Macerich at BofA Real Estate Conference: Strategic Path Forward

On Tuesday, 09 September 2025, Macerich (NYSE:MAC) presented its strategic initiatives at the BofA Securities 2025 Global Real Estate Conference. The company showcased its progress on the "Path Forward Plan," emphasizing business simplification, operational improvements, and leverage reduction. While Macerich has made strides in leasing and asset sales, challenges such as inflation and retailer concerns persist.

Key Takeaways

• Macerich is ahead of schedule on its Path Forward Plan, focusing on business simplification and leverage reduction.
• The company has signed 4.3 million square feet in leases, surpassing initial targets.
• $1.2 billion in mall sales have been completed, contributing to balance sheet improvements.
• The acquisition of Crabtree Mall aims to boost occupancy to 90% by 2028.
• Macerich is forming a Gen Z committee to better cater to younger demographics.

Financial Results

• The company is on track with asset sales, having completed $1.2 billion, including $332 million from Lakewood and $22 million from Valley Mall.
• Macerich targets a 5.2% CAGR in NOI over four years, with a focus on development projects coming online from 2026 to 2028.
• The SNOW pipeline has grown to $87 million, with expectations to exceed $100 million by year-end.
• Macerich projects $1.4 to $1.5 billion in total dispositions, focusing on outparcels and non-enclosed mall assets.

Operational Updates

• Leasing activity remains robust, with 4.3 million square feet signed to date.
• The company has addressed nearly 30% of its 2026 lease expirations, with 45% in the LOI stage.
• For Forever 21 spaces, 67% are committed with executed leases, and 18% are in LOI.
• Demand is strong across various retailer categories, including food, entertainment, and health sectors.

Future Outlook

• Macerich plans to reach 90% occupancy at Crabtree Mall by 2028.
• The company aims to drive traffic and sales through strategic renewals in 2029, 2030, and 2031.
• Deleveraging remains a top priority, with a mid-2026 inflection point in FFO anticipated.
• The Gen Z committee aims to enhance customer engagement with younger demographics.

Q&A Highlights

• Macerich is addressing 2026 maturities through refinancing and asset sales.
• The financing market has opened for "B malls," with debt yields of 14% to 15%.
• The company expects flat to down 10-year yields and stable spending on AI initiatives.
• Same-store NOI growth for A malls is projected to increase next year.

For a detailed understanding of Macerich’s strategic initiatives and financial performance, please refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - BofA Securities 2025 Global Real Estate Conference:

Unidentified speaker: Hey, let’s get started here. Welcome to the Macerich Roundtable. Jack, I’ll turn it over to you. Maybe you can make some introductions to the team up here. I think you’ve got some opening remarks.

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: Yeah, I have some remarks myself. Good afternoon. It’s a pleasure to be here. My name is Jack Sham. I’m the CEO of Macerich. I’ve brought to my right Doug Healey, our Senior EVP, Head of Leasing. On my left is Dan Swanstrom, our Senior EVP, CFO. I’ve got Brad Miller at the end, SVP, Head of our Portfolio Management effort. Ironically, when we were here a year ago, I had just started last year at the company. We were focusing on beginning to outline what we could accomplish on our path forward plan. Today, I’m proud to report that we’re either ahead of schedule or on track on all components of the plan and have significantly de-risked the plan.

This pace and confidence in achieving our remaining goals for a projected mid-2026 inflection point have enabled us to pursue new growth opportunities, such as the acquisition of Crabtree Mall in June. Recall that our path forward strategy is built on simplifying the business, operational performance improvement, and leverage reduction. We’re solving for strengthening the balance sheet, fortifying our core portfolio, driving operational excellence, and positioning us for growth. In May, we provided an update to our path forward plan, which included a comprehensive NOI bridge. This update also provided a roadmap for 2028 target FFO ranges and a path to our target 2028 leverage ranges. We also provided an update on the composition of our go-forward portfolio. Driving operational performance improvement begins and ends with leasing. Recall that we are targeting an average of 4 million square feet of leasing in 2025 and 2026.

