Acadia Realty Trust Q1 2026 Earnings Call - Street Retail Tailwinds Fuel 11% Earnings Growth and Aggressive Expansion
Summary
Acadia Realty Trust reported a strong first quarter of 2026, delivering 11% year-over-year earnings growth driven by resilient demand for its street retail portfolio. Management highlighted a structural supply deficit in prime open-air corridors, which is fueling double-digit rent growth and near-term mark-to-market opportunities across markets like SoHo, Chicago's North Michigan Avenue, and Dallas's new Henderson Avenue development. The company raised its full-year 2026 FFO guidance to $1.22-$1.26, citing accelerating same-store NOI and accretive external growth. Acadia also closed over $1 billion in transactions year-to-date, expanding its footprint into luxury corridors like Worth Avenue in Palm Beach and Newbury Street in Boston without issuing equity, supported by a newly refinanced $1.4 billion credit facility.
The investment management platform continues to generate institutional capital through recapitalizations, with a recent $440 million joint venture with TPG Real Estate validating the firm's operational model. Management emphasized that while competition has increased in general open-air retail, street retail remains a less crowded field due to higher underwriting barriers and a need for specialized tenant relationships. With a robust signed-not-open pipeline and a focus on value-add acquisitions, Acadia is positioned for sustained multi-year top-line and bottom-line growth, targeting 5% CAGR and day-one accretion on all new investments.
Key Takeaways
- Acadia Realty Trust delivered 11% year-over-year earnings growth in Q1 2026, driven by a 6% same-store NOI increase and strong internal leasing velocity.
- The company raised its full-year 2026 FFO guidance to $1.22-$1.26, with internal NOI growth contributing $0.07-$0.09 of the projected $0.10 increase.
- Street retail tailwinds remain dominant due to limited supply, rising consumer demand for physical locations, and high-income tenant resilience, leading to 40% weighted average lease spreads on mark-to-market opportunities.
- Acadia expanded its presence in luxury corridors with inaugural investments on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach ($43 million) and Newbury Street in Boston ($109 million), targeting long-term scale and rent growth.
- The investment management platform executed a $440 million recapitalization with TPG Real Estate and a $68 million deal with Cohen & Steers, validating its incubated recap model and freeing up capital for redeployment.
- Year-to-date transaction activity exceeded $1 billion, comprising $600 million in new investments and over $500 million in recapitalizations, all achieved without equity issuance.
- Same-store NOI growth is projected to trend between 6%-9% through the year, with street and urban portfolios outperforming suburban assets by 400-500 basis points.
- The signed-not-open pipeline stands at $10.5 million in additional annualized base rent, with 80% expected to commence in 2026 and the remainder in early 2027, providing embedded growth.
- Henderson Avenue in Dallas, a $200 million development, is 80% pre-leased with tenants like Rag & Bone and Warby Parker, targeting 8%-10% returns and stabilization by 2028.
- Acadia refinanced its corporate credit facility to a $1.4 billion agreement, extending maturities and increasing borrowing capacity by $250 million to support continued growth without diluting shareholders.
Full Transcript
Operator: I’d now like to hand the conference over to Linnell Ray, Lease Administration and Due Diligence Analyst. Please go ahead.
Linnell Ray, Lease Administration and Due Diligence Analyst, Acadia Realty Trust: Good morning, and thank you for joining us for the first quarter 2026 Acadia Realty Trust earnings conference call. My name is Linnell Ray, and I’m a Lease Administration and Due Diligence Analyst. Before we begin, please be aware that statements made during the call that are not historical may be deemed forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements. Due to a variety of risks and uncertainties, including those disclosed in the company’s most recent Form 10-K and other periodic filings with the SEC, forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this call, April 29, 2026, and the company undertakes no duty to update them. During this call, management may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures, including funds from operations and net operating income.
Please see Acadia’s earnings press release posted on its website for reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures with the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. Once the call becomes open for questions, we ask that you limit your first round to two questions per caller to give everyone the opportunity to participate. You may ask further questions by reinserting yourself into the queue, and we will answer as time permits. Now, it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Ken Bernstein, President and Chief Executive Officer, who will begin today’s management remarks.
Ken Bernstein, President and Chief Executive Officer, Acadia Realty Trust: Thank you, Linnell. Great job. Welcome, everyone. As you can see in our press release, we had another strong quarter in what is shaping up to be a very solid year, both with respect to our internal as well as our external growth initiatives. While geopolitical events have certainly added unwanted uncertainty to the global economy, thankfully, due to the tailwinds for open-air retail in general, and then even more so for street retail, we are seeing continued strong results driven by strong tenant demand, strong tenant performance, and attractive investment opportunities. As the team will discuss in more detail, we delivered 11% year-over-year earnings growth, driven by nearly 6% same-store growth.
Even with heightened uncertainty in the capital markets, we completed over $2.5 billion of transactional activity, comprised of $600 million of new investments, over $500 million of recapitalizations within our investment management platform, and a new $1.4 billion corporate borrowing facility. Since I have discussed in detail the key drivers of the tailwinds in open-air retail on our previous calls, I will limit my explanation a bit. In short, our continued strong performance is being driven most significantly by our street retail portfolio and more specifically by five key factors. First, limited supply that continues to shrink. Second, probably more importantly, increasing demand due to the ongoing focus by retailers to having their own physical locations rather than being so heavily reliant on either wholesale or digital channels.
