RPT Realty (NYSE:RPT) Q2 2022 Earnings Conference Call August 4, 2022 9:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Vincent Chao – Investor Relations
Brian Harper – President and Chief Executive Officer
Mike Fitzmaurice – Chief Financial Officer
Conference Call Participants
Derek Johnston – Deutsche Bank
Todd Thomas – KeyBanc Capital Markets
Ravi Vaidya – Mizuho Securities
Omotayo Okusanya – Credit Suisse
Craig Schmidt – Bank of America
Floris Van Dijkum – Compass Point Research
Hongliang Zhang – JMorgan
Linda Tsai – Jefferies
Operator
Greetings and welcome to RPT Realty Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.
I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Vin Chao, Managing Director of Finance and Investment. Please go ahead.
Vincent Chao
Good morning and thank you for joining us for RPT’s Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call.
At this time, management would like me to inform you that certain statements made during this conference call which are not historical may be deemed forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Additionally, statements made during the call are made as of the date of this call. Listeners to any replay should understand the passage of time by itself will diminish the quality of the statements made. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in any forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, factors and risks that could cause actual results to differ from expectations.
Certain of these factors are described as risk factors in our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021, and in our earnings release for the second quarter 2022. Certain of these statements made on today’s call also involve non-GAAP financial measures. Listeners are directed to our second quarter 2022 and first quarter 2022 press releases, which include definitions of those non-GAAP measures and reconciliations to the nearest GAAP measures and which are available on our website in the Investors section.
I would now like to turn the call over to President and CEO, Brian Harper; and CFO, Mike Fitzmaurice, for their opening remarks, after which, we will open the call for questions.
Brian Harper
Thanks, Vin. Good morning and thank you for joining our call today.
Since joining the company in 2018, our team knew that this would be a turnaround story, one that required upgrading the portfolio; strengthening our cash flows; implementing strong governance; optimizing our operations team to lease, lease, lease; and attracting the best talent out there.
Our data-driven investment and the operating platforms that we put in place over the last 4 years allowed us to do just that. This company has been significantly transformed. We have significantly upgraded the portfolio quality and strengthened cash flows, positioning us for exceptional operational results.
We had another excellent quarter, thanks to our outstanding team. We continue to make meaningful strides towards our strategic vision for the reimagined RPT, highlighted by the accretive generational acquisition of Mary Brickell Village in Downtown Miami in July. This is the 13th open-air shopping center that we have acquired in last year, equating to about $840 million of value.
To put this in context and considering our 2022 expected capital recycling activities, almost 50% of our ABR will be in the top-growing markets in the Boston and suburb regions in the country. The transformation of the company has led to our fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year top and bottom line growth, and we continue to experience wind at our back with operating fundamentals holding steady with a strong backload of rents and double-digit re-leasing spreads that we expect to drive growth over the next several years.
And lastly, we would like to thank our banking partners for their support. We were significantly oversubscribed on our credit facility recast, which will result in improved duration and stronger liquidity. As we have been saying for some time, a relatively smaller size is an advantage that has allowed us to rapidly reshape our portfolio towards higher-demand markets with better population growth, job growth, household income, rent growth, sales performance and essential tenancy, all of which are important factors in this period of economic uncertainty.
In a pandemic short in the last 4 years and considering our remaining ’22 investment goals, we have turned over 30% of the portfolio into markets like Boston, Miami, Tampa, Nashville and Atlanta. These markets now account for about 40% of our ABR, which has nearly doubled since 2019. And for that same period, markets where we are over-indexed, like Detroit and Chicago, are expected to fall about 50% to a blended 14% of our ABR. Overall, our capital recycling efforts were aligned with our buybacks, accretive to earnings, leverage and portfolio quality, which we believe translates into superior cash flow strength.
Through this process, we have also been able to improve our tenancy, replacing weaker credit tenants with the likes of Whole Foods, Wegmans, multiple T.J. Maxx concepts, BJ’s, Ulta, Walmart, Giant/Ahold, Nike and much, much more. By improving the tenancy, we get the ancillary benefit of driving cap rate compression at our centers, particularly in cases where we’re adding a grocer to a previously non-grocery-anchored center like at River City Marketplace in Jacksonville, Highland Lakes in Tampa and Troy Marketplace in Detroit or significantly improving an existing grocery as we are doing at Crofton Center in Baltimore.
We have much more to follow at other centers as well. Including our signed not commenced, properties for which we have a grocery component will contribute over 71% of ABR, up from 65% at the end of 2019. These efforts have created a halo effect for our small shop leasing initiatives, which helped drive cross-shopping, sales performance and rent growth.
This quarter, we signed 26 new small shop leases with strong national tenants like Chase Bank, Fifth Third Bank, Massage Envy at an average ABR per square foot of $31.92, which is 27% above our in-place small shop average. Our small shop leased rate is now at 86.4%, up almost 3% since the end of the second quarter 2021, the strongest increase we have experienced since pre-COVID.
