Farmland Partners - Q4 2022

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Welcome to the Farmland Partners Inc. Q4 2022 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. Please press star one on your telephone keypad to ask a question. If you change your mind at any time, please press star two. For operator assistance at any point, it's star zero. Thank you. Let me turn the call over to Paul Pittman, Chairman and CEO. Paul, you may begin.

Paul Pittman (Executive Chairman and CEO)

Good morning. Welcome to the Farmland Partners fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings conference call and webcast. We appreciate you taking the time to join us for these calls. We see them as an important opportunity to share with you our thinking and our strategy in a format less formal and more interactive than public filings and press releases. I will now turn it over to our General Counsel, Christine Garrison, for some customary preliminary remarks. Christine.

Christine Garrison (General Counsel and Secretary)

Thank you, Paul, and thank you to everyone on the call. The press release announcing our fourth quarter earnings was distributed after market close yesterday. The supplemental package has been posted to the investor relations section of our website under the subheader Events and Presentations. For those who listen to the recording of this presentation, we remind you that the remarks made herein are as of today, February 23, 2023, and will not be updated subsequent to this call. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements, including statements related to the future performance of our portfolio, our identified and potential acquisitions or dispositions, impact of acquisitions, dispositions and financing activities, business development opportunities, as well as comments on our outlook for our business rents and the broader agricultural markets. We will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures, including net operating income, FFO, adjusted FFO, EBITDAre, and adjusted EBITDAre.

Definitions of these non-GAAP measures, as well as reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures, are included in the company's press release announcing fourth quarter and full-year earnings, which is available on our website and is furnished as an exhibit to our current report on Form 8-K, dated February 22, 2023. Listeners are cautioned that these statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, many of which are difficult to predict and generally beyond our control. These risks and uncertainties can cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations, and we advise listeners to review the risk factors discussed in our press release distributed yesterday and in documents we have filed with or furnished to the SEC. I would now like to turn the call to our President, Luca Fabbri. Luca.

Luca Fabbri (President)

Thank you, Christine. I will make some very brief remarks about the year behind us. 2022 has been a very strong year for U.S. agriculture in general and our company, Farmland Partners, in particular. Global events have really highlighted throughout 2022 the key role that U.S. agriculture plays in addressing global food demand. Partly a blessing of geography, but also thanks to the absolute world-class infrastructure that, and pool of talent that U.S. agriculture enjoys. High, especially on the row crop side, high yields and high prices have led to strong P&Ls for farmers.

There's been some increases due to inflation in certain farming inputs, the biggest cost factor increase in businesses in general in 2022, interest rates, has only affected U.S. agriculture as a whole relatively marginally because of the very low leverage in the industry, in the low teens. The strong farmer profitability has and profitability of the whole sector is translated into strong pricing for farmland in general as an asset class, which of course we have greatly benefited from, but also has helped the company have a very strong renewal season for our rents. Specifically in the rents that we rolled, especially in the fixed cash rents in row crops, we've seen increases of 16% across the board for the ones that renewed.

More in general, for FPI, it's been a strong year. We were able to delever significantly earlier in the year as we were looking down the pike at the interest rate increases. We were able to strengthen relationships with our lenders, putting us in a very strong liquidity position. I mentioned the strong rent renewals. On the negative side, we have faced, despite delevering, higher interest costs, of course, that have impacted our P&L. Also, we have experienced in permanent crops a little bit of the opposite that what we have experienced in row crops. Our portfolio in permanent crops is heavily weighted in California, which has experienced several years of drought, leading to, excuse me, leading to low yields.

At the same time, globally, there has been, permanent crop markets have experienced a combination of low demand still due to lingering COVID impacts, as well as high yields. Overall, our acquisition activity in 2022 has been somewhat modest, mostly due to the high cost of capital, both equity and debt. We have been very choosy in our acquisitions, but we have been able to actually capture the potential transactions that were particularly attractive. With that, I will pass the floor to our Chairman and CEO, Paul Pittman, for some remarks on the outlook.

Paul Pittman (Executive Chairman and CEO)

Thank you, Luca. It's sort of a bad deal here that Luca gets to talk about last year, which was a pretty strong year, and I get to talk about next year, which will be quite a bit of a challenge. You know, really where we are is we have faced, as Luca said, you know, significant drought in California. That drought is, as you all know, sort of behind us in the sense that it has been incredibly rainy and snowy on the West Coast. The problem as it translates into our P&L, and obviously, the stock price this morning is reflecting this, is that there's a substantial tail of revenue that comes from those specialty crops in the following year.

