EPR Properties at BofA Conference: Strategic Shift and Growth Plans

On Tuesday, 09 September 2025, EPR Properties (NYSE:EPR) presented at the BofA Securities 2025 Global Real Estate Conference. The company outlined its strategic outlook for 2026, emphasizing diversification and growth beyond theaters. While EPR is optimistic about its acquisition strategy and financial health, challenges in discretionary spending were noted.

Key Takeaways

• EPR Properties plans to close a $200 million ground lease transaction, reducing leverage below five times.
• The company aims for a $500 million annual acquisition run rate, focusing on experiential assets.
• EPR’s portfolio diversification targets a 20% composition in theaters.
• The company anticipates 4-5% FFO growth and is planning for 60% equity and 40% debt funding.
• AI initiatives are being integrated across departments to enhance operational efficiency.

Financial Results

• Casino Ground Lease: EPR expects a $200 million return from a ground lease transaction, anticipated to close this month at an attractive cap rate.
• Leverage: The transaction is set to bring leverage below five times, with a target range of 5x to 5.6x.
• Free Cash Flow: EPR generates $130 to $150 million in free cash flow beyond current obligations.
• Rent Coverage: Overall rent coverage improved in Q2, with theater rent coverage surpassing 2019 levels.
• Percentage Rents: The Regal restructure is performing as expected, although some percentage rents from Q1 will not recur.

Operational Updates

• Acquisition Target: EPR aims to achieve a $500 million annual acquisition run rate.
• Theater Dispositions: Most vacant theaters have been disposed of, leaving four operating theaters.
• Cartwright Water Park Hotel: The hotel operates at break-even to slightly negative due to union labor costs.
• Portfolio Composition: EPR targets a portfolio reflecting the investable universe of experiential businesses, aiming for 20% in theaters.

Future Outlook

• Growth Strategy: The focus will be on acquisitions rather than development for impactful growth in 2026.
• Capital Allocation: Future acquisitions will be funded with 60% equity and 40% debt.
• Investment Spreads: EPR targets a minimum investment spread of 100 basis points, historically achieving 150-175 basis points.
• Rent Escalators: Rent escalators are expected to be slightly above 2%, with a $6 million annual AMC rent increase effective July 1.

Q&A Highlights

• Investment Capacity: EPR has the capacity to invest more than $500 million annually.
• Percentage Rents: Viewed as an inflation protector, not underwritten except for the Regal restructure.
• Interest Rate Outlook: Long-term debt rates are expected to remain flat or rise when the Fed cuts rates.
• AI Initiatives: Increased spending on AI initiatives across departments is planned.

For further insights, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript.

Full transcript - BofA Securities 2025 Global Real Estate Conference:

Yana Gallen, Analyst, Bank of America: Welcome to BofA’s 2025 Global Real Estate Conference. I’m Yana Gallen, and I cover the net lease REITs over at Bank of America. I’m very honored to be here today with EPR Properties. We have Chairman and CEO Greg Silvers, CFO Mark Peterson, and the new CIO, Ben Fox. Maybe I’ll turn it over to Greg to give some opening remarks on the company and strategy.

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: Sure. First of all, two things. First of all, as Yana did, I wanted to introduce that our second quarter call, we announced that Greg Zimmerman, who is currently our CIO, is retiring in the first quarter of next year. We also announced that we had hired Ben, who’s to my right. Again, long storied history in the industry, both with Realty Income and Aries. We’ve done and looked at transactions with Ben and known him for many years, and we think will be a great fit within our organization.

The next thing that I just want to hit, and we could talk about broader strategy, but we’ve got a lot of questions about this while we were here, so I wanted to touch base on it, is a lot of people ask us in the July timeframe when our stock price went up is, why didn’t you, did you consider issuing equity and things of that nature? It’s been pretty reported now that we have a gaming asset in the Catskills, of which we own a ground lease, and that the Genting Group has told us that they intend to exercise their option on the ground lease with financing supplied by the IDA of Sullivan County. Again, that will be $200 million roughly that we will get back at a very attractive cap rate. That transaction is not closed. They’re out in the market now raising those bonds.