I began my remarks by discussing the progress we’ve made in transforming our portfolio. The key drivers of this rapid transformation have been our 3 unique investment platforms. In 2021, we were the top buyer of open-air shopping centers and have followed up this year with another $375 million of acquisitions or $223 million at our share.
During the second quarter, we closed on our — on more acquisitions in the Boston MSA, including The Crossings and Brookline Village. Both are great additions to the portfolio and continue to build on our scale in Boston, which is now our second-largest market based on ABR.
In July, we closed on the acquisition of another first ring center through our grocery-anchored joint venture platform. Mary Brickell Village is an iconic and generational asset, one of the top open-air centers in the country. This property is truly reflective of the new RPT brand, offering cash flow stability, visible near-term growth, attractive long-term growth potential, and finally, significant future value-creation potential through densification.
Miami is a market that we have been actively combing for investment given the gravity of the market, which is becoming the Manhattan of the South, with firms like Citadel, Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Point72 and Elliott Management all recently setting up shop in Miami and West Palm Beach. With Mary Brickell, our Miami exposure rises to over 7% of our ABR.
Mary Brickell is all about the density, which is unmatched within our portfolio, as you can see from the statistics we provided in a separate press release that we posted last night. This is simply a great asset in a great location.
In addition to the strength of location, Mary Brickell is also home to an attractive tenant lineup, anchored by a top-performing Publix that is doing more than 2x the Florida average in sales per square foot. Overall, tenants do extremely well here, averaging $1,100 per square foot in sales with an active 24-hour cadence fueled by a complementary mix of food and beverage, service and necessity tenants. National and regional tenants account for over 60% of the ABR of this center with almost 6 years of remaining term, providing cash flow stability. Placemaking will be a major component for success here, and we have been off to a quick start.
While we see a strong and stable lineup today, we also expect above-trend NOI growth at the center, primarily driven by signed leases that have yet to commence. Average rent escalators of about 2.5% and below market rents. Market rents in Brook will have grown by over 40% over the last decade. This is a $45 ABR per square foot center in a market where the last several tenants have signed leases over $100 per square foot.
The demand is robust. Coupled with the fact that this behaves as more of an urban street front setting, tenant allowances will be much lower than your typical suburban shopping center. This is a supply-demand imbalance scenario at its finest. Longer term, we believe unlocking the air above certain components of the center is where the most value could be made at the site as one of the most sizable doughnut holes remaining in the area. Today, the center is 200,000 square feet but is zoned for development of up to 80 stories and about 4.1 million square feet of residential, office or hotel.
The strength of the market for each of these property types gives us significant optionality as we consider future plans. Be sure to check out Page 44 in our investor deck.
The stats for both office and residential are staggering. From a land perspective, we acquired Mary Brickell for $42 million per acre, which compares favorably to a parking lot just a few blocks away that just sold for $145 million per acre. Although we did not acquire the property based on development value, we do see this as a material potential driver of future upside. We believe that good things happen to good real estate, and this is great real estate.
As you can clearly see, we can play in multiple different sandboxes within the retail real estate ecosystem. Scaling in our target markets amongst the first ring urban types of real estate, grocery-anchored centers and core power centers continues to be our vision and our strategy. Having detailed market knowledge and large GLA exposure in these markets allows us to optimize our on-the-ground operations teams, leverage our retail partners and gain access to greater deal flow on the investment front. We will continue to be highly targeted and data-driven with our capital allocation decisions in order to maximize shareholder value.
And with that, I’ll turn the call over to Mike to discuss our financial performance, acquisition funding details, balance sheet management initiatives and an updated outlook. Mike?
Mike Fitzmaurice
Thanks, Brian, and good morning, everyone. We are pleased to report another strong quarter, highlighted by 23% operating FFO per share growth, supported by our investment activity and solid fundamentals, including strong same-property NOI growth, healthy re-leasing spreads and a higher leased rate. We’re also very pleased with our proactive balance sheet management, allowing for optimal financial performance for several years to come.
Starting with second quarter results. Operating FFO per diluted share of $0.27 was up $0.01 over last quarter, primarily driven by higher-than-expected same-property NOI growth of 4.4%, fueled by lower expenses and bad debt net of abatements. Our same-property NOI growth was more than impressive this quarter as the spread was up against a 13.5% level from second quarter 2021. Leasing volumes, signed-not-commenced balances, re-leasing spreads and contractual rent increases continue to hold steady. Year-to-date, we have signed 1 million square feet, which is the strongest first half since 2016. We signed about 293,000 square feet during the quarter, resulting in a leased rate of 93.3%, up 10 basis points sequentially; and backstop by a robust sign-not-commenced and leases in advanced negotiation backlog balance of $10.3 million or $0.11 of operating FFO per share, which is a long tail commence through 2025. We expect $0.01 to come online in the second half of 2022, $0.07 in 2023, $0.02 in 2024 and $0.01 in 2025.