The lack of rainfall behind us will lead to a relatively challenged specialty crop performance in the 2023 calendar year. That added with the increased cost of interest rates is what's doing the damage to our AFFO for the 2023 year as you see in the guidance. That being said, it does sort of set the stage for what hopefully would be a pretty strong 2024 because we're gonna see, you know, a substantial return in specialty crop volumes. It's a little hard to predict price, but we'll see volumes recover substantially. That doesn't have an effect, unfortunately, until 2024. Thinking kind of broadly about what's occurring here, you know, farmland has two components of return. It always has, and it's the current yield and the asset appreciation.

The asset appreciation is probably the bigger of the two, and we have seen very, very strong asset appreciation, certainly amongst our row crop properties, and despite the drought, probably to some degree, even among the specialty crops. Inflation drives farmland values up without question. What we're very disappointed about, and I'm, you know, a huge shareholder, so I'm personally very frustrated with, is all of the very strong things happening in the farm economy, and therefore in our portfolio on the row crop side, are being taken away by the volatility, the negative volatility at this point in time, on the specialty crop side. You know, this is leading to, you know, stock price that fundamentally vastly undervalues the portfolio. We own some of the best farmland in the world, and we are trading at a very large discount.

That being said, you know, from an investor's perspective and from my perspective as a stockholder, we've got to do something to stop having the relatively smaller piece of our assets, you know, 20%, 25% of our assets are in these specialty crops, sort of being the tail that's wagging the dog. This is the boom times for row crop. It will go on for at least another year on the row crop side. We've got, as I said, negative, the negative effect of volatility on the specialty crop side. What that's frankly causing us to do is seriously evaluate, given where we wanna be as a company, as a stable long-term store of value, whether we should continue to be involved in the specialty crop business.

You know, it's important to remember that a couple of years ago, the specialty crop side of our business was the engine of AFFO and was performing quite strongly, and there is this ebb and flow. As I said, the volatility caused in the specialty crop side of the business, and there's sort of no structure you could set up to take that away, or at least not very many structures that could take it away, is really hurting the underlying story, that is so powerful and so successful on the row crop side. It's really sort of a, almost a tale of two different industries in terms of our...

What's happening to the underlying tenant base and operations of the two businesses and therefore, you know, effect on our rents from the two different sides of the business. The, you know, the best value in farmland today, in my opinion, is, you know, we were here a few years ago, and we're here again. The best value out there in the market is frankly, our stock. We can buy high-quality farmland through our stock better than we can do by buying farms. It's something we need to really kind of focus on as a company.

You know, the... my perspective is that the underlying farm economy is very strong on the overwhelming majority of our assets, the row crop side, that the specialty crop side will substantially recover because the drought is been lessened quite a bit this winter. The P&L impact of that recovery is unfortunately not gonna really show up until the 2024 year. During Q&A, obviously willing to go deeper into this and what we're seeing out there and what we intend to try to do. I'm gonna turn it over to James to go through the comments regarding past quarter and past year performance.

James Gilligan (CFO and Treasurer)

Thank you, Paul.

I'm gonna cover a number of items today, including summary of full year 2022 and Q4 2022, review of capital structure and interest rates, greater detail on revenue build-up and guidance for 2023. I'll refer to the supplemental package in my comments. As Christine said, the supplemental is available in the investor relations section of our website under the subheader Events and Presentations. First, I'll share a few financial metrics that appear on page two. For the 12 months ended December 31, 2022, net income was $12 million compared to $10.3 million for 2021, an increase of $1.7 million. Net income per share available to common stockholders was positive $0.16 compared to -$0.17 for 2021, an increase of $0.33.

AFFO was $15.8 million compared to $0.4 million for 2021, an increase of $15.4 million. AFFO per weighted average share was $0.30 compared to $0.01 for 2021, an increase of $0.29. Improved performance was due to increased fixed rents, increased brokerage and auction revenue, reduced litigation expense, and reduced distributions on preferred stock. Cost of goods sold was higher in 2022 due to the greater number of farms under direct operations in 2022 compared to 2021. General administrative expenses were higher in 2022, largely due to the acquisition of Murray Wise Associates or MWA, as we say internally, in late 2021. For the three months ended December 31st, 2022, net income was $6.7 million compared to $13.3 million for Q4 2021, a decrease of $6.6 million.