If it closes, it should close this month. It did show up, again, a credit to everybody here who has the best tickler system. It showed up in the Malaysian Times, and we thought, I don’t know that anybody will see that. As soon as that happened, three phone calls. Again, what we’re excited about and what that means for us is, you know, given where our leverage is, that additional capital, this will take us substantially down below five times if it closes. We’re going to have a really strong war chest to begin to look at revving up our growth engine. We came into 2025 with several goals. One of them was letting the theater noise calm down. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that we actually have had most of our meetings here, and at 35 meetings, first 30 minutes, we don’t talk about theaters.

Hopefully that means they are in a much more stable environment. We also had a significant amount of dispositions of selling vacant theaters that we worked through there. That 2026 was setting up to really energize our growth engine again. Now we’re going to have what we think is very attractive cost of capital to do that with, get back to more of our kind of $500 million run rate of acquisitions. I think even now at 4.3% growth this year, we’re kind of near the sector leading as far as growth. Next year we’re having the dry powder in the opportunity. 2026 sets up very favorably for us. Why don’t I open it up for questions after that?

Yana Gallen, Analyst, Bank of America: Great. Anyone in the room is welcome to speak up. Maybe I’ll just kind of start with that, that you’ve been very successful recycling capital this year. I guess maybe if you can just talk to us a little bit about like the deploying that capital and kind of the opportunities you’re seeing and the mix of whether it be development, mortgage, or kind of income producing.

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: I would say that it’s definitely gearing more toward acquisitions, so not development. If you go back and you think about our history, generally to do the numbers that we did, we kind of had an anchor transaction in there, and then we did the add-ons from that. When we were just doing kind of $250 million, it’s hard to do a $150 million transaction and then satisfy the needs of our existing tenants. With the capital that we are creating now, we’re going to be back in this game. Right now in the market, so everyone knows, there are $400 million plus transactions out there in the market right now. I don’t know that we’ll get one of those or any of those, but that’s an environment that we’re back in. I think we feel like our pipeline is as robust as it’s been.

We think now there’s no doubt this takes time to get through these and get these transactions. For us, this has always been about the setup for 2026. We feel like we’re in a really good position for that. One of the things that I will kind of lean into my friend to the right, Ben, is Greg has done a great job, but there’s always new energy when somebody new comes in. There is a lot of energy in the building about gearing up and getting things done and let’s go forward. You know we kind of hamstrung Greg for several years with the amount of capital, and now as soon as Ben gets here, we’re releasing him. I think it’s a very good environment set up for what we see as a really good going forward.

I think in our unique setup, we kind of have segments that we kind of own. We’re not seeing a tremendous amount of cap rate pressure. Things are still in the eights. We feel good about that. We feel good about, like I said, if you think about by category, we’re looking at ski deals. Everybody sometimes says, are there any more ski deals? We’re looking at ski deals. We’re looking at attractions. We’re looking at even play. We’re looking at fitness and wellness. I think we feel there is a really good backdrop as this has kind of worked out to our plan that we got through the dispositions. We got through kind of the stabilization of theaters. Now turn on the growth and the narrative. As I tell our team, it feels like we’re just getting to clean air. Now let’s hit the gas.

Yana Gallen, Analyst, Bank of America: Could you provide maybe a little bit more color around those larger $100 million plus transactions, kind of where in those categories they flow?

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: Sure. I’ll give you an example. I can’t give specifics. There’s in attraction properties. There is in eat and play properties. There is in fitness and wellness properties. I’m trying to think right off the top of it. I know it’s in that. Maybe you remember the other one. Those are the predominant ones. Yeah. In those areas, we think things are starting to happen very positively in these spaces, and we feel really good about kind of the setup. Like I said, these will be competitive. Don’t know that we will get them. We are getting the calls. We’ve got a hat to throw in the ring, and we’ve got a cost of capital that we think is going to be very competitive.

Yana Gallen, Analyst, Bank of America: Could you just kind of talk about that competitive environment? You guys have really carved out a unique niche, but who do you compete with on these types of transactions? Are you running into any other REITs?

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: Actually, we were just talking about this with another group. Two years ago, I would have said it’s other REITs. Now it’s predominantly credit funds. Credit funds that used to be 55, 60 are now 80, 85 and so to LTV. It’s a different group. What’s really interesting about that, Yana, is rate-wise, it’s not. I mean, sometimes they’re more expensive than us. It really is kind of a philosophy of where the seller is at that point. Are they wanting long-term capital or are they wanting short-term capital? Do they think the world’s getting significantly better in three years and I’ll take a three-year deal or do I want to lock in my economics and know where I’m at? We’re seeing more of that now than we are another net lease REIT.