Given our long-term embedded mark-to-market opportunity, coupled with the age of our portfolio of over 30 years, we also continue to drive rent with our 42nd consecutive quarter of positive rent growth with our blended spreads coming in at 14% for the quarter. Annual contractual rent increases were also compelling for signed leases during the quarter, coming in at about 200 basis points.
We ended the first quarter with net debt to annualized adjusted EBITDA of 7.1x, Including our leasing backlog of $10.3 million, our leverage would be about 0.5 turn better at 6.6x. Our leverage is elevated this quarter as a result of the timing of acquisitions and dispositions. In line with expectations, we will effectively fund acquisitions with dispositions, including contributions to our joint venture platforms. We also have about $17 million of forward equity that we judiciously raised in the first quarter that is yet to be settled as well.
In regard to funding acquisitions, dispositions represent our most efficient source of capital, and our timely execution has allowed us to achieve optimal value for these assets. Since the end of the first quarter, we closed the sale of 2 assets, including Rivertowne Square in Deerfield Beach, Florida and Tel-Twelve in Detroit. We are able to obtain attractive pricing on both assets where we felt we had harvested full value with combined occupancy of 96%.
In the case of Rivertowne, we were able to reduce our exposure to weaker credits with long-term leases, Winn-Dixie and Bealls, while Tel-Twelve, we were able to realize $84 million of total value between the previous parcel sales of Lowe’s and Myers to our net lease platform and the sale of the remaining property. The total value for the 2 sales was about $8 million higher than if we sold the asset together, highlighting the synergy between our investment platforms.
We also recently went under contract to sell Mount Prospect plans in Chicago for $35 million that we expect to close in the third quarter, subject to customary closing conditions. Following the sale, we will have reduced our Chicago exposure to just one asset. Finally, we’ve agreed to terms to contribute 2 Midwest properties into our grocery-anchored joint venture platform: Troy Marketplace in Detroit; Shops on Lane in Columbus, Ohio. Both centers are highly quality assets, but considering our Midwest exposure and the meaningful dislocation between public and private valuations, we believe that contributing these properties is in the best interest of both our shareholders and our joint venture partner.
Our measured capital allocation approach has allowed us to trade highly occupied Midwest cash flows for collectively stronger, higher growth cash flows in Boston and Miami. As we are IRR-driven buyers, this was done on an accretive basis. However, for the sake of clarity, our year 1 yield is expected to be about neutral due to 3 reasons. One, we took advantage of the significant dislocation between private and public valuation and optimized pricing for our asset sales, which traded nearly 300 basis points, inside of our implied cap rate based on where our stock is trading today. Two, a few of the asset sales were contributed to our JV platforms, which created additional management fees. And three, we were able to contribute select components of our open-air centers to our net lease platform, resulting in enhanced yields on the remaining portion of the center that we kept on balance sheet. All 3 were direct benefit to lowering our cost of capital, enabling us to continue to transform our portfolio quality in an accretive, measured manner.
Turning to our financing activities. One of our core principles is to be proactive with our liability management to support our growth initiatives as well as to protect the company through an uncertain economic times. To that end, I’m thrilled to announce that we have received binding commitments for an $810 million amended and restated unsecured SOFR-based credit facility, an increase of about $150 million over our existing unsecured credit facility. The facility consists of a $500 million unsecured revolving line of credit and $310 million of term loans. As a result of this recast, we will enhance our liquidity, lower our debt cost, eliminate near-term debt maturities through 2024 and increase our weighted average debt maturity by approximately 1 year. I’m also happy to report that this new facility is the first time we have tied our ESG initiatives directly into our financing options. We expect to close in the facility early August subject to satisfaction of customary closing conditions.
And lastly, moving on to guidance. Due to our above planned operational performance during the quarter, we are raising the low end of our same-property NOI growth guidance by 50 basis points to 3% to 4% while maintaining our operating FFO per share range consistent at $101 to $105. We do expect our year-over-year same-property base rent growth to accelerate in the back half of the year as our SNO backlog comes online, but given tougher bad debt comps that include prior period reversals in 2021, we expect same-property NOI growth decelerate for the remainder of the year.
Also, as a reminder, we have not forecasted any favorable or unfavorable adjustment from prior year bad debt estimates in our 2022 guidance. Lastly, we are not increasing our acquisitions or dispositions guidance at this time. However, we will not sit idle, and we’ll continue to strive to identify opportunities in which RPT is positioned to add value in an accretive, measured manner.
And with that, I’ll turn the call back to the operator to open the line for questions.
Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from the line of Derek Johnston from Deutsche Bank.