To the end of the second quarter, we’ve already signed 4.3 million square feet, which is ahead of schedule on leasing volume and on target for our market rent assumptions used in the five-year plan. I believe by now we’re all familiar with our leasing speedometer and our sign not open or snow pipeline. These metrics best track our progress on driving a higher percentage of new lease deals versus renewals, which in turn drive higher spreads and incremental revenue to achieve our NOI targets. The Macerich Leasing Speedometer tracks revenue completion percentage for all new leasing activity in the five-year plan and drives every leasing and capital allocation decision at our properties. Our initial goal on new deals was 50% progress by mid-2025 and 70% by year-end 2025.

By hitting that goal, it would put us on track for an 85% completion target by mid-2026, which would effectively complete the new leasing goal outlined in our plan. That also puts us on track for our ultimate opportunity to achieve the $130 million in cumulative SNOW potential. For new deal lease completion, we are at 66% today, and we have a large pipeline of letters of intent, which puts us on pace to exceed our 70% year-end target. The SNOW pipeline has grown to $87 million when we reported Q2 earnings in August. That also puts us on track to exceed our SNOW pipeline target of $100 million by year-end. We’re also making substantial progress in executing on planned dispositions as part of our Path Forward Plan to improve the balance sheet and refine the composition of our portfolio.

Today, we have completed approximately $1.2 billion of mall sales, which include the recent sale of Lakewood and Valley Mall three weeks ago. What we have remaining for mall sales are several additional EDDI assets for sale or loan givebacks we’ve identified over the next one to two years, increasing the total dispositions to $1.4 to $1.5 billion. The remaining $500 to $600 million dispositions in our plan represent the sale of out parcels, freestanding retail, non-enclosed mall assets, and land. I’m pleased to report that we currently have approximately $120 million sold or under contract against our 2025 target of $100 million to $150 million. I mentioned Crabtree earlier. I’d like to close on that acquisition as it speaks to how much we have de-risked execution of the plan and how positive we are on Class A malls in general.

We acquired Crabtree Mall, a market-dominant Class A retail center, totaling 1.3 million square feet in the Raleigh-Durham MSA for approximately $290 million. It’s accretive to the Path Forward Plan’s 2028 target FFO range. It’s a powerful entry point to one of the top Southeastern U.S. markets, and it holds a dominant market position in a high-growth market with the top retailers in the country identifying it as either the number one or number two must-have location within the Raleigh-Durham MSA. We’re excited about this mall as we have the perfect opportunity to deploy our operating, leasing, and marketing platform to reinvigorate leasing momentum, drive permanent occupancy closer to 90% by 2028, and capture the embedded NOI growth upside potential. Retailers are now elated that we own and manage them all, and we’ve seen that reflected in the inbound indicators of interest and negotiations already underway.

We believe there are more opportunities out there to use the platform we’ve created with our Path Forward Plan and our rigorous process to work with leading retailers eager to find the best malls to reach their consumers. In closing, I feel very good about where we are on the Path Forward Plan and with the addition of Crabtree to our go-forward portfolio. I’m pleased that we’re ahead of plan on leasing, on track with asset sales and dispositions, and have a clear roadmap for hitting our deleveraging targets. Our team is working well together, executing nicely on the key components of the Path Forward Plan and properly incentivized and aligned on shareholder value creation. I’ll turn it over to you. Thanks.

Unidentified speaker: We’re great. Thanks, Jack, for that. I mean, you’re certainly well ahead of leasing. When you compare it to your plan, you’re certainly well ahead of leasing when you compare it to last year in both the number of deals and the square footage. Talk to the changes that you’ve implemented, right? You’re getting to that progress. I know you’ve talked about technology enhancements in the portfolio driving the leasing capital allocation. What changes have you made as you’ve come to Macerich that are driving this leasing machine here?

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: I think what we’re doing is very unique as it relates to being a mall landlord. It started with COVID, right? Macerich, before I joined the company last year, was not positioned well going into COVID, obviously, from a balance sheet standpoint. It had to do a very large equity offering to kind of right-size the balance sheet so it didn’t have to pursue other more toxic options, I would say. What happened between that time and before I started was the company was basically on an annual basis trying to just stay ahead of quarterly earnings and guidance. The mall portfolio was generally pretty well leased, but we had over 30 vacant acre locations within our centers.

