Kimco Realty at BofA Securities Conference: Strategic Growth Insights

On Wednesday, 10 September 2025, Kimco Realty (NYSE:KIM) participated in the BofA Securities 2025 Global Real Estate Conference, highlighting its strategic focus on necessity-based retail and innovative technology use. The company showcased strong performance metrics, with high occupancy rates and robust tenant demand, while also addressing potential challenges in the retail landscape.

Key Takeaways

• Kimco Realty is leveraging technology, including generative AI, to enhance leasing and operational efficiency.
• The company plans to recycle capital by selling flat ground leases and reinvesting in higher-growth shopping centers.
• A strong financial position with low net debt to EBITDA ratios and favorable bond spreads was emphasized.
• The tenant watchlist is at its smallest, indicating a healthy retail environment.
• The company aims for continued FFO growth through organic initiatives and asset management.

Financial Results

• The sign-but-not-open pipeline is valued at $66 million, with $45 million expected to flow during 2026.
• 86% of the annual base rent (ABR) is derived from grocery-anchored shopping centers.
• Small shop occupancy has reached a record high of 92.2%.
• Flat ground leases account for 9% of the annual base rent.
• Kimco Realty targets a 5% FFO growth, consistent with the previous year.
• Consolidated net debt to EBITDA is in the low fives, while look-through net debt to EBITDA is in the mid-fives.

Operational Updates

• Over 90% of spaces vacated by bankrupt tenants like Party City and Joann have been re-leased at significant rent spreads.
• Anchor occupancy is slightly below historical highs, but small shop occupancy is at a record level.
• The company is utilizing generative AI to streamline lead generation and compress the deal curve.
• Kimco Realty plans to sell $100 million to $150 million of long-term flat ground leases annually, starting this year.

Future Outlook

• The capital recycling program will focus on reinvesting in higher-growth shopping centers.
• A structured investment program with a gross asset value of over $2 billion is underway.
• The company anticipates refinancing $800 million of debt next year, with a $2 billion revolver providing liquidity.
• Spending on AI initiatives is expected to increase next year.

Q&A Highlights

• The tenant watchlist is at its smallest, reflecting a strong retail environment.
• New leasing spreads are in the 30+% range, with renewal spreads in the high single digits.
• There is potential for increased same-store NOI growth, with the sector’s run rate around 2% to 3%.
• Interest rates are expected to remain relatively flat when the Fed begins to cut rates.

For a detailed understanding of Kimco Realty’s strategic plans and performance, please refer to the full transcript.

Full transcript - BofA Securities 2025 Global Real Estate Conference:

Samir, Analyst: Welcome to the Kimco Roundtable. Joining me is Conor Flynn, who’s the CEO of the company. Conor, I’ll turn it over to you to introduce the team and provide some opening remarks.

Conor Flynn, CEO, Kimco Realty: Thanks very much, and thanks for having us today. With me today are my partners here, Ross Cooper, our President, Chief Investment Officer, Glenn Cohen, our CFO, and Dave Bujnicki, our Head of IR. We’re really happy to be here today. For those of you less familiar with Kimco Realty, we are the largest owner and operator of open-air grocery-anchored shopping centers. We focus on high-barrier, first-ring suburban markets across the Sun Belt and coastal states. Today, 86% of our ABR comes from grocery-anchored shopping centers, and over 91% of our portfolio is concentrated in the strongest demographic corridors with high barriers to entry. That foundation is really what drives both resilience and growth, regardless of economic climate.

Our strategy is clear: focus on necessity-based retail, maintain a disciplined balance sheet, and use our national scale, deep retailer relationships, redevelopment platform, and creative capital allocation, including structured investments and strategic use of entitlements to deliver outperformance through the cycles. Since our last earnings call, we haven’t seen any slowdown in leasing velocity or tenant demand, quite the opposite. Retailers are actively pursuing space, accelerating deals to meet their store opening mandates, and focusing tightly on well-located, high-performing centers just like Kimco Realty owns. In today’s tight supply backdrop, delaying new store openings means losing share to a competitor, and our pipeline reflects that urgency.