Derek Johnston
So I see occupancy decreased for the third quarter in a row. Looking on lower anchor, I think you may have telegraphed this, Brian, in the past. But specifically, how are you balancing rent versus occupancy? And are you aggressively taking back space here? How are you thinking about that balance?
Mike Fitzmaurice
Derek, this is Mike. You’re right, we did telegraph this at the outset of the year that we are going to proactively take back several spaces during the year to upgrade tenancy and the merchandising mix at several centers, which we’ve been doing for the last several years. So we did experience this — an acceleration in our leased rate though, which was up during the quarter at about 93.3%. But as you noted, we did see the occupied rate come down a bit.
During the quarter, we took back a couple of spaces: one, a long-term struggling tenant at one of our assets in Florida that is very well located in a center that we want to upgrade to with a better grocer; and the other one was in connection with our redevelopment project at our Crossroads asset in Florida as well where we demoed a Publix, and we’re in the process of rebuilding that into a Publix flagship store, which will open, I believe, in the second quarter of next year.
But the flight pattern from here is that occupancy will hold steady for the remaining part of the year with signed-not-commenced coming online, partially offset by a space we’re taking back at our Jacksonville asset. It’s a regal theater that we’ve already backfilled — or already signed a lease for, excuse me, with BJ’s Wholesale that will open at the end of ’24. So very excited about that trade of cash flows from a credit perspective.
The last point that I’d make is, you should absolutely see our leased rate creep over 94% by the end of the year, which kind of gives you that directional confidence that we can get this portfolio to 95%, 96% over the long term.
Derek Johnston
All right. Great. And then, guys, on acquisitions, this Mary Brickell property, it is a high-quality asset. It’s in one of the best submarkets in Miami. Kind of have to think, what kind of cap rate was underwritten here? And I have to imagine this was a marketed deal. So did you guys have to go over the top here? Or another way, like what advantage did your team have to win this deal?
Brian Harper
Yes. Thanks, Derek. I won’t get into cap rates, just not appropriate given the 78% occupancy with upside. And rents really now being done at $117 a square foot within a $45 ABR market. So massive upside on that. It’s really underwritten to an 8% unlevered IRR. That’s without any densification, which won’t come on for several years down the road.
We have upwards of 2.5% to 3% escalators embedded in that. So we really saw just massive potential of, not only the curation, but long-term rent growth on this asset. And the densification is just icing. This was very competitive. And I could tell you of the fact that, as previously mentioned, we established our JV with GIC in 2019. It wasn’t about just the capital. It was about partnering with intellectual capital and astute investors that have a global reach. They see billions upon billions of deal flow in both equity and debt markets.
We have deep relationships. They have global ones. We are talking about one of the top sovereigns in the world. And when they show up to the dance, obviously, they — and without getting in too much detail, their global reach and brand along with ours, obviously, helped us win this generational asset.
Mike Fitzmaurice
Yes. And just to offer some clarity on the mark-to-market opportunity. The market is currently, like Brian said, well over $100. This asset today is at $45 in ABR. So we have extremely high mark-to-market opportunities, which is — which runs parallel with our portfolio that continue to drive rent as well. I mean, over the last 16 quarters, we’ve been here. We’ve been producing 30% re-leasing spreads.
Brian Harper
Yes. And I’ve been pretty — very, very pleased with the execution of our dispositions. And really, when you could say you dispose of the dispositions and buy an asset of this generational type on a neutral basis, this is why we’d set up these JVs to transform the portfolio into higher, resilient cash flows in the top-growing markets in the country.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Todd Thomas from KeyBanc Capital Markets.
Todd Thomas
Just following up there on Mary Brickell Village. Mike, so you mentioned the year 1 yields roughly neutral with that acquisition and the dispositions to fund that investment. But there’s a lot of executed leases in the pipeline there that should come online over the next, I guess, 12 to 18 months and maybe some additional leasing, perhaps. That might be likely. What does the spread look like? Or how much accretion would you anticipate sort of heading into sort of the second year of ownership there? Like, what’s the yield ramp look like? If you could provide some color there.
Mike Fitzmaurice
Yes. No, I think there are absolutely some yield ramp from where we’re at today relative to where we bought it at. Like Brian said in his prepared remarks, we got about 14% or so of signed-out lease that’s yet to commence over the next year. So you’re probably looking at about, I would say, 75 basis points to 100 basis points of spread above where we bought it at today.
Todd Thomas
Okay. And then as you think out a little bit longer term, I realize you didn’t underwrite the potential build-out necessarily for anything vertical and that it’s probably not something near term on the radar necessarily. But just curious how you would think about that longer term, whether you’d look to execute that within the current structure, the R2G venture or, if you would like, potentially monetize that or offload some development risk and some of the risk of having something like that on balance sheet.