I would say the first change that I think, which is why we’re seeing the success coming in, was come up with a game plan on what are the assets that we need to own, first and foremost. What is the culture that we want our company to be? One of the principal ones is empowerment. I think this was a very top-down controlled kind of organization over the last number of decades. If you were to look at why we’re doing what we’re doing today, we have a leasing team, an asset management team, a property management team, legal team. The team is just going above and beyond, historically what this company has performed in terms of these leasing targets. I think on the one hand, we’re leasing really good space in really good centers where tenants want to be in.

We’re making capital decisions to support that leasing, which is driving those spreads. We have a host of technology tools that we put in place and process tools that enable this company to communicate really efficiently, especially as it relates to tenants and leasing. The other thing that I big changed was the empowerment of our asset management team. If you were to ask me, who is the owner of these assets? Who is the owner represented at Macerich before I got here? It wasn’t really clear to me. I said, look, asset management team, you guys are the owner. You guys are coming up with these five-year budgets. You’re going to hold the organization accountable to them. You’re going to hold the organization to capital allocation, look at point-to-point IRRs, decide on whether we should sell or buy.

That manually frees up leasing to basically green light and do what they need to do versus having indifference within the company. It’s a combination of very specific strategy, empowering our asset management team to kind of be the owners of these assets that are going to be accountable for these five-year plans. We had a great leasing team, so they always knew how to lease. We just didn’t give them the direction or the latitude to do it. I think that’s why you’re seeing us succeed in this way right now.

Unidentified speaker: I guess, Doug, turning over to you, I mean, what are you seeing on the ground as it relates to the consumer? Clearly they’ve been impacted with inflation. Retailers have been impacted from tariffs. I’m sure you’re in deal review meetings. What are things that come up and what are concerns from your retailers?

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: There’s definitely a lot of things going on between politically, the tariffs, and other things in the macroeconomic environment. So far, and I think I’ve said this on several calls, so far we’ve seen no correlation with retailer demand. In fact, I think you alluded to it earlier, we have already signed as many deals in 2024 year to date than we signed in all of 2025. I’m sorry, 25 compared to 24. That’s kind of what we’ve done in the past. What’s more forward-looking is we have an Executive Leasing Committee every other week that approves deals, and those deals go to lease. They go, they get fully executed. They go into our snow pipeline. We’ve already reviewed more deals in that committee this year, year to date this year, than we did in all of 2024. That’s much more forward-looking, in my opinion.

You know, we’re not seeing any slowdown at all at this point.

Unidentified speaker: To put it into perspective here, when you think about 26 expirations, how much of that had been addressed versus where you were? What’s it last year?

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: Oh, Brad, do you have that exact number? I know we’re ahead of where we were.

Unidentified speaker: Okay, so you’re ahead.

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: We’re ahead of where we were. We’re basically done with 2025, and we’re ahead of where we were at this point for 2027.

Unidentified speaker: For 26.

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: Yes.

Unidentified speaker: Talk to us about the Forever 21 space, right? I mean, clearly square footage, but they didn’t pay a lot of rent. Where are you kind of on those, let’s call it under commitment? Where is it under LOI? Talk to us about those discussions that you’re having.

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: You’re right. We had about 570,000 square feet with Forever 21 that we got back. That’s a lot of square footage, but you’re 100% right. They did not pay a lot of rent. We kind of foresaw this. We knew this was going to happen. We have been actively leasing the space way before they filed bankruptcy, way before they closed doors. We’re about 67% committed right now in terms of fully executed leases and leases out, with another 18% in LOI. We’re trading paper on about 85% of the vacant square footage. If there is a silver lining in this filing and this liquidation, it’s allowing us to take out what was a non-relevant retailer not paying a lot of rent and put in tenants that are really relevant and will pay rent.

If you think about replacing a Forever 21 with a flagship Zara or a Dick’s House of Sport or a Uniqlo or a flagship Foot Locker, not only are you replacing with a better brand, but now you replace an anchor in what was probably a dead wing because Forever 21 wasn’t doing the business with tenants that are going to drive traffic into that area, and that traffic is going to parlay into better leasing and more rent.

Unidentified speaker: What is sort of the rent growth you’ll see in these types of, I mean, obviously there’s a capital commitment part you have to think about, right? Maybe on a net effective basis, what would be sort of the rent growth in that?

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: Yeah, I mean, on the Forever 21 spaces, we expect to double the rent, right, that we were getting from Forever 21 across. It was 2.5 times the rent Forever 21 was paying.

Unidentified speaker: Okay.