Yana Gallen, Analyst, Bank of America: Maybe just again touching kind of like on the disposition side and the success that you’ve had with the theaters and just the tremendous box office, plus when you look at, you know, it’s getting backfilled with a lot of great titles. Does that on the margin kind of just change your thoughts about?

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: I don’t think so. I mean, again, we firmly believe that you set your strategy and you go forward. We want to diversify away from theaters, but we’ve said all along, we’re not fire sellers. We know where value is. We know these assets are performing well. Our coverages now are better than they were in 2019 on the theater side, so again, that’s good. To the disposition side, it’s really about owning quality real estate. I joke that last week we got, or not last, it was probably last month, I got a call from an investor. We sold a theater to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. An investor’s wife called me and said, what is the Children’s Hospital going to do with a theater? I’m like, I don’t think they’re going to use it as a theater. I think it’s, you know, it’s 20 acres and very good.

You know, you look at that deal or the one in California where we sold to Costco. We bought that theater for $19 million, operated for 20 years, and we sold it for $24 million. From an ROI standpoint, if you own good quality real estate, that in the end is what creates value for you. Most of our theaters are in large metropolitan areas. They’re generally 15 to 20 acres. We’ve sold these. It’s really about highest and best use. We’ve sold for retail, we’ve sold for office, we’ve sold for multifamily, we’ve sold for any variety, industrial. We started off, I think, originally with 24 or 25 theaters. We have one left. We’ve gotten through that process. We achieved candidly better results. When we put our plan together, we outperformed those and got better results than we thought.

As I said, the underlying theater business is a different business than it was in 2019. In 2019, we had an $11.3 billion box office, and the average spend of the consumer on food and beverage was about $4.20. Now it’s, call it, somewhere $9 billion, $9.5 billion box office, but the average spend on food and beverage is closer to $8. That’s 80% margin business. I don’t know, I don’t want to scare you guys, but they don’t pay a lot for that Coke and popcorn that you’re paying for. It’s a really good margin business. You look on an EBITDA basis, an $11.3 billion box office is the equivalent of a $9.5 billion from the EBITDA generation. You know the business is, and as you said, we’ve got more titles coming. You have, you know, Amazon bought MGM two years ago. They did seven titles this last year.

They committed they want to do 13 a year. Apple just had their first real financial success with a title with F1. I mean, they’ve done other, what I would call more art product films, but F1 generated $600 million. They’re more enthusiastic. Paramount, Skydance that bought Paramount, doubled down and said, we want to do more theatrical releases because they see that as feeding their ecosystem of further down streaming. The business feels very good and stable. Opportunities are great. We’ve cleared out a lot of the distractions. Like I said, we think we’re really well positioned as we move into 2026.

Yana Gallen, Analyst, Bank of America: As you think about the kind of portfolio compositions, do you think rough targets around?

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: Yeah, I mean, again, what we would say is if you look at the investable universe of experiential theater business, if you think about it as a total, it’s probably about 20%. Would it be ideal sometime to get our portfolio representative of that investable universe? I think that would be a target. That’s going to take time. As I said, we’re at a position now where we’re not going to dilutably do something for the sake of saying we did it. There are more transactions trading in income-producing theaters now, we’re starting to see that. That asset class is gaining in interest, but we’ll just have to see how that plays out.

Yana Gallen, Analyst, Bank of America: Maybe turning over to Ben and just, you know, sitting in this new seat, I guess, where do you start? What are kind of the things that you were kind of looking at or focusing or carrying a similar strategy or maybe broadening out to different categories?

Ben Fox, CIO, EPR Properties: No, I think it’s exactly as Greg said, really building on the momentum and continuing what the team has already done very well and just kind of getting that momentum at the inflection point of going into growth as we enter next year and round out this year. The depth in the existing verticals is there. There’s breadth and depth. It’s continuing to do what the team’s been doing very well and keep that going forward.

Yana Gallen, Analyst, Bank of America: Great. You mentioned kind of this $500 million go forward, maybe near term, more on the income-producing side. I guess is there still the opportunity to do kind of attractive development deals or raise?