Brian Harper
Yes. It’s a massive upside in the future. I can assure you that we’re not taking it on ourselves. Nothing was underwritten as far as the densification. And really, this is about 6 to 7 years out. We have a great relationship with one of the top residential developers in Miami and really the world who would help us monetize the air, but that’s a long way down the road.
Todd Thomas
Okay. And then just in general on your net investment guidance, you’re sort of — you’re kind of within range of what is embedded in the guidance for acquisitions for dispositions at your share. I realize there’s nothing else really significant in guidance.
But it seems like others are maybe pulling back a little bit or citing a slowdown in investments, either because their cost of capital has increased or sellers are holding property off market. What’s your appetite like today to continue investing? And it sounds like your partners’ appetite’s there. What implications does that have for RPT?
Brian Harper
I mean, we’re combing the markets with caution. This is a — outside of trophy assets such as Brickell that — where cap rates haven’t moved at all, this is a market where there’s still uncertainty of cap rates between the buyers and sellers. So until that settles, we’ll hang around the room. Could we do more contributions where maybe we contribute an asset to the platform — or a grocery platform and buy something accretively on balance sheet? Sure. That’s a unique attribute to RPT that others don’t have. So when the cost of capital’s not there, we have that mechanism that we could do that.
But at the same time, Todd, I want to see — we’re striving for the highest IRR as possible, and I’m not there yet on where things — outside of the trophy assets, will settle from a yield perspective.
Todd Thomas
Okay. And just one last one. Mike, I think you touched on this, I think, in your prepared remarks a little bit and then maybe afterwards. But the — regarding the space recaptures that you discussed, I think it was about 200,000 square feet that you had sort of identified and targeted at the beginning of the year. And I think the majority of that was expected to come off-line in 2Q and 3Q of this year. How much took place already prior to the end of 2Q? I guess, how much more is there to go there? And just trying to get a little bit of a better understanding there on the impact it might have on occupancy rates moving forward.
Mike Fitzmaurice
Yes. Sure. Yes. Today, it’s — I mean we’ve hit about 150,000 square feet that we recaptured for the first few quarters. And to your point, Q3 will be another quarter where we’re going to see approximately, call it, 90,000 square feet over 3 spaces that we’re going to take back.
And all three of these spaces have been re-leased. One has been released to Total Wine. It’s going to open up in the third quarter of ’23. One is the BJ’s lease that I referenced earlier that’s going to open in the first half of 2024. And then we’re taking back one of — a space in one of our Boston assets and re-lease them to two TJX concepts. So very, very, very strong upgrade in occupancy, but that’s going to cause our occupancy to kind of hold steady given the offset with SNO command line towards the end of the year.
So you should finish the year right around kind of where we’re at today, Todd. But again, I would focus more on the lease rate, which we think is going to be north of 94%. That will really hold steady for the rest of the year and provide more occupancy upside in ’23 and ’24.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Haendel St. Juste from Mizuho.
Ravi Vaidya
This is Ravi Vaidya on the line for Haendel St. Juste. With leverage north of 7x, should we expect you to be net sellers in the second half? What is your balance sheet philosophy here? Are you comfortable leveraging that high as you had in the recession? And what’s your target leverage? And what’s your time horizon to reach that?
Mike Fitzmaurice
Congratulations on the new role. We did end the quarter at 7.1x. That was a bit elevated given the timing of acquisitions and dispositions. So to your point, we will be net sellers in the second half of the year. We should end the year in the high 6s. And then as signed-not-commenced does come online over ’23 and ’24, we’ll naturally get to the low 6s. And that’s where I’m comfortable given the strength of the cash flows, especially as it relates to the improvement we made in our geographic exposure and our focused leasing efforts on essential tenancy like bringing in grocers into non-grocer centers.
It’s also worth mentioning that leverage is just 1 element of the balance sheet. The other element or second prong as I would call it is liability management. We’ve been very proactive on that front for the last several years. And once we’re done with our recast here in the next couple of weeks of our credit facility, we’re going to have 0 debt maturing through 2024.
And then the last prong is floating rate risk. 100% of our term loan debt is currently hedged today. So we have minimal interest expense vulnerability there. And the vast, vast majority of our debt is on a fixed rate basis. So when you kind of add it all up, I feel really, really good about the balance sheet strength and where it’s going.
Ravi Vaidya
That’s helpful. Just one more here. You’ve done a great job getting the SNO ABR online ahead of time and even faster than anticipated. But looking forward, do you think there’s going to be any signs of store opening delays or anything like that given labor shortages, any supply chain problems?
Brian Harper
I — we’re laser-focused on that and really embedded in our leases. We take more of a conservative approach with longer lead times, and that’s embedded into the guidance. So we actually hope for some more of an upside as we kind of get the — and the operations team from leasing tenant coordination and asset management are all doing a great job coordinating with the tenants and municipalities, potentially even open sooner. So we took more of a cautious view with this in mind of supply chain. And hopefully, we’ll beat those targets and leases and get these tenants online and open.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Tayo Okusanya from Credit Suisse.
