LXP Industrial Trust (LXP) Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Hello and thank you for standing by. My name is Mark and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the LXP Industrial Third Quarter Earnings Call and Webcast. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad.

And if you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again thank you now i would like to turn the call over to heather gentry investor relations please go ahead thank you operator welcome to lxp industrial trust third 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 8 . 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 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 and unit 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 positions, 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 third 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. Good morning, everyone. We had a great third quarter, highlighted by the transformative sale of our two vacant million-square-foot development projects in Central Florida and Indianapolis to a user-buyer. This transaction was exceptionally impactful to our overall business, providing immediate earnings accretion while also materially reducing leverage, two positive outcomes rarely achieved in tandem. The aggregate gross sale price of $175 million represented a 20% premium to the gross book value of the properties and is a superior outcome compared to leasing the assets. The transaction drove portfolio occupancy up 370 basis points, significantly decreased leverage to 5.2 times net debt to adjusted EBITDA from 5.8 times, and will generate an estimated 6% accretion to adjusted company FFO per share, reflecting the property operating cost savings and interest expense savings from debt reduction. The net proceeds from the sale of $151 million were used to repay $140 million of our 300 million 6.75% senior notes due in 2028, pursuant to a cash tender offer that closed subsequent to quarter-end, considerably improving our balance sheet and financial flexibility. We have now successfully leased or sold 98% of our development program. Our program has contributed to LXP having the youngest industrial portfolio in the public market, with 15 facilities developed since 2019, totally 9.1 million square feet, at a weighted average estimated stabilized cash yield of 7.1%. Additionally, the two development property sales and a leased land sale completed late last year produced gains of $91 million, or 54% over our cost of $170 million. Year-to-date sales volume totals $273 million, with an average cash capitalization rate of 5.1 percent on stabilized assets the investment sales market remains healthy and we are currently marketing approximately 115 million dollars of assets for sale in our non-target markets for opportunistic reinvestment which may include opportunities in our land bank during the quarter we further added to our target market exposure and acquired an approximately roughly 157,000-square-foot Class A industrial facility in the Atlanta market for $30 million to satisfy a 1031 exchange requirement. We continue to focus on our 12 market investment strategy in the Sun Belt and select lower Midwest states, which account for approximately 85% of our gross assets. Market fundamentals improved during the third quarter, with our 12 target markets outperforming the broader market. We continued to see robust net absorption in our target markets, which accounted for roughly 33 million square feet of the overall U.S. net absorption of approximately 45 million square feet in the third quarter. Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, and Indianapolis were standouts with net absorption of between 4 and 8 million square feet in each of these markets. Furthermore, Atlanta, Greenville, Spartanburg, Columbus, and Central Florida each experienced net absorption of over 2 million square feet. In addition to demand from large retailers and 3PLs, it's notable to highlight that manufacturing-related demand has been a meaningful contributor to demand in our markets, reflecting the significant onshoring investment across our geographic footprint. During the quarter, flight to quality continued with large corporate users driving the absorption into newer facilities, and we saw an increase in demand for larger spaces. We stand to benefit from both of these trends, given our portfolio is the newest in the industrial REIT space, and our focus is on bulk logistics. U.S. vacancy held relatively steady, around 7%, primarily due to positive demand and a further decline in new completions. Construction starts remain below historical levels, with the construction pipeline in our 12 markets of approximately 88 million square feet, down nearly 73 percent from the 2022 peak of approximately 330 million square feet. Today, we also announced that the Board of Trustees authorized an annualized dividend increase of two cents per share to an annualized rate of 56 cents per share on a pre-split basis. The newly declared common share dividend represents an increase of 3.7 percent over the prior dividend and will be paid in the first quarter of 2026. In summary, our company is in a great position. The sale of the development projects accelerated and de-risked several of our most critical operating objectives, resulting in meaningfully higher occupancy, lower leverage, and earnings accretion. We believe this outcome, combined with our high-quality, young portfolio of primarily Class A assets in markets that are outperforming consistent contractual rent growth, inexpensive rents in relation to market, above-average tenant credit with an investment-grade balance sheet, moderate payout ratio, and a land bank to be utilized for creative growth opportunities, positions us well for success going forward with that nathan will now discuss our financials leasing and balance sheet in more detail thanks will we produced adjusted company ffo in the third quarter of 16 cents per diluted common share for approximately 47 million dollars this morning we increased the midpoint and