It should be noted the gain on dispositions of assets was $7.2 million lower in Q4 2022 compared to Q4 2021, accounting for all the decrease in net income between the periods. Net income per share available to common stockholders was $0.11 compared to $0.14 for Q4 2021, a decrease of $0.03. Again, this was impacted by the difference in gain on disposition of assets as noted a moment ago. AFFO was $10.0 million compared to $8.9 million for Q4 2021, an increase of $1.1 million. AFFO per weighted average share was $0.18 compared to $0.19 for Q4 2021, a decrease of $0.01. Q4 2022 showed higher fixed rents, management fees, interest income, direct operations profits, and lower litigation spend compared to Q4 2021.

Those items were offset by lower variable rents, increased general and administrative expenses, and higher property operating expenses, largely due to higher state franchise taxes, higher property taxes, and higher insurance premiums. I will skip ahead to page 13 to make a couple of comments about our capital structure. Total debt at December 31, 2022 was $439.5 million. Since December 31, 2021, we have reduced debt by over $70 million. Fully diluted share count as of February 17 was 55.6 million shares. If you look at the table on the bottom of the page, between the MetLife credit facility and the Rutledge Farm Credit Mid-America credit facility, we have undrawn capacity in excess of $160 million today.

As shown in previous quarters, we have approximately $174 million of MetLife debt with rates that reset in 2023. These are loan numbers one, four, five, six, seven, and 10. The notes at the bottom of the page show the four loans representing approximately $109 million of that $174 million that have already been agreed to. $5 million has been reset to 5.63% and $104 million has been reset to 5.55%. The reset loans also have increased flexibility to prepay without penalty, up to 40% of original principal balance per year. Next, I will turn to page 14 to provide an overview of our income statement.

Over the last year, we presented numbers in categories shown on the top table of page 14, fixed payments, variable payments, direct operations gross profit, and other items. This was an effort to make the business easier to understand. However, this presentation may have made it a little difficult to model out the business because it did not detail out the building blocks that comprised the different categories. The second table on page 14 does just that. It shows the building blocks for both GAAP revenue, line items, and supplemental categories. Reading across the rows, you can see what makes up the supplemental categories, and reading down the columns, you can see what makes up the GAAP line items.

Page 15 shows these building blocks described on the previous page for 2021 and 2022 by quarter, with comments at the bottom of the page to describe the differences between the periods. A few points to highlight are fixed farm rent increased as we acquired properties and renewed leases, and decreased with dispositions. Solar increased in 2022 as a large project in the state of Illinois commenced its construction phase. Tenant reimbursements declined with asset dispositions and farms that converted to direct operations. Management fees increased as we managed more acres for third parties in 2022 compared to 2021. In Q4 2022, we acquired land and buildings for 4 agricultural equipment dealerships in Ohio under the John Deere brand. On the balance sheet, they appear as loans, and on the income statement, it impacts interest income.

This accounts for the increase in interest income in the fourth quarter of 2022. Variable payments were down due to lower performance in tree nuts and grapes caused by lower prices and yields during the Q4 harvest. Citrus farms that produced variable payments in 2021 converted to direct operations in 2022. Direct operations is a combination of crop sales, crop insurance, and cost of goods sold. It was up in 2022 because of the citrus farms that converted to direct operations, as mentioned a moment ago. Other items increased for the full year of auction and brokerage activity in 2022 compared to 2021. At the bottom of the table, we show the increase in fixed payments on same-store row crop farms.

When we talk about same-store row crop farms, we mean row crop farms that were in the portfolio before the beginning of the period being compared, or in this case, January 1st, 2021. It does not include specialty crop farms, acquisitions, dispositions, or other non-comparable farms between the periods. This group is up approximately $1 million between the years. Next, on page 16, we compare the guidance range from October to actual performance with notes at the bottom of the page. Direct operations gross profit was lower than expected due to lower pricing and yields in the Q4 harvest period and crop insurance payments that will lag into 2023.

Property operating expenses were up compared to expectations due to the required credit allowance on the Ohio Ag Equipment dealership acquisitions, higher than projected state franchise taxes in the fourth quarter, and higher than projected property taxes in the fourth quarter. On the next page 17, we have the outlook for 2023 using those same building blocks described on page 14. On the revenue side, fixed farm rent increases due to new leases signed and farms acquired in 2022 that will contribute a full year in 2023. Solar, wind, and recreation are up slightly, while tenant reimbursements will be pretty consistent with 2022. Interest income increases with a full year's contribution from the Ohio equipment dealerships mentioned before. The variable payments and direct operations are decreasing in 2023.