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: Doug, just to add on the 2026 expires, we had, as of when we reported about a month ago, commitments on almost 30% of our expiring square footage and another 45% in the LOI stage. We are pretty far along, and to Doug’s point, certainly ahead of pace compared to last year.

Unidentified speaker: In terms of categories, as we think about retailer categories that are active, as we’re looking for, as they’re looking for space, maybe talk about that for the audience here.

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: It’s interesting. We’re still seeing unprecedented demand almost across all categories. You know, legacy for sure, digitally native and emerging brands, international brands. Think about Zara, think about Aritzia, think about Uniqlo, food and beverage for sure, grocery, medical, entertainment, health and wellness. There’s demand from all of these categories, which is really exciting to me, and I think very intriguing is, you know, we always talk about some of these sexy emerging brands, whether it’s Alo Yoga or Faraday or Brandy Melville, and they’re great. We need to have them in our shopping centers. We’re starting to see some of these legacy brands really reinvent themselves. For example, the Gap, Old Navy, they’ve been irrelevant for a long time. They are extremely relevant right now. We’ve seen it with Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister, Coach, Pacific Sunwear.

While we continue to reach out and accommodate these emerging brands, it’s really good to see the legacy brands who are a staple in our properties reinventing themselves and performing very, very well.

Unidentified speaker: I want to keep the conversation interactive, so if there’s any questions, please. On the balance sheet front, I know you got one sort of remaining maturing loan in November right now. Maybe talk around that. Also, how are you addressing some of the 2026 maturities at this point?

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: Yeah, so on 2025, we’ve got one at South Plains. We’re currently in discussions there, so stay tuned. We’re looking at a potential extension there, but more to come in the coming weeks. We’ve already attacked a lot of our 2026 maturities through asset sales. Examples, most recently, Lakewood. Three weeks ago, we announced we closed on the sale of Lakewood for $332 million. That was probably our second largest maturity. Flat Iron, we had paid down the debt on that. We’re proactively attacking the 2026 maturities as well through a combination of refinancings, asset sale paydowns, and then there’s one or two where we’ll have discussions with the lender and kind of see where those play out, if it makes sense to get an extension or potential giveback.

Unidentified speaker: In terms of asset sales, maybe update us on that. I know you did South Park in April. Lakewood sold in July. So remind me.

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: You got Valley Mall, Lakewood.

Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: Yeah, we just closed, as I said, on Lakewood for $332 million. Valley was similarly about three weeks ago. That was $22 million. That was an unencumbered asset. In totality, if you take a step back, when Jack came on, he outlined about $2 billion of asset sales as our target. We’ve had incredible progress over the last year with Valley and Lakewood. We’re now at $1.2 billion of mall sales completed.

Unidentified speaker: Okay.

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: We have another $200 to $300 million of malls that we’ll look at over the next 12 months in terms of incremental remaining EDDI dispositions or givebacks. Really, the last chunk to get to the overall $2 billion target is $500 to $600 million of out parcels, freestanding retail, non-enclosed malls. On those, we had at the beginning of the year provided guidance of $100 to $150 million of what we thought we could sell in 2025. As Jack alluded to earlier, we’re pleased to report that we’re currently at $120 million.

Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: Against that target, ahead of pace on the disposition targets, and the team’s aggressively attacking the 26 out parcel dispositions and lining them up as we speak now.

Unidentified speaker: Maybe on that, just talk about the appetite from buyers for these mall assets, right? It feels like you’re making good progress on that side too. Maybe just kind of what does the transaction market look like? What does pricing look like?

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: Yeah, I mean, the financing market has thankfully opened up on sort of what I call, what we would call B malls, you know, malls that are performing in the $400 to $600 per square foot in sales. They’re probably looking at like 14% to 15% debt yields in terms of underwriting. That’s going to kind of put a kind of floor on cap rates for a while as it relates to just financeability of those assets. I would say we’ve seen a good buyer base of malls that we’re selling. I know when we were competing for Crabtree Mall, there were a number of private entities that we were competing against. I would say that the market is starting to begin to function more holistically.