tightened the range of our 2025 adjusted company ffo guidance to 63 to 64 cents per share the The revised guidance reflects the creative impact from the sale of the development projects and debt repayment. As well discussed, the Central Florida and Indianapolis development properties were sold for an aggregate gross sale price of $175 million, which represented a 20% premium to the cost basis, or $29 million over the gross book value of the properties. Based on our underwriting of market rents , leasing and holding period costs, and free rent, we estimated the yield implied by the sale price to be approximately 5%, which demonstrates the attractive valuation achieved in the sale. Our share of net proceeds of approximately $151 million was used to tender for the 6.75% senior notes due 2028. The tender resulted in the repayment of bonds with a principal amount of $140 million and will produce savings in interest expense, and amortisation of deferred financing costs of approximately $10 million per year. We will also save roughly $1.8 million of property operating costs per year at these two properties, which were previously expensed in the income statement. In aggregate, these interest and property operating costs total approximately $12 million per year, or $0.04 per share, which represents 6% accretion versus our adjusted company FFO in the third quarter. This significant earnings accretion is paired with a 0.6 turn reduction in leverage, making this transaction even more compelling. Turning to the same-store portfolio, we produce same-store NOI growth of 4% year-to-date and 2% for the third quarter, with our same-store portfolio 96.9% leased at quarter end. We narrowed our full-year 2025 same-store NOI growth guidance to 3% to 3.5%. As a reminder, our same-store pool does not include the 1 million square foot development property in Greenville that we leased in May, and the benefit of this lease is not included in the same-store growth metrics. Our portfolio occupancy increased to 96.8% during the quarter, up from 94.1% the previous quarter, primarily driven by the successful execution of the sale transaction. We also continue to see our rent escalators trend higher, with an increase in the average annual escalator to 2.9%. As market fundamentals trend upward, tenant sentiment appears to be improving with increased activity, although decision-making timelines continue to be extended. Our current mark-to-market on leases expiring through 2030 remains attractive, with in-place rents 17% below market based on brokers' estimates. Regarding 2025 expiration, subsequent to quarter-end, we leased our 380,000-square-foot facility in the Indianapolis market to a new tenant for 10 years with 3.5% annual rent bumps. This was a July 2025 expiration in which the previous tenant held over through the end of September. This was a great outcome with a new rent representing a 34% increase over the prior rent. We continue to see promising activity where we have experienced tenant move-outs, with these rents approximately 30% below market. We've made good progress on our 2026 lease expirations, addressing approximately 1.8 million square feet, or 27% of total 2026 expirations, at an average base cash rental increase of approximately 31%, excluding one fixed rate renewal. Our remaining 2026 lease roll represents roughly 8.5% of our ABR, with good prospects for attractive mark-to-market outcomes. During the third quarter, this leasing included a three-year renewal with 3.25% annual bumps on a September 2026 expiring lease at our approximately 500,000 square foot facility in the Dallas market. The new rent represents an 8% increase over the prior rent. Subsequent to quarter-end, we extended a June 2026 expiring lease at our 70,000 square foot facility in the Greenville Spartanburg market for five years with 3.5% annual bumps, representing an increase in rent of approximately 7% over the prior rent. Additionally, the tenant at our approximately 650,000 square foot facility in Cleveland, with an October 2026 expiration, exercised their five-year fixed-rate renewal option with 2.5% annual escalators. Our 600,000 square feet of redevelopment projects continue to progress as a reminder this includes a 350 000 square foot redevelopment in orlando and a 250 000 square foot redevelopment in richmond both facilities are expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2026 and produce yields on cost in the low teens moving to balance sheet at quarter end our net debt to adjusted ebitda was 5.2 times we had 230 million dollars of cash on the balance sheet at quarter end and approximately $80 million pro forma for the bond tender. As we noted in our earnings release, the board approved a one-for-five reverse stock split, which is scheduled to take effect on November 10, but trading on a post-split basis beginning on November 11. The earnings press release includes further details. The dividend for first quarter 2026, reflecting the dividend increase announced today, will be adjusted for the reverse stock split on a prorated basis.

With that, i'll turn the call back over to will thanks nathan in closing we're pleased with our third quarter results and our outlook moving forward the accretive sale of the vacant development projects addressed our most important operating objectives in 2025 and positions lxp for a strong 2026 and beyond we remain focused on creating value for our shareholders by marking rents to market, raising rents through annual escalators, capitalizing on our lease up opportunities, and concentrating on our 12 market investment strategy. With that, I'll turn the call back over to the operator.

We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question at this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. And our first question comes from the line of John Peterson with Jeffries. John, please go ahead.