Recent highlights: just a five-store Sprouts Farmers Market package we executed in under a month, multi-site TJ Maxx deals turned around in just 10 days, that’s a new record for us, demonstrate the pace that’s now possible with the right platform and the right technology. I do believe technology is going to be a differentiator for Kimco Realty in the not-too-distant future. Nothing encapsulates this more than the speed at which we’ve been able to backfill the bankruptcy tenants that we were dealt this year. Over 90% of the boxes vacated by Party City, Joann, and Big Lots have been executed at large double-digit rent spreads. This has helped expand our sign-but-not-open pipeline to $66 million, which will provide meaningful future cash flow growth, as 88% of that will have commenced by the end of next year. Small shop occupancy is another bright spot for Kimco Realty.

We’re at a record high at 92.2%, and we see further opportunity to expand that even higher, primarily driven by the broad-based demand. If you think about a shopping center at the evolution of retail, we’re seeing just a surge of tenant demand from services, health and wellness, beauty, and really the Rolodex of retailers continues to expand. I think one of the things that really sets Kimco Realty apart is our ability to operate all different types of retail, because that’s really what retailers are focused on today. It’s not the prototype of what the asset is called, whether it’s a grocery-anchored shopping center, a lifestyle center, or a power center. It’s really more about the corner and the demographic of where their data is saying their customer sits and how to best service that customer.

That’s really why I think Kimco Realty is really well positioned, because the future of retail is not what type of asset you have, it’s the platform you have, the relationships you have, and the ability to be nimble enough to create opportunities for retailers that are looking to grow. I want to also tout our scale and optionality. We have really identified a tremendous amount of optionality for future growth. We use it in right-of-first refusals and right-of-first offers. We’re doing that in our structured investment program. All of the mezzanine financing and preferred equity that we put in place are on assets we want to own, and those assets we have ROFOs and ROFRs on. We continue to focus on grocery. We’re up to 86% from our annual base rent coming from grocery-anchored centers.

A lot of that growth has been driven by our asset management platform, where we actually include a grocery component from some of the boxes we’ve gotten back. Grocery stores like Sprouts Farmers Market, Trader Joe’s, Aldi, Lidl, we’re doing a large-scale Kroger deal. We’ve got a number of deals cooking with BJ’s and Walmart and others. It’s really interesting to see that all different parts of the square footage categories have multiple demand drivers really pushing our occupancy levels to all-time highs. We also have very disciplined capital allocation. We’ve identified our flat ground leases, which are 9% of our annual base rent, as really a nice opportunity for us to creatively recycle. Kimco Realty’s been on a long journey to get to where we are today.

We’ve really had to transform the portfolio to 86% grocery-anchored by selling really dilutively, higher cap rate assets for middle markets and reinvest in grocery-anchored shopping centers. Now we’re at a point where we can showcase that, hey, the transformation is showing up in our numbers. The organic growth is really strong, leading to sector-leading FFO growth. Now we’re at a point where we can asset manage the portfolio to creatively recycle, meaning we can sell our flat ground leases at very low cap rates, take that capital, redeploy it in growth shopping centers that have not only a higher going-in cap rate, but a much higher compound annual growth rate, leading to a very high unlevered IRR. Those are the types of initiatives we have put in place to differentiate Kimco Realty from the peer group to continue to have us be the upper quartile earnings growth driver.

We were one of the only two shopping center REITs to do 5% FFO growth last year. We’re well on our way for doing that again this year. I believe with that $66 million of sign-but-not-open pipeline, we have really all the tools in our tool belt to showcase that we can consistently do that.

Samir, Analyst: Thank you, Conor, for that. Maybe to kind of talk about the different buckets of growth you spoke about, let’s start with the technology side. You said, I mean, I feel like every time I look at a lot of these shopping center names, they look very familiar. Talk about the technology differentiation that your platform.

