W. P. Carey Q4 2025 Earnings Call - Record investment volume, industry-leading rent growth and accretive spreads set stage for 2026

Operator: Hello and welcome to W. P. Carey’s fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings conference call. My name is Diego and I will be your operator today. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. Please note that today’s event is being recorded. After today’s prepared remarks we will be taking questions via the phone line. Instructions on how to do so will be given at the appropriate time. I will now turn today’s program over to Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations. Mr. Sands, please go ahead.

Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations, W. P. Carey: Hello everyone and thank you for joining us today for our 2025 fourth quarter earnings call. Before we begin I would like to remind everyone that some of the statements made on this call are not historic facts and may be deemed forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from W. P. Carey’s expectations are provided in our SEC filings. An online replay of this conference call will be made available in the Investor Relations section of our website at wpcarey.com where it will be archived for approximately one year and where you can also find copies of our investor presentations and other related materials. With that let me hand the call over to W. P. Carey’s Chief Executive Officer Jason Fox.

Jason Fox, Chief Executive Officer, W. P. Carey: Thanks, Peter. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. 2025 was a standout year for W. P. Carey, reflecting successful execution across our business, producing strong performance for the year and laying the foundation for attractive, sustainable growth that supports long-term value creation. The 5.7% AFFO growth we generated for the year was among the best in the net lease industry, reflecting our record investment activity, sector-leading rent growth, and strong portfolio performance. The dividends we paid, combined with the appreciation of our stock price, provided our shareholders with a total return of 25% for the year, placing us in the top tier of publicly traded REITs. Looking ahead, we’re confident the momentum we established in 2025 will carry into this year. Our deal flow remains strong. We have access to multiple forms of accretive capital.

We expect incrementally higher contractual rent growth compared to last year and stable credit quality within our portfolio. Our competitive advantage on investment spreads should also continue to differentiate us. Our average yields and IRRs are among the highest of the public net lease REITs, reflecting both the strength of our rent bumps and the long duration of our leases. When combined with our lower average cost of debt aided by access to euro-denominated financing, we believe we’re exceptionally well-positioned to drive industry-leading AFFO growth in 2026 and beyond. On this call I’ll briefly recap 2025 and expand on how we’re positioned to continue delivering attractive growth. I’m joined by Toni Sanzone, our CFO, who will review the key details behind our results, balance sheet, and guidance, and Brooks Gordon, our Head of Asset Management, to take your questions. Starting with our investment activity.

We finished the year at the top end of our guidance range closing record annual investment volume totaling $2.1 billion representing substantial growth over our initial guidance and demonstrating our ability to source and close a high volume of transactions in a competitive market. Throughout 2025 we put capital to work at attractive spreads relative to the pricing we achieved on our asset sales as well as to our overall cost of capital. Our investments carried a weighted average initial cash cap rate of 7.6% for the year translating into an average yield just above 9% over long-term leases averaging 17 years. In contrast the occupied assets we sold traded at cap rates averaging 6% generating an average spread of about 150 basis points and creating significant value as we recycled capital from non-core asset sales to higher yielding net lease investments.

We allocated the most capital to warehouse and industrial, which accounted for 68% of our full-year investment volume and found additional compelling opportunities in retail, which represented 22%. Geographically, 26% of our 2025 investment volume was in Europe and 74% was in North America, the vast majority of which was in the U.S. Importantly, we finished the year with continued strong momentum, completing $625 million of investments during the fourth quarter. Among them was our $322 million investment in a portfolio of high-quality Life Time fitness facilities, which significantly expanded our relationship with that tenant, making it our third largest by ABR. One of the compelling aspects of our business model that continued to stand out in 2025 was our industry-leading rent growth.