Third, strong tenant performance due to a resilient consumer, especially the upper-end shoppers at our street locations. Fourth, lighter relative CapEx in our retenanting of street locations. Finally, stronger annual income growth in our street locations due to both higher contractual growth and then more frequent mark-to-market opportunities. These continued tailwinds are enabling us to deliver solid internal top-line growth and having that growth hit the bottom line, both in terms of earnings growth as well as net asset value growth. AJ Levine will discuss our progress last quarter and why we are poised to continue to deliver superior growth for the foreseeable future. Supplementing this internal growth and ensuring that we can continue to deliver this steady growth well into the future is our external growth initiatives.
Reggie Livingston will discuss our acquisition activity over the last quarter, where we continue to deliver on our goals, both with respect to our on-balance sheet acquisitions of street retail and our execution through our investment management platform. Let me give a few observations. As we have seen more investor interest in retail over the past year, competition has increased for most formats of open-air retail, but so has the volume of deals coming to market. Even with increased competition, we expect to be able to meet our acquisition goals. While we welcome the company, it has been a bit more difficult to simply buy existing yield to make our targeted returns. As it relates to street retail investment opportunities, while competitive, it’s still a less crowded field than in other formats with fewer capable buyers.
We’re still seeing enough attractive investments that are accretive day one, both to earnings and net asset value. We are most focused on investments where there are near-term value creation opportunities where we can use our skill set and relationships to unlock that value. We’re still finding deals that get us to a 6% plus yield in the near term but require a few more moving pieces. Since our team has never been hesitant to use its value-add skills and relationships, this shift is welcomed. Same is true for our investment management platform. The ability to achieve opportunistic returns by simply buying stable assets, as we successfully did during our Fund V investment period a few years ago, is becoming increasingly difficult. Thus, our recent investments over the past year have been much more value-add focused, and we expect that focus to continue.
As it relates to our investment management activity, we can actually team up with the increasing pool of institutional capital and harness that increased interest. We don’t have to just beat them, we can join them as well. To be clear, with respect to both our REIT and investment management acquisitions, our goal continues to be to make sure our investments are accretive to earnings and to net asset value day one, and to achieve a $0.01 of FFO for every $200 million of assets acquired. Reggie will walk through how our most recent activity is meeting our goals, both in terms of volume and accretion, and then equally importantly, how we are planting seeds for continued superior growth down the road.
Finally, John Gottfried will walk through our balance sheet metrics and how we are positioned to continue to drive both internal and external growth with plenty of dry powder and diverse sources of capital. To conclude, our street retail investment thesis is working. The internal and external opportunities we see provide a clear line of sight into providing solid multi-year top-line growth, and then having that growth drop to the bottom line. With ample balance sheet capacity, we’re in a position to capitalize on the exciting opportunities that we have in front of us. I’d like to thank the team for their continued hard work. With that, I will hand the call over to AJ.
AJ Levine, Executive (Internal Growth/Leasing), Acadia Realty Trust: Thanks, Ken. Good morning, everyone. I’d like to start out with an update on internal growth with a focus on trends and performance on our high-growth streets. I’ll touch on some of our slower-to-recover markets with significant upside, namely San Francisco and North Michigan Avenue. I’ll finish with an update on Henderson Avenue in Dallas. Overall, another strong quarter of leasing across the board, street, suburban, both within the REIT portfolio as well as our investment management platform. Our total volume of signed leases in Q1 was an additional $3.5 million our share. We’ve grown our pipeline of new leases in advanced negotiation to $11.5 million, which is a net increase of nearly $2.5 Million above the previous quarter. As we sign leases, we are quickly reloading the pipeline and then some.
As Ken articulated, because of the historically strong supply-demand dynamic and the resilient high-income consumer that shops our streets, all signs indicate that we’ll be able to deliver similar results through the remainder of this year and beyond. In addition to an accelerating leasing velocity, we are also seeing a steady rise in market rents on our high-growth streets. We are currently negotiating new leases, fair market renewals, and pry loose mark-to-markets along several of our streets, including SoHo, Upper Madison Avenue, M Street, Armitage Avenue, and Melrose Place. This are all market that has experience several years of double digit rent growth. If we’re successful in signing these new deals, it will result in a weighted average spread of just over 40%. Now remember, street leases have 3% contractual growth.
A 40% spread after five years of 3% growth means that rents have grown closer to 60% over that time period. This is what we mean when we say that not all spreads are created equal. Incremental to the sector-leading growth that we’re seeing on our streets, we’re also continuing to build conviction around historically strong markets that are in the earlier stages of recovery, like San Francisco and North Michigan Avenue in Chicago. At our last update, we reported that since the start of 2025, we had signed about 90,000 sq ft of new leases across our two assets with LA Fitness Club Studio and T&T Supermarkets.