Conor Flynn, CEO, Kimco Realty: Yeah, technology, in my opinion, is going to be, I think, a real advantage of scale. We’ve been investing in it for a long period of time to sort of get our systems and our, really, our backbone in place. Salesforce obviously is a wonderful tool that we use day in and day out, and we have occupancy on an hourly basis updated. Where I see sort of the future going is really showcasing how technology has led to data insights that you can only get from using the best-in-class technology. Generative AI is clearly sort of where everything is headed. We’ve started to use that on the leasing front. We’ve seen a lot of success in generating leads, specifically in small shops. The anchor Rolodex, we know them all pretty well. They can call me on my cell phone. I can call them on their cell phone.

It’s really sort of the diversity of demand on the small shop side is where we see the funnel being opened up. A lot of those small businesses may have one business and are looking to open a second one, or if they’re a regional player and have a new store opening plan, we can sit down with them and showcase that, hey, if you want to hit your new store opening plans, let us use our technology, understand your demographic profile, understand where your consumer lives, works, and plays, and what shopping centers that Kimco Realty owns can service them. That’s what’s led to portfolio deals recently with Sprouts Farmers Market and others that we think are big difference makers for us. Overall, I think generative AI is going to have a meaningful impact on G&A.

If you look at Kimco Realty’s operating efficiencies, the G&A for Kimco Realty has been relatively flat over the past three years. We’ve bought a public company. We’ve bought the single largest tenant, single largest asset Kimco Realty’s ever acquired in Waterford Lakes. We continue to see that operational efficiency as we grow and put our platform in position for growth as being a real differentiator.

Samir, Analyst: One of the companies I covered in self-storage, Extra Space, was also talking about ChatGPT and how some of the customers are using ChatGPT to kind of say the requirements they look for, etc., to make it more of sort of AI initiative. Are you seeing that sort of leasing? I mean, how deep is this AI initiative that you’re maybe alluding to?

Conor Flynn, CEO, Kimco Realty: I think the early green shoots that we see are in marketing.

Samir, Analyst: Yeah.

Conor Flynn, CEO, Kimco Realty: We use it pretty consistently across all of our marketing platform. It allows us, I think, to get more market share because of that. I think also, you can go through each vertical. I think legal is going to be a pretty sizable one where you can, in essence, query. You have to start from scratch. You have to make sure that your data is all correctly identified, that it’s in the right place so you can query it correctly. That’s all of our leases. Those are types of tools that allow you to move faster. Also, the deal curve is being compressed. That’s why I mentioned the TJ Maxx speed. That’s why I mentioned the Sprouts deals. Those are the fastest we’ve ever done. A lot of the tools we’re using today allow us to expedite that deal curve.

In essence, every day, we calculate every single day of how much money that costs Kimco Realty for that tenant not to be open and rent paying. Everybody knows exactly how much meaningful impact that day will have. Those are the types of things that I think when we look at the accounting side, we already use it. A lot of the abstracting that’s already done through AI. The tools we have in place, I think, are readily available. We’re challenging each department to say, hey, what more can you do with these tools?

Ross and I were just talking about it this week that we’re already experimenting with taking brokerage offering memorandums and putting them into ChatGPT and seeing what does that Argus model look like versus one that’s driven by an acquisitions analyst and continue to see how strategic capital allocation can be utilized differently using those types of insights as well for how future demographics are shifting, what retailers are going to perform well in certain areas.

Samir, Analyst: Is there an upfront sort of cost to this in terms of the initiatives, or how should we think about the expense side of it?

Conor Flynn, CEO, Kimco Realty: You know, right now there is no incremental cost because it’s still free. I think we have really targeted each department head to say, hey, look, you are in charge of understanding that this is going to be a useful tool. I think of it as an output. Like, how do you magnify the leasing output by using the tool? That’s why we continue to point to portfolio deals and leasing volume, because that to me is where I think the initial onset is really going to have meaningful impact. There are going to be synergies along the way as well in terms of redundancy of tasks. Overall, I think we’re still in the very early innings to see how it’s going to play out.