The decrease in variable and direct operations is due to the items Paul noted in his comments. Lower yields due to weather and poor pricing due to supply-demand imbalances. On the expense side, property operating expenses are increasing due to assumptions of higher property tax and higher insurance premiums. G&A is in line with 2022. Legal and accounting decreases with lower litigation spend. Litigation spend will be down from approximately $1.3 million in 2022 to an estimate of $250,000 in 2023. Interest expense is up due to higher base rates on floating rate debt and interest resets that will occur or have already occurred in 2023. The bottom of the page provides greater detail on the assumptions behind interest expense.

We use forward curves from Bloomberg and an estimated remaining 2023 resets at three-year Treasuries plus historical spreads. This results in AFFO in the $9.3 million-$13.5 million range compared to $15.8 million in 2022. AFFO per share is in the range of $0.17-$0.24 compared to $0.30 in 2022. This wraps up my comments this morning. Thank you all for participating. Operator, you can now begin the Q&A session.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind at any time, please press star 2. For operator assistance at any point, it's star 0. Thank you. We now have the first question on the line from Dave Rodgers of Baird. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Dave Rodgers (Senior Research Analyst)

Yeah. Hey, good morning out there. Paul, I wanted to start with your comments around the specialty crops and your belief that that's obviously having a pretty big negative impact on the stock recently and today. It seems like NOI and the guidance is actually not that far off and maybe a little lower than anticipated, but certainly, the interest expense is more disappointing, and I think you've communicated some of that. I guess what gives you the sense that the specialty crops are the big drag on the portfolio? Then I guess maybe a follow-up to that is if you chose to sell those and reinvest that capital, how would you do that?

Paul Pittman (Executive Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. You know, look, this is something we're evaluating, so no one should take from our comments that we are going to exit specialty crop. We're certainly considering it. You know, here's, you know, big picture and I'm using these things a little bit anecdotally. Please don't take exactly the number and go model it. In the leases we rolled over on the row crop side, Luca alluded to this, and I think James did as well, we got a 16% average increase on the fixed cash rents on the row crop that we rolled over to new three-year leases. If you recall last year, we got approximately 10%, I think, when we did those rolls, something in that range.

On the row crop side, the you know, high inflation, strong yields on the crops, and high crop prices due to worldwide shortages of these key commodities is driving us to have increasing positive returns and results, growing rents, essentially, and rapidly appreciating asset values on the row crop side. When we turn to the specialty crop side, what we are experiencing and it's, you know, it's mixed up and complicated to unravel because of all the specialty crops with the exception of citrus, the most of the revenue or a large portion of the revenue shows up in the next year in these long marketing tails. The negative, you know, the negative impact of the drought is really having a 2023 impact equal to or greater than the drought impact in during the 2022 financial year.

The 2023 year gets hurt by the 2022 drought. On top of that what has happened is in many of these crops, we had a big crop coming off the 2021 year. We've got excess supply in many parts of the world on the tree nuts, especially. You've got this double whammy as we project during the 2023 year of relatively low yield due to the drought and frankly relatively low price due to these supply-demand imbalances on a worldwide basis. You know, back to your core of your question is, you know, what diversification has gotten us is there's something bad going on somewhere all the time. It is, you know, very frustrating to me as a shareholder and as the Chairman and CEO.

What we want to try to do is figure out a way to substantially dampen that volatility. Because you've been with us, Dave, for many years now as an analyst on the company. What happens on the row crop side, in the bad times, and, you know, we lived through them in year 15 through 19, basically, 2015 to 2019. You're talking about, you know, maybe you can't get a rent increase, but you're not talking about big rent decreases. The reason is it's fixed cash rent. You know, the bad era in the row crop side, and it will come again, doesn't drastically reduce and create volatility in our P&L. Especially crop side because of the nature of the way those leases are, and we get these big swings.

I think it's frankly hurting us, and it's hurting the price of the stock. We've got to figure out how to have that stop happening. You know, might be joint ventures, might be dispositions, might be, you know, some other way of structuring our leases. There's a lot of choices. We got to get that problem to frankly go away. I hope that answers your question.