Oh, great. Thank you. Congrats on the property sales. Your debt is now down to 5.2 times debt to EBITDA. So, I wonder if you could just talk about the decision-making on deploying capital in the future for external growth, whether it's acquisitions or development, or are you guys more focused on, I guess, internal growth at the moment?

Well, we have a very good internal growth profile, John, beginning with contractual rent escalations and inexpensive rents, and hopefully some occupancy gains that we're working on. Our orientation on the external growth side would still be focused on build-to-south, and there are a handful of places in the land bank where some modest spec development could be in the cards next year if tenant demand continues to stay strong. but those would be smaller boxes and you know the overall scale would be pretty pretty small in relation to our overall liquidity acquisitions are really not something that we're looking at from time to time as we've discussed if we have a property sale and we're trying to manage tax gain we might purchase something like we did with that all right that's helpful and then you know in your presentation there's a lot of focus on your 12 target markets so it kind of

raises the question, what about the other markets? I think it's about 15% of your revenue comes from outside of those 12 markets. Is that something we should think about as a medium-term disposition target?

Yeah, we've been selling assets out of those markets and creating liquidity for redeployment, and we have a handful of things in the market that meet that criteria. So, we do do that portfolio as a source of liquidity for other initiatives but we're committed to taking you know it'll be a process where we realize as much value as we can in each case and there's some assets that require you know at least extension would be so I think slow and steady but yeah we're looking at that portfolio okay thank you very much and your next question comes from the line of Todd Thomas with KeyBank Capital Markets Todd please go ahead hi thanks

Thanks. Good morning. Will, I just wanted to go back to your comments. You mentioned the company's marketing on the non-target market side, about $115 million of assets. Can you just elaborate on that a little bit, what the timeline might be for some additional dispositions to materialize and what the disposition cap rate might sort of look like for those assets?

Perhaps you can sort of um you know bookend yeah it's uh it's just four buildings uh they're not um under contract at the moment but we think there's a good chance that they close uh this year in december and in terms of cap rates probably something in in the low sixes um you know which is a little bit higher than where we've made trades early in the year but we're kind of looking at at the plan in its entirety uh which should land somewhere in the sort of five and a half to five and three quarter area. You know, it's a good outcome, and where we've redeployed capital this year, there's...

Okay. And then, Nathan, you talked about the stronger in-place escalator that you've been sort of achieving here. You're close to 3%. You have about 10% of ABR expiring in 26. Sorry if I missed this, but can you talk about the expected mark-to-market in 26, what that might look like, and whether there are any other, you know, meaningful considerations that we should be thinking about as it relates to same-store and OI growth.

James, do you want to address the mark-to-market first?

Yeah, sure. So we're projecting about a 20% mark-to-market for 2026, which is up slightly from last quarter because we did pull that Dallas deal out that had a slightly lower mark-to-market on it. I do want to talk about that one just for a second, though. We marked it up 8%, but if you remember, that was a three-year deal that we marked up 40%.

And then just layering on top of that, some other observations, you know, you pointed out the contractual end escalators, which are creeping up, you know, we're almost at 3% now. On average, it's 2.9% across the portfolio. With regard to the expirations, at quarter end, we were around 10% in terms of expirations in 26. But with the subsequent events, we've addressed 20. And then the one other thing I would mention, Todd, with regard to that, we will get the benefit in real property.

Dan, it sounded like you see an opportunity for occupancy growth as well. What level of retention are you anticipating in 26, and what's that been trending like in 25, if you can just remind us?

So in 26, we're anticipating around 80%. So kind of a return to the norm on what we've had historically. And we've got a decent amount of visibility there. I mean, it is back-end loaded. The majority of the lease expirations are in the back half of the year. But we just addressed two of the big ones in the Dallas asset and then in the Cleveland assets and knocking that out as we kind of go along. You know, 25 was a unique year in the fact that we had some 3PL exposure. So I think it was, you know, we had quite a bit of vacancy. we're working through that vacancy now we've got about a million square feet of second generation leasing that needs to be done and we've got really good some good outcomes and we're excited about the market market opportunity okay great thank you and your next question comes from the line of beach germain with citizens bank mitch please go ahead uh thank you and congrats on the sale um how long were those discussions ongoing i'm just trying to i'm curious to see you know kind of

how the leasing versus the sale discussions you know kind of were transpiring well it was an unsolicited offer that we got on on the buildings and um that we were under access agreement dating back sometime in may so we were in possession of material non-public information for a long time both in second quarter and third quarter uh so it was um you know it took a long time to get from May to the closing, but it was in, you know, in the works for a pretty long time.