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: I think there’ll be aspects of that in there. I mean, we still have, as Ben referenced, long-term tenant relationships that we’ve built over years, and we’ve continued to help them grow. I think we also want to demonstrate our capabilities, and you demonstrate that with acquisitions. I mean, you show, but nobody sees the results of a development for 18 months, whereas we want it to be more impactful in 2026. I think it will lean more into the acquisition side. It doesn’t mean that we will not have developments because, again, either if it’s an existing tenant or to do something on a really strong new relationship, we would definitely take a look at it. Most of the opportunities that we’re looking at now are on the acquisition side.

Yana Gallen, Analyst, Bank of America: I think just kind of seasonally, you had some new product come online, maybe just early trends. How’s that going?

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: I would say that, you know, generally speaking, the tendencies are hanging in. There’s no doubt, and we’ve talked about it. I think on incomes below $100,000, there’s clearly more stress than there is above that. The correlation is often kind of, it’s interesting. If you think about the theater business, generally, if you map recessions, theaters outperformed in a recession almost every time. I mean, because notwithstanding, I always enjoy the fact that I’m in New York, but the average ticket price in the U.S. is $10 to go to the movie. A parent can take, and children’s prices are half of that. For most of the U.S., a parent can take two kids for $20. Everybody thinks I’m a liar who lives in the city, but.

Yana Gallen, Analyst, Bank of America: I don’t want to tell you what I spent on Superman.

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: That’s a little different. Like I said, you see sort of more softness in something like a Six Flags, where an average ticket price is $80 to $100. That consumer is a little less affluent. That’s their vacation. That is what they’re doing. If you take a family of four, that’s $500. We have seen a little bit of softness in there. You look at a Top Golf, that’s $125 plus. That’s been quite resilient from what we’ve seen. It’s also interesting when we look at fitness and wellness, and people will often say kind of consumer discretionary. For a lot of people, fitness and wellness is not discretionary anymore. They’ve inculcated that into their lives for their physical and mental well-being. They need to have that aspect of it. We’ve seen actually increasing trends in that more than anything declining.

Yana Gallen, Analyst, Bank of America: Maybe just in terms of kind of rent coverage, better in fitness and wellness and theaters.

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: Actually, rent coverage, overall rent coverage went up in the second quarter. I’ve just given you an insight as to where kind of things are. We’ll see how it comes through in the third quarter, but that was through June. Again, we’re not seeing cracks. I spend a lot of time talking to our tenants and getting their feedback and what’s going on in the market and what they are seeing. I try to understand these trends. Often, most of these things, other than maybe a little, and it takes a lot to move the needle, we’re Net Lease, so it doesn’t directly impact us, you know, about whether we’re going to get paid or not. If people are interested as a proxy for the overall economy, how are things doing?

Yana Gallen, Analyst, Bank of America: Just to kind of talk about the strength of the portfolio, I think this year your percentage rents came in in the first quarter much higher than expected. Maybe just thinking about the way that these different leases are structured, is that potentially a headwind next year? Or how do you think about?

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: We say this all the time, but it continues to perform. We’ve seen that the biggest component of our percentage rent as an actual thing was our Regal restructure, and Regal delivered. If you look at the chart we gave, I think Regal will be pretty right close to that exact number. We hit our underwriting and everything done. If you look at that business, the current forecasts for next year are up over this year. You have certain things that go down a little bit and other things go up a little more. I think it’s been remarkably consistent, and we will see when we kind of give guidance next year. I think as we set up right now, I don’t.

Ben Fox, CIO, EPR Properties: Mark, I don’t, yeah, note that the casino transaction, by the way, hasn’t closed yet. They have not given us notice. They need to raise the bonds. We’re in great shape, whether it happens or not from a capital perspective, given our little leverage. What I want to comment on, part of that component, there’s a percentage rent component to that casino. When we quote the cap rate, it’ll be inclusive of some percentage rents. We’ll talk, we’ll provide more clarity on that. That will go down, but the transaction is such that we’ll redeploy. It’s a good thing. We did have some out-of-period percentage rents in Q1 that we called out that won’t repeat as well. As Greg said, that’s kind of offset by the fact that box office should go up. Therefore, Regal percentage rents should go up.