Dave Rodgers (Senior Research Analyst)

Yeah, I appreciate that color. I wanted to go back to one other comment you made, which was you thought about two-thirds of the value of owning a farm over time is the appreciation in the land. I guess I wonder where you think cap rates are going and yields have moved. I think maybe part of that question comes from the fact that you're repricing debt into the mid to high 5s, which is largely now consistent with where your implied cap rate is. I'm curious, again, you know, how you view kind of the underlying farm market and prices moving there with the aggressive move in debt costs that we've seen.

Paul Pittman (Executive Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. You know, the good news in many respects is that the farmland market has continued to appreciate even with higher interest rates. These high interest rates will gradually put a damper on prices. They just, you know, common sense and history suggests they must. It hasn't really occurred yet, and when I say put a damper on, it will stop the growth of the asset values. It won't probably reverse it very much, if at all, on the row crop side. The reason for that is the overwhelming amount of these purchases are done with cash. You know, the farmers are quite profitable. Farmers drive the asset values on the row crop side, not institutions. They bought farms. Those farms are in very strong hands.

I just don't think you're gonna see asset values come off with high interest rates, and you certainly haven't seen it happen yet on the row crop side. Institutions like us and, you know, us in particular because that's what I know about. These high cap rates have really dampened the amount of purchasing we are doing of new farms, and it's going to until the cost of capital goes back down. When it's hard for us to buy farms at a negative spread, even though we're very confident the 5.5% or greater average annual appreciation of row crop farmland will continue. I mean, that's a statistic that's in place now for more than 50 years. It's not gonna change.

It's hard for us as a public company to be in the market when our cost of debt capital is in excess or equal to 5.5%. You know, back to the cap rates on the underlying assets, the problem is you take high-quality Illinois farmland, it is trading today at a 2.5 cap. I don't see that changing. It's a counter-cyclical asset class when you get right down to it. It's not really driven by, you know, Wall Street or institutional money. It's driven by, you know, small town, rural America money, primarily. You know, worldwide food demand climbs, supply demand, the volatility of the key commodities around the world is high. You know, it's Ukraine, South American drought, all kinds of other issues.

High quality U.S. farmland is continuing to be viewed by the people that drive the underlying asset value as a very, very good investment, a great store of capital, a great long-term wealth creator. What we've got to do is figure out how to get that to convert into our stock price. You know, unfortunately, we're not communicating that very well for, you know, some reason. Part of it is, you know, volatility on the specialty crop side.

Dave Rodgers (Senior Research Analyst)

All right. I appreciate all the details, Paul. Thanks.

Paul Pittman (Executive Chairman and CEO)

Thanks.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Your next question comes from Steve Rob Stevenson from Janney. Please go ahead.

Steve Dumanski (Director in REIT Research)

Yes, good morning. This is Steve Dumanski for Rob Stevenson. Just wanted to see if you could please provide more insight on the four agricultural equipment dealership acquisitions.

Paul Pittman (Executive Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. We acquired the real estate, not the operations. We acquired the real estate underneath four different John Deere dealerships in Ohio. The operator of those dealerships is a company called Ag-Pro. Ag-Pro is the largest John Deere dealership network in the United States. They have something in excess of, I think, 80 separate dealerships. We bought those four dealerships. The driving reason to do that transaction is really several key points. First is the cap rate and the return on those is pretty strong. Certainly stronger current yield than you experience on farmland in most cases, certainly on row crop farmland.

Second big driver is that we frankly feel like those dealerships are in locations, particularly a couple of them, where we get pretty good long-term appreciation of the underlying asset. You know, John Deere dealerships are really tied strongly to the row crop farm economy in particular. We think it matches up with our general sort of thesis that row crop farmland is very valuable. It will continue to appreciate in value. We think these assets appreciate in value. Credit quality of tenants obviously quite high. In addition, it networks us through that dealer network to a whole lot more farmers, whole lot more relationships.

I mean, we're, you know, frankly kind of wrapping ourself in the flag of John Deere a little bit, in terms of how we can reach out to farmers that use that dealer network. You know, that's one of the strongest brands in the world, frankly. It's certainly the strongest brand in agriculture. There's a lot of sort of synergistic benefits to cracking that door opening and making some investments in that sector. It will not be the core of our business by any means. It will remain a tiny percentage of what we do, because what we really wanna focus on most is really the, you know, row crop farmland and high quality farm assets generally that appreciate over time, is really the core of our long-term story.

