LXP Industrial Trust (LXP) Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning. My name is Aaron, and I will be your conference operator for today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the LXP Industrial Trust first quarter 2025 earnings call and webcast. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise, and after the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during that time, simply press star, followed by the number one in your telephone keypad. If at any point you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star followed by the number one again. With that, I'm pleased to turn our call over to Heather Gentry, Executive Vice President of Investor Relations. Heather, you may begin.

Thank you, Operator. Welcome to LXP Industrial Trust's first quarter 2025 earnings conference call and webcast. The earnings release was distributed this morning, and both the release and quarterly supplemental are available on our website in the Investor section and will be furnished to the SEC on a Form 8K. Certain statements made during this conference call regarding future events and expected results may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. LXP believes that these statements are based on reasonable assumptions. However, certain factors and risks, including those included in today's earnings press release and those described in reports that LXP files with the SEC from time to time, could cause LXP's actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. Except as required by law, LXP does not undertake a duty to update any forward-looking statements. In the earnings press release and quarterly supplemental disclosure package, LXP has reconciled all non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure. Any references in these documents to adjusted company FFO refer to adjusted company funds from operations available to all equity holders on a fully diluted basis. Operating performance measures of an individual investment are not intended to be viewed as presenting a numerical measure of LXP's historical or future financial performance, financial position, or cash flows. On today's call, Will Eglin, Chairman and CEO, and Nathan Brunner, CFO, will provide a recent business update and commentary on first quarter results. Brendan Mullenix, CIO, and James Dudley, Executive Vice President and Director of Asset Management, will be available for the Q&A portion of this call. I will now turn the call over to Will.

Thanks, Heather, and good morning, everyone. Our 2025 is off to a good start as we produce solid same-store NOI growth backed by strong leasing outcomes in the first quarter. We remain focused on increasing occupancy, enhancing returns in our portfolio, and executing on our 12-market investment strategy in the Sun Belt and Lower Midwest. In the first quarter, industrial fundamentals held relatively steady despite tariff uncertainty. While it is too early to know the full impact of the tariff announcements, our markets have continued to experience healthier industrial fundamentals when compared to select coastal markets, and we believe strong long-term demand trends remain in place. Overall, U.S. net absorption was 23 million square feet in the first quarter, 19 million square feet of which was in our 12 target markets. On the supply side, new starts remain low, and the construction pipeline in our 12 target markets is approximately 87 million square feet, down almost 75% from the 2022 peak of approximately 330 million square feet. In terms of product mix, new Class A facilities continue to be favored by many users, evidenced by higher net occupancy gains for new product compared to older facilities, which saw an increase in move-outs during the quarter. We believe our portfolio, which is comprised of 91% Class A industrial facilities with an average age of 9.5 years, stands to outperform in a market environment where quality matters. There has been a slower cadence in leasing transactions this year, primarily as a result of our limited 2025 lease roll, which represents less than 3.5 percent of our ABR, and secondarily due to longer decision-making times by many tenants. We remain cautious in the near term as the current market environment, particularly as it relates to trade policy, has created further uncertainty for tenants making spacious decisions. That said, leasing outcomes have been favorable so far this year, and our current mark-to-market on leases expiring through 2030 is estimated to be approximately 18 percent based on broker's estimates, which will contribute to our FFO growth. As we discussed in last quarter's call, we expect there could be lower tenant retention this year compared to 2024. In-place rents on remaining 2025 lease expirations are approximately 30 to 35 percent below market. We believe any space we may get back in 2025 will be attractive to other users.

With respect to other vacancies, we have activity at all three of our big box facilities.

Leasing these facilities is an important component to FFO growth and continues to be our top priority. Our investment strategy is concentrated on 12 target markets situated along the Sun Belt in select lower Midwest states. These markets, where approximately 85 percent of our gross assets are located, have favorable demographics with employment and population growth exceeding the national average, business-friendly government policies, and logistics infrastructure. These markets are also benefiting from significant investment in the on-shoring of advanced manufacturing. Some of the current projects in our target markets include Taiwan Semiconductor in Phoenix, Hyundai's MetaPlant in Savannah, Apple's Server Manufacturing Plant in Houston, Eli Lilly's investment in Indianapolis, and Andrell's Grown Manufacturing Facility in Columbus. Our focused geographic strategy provides us with both investment and operational benefits, including deeper relationships with brokers, developers, and tenants, as well as enhanced market knowledge resulting in better investment and asset management decision making. With that in mind, year to date, we've opportunistically sold two industrial assets for approximately $75 million at an average cash capitalization rate of 4.1%. We were able to maximize the value of both assets. One was sold to a user buyer and the second was sold after securing a long-term lease extension that raised the rent considerably. As a result, we have a strong cash position as we manage through an uncertain market backdrop. Going forward, and as market conditions permit, we continue to look for good uses of capital in our target markets as we selectively recycle capital from our assets in non-target markets. With that, Nathan will now discuss our financials, leasing, and balance sheet in more detail.

