument that more people generates more deal flow. I think where we believe that's true, we have added people. Where we believe it's not true, we've tried other methods to unlock inventory. So, I mean, I guess if I just look back on the fact that we initially expected 500 million a year and now we're at a billion this year, you know, I don't want to be too negative on the fact that the team has grown and the team has produced pretty well. So, we're being careful with our G&A, but we certainly recognize we're willing to allocate G&A towards growing the business where we see an opportunity to do so.

And to your point, you know, does more people necessitate a higher G&A run rate? And the answer is in certain departments, yes, as David allude to with transactions. But to Flores's point, this business is so simple in all the other facets that we are more efficient on that front or in those departments. So again, you're running a little bit higher headcount to your point on sourcing deals, but everywhere else, you know, we don't have a captive. We don't have all the other kind of bells and whistles, which we think are an administrative burden and a GNA burden. And so we prefer to operate pretty simply in other apartments, which is a huge benefit to GNA.

Okay. And then the second question is on tenant diversity. I hear your point that your portfolio is on the radar of more national tenants, but isn't there an argument that sort of local tenants or small regional tenants provide that sort of pizzazz that makes people want to go to your center versus the one across the street, and therefore there's sort of a mix that will always bias perhaps more local tenants relative to how many nationals that you could put in. I'm just thinking especially when you have like new concepts that are on the rise, those often start out as local or small regionals, and I would just think that that's what creates a differentiating standpoint as you think about your two-thirds, one-third mix.

Yeah. Certain pieces of that I would agree with, but there's other, I guess there's other pieces of what we were talking about, which are more of a choice, an asset management choice. So let's unpack it a little bit. The industry, I think, is fairly consistently 70-30 in that range. You know, is it 65? Is it 75? I think that level of change over time is the question mark. I don't think it's ever going to get to, you know, 90-10. And part of the reason you're right is that there are, in every local community, certain tenants that, our longstanding can generate enough revenue to support rents and are worthy of being in our property. So I don't ever think we're going to be at a point where we're trying to force 100% nationals. We do spend a significant amount of time on credit worthiness. So our local tenants go through a pretty robust analysis on their credit and their ability to pay and their business history. And there are a lot of small businesses in the country that have that high credit and and high probability of retention over time. So I'd agree with you, the local tenants are important. I guess I would diverge a little bit about the comment of unique tenants that draw customers who want to be at your property. That to me is a philosophy that's more aligned with lifestyle, where you have a destination property and you're trying to get unique and differentiated tenants to kind of attract tenants to come to your properties. Our asset class and what we've been trying to buy are very simple rows of shops on vehicular corridors where it's more running errands. I mean, we know that the customers on average spend less than seven minutes on our asset. They're not coming to cross shop and they're not necessarily coming because of a unique tenant. They're coming because it's convenient. And so our job as asset managers is to generate as much rent as we can from the best credit for people that want that access to those many money customers traveling, you know, 40,000 cars a day along that road. Thank you. Thanks, Alex.

Your next question is from the line of Mike Muller with J.P. Morgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks. Connor, you clearly have a lot of unsettled equity to tap today. But on a go-forward basis, how are you thinking about the equity debt mix for acquisition funding?

It's a great question. So to your point, we have just under $900 million of either cash, unsettled equity, free cash flow over the course of the year. And that's offset by use to satisfy the rest of our pipeline of about $500 million. So we expect to end the year with round numbers, $350, $375 million cash, assuming no changes in investment cadence. So it does feel like, Mike, for the next six plus months, we've got all the equity needed on hand or cash needed on hand. And from there, I think it's likely you'll likely see us look to the private placement market. We obviously were pretty active on the equity front and operate with a lower debt to equity mix. We call it kind of low 20s. But just go forward. If you think back to our original base case, we had assumed 100 percent debt and we remain that retain that capacity depending on the best pricing at the time. So it's a long-winded, securitist way of saying TBD and when we get to next year, but we've got significant leverage capacity if, for whatever reason, we decided to go down that path.

Got it. Okay. And then what are you seeing today for acquisition pricing if we're looking at just one-off transactions versus buying a larger pool of comparable properties? I mean, is there a significant portfolio premium or is it actually smaller here because of how intensive the product is?

I can start just the rest of our pipeline, which is 100% spoken for. We've got a billion dollars over the course of the year. Those are all one-offs, Mike. So when we're speaking about this low six cap rate, that is what we're referring to on an individual basis. And I'll defer to David on the portfolio front.

Yeah, I think, Mike, the portfolios we're talking about in this asset class tend to be not that large. In many cases, if we find an owner that has a number of properties, we might only want a portion of them. So I think, honestly, the portfolios that we have bought in the past were simply the sum of each individual asset's value. I don't think there's really a premium or a discount for the larger portfolio size. Got it.

Okay. Thank you.

Thanks, Mike.

We have reached the end of the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to David Lukes, CEO, for closing remarks. David, please go ahead.

Thank you all for your time, and we look forward to speaking to you next quarter.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.