Earnings call transcript: Alpine Income’s Q3 2025 results show mixed signals

Alpine Income Property Trust Inc reported its third-quarter 2025 earnings, revealing a mixed performance. The company posted an actual earnings per share (EPS) of -$0.09, significantly missing the forecast of -$0.01. Revenue also fell short of expectations, coming in at $14.56 million compared to the anticipated $14.67 million. Following the announcement, Alpine’s stock decreased by 1.04% to $13.94, reflecting investor concerns over the earnings miss. According to InvestingPro data, the company maintains a significant 8.23% dividend yield and has raised its dividend for six consecutive years, demonstrating commitment to shareholder returns despite current challenges.

Key Takeaways

• Alpine Income missed both EPS and revenue forecasts for Q3 2025.
• Stock price fell by 1.04% in response to the earnings announcement.
• The company is expanding into new property types beyond retail.
• Alpine is focusing on high-yield loan investments and asset dispositions.

Company Performance

Alpine Income Property Trust Inc’s performance this quarter was marked by strategic moves to expand its portfolio and improve credit quality. Despite these efforts, the company faced challenges in meeting financial expectations. The focus on recycling the portfolio and increasing yields through loan activities is central to Alpine’s strategy, although this has yet to translate into improved earnings. InvestingPro analysis shows the company achieved impressive revenue growth of 17.14% in the last twelve months, with liquid assets exceeding short-term obligations, indicating strong operational execution despite earnings challenges.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $14.56 million, below the forecast of $14.67 million.
• Earnings per share: -$0.09, missing the forecast of -$0.01.
• Operating expenses reduced by approximately $800,000 annually.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Alpine Income’s actual EPS of -$0.09 was a significant miss against the forecasted -$0.01, resulting in an 800% negative surprise. Revenue also fell short by 0.75%, marking a challenging quarter for the company. This performance contrasts with previous quarters where Alpine has generally met or exceeded expectations.

Market Reaction

Alpine’s stock responded negatively to the earnings report, dropping by 1.04% to $13.94. The stock has been trading near its 52-week low of $13.10, highlighting investor caution. The decline reflects concerns over the company’s ability to meet financial targets and sustain growth. InvestingPro analysis indicates the stock is currently trading near its Fair Value, while analyst targets range from $15 to $19, suggesting potential upside. For deeper insights into Alpine’s valuation and more exclusive ProTips, subscribers can access the comprehensive Pro Research Report available on InvestingPro.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, Alpine Income is maintaining a cautious outlook. The company plans potential loan sales before the year-end and continues to invest in high-credit assets. While EPS forecasts for upcoming quarters are modest, Alpine remains focused on balancing net lease and loan investments. InvestingPro data shows the company maintains a Fair overall financial health score, with analysts predicting a return to profitability this year. The company’s current ratio of 1.21 indicates adequate liquidity to support its strategic initiatives.

Executive Commentary

"We’re getting double-digit unlevered yields on assets that will sell for really, really low cap rates," said John, an executive at Alpine. This highlights the company’s strategy of focusing on high-yield investments. He also noted the potential for dividend increases, stating, "As we progress here and earnings grow, there’ll be pressure to raise a dividend just based on what we need to pay out as a REIT."

Risks and Challenges

• Market volatility may impact asset valuations and investor sentiment.
• Increased competition in the real estate sector could pressure margins.
• Economic downturns could affect tenant credit quality and rental income.
• Interest rate fluctuations may influence loan and investment returns.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about Alpine’s loan strategies and the rationale behind higher interest rates on short-duration loans. Executives clarified their investment and disposition guidance, emphasizing the focus on portfolio composition and tenant credit ratings.

Full transcript - Alpine Income Property Trust Inc (PINE) Q3 2025:

Conference Call Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question or a comment at this time, please press star one-one on your telephone. If your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue. Please press star one-one again. We’ll pause for a moment while we compile our Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Michael Goldsmith with UBS. Your line is open.

Good morning. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. A lot of investment activity, both during the quarter and subsequent to quarter end. Can you just provide a little color in how you’re thinking about funding all of this activity?