Thanks, Will. We reported adjusted company FFO in the first quarter of $0.16 per diluted common share for approximately $46 million, which was consistent with our expectations. Our same-store NOI growth was 5.2% during the quarter, with our same-store portfolio 99.2% leased at quarter end. We are maintaining our 2025 same-store NOI growth range of 3% to 4% and maintaining our 2025 adjusted company FFO range of $0.61 to $0.65 per diluted common share. The long end of this guidance assumes we do not lease any of the big boxes in 2025, and the high end represents all three big box leases commencing in the second half of the year. Our expectations for 2025 G&A are unchanged at $39 to $41 million. In the quarter, we leased approximately 1.1 million square feet, which consisted of two lease extensions with an average annual escalator of 3.6%. We achieved great outcomes on both extensions. This included a five-year renewal at our 540,000 square foot facility in Phoenix with a 59% cash rental increase over the prior rent and 3.25% annual rental bumps. We also extended our lease with Mars at our 605,000 square foot facility in Atlanta for an additional two years to 2030, locking in two more years of 4% escalators. We previously signed a three-year extension with Mars last May at an approximately 63% increase over the prior rent, excluding TI reimbursements we commenced the redevelopment of our 250 000 square foot facility in richmond during the quarter which we expect to complete in early 2026 the facility is part of an integrated four building campus and the redevelopment includes repositioning the property into a standalone facility market rent is roughly 70 percent over the previous rent and the building is the only one of its size currently available in the market on the balance sheet front in the first quarter, we repaid the 50 million unswapped portion of the 300 million term loan. Net debt to adjusted EBITDA was 5.9 times at quarter end. We continue to focus on reducing leverage over time as we grow EBITDA through raising occupancy, marking rents to market, and increasing rents with annual escalators. We had $71 million of cash on balance sheet at quarter end and $110 million dollars pro forma for the proceeds from the chillicothe ohio property sale in april in light of the current market uncertainty we thought it would be helpful to highlight the quality of our tenant base approximately 47 percent of our abr is from tenants with investment grade rated parent companies this high credit quality is one of the benefits of owning larger boxes and a young portfolio as the tenants are typically high quality well capitalized large corporations. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Will.

Thanks, Nathan. In closing, we're pleased with our first quarter results. While the direction of tenant demand is uncertain in the near term, we believe our asset quality, tenant credit strength, balance sheet, and portfolio footprint that aligns with on-shoring initiatives positions us well. Our focus remains on creating value for our shareholders by increasing occupancy, marking rents to market, raising rents through annual escalators, and concentrating on our 12 market investment strategy. With that, I'll turn the call back over to the operator.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this point, if you would like to ask a question for today, remember it is star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. We'll take our first question for today from the line of Anthony Paolo with JP Morgan. Your line is live.

Great. Thanks. Good morning. I guess first question is, I know you don't have a lot of expirations in 2025, but as start to look out the next few years, that ramps. Can you identify any like known move outs? Like as we start to look out the next few years and And, you know, you talked a lot about the lease up that we're all looking at on the three big boxes as being a driver to return to growth. But, you know, are there any headwinds we should start to think about that could be offsets as you look out to the heavier expirations right now?

Morning, Tony. It's James. So, you know, looking at 26 and 27, it's too early to tell. You know, we like the tenant base we have there, and we think that we're going to be successful in renewing a lot of those tenants. But much of the 26 expirations are back end weighted. so we're going to have to kind of wait and see on that we've touched on the 2025 expirations that there's some uncertainty around the tenants that we have left but we're um we're also you know excited about the fact that we have high quality property with the opportunity to mark to market so regardless of those outcomes we feel like we're going to be able to drive rent um whether it's with the new tenancy or through renewal okay and then um with regards to the three large uh boxes you know, what do yields and rents look like there at this point?