Omotayo Okusanya
Hopefully, I didn’t miss these details, but did you give us any information about what the pricing on the new line of credit would be and also on the term loans?
Mike Fitzmaurice
Yes. Credit spreads are coming in at about 10 basis points on where they currently are at today. And that’s just given the change of term. We’re going from more 7-year to 5-year terms, so that lowered the spread of a bit for us. And again, Tayo, we’ve talked about it in the past, we’re 100% hedged on all the term loans today. The first time we have something come unhedged is until 2023, which is about $60 million of our term loans, and that current rate on that hedge is about 3%. If we were to hedge that today, which I’m not interested in doing until the world gets into a more normal environment, it would be about 3.5%, 3.75%. So it’s not too much further around from where it’s at today.
Omotayo Okusanya
But the rate on the term loan — on the new term loan is specifically how — is how much?
Mike Fitzmaurice
It’s about 10 basis points less where it’s at today.
Omotayo Okusanya
Okay. Got you. Okay. That’s helpful. And then just kind of following up on the whole question about kind of opportunities to really put capital to work across the 3 platforms just to get — kind of given the cost of capital. Again, just talking about Brickell, and I get the point about 78% occupancy and looking at cap rates may not matter or things like that. But is the only way to kind of get deals done today looking at value-add projects like this where, okay, maybe it’s dilutive or maybe even neutral in near term? But when you kind of take a look at it over an investment cycle and look at upside opportunities, then when you start to underwrite these things to high single-digit unlevered IRRs, that makes more sense. But near-term, maybe there’s not a lot of earnings boost from doing such deals.
Brian Harper
I think it’s a combination. With our geographic focus lasered into our top core markets, it’s a combination of these types of deals. And frankly, the Northboroughs and Boston of the world, where we bought that Wegmans and BJ’s anchor deal with three T.J. Maxx concepts. We’ve done 2 more since the acquisitions. Say, we’ll be the only center in the country with all five TJX brands.
And by the time those two tenants open, we’re left with a — and after the spin-off to RGMZ on a few of those parcels, we’re left with a 10% yield for RPT shareholders that consists of almost 70% investment-grade tenants with a much stronger growth CAGR of 4.5%. So that is still very, very attractive.
At the end of the day, we want resilient cash flows in our top core markets with the highest unlevered return possible. Period. So I think with the 3 platforms, that’s why we set it up, and that gives us optionality that a lot of — that, really, the peer set doesn’t have.
Mike Fitzmaurice
Yes. For us, I mean we can go back to Mary Brickell and all the growth opportunities that we have there. It’s pretty darn compelling when you look at the signed-not-commenced that’s yet to come online, like I told Todd out a few minutes ago. It’s about the 75 to 100 basis points expansion of cap rates there. Brian talked greatly about the mark-to-market opportunities going from 45 to 100 over the long term. Contractual rent increases are at 250 basis points, which is about 100 basis points wider where our portfolio is at. So it continues to push that.
That gets us to that high single-digit IRR that we continue to target, and that’s the other way to get there is through asset buys like that. On top of that, we get the management fees. So it’s pretty compelling. And to Brian’s point, to be able to have that option and then the options within our JVs, it provides a bit of a competitive advantage for us.
Operator
Our next question is from the line of Craig Schmidt from Bank of America.
Craig Schmidt
Just some questions on Brickell. Any thoughts on the direction you might be taking leasing at Mary Brickell? I mean it has a very high food and beverage focus and some unique tenancies. Just curious if you thought that there might be a change or you would obviously continue in the direction the center was already taking.
Brian Harper
No. We’re going to upgrade the co-tenancy, Craig. I mean, really, we got a lot of wind behind our back on this asset. I mean this is really a 200,000 square foot grocery-anchored center in one of the top submarkets in the country with Publix doing 2x their net average volume in Florida. There is a diverse food and beverage offering today. And what I like about it that we don’t have is the traditional apparel user. So a lot of our necessity uses are there today.
And what’s interesting, too, is just even the surrounding across-the-street adjacencies. There was a restaurant that’s recently opened called Sexy Fish out of London. They’re doing $1 million a week in sales. If you look at the traffic data from some of our restaurants and that restaurant compared to thriving restaurants in SoHo, it greatly eclipsed those at Mary Brickell.
So to say the least, there is massive pent-up demand from food and beverage, obviously, boutique, fitness, some digital-native tenants, even some core household name brands that have a global recognition. So we’re really excited, and we’re — our sleeves are rolled up, and we’ve hit the ground running since we’ve closed.
Craig Schmidt
And just the 31,700 square feet of signed leases, are those ABRs near the $100 mark or the $45?
Brian Harper
They’re near the $100. They’re kind of in between, let’s call it, $70, $80, if memory serves me right, with contractual bumps. There are a variety of — some are in the back of the center, some are second-level space. So really not a good antidote but around that and very healthy reps.