What I think that means is you’ll see more malls, some that are special servicing, some that are lender controlled, start to come to market. There’s a lot of equity to find homes for that right now. I’d say private equity. We’ve had a lot of success in selling malls within our portfolio into that group. The buyer will have to have his own vision as to what they want to do. Like in each of the, like Lakewood, we sold that to Pacific Retail. They have an institutional partner that’s going to come alongside with them. There is an opportunity to generate return on that asset. It probably looks like a six-year kind of, in our opinion, kind of back-ended horizon to accomplish that.

In our judgment, I’d rather take, put that money and put it immediately into a Crabtree Mall that is generating 11% yield and is going to quickly increase based on kind of the things that we do really well. I would say that the market is getting more functional as opposed to dysfunctional because of financing. Equity sources are there, and now it’s just a question of the product, the total addressable market. I think you’ll probably start to see more come on to the market in the coming months.

Unidentified speaker: I mean, Crabtree feels like it was a very unique opportunity, right? It’s like sort of a too good to be true, where it generates very high sales productivity. I mean, the 11% yield, and talk to us how that came about, that opportunity for you.

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: It was owned by a sovereign wealth fund for many, many years. I think they had over that course of time tried to sell the center. Obviously, they probably may have should have sold it earlier in a different kind of cap rate environment for that type of center. The financeability, I think the way if someone wanted to get secured financing on that could only go so far and create so much flexibility. The equity check required for a private buyer, like if we were selling that property, it was unencumbered, you would probably need $100 to $120 million equity check into that. That’s not for everyone, right? I think size certainly kind of impacted some of the marketability of that asset. For us, once we saw it, we were kind of all into it. We are happy to own it right now. Happy for our shareholders.

Unidentified speaker: In terms of what you can do there, you know, the opportunity is set. I mean, what feedback are you getting from retailers from Crabtree? Talk about, you know, what is the occupancy today? Where can you take it? Talk about that accretion.

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: The occupancy today is, Brad.

Unidentified speaker: Mid 70?

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: Yeah, and we expect to take it to 90% by the end of 2028. What I can tell you about the retailers is they were waiting for the right buyer, and we were the right buyer. The previous owner wasn’t investing a lot of capital into the property. They weren’t investing a lot of capital into the retailers. The retailers wanted to be in that center. They wanted to invest in their stores, but if the landlord wasn’t going to do it, then they weren’t going to do it. As Jack said in his prepared comments, they were elated when we bought it. I’m not going to start naming names, but we have some key retailers that are expiring in the near future who’ve approached us proactively, not only wanting to extend for another 10 years, but also expand, remodel, et cetera.

Those retailers that are not in the market, where they might have gone to the competition, they’re now looking at us. It’s been very, very well received by the retailer community.

Unidentified speaker: The one topic I want to talk a little bit about was CapEx, right? I mean, it feels like you get these boxes back, going to require capital requirement. Maybe generally, as we think about, you know, the boxes you’ve gotten back, you know, Forever 21, et cetera, and how should we think about CapEx over the next several years in the mall business as a percentage of NOI?

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: I mean, boxers are clearly more challenging.

Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: We have 23, what I’d call anchors that have either been, we’ve already signed deals, we’ve opened them, or we’re underway right now. Six are under LOI right now, and we’ve got one that we’re fast-pacing. We’re going to target having 30 complete within a pretty short period of time. The different options are sell the box with a little bit of TA or sell the box for a good number, have the tenant build. The other option is, you know, they sign a lease and we provide, you know, the capital for the tenant improvement, and there’s also landlord work associated with it, especially if it’s an old Sears box. There’s not a one-size-fits-all.

I would tell you that the way I look at it is obviously I look at the return on capital of just what, like a Dick’s House of Sport is going to go into a Sears location. Kind of depending on the type of deal you structure with them, you’re going to get a good rent, you’re going to provide a decent amount of TA, and there’s probably going to be some landlord work. That’s not the end of the story. You’ll get a decent return, hopefully mid to higher single, you know, mid to single-digit return on that capital invested. The real story is what does it do to the wing of that shopping center? Who else can you bring in? Does it drive traffic? Our business is really simple. Go to Tyson’s Corner, go to Queen’s Center, go to Scottsdale Fashion.

We drive traffic, we drive sales, we drive rent big time, right? If I have a wing that’s got a vacant anchor, I don’t have that ability to create that tension. I don’t have the draw. Someday we’ll start to show you statistics at Chandler. The prior leadership had negotiated a deal with Shields. Pretty much gave the box to Shields with some tenant allowance to get them to open that store. Shields is going to do north of $120 million in sales. The trade area for Chandler has increased 20% because of Shields. If you look at the tenancy in that wing, we just approved Alo, you know, in that wing to go into that wing of the center. It was virtually unleasable before. It was too much GLA. Now that center is really thriving.