John, Executive/Leadership: Hey, Michael. It’s John. Thanks. You know, look, we, as you know, we’ve been very busy on the recycling side. Some of that’s going to come from asset sales as we keep on continuing to increase the credit quality of our portfolio, and then a little bit of this is our loans maturing. Basically, a little bit is going to be net growth in anticipation of additional sales. A little bit of balance on both sides.

Got it. Thanks for that, John. You know, all this loan activity, you’re seeing really nice yields on that. I guess the way it cuts the other way is it can generate lumpiness in the quarters as they come due. Can you talk a little bit about how you’re thinking about managing that and lease expiration and these loan expirations just to ensure the AFFO doesn’t move around too much?

Yeah. Obviously a good question. I mean, when we started this kind of loan program about three years ago, that was a little bit of the pushback, was, well, you can’t replace these loans at these rates. Here we are, we’re doing it with really existing relationships without even trying. Certainly, as we see more opportunities, part of that funding mechanism that Phil mentioned is selling off a senior pieces of these loans. These loans are very bite size, and there’s a lot of capital out there. There’s a lot of opportunity. I would say I’m not worried about replacing these and having kind of earnings coming down because these are one-time sort of opportunities. We’re seeing a strong pipeline of super high-quality kind of assets and sponsorships.

Got it. If you’re doing this without really trying, it’s exciting to see what you do when you put some effort into it. I’m just kidding. Thank you very much. Good luck in the fourth quarter.

Thank you.

Conference Call Operator: One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from RJ Milligan with Raymond James. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning, guys. John, with the recent activity now in residential development, I think you guys have a loan in industrial. Can you tell us how you’re thinking about other property types and if you’re going to continue to pursue things outside of retail?

John, Executive/Leadership: Yeah. It’s not, it’s not, you know, by design going out here, just these, you know, unique opportunities with very strong sponsors and very, you know, strong assets. The industrial property that we did in Fremont outside of San Francisco, that was actually a retail property that the sponsor is basically converting to industrial to a higher and best use. Under part of our underwriting on that is if we ever had to foreclose as roughly, you know, 50% of the acquisition, it could still be retail and work on our basis. To answer your question, we’re going to stay more focused on the retail side for sure. If we see unique opportunities and they’re short duration, we’re not opposed to taking on those opportunities.

Okay. That’s helpful. Phil, you talked about some of the sources of capital next year, some of the loan maturities, potential asset sales. Should we expect that to get reinvested or will those proceeds be used to pay down debt, lower leverage? You know.

Phil, Financial Executive: A little bit of both, but I think first they’re going to get reinvested into a lot of the loans that were recently done, RJ. The maturities coming back from the 2026 loans are going to, we’re just kind of proactively redeploying that capital a little early with the loans going out first, the new loans going out first. A lot of that’s going to just recycle into that. On the margin, you could see leverage take down a little bit.

Okay. That’s helpful. Thanks, Chris.

Conference Call Operator: Thanks. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Alex Fagan with Baird. Your line is open.

Good morning, and thanks for taking my question. On the luxury residential development in Austin, can you talk about how you got comfortable with the loan and what stage of development it currently is at?

John, Executive/Leadership: Yeah. We’re familiar, if you think back at our origins of CTO and when I got here 14 years ago, we had 14,000 acres of land in Daytona Beach to sell. We are very familiar with residential lot developments through that experience. With regards to kind of where this project is, it’s really at the finish line of delivering lots. Actually, there’ll be some lot sales starting next week, in fact. It’s really kind of coming in at the late stage and not on the early stage.

Nice. On that loan, how much of the loan are you looking to sell?

Probably look to sell potentially 50% of it. It really depends on how fast the proceeds come back. It could be less, but potentially 50% up to 50%.

Nice. Switching gears a bit, with the vacant assets that were sold in the quarter, how much do we need to remove from operating expenses that you’re carrying?

Phil, Financial Executive: Yeah. This is Phil. The two largest vacant properties we have are the Theater Marina, which was sold, that had an annual run rate on the expense side of about $400,000. The one that we have left that’s large is the former Party City that also has a run rate of close to $400,000 on an annual basis. If you were to run rate the current quarter, that’ll come down another about $400,000 on an annual basis once Party City is sold.

Wait, and Party City wasn’t sold this quarter?

It was not. Marina was sold in the quarter. It was sold early in the quarter, so pretty much the full impact of that is reflected. Party City is not sold yet.

