Jim Nakagawa, CFO & treasurer, and Matt Romney, senior vice president for capital markets, are reporting for Excel Trust at NAREIT's REIT Week.
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Below are notes from the session.
8:08: Romney: We like to find assets based on relationships that we have. Gary has been in the industry for 30+ years. Mark Burton (SVP acquisitions) has been with Gary with 27 years. We look to find product in an off-market basis. You won't see us competing for bids. And you won't see us in markets like New York, L.A., San Francisco. … The pricing is just not attractive. When we can buy properties at a 7.5 or an 8.0 cap in Dallas, Atlanta or Northern California, that's more attractive for us. … We're really trying to buy core assets for non-core prices.
8:15: Romney: We haven't seen a lot of rent roll-down. A lot of our peers have seen some rent roll down the past couple of the years. Most of the lease renewals we've done have been flat with some slightly positive.
8:25: Romney: We more than $500 million in our pipeline. We don't have all the capital available to us today, but we have opportunities to grow. We can issue common equity when the time is right. We won't do it at (our current) stock price. … We did a deal recently doing O.P. units as currency. It was very positive. It extended our buying power without using cash. … We are also recycling capital—selling assets to fund future acquisitions, to upgrade quality and to focus on the geographic regions we like.
8:28: Romney: The demand for anchor space has been strong. Inline has not been improving as quickly. … Most of the centers we have are fully leased. We have a couple of centers with some shop vacancy that we bought that way. … The fact that the centers we have include good anchors allows the shops to continue to thrive. … We haven't seen a lot of folks asking for rent relief recently. That's been good. And I think they'll recover over the next year or two as well.
8:30 Romney: We like shadow anchors. … They represent an anchor opportunity for your center. It's very supportive to your center. … Shadow anchors are good for us. When you talk about development, we do have three development properties. Two of these will come online in 2011--one in Alabama that is a Publix-anchored center. Publix is a great grocer. We feel like they compete with Walmarts and Super Walmarts pretty well.
Session ends.