I think as you all think about the opportunity for Macerich, we are pulling the band-aid off, leasing the way we should be leasing, filling anchors. That gets us to the starting point in 2028. We’ll hit our leverage target. We’ll exceed or meet our FFO per share. That’s not the real story. The real story is going to be in 2029, 2030, 2031 renewals, when we’re starting to really drive traffic and sales. That’s where the real power, I think, is in terms of opportunity. Because for a long time, I would say if I were a student of what happened in our portfolio, not a lot of offensive capital went in. We got picked off by power centers, lifestyle centers.

There will be a time of reckoning when I’m going to be able to go back when I’m fully leased and be much more offensive as it relates to pulling tenants out of lifestyle centers around us. Let’s see what happens then, right? We haven’t had that chance because if you think about the mall business, it’s been very challenging. You got COVID, you got anchors, you got people not going to centers anymore. The reality is traffic in our portfolio year to date is up already versus the first six months of last year, and it’s only going to increase with these 30 anchor stores and all of these flagship locations that are being built, which are demand generators.

You know, when HaiDiLao opens, when Din Tai Fung opens, when Eataly opens, when Dick’s House of Sport opens, when Baumauer opens, down the line, these will drive Level 99, you know, at Tysons, these are going to drive traffic. If you’ve studied, which you should look, Gen Z is a big proponent of customer, the highest, fastest growing customer foot traffic in our centers. It’s big spending. That’s a big pot of money that goes to malls. You know, what do they want? I can tell you we’re trying to figure it out, right? They want a certain tenancy, but as a landlord, what do we need to do today? What do we need to do five years from now, 10 years from now? That is going to be the largest segment spending population that will facilitate in our centers.

That’s kind of like the newest committee that I’ve just formed, my Gen Z committee, which I don’t qualify, but getting the right people on it.

Unidentified speaker: Do you think that you’ll be achieving your targets and realize more cash earlier? Do you think you’ll be benefiting from more cheering acquisitions, or do you think you’ll be able to deliver better than you think?

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: Deleveraging is the most important thing that we can do right now. Because for some, right now at our current leverage level, we’re not investable for some. I think that, you know, that’s a core objective of the company. You know, when we looked at Crabtree Mall, I had looked at six other opportunities before Crabtree Mall. I would just tell you I offered on one other one, one of those other six. Crabtree Mall was the one that, that was the one that we needed to buy for, as I’ve sort of mentioned. Will there be other ones? I don’t know. We’ll continue to look, but I’ve got a really high bar of what it takes to, you know, absorb more than I thought. I kind of have a good feeling as to what we really need. Deleveraging is really critical.

We’re not going to buy a bunch of stuff and delay our deleveraging plan by any. We’re just not going to do that.

Unidentified speaker: We’re wanting to take material out to buy it and then sell it.

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: The other thing about buying a Crabtree is, you know, it gives me the ability to maybe look at some of the steady Eddys. Some of those are unencumbered. I could monetize them. The cap rates now are inflecting pretty close to where I might be able to maybe trade out a slower growing kind of go forward versus a Crabtree, which is a very high same-store NOI kind of property right now in our portfolio.

Unidentified speaker: Hey, Jack, this conversation we’re having, it feels like you’re well ahead of all your targets. Leasing, S&O, you’ve done a good job on the leverage side. This $180 million that you’ve put out is out there, but it certainly feels like you’re moving even above that direction. Help us understand what are the biggest swing factors, right? Is it asset sales? What’s driving you not to push that $180 million above?

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: Yeah, look, and just for everyone’s background, I think everybody’s seen the Path Forward Plan. In May, we put out our Path Forward Plan, which included a detailed look at a comprehensive NOI bridge, targets to 20 key components of 2028 FFO targets, and the deleveraging path. As you look at some of the variables on the NOI bridge, obviously we’ve talked about the asset sales and the timing of those. From an incremental NOI perspective, we’ve got the pace of NOI growth from the new leasing activity and the SNOW pipeline that we’ve talked about, where we’re driving good progress, completion of the major development and other redevelopments, the timing of which and when that comes online obviously affects when the NOI is realized. On the FFO, we provided key components on the expense side, the largest one being interest expense.

