W. P. Carey - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Executive Summary

• Q1 2025 revenue was $409.9M, up 5.2% YoY, and essentially flat QoQ; diluted EPS was $0.57, and AFFO per diluted share was $1.17. Versus S&P Global consensus, WPC posted a slight revenue miss ($409.9M actual vs $412.7M estimate*) and an EPS miss ($0.57 reported vs $0.68 estimate*), with the EPS shortfall driven by FX losses and a higher non-cash credit loss allowance.
• Management reaffirmed full-year 2025 AFFO guidance of $4.82–$4.92 per share and investment volume of $1.0B–$1.5B, funded primarily through accretive non-core dispositions ($500M–$1.0B) without equity issuance.
• Active portfolio optimization: contractual same-store rent growth of 2.4% (comprehensive 4.5%); occupancy 98.3%; WALT 12.3 years; and progress on reducing top-tenant exposure (Hellweg agreements to take back 12 stores and re-tenant/sell).
• Balance sheet actions: repaid $450M notes due Feb-2025 and refinanced €500M term loan to 2029 with a swap fixing all-in EUR rate at ~2.80%, supporting a low 3.2% weighted average cost of debt.
• Near-term stock catalysts: potential guidance raise if deal visibility and tariff backdrop improve; accretive spread between asset sales and new investments (~100 bps spread targeted); and additional self-storage operating portfolio sales in H2 2025.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

• What Went Well

  • “We’ve had a strong start to the year, closing approximately $450 million of investments to date… and reaffirming both our AFFO and investment volume guidance ranges” — CEO Jason Fox.
  • Comprehensive same-store rental income grew 4.5% YoY, with CPI-linked increases a key tailwind; contractual same-store ABR growth was 2.4%.
  • Refinanced €500M term loan to 2029 and executed an interest rate swap to fix EURIBOR at 2.00% (2.80% all-in), underpinning a 3.2% weighted average debt cost.

• What Went Wrong

  • EPS missed consensus; net income fell 21% YoY due to FX losses ($27.9M) and a $12.3M non-cash credit loss allowance, partially offset by gains on real estate sales.
  • Slight revenue miss vs S&P consensus; operating property revenues were lower YoY given prior hotel sale and self-storage conversions to net lease.
  • Occupancy slipped modestly QoQ (to 98.3%) on partial renewals at two European warehouses; management expects efficient backfill over 2025.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Hello and welcome to W. P. Carey's first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. My name is Diego, and I will be your operator today. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. Please note that today's event is being recorded. After today's prepared remarks, we will be taking questions via the phone line. Instructions on how to do so will be given at the appropriate time. I will now turn today's program over to Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations. Mr. Sands, please go ahead.

Peter Sands (Head of Investor Relations)

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us this morning for our 2025 first quarter earnings call. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that some of the statements made on this call are not historic facts and may be deemed forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from W. P. Carey's expectations are provided in our SEC filings. An online replay of this conference call will be made available in the Investor Relations section of our website at wpcarey.com, where it will be archived for approximately one year, and where you can also find copies of our investor presentations and other related materials. With that, I'll hand the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Jason Fox.

Jason Fox (CEO)

Thanks, Peter, and good morning, everyone. We entered the year anticipating uncertainty, and the uncertainty surrounding tariffs clearly proved to be the key theme of the first quarter. To date, however, that uncertainty has not translated into any direct impacts on our business, and we've continued executing on the plan we previously outlined for 2025. We started the year with solid investment volume and have good visibility into additional deals closing over the near term. We also remain comfortable with our ability to accretively fund new investments this year, including through the high end of our guidance range, without needing to access the capital markets. While the potential impacts of tariffs are causing substantial uncertainty in the broader economy and capital markets, to date, we haven't seen any direct effects on the performance of our portfolio, whether through rent collections or re-leasing.

We continue to believe that our estimate of potential rent loss from tenant credit events, which is embedded in our guidance, will be sufficient, even if tariffs put pressure on tenant margins later this year. Despite the uncertainty over tariffs, we have now resolved the situations with two of our top tenants that were experiencing credit difficulties, as we outlined in our recent business update press release. Overall, we remain cautious on the environment but are comfortable with the assumptions baked into our guidance and also see a path to the high end of our AFFO and investment volume guidance ranges. This morning, I'll focus on several topics: our recent investment activity and an update on our sources of capital to fund those deals, additional perspective on tariffs, and an update on tenant credit.

Following that, Toni Sanzone, our CFO, will review our results and guidance, and Brooks Gordon, our Head of Asset Management, is joining us to take questions. Starting with our investment activity, year to date, we've closed about $450 million of investments with an initial weighted average cap rate of 7.4%, including the $275 million we closed in the first quarter. Importantly, with rent escalation structures averaging in the mid to high 2% range, the average yield over the life of the leases exceeds 9%. We also have several hundred million dollars of investments in our pipeline at advanced stages, the majority of which we expect to close in the next couple of months. In addition, we currently have eight capital projects totaling $117 million scheduled for completion this year.