Okay. There were two vacant assets sold in the quarter. Is the other one just minor?

Yeah. We have, no, those are the two largest, Marina and Party City. We have a few. We had former convenience stores that are really small. We sold one during the quarter. There’s two left. Altogether, those don’t even come up to $100,000 on an annual run rate. They’re very small and on the margin.

Got it. Thank you, guys.

Conference Call Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Rob Stevenson with Janney Montgomery Scott. Your line is open.

Good morning, guys. Is the sale of the large loan interest that you may do, is that in the disposition guidance, or are dispositions just properties in terms of the guidance?

Phil, Financial Executive: If we were, it’s not, it would be on the high end, Rob, if that happened, or exceeding the high end if it happens before the end of the year. The timing on it is a little hard to predict. It could be just before the end of the year, or it could be a little bit after the end of the year. If it were to happen before the end of the year, that would put us on the high end or over the high end of guidance on the dispos side.

Okay. You would classify that as a disposition?

Yes. We’ve historically put dispositions of loans with properties there. If you look at guidance, we kind of added a line for that, a little bucket, when we put year-to-date actuals. There was a line that had loan sales and it showed zero, just to kind of help clarify that we do kind of look at that as a disposition. If the loan one were to happen, we would probably be just over our high end.

Okay. The reason why I ask is if I look at the year-to-date investment and disposition volumes versus the guidance, they’re sort of implying between $50 million and $65 million of net investments in the fourth quarter. You’ve got $27.5 million in terms of rough numbers from the proceeds from the repayment of Publix and Verizon. Just trying to figure out how you’re going to finance that, especially given where the stock price is. I don’t know, John, if you’re comfortable issuing equity here or whether or not you guys just use the line, but was sort of curious as to how you guys are thinking about the sort of incremental there and where does sort of leverage peak out at here in the fourth quarter, if you do decide to fund any of those net investments on the line?

Yeah. Just before, I’ll let John answer. On the investments, you know, we always put the full amount for the properties, obviously. For the loans, we put the origination or the initial amount committed. You know, today we’re sitting at almost $200 million if you include all the subsequent activity on investments. Of that, $130 million, $135 million is loans, Rob, but only $72 million have funded so far. We also, in the guidance, put in brackets there kind of on the loans just to help clarify because it’s a great question, you know, how much of the loans have funded year to date. The full amount of that won’t fund because the loans won’t fully fund by the end of the year.

Okay. The net would wind up being lower than that sort of $50 to $65 million that you’re implying because that’s including the full value?

Yeah, I mean, there could be $50 million, $60 million of that that’s loans that are not funded.

Okay. That’s helpful because it was looking like the leverage was going to peak out at something more substantial here if you guys did it all on the line.

There could be $50 to $60 million of that number that’s loan-related that’s unfunded by year-end. On top of that, you could also see like an A note sale prior to the end of the year that would further help lighten that load for the funding.

Okay. John, what is sort of left within the property portfolio that you want to sell? Is this going through and, you know, sort of cleaning up anything remaining? Is it whittling down some of the dollar stuff? How are you thinking about, you know, when you look at dispositions, not only in the fourth quarter, but in 2026, what are you sort of thinking that you’re going to wind up selling? You know, where is the market for those types of assets today?

John, Executive/Leadership: Yeah. As we discussed previously, we still have some Walgreens that we definitely are moving through. We, you know, dollar stores, as you hit on, certainly will be something we’ll trim back on. There’s some other, you know, that we’ve sold, Advance Auto Parts and that sort of things and Tractor Supply. Those sort of assets will continue to kind of grind through, if you will, as we see good pricing. It’s just really using that as a way to kind of reinvest in some of the high credits that we put on this quarter, and loans and so forth. You’ll see us be active at the end of the year here with continuingly bringing in some real super high-quality type credits. We’re looking forward to kind of what this company looks like starting next year.

Given the acquisition of the Lowe’s, was that opportunistic or, just from your standpoint, is the property acquisitions going forward going to be more targeted towards the higher credit quality and basically investment grade and above quality tenants? Are you still looking to acquire stuff across the spectrum on a property-specific basis?