Since our last update, and following the end of the first quarter, we’ve added another 25,000 square feet by signing Sprouts Farmers Market, who will be joining Trader Joe’s and Club Studio at 555 Ninth Street. Like T&T and Club Studio, this will be their first store in San Francisco. What’s become clear is that tenants are strengthening their conviction around the recovery of San Francisco, and with another 70,000 square feet of space remaining to lease, in addition to some accretive pry loose opportunities, we are gaining increased confidence that we can continue to unlock the meaningful remaining embedded value within our two San Francisco centers. Now, right behind San Francisco is North Michigan Avenue, which continues to see steady improvement and has certainly moved beyond the green shoots phase of recovery.
We still have a ways to go, but foot traffic has returned to pre-2019 levels, and since the start of this year, there has been a noticeable increase in tenant demand. Over the last year, we’ve seen new store openings and new lease signings from top brands like Mango, Aritzia, Uniqlo, and American Eagle, and most recently, the 60,000-square-foot Candy Hall of Fame at 830 North Michigan Avenue. Even so, rents are still 50% below where they were at prior peak. North Michigan Avenue is an iconic, irreplaceable street, and we are confident that the recovery will continue to accelerate. When it does, we will be well-positioned to capture that upside. Finally, I’ll end with an update on Henderson Avenue in Dallas.
As a reminder, the vision on Henderson is to create a vibrant, walkable street curated with a mix of today’s most sought-after retailers and supplemented with dynamic and recognizable F&B. Mixing the best of what’s worked on streets like Armitage Avenue in Chicago, Bleecker Street in New York, Melrose Place in L.A., and M Street in D.C. In short, Dallas’ first and only true street retail shopping experience. The street is already off to a great start with tenants like Tecovas and Warby Parker producing sales that could already justify rents doubling. With 80% of our retail on the street now spoken for, our new leases are doing just that.
I can’t reveal the names of all of the brands that have committed, but to give you a flavor, the project will consist of a healthy mix of nationally recognized tenants like rag & bone, who is relocating from Highland Park Village, along with a collection of younger brands that have had success on some of our other high-growth streets, like Guizio, Cami, and Margot. We’re saving around 10% of our space for brands that are more local and authentic to Texas. Add in some fun, high-volume F&B like Prince Street Pizza, PopUp Bagels, and Salt & Straw Ice Cream, and you have the makings of a well-curated walkable street.
In summation, the key takeaway is that despite consistently high levels of leasing activity over the past several quarters, we continue to see meaningful runway ahead, both in terms of mark-to-market opportunity and ongoing lease-up of our high-growth streets, as well as tapping into markets that have more recently begun to show the signs of a strong recovery. As always, I’d like to thank the team for their hard work. With that, I will turn things over to Reggie.
Reggie Livingston, Executive (Acquisitions/Investment Management), Acadia Realty Trust: Thanks, AJ. Good morning, everyone. I’ll cover two things: our transaction activity for Q1 and through April, and then I’ll share some perspective on what we’re seeing in the market. On the transaction front, we’ve been incredibly busy year to date. We’ve closed over $1 billion in acquisitions and recapitalizations, gained footholds on two of the country’s premier luxury retail corridors, all while achieving our accretion and growth thresholds and building a pipeline that should maintain a high level of activity for the balance of the year. Let’s walk through some details, starting with the acquisitions not previously announced. At the end of the quarter, within our REIT portfolio, we made our inaugural investment on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach for the acquisition of 225 Worth for $43 million.
This street is one of the most irreplaceable luxury retail corridors in the country, and it has all the ingredients for continued rent growth, including strong-performing tenancy, a high-end customer base, and limited supply. This asset contains Gucci, J.McLaughlin, and G4, and possesses a meaningful mark-to-market opportunity that we’ll harvest in the near future. Our conviction on Worth goes beyond this single asset. We have an active pipeline in that corridor, and our strategy there mirrors what we’ve executed in other markets. Acquire a foundational position, build scale, and activate the benefits of concentration to drive returns over time. Subsequent to quarter end, also in our REIT portfolio, we closed on 428 Newbury for $109 million. These assets are anchored by Chanel and Cartier, two of the most sought-after luxury tenants in the world.
These buildings are between Arlington and Berkeley Streets on Newbury, one of the best concentrations of luxury retail on the East Coast. Most importantly, this asset has a meaningful value creation opportunity that we expect to harvest soon. The same scale thesis applies here. We understand the Newbury Street market and have relationships to create a path to building a greater presence on the corridor. For both Palm Beach and Boston, it’s important to note they adhere to our metrics of being accretive to NAV, hitting our FFO accretion target of a penny per $200 million, with CAGR in excess of 5%. On the investment management side, Q1 was defined by executing on recapitalizations. We formed a joint venture with TPG Real Estate that encompassed the recap of Avenue at West Cobb and six Fund V assets, a $440 million transaction.
The scale of this recap is a meaningful validation of our platform, our assets, and our relationships. We also completed the recap of Pinewood Square in Palm Beach County with private funds managed by Cohen & Steers in a $68 million transaction. This is our second recap with Cohen & Steers, a highly regarded investor, and their involvement reflects both the quality of the asset and the credibility of our business plan. These transactions, in part, demonstrate our incubated recap model at work and in total free up capital that we can accretively redeploy. Now, turning to what we’re seeing in the market, the retail investment landscape remains active, even as the macro backdrop has grown more complex.Supply remains constrained, new development is sparse, and institutional capital flows into quality retail continue to grow. None of the current macro noise has changed those underlying dynamics.