Like, has there been any, you know, diminution in the market or have those held steady? What's happening?

So, Tony, maybe I'll take the first part on the rent piece, and then Brendan can talk about the yields. But we haven't really seen anything come that's created a lot of movement off the market rents. Maybe there's been a little bit of a, you know, a slight markdown, but for the most part, what we've seen is it's been more in the free rent T.I. So we've seen on the big box leasing, we've seen T.I. kind of tick up from mid single digits to low double digits in some cases. And we're back to seeing, you know, almost a month per year of free rent being offered as a concession, but not as much pressure on the face rate. Yeah.

And then with respect to yield, we're not changing our prior guidance from the stabilization at around a six.

Okay. And then just last one, if I can. Anything else on the disposition side over the balance of the year that you're thinking about?

Not at the moment, Tony. We made two really good sales, but while we're in this sort of, you know, 90-day pause around tariff policy, you know, we've sort of gone pencils down on disposition activity. We do have a longer-term strategic objective of continuing to concentrate on the 12 markets we made some good progress there last year um we you know normally would have put some of that cash uh we freed up from the sales back back to work but at the moment we like cash uh a lot and um you know we'll just uh wait and see how things unfold in the next 60 days or so okay thank you thanks for your questions our next question comes from the line of todd thomas with key bank capital markets your line is live hi good morning this is aj on for

todd appreciate you guys taking my question um first just wanted to ask about the redevelopment you announced this morning um is this a change in the strategy or was this always the plan and previously included in guidance so what we had is we had a contraction option from a tenant that had a four-building campus, and the rest of the campus goes out through 2030.

So it could have been that they continued in and stayed through 2030, or they had the option to contract, but the buildings that we acquired were always meant to be single if they needed to be. So it's a good opportunity for us to redevelop this property, which basically means separating it from the others and marketing it and hopefully getting a really good tick on the marked market.

Okay, that's helpful. And then, so what impact does the redevelopment have on guidance?

So perhaps you know impacts around it being taken out of the same store pool so you know same story no i um you know anything anything regarding cap interest or anything else that will impact asso yeah aj it's um it's nathan here so we had always anticipated that this property would be taken out of the um the same store pool so we put out guidance of three three to four percent um same for the year, we had this property excluded because we knew that this redevelopment was part of that business plan. You know, as James described, the scale of this particular project clearly puts it into the bucket of a project that should be in the redevelopment pool. And then specifically on Q1, you know, the inclusion or exclusion of this particular property really had no impact on same-store NOI growth because this redevelopment project did not start until the end of the quarter.

It's a fantastic time to have a building this size available in that market. The rent that we've had there is very inexpensive related to market, so this will be just a great outcome for us when we get the asset repositioned.

Okay, no, that's helpful. That kind of leads to the next question on kind of what interest, you know, that market and perhaps that building you're kind of expecting to see. And also, what is the stabilized expected yield to be following the redevelopment?

So, I guess the good news is that it's the only building of its size in that market. You know, Richmond's had a low vacancy rate. So, we think that when we have the building ready to go, we're going to get a lot of good activity.

And so, you mentioned a strong mark to market. and then just just just adding on that you know you sort of asked about return profile and you know the way we the way we've thought about it is you know the incremental rent um that we may achieve on um on getting this property back and taking the rent up to market is there's something like 700 grand per annum and you know the capital investment um that that uh we're expecting here and disclosed in materials today is around five million dollars so you know if you think about the yield on cap capital investment there is something like a mid-teens yield thank you thanks for your questions once again if you would like to ask a question today

remember it's star followed by the number one on your telephone our next question is from the line of john peterson with jeffries your line is live great thank you good morning guys uh just looking your lease expiration maybe through the end of 2026, I'm just curious if we look at the markets, are there any of those markets where you're particularly, I guess, excited in terms of upside on leasing spreads? I think your three largest expirations next year in Dallas, Charlotte, and Cleveland. But anything to kind of point out and call out there if we think specifically about the markets you're in?