Craig Schmidt
Super. And then just the previous traded Brickell, I read, was $113.5 million. I’m just wondering the difference between that and the $216 million. Was it mainly driven by NOI growth? Or was there some cap rate compression that accompanied that?
Brian Harper
I think it was mostly by NOI growth of curation and merchandising that the previous owner did and did a nice job with. Obviously, a little bit of, I’m sure, cap rate compression just given the markets and Brickell particularly being so in demand. Vacancy rate here, Craig, is — also is only 2.5% in this community. So there’s just massive demand. And what I like and I said in my prepared remarks is this really access more of a street urban deal where the demand and supply really help us and really minimize CapEx and elevate rents on our marquee spaces.
Craig Schmidt
Yes. And then I guess just finally, the Brickell City Center seems to have a more lux, more goods focus. Is — do you see them much of a competitor type of tenants that you’re going after?
Brian Harper
No. Completely different. This is very community-driven. This is very heavily landscaped. This really serves as an oasis in the heart of this urban, really, city that’s undergoing huge growth. So we really service a large dwell time for our community. I think it’s roughly a little over 2.5 hours of average dwell. So completely different feel and tenancy than an enclosed mall at city center, but that mall is doing extremely well as well.
Operator
Our next question is from the line of Floris Van Dijkum from Compass Point.
Floris Van Dijkum
I’m wondering, did — Ken Bernstein give you guys — slipped you a drink to count the benefits of street retail here?
Brian Harper
No, we — they do a very nice job, obviously. And retailers speak to us, Floris. You know how deep our relationships are with the retailers. Retailers point us to these acquisitions. We’re smart, but we’re not in the heads of retailers. We use them with our relationships to point us to acquisitions like this. So we’re excited, another first ring deal off the heels of Brookline in Boston and can see more in the future.
Floris Van Dijkum
Yes. I was going to get to that. So actually, let me just finish up the thinking on Brickell. I’ve actually — recently was there. It’s a nice-looking center. There’s a lot of vacancy, but obviously, that’s being filled. So that’s very encouraging. The air rights, I believe your sites sit on both sides of South Miami Ave. The air rights, are they on the east side of the street or are they over the bulk of where the existing center is, which is where the Publix is as well on the west side?
Brian Harper
The 4.1 million square feet of allowable square footage is on both the east and west side on the parcels, including the whole entire 5 acres, which are both sides of the street.
Floris Van Dijkum
So it’s both. Okay. So I’m just thinking about this, and I know you talked about this being 6 years down the road. But would it require you to take down existing stuff? Or can you — is the structure in place where you can build on top of things? Or are there — it seemed like most of the space that you have is already filled out. So does it require you to take down existing buildings?
Brian Harper
It’s a little bit of both, frankly. It would require some of the buildings to go down. But again, that’s years away, and we’re working with a top — we’ll begin working with a top residential developer for initial concept plans. But that’s 6 or 7 years down the road where we can embark on that, which obviously would create a lot of value creation just given the demand in residential that’s only getting better in that market, and frankly, even the demand for office. A 200,000 square foot office tenant that’s going in across the street on a new construction building, just been signed for $160 a square foot. So we are really bullish. But right now, our focus is lease, lease, lease and embarking on kind of the remerchandising and the curation of this asset.
Floris Van Dijkum
All right. Great. Maybe also if you touch upon the cap rates on the 2 assets, the Columbus, I think, and Detroit assets that contributed — were contributive to the — to your JVs.
Mike Fitzmaurice
Yes. At this point, Floris, I’m not going to comment on cap rates for a variety of reasons. But what I will tell you and as I kind of mentioned in my — or did mention in my prepared remarks, if you look across what we acquired this year in Boston, the Portsmouth asset and then Mary Brickell here recently, against dispositions in Chicago, Detroit; contributions, 1 in Detroit, 1 in Ohio; then a small asset in Florida that we sold. It was all funded on a neutral basis. And from an IRR perspective, we absolutely think that we’re buying growthier-type assets that will support the outsized growth of the company over the coming years.
Floris Van Dijkum
And then maybe the last one, you touched upon it briefly. Brookline, small acquisition of street retail, $5 million. I mean, can we expect more of these things? Or I mean, what’s the benefit of having just one small retail asset?
Brian Harper
The value is consolidating and creating a portfolio in that submarket or submarkets around that. So again, it’s the highest and best use on our capital, highest unlevered returns. That particular asset had, think the top Starbucks in the region, with a lot of tenant demand. It’s a lot of mom-and-pop owners where low ABR existing, so huge mark-to-market in place. So it’s a business we like. But at the same time, we’re evaluating that compared to other investment opportunities across our core markets.