Even with inflation remaining below the peak levels of recent years, we generated among the best internal growth in the net lease sector, driving a meaningful share of our overall AFFO growth independent of our transaction activity. We expect this to continue in 2026, supported by the strength of our fixed rent escalations. Turning to our sources of capital. As mentioned, our 2025 investment activity was supported by disciplined capital raising, funding new transactions primarily with sales of non-core operating assets. This approach enabled us to both accretively recycle capital and further simplify our portfolio mix, effectively exiting the operating self-storage business. During the year, we also successfully refinanced our euro-denominated term loan, locking in an attractive all-in rate below 3%, further demonstrating the advantages of having access to euro-denominated debt and multiple forms of capital.

In mid-year we achieved excellent execution on our five-year U.S. bond issuance giving us additional funding flexibility. Furthermore during the second half of the year we utilized our ATM program to sell forward equity getting ahead of our 2026 needs. And so looking ahead to 2026 we remain very well-positioned to sustain a high level of investment activity and deliver attractive AFFO growth. Following the strong fourth quarter we’ve already closed approximately $312 million of new investments year to date and we currently have a sizable investment pipeline with several hundred million dollars of transactions at various stages of completion. In addition our year-to-date investment volume includes roughly $50 million of completed capital projects with another $290 million underway and scheduled to deliver over the next 12 to 18 months. We remain just as active if not more active than other net lease REITs in build-to-suit, expansions, and redevelopment projects.

These are capabilities we’ve built over many years and view as a meaningful competitive strength now further supported by our recently launched Carey Tenant Solutions platform. Historically we’ve generally maintained a pipeline around $200 million of such projects which typically deliver above-market yields, extend lease terms and enhance the strategic importance of the assets involved, creating highly attractive proprietary deal flow that leverages and strengthens our tenant relationships. We see significant opportunity to lean further into these capabilities with our Carey Tenant Solutions platform positioning us to do even more going forward alongside other initiatives such as our expansion in U.S. retail. With all these factors in mind we’re confident in our ability to continue generating higher investment volumes than we have historically as we demonstrated in 2025.

At the same time we’re mindful that it’s still early in the year, so we’re starting with an initial investment volume guidance range of $1.25 billion-$1.75 billion. As we move through the year and gain more visibility to the second half, we expect to refine and potentially raise that range as we did in 2025. We also foresee cap rates being incrementally lower this year. Based on our current pipeline we’re anticipating going-in cap rates in the mid- to low-7% range compared to 2025’s weighted average of 7.6%. The momentum we’re generating on the investment side of the business is supported by our strong funding position having already accounted for the vast majority of our anticipated 2026 equity needs.

The more than $400 million of forward equity we sold in 2025 remains available for settlement with an active ATM program in place enabling us to issue additional forward equity as needed. We also anticipate generating close to $300 million of retained cash flow this year providing an additional source of equity capital. Importantly, with the option to pursue additional accretive disposition opportunities potentially taking us over the top end of our initial disposition guidance range should we choose to do so enabling us to continue driving AFFO growth. Accordingly, we have ample flexibility to fund additional investments above the top end of our initial acquisition guidance range regardless of equity capital market conditions. Let me pause there and hand the caller over to Toni to discuss our results, balance sheet, and guidance in more detail.

Toni Sanzone, Chief Financial Officer, W. P. Carey: Thanks Jason and good afternoon everyone. Our fourth quarter and full year results demonstrate a strong, consistent pace of investment activity throughout 2025 at attractive spreads coupled with sector-leading internal rent growth from our portfolio. I’ll walk through the details of those results starting with AFFO. AFFO per share for the fourth quarter was $1.27, representing a 5% increase over the prior year fourth quarter. For the full year AFFO totaled $4.97 per share, representing 5.7% year-over-year growth and coming in just above the midpoint of our guidance range. As Jason mentioned, the record investment volume we completed came in just above the top end of our guidance range at an average spread of just over 150 basis points to our dispositions, which will continue to benefit our earnings in 2026 as the full year impact flows through our results.