Samir, Analyst: Maybe on the operational side, you talked about occupancy. It feels like there’s room to push occupancy both, you know, anchors are already kind of up there, with all the backfilling you’re doing. Even on the shop side, maybe quantify it and give us an idea of how much more you can push on occupancy, maybe even into next year at this point.

Conor Flynn, CEO, Kimco Realty: Yeah, so the historic high on anchor occupancy, we’re still about 150 basis points below that. That’s real runway that we believe we can recapture relatively quickly, especially when we look at the pipeline of anchors that we’re doing deals with today. The small shop side is sort of an unknown how far we can push that because we’re sitting at an all-time high. Some of our peers are at 98% occupied in small shops, and we’re at 92.2%. I still think of that as real significant upside, especially when you look at the anchor deals that we have cooking right now, because typically those small shop vacancies are concentrated in assets where the anchor is sitting vacant. In essence, the hardest space to lease is the lease that’s sitting next to a big box vacancy.

If we lease those big box vacancies up to 99% plus, which was our historic high, all of a sudden the small shops should start to fill in nicely as well. The diversity again of demand for small shops is really exciting because it’s almost like what doesn’t work in a shopping center. If it’s all about convenience and value, that’s really where everyone is focused right now in terms of new store opening plans. We really leaned into services. We think that’s the best way to get people out of their chairs, into their car, into the shopping center. A lot of these services you can’t do online. We’ve always had a big component of quick service restaurants, financial institutions. It’s interesting to see the bank branch evolve and have that come back. Obviously hair and nail salons, beauty, medical, urgent care, pediatric urgent care, vet clinics.

It continues to evolve where the shopping center is the most convenient aspect of people’s lives to be able to access those types of services.

Samir, Analyst: On the backfill, you said there’s activity on like 90% of the boxes. Talk about the, you know, certainly a lot of rent upside here. Maybe help us on the timing of the NOI contribution on these boxes.

Conor Flynn, CEO, Kimco Realty: Yeah, I mean, I can briefly mention the depth of demand and then Glenn maybe talk about the cadence of the sign-but-not-open pipeline coming online. The nice part is you have multiple demand drivers for every shop category right now. On the big box players, we have multiple deals now going with Home Depot, Lowe’s, Costco, Target, Walmart, BJ’s, IKEA, Kroger, and 100,000 square foot prototype. It’s really interesting to be in a point where the demand drivers are deep across all the different square footage categories, which allows us to say, hey, this is the box that’s available. Make the square footage work. In essence, if we don’t have to split a box, the CapEx load is a lot lower. That’s what’s really been working for us across the board.

Depending on the size of the box, the junior anchor demand has always been the deepest in terms of the demand pool. TJ Maxx and all their banners, Marshalls, Homesense, HomeGoods, Sierra Trading Post, Ross with their two banners, Ross and dd’s, Nordstrom Rack, Burlington, those have all been the very strong 100 plus new store year type growth vehicles. You’ve got Dick’s Sporting Goods now doing their new prototype of House of Sports, which is a larger box player again, continuing to want to expand there. They also have Golf Galaxy and other banners. Grocery continues to be quite hot as well. It’s really interesting. On the smaller shop side, on the small box side, you’ve got Aldi, Lidl, Trader Joe’s, which are in that 10,000 to 15,000 square foot range.

Then you level up to the Sprouts Farmers Market and the Whole Foods, which are in that 30,000 to 40,000 square foot range. You’ve got the traditional grocers like Albertsons, Kroger, and Ahold Delhaize, which are in that 40,000 to 50,000 square foot range. Then you’ve got the big box players that are doing grocery as well, like BJ’s, Target, Walmart, and Costco. It’s a really nice demand driver depth that we have.