Four months into the year, we have clear visibility into approximately $570 million of deals for 2025 in a solid near-term pipeline. It's important to note that the market for net lease real estate, which generally has long lease terms, is not as influenced by near-term fluctuations in market rents and leasing velocity compared to shorter-term multi-tenant properties. As a result, to date, we've seen very little disruption in net lease transaction activity. Furthermore, we foresee scenarios where sale-leaseback transactions continue to ramp up, as they can be very attractive alternative sources of capital for corporates and sponsor-backed companies during times of market volatility. As the market leader in sale-leasebacks, which typically comprise a large portion of our investment volume, we would be at a distinct advantage competing on new investments.

Similarly, if mortgage lenders tighten their lending criteria, real estate private equity and other competitors that use asset-level debt will become less competitive. In summary, we believe we will remain on track or ahead of expectations for the first half of the year. Once we have greater visibility into how the transaction environment is likely to play out over the remainder of the year, we see a path to raising our expectations for full-year investment volume, although we're mindful that the overall flow of new deal launches has some potential to slow amid the current climate of uncertainty. That brings me to our sources of capital. We continue to believe we have one of the lowest costs of debt in the net lease sector through our mix of U.S. dollar and euro-denominated debt.

Toni will discuss the details, but during the quarter, we refinanced our euro-term loan, fixing its interest rate below 3% through an interest rate swap. We do not have any meaningful additional debt maturities in 2025, and at quarter end, we were only minimally drawn on our $2 billion revolver. Our next bond maturity is the euro bond maturing in April 2026, and our next U.S. bond maturity is not until October of 2026. On the equity side, we are making progress on our plan to fund our investments this year, primarily through non-core asset sales. During the first quarter, we sold assets totaling approximately $130 million and are making headway on additional dispositions. In addition to that, we are currently in the market with a sizable portfolio of operating self-storage assets, representing about half of our total self-storage operating NOI.

While it is too early to say what the exact outcome will be, we have seen substantial interest from self-storage buyers, and we're evaluating various options to maximize value, ranging from several smaller portfolio sales to a single buyer. We expect deal timing to be the second half of the year, and to the extent there are multiple buyers, deals may close at different times. We remain comfortable that we'll generate at least 100 basis points of spread this year between our asset sales and new investments. We will, of course, look to do better than that, but currently, we're maintaining that assumption in our guidance model. More broadly, we believe our investment spreads are underappreciated by the market, as the narrative is often around going in cap rates without any discussion of rent growth over the life of a lease.

When you combine our ability to partially finance deal activity through European debt with our sector-leading rent bumps, we continue to feel good about our ability to generate growth through new investments, and we remain focused on putting capital to work this year. Turning now to our perspective on tariffs. While it is too soon to determine how tariffs can impact our business this year, we would highlight several points. Our portfolio is built to withstand downturns and periods of economic weakness. We focus on investing in large companies, which have greater liquidity and access to capital, and are far better equipped to weather economic downturns than smaller companies. Approximately three-quarters of our ABR comes from tenants that generate annual revenues of over $500 million. We own critical real estate with strong leases, and in cases where a tenant's business is restructured, we frequently do not see any disruption in rents.

One of the potential misperceptions about our international portfolio is that it inherently faces greater risks from the direct effects of tariffs compared to a purely U.S. portfolio. In reality, the majority of our European tenants operate primarily domestically, selling into their local markets rather than exporting to the U.S., especially in industries like grocery, home improvement, and car dealerships, which comprise the bulk of the European tenants in our top 25. Industrial and warehouse properties have also been a focal point when considering the impacts of tariffs on the real estate sector, particularly the potential impacts on re-leasing and demand for space. In general, our warehouse tenants are not positioned in major ports or logistics hubs where they might have obvious exposure to international supply chains.

Because our leases are long, with leases representing just 1.3% of ABR expiring this year and 2.9% next year, the leasing and occupancy pressure that may be flowing through to traditional REITs will not be as impactful on our portfolio. Furthermore, to the extent the onshoring trend continues, we think the value and importance of our industrial portfolio could be enhanced through greater demand for domestic manufacturing capacity. In fact, recent conversations with tenants have included inquiries and discussions on expansions, indicating that this is becoming more of a focus. The final and perhaps most important point I want to make regarding tariffs is that the current uncertainty over their magnitude and timing does not change the estimated rent loss we've accounted for in our 2025 guidance, which covers a variety of scenarios, including those in which we experience incremental unexpected credit events this year.