Yeah, I mean, we still like the Sunbelt markets. We think that that's where our best opportunity is for mark to market. We feel like we've got some really good new product that's going to have, you know, the first generation role in Phoenix where we're going to significantly mark those to market. And we've got some really strong assets in Dallas as well. So, you know, Sunbelt is where we're looking for the really strong mark to market.

Are you guys seeing any, I know you mentioned this early, but with tariffs and everything going on, I mean, are you starting to see any signs of, you know, inventory building in the near term, maybe higher utilization? I think Prologis kind of alluded to some of that on their call. And then maybe any sort of demand related to supply chain reconfiguration, I guess, specifically thinking about auto manufacturing. Is there any of that to really call out?

So what we've seen, I guess, related to tariffs is we've seen a couple of different avenues by tenants. We've seen some that have just kind of continued on with their business plans through the tariffs. We've seen that through consolidation in some of the markets that they had planned ahead of time. We've also seen the acceleration of demand in some circumstances around bringing in additional product and trying to find room for that. Solar panels are one of the items I would call out there. And then we've seen some kind of take a step back and pause on their plans and reevaluate what they were planning to do and trying to figure out, like I think everyone else's, what this ultimately looks like so they can plan around it from a supply chain perspective.

Okay. And then last question for me, I think a couple of weeks ago, Amazon, you know, there were headlines about, you know, them wanting to accelerate investment in warehouses in the U.S. I mean, how do you think about some of the larger e-commerce players or maybe what are you seeing in terms of demand there? And could that potentially be good news for your your three million square foot recent developments you're trying to lease up?

They're definitely still in the market. We'll see if it plays out for us in any of our big boxes, but we've seen their activity pick up. They're definitely kicking the tires. They're not the only ones. There's some major retailers that are in the market right now looking to do some of the same things.

Okay, great. That's helpful. Thank you. Thanks, John.

Thanks for your calls. Our next question is from the line of Jim Cameron with Evercore. Your line is live.

Thank you. I know it's a way out there and maybe you can't speak to it, but you've got the two big lease expirations potentially with Nissan in early 27 and kind of thematically with the line of question on the call, you know, they've been kind of a struggling operator.

Could you just talk a little bit about what sort of notice they need to provide you or where you are you talking about those renewals and kind of how they're doing in those facilities just kind of get a sense of what your expectation is for those two leases thank you maybe before james um you know specifically addresses um you know how the how renewal discussions might play out just with with regard to um missing you're right we have the two facilities um leased to nissen and jackson and nashville you know um the u.s market is is critical to nissen it's about 40 percent of their total sales and although you know you know seeing the global efficiency program that's been announced you know all of the recent public commentary has really focused on reconfirming their commitment to the U.S. plants and very very recently they've come out and said that they're actually intending to max production in these U.S. plants and maybe I'll head it off the uh to jim just to address the specifics around the renewal so our two big warehouses are directly tied to the manufacturing plants the one in nashville is tied to the plant via private road they also invested a significant amount of capital to bring suppliers in-house so that they can get things just in time to the manufacturing plant similarly in canton

which is outside of jackson we've been talking to them about potentially having some additional investment, probably of their own dollars, but just investment of doing something similar to what they did in Nashville. So, investing millions of dollars into bringing suppliers in. They've also, both facilities have low rent. You know, Nashville's been a really tight market. So, if something were to happen, which I don't anticipate, we do have a really strong facility there in Nashville that would be functionally available to someone else. But they have preferential renewal options as well so i think we have a really high probability of of keeping them with all those different factors very good have they put like incremental of their own investment inside your building as well obviously i guess i just want to understand kind of these aren't just uh just four walls in a box they put some monies in they have so so what they did in nashville is so there's about a million square feet that is just the warehouse piece and And they co-invested with suppliers, and they put a couple of different manufacturing operations in the balance of the space so that they would have the suppliers on site and could more quickly provide those products to the manufacturing plant.

Okay, thanks for the color. Appreciate it.

Thanks, Jim. Ladies and gentlemen, last call. If anyone would like to ask a question for today, remember it's star followed by the number one on your touchtone keypad. We'll pause for just a couple seconds to see if we have any further questions. Okay. With that, let's go ahead and end our Q&A session for today. Mr. Eglin, I'd like to turn it back over to you for any closing comments.

We appreciate everyone joining our call this morning, and we look forward to updating you on our progress over the balance of the year. Thanks again for joining us today.

Thank you.