What that environment rewards, though, is exactly what we’ve built. Recall, in the street retail world, the majority of our acquisitions are off-market, and that sourcing advantage doesn’t diminish in periods of volatility. If anything, it improves as motivated sellers gravitate towards certainty of execution. This rewards us disproportionately because there are just less players in the street retail segment, and our pipeline reflects that reality. We have a number of opportunities in advanced stages of negotiation and will continue to underwrite to the same disciplined thresholds that have defined our recent activity. On the investment management side, while the institutional appetite remains elevated, so are the number of owners looking to monetize.
Owners without the capital, patience, or relationships to unlock value in their assets are looking for an exit, and that’s creating a compelling opportunity for a platform like ours that has all three. Our pipeline on this side is as active as it’s been. To close, as I said, we’ve been busy finding the right assets on the right corridors with the right growth profile while continuing to accretively build the investment management business. We expect this activity to continue as we’re on track to deliver transaction volume for the balance of the year consistent with our past activity. I want to thank the team for their hard work this quarter. With that, I’ll turn it over to John.
John Gottfried, Chief Financial Officer, Acadia Realty Trust: Thanks, Reggie, and good morning. Our first quarter results are clear. Our internal growth is accelerating, and we are achieving our external growth goals on both accretion and volume. These accomplishments are driving our bottom line earnings. Our year-over-year earnings are up 11%, with the acquisitions completed to date, we raised our full-year 2026 earnings guidance. I will start my remarks by laying out the building blocks for the remainder of the year, followed by an update on 2027, and then closing with the balance sheet. For those of you that know our approach towards earnings expectations, we set robust targets for ourselves, and thus makes it unlikely of raising our guidance, particularly so early in the year.
However, given the strength in our operations and the accretive acquisitions we’ve completed to date, we raised both the high and low of our guidance to $1.22-$1.26, representing 9% growth at the midpoint over the $1.14 of FFO we reported in 2025. With the simplified reporting that we rolled out last year, you can clearly see what’s driving that growth. Based on our latest model, here’s how that $0.10 of projected year-over-year growth breaks down. We expect that our internal NOI growth, inclusive of redevelopments, should contribute about $0.07-$0.09 of FFO. External growth is projected to add $0.04-$0.05, driven by the full-year impact of 2025 deals and those closed year-to-date in 2026.
The continued expansion and scaling of our investment management program should add another $0.01-$0.02. As we’ve previously discussed, partially offsetting our projected growth is approximately $0.04 that is embedded in our guidance from the anticipated conversion of the City Point loan in the second quarter. Again, while dilutive in the near term, it will ultimately be accretive as the asset stabilizes. The earnings growth that we expect to deliver in 2026 provides us with a roadmap for what we aim to achieve in 2027 and beyond. Before moving to same-store NOI, I want to give a few updates on our earnings model and anticipated quarterly FFO cadence for the balance of 2026.
We anticipate our quarterly run rate will be in the $0.30-$0.32 range for the balance of the year, which consistent with our past practice does not factor in additional acquisition accretion, notwithstanding the active pipeline our acquisition team is underwriting. Secondly, as I’ll discuss shortly, rent commencements from our signed, not yet open portfolio pipeline is weighted to the back half of the year, positioning us for strong embedded growth heading into 2027. I now want to give an update on occupancy, internal growth and same-property NOI. At quarter end, our REIT economic occupancy increased to 94%. As we have said repeatedly, not all occupancy is created equal. Our street and urban portfolio, our most valuable space, sequentially increased 140 basis points and 570 basis points from Q1 of last year.
We still have several hundred basis points of embedded upside with the portfolio 91.7% occupied as of March 31st. As outlined in our release, we ended the quarter with $10.5 million or approximately 5% of our ABR in our signed not open pipeline. We grew our pipeline by approximately 18% during the quarter, and that’s even after nearly 25% of our pipeline commenced in Q1. As AJ discussed, our leasing pipeline remains robust, and we anticipate that our SNO should continue to build over the next couple of quarters. I’ll now spend a moment to highlight a few key items on our $10.5 million pipeline for those updating models.
We anticipate that approximately 80% of our SNO, representing $7 million-$9 million of ABR, will commence during 2026, with the remaining balance targeted for the first half of 2027. I want to highlight that over $4 million of the $7 million-$9 million is projected to commence in the fourth quarter of this year, primarily from the anticipated openings of T&T Supermarket and LA Fitness’ Club Studios at our San Francisco redevelopment projects. When incorporating the timing of commencement, we expect approximately $2 million-$3 million of incremental ABR to be recognized in 2026, with the vast majority of that being in our same-store pool, which leaves us with $7 million-$8 million of embedded incremental ABR growth heading into 2027.