We still feel good about the AFFO growth estimate we've guided to and continue to see the potential to increase it as we gain greater visibility into the remainder of the year. Before I hand the call over to Toni, I want to give a brief update on the significant tenants we've been focused on from a credit perspective, namely True Value, which is now Do it Best, Hearthside, and Hellweg. To date, the situations with Do it Best and Hearthside have played out as we anticipated, which were factored into our initial guidance and covered in our recent business update. Hellweg's status is also largely unchanged since our recent press release. It remains current on rent, although it continues to face a challenging operating environment, including weak German consumer spending and a competitive do-it-yourself industry.

Hellweg continues to work with its key stakeholders, including landlords and lenders, to further improve its liquidity, and those conversations are ongoing. In the meantime, we're actively reducing our exposure, executing agreements at the end of March to take back 12 stores, representing about one-third of our total exposure, with seven stores terminated by September of this year and another five stores by September of next year. We expect to re-tenant most of those stores, achieving rents in line with their existing rents, and to sell the rest, in both cases with limited downtime. Those steps should help improve Hellweg's liquidity while also giving us a clear line of sight to moving Hellweg out of our top 10 tenants.

Lastly, separate from the 12 stores we're taking back, we recently sold one of the occupied Hellweg stores in our portfolio and have an additional three under binding contracts, further reducing our Hellweg exposure in the near term. I'll pause there and hand over to Toni to discuss our results and guidance.

Toni Sanzone (CFO)

Thanks, Jason. Starting with earnings, we generated AFFO per share of $1.17 for the first quarter, an increase of 2.6% year over year. Our first quarter results and activity through April reflect a solid start to the year, keeping us on pace and even ahead of our expectations to date. We have reaffirmed our AFFO guidance range of $4.82-$4.92 per share. As we continue to monitor and navigate current market dynamics, we remain cautiously optimistic that we have a path to exceed the 3.6% growth implied in our guidance. As Jason noted, we have good momentum on the deal front, and our guidance continues to assume investment volume of between $1 billion and $1.5 billion. During the quarter, we sold nine assets, generating total proceeds of $130 million.

We continue to expect dispositions for the year to total between $500 million-$1 billion, with a large majority expected to be opportunistic non-core asset sales, including operating self-storage properties. We remain confident in our ability to generate proceeds from these asset sales at cap rates that allow us to accretively fund investment activity even above the high end of our guidance range. Contractual same-store rent growth for the quarter was 2.4% year over year and is expected to remain around that level for the full year. As a reminder, about 50% of our contractual rent increases are tied to CPI, positioning us well if inflation starts to rise as a result of tariffs, although the tailwind to our lease revenues would be more impactful next year and beyond.

Comprehensive same-store growth for the quarter was 4.5% year over year, partly benefiting from the rent abatement for Hellweg during last year's first quarter, as well as the commencement of ongoing cash rent this year from our warehouse lease to Samsung. Historically, our comprehensive same-store has typically tracked around 100 basis points below contractual, although based on our current estimates, we're on track to do better than that for the full year. Leasing activity for the quarter comprised 16 renewals or extensions, representing 1.8% of portfolio ABR, which continued to trend positively, recapturing 103% of prior rents while adding 6.2 years of incremental weighted average lease term. Our AFFO guidance continues to include an estimated $15-$20 million for potential rent loss from tenant credit events.

We currently have visibility into identified rent loss, which is expected to represent about one-third of our total estimate, including downtime on the Hellweg stores we're taking back, with the balance of the reserve reflecting the uncertainty of the current macro environment. We continue to believe that our estimate of potential rent loss will be sufficient and possibly conservative, even if tariffs put pressure on tenants later this year. Other lease-related income totaled $3.1 million during the first quarter and is expected to increase as the year progresses. Based on current visibility, we continue to expect other lease-related income to total between $20 million and $25 million for the full year, consistent with where it's been in recent years.

On the expense side, both G&A and income tax expense tend to run higher in the first quarter due to timing and are expected to resume a steadier run rate beginning in the second quarter. For the full year, we continue to expect these expenses to be in line with our initial guidance expectations as provided in our earnings release. During the first quarter, operating property NOI totaled $16.6 million, comprised of $13.6 million from our portfolio of 78 operating self-storage properties and a total of $3 million from our four remaining hotels and student housing assets. Excluding the impact of expected dispositions, our operating property portfolio would be expected to generate between $70 million and $75 million of operating NOI during 2025.