We put our assumptions in there, so obviously interest rates and the variability of that could be a factor in that plan. As we’ve talked here today, we believe we’ve de-risked that plan significantly. We’re ahead of plan on leasing, which shows up on the leasing speedometer and the SNOW. We had $87 million as of last quarter, driving towards that $100 million goal this year and $130 million ultimate opportunity. We’re on track on the asset sales. I think we just put out the version 2.0 a couple of months ago. This is kind of a multi-year plan.

Unidentified speaker: Okay. We’ve got a couple of rapid-fire questions. Before that, any final questions?

Unidentified speaker: Since 75% going to yield for Crabtree, is that indicative where you see trends?

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: I mean, the trouble with these cap rates, I think it’s really hard to triangulate. Like, you know, we sold Lakewood for a mid-9% cap rate. Now, that had a development component to it. I don’t think there’s like a uniform kind of cap rate price right now. I think some of it is affected by financeability. Some of it is a function of, you know, IRRs, you know, that people kind of model in. Some of that’s based on, you know, where you can take NOI, you know, how much capital is involved to get it there. I wouldn’t kind of try to suggest that 11% cap rate is the cap rate because like we might show up with one at a 13% or I might show up with one at an 8%, you know, and be able to show you defensively why that made sense.

It’s really, I know Green Street kind of moderated all their NAVs, but you know, the buyer base right now is basically private equity with operators, now us. You know, Simon bought Brickle, you know, a very unique circumstance, right? I think it’s a little, I don’t think you could truly generalize, you know, kind of an overall cap rate. I think that that was very attractive for us as a buyer. I’m very happy with that, especially if you look at comps on open-air centers that have similar tenancy that are, whatever, 400 basis points, 500 basis points inside of that. That is a really defensible investment. That center is going to regain trade area again and customer traffic.

Unidentified speaker: I’m sorry, I’m standing and I’m assuming the stats are on.

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: I don’t know too much about it except that, you know, obviously it’s a very strategic asset, high-end. They were already a partner in it. We weren’t a partner in Crabtree. I haven’t necessarily seen them buy out in the open market. Not to say they wouldn’t, I’m not in their shoes, but for us, we’ve sold enough assets at this point. We kind of understand the elements that really, for us, make a really good, compelling investment. If it lines up and doesn’t derail us from or delay us in any way in our leverage kind of goals, we’ll certainly try to lean into it.

Unidentified speaker: In terms of FFO, as we think about this year and next year, you’ve sort of troughed in FFO, right? I mean, it feels like you’re going to inflect. What’s the timeframe you think?

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: I mean, we’ve talked about this, you know, a lot of these components come around a mid-2026 inflection point. I mean, a lot of it’s dependent on the timing of asset sales, right? When those are realized, in terms of the bridge, we’ve talked about all the leasing activity, which kind of gets you to like 85% plus by the mid-2026 timeframe. The NOI bridge kind of outlines a lot of this, but you can see the ramp-up in NOI from development coming online that really starts to ramp 2026 into 2027 and 2028. You can tell in the NOI bridge, we’ve provided a CAGR over four years. It’s 5.2%. Based on what we said before, it really ramps in 2026, the end of 2026 into 2027, 2028.

Unidentified speaker: Okay, a couple of rapid-fire questions. Number one, when the Fed starts to cut rates, do you expect long-term debt, long-term yields to decline, stay flat, or potentially rise?

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: Sorry, can you just repeat the first part of that?

Unidentified speaker: Yeah, Feds at this point will probably likely cut rates, right? What happens to the 10-year yield? Do you think it declines, stays flat, or potentially rise?

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: Flat to down.

Unidentified speaker: Okay. Number two, last year, the majority of companies stated they are ramping up spending on AI initiatives. How would you characterize your plans over the next year? Higher, flat, or lower?

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: It’s flat.

Unidentified speaker: Flat, okay. Number three, this is for the industry. A mall sector, do you believe same-store NOI growth for the A mall sector will be higher, lower, or same next year?

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: It’s higher.

Unidentified speaker: Okay, thank you very much.

Jack Sham, CEO, Macerich: Thank you.

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