You have tenants from time to time that hit a break point, I’m sorry, hit a rent bump where it moves from minimum rent from percentage rents. The line item percentage rents could change, but our overall income statement doesn’t. There’s a lot of dynamics there, but we feel good about the ongoing percentage rent profile.

Yana Gallen, Analyst, Bank of America: Maybe just also on, it was a very good ski season. I guess, do those also come with the percentage rent and think about like weather impacts?

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: I mean, first, everybody should know there’s not a segment that we have that doesn’t have percentage rent. Maybe one or two leases don’t, but most everything we structure with a percentage rent. Yes, ski is paying percentage rent.

Ben Fox, CIO, EPR Properties: Part of the out-of-period was ski related in one asset that we got in the first quarter. That’ll change. As far as the performance, we would expect probably to be pretty similar in the ongoing performance of.

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: Yeah, it’s these out-of-period things that carry occasionally because we periodically audit people. You know.

Ben Fox, CIO, EPR Properties: Maybe they take liberties that we figure out, and then we agree to make that right and make that payment.

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: In ski, it’s a lot of it about how you allocate pass revenue.

Yana Gallen, Analyst, Bank of America: Okay.

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: As you can imagine, because the pass business is the driver, we got to the bottom of that.

Yana Gallen, Analyst, Bank of America: Great. Any updates on the operating portion of the business and car group?

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: I mean, again, as we said, we’re really down to four theaters and they kind of reflect box office. Clearly their trajectory is positive. The other major issue is Cartwright, which is our water park hotel up at the Catskills, which we’ve talked about extensively. We did that to activate what is this gaming thing. The challenge there, and I’m probably not telling anybody, is operating in a hotel with union labor is, again, if we take the revenue line and apply the margins of our other water park hotels, we would love that property. Somehow in that environment, all the money seems to go away for one reason or another. It is basically a break even to slightly losing proposition.

Ben Fox, CIO, EPR Properties: By the way, when you compare year over year, last year we had seven operating theaters, this year it’s four, a little bit of apples and oranges comparison year over year. I think one thing going from seven to four is part of simplifying the story element of what we’re trying to do, less operating properties. We’re not doing operating properties going forward. We went from seven to four on the consolidated.

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: Those will probably continue to go down.

Ben Fox, CIO, EPR Properties: Yeah, we’re down to only two unconsolidated JVs that are operated. The story is getting simpler, I believe, which is part of our objective. As Greg said, those theaters that are left are kind of riding the box office wave, so they should continue to do better.

Yana Gallen, Analyst, Bank of America: Is the plan to completely exit operating or is it good to have a little R&D?

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: Yeah, it’s an interesting thing about theaters. I hope no theater companies are listening to this. If you operate a theater, there’s a service. Every theater in the country is polled nightly to get box office data. What you can do if you’re operating properly, you get that and you can actually see all that data for the entire country. I think we’ll keep at least one for that aspect of it because it is really good data. You actually have a peer into every one of the competing properties you’re up against as far as how they’re performing. I think, I don’t know that we need four, but they’re making money now and we’re just waiting for the right opportunity to exit. Like we did in California, Costco comes along and says, "Hey, I’d love to do this." We’re not hell-bent on being in that business. Not at all.

Yana Gallen, Analyst, Bank of America: Maybe going back to this $500 million per year, how are you thinking about the financing for that? Right now you have this great cost of capital from the dispositions, but over time, how do you think about that spread?

Ben Fox, CIO, EPR Properties: Can I comment on that?

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: Yeah.

Ben Fox, CIO, EPR Properties: Yeah.

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: You’re the CFO. I’ve got to give you that one.

Ben Fox, CIO, EPR Properties: I want to say something.

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: We talk about the fact that even if this casino transaction doesn’t happen, we’re five times levered, right? If the casino transaction happens, we go quite a bit under five times. Our stated goal is five to five six. We have quite a bit of room, actually a lot of room either way to do transactions in the near term, very accretive transactions with low-cost capital that don’t necessitate the need to raise equity. Beyond that, I think as that theater sentiment has improved, as we start executing on that growth, I do expect that our equity price will probably continue to rise, which will lower our cost of capital. Once we get through this capital, we’re in a place where we could, you know, raise equity and do incrementally more. If you look kind of pre-COVID, we were doing $500 to $600 million a year.