Yeah. On the Lowe’s, that was off-market. It was relationship-driven. We had seen these assets before, a couple of years ago, and they were pulled off the market. We’re extremely excited about having those in our portfolio. With regards to, you’ll see more of the high-quality, credit, big box sort of assets coming in. You probably won’t see us be active in buying a generic tractor supply. Clearly, we don’t have any car washes. We like that distinction, that no car washes in the portfolio. We feel like we’re set up pretty strong to kind of offer investors something a little bit different. Getting the Lowe’s and Dick’s in the top five just gives investors an exposure that they can’t get in other locations.

Okay. Last one for me, is all of Beachside open and producing at this point, or is there still some of that stuff that’s down, and that you’re getting insurance payments on?

No, it’s all been open for a while. I mean, they opened those up less than four months after the hurricane last year. Interestingly enough, they still, when they opened, they weren’t obviously as polished looking as they were previous to the hurricane, but they did better sales than they did pre-hurricane. A lot of pent-up demand from customers and, unfortunately, some of their competition did not reopen. It just kind of drove more traffic to those restaurants.

Okay. Rent coverage today is actually higher than where it was pre-hurricane?

Yes.

Okay. Thanks, guys. Appreciate the time and have a great weekend.

You too.

Conference Call Operator: One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Gerard Mitchell with Alliance Global Partners. Your line is open.

Thank you. Good morning. I wanted to ask you if you had any update on your properties that are leased to At Home?

John, Executive/Leadership: Yes. Those properties, as we kind of, the one is in Concord, North Carolina, that could be sold in the not too distant future. The others are a same situation where we’re monitoring what At Home’s doing. If they come back, we’re working on replacement tenants. The idea would be if At Home vacated one of the properties, we would have a replacement tenant in, and then we would sell it at a better cap rate than as an At Home. It’s a manageable exposure and potential upside.

Okay. Second question. I want to go back to the two loans that you did after September. The interest rates on both of them are higher than the year-to-date loan activity. Can you provide some color on why the rates were higher at 17% and 16%?

Phil, you want to handle it?

Phil, Financial Executive: Yeah, he was just asking about why the interest rates on the residential and the mixed-use are significantly higher than the blended rate for the portfolio.

John, Executive/Leadership: Yeah. On that, basically, because it’s such a short-duration loan, to give you more background than maybe you want, the competition for a loan for that sort of product would be mainly from an opportunity fund or a credit fund. Those funds really aren’t looking to invest where the duration is less than two years in order to get a multiple. We’re able to give a highly flexible loan, but for that, we charge a much higher rate. Just the flexibility of our loan and the short duration gives us that higher interest rate investment.

All right. That’s all I had. Thank you.

Conference Call Operator: One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from John Masaka with B. Riley Securities. Your line is open.

Phil, Financial Executive: Good morning.

Morning.

Given all of the investment activity on the loan front, particularly subsequent to quarter end, do you view that as maybe kind of the max level you want to be at in terms of a loan balance if this all kind of blends out? Or could you pursue more of that and become, I guess, maybe more of like a mixed loan net lease type REIT? It feels like the amount of loan investments are starting to, certainly in terms of the investment activity, outweigh the net lease transactions.

John, Executive/Leadership: I would say that it just kind of really came together here this last quarter. The loan activity could tick up from here for sure, as it’s a little bit in anticipation of things burning off, paying down, paying off. We are super active on the core net lease side with larger type assets. You’ll see this similar balance, but we think we’re delivering, and we know we’re delivering, really strong free cash flow and high earnings. There are other net lease REITs out there that do the loan program as well. You have REITs like Vichy that have a balance of net lease and loans. It’s not like we’re in a new frontier here.

Phil, Financial Executive: No, it’s true. I just remember thinking, and maybe I’m misremembering, the loans were kind of an opportunistic thing a couple of years ago, and now it feels like they’ve become a bigger part of the investment strategy. I’m wondering if that’s something you view as permanent on a go-forward basis or if it’s still something that’s temporary where you found this kind of opportunistic way to accretively deploy your capital even in a, you know, a challenged equity market.