Lastly, on earnings flow-through, with nearly half of our SNO coming from our REIT redevelopment portfolio, we’re capitalizing certain costs, primarily interest and real estate taxes, not all of that incremental ABR flows to the bottom line. Of the $5.3 million of ABR in our SNO redevelopment pool, we expect to capitalize between $3 million-$4 million of cost on a full-yIar run rate basis. Moving on to an update on our 2026 same-store expectations. We remain on track to land at the midpoint of our guidance or 7%.
I mean, I will likely regret providing this level of quarterly granularity, giving it only takes a few hundred thousand dollars to move us 100 basis points in either direction. Based on our current model, we see same-store growth trending 6%-8% in Q2, 7%-9% in Q3, and 5%-7% in Q4, with our street and urban portfolio anticipated to outperform suburban by 400-500 basis points. Now moving on to our balance sheet. So far in 2026, and it’s still early, we have acquired over $600 million of REIT and investment management deals. We did so without issuing any equity.
With the available capacity on our revolver, unsettled forward equity, and anticipated proceeds from our structured finance and investment management businesses, we have all the accretive capital we need to fund our acquisition pipeline. As highlighted in our release, we completed the refinancing of our unsecured corporate credit facility, entering into a $1.4 billion agreement. As part of this refinancing, we tightened pricing, extended maturities, and increased our total borrowing capacity by $250 million to support our growth. The new facility was significantly oversubscribed, we strategically added two new banks to our incredible and long-standing lineup of capital partners. Following the completion of this facility, we have very manageable maturities and swap expirations over the next couple of years, which means our top-line earnings will largely drop to the bottom line.
In summary, we had an incredibly busy and productive start to the year. Our multi-year expectations of strong internal growth is intact, and we have a balance sheet that has ample capacity to support our expansion goals. With that, I will turn the call over to questions.
Operator: As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. In the interest of time, we ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up and rejoin the queue for any further questions. Our first question comes from Craig Mailman with Citi.
Craig Mailman, Analyst, Citi: Hey, guys. John, that was helpful going through the kind of the guidance detail there. Just kind of curious, you know, between AJ and Reggie, I know there’s not a lot incrementally for acquisitions. Maybe just to start there, Reggie, I think you said that activity for the balance of the year could be similar to what we’ve seen recently. I mean, in terms of magnitude on growth, maybe pro rata share, like goalpost, what you guys are looking at, what could conceivably close this year, and maybe what the earnings impact of that could be.
Reggie Livingston, Executive (Acquisitions/Investment Management), Acadia Realty Trust: Sure. I’ll focus on what I think could close this year. Taking a step back, run rate retail on the REIT portfolio side, we’ve done about $400 million or so the last year plus. We’ve done about $200 million of that so far this year. I think we could pencil in doing basically the same volume that we’ve done last year from a REIT portfolio side. On the investment management side, where we’ve averaged about $250 million+ or so the last 2.5, three years per year, I think we can do that as well. That’s by definition a little lumpier because we’re focused more on value add opportunities. I think that’s kind of how we think about it from a goalpost standpoint from a volume.
On the earnings side, Craig, I think the one thing, and we pointed out, is that our target, which is unchanged, is $0.01 of accretion, and that is both REIT. On a $200 billion worth of REIT acquisitions, our team is day one earnings accretion of $0.01 per $200. That same math, even though our pro rata share is much less of the equity, but when you factor in the fees, $200 million of investment management is also $0.01. In terms of earnings impact, you would just prorate that throughout the year, but those targets are unchanged.
Craig Mailman, Analyst, Citi: Okay. That’s helpful. John, you’re breaking up a little bit. I don’t know if it’s my line or yours, but just a heads up. Similarly on the leasing side, AJ, you said you guys are working on a fair bit of fair market value adjustment and some other deals. I mean, how much of those are already embedded in guidance versus could be incremental upside as we head into the back half of 2026 into early 2027?
John Gottfried, Chief Financial Officer, Acadia Realty Trust: Craig, are you referring to what’s in the pipeline of what could go be in the pipeline and converted to to show up in rents? Is that the question?
Craig Mailman, Analyst, Citi: Yeah. Like what’s actually considered in some of the metrics you guys talked about versus could be additive to that you guys don’t want to put in there yet because the predictability of it’s not great. Just kind of.
John Gottfried, Chief Financial Officer, Acadia Realty Trust: Yeah. Yeah. Got it. I think any leasing that we need to happen has already happened to hit the midpoint of our guidance, both on same store and earnings. Whatever AJ, if he gets something signed that is in his pipeline, and we get them open and operating, that would be additive to that, which in the street is possible.
AJ Levine, Executive (Internal Growth/Leasing), Acadia Realty Trust: Yeah. We’re typically fairly conservative with FMV assumptions, and it’s typically upside for us.
Craig Mailman, Analyst, Citi: All right. Great. Thank you, guys.
Operator: Our next question comes from Andrew Reale with Bank of America.
Andrew Reale, Analyst, Bank of America: Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe if you could talk about your new corridors, Palm Beach and Prime Newbury. I guess first, what’s the timeline for realizing the mark-to-market opportunities there that Reggie mentioned? Then are there any additional assets in the pipeline in either of those markets today? How scalable do you think those markets could ultimately be?