Like Greg said, generally kind of a bigger transaction combined with some smaller transactions. We generally think of that as, but for the case we’re in, it’s sort of 60-40 funded, 60% equity, 40% debt, just to kind of keep our investment grade ratings and kind of stay leverage-wise where we need to be. That creates, you probably got a little bit outsized creation here in the near term, but that creates about 4% to 5% FFO growth combined with a, you know, a 6% dividend today. That’s double-digit returns. That’s what we did for 20 years prior to the COVID that created those outsized returns. You got a nicely covered dividend that’s outsized today. Hopefully that comes down as the stock price goes up, but today it’s a nice sized dividend combined with that growth. We think we can deliver really attractive shareholder returns.

The only other thing I’d add to that and Mark can comment on is beyond that, we’re probably generating somewhere between $130 and $150 million in free cash flow beyond that. If you start to look at all those components and we get back to a reasonable multiple, all of a sudden that creates a really nice kind of setup for delivering that level of growth.

Yana Gallen, Analyst, Bank of America: Just thinking about kind of investment spreads, when you were in this pre-COVID environment with this nice kind of 4% to 5% FFO growth, where were those average historical investment spreads? I think this year and next year they’ll be much wider. Do you see them coming back to that range?

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: I would say we always talk about, it’s just the reality. We talk about targeting a minimum of 100 basis points. I would say we probably realize closer to 175. You know, when you say, you know, it doesn’t mean if you wanted a new relationship, you wouldn’t go to the minimum and you get more in a little, but I would say it generally would run around $150 to $175 on an initial cash on cash yield. Clearly, that would be higher on a GAAP yield.

Ben Fox, CIO, EPR Properties: Higher on an IRR with the escalators as well.

Yana Gallen, Analyst, Bank of America: Maybe just talking about rent escalators, is there any change in kind of how you structure?

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: Everybody’s trying to push a little bit. You remember we came from a period of 10 years where we all kind of anchored into 2%, and then about 2012, every tenant started pushing back and we had some deals in there that got down to 1.5%. I think we’re on the other side of that where people are trying to push a little bit above 2%, you know, whether that’s 2.25%. That’ll be a discussion, but clearly we try to anchor on where inflation expectations are and try to have those discussions with our tenants.

Ben Fox, CIO, EPR Properties: One near-term catalyst that we’ve talked about is AMC, a larger tenant, has its first rent bump subsequent to the deal we did with them. That hit July 1. That’s a $6 million increase in rent. We’re going to get kind of $3 million this year, back half, and then that annualizes next year. Some of these are not always 1.5% to 2% per year. Sometimes they’re every five years. That.

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: It wouldn’t be a cumulative 10%.

Ben Fox, CIO, EPR Properties: Yeah, yeah, 10% every five years. You get that 2%, but it doesn’t necessarily hit every year. That’s just a larger tenant that I wanted to call out that’s kind of a catalyst.

Yana Gallen, Analyst, Bank of America: Are there any other kind of one-time or step-ups occurring?

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: The only reason they’re on a cash basis, which most of them would not be, is so in that.

Ben Fox, CIO, EPR Properties: There’s a whole list of some of them are annual, some are every five years. They kind of tend to average out. It’s just when you have a large tenant, a larger tenant, you know, it becomes more significant. As Greg said, that one happens to hit FFO and AFFO because it’s not straight lined.

Yana Gallen, Analyst, Bank of America: Could you just remind us how much of your APR is on a cash basis?

Ben Fox, CIO, EPR Properties: Really, for any significance is AMC.

We have one tenant that still has a backup deferral, but effectively they have good coverage. They’re paying the rent. We set that level such that they had an EBITDA threshold that if they exceed it, it was set pretty high. If they exceed that EBITDA threshold in theory, you know, that could get repaid, but we’re not guiding to that or anything like that. AMC is really the significant tenant that remains. You know, their coverage is improving. They’re paying every month. By going accrual, you’d just be booking a bunch of straight line, and you know, there’s not much benefit of doing that anyway.

Yana Gallen, Analyst, Bank of America: Great. Anything from the audience? Michael?

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: Yes, please.