John, Executive/Leadership: No, it’s definitely a good point. Yeah. When we were opportunistically thinking that it was like a one-time opportunity, it’s become repeat. Customers are coming back to us because of the flexibility and the speed that we can transact on. They’re willing to pay a higher rate. As you know, we get right of first refusal on acquiring these assets. If the market stalls and cap rates tick up, we have the opportunity to bring these into our portfolio. Like I’ve said before, we’re getting paid a much higher yield than going out and buying some sort of generic net lease property out in the middle of nowhere. We’re basically in Austin with very opportunistic type yields with very high-quality sponsor and high-quality asset. The Publix that we had pay off in Charlotte, a Publix in Charlotte, I think that paid off because they sold it at a 5.25% cap.

These are, we’re getting double-digit unlevered yields on assets that will sell for really, really low cap rates. It’s great to see the opportunities that we’re able to kind of, it’s become more of a permanent fixture as the sponsors are still very active in the development side on these credit tenants. The banking system just really is slower, less proceeds. We’re just basically providing an answer to their capital needs in a much more efficient fashion.

Phil, Financial Executive: Okay. Understood. Maybe on a very micro level, with Cornerstone Exchange, pretty significant jump up in the amount you’re kind of lending on that project. Why, I guess, maybe why did it increase by so much?

John, Executive/Leadership: They ended up signing some additional leases. As they’ve proven out their development with leases, we wouldn’t loan on it until they have a signed lease. That’s what happened. The development’s gotten larger as they’ve signed leases.

Phil, Financial Executive: Yep. That makes sense, and that’s it for me. Thank you very much.

John, Executive/Leadership: Great. Thanks.

Conference Call Operator: One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Craig Coursera with Lucid Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Yeah. Hey, good morning, guys. John, I want to circle back with a few questions on the Austin loans. It sounds like you’re not taking any entitlement or approval risk, at least on phase one. Is that a fair assessment? Does phase two need to be approved?

John, Executive/Leadership: It’s a fair assessment on both. You know, the entitlements are there for both phases and everything needed to basically deliver.

Okay. Great. What is the current LTV at those loans, you know.

I would put that one in kind of on a discount NTV basis, we’re in the 70s.

Okay, if you were to sell the senior tranche or a portion of those loans, and I think Phil mentioned it might be upwards of 50%, what would your yield be if you’re holding the junior piece? You know.

I don’t want to go out there. I mean, it’ll be higher. I don’t want to give you specific numbers.

Fair enough. All right. Changing gears, to Lake Coxway, mixed-use development. Is that just raw land now, or has the developer started, or kind of where in the process is that development?

Yeah. The developer has started. We’re coming in when they really need to start doing some additional work and delivering pads and that sort of thing.

Okay. That’s it for me. Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

Conference Call Operator: One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Barry Oxford with Colliers International. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks, guys. John, real quick, a couple of questions on the dividend. Given what I’m hearing on the conference call, you want to retain as much capital as possible. Is it fair to say that, you know, even though you could raise the dividend, for lack of a better word, substantially, any dividend increase will probably be minimal because you want to retain as much capital from an asset allocation?

John, Executive/Leadership: That’s right. As we progress here and earnings grow, there’ll be pressure to raise a dividend just based on what we need to pay out as a REIT.

Right. You don’t run afoul of the REIT rules.

We don’t want to pay a check to the IRS. We’d rather give it to our shareholders.

Right. One thing that I noticed in the press release was the credit-rated tenants. Now, your investment-grade tenants, the percent of the portfolio was still roughly the same, but you had a fairly good drop with the credit-rated tenants. What was going on there?

Phil, Financial Executive: Just the credit-rated as a % of the total portfolio. At the end of the last quarter, it was 51%.

Yeah, it went from 81 to 66.

Oh, from the credit-rated.

Yeah, the credit is fine.

That was more, Barry, that’s more the Walgreens and the like that used to have a credit rating dropping them that were very, very low and had gone from credit rated to, you know, not or from investment-grade to not investment-grade, but were still carrying a rating. It’s more for, related to a couple of tenants like that, like At Home, Walgreens, and such, dropping the credit rating altogether. That’s what caused that decrease.

Okay. Makes sense. All right, guys. Thanks. Have a good weekend.

You’re welcome.

John, Executive/Leadership: Thanks.

Conference Call Operator: I’m not showing any further questions at this time. As such, this does conclude today’s presentation. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect and have a wonderful day.

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