Reggie Livingston, Executive (Acquisitions/Investment Management), Acadia Realty Trust: Sure. I’ll start with the second one, Andrew. For us to identify a market is never just about one deal. We think, how can we amass 100, 200 plus over time so that we can enjoy the benefits of that scale that we’ve talked about being the first call for sellers, the first call for tenants and et cetera. We have an active pipeline that we feel pretty good about. We always gonna stay disciplined in our underwriting, as I’ve said before, but we think those markets we do, we think we can scale. Before we even talk about scaling, though, is do those markets have the same rent growth drivers and demand that we have in SoHo, in Georgetown, and our other markets? I think these corridors do. There’s tight supply.
The tenant demand is very high. The sales volume is there. Not only justify the rent run-up from previous years, but continued rent growth in the future years. We think both Worth Ave in Palm Beach and that block of Newbury and some of Newbury generally have those. We feel good about the opportunities that make sense there, and that we’ll be able to scale. To your first question, I don’t wanna get into too many specifics, but I think big picture, the opportunities for us to harvest mark-to-market opportunities and harvest six plus yields really is fact dependent. I think the framework and the way to think about all this is there’s a lot of things happening in these markets from that rent growth, from FMV resets.
A bunch of retailers are actually reaching out to us, even before their leases expire and say, "Hey, I wanna invest in my space, so let’s do an early renewal now." All of those things, in order to the benefit of us being able to achieve the yields and the yield in the near term instead of long term.
John Gottfried, Chief Financial Officer, Acadia Realty Trust: You know, just to add on to that, the way that, you know, from a modeling perspective, two thoughts is when we look at, and again, you should assume that in these instances, the lease would be below market. When we think of that and the, like, bookkeeping we do, we are conservative as to where we think the market is on day one. Just a rough rule of thumb that we think about is ideally, we wanna get to the sixes cash that Reggie referred to. Target is two years, but we’ll tolerate up to three or four years for the right deal and where we have the level of conviction. That’s in terms of timeline and what, you know, we do initially to establish really the gap yield, which would be that below market impact.
Andrew Reale, Analyst, Bank of America: Okay, that’s helpful. Thanks. John, I think it was last quarter, you said pry loose could potentially be the most impactful variable within the 5%-9% same store range, with the real benefit from that, you know, maybe accruing in 2027 or 2028. I mean, if you were to maximize the pry loose opportunity in the second half of this year, how should we think about quantifying .he NOI impact from that downtime?
John Gottfried, Chief Financial Officer, Acadia Realty Trust: Yeah. You know, I’ll go back to my remarks, is that we’re going to target the 7%, Andrew. I think that was one. We gave a wide range. I’ll start with our historical practice and maybe I’m not need to not be so stubborn. We could change our historical practice. We have not updated same store guidance, you know, once we’ve given that, which is why we’re doing it this quarter. I would say, assume we are targeting the 7%. The pry loose, I think is very real, very actionable. It’s not gonna deviate from the 7% target.
Reggie Livingston, Executive (Acquisitions/Investment Management), Acadia Realty Trust: Good luck getting John to count his chickens before they hatch.
Andrew Reale, Analyst, Bank of America: Fair enough. Thank you.
Operator: Our next question comes from Floris van Dijkum with Ladenburg Thalmann.
Floris van Dijkum, Analyst, Ladenburg Thalmann: Thanks. Morning, guys. Question, it doesn’t seem to get a lot of attention these days, but your Henderson Avenue development, it’s about $200 million. Should, you know, investors expect something like a 9% or 10% return on that? That’s what you’ve indicated the remaining ATM, the forward ATM is gonna be used to fund that. Maybe also talk a little bit about the timing of that development and what kind of rents you’re getting and how much of that is pre-leased.
John Gottfried, Chief Financial Officer, Acadia Realty Trust: Let me just start with the yields and timing, and then I’ll turn it over to AJ on the leasing specifics. We’ve put out there and we are on, if not ahead of target, that we think the development’s going to stabilize to an 8%-10%. Very consistent with what you shared. Other point of that, Floris, is that’s the 8%-10% on the dollars we’re spending incrementally. That is not factoring in is that we have a whole other portfolio of assets that what A.J’s about to share with you is that that whole entire portfolio of assets is proving out to be very below market, that we are not factoring in the lift from the balance of the portfolio that the development is gonna add to that.
In terms of timeline, we’ll be through our part of construction, back half of this year, begin delivering space, stabilizing in 2027 and up and running in 2028. I’ll let AJ talk about where we are in leasing and status there. In terms of, you know, in terms of what we laid out as expectations, we are on track, if not ahead.
AJ Levine, Executive (Internal Growth/Leasing), Acadia Realty Trust: Yeah, I mean, I would say the interest and excitement on Henderson has been far beyond, I think, what we even initially imagined. I think what you have to remember, and we’ve said it before, is that existing sales on the street are already in excess of some of the sales we’re seeing even in markets like Armitage Avenue, and rents on Henderson are half of what we have currently on Armitage Avenue. I mentioned in my prepared remarks, you know, there’s already justification for rents doubling on the street.