Steve Dumanski (Director in REIT Research)

Thank you. That was very helpful.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. As a reminder, it's star 1 to ask any more questions today. Our next question comes from the line of Craig Kucera of B. Riley Securities. You may proceed.

Craig Kucera (Managing Director for Real Estate Equity Research)

Hey, good morning, guys. I apologize if I missed this. There's a lot of calls going on right now. James, I know that you had the debt resets here that you announced in the press release that are resetting here in the first quarter. How are you thinking about dealing with the remaining resets in 2023 and in 2024? Do swaps or interest caps come into play?

James Gilligan (CFO and Treasurer)

We've looked at that a little bit. Our assumptions are, we kind of noted them in the supplemental where we provide guidance. What we're kind of looking at is we're looking at the forward curves, and we're also using kind of historical spreads, to think about sort of how those, how those will likely reset when we come up on those dates. That's how we've kind of modeled them out. We have had a lot of conversations with not only the incumbent lender, but also potential new lenders on ways to, you know, sort of deal with that debt in a different fashion. We're, you know, continuing to bring competition to bear where we can.

Frankly, again, everyone's good ideas and, you know, approach those resets with all the, all the arrows in our quiver that we can.

Craig Kucera (Managing Director for Real Estate Equity Research)

Got it. Paul, I know that you tend to take a very long-term look as most farmers do on the asset value and how to think about things. You know, your guidance has maybe, you know, $25 million-$50 million of asset sales, but does it make sense maybe to increase those sales when you can sell at such a deep discount to debt costs and maybe improve your per share results? How do you kind of think about that, as we are in a higher interest rate environment?

Paul Pittman (Executive Chairman and CEO)

Yeah, we do certainly think about asset sales all the time. I mean, you know, look, we balance a variety of things when we think about asset sales. You know, first is, are we getting a really good price and a fair value for the asset we own? Ed, you're correct. You know, there's a lot of money flowing out there into this asset class, and cap rates are low, and we could sell assets and buy back stock. Our philosophy generally is don't sell what we call the crown jewels type farms. You know, if it's an A-plus farm or an A farm. The reason is, it's almost impossible to buy that stuff back unless you know, pay dearly from a financial point of view.

You know, if it is a farm that's kind of been underperforming or it's a farm that we're not in love with, we're actually looking at in many asset sales. Don't want to sort of over predict a certain amount, which is why you see the guidance where it is. You know, I think we're pretty dedicated to trimming parts of the portfolio that where we can get a profit and redeploy that capital into debt reduction or frankly into stock buybacks given what's happened this morning.

Craig Kucera (Managing Director for Real Estate Equity Research)

All right. Thanks, guys. Appreciate the color.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. To ask any further questions, please press star then one on your telephone keypad.

As we have had no further questions, I'd like to hand it back to Paul Pittman, Chairman and CEO.

Paul Pittman (Executive Chairman and CEO)

Thank you. Thank you all for joining us for this phone call today. I mean, I'm as disappointed in the stock price performance this morning as many of you are. You know, I think it is important to keep things in perspective from a financial point of view. You know, 2022 was a very strong year. 2023, as we have predicted, will be a more challenging year. That is the nature of production agriculture. It almost sounds trite, but, you know, they grow these crops outdoors, we will be a subject of which has happened here of volatility driven by weather and commodity pricing. On the other hand, it is the long-term averages of performance in the sector that drive farmland asset values and long-term return.

We all know is that global food demand, and there continues to go up, and therefore, demand for farmland will continue to go up. We are seeing that in terms of asset value appreciation. That asset value appreciation is frankly, probably all still occurring in the specialty crop side of the portfolio, just not as rapidly as it is occurring in the row crop side. Even though you have a year in the, a year of tough performance in terms of crop yields and things like that, you know, the long-term demand for almonds and pistachios and citrus is still a worldwide positive outlook.

I don't think you're gonna see significant reductions in asset values, but you're gonna see a challenging 12-month period of time in terms of the P&L in front of us. We'll get through this. It'll be a, you know, real positive long-term story, and it will continue to be so. On the row crop side, in particular, given what continues to happen with production around the world and what's going on in Ukraine slash Russia, US farmland and demand for US farm crops will remain elevated, in our opinion, for the next 12 months at least, and that'll be positive for the rent rolls we do in the 2023 year, for example. With that, I'll conclude, and thank you all for your time.

Operator (participant)

Thank you all for joining. That does conclude today's call. Please have a lovely day. You may now disconnect your line.