Samir, Analyst: Yeah, from the sign-but-not-open pipeline, it represents about $66 million today. About $45 million of that will flow during 2026. When you look at the backfills of what’s created, some of that sign-but-not-open pipeline between the backfills of Party City, Joann, Big Lots, and Rite Aid, they make up about 20% of that sign-but-not-open pipeline. In pretty short order, on the Party City locations, there were 49 leases already. Forty of them have been addressed. On the Joann locations, there were 24. We signed seven. We have 13 LOIs. There’s only four left that we’re marketing. On the Big Lots and Rite Aid locations, there were another 23 boxes, of which there’s only two that are in the marketing phase. The others have either been signed, leased, or are in the LOI phase. Really very fast speed to replacing these boxes.

Over the next nine to 12 months, we’ll get them open and get the flows going. We have really good visibility into what’s going to come online into 2026. Are there any questions from folks here? On the other side of it, as we think about these are all the positives, but the risks next year and any kind of watchlist kind of tenants, categories we need to think through here?

Conor Flynn, CEO, Kimco Realty: You know, the watchlist is the smallest it’s ever been. I think when you look at COVID, post-COVID, and then what happened earlier this year with, you know, Joann, Big Lots, Party City, you really start off with a very, very small list. Some of the names, by the way, have been on the list my entire career and are now starting to do new deals again. It’s like when you look at like Michaels and the market share that’s up for grabs there from Joann and Party City going away, there’s a real case to say, hey, that I think they have a chance to come off the watchlist. That being said, it’s very hard to come off the watchlist.

I think the other names that have sort of reorganized at home, you know, continues to operate and did not reject any of our leases, but we’ll have to continue to monitor that. We only have five pinstripes. Obviously, we only have one, but it’s a very profitable location for us. We’ll have to see how that plays out. These are very, very small in terms of the scale of Kimco Realty. We don’t really see any major bankruptcies for the rest of this year and don’t really see a whole lot that we can anticipate at the beginning of next year. There are names that have to reset their business plan. They have to deal with tariffs. They have to deal with maybe consumer spending changing.

Overall, I think where the occupancy levels sit today and the lack of new supply, those boxes that do come back, that in essence is the shadow supply that retailers that are on expansion mode are super eager to capture because without any new development, those are the spaces that they have to target in order for them to hit their new store growth.

Samir, Analyst: Okay, that 75 to 100 basis points should be ample. As you think about credit loss reserves, right? There shouldn’t be any, that’s just kind of the normal.

Conor Flynn, CEO, Kimco Realty: Yeah, I mean, retail always has had a level of churn. I don’t necessarily think that it’s going to change, but it’s hard to see it sort of meaningfully changing in terms for the worst. I think we’re in a better spot finishing off this year. The watchlist is as small as it’s ever been. You could probably have something happen that changes that, but I feel like from a fundamental standpoint, it’s about the healthiest the sector has been in a long, long time.

Samir, Analyst: Okay, leasing spreads still kind of, you know, should be similar to kind of what you, what we’ve been seeing this year, right?

Conor Flynn, CEO, Kimco Realty: Yeah, I mean, it’s a good combination of new leasing spreads being in that like 30+% range and renewal spreads being, you know, high single digits. It blends to, I think we were the highest in seven years when you look at our blended spreads. Clearly, pricing power, there’s a lot of negotiations going on right now where we’re trying to push as much as we can. When you look at the brick-and-mortar business, that’s where retailers are profitable. I think it was Walmart that just this past quarter said that it was the first time ever that their e-commerce business ever turned profitable. That’s Walmart. When retailers want to grow free cash flow and then expand margin, they’re going to invest in their store base.

Samir, Analyst: Are you surprised that given the comments you’re making on how strong the environment is, right? Really no supply out there. Why can’t we, why can’t you push rents even more here? Why is this same-store kind of in this 3%, you know what I mean, percent range? What is it? Is it just...