Some of the more recent leases that we’re signing are actually doing just that. You know, rag & bone obviously having a lot of success over at Highland Park Village, deciding to shift to merchandising that’s a little bit more in line with what they prefer from a co-tenancy standpoint. Some of the younger brands like Margot and Guizio. I’m anxious to give you more names. I’ve shared what I can at this point, we’re off to a great start.
Floris van Dijkum, Analyst, Ladenburg Thalmann: Great. Maybe as a follow-up question, if I can ask. Wanted to touch base on Chicago. I know you talked a little bit about the momentum, and I think TPG has bought into your JV, if I’m not mistaken, at 717. What is the appetite of, you know, those kinds of capital partners to perhaps take advantage of some of the opportunistic investment opportunities that could be achievable in that market? Maybe talk about some of that, you know. Where’s the upside, or is there only? ’Cause all we hear about is typically when we talk to people, they say Chicago is terrible. You know, what has changed and why is it not a bad place to be?
John Gottfried, Chief Financial Officer, Acadia Realty Trust: Let me start with, of course, the recap with TPG was Fund V, nothing to do with Fund IV, so that we still, everything we own, 717 is in Fund IV and still held by Fund IV. Just to clarify there’s been no transaction. AJ.
Floris van Dijkum, Analyst, Ladenburg Thalmann: Okay.
Ken Bernstein, President and Chief Executive Officer, Acadia Realty Trust: Yeah, I just wanna, you know, correct one thing. I mean, Chicago is not terrible. It’s, you know, been a bad place to be. Certainly in our neighborhoods, we’ve had many years of success there. You know, the issue with North Michigan Avenue has never been an issue of fundamentals, right? Street footfalls are back in excess of 2019 volumes. The sales are seeing, you know, very real growth over the last few years. It’s really always just been a challenge of difficult spaces, multi-level retail, historically been, you know, those flagship locations that have been sort of more difficult to backfill, but those spaces are filling in. I mentioned some names in Uniqlo, you know, H&M coming back to the street, American Eagle, Aritzia, large format spaces.
As those fill in, we’re going to continue to see increase in activity. Of course, the challenge of having three underperforming malls on the street, you know, hasn’t done us any favors. As those pieces start to get figured out, we’re just going to see more and more momentum on the street.
Floris van Dijkum, Analyst, Ladenburg Thalmann: Thanks.
Operator: Our next question comes from Todd Thomas with KeyBanc Capital Markets.
Andrew Reale, Analyst, Bank of America0: Thanks. Good morning. First, I just wanted to ask about the, if there’s any more markets or corridors that you’re evaluating today. Just curious if we should expect some additional inaugural investments in the quarters ahead as we contemplate some additional investment activity. Then, Ken, maybe a bigger picture question just for you or Reggie. You talked about the increased competition for open air centers. I think you referenced that in context of speaking about Fund V assets, for example. You indicated that you’re still finding opportunities on the street and urban segment a little less crowded. Why do you think it’s less crowded?
Why is the competition lower and the acquisition environment seems more favorable, you know, where there are strong IRR and risk-adjusted return opportunities, good rent growth? You talked about the escalators. Just curious to get your thoughts there.
Ken Bernstein, President and Chief Executive Officer, Acadia Realty Trust: Sure. Let me make sure I understand. The first part of the question, are you referring to our investment management platform and bringing in additional institutional partners for additional initiatives?
Andrew Reale, Analyst, Bank of America0: No. just, you know, you know, you made additional investments in Newbury, but, you know, sort of characterized it as like a newer market and your inaugural investment in Palm Beach. Just curious, you know, as we think about additional investments, you know, whether there’s more markets being contemplated today, more corridors that we should expect to see the company enter?
Ken Bernstein, President and Chief Executive Officer, Acadia Realty Trust: Yeah. I’ll tackle both and Reggie chime in. In terms of additional markets, we spend a fair amount of time, AJ and I especially, talking to our retailers of which markets are perhaps ones you might wanna be in and which ones are going from nice to have to need to have. In the case of Palm Beach, it is transitioning from a seasonal market, and for a variety of reasons that we all read about, it’s now becoming a must-have market. In those instances where we see fragmented ownership, where our retailers are saying, "Boy, we would welcome institutional high-quality ownership like Acadia or others," that is where we spend the majority of our time and attention. In some markets, Dallas, there was no place to buy, so there we are building and creating that street retail environment.
For Palm Beach, Worth Avenue checks that box clearly, as does Newbury in Boston. There are probably a half a dozen, perhaps a dozen additional markets that would fit into that spectrum that we’re constantly spending time on. What we’re saying is, and Reggie touched on this, is there enough assets for us to acquire over a realistic period of time that we can build adequate scale? Is there a spine? Are there barriers to entry on a given corridor so that it just doesn’t keep on wandering up and down, left and right, east or west?
When it does, in the case of Worth Avenue and Newbury and as I said, about a half a dozen others, you should expect over time that we’ll focus on those. We don’t have to add new markets in order for us to achieve our goals of being the premier owner operator of street retail in the United States, it’d be nice to have a few more, and from our retailers’ perspective, they would welcome that. In terms of competition, street retail has a longer learning curve. It is pretty easy to underwrite some formats of open air retail, that’s why you saw capital move first and foremost back to supermarket anchor.