During the fourth quarter we continued to fund our investment activity accretively through opportunistic dispositions selling 44 properties for gross proceeds totaling $507 million bringing full year disposition volume to $1.5 billion the vast majority of which was sales of non-core assets. Our 2025 dispositions included sales of 63 self-storage operating properties for gross proceeds totaling approximately $785 million leaving us with 11 such properties at year-end which we’re currently in the process of selling and hope to complete in the first half of the year. Turning to our portfolio growth. Contractual same-store rent growth remained strong averaging 2.4% both for the fourth quarter and the full year on a year-over-year basis. CPI-linked rent escalations averaged 2.6% for the year which comprised about half of our ABR while fixed increases which make up the other half averaged 2.1% for the year.

We continue to see fixed increases in new investments trend higher than the averages in our existing portfolio which will support sustained higher levels of internal growth even as CPI is moderating. About three-quarters of our 2025 investment volume had leases with fixed rent escalations averaging 2.5%. For 2026 we anticipate the contractual same-store rent growth will trend slightly higher than it did in 2025 although still averaging in the mid-2% range for the full year. Comprehensive same-store rent growth for the quarter was 70 basis points which moderated from the first half of the year as anticipated driven by the impact of a prior year fourth quarter rent recovery as well as higher vacancy over the back half of 2025.

On a full year basis, comprehensive same-store averaged 2.8% in line with our contractual same-store growth after taking into account the impacts of re-leasing, rent collections, vacancies, and lease restructurings. Our portfolio continued to perform well throughout 2025 with minimal rent disruption. As previously announced, rent loss from tenant credit events totaled $6.4 million for 2025 or about 40 basis points of rent, which was well within our conservative assumption of around $10 million earlier in the fourth quarter. We continued reducing our HELVIG exposure in 2025 through a combination of re-leasing activities and asset sales, bringing it down to 1.1% of total ABR by year-end, and we’re currently engaged in active transactions that will further reduce our exposure by mid-year.

Looking ahead to 2026, we’re taking a similar approach to last year, initially assuming a conservative estimate for rent loss from tenant credit totaling $10-$15 million or 60-90 basis points of expected rent. Importantly, we’ve not seen any material changes in credit throughout the portfolio since our last earnings call. As was the case in 2025, we hope to be able to reduce our rent loss estimate as the year progresses, which could provide some upside to our initial AFFO guidance. Portfolio occupancy at the end of the year increased to 98%, up 100 basis points from the end of the third quarter, as we completed vacant asset sales and entered into new leases during the fourth quarter, as we had anticipated. During 2026, we expect portfolio occupancy to remain over 98% through a combination of releasing and dispositions.

Fourth quarter releasing activity resulted in the recapture of 100% of prior rent on 1.3% of ABR and added almost eight years of weighted average lease term. We saw similar positive results for the full year with about 100% recapture on 5.3% of total portfolio ABR adding 5.7 years of weighted average lease term. Other lease-related income for the fourth quarter was $8.1 million, bringing the total for the year to $24.6 million in line with our expectations. While the timing of these payments can vary from quarter to quarter and even from year to year, they demonstrate our proactive approach to managing our portfolio, often identifying opportunities to maximize the outcome for assets that may be better suited for releasing, redevelopment, or disposition. Turning now to our guidance.

For 2026 we currently expect to generate AFFO of between $5.13-$5.23 per share implying a healthy 4.2% year-over-year growth at the midpoint and which is based on investment volume of between $1.25-$1.75 billion. Currently we’re assuming 2026 dispositions total between $250-$750 million. This includes ordinary course net lease dispositions notably certain of our vacant assets and a subset of our HELVIG portfolio as well as the expected sale of our remaining operating self-storage assets. As Jason discussed we’ve identified additional opportunistic and non-core asset sales we could execute at attractive cap rates giving us a great deal of optionality in funding investments accretively. As the year progresses and we have a greater visibility we’ll be able to refine that range.