Conor Flynn, CEO, Kimco Realty: It’s the combination of like the leases that have been signed over the past two decades plus, right? You have to remember we’re coming into the year at pretty high occupancy levels, right? I think the whole sector is near all-time high. Those leases that were signed, typically the anchor leases are relatively flatter than the small shops. The small shops, you know, and again, if you think about all the different retail cycles, a lot of those leases were signed where landlords didn’t have pricing power. They didn’t have the ability to push annual escalators. I think the historical run rate of the shopping center sector, and you know this well, is probably right around 2.

Samir, Analyst: Yeah.

Conor Flynn, CEO, Kimco Realty: To push the sector from two to three takes a lot.

Samir, Analyst: Yeah.

Conor Flynn, CEO, Kimco Realty: That’s been the run rate for the past two years, right? I think you’re seeing incremental improvements, but it’s really because the slice of the lease portfolio that you can get to each year is relatively small. The new leasing obviously is where you’re seeing the outsized lease spreads, the better economics, the improved annual growth rate. The rent renewals are typically negotiated because they have options that they can exercise. Those have been negotiated when they signed the lease originally. That’s why the growth rate has improved, but it hasn’t dramatically improved.

Samir, Analyst: Anything? Yeah, go ahead.

Unidentified speaker: We do consider getting quarter leases.

Conor Flynn, CEO, Kimco Realty: Sure.

Unidentified speaker: We just want to do that. In terms of the options on the leases that you’re working with.

Conor Flynn, CEO, Kimco Realty: Mm-hmm.

Unidentified speaker: You saw the... What are the terms of the options nowadays such that you can get?

Conor Flynn, CEO, Kimco Realty: Yeah, no, it’s a good question. In terms of the new lease terms, we are taking out options on the back end. What used to be four or five-year options was the traditional anchor demand. Usually now it’s one or two. Those bumps are either improved from the base term or at fair market value. That’s where you’re seeing the incremental negotiation take place. It is interesting to think of how the retail model has evolved and where it is today. Overall, I think it’s in a really good spot to continue in the momentum that we’re showing.

Samir, Analyst: The one area I wanted to talk about was sort of the capital recycling, the asset recycling you talked about, ground lease opportunities, and putting that into creative acquisitions. Maybe expand on that. Tell us how much you can sell in terms of non-core assets or ground lease, and then how much you can deploy into a creative acquisition.

Ross Cooper, President, Chief Investment Officer, Kimco Realty: Sure, I’m happy to take that. Thanks, Samir. I thought you’d never ask. Conor alluded to in his opening remarks the differentiators that we have here at Kimco Realty and really looking at optionality and ways to outperform. When we look at our portfolio, we have upwards of 9% of our ABR that’s coming from long-term flat ground leases. It’s a great credit. It’s a bond-like instrument, but it is certainly weighing on our growth opportunities. When we look at what can we do to differentiate our capital, this is something that we have that is very unique within the sector. We’re taking a look at our portfolio, taking a look at that 9% of ABR, and really looking at monetizing in any given year, starting this year, $100 million to $150 million of dispositions of these long-term flat ground leases.

We executed on our first one last quarter at Home Depot in California at a 5.7 cap. The beauty of this program is that when you look at recycling that capital, we are going to be converting that into a 1031 exchange on an acquisition this month on a dual grocery-anchored shopping center that has a going in cap rate that’s 50 basis points higher than the cap rate that we sold the asset. More importantly than that, you’re taking an asset that has a sub-1% CAGR and converting that into an acquisition that has 200 basis points of higher compound annual growth rate.

On that particular asset, while one individual transaction is not necessarily going to move the needle dramatically on a portfolio of our size, when you think about the compounding effect of that additional 200 basis points of growth year after year and layer that onto a couple hundred million dollars a year over a multiple year period, it can start to have a real meaningful impact on both same-site NOI as well as FFO growth. The really important part that Conor alluded to is the consistency and the recurrent nature of that. This is not a 2025-2026 strategy. This is something that we envision happening and occurring on a year-over-year basis for the indefinite future of the organization.