You still need to underwrite thoughtfully and carefully your supermarket, but all of the things we talk about in terms of our tenants, you don’t really hear in terms of the satellites. That dry cleaner, that coffee shop and otherwise, we don’t get into that same level of underwriting, so it’s just lower barriers to entry. For street retail, you have to understand the markets, you have to understand the tenants, you have to understand the local laws. It has taken us well over a decade to get to the point where we are right now. For a lot of institutional owners, gearing up is just too difficult. They’d rather partner with us or otherwise. We are certainly, we like our positioning in the street retail format.
That being said, as Reggie’s pointed out, team’s been very active in other formats of open air retail. Thankfully, volume is coming back. We’ll achieve our volume goals, notwithstanding it being more competitive. We just have to work a little harder on it. So far so good.
Andrew Reale, Analyst, Bank of America0: Okay, that’s helpful. Then John, you know, just real quick, appreciate the update on City Point as it pertains to the guidance. What’s the ABR upside opportunity there today? You’re at a little over $21 million of ABR. Where does that stabilize and what’s the current thinking around the stabilization timeframe?
John Gottfried, Chief Financial Officer, Acadia Realty Trust: In terms of stabilization, Todd, it’s one we’ve always thought of in two distinct phases. I think the first phase, and call that in the next 18-24 months, where we should be able to add 10%-20% of current ABR. We should add our goal, our strategy, and our leasing plan, add that up over the next year or two. Secondly, again, the neighborhood is still filling in, proof of concept. We have some leases that we’ve signed that will be rolling. Second stabilization, you know, we think that. AJ, chime in. We think that we add another 30%-40% off of that once we get to that second level of stabilization after we get through this first one.
AJ Levine, Executive (Internal Growth/Leasing), Acadia Realty Trust: Yeah, for sure. I mean, the last 18 months have been pivotal at City Point. you know, between Sephora and Swarovski, most recently, Warby Parker, Van Leeuwen, it really is starting to get that Armitage M Street feel. Really, at this point, it’s just about finding the right retailers, you know, completing that right mix of merchandising. Yes, there’s a lot of runway ahead there as well.
Todd, what we look at to give us conviction there is the sales that are being generated. You know, we don’t wanna give individual tenant sales, but you could take a guess as to who they are. They are doing the increasing volumes. That is attracting the attention to retailers. That is what’s giving us the conviction that it’s a matter of when, not if.
Andrew Reale, Analyst, Bank of America0: Okay, that’s helpful. Thank you.
Operator: Our next question comes from Michael Mueller with JPMorgan.
Michael Mueller, Analyst, JPMorgan: Hi. I guess first, you mentioned 8% to 10% returns for the Henderson expansion. What are some of the moving parts that put you at an eight versus a 10? I mean, is there that much variability in the rents being discussed?
Ken Bernstein, President and Chief Executive Officer, Acadia Realty Trust: Yeah. Michael, some would be cost, some would be timing of open of when we declare we are at stabilization. If you really looked at the math, when you’re doing a full lease-up like this, 200 basis points of variability feels normal. Maybe it’s a little wide so that we’re being a little conservative, but it’s not appropriate to say we’re getting to nine right now. I think give us a little latitude, and hopefully, the tenant sales performance that we have seen so far, the tenant enthusiasm that we’re seeing. A lot of it is just logistics. How long does it take to get the various different tenants open? A few months delay could change those numbers 10, 20 basis points one direction or another.
Michael Mueller, Analyst, JPMorgan: Okay. I guess second question, you now have, what, three buildings on Newbury, the one in Palm Beach. I know the goal is to scale that, but could you operate those buildings efficiently over the longer term if you couldn’t find additional acquisitions? Do you really need to be, you know, have five or 10 assets in a market to kind of have it work over the long term?
Ken Bernstein, President and Chief Executive Officer, Acadia Realty Trust: Yeah, we could absolutely operate them. When I refer to, and when we have referred to benefits of scale, it’s very different than G&A as a percentage of assets in a given corridor. While there are benefits to scale like that, and that’s how we traditionally in our industry think about it, what we’re seeing is very different. What we’re seeing is when we can control enough buildings on a given corridor, as we have in Armitage Avenue, as we have on M Street, as you will see us continue to do on Green Street in N.Y. and elsewhere, we can then pull other levers that enable us to in fact get higher rents more efficiently, less downtime. AJ and team are constantly shuffling tenants. We just had a meeting this morning on this, where some tenants wanna be larger, others are ready to leave.
By having enough choices on a given corridor and being a trusted landlord for these retailers, the benefits of scale that we’re referring to are not cost related. It’s really the ability to drive rents and NOI over time, and that requires more than just a couple buildings on any corridor. In order for those benefits of scale, if I’m referring to it, I look forward to Reggie and team adding to both of these corridors over time.
Michael Mueller, Analyst, JPMorgan: Okay. Thank you.
Operator: That concludes today’s question and answer session. I’d like to turn the call back to Ken Bernstein for closing remarks.
Ken Bernstein, President and Chief Executive Officer, Acadia Realty Trust: Great. Thank you, everyone. Look forward to speaking with you next quarter.
Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.