Floris Van Dijkum
But it would not be — we should not be surprised if you were to have more of these kinds of acquisitions, either in Brookline or Newton or some of the neighboring [units]. Would that be correct?
Brian Harper
Yes. That’s the — correct. If the unlevered returns are there, absolutely.
Operator
Our next question is from the line of Hong Zhang from JPMorgan.
Hongliang Zhang
I think you laid out a long-term occupancy target of 94%, 95%, but it sounds like occupancy will be relatively stable for the remainder of the year. Could you talk a little bit about the trajectory of occupancy growth and when you think you’ll hit that target?
Mike Fitzmaurice
Yes. Yes. Yes, like, as we telegraphed over the last several quarters, we did plan on taking back several spaces this year in connection with our remerchandising initiatives, where we’re upgrading tenancy at double-digit yields. And our team is doing a fantastic job in that, improving the tenancy at each of those centers and really focused on more of the grocery business and the essential tenancies. So very pleased with that effort.
And then you’ll see that in the lease rate by the end of the year, we’ll be north of 94%, which gives you the directional pathway to the 95%, 96% that we hope to get over the long term. And in terms of a target date, I would say, late ’24 into ’25 is when we start seeing the mid-90s number. And that’s going to be largely driven by our small shop lease up.
Today, we’re at 86% leased, which is just a couple of percent shy of where we were at, at the end of 2019, and we have a much better portfolio than we did then. As Brian remarked in his prepared remarks that we’ve turned over about 30% of the portfolio, and we believe that number will get to 91%, 92% over time, probably in the same time frame as that ’24/’25 time frame.
Hongliang Zhang
Got it. And out of curiosity, so you’re contributing two grocery-anchored assets to the joint venture later this year. Are there any other properties that fit the criteria that could be potentially contributed at a later point in time as well?
Brian Harper
Sure. Sure. And I mean, I think the contributions then would most likely — the proceeds will go to balance sheet where we can grow in an accretive manner. So again, this is a unique instrument, a unique partnership that when the cost of capital is not there, we could look to our venture platforms and extract the appropriate accretive yield for the company.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Linda Tsai from Jefferies.
Linda Tsai
It seems like you had a solid quarter with execution on all fronts in the second quarter, and you increased same-store NOI guidance. Why didn’t you raise earnings guidance, too? Does it have to do with the occupancy coming off-line or the impact of Mary Brickell?
Mike Fitzmaurice
No. No, not at all. Not at all. I mean, both those set the transactions. The planned recaptures and Mary Brickell is all embedded within our guidance over the year. As far as the remaining part of the year, not lifting guidance at this point in time. I just think we’re cautious in sort of an uncertain environment. So we’re going to sit where we’re at right now. We feel pretty good about it.
Linda Tsai
Got it. And then I realize that Mary Brickell is a trophy asset. But if you look at the original assets you JV-ed with GIC, three of which were in Florida, one in Missouri, one in Michigan. At the time, those are considered kind of average in quality relative to your overall portfolio. But given the changes you’ve made over the past few years, how do you think about the quality of those assets today?
Brian Harper
The original assets, we’ve greatly improved them tremendously. From Boca Raton, Mission Bay, where we’ve done a large amount of leasing, and we’re adding a very, very well-known medical use that will be signed here shortly. In Palm Beach, in Crossroads, that’s one of the remerchandising efforts that Mike referenced with the Publix that is being redeveloped into a flagship Publix will come online next year. Coral Creek, I believe, 98% leased. Publix is doing phenomenal sales.
We have done a great job of small shop leasing. Town & Country, where we did bought — we got a Steinmart box. We replaced that with signed leases with REI we just opened this week and a signed lease with Sephora, a signed lease with Chase at ungodly huge rent spreads. We’ve done deals with Athleta to go next to HomeGoods. So really curated that property to be higher end for that wealthy consumer in that market of St. Louis.
And then Old Orchard, Plum Market, that’s really just been a healthy, good CAGR with strong sales from the grocer. And we’ve been periodically getting a tenant or 2 at renewal with no options and replacing them at significantly higher rents. So not speaking for our partner, we’ve been extremely happy with the results of that original seating of the assets and have improved the cash flows and the credits of each of those assets.
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the question-and-answer session. And now I would like to turn the call back to Mr. Brian L. Harper, CEO and President, for closing remarks.
Brian Harper
Thank you, operator. So the second quarter was another active one for RPT. And although we remain cautious about the macro environment given the rapid rise in rates and inflation, we are optimistic about our business. Our strong performance is reflective of the dramatic improvements in the quality of our cash flows as a result of the portfolio reshaping that has taken place over the past few years, while our joint venture platforms are providing us with observable competitive advantages. Combined with our proactive liability management, we believe that RPT is very well positioned to perform in any environment and are excited about the future. Thank you all for joining this call. Have a wonderful day.
Operator
Thank you. The conference of RPT Realty has now concluded. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.
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