However, as previously noted, a significant portion of our dispositions this year are expected to be sales of self-storage operating assets, which our guidance assumes occurs in the second half of the year. As we get more clarity regarding the timing of asset sales, we will update our operating NOI estimates accordingly. Non-operating income for the first quarter totaled $7.9 million, comprised of a $2.8 million dividend from our equity stake in Lineage, $2.6 million of interest income, and $2.6 million of realized gains on currency hedges. Our guidance assumes the dividend from Lineage is held at its current level for the remainder of the year. Beginning in the second quarter, interest income will decline to a nominal level, generally less than $1 million per quarter, as we've now fully deployed our excess cash.

While foreign currency gains from our hedging program are now expected to be lower given a weaker U.S. dollar, it's important to remember that our European cash flows, and therefore AFFO, are positively impacted by a stronger euro and pound, offsetting any decline from currency hedging. In total, we currently expect non-operating income in the low to mid-$20 million range for the full year. Moving now to our balance sheet and leverage. Our balance sheet remains extremely well-positioned, with ample liquidity and very minimal near-term debt maturities. Following the repayment of the $450 million bond that came due in the first quarter, we fully deployed the excess cash we had on our balance sheet at year-end. We ended the first quarter with liquidity totaling almost $2 billion, comprised largely of the availability on our credit facility.

Our remaining 2025 debt maturities comprise less than $140 million of mortgage debt, and our next bond maturity is not until April 2026. As previously announced, at the end of the first quarter, we refinanced our EUR 500 million term loan, extending its maturity an additional three years to 2029, with an option to extend up to an additional year. In connection with this refinancing, we executed an interest rate swap, locking in an attractive all-in rate of 2.8% through the end of 2027, which further demonstrates the advantages of having access to euro-denominated debt and multiple pools of capital. Our overall weighted average cost of debt for the first quarter remained low at 3.2% and is currently expected to stay around that level for the remainder of the year, supported by the excellent execution we achieved on our term loan.

We ended the quarter with our key leverage metrics well within our target ranges, with debt to gross assets at 41% and net debt to adjusted EBITDA at 5.8 times. The strength of our balance sheet, combined with our ability to generate proceeds from non-core asset sales, leaves us very well-positioned to accretively fund our acquisition volume this year without the need to raise equity capital. On an administrative note, we expect to file a registration statement this week, updating our existing shelf registration upon its expiration in May, which will include the renewal of our existing ATM program. Lastly, during the first quarter, we declared a dividend of $0.89 per share, or $3.56 annualized, representing a 2.9% increase over the prior year. Our dividend is very well covered by our AFFO per share, with an expected annual payout ratio of 73%.

With that, I'll hand the call back to Jason.

Jason Fox (CEO)

Thanks, Toni. In conclusion, we feel very good about how we've started the year and the progress we're making towards executing plans outlined in our previous call. We're tracking slightly ahead of the initial expectations we provided on investments, and we're actively working on the non-core dispositions we highlighted. We continue to have confidence in accretively funding investments through the high end of our guidance without needing to access the equity markets. Although there are still a range of potential scenarios that could play out with tariffs, in most scenarios, we believe we have already accounted for this uncertainty in our initial guidance. We are very comfortable affirming our growth expectations, and we see the potential to raise guidance from here as we gain greater visibility into how tariffs, tenant credit, and the transaction environment are playing out for the year.

That concludes our prepared remarks, so I'll hand the call back to the operator to take questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. At this time, we will take questions. If you would like to ask a question, simply press Star, then the number 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the Star, then the number 2. Our first question comes from Greg McGinniss with Scotiabank. Please state your question.

Greg McGinniss (Vice President and Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, good morning. Jason, you know that there's several hundred million dollars of deals in the pipeline. Could you just provide some details on cap rates, retail industrial split, and U.S.-Europe split on that?

Jason Fox (CEO)

Yeah, sure. You know, like always, our cap rates spread across a range, and sometimes that's a relatively wide range depending on a number of factors. We're still currently targeting deals in the sevens on average. We'll probably guide towards mid-sevens, which is where we ended last year. That's where we were in the first quarter, and it's roughly where our current pipeline is priced as well. You know, that's—and I would say that's generally the same across the U.S. and Europe. Obviously, Europe, you can have even a wider range of cap rates depending on countries. Generally speaking, I think that they're relatively consistent within that range. When you think about Europe, you know, obviously, we have a much lower cost of debt in Europe. We're probably 150-175 basis points inside of where we could borrow in U.S. dollars.

You know, we're seeing some pretty interesting spreads in Europe. In terms of pipeline, you know, I think deals to date were largely weighted towards North America, but the pipeline, I would say, is maybe 50/50, maybe a little bit more weighted towards Europe. We're starting to see activity levels pick up a little bit more there. I think in terms of property type, you know, it's maybe consistent with how we've allocated historically. It's going to be mostly industrial and warehouse, especially year to date. The retail side is a little bit light right now, but I would expect that to pick up some as the year goes. Pretty typical year. Much of the deals are sale-leasebacks, which is typically a theme for us, so no surprises there.