G&A is expected to total between $103-$106 million for 2026 which includes additional investments in data and technology initiatives with a focus on expanding AI further into our business processes and portfolio monitoring. We have a highly scalable operating platform and remain keenly focused on driving further long-term efficiencies. For modeling purposes just a reminder that our G&A expense runs highest in the first quarter mainly due to the timing of payroll taxes. We currently expect first quarter G&A to total about $28 million with the balance of the year expected to trend lower and more evenly. Non-reimbursed property expenses are expected to total between $56 and $60 million for 2026 including approximately $6 million of expected demolition costs associated with the planned redevelopment work.

I’ll note these incremental costs are expected to mostly occur in the first half of the year and will be more than offset by an associated termination payment which will be recognized in other lease-related income since we proactively terminated the in-place lease at these facilities to commence the development work. Excluding demolition costs, we expect non-reimbursed property expenses to decline as we continue reducing vacancy and the related carrying costs. Including the termination payment related to this redevelopment, other lease-related income is expected to total in the low- to mid-$30 million range for 2026 with about $20 million of that total expected to be recognized in the first half of the year.

Tax expense on an AFFO basis, the vast majority of which comprises foreign taxes on our European assets, is anticipated to fall between $45-$49 million for 2026, with the increase over last year mainly reflecting growth in our European portfolio. As we’ve now exited the vast majority of our operating assets, we expect operating NOI to total only about $10 million in 2026, which contemplates the sale of our remaining self-storage properties by the end of the first quarter. Investment management fees are expected to decline to about $5 million this year, down from $9 million in 2025, as NLOP continues to execute asset sales. Non-operating income for 2026 is currently estimated to total between $7-$11 million, declining from about $17 million in 2025.

For 2026 we assume a flat dividend from our equity stake in Lineage of about $11 million as well as lower estimated FX derivative hedging impacts assuming the euro remains around its current level for the full year. Given the effectiveness of our hedging strategy movements in the foreign currency rates are not expected to result in any meaningful impact on our 2026 AFFO. Considering all these factors we see encouraging momentum heading into the year. The midpoint of our initial AFFO guidance range implies meaningful year-over-year growth of 4.2% driven primarily by accretive external growth and continued strong internal growth. And importantly we’re delivering this growth outlook even while initiating guidance with a conservative stance towards both investment volume and credit-related rent loss. Moving to our balance sheet.

In 2025 we demonstrated we have a variety of capital sources to fund our investment activity accretively and we expect to continue to optimize our funding approach in the coming year allowing us to execute on a strong pipeline of activity while generating attractive spreads. We sold 6.3 million shares of forward equity through our ATM program at a weighted average price of $67.53 for gross proceeds totaling $423 million. All of this forward equity remains outstanding, positioning us well to fund our investment activity throughout the year. Our strong investment-grade balance sheet and diversified asset base also gives us the unique opportunity to access attractive debt capital across a variety of markets. We have two bonds maturing in 2026, a $500 million euro bond in April and a $350 million U.S. bond in October.

Our initial guidance assumes we refinance these bonds with issuances in the same currencies, although we continue to have a wide range of options available to us. Our weighted average interest rate on debt was 3.2% for 2025, which we believe is among the lowest in the net lease sector. Despite having to refinance our upcoming bond maturities, our weighted average interest rate for 2026 is expected to remain in the low- to mid-3% range. Net debt to adjusted EBITDA was 5.6 times inclusive of unsettled forward equity at the end of the year, well within our target range. Excluding the impact of unsettled equity forwards, net debt to adjusted EBITDA was 5.9 times. We expect to continue to manage the balance sheet, maintaining leverage within our target range of mid- to high 5 times.

We ended the year with liquidity totaling $2.2 billion, including the availability of our credit facility, cash on hand or held for 1031 exchanges, and unsettled forward equity. In December, we increased our quarterly dividend by 4.5% year-over-year to $0.92 per share. Based on our current stock price, that equates to an attractive annualized dividend yield over 5%, which remains well supported with a full-year payout ratio of approximately 73%. We expect our dividend to continue to grow in line with our AFFO growth while maintaining a conservative payout ratio. And with that, I’ll hand the call back to Jason.

Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations, W. P. Carey: Thanks, Toni. 2025 was a successful year that demonstrated the strength of our business model, the quality of our portfolio, and the dedication of our team. We executed on our objectives across the company, delivering attractive external and internal growth, maintaining disciplined capital allocation, and continuing to strengthen and incrementally optimize our portfolio composition. We’ve entered 2026 well prepared to build on that progress. Our investment momentum remains strong, and our initial acquisition guidance for the year is effectively fully funded with the flexibility to execute additional investments without needing to access the equity capital markets. Through the combination of our internal growth, the spreads we’re achieving on new investments, and a well-supported dividend, we’re confident that we can again deliver attractive double-digit total returns this year before factoring in any expansion to our multiple.

That includes our prepared remarks so I’ll pass the call back to the operator for questions.

Jason Fox, Chief Executive Officer, W. P. Carey: At this time we will take questions. If you would like to ask a question please press the number one star key then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question please press the star then the number two. And your first question comes from Jana Galen with Bank of America. Please state your question.

Toni Sanzone, Chief Financial Officer, W. P. Carey: Thank you. Hi, and congratulations on a very successful 2025. Jason, I wanted to follow up on the strategy of expansion in U.S. retail. It looks like Life Time was part of this goal. I’m kind of curious what other categories within retail you’re targeting and whether these will be kind of in the form of more larger sale-leaseback opportunities.

Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations, W. P. Carey: Yeah, sure. Yeah, we’re making good progress in retail. It accounted for about 22% of our deal volume last year and of course about two-thirds of that was the Life Time deal. Looking forward to this year, a good chunk of our pipeline is retail. It’s probably about 50/50 right now. Overall net lease retail is the biggest part of the net lease market especially in the U.S. and we think it could become a bigger part of our deal volume on an annual basis. I’d like to build it to maybe 25%-30% of our annual deal volume that would include both the U.S. and Europe. When you think about what we’re targeting I mean we’ve done deals recently with Dollar General and Life Time some other fitness we’ve done some family entertainment some grocery some C-stores in Europe.

I mean, we’re kind of looking across the sector, and we’ll be somewhat opportunistic, and the things that we typically look for in generally what we do in net lease, we’re focused on tenant credit and lease term and structure. Master lease versus individual leases, coverage, things like that are all important, and that won’t change.

Toni Sanzone, Chief Financial Officer, W. P. Carey: Thank you. Then maybe also on the Carey Tenant Solutions platform maybe just near term how much above $200 million should we think about that growing?

Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations, W. P. Carey: Yeah, sure. So we’ve historically, as I mentioned, done about $200 million per year or had active projects maybe in that range at any given point. We do think that this can become a larger component of the business. Last year we started a number of new projects. I think year to date we completed about $50 million of those and there is another $280 million in construction that we’ll deliver over the next 12-18 months. Some of those new deals were done in conjunction with some recent investments where we agreed to either a build-to-suit or an expansion as part of that. There’s other things that we’re doing related to our existing portfolio.

I mean, namely there are some expansions and redevelopments and it includes I think two redevelopments that Toni had referenced earlier as well as an expansion for one of our top tenants. So it’s becoming more of an emphasis for us and it’s hard to predict exactly how big of a component it could be but I do think we can increase it.

Toni Sanzone, Chief Financial Officer, W. P. Carey: Thank you.

Jason Fox, Chief Executive Officer, W. P. Carey: Your next question comes from Greg McGinnis with Scotiabank. Please state your question.

Speaker 1: Hey Jason. Appreciate the commentary on the retail side. Also hoping you can kind of dig in a bit more on the industrial types of assets that you’re finding or looking for cap rates and then kind of U.S. versus Europe. And if you comment on whether or not Realty Income is becoming more of a competitive company that you’re seeing more on deals in Europe as well that’d be appreciated.

Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations, W. P. Carey: Yeah, sure. I mean, industrial’s still really the core part of our business. We want to keep on adding retail, but industrial’s significant. It’s probably made up two-thirds to maybe even three-quarters of our deal volume over the last number of years. In terms of what type of industrial, it’s really a mix between both manufacturing and logistics. I mean, we do provide some disclosure on those two components. I think in the past we’ve also layered in some food production and processing, which we’ve always liked. Those tend to be non-discretionary spend type products. The tenants tend to have very meaningful investment in these facilities. We also tend to get long lease terms and, in many cases, higher yields as well. So that’s certainly a component as well.

In terms of cap rates I mentioned earlier, I think that there’s maybe some expectation they could tighten a little bit this year. Last year our average for the year was 7.6%. We’ll continue to target deals in the 7s this year but I do think they could come in some. So maybe that ends up somewhere in the low- to mid-7% range on average for us versus the mid-7s last year. Maybe that’s 25 basis points of tightening but it’s early in the year it’s kind of hard to predict what will happen over the next 10 months or so. In terms of real estate income I mean we see them from time to time I would say more in Europe than we have in the U.S.

But they’ve focused a lot of their investing in the U.K. which has not been a country in which we’ve allocated a lot of capital. We’re still doing more of our deals in continental Europe and we’re doing more of our deals at least lately in industrial. So we see them from time to time but Europe’s a big market and there’s not a lot of competition there generally. So I wouldn’t say it’s all that impactful.

Speaker 1: Okay. And then.

Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations, W. P. Carey: I don’t know if I missed anything else there.

Speaker 1: Yeah no thank you. I appreciate that. Just on the potential cap rate tightening is that just kind of an assumption based on kind of maybe cost to borrow lowering or increased competition? Is it anything that you’re seeing today or is it just some conservatism that we’re building in there?

Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations, W. P. Carey: Yeah, it’s really a combination of all of that. I think that to the extent rates come down and stay stable, I mean, they’ve really been range-bound in this kind of low fours for probably the better part of six months now. I think a lot of that maybe has flowed through to cap rates but probably not all of that. Incremental competition, yeah, maybe there’s some of that but we haven’t seen a lot of it. We hear about new entrants but we haven’t seen it and we haven’t seen it be all that impactful yet. But I think ultimately that could be a little bit of a catalyst towards that as well. So yeah and I think overall cost of capital across the sector is probably getting a little stronger too. But we haven’t seen a lot of it.

I would say our year-to-date deals are still within our target range maybe at the low end but I would probably attribute most of that being that the bulk of what we’ve done year to date have been in Europe. And we can borrow call it 100 basis points in euros inside of where we can borrow in dollars. So even if those cap rates are a little bit lower than what we’ve done historically I think our spreads are still wider than where we’ve been. So it’s shaping up. It’s a good market. We think that we’re going to be quite active this year and I think our spreads are probably going to be similar to what we did last year.

Speaker 1: Okay great. Thank you.

Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations, W. P. Carey: You’re welcome.

Jason Fox, Chief Executive Officer, W. P. Carey: Thank you. And your next question comes from John Kim with BMO Capital Markets. Please state your question.

Speaker 4: Thank you. I wanted to ask about Carey Tenant Solutions which I think is just your branding for build-to-suit. Just wanted to make sure that was the case. But how do you protect yourself from development risks associated with these type of projects? And I think in the past you’ve talked about a 25-50 basis point premium on built-to-suit versus acquisitions. Is that still the right range to think about?

Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations, W. P. Carey: Yeah, sure. Yeah, maybe it’s helpful just to kind of spend a minute or so high level on Carey Tenant Solutions. I mean, we’ve been quite active on what we call capital investment projects for some time. It’s been in our disclosure and our SUP for many years at this point in time, and it includes build-to-suits, expansions, and redevelopments. We’re good at these types of investments. We have a lot of experience on the team, and I’ve mentioned that I’d like to see us do more, and I think there’s real potential for that. So, part of our effort around this is to formalize it, brand it, be a bit more holistic in our outreach to our tenants, more proactive in our approach overall. And I think that we can see some increased activity.

I mentioned earlier that we historically have seen about $200 million of in-process capital projects. I think that can get bigger and become a more meaningful component of our annual deal volume. Look, it’s also something that investors ask us about. I think there’s been some more some other REITs that have made it more high profile and we’ve been asked about what our capabilities are. So that’s kind of the thought process behind our recent launch of Carey Tenant Solutions, what we’re calling it. In terms of development risk, most of what we’re doing here are build-to-suits and expansions. There are occasionally really high quality very attractive pre-developments and it’s a real high bar for us to do that type of work. So it’s going to be predominantly build-to-suits and expansions and you can see that in our supplemental.

That’s what the disclosure is as well. So the development risk typically you have very strong and large general contractors that provide fixed price contracts. In many cases on build-to-suits we’ll have guaranteed rent start dates built into the structures. So even if there’s delays we still get our rent. We’ll also have a construction rent kind of built into the budget as well. So we effectively either earn or accrue interest something for our cost of capital during the construction period. So like I said we’ve done this for a really long time. We’ve boxed the risks. We have a great team in place that one of the benefits of being as large as we are and having the scale is we can build out a dedicated in-house project management team.

They have lots of experience, a lot of connections to local partners, and it’s a real competitive advantage for us. I think you also asked last week about.

Speaker 1: Then you talked.

Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations, W. P. Carey: Cap rate spreads.

Speaker 1: Pardon me.

Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations, W. P. Carey: Yeah. I would say on a build-to-suit which is more of a market deal it’s probably in the 25-50 basis point premium and a lot of that will depend on the length of the build period and maybe the specifics of the deal with basis relative the construction costs relative to kind of a market basis or where that puts you relative to market rents. I think on the other end of the spectrum are these expansions that we do for our tenants where this is truly proprietary deal flow to captive deal. The tenant can either fund these expansions themselves on property that we own or they can choose to maybe do something outside of what is likely a really critical core facility for them or they can do a deal with us. And so we have some pricing power of course.

We’re very mindful of our tenant relationships and we want to make sure that there is kind of fairness in how we price it. But we’ll typically see on those anywhere from 100 to 2 or 300 basis points of spread depending on the specific project. And it’s not just the premium that we benefit from in many cases on these expansions and kind of follow on deals that we do for tenants. We’re also increasing the criticality of the real estate. We’re lengthening lease terms and when those are on master leases with other properties there’s a drag along effect with other properties as well. And also just deepening the tenant relationship through these type of transactions. So all those are reasons why we want to lean into this more especially because we’re quite good at it.

Speaker 4: Great. Thank you. Then my second question is on your leverage. You talked about operating at a mid- to high-5x leverage. Is that where you think you’d get the premium multiple for your stock? I’m just wondering how you balance AFFO growth versus having a cleaner balance sheet with more firepower.

Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations, W. P. Carey: Yeah, sure. I mean, look, there’s no real changes to our leverage targets. We’ll continue to operate in the mid- to high-5s. We’re very comfortable with that. But I think you’re right. There is a certain impact on equity multiple based on leverage, and I think over time I can see us drifting to the lower end of that range. I wouldn’t say there’s a specific timeline in that, and that should help the equity multiple. But right now we’re very comfortable within that mid- to high-5s range.

Speaker 4: Great. Thank you.

Jason Fox, Chief Executive Officer, W. P. Carey: Thank you. Your next question comes from Jason Wayne with Barclays. Please state your question.