Michael, Unidentified speaker: Maybe based upon, sorry, you can mention you have a $500 investment revenue, just whether it is in house or goes away to your plan. Do you have room to move that?

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: Yeah, we have more than that. I mean, there’s no doubt that we have more than that, and we can move that and scale that up. Again, I think what we’re trying to set is reasonable expectations. I mean, we had a $250 million. We’re saying we’re probably taking that up to closer to $500 million. We’re doubling what we’re doing. I think what we would love to do is under promise and over deliver. That is the mindset that we’ve done consistently over our years of existence. I think Ben and his team have got a lot of things in the works. I think we feel that things are moving our way. Like I said, we’ve kind of cleared out all of the, to a large degree, the negative discussion.

I think now the focus is going to be about growth, and I think we’re going to be able to deliver that.

Michael, Unidentified speaker: Sure. On the percentage of rent, I think we need to be very careful about the marketing and what’s the advantage of this around that setup. In a certain way, is there a situation that you can?

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: Again, I think what we always looked at, Michael, was the idea that the greatest inflation protector was the idea of we didn’t give up to do that. We didn’t give up rate. We didn’t give up escalators. We always looked at this as just a kicker. Now, let’s set Regal aside because that was a research. For most of our product, it was the idea that if inflation ever kicks in, we will be able to ride that out. Nothing ever stops a tenant from calling us and saying, "Listen, I’m paying you $2 million. What if I paid you $1 million in fixed rent? Would you take that?" They might do that. Right now, it’s variable for them. It is based on their performance. The reality is it’s worked out very much in our favor so that it is a significant contributor.

I still think in an inflationary environment, it is a much better tool than just a 2.5% rent escalator. Yes, we get to ride up as our tenant rides up. It’s also a good indication for you guys to understand our properties are doing well. Meaning they’re paying, actually, a lot of these are set on natural breaks where you say, you know, rent’s going to be 10% of revenues. If it exceeds 10% of revenues, we participate. That means that clearly revenues, your rent, that’s a proxy for coverages, are improving because you’re getting paid and you’re actually driving down your occupancy cost. I think we like the structure. I think it lets us, like I said, we didn’t give up economics to get it.

Ben Fox, CIO, EPR Properties: In other words, we don’t even, Regal aside, we don’t even underwrite it. It’s extra. Like if they perform really well, we want to participate. It’s an inflation hedge. It’s extra income for EPR. In other words, we underwrite the deal. We’re happy with it. If they perform really well, we’re going to get extra is what it is. Now, Regal is a different story. That got set at a different time. Coming out of their bankruptcy was set at a low. That was a compromise.

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: That was a bad buy, us saying, we think the business is coming back. You want to set a low rate. We’ll set a low rate, a lower rate, but we actually want to participate. Would it surprise me that we get a call from Regal in the near future with the projections on how much they’re going to pay? I mean, our bet was good. I mean, we’re going to be significantly, you know, we had projected that with a $9 billion box office, we’d have a 97% recovery of everything. We’re going to be at that or better. The bet was the right bet to make for us.

Ben Fox, CIO, EPR Properties: Yeah, they wanted to set box office on where it was at the time. We knew where it was going. The compromise was a percentage rent structure for Regal. That’s about a third of the percentage rents. The other percentage rents I would just characterize as gravy because the investments have done well and they’re paying us extra because they exceeded the thresholds.

Yana Gallen, Analyst, Bank of America: I have three quick rapid-fire questions that we’re asking all the REITs at the conference. When the Fed starts to cut, do you expect rates for long-term debt to decline, stay flat, or potentially rise?

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: My bet would be stay flat or rise. I hope I’m wrong.

Yana Gallen, Analyst, Bank of America: Last year, the majority of companies stated they’re ramping up spending on AI initiatives. How would you characterize your plans over the next year? Higher, flat, or lower?

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: Definitely higher. I mean, again, I’ve challenged each of my direct reports. We have finance assets and then we have administrative legal, of how we can incorporate elements of AI. Again, that’s a discussion we had at our board level.

Yana Gallen, Analyst, Bank of America: Do you believe same-store NOI for your sector will be higher, lower, or the same next year?

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: I think ours will be slightly up.

Yana Gallen, Analyst, Bank of America: Great. Thank you so much for the time.

Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO, EPR Properties: Thank you, guys. Thank you, everyone.

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