Greg McGinniss (Vice President and Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. On the dispositions, which are helping to fund the acquisitions, just to make sure I understood correctly, you said it is 100 basis points under the acquisition cap rate? Is that right?

Jason Fox (CEO)

Yeah, that's roughly where we're estimating right now and kind of built into our guidance model. We hope to do better than that. That's probably a good number to use right now based on current visibility.

Greg McGinniss (Vice President and Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Smedes Rose with Citi. Please state your question.

Smedes Rose (Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Hi, thank you. I just wanted to ask you, you sort of indicated that it seems like a reasonable chance that you'll be able to get on a path of acquisitions above the high end of your current outlook. If that happens, in order to fund that, would you look to potentially sell more of the self-storage operating assets? Or I guess maybe just sort of thoughts in general about funding anything above what's currently in guidance?

Jason Fox (CEO)

Yeah, sure. I mean, we've talked about this before. I think that our kind of range of disposition possibilities can include funding that would take us at to or maybe even through the top end of our investment guidance. You know, I think we have lots of flexibility there on how we think about that. You know, I think that even if we go beyond that, I think that we have the ability to lean into storage even more. We talk about the amount of storage we're selling right now that's kind of baked into the midpoint. It's about half of our portfolio, so we certainly can look at more storage. We also have other longer-term sources of capital, such as the Lineage equity stake, although we wouldn't expect that to be available to us anytime soon. Maybe more near-term would be the construction loan in Las Vegas.

That's about $250 million-$260 million. Obviously, we have a fair amount of free cash flow as well. I think we're comfortable to continue to fund deals without the need to be in the equity markets through this year, even if we continue to outperform on the investment side.

Smedes Rose (Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Thanks. I just wanted to ask you, you provided a comprehensive outlook on reducing overall exposure to Hellweg. It's about 18 months, I guess, in terms of to completion. If you need to, is that something that you can accelerate if things go south more quickly for Hellweg relative to maybe your expectations? Or just kind of what's the flexibility there, I guess?

Jason Fox (CEO)

Yeah, sure, Brooks. You want to take that?

Brooks Gordon (Managing Director and Head of Asset Management)

Sure. Yeah. As you described, we've got a clear path to reduce that exposure over this year and into next year. I'd expect that to be cut roughly in half over that time frame. We will evaluate a few other dispositions. Bigger picture, as we've said on previous calls, we're well advanced in any potential contingencies as well. To the extent we have a path to take back more stores, we have demand for those stores at rent in line with the existing. There would be some downtime, as we discussed and Toni mentioned, but that's fully contemplated in our guidance and our credit loss reserve. There are other levers we can pull, and we'll continue to evaluate those. As is, we have a good path, and we're executing on that path to reduce that exposure proactively.

Operator (participant)

Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. Your next question comes from Michael Goldsmith with UBS. Please state your question.

Michael Goldsmith (Analyst)

Good morning. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. You have exposure in both the U.S. and Canada, and I know you've talked a lot about the tariffs or U.S. and Europe, sorry, and you've talked a lot about tariffs on the call today. Maybe can you just talk about maybe the difference in some of your exposure in the U.S. and in Europe and how tariffs could maybe just tariffs, is that a bigger tailwind for your Europe exposure, or is that a greater headwind? I'm just trying to understand the portfolio and how it will, how your tenants are functioning in this kind of post-tariff world.

Jason Fox (CEO)

Yeah, sure. Europe's not a headwind, I think that's for sure. I mean, we've heard some of the commentary around that may create more risk within our portfolio. I mentioned this earlier, the majority, maybe even the vast majority of our European tenants primarily operate domestically. They're selling into their local markets. They're not exporting to the U.S., and they're really not dependent on imports from the U.S. as well. These are industries like grocery and DIY and car dealerships that comprise the bulk of our Europe tenants. Could it be a tailwind? Hard to say. I think, generally speaking, we like our European portfolio, but it's somewhat insulated or maybe isolated from what's happening here in the U.S.

Michael Goldsmith (Analyst)

Got it. I know you've talked about the three big names on the watch list, but has there been any notable additions or removals from the list? I know the three that have come up kind of came up pretty quickly. Just kind of have you seen any impact from tariffs or tenant credit issues from the tariffs, anything that you're monitoring in particular? Thanks.

Jason Fox (CEO)

Yeah. I mean, broadly speaking, on the portfolio side, while tariffs, of course, are creating a lot of uncertainty, and we're hearing companies talking about tightening expenses and maybe pushing decision-making back on new capital spending, we haven't seen any direct impacts based on tariffs on the performance of our portfolio. In terms of maybe kind of a broader look at watch list, Brooks, I don't know if you have a comment on that.