Great. That's helpful. And then how much of the portfolio was subject to these fixed renewals versus, you know, you able to, you know, kind of drive rents, you know, kind of within line with kind of what your expectations are for the, you know, 26 and beyond?

Yeah, it's probably about 15% of the portfolio. We do have some near-term large ones that they kind of drive down that mark to market. Mitch, I would just remind you that our mark to market numbers always incorporate the fixed rate renewals. We have three more that are coming up this year and then we have a couple of large ones with our lease on leases in 2027. When we have the opportunity and it does present itself periodically, sometimes we can negotiate around them if the tenant's looking for capital dollars or something else kind of outside of the base lease term.

Okay, great. And then I guess my last question, And same store results this quarter. Is a little bit of that driven by some of, you know, I think you had a couple of assets go vacant? Is that kind of what happened this quarter to, you know, drive that result a little bit lower versus where you were trending? Is there anything specific that you want to call out?

Yeah, Mitch, on Saints Door, spot on, you know, the delta between Q2 and Q3 is the impact of those move outs at the end of Q2 and then during the course of Q3. So, simplistically, the building blocks of the outcome are, you know, top line, contractual end escalators, and the benefit of renewals and new leasing outcomes is about 4.75% as a positive impact, and then the drag from lower occupancy was about 2.7%. But just as a reminder, that Greenville asset is not in the pool, and had it been in the pool for the quarter, it would have had a 1.8% positive impact, and so the result for Q3 rather than being 2 percent would have been 3.8 percent more and as I said earlier we'll obviously get that's super helpful thanks guys thank you again if you would like to ask a question see the press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad and your next question comes from the line of Vince T-Bone with Green Street Vince please go ahead hi good morning

I just wanted to follow up on things to run away as well. If I heard correctly, it looks, I think full year guidance was brought down at the high end from four to three and a half. I thought all the move outs in the third quarter were expected. So if you can just talk about what drove kind of the lowering of the high end of expectations, was it bad debt or just kind of taking out, you know, any new leasing that maybe would have got you to the high end?

Cause it looked like, you know, some rough math, looks like fourth quarter is expected to accelerate further on the same store basis so if we need to talk about those few pieces that'd be that'd be helpful yeah thanks so we uh we did narrow narrow the guidance range for same store uh it was three to four percent uh previously three to three and a half percent uh as a reminder you know that that outcome so in in the range of outcomes we expect the q2 but also in the range of outcomes we uh we expected at the at the beginning of the year. The change on the high end is really a reflection of the passage of time since our last call. You know, the high end on our last call really required the conversion of a lot of leasing prospects with very near-term needs. We have very, you know, we have good activity across the move-outs we've had in 2025, but the conversion, you know, is going to take a little bit more time.

No, that's helpful. And I'll just confirm, it doesn't sound like bad debt at all was an issue. Can you just confirm that's the case?

Oh, yeah. No, sorry. So, no bad debt in the quarter or year to date and we've collected all rents.

Great. Thank you. And then maybe just one last one for me, and sorry if you already touched on this, but just on the press release, you mentioned 1.1 million square foot of leasing post quarter end. Are you able to split that between renewals and new leasing on a square footage basis? Yeah, there were renewals. Okay.

So just to clarify, Vince, there were two renewals and there was one new lease, which is the 380 in Indianapolis that we described in the prepared remarks. Perfect. No, thank you. That's all I have.

Excellent.

And your next question comes from the line of jim kamert with evercore isi jim please go ahead thank you good morning um with the apparent mania happening in data centers and ai i'm just curious what your latest thoughts are on uh the phoenix land uh if there's any additional opportunity for lexicon there to monetize sell to other developers or proceed on your own just curious thank you um well Well, this is Brennan.

Hi. It's an avenue that we're certainly very interested in. In Phoenix, like most of the data center markets in the country, the limiting factor is, so that's the focus there. I think that we'll continue to explore whether there are opportunities. And meanwhile, incredibly compete on build a suit. Market fundamentals there.

And second question. I've forgotten, are the two large Nissan expirations, I realize not till Q127, but are those fixed escalations? Should they extend or not?

Yes, they are fixed.

Can you say the percentage or you're not disclosing?

One and a half percent. Okay, thank you very much. Thanks, Jim.

And again, if you would like to ask a question, just press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. There's no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Will Eglin for closing remarks. Will?

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.

This concludes today's call.