The reason that we have confidence that we can continue to do that is because at the same time that we’re selling some of these long-term ground leases, we’re signing new leases with the same tenancy that we’re selling. As Conor mentioned, we’re doing new deals with Walmart, we’re doing new deals with Home Depot, Lowe’s, BJ’s, Target, etc. We’re replenishing that pipeline as we continue to recycle the capital and then converting that into 1031 exchanges where necessary or other acquisitions where we’re getting a creative higher going in cap rate as well as a higher growth profile.

Samir, Analyst: Does that $100 to $150 million range include entitlement sales, or is that all ground lease?

Ross Cooper, President, Chief Investment Officer, Kimco Realty: The majority of it is ground leases. When we look at the entitlements, we will also be pruning some non-income-producing assets, some land parcels. The other component that we have that really is unique to Kimco Realty is the entitlements and the multifamily densification program. When you think about the way that we’ve been able to start to really generate value on the entitlements, we’ve taken some of this entitled land, unimproved land. We can enter it into a joint venture by contributing our land into this partnership where our contribution is in a preferred equity piece of the capital stack. We’re also earning a current return during the construction phase, which is important.

The expectation is that upon completion and stabilization of the multifamily project, we can monetize that asset, crystallize the value, and then go ahead and recycle that capital either into acquisitions or coming out of the ground with the next project, whatever the case may be, and having the optionality with the right of first refusal on those projects. The baseline expectation is that we’ll go ahead and monetize that, but we have the option, if we elected to, to bring in a new partner and retain the asset. It’s a really nice spot for us to be in. We think that we’ll continue with that program. The first project that we anticipate stabilizing in 2026 is our Colter Avenue property at our Suburban Square asset in Philadelphia.

We just announced last week that we just broke ground on the next project in a similar program in our Westlake asset in Daly City, California. If we can continue with that recurring site recycling and get on that flywheel, we think that’s a really nice way for us to continue to prove out value, enhance the assets by bringing the residential component to the property, and then recycle the capital upon stabilization of the asset.

Samir, Analyst: Maybe talk about, expand on kind of the transaction market, what you’re seeing there. Certainly, it feels like there’s a lot of lifestyle centers out there in the market right now. Talk about a deep debt buyer pool and maybe pricing.

Ross Cooper, President, Chief Investment Officer, Kimco Realty: Yeah, I think that’s another differentiator for Kimco Realty is that, you know, we’ve historically been somewhat agnostic on format. As Conor Flynn mentioned, you know, we really look at the demographics, the tenancy, the quality of the asset more so than the format of the layout. You’re seeing a real blurring of the lines. You know, you talk about lifestyle assets, but the last three acquisitions that we’ve made, which are categorized as lifestyle, all have a grocery component, all have a junior box lineup at Renstat. We’re really excited about being able to mark to market over time and then have a component of that specialty lifestyle type retail. It’s extremely competitive today on all formats of open-air retail. You’ve seen a lot of capital aggressively chasing these assets.

We are in a unique position where we have a pretty wide aperture of both format and the way that we can invest in assets. Today, core acquisitions are not necessarily accretive for us based upon where our cost of capital is. That’s putting aside the 1031 exchange, you know, recycling of the ground lease capital. We have a structured investment program that we think is a really interesting and exciting way for us to participate in high-quality real estate today, where we’re generating a higher return in the short term than we would obtain by acquiring the asset outright, but we’re getting paid to wait. We’re getting right-of-first offers or right-of-first refusals on all of these properties and all of this real estate.

At some point in the future, hopefully sooner than later, we anticipate that our cost of capital will put us in a position where we could be more aggressive in terms of exercising these right-of-first refusals and right-of-first offers. When you think about the program just on the structured investment side, we have upwards of $2 billion of gross asset value where we have the first and last look on many of these assets. At the appropriate time, we anticipate that many of these can ultimately become part of the acquisition pipeline.