Brooks Gordon (Managing Director and Head of Asset Management)

Just that I think, to reiterate, it's really best to think about it in the context of our guided credit loss reserve. We think that's the best tool to really model credit risk. That said, the watch list has come down substantially because two of the big tenants came off. So in Do it Best and Hearthside. But again, we want to really focus on that credit loss reserve guidance.

Michael Goldsmith (Analyst)

Thank you very much. Good luck in the second quarter.

Jason Fox (CEO)

Yeah. Thanks, Michael.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from Joshua Dennerlein with Bank of America. Please state your question.

Joshua Dennerlein (Analyst)

Thank you. Good morning. Maybe going back to that question for Toni and Brooks, appreciate the detailed guidance assumption, but that $15 million-$20 million of potential rent loss in the guidance, does that also account for the expenses on vacant assets? And what do you assume for repositioning capital, or will most of these assets potentially be sold?

Jason Fox (CEO)

Toni, do you want to start? Maybe Brooks can talk about the second half.

Toni Sanzone (CFO)

Yeah. I think in terms of the credit loss, the numbers that we're providing are really on top-line revenue. I would say there is a factor built into our property expense assumption that takes into account some downtime there as well. That's been factored in. It's just separate from the range that we provided on the $15 million-$20 million.

Brooks Gordon (Managing Director and Head of Asset Management)

Yeah, just to add, the downtime, again, as Toni mentioned, is baked into our analysis. It will be pretty moderate. And capital expenditures, kind of TBD per store, they're not very capital-intensive. These will be paving work and some facade cosmetics. So not huge capital expenditure amounts associated with the repositioning. The tenants will perform their own fit-out.

Joshua Dennerlein (Analyst)

Great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from Anthony Paolone with JPMorgan. Please state your question.

Anthony Paolone (Analyst)

Great. Thanks. Just wondering, I think there was a little bit of occupancy slippage from 4Q to 1Q, and it seemed like you kind of addressed a lot of the credit items, and it did not seem to be related to that. Just wondering what drove that.

Jason Fox (CEO)

Yeah. The occupancy slipped a little. There were some removals from the vacancy list and a couple of adds, really driven by two European warehouses where we did partial renewals with the tenant, where they stayed in about 70% of the two buildings. We are seeking to backfill those. That was really the net add. I'll add that we have active transactions on the large majority of the existing vacancies, so we expect to chip away at that pretty efficiently over the course of the year.

Anthony Paolone (Analyst)

Okay. Just on that note, if we look out, I guess, maybe next 18 months or through 2026, is there much in the way of known vacates to think about just outside of sort of watch list credit matters, just known vacates?

Jason Fox (CEO)

Yeah. I think, first of all, important to note that the overall scale of lease expirations over the next several years is quite small. That is kind of the big picture. We have one warehouse, actually a pair of warehouse properties in Europe in July that we expect a non-renewal on. That is about 50 basis points of ABR, so in the back half of the year. That is fully embedded in our guidance. The guidance does not contemplate any lease-up this year on those buildings. We are actively marketing them and expect to lease them up down the road. To be clear, lease-up is not included in the guidance.

Anthony Paolone (Analyst)

Okay. If I could just sneak one more in. On the self-storage operating assets, is there much appetite to do more net leases there, or is it just more creative to do sales and reinvest at this point?

Jason Fox (CEO)

Yeah. I mean, I think we still have the flexibility. I mean, last year, we leaned into some of the conversions there. This year, we think that sales are the best way to fund new investments, especially given the spread we can generate between what we're selling and what we're buying. Yeah, I think that for the other half of the portfolio that's not being marketed right now, I think there's flexibility there, and we'll have to continue to evaluate what we want to do. It doesn't have to be all of one or the other. I mean, we could sell some more, and we can convert some more as well. I think it'll depend on the situation at the time.

Anthony Paolone (Analyst)

Okay. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from Spenser Glimcher with Green Street Advisors. Please state your question.

Spenser Glimcher (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research)

Thank you. Just as it relates to the capital projects in progress, is there any concern on input costs, or do you guys have pricing agreements in place?

Jason Fox (CEO)

Brooks, you want to take that?

Brooks Gordon (Managing Director and Head of Asset Management)

Yeah. The vast majority of our capital investments are really subject to guaranteed contracts. Where we do take any cost exposure, we build in very large buffers to that. It is something we are certainly cognizant of, but the vast majority of our capital deployment is subject to guaranteed max price contracts.

Spenser Glimcher (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research)

Okay. Great. On the labor side, has there been any disruption to date or any concern there at all?

Jason Fox (CEO)

Not that we've seen.

Spenser Glimcher (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research)

Okay. Great. Just maybe one broader one. I was just hoping maybe you guys could provide some additional color just on the makeup and breadth of competition in both the U.S. and Europe. I know you mentioned, obviously, the lending environment tightens. That's going to help keep PE and debt capital on the sidelines. Just curious how active you've seen debt capital players essentially been year to date.

Jason Fox (CEO)

Yeah. I think the net lease market has always been competitive, and that's especially in the U.S., I think, over the past year or so. We've seen a bit of a pickup with some new private equity entrants, including some that are on non-traded platforms. As you mentioned, it's hard to predict how impactful they'll be, especially right now, given that many of them will be focused on using higher leverage, and that's gotten more expensive and maybe a little less reliable in the current environment. As an all-cash buyer, that puts us at a pretty good advantage. I think it's incremental to competition. We've seen that historically. People come and go, especially the big asset managers, when they may see an opportunity to add to AUM. Europe has always been less competitive, and I think that's still the case.

There's really no one new popping up there that's making any impact.

Spenser Glimcher (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research)

Okay. Thank you so much.

Jason Fox (CEO)

You're welcome.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Your next question comes from James Kammert with Evercore ISI . Please state your question.

James Kammert (Research Analyst)

Hi. Good morning. Thank you. Given that you do so many sale lease-backs, create-your-own-lease, etc., in your discussions of late, have you been able to detect any ability to shift sort of the annual escalator in your negotiations, upward or downward? Curious what the sellers and PE owners today are thinking about inflation and how that might impact the organic growth you can extract on these sale lease-backs. Thank you.

Jason Fox (CEO)

Yeah. Sure. I mean, since the spike in inflation a couple of years back, and really in both markets, but it's been more impactful to the U.S., I would say it's gotten a little more difficult to get those escalators into our U.S. leases. We still get them in Europe. It's more customary in Europe to have rent increases indexed to inflation. Right now, it's probably half of our pipeline, which mainly correlates to the European assets in our pipeline. To your question, when we're not getting CPI-linked increases, let's say in the U.S., we have been able to push through higher fixed increases. I think historically, we've probably been in and around the 2% range if you look back over the prior 10, even 20 years.

More recently, it's been kind of in the mid to high 2s on average, with many of our deals even north of 3%. I think our average year-to-date right now, the fixed bumps are 2.8%. Yeah, I think to answer your question, we have been able to continue to push through on the fixed bumps within the lease. A lot of that is market-specific. I mean, we want to do our best to have our bumps track what we think market expectations are long-term, and we're seeing some of that.

James Kammert (Research Analyst)

Thank you. That's helpful. Thanks.

Jason Fox (CEO)

You're welcome.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Your next question comes from Eric Borden with BMO Capital Markets. Please state your question.

Eric Borden (Analyst)

Hey. Good morning.

I appreciate your comments around no direct impacts as it relates to tariffs, but there may or may not be some tangential impacts. I was just curious if there's any tenants or any sectors or geographies that you're watching more closely as it relates to additional pressures.

Jason Fox (CEO)

Yeah. Maybe I'll have Brooks kind of weigh in a little bit, but it's probably worth noting that we did add to our disclosure in our IR deck some new disclosure that breaks out our property types and tenant industries by region. You can see a little bit more detail. Again, we've added it by property type and region. I don't know, Brooks, if there's anything broad you want to touch upon there.

Brooks Gordon (Managing Director and Head of Asset Management)

Not anything incredibly subtle. I mean, we've taken the time to look at all of the industries. As Jason mentioned, we've added some disclosure around that so you can do the same. We've evaluated all the tenants within those and kind of characterized each of those industries in terms of our view of whether it's a direct impact, an indirect impact, or really more of just a broader economic sensitivity if there's a slowdown more broadly. The ones that are intuitive are the ones that we're certainly focused and paying close attention to, ones with big global supply chains. I think we feel quite good that our specific investments are with big tenants where our facilities serve the regional market. We have tenants that are very, very important to their industries. We're focused on them, but I think we're comfortable with them.

Certainly, on the other end of the spectrum, we've got ample exposure to industries that we think will fare quite well, whether that's food retail or services like self-storage or gyms or education. It is a big, diverse portfolio that will certainly be impacted if tariffs are high and persistent. That's not clear right now. We are paying close attention, and I think we feel comfortable with our exposure and looking to mine for opportunities as well, especially in conversations with management teams. Over time, we are going to be able to help them adapt, and that's what we're good at.

Eric Borden (Analyst)

I appreciate that. More of a bigger picture question. We understand that you have a dearth of capital without having to issue equity, and that may even lead to hitting your above-investment target for the year. On the other side, your equity shares have performed well year-to-date, and your implied cap rate is below your investment spread target. Just curious, how are you thinking about issuing equity maybe in later 2025 or 2026 if acquisitions do continue to ramp and the market continues to hold?