That doesn’t even include the institutional joint venture program that we have, which is upwards of $6 billion of real estate in which we have partnerships where we have a right-of-first offer or right-of-first refusal in the event that those assets are to be sold or we kind of push forward on trying to acquire some of our partners’ interests in those assets. We have a tremendous opportunity just within the embedded portfolio that we have investments in, not even mentioning trying to bid on third-party assets, you know, outside of that.

Samir, Analyst: Got it. Glenn, maybe finally on the balance sheet, kind of what you’re seeing there. My second question is, as you think about next year, talk about swing factors that can sort of move numbers we need to consider into next year.

Ross Cooper, President, Chief Investment Officer, Kimco Realty: Sure. So from a balance sheet standpoint, I mean, the balance sheet really is in great shape. We have an A- rating from Fitch. We’re on positive outlook from both Moody’s and S&P at BBB+ Baa1. We’ll see where that goes. They’ll be evaluating that over the near term in terms of where it goes. We think we’re operating where we should be today. One of the nice things about where the portfolio and the balance sheet sits today is we do not need to do any further deleveraging. We’re operating at a consolidated net debt to EBITDA in the low fives and on a look-through basis, including the preferred and pro-rata portion of JV debt in the mid-fives. We think that’s the right place to operate the company. One of the things that’s been a headwind for a while was all the deleveraging that we had been doing.

It’s dilutive to do that in nature. That’s behind us. Same thing with the transformation of the portfolio. We’d sold a lot of assets that were dilutive, bought other assets that were at lower cap rates, higher quality stuff. The portfolio is also in great shape. Now we’re in a position similar to what Ross was talking about, where we can sell these ground leases and accretively have this disposition program that will help add fuel to the FFO growth that we’re targeting. In terms of some of the swing items that you ask about for next year, again, we’re watching pretty closely. Getting the sign-but-not-open pipeline up and flowing is a critical component. We don’t anticipate a lot of bankruptcy activity. As long as credit loss stays within the target that we’re assuming in that 75 to 100 basis point range, that should not be an issue.

We will have a little bit of a headwind from refinancing the $800 million of debt that matures next year, but the bulk of the debt doesn’t begin maturing until August of next year. We have time to see. If there’s some rate cuts and rates come down a little bit, I think we’ll be in good position to absorb that as well. The NOI growth is far out exceeding the headwind from the refinancing that’ll go on. The other thing is just going to be the timing of some of the structured investments that we’re doing, as well as the timing around sales of the flat ground leases.

Samir, Analyst: I want to mention the bond spread.

Ross Cooper, President, Chief Investment Officer, Kimco Realty: Yeah, from a bond spread standpoint where we sit today, you know, we did a bond at the end of June, a long 10-year bond at 92 basis points over the Treasury. That was one of the tightest spreads that we’ve ever issued. Today, if we went to the bond market, we’re probably through that. We’re probably the high 80s or around 90 basis points over. Today we’d issue a new 10-year bond, you know, really sub 5%. We’re going to watch closely and be opportunistic about the refinancings that come up. In addition, we have our full availability on our $2 billion revolver. Liquidity is in really great shape as well.

Samir, Analyst: I’m going to ask some rapid-fire questions. All right. Number one, when the Fed starts to cut rates, do you expect long-term yields to decline, stay flat, or potentially rise?

Conor Flynn, CEO, Kimco Realty: Relatively flat.

Samir, Analyst: Okay. I think I know the answer to the next one. AI initiatives. Maybe talk about spending on AI initiatives. Is that going to be higher, flat, or lower next year?

Conor Flynn, CEO, Kimco Realty: Higher.

Samir, Analyst: Okay. This is for the sector. Same-store NOI growth for your sector will be higher, lower, or same next year?

Conor Flynn, CEO, Kimco Realty: It’s close to the same, maybe incrementally higher.

Samir, Analyst: Okay, perfect. Thanks a lot, guys.

Conor Flynn, CEO, Kimco Realty: Thank you.

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