Jason Fox (CEO)

Yeah. Look, I mean, that's a good question for us to get, especially since we have had a good start to the year in terms of equity. I think, generally speaking, we can consider getting back into the equity markets if we see some more momentum. The reality is we do not need to. We have a plan to fund our deals through this year, even if our investments are at the top end or even above the top end of our range, so we feel comfortable there. I think it is purely opportunistic. We will keep on monitoring what the best sources of capital are. At some point in time, certainly, equity will be one of those. Right now, I think we are more focused on the non-core asset sales.

Eric Borden (Analyst)

Thank you. Appreciate the time.

Jason Fox (CEO)

Yep. You're welcome.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. A reminder to participants to ask a question, press Star 1 on your telephone keypad. To remove yourself from the question queue, press Star 2 on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from John Kilichowski with Wells Fargo. Please state your question.

John Kilichowski (Analyst)

Good morning. Thank you. Jason, earlier, you referred to that property type diversification page where you broke out industrial and warehouse. Thank you for that. Earlier, you touched on how Europe, you felt like your exposure in those categories was very levered towards the domestic side. I'm curious, for your United States exposure, do you feel like you have a good idea of what portion of those are domestic versus international weighted in terms of their supply chains?

Jason Fox (CEO)

Yeah. Brooks, do you have any comments on that? You might be on mute. You might be on mute, Brooks.

Brooks Gordon (Managing Director and Head of Asset Management)

Oh, I'm sorry about that. Not specific changes in some of the observations we've made so far on the call today. I think important to note that across all our property types, the vast majority of what our tenants do, even if they're global companies, is regionally focused. There's much less, for example, port-dependent trade type investments that we make. That's really not our bread and butter. While I don't have a specific percentage for you, I think where we've got some comfort is, number one, in the criticality of the buildings and that these buildings are serving businesses that are regionally focused. They're not, generally speaking, completely tied to kind of international trade dynamics. Certainly, there'll be some of that. I think that the vast majority are very much focused on our local markets.

John Kilichowski (Analyst)

Okay. Thank you. On your credit loss assumption, and apologies if you said this earlier, have you given what percentage is Hellweg versus your kind of unknown buffer piece?

Toni Sanzone (CFO)

No. I think if I can reiterate here, as we sit here today, I said we had line of sight to about a third of the total reserve that's identified rent loss. Included in that is the downtime on the Hellweg assets we expect to take back this year that Jason referenced in his comments. That's part of the kind of the $6 million-$7 million or so of identified rent loss. There is another two-thirds of the reserve that's out there for anything generally broadly across the portfolio. Nothing specific for Hellweg in there, but I think we presume that that two-thirds of unidentified would be sufficient to cover a number of scenarios and different outcomes around Hellweg over the balance of the year.

John Kilichowski (Analyst)

Okay. Thank you. Last one for me. It looks like there may have been a straight-line right down in the quarter. Anything to note there?

Toni Sanzone (CFO)

No. Nothing notable there. I think we had a couple of accelerations of intangibles, probably the JOANN tenant that vacated through the first quarter. We did see a little bit of acceleration there, but nothing really notable.

John Kilichowski (Analyst)

Okay. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Anthony Powell with Barclays. Please state your question.

Anthony Powell (Analyst)

Hi. Yeah. The same store growth in Europe came down sequentially last quarter. I noticed there was a change in the same store pool there. Just wondering what those changes were and if same store growth was lower due to a change in property type or lease escalator mix at all or what's driving that.

Jason Fox (CEO)

Toni, do you have a view on that?

Toni Sanzone (CFO)

I'm looking at the totals here. I mean, I don't think there's anything specific that stands out. I think on a year-over-year same store, I highlighted here, on the European side, we're seeing the impact of Hellweg that's benefiting kind of on the quarter. On the contractual side, I think it's really just CPI coming down. We're seeing our leases bump in the first quarter. The majority of our leases have rent bumps that are weighted towards the first quarter. That's really just based on where current inflation or even inflation over the last two to three months before year-end was tracking. I think it's really more CPI-driven as opposed to specific tenant-driven.

Anthony Powell (Analyst)

Got it. Thank you so much.

Jason Fox (CEO)

You're welcome.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. At this time, I am not showing any further questions. I'll now hand the call back to Mr. Sands.

Peter Sands (Head of Investor Relations)

Great. Thank you, everyone, for your interest in W. P. Carey. If anyone has additional questions, please call Investor Relations directly at 212-492-1110. That concludes today's call, and you may now disconnect.

Operator (participant)

Pardon me. Disconnect.