Brooks Gordon, Head of Asset Management, W. P. Carey: Hi. Good afternoon. Just on the $60 million in dispositions year to date, I’m just wondering the cap rate there and can you give some color on the cap rates that you’re assuming on dispositions for the full year?

Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations, W. P. Carey: Yeah, maybe I’ll start and if Brooks has any color he can add. For the full year our disposition guide is quite wide as you know. It includes—hold on a second. Sorry, another call came in. It includes kind of a normal course dispositions. Example would be some holdings but it also includes a meaningful number of assets that we’ve talked about how we can sell opportunistically at very attractive pricing. These are what I would characterize as non-core and we’ve referred to call it $ several hundred million of those deals. So the average disposition cap rate for the year is very much going to depend on the mix of assets we choose to sell. There are certainly scenarios that could put us in and around the execution we saw in 2025 especially if we factor in some vacant sales.

So we’ll dial that in as we execute and as the year continues. In terms of the $60 million, I mean it’s a small amount. It really probably depends on the exact assets we’ve disclosed. We tend not to go into that level of detail. I don’t know, Brooks, if you have any commentary on, broadly, if that’s any indication for the rest of the year.

Brooks Gordon, Head of Asset Management, W. P. Carey: No, I think you’ve largely hit it. We have closed a few transactions. The largest so far in Q1 was a warehouse property formerly leased to the tenant JOANN which vacated. We sold that at an extremely attractive price relative to the prior in-place rent. I can’t show the specific cap rate but highly accretive. Got it. And then yeah just on the non-core deals that you’ve identified to go above the high end of the guidance range can you just go into what’s still available there?

Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations, W. P. Carey: What’s still available there? Yeah, sure. I mean it’s a mixture of assets and maybe I’ll just kind of rattle off a couple. These are just examples of course. I mean we do have a final property in Japan and given where rates are over there those tend to sell tight. We have an operating student housing asset and that leased hotel. And really there’s a number of assets that are leased to tenants who regularly approach us about repurchasing the properties. Those tend to be at very aggressive pricing. I think that we can answer the phone on some of those if we feel a need to do it. And of course Brooks has mentioned the JOANN’s deal which is very attractive as a sub-6 cap rate based on prior rent for a vacant asset. So good transaction there.

But I think maybe the important note is we have lots of flexibility here. We mentioned earlier that we feel that we’ve pre-funded our equity needs for the year and to the extent we need to if our deal volumes are higher than our initial guidance would suggest we can lean into some of these accretive asset sales. We can also consider equity as well. We’ve certainly had a nice run over the last 12 months and equity is a lot more interesting too. But there’s a lot of flexibility. There’s no immediate needs though based on our current deal volume guidance. It’s fully funded.

Brooks Gordon, Head of Asset Management, W. P. Carey: Got it. Thank you.

Jason Fox, Chief Executive Officer, W. P. Carey: Thank you. Your next question comes from Smedes Rose with Citi. Please state your question.

Speaker 9: Hi. Thank you. I wanted to ask about a little bit more about your acquisitions outlook for the year. I understand you said that you were coming into the year from a conservative standpoint, but just going back and looking at some of your commentary on your third quarter call, you talked about having the infrastructure in place to support a similar pace of activity you were seeing in the back half of 2025 and not seeing anything that would disrupt the pace of activity that you were seeing from a broader kind of macro perspective. It seems like this is more than conservative. It seems like a very marked slowdown from what you’re seeing and especially in light of what you’ve already talked about in a year to date.

Can you just kind of help me understand a little bit more conservative versus is there something disruptive that’s happening that’s slowing down the overall pace, and just trying to get a better sort of handle on that?

Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations, W. P. Carey: Yeah. No. There’s nothing that we’re seeing in the market right now that suggests there could be a slowdown. It’s strong. It’s constructive. Stable interest rates. And look, we’re confident in our ability to continue generating high deal volumes and maybe we’re back to what we did in 2025. I mean, if you look back to last year, maybe at the beginning of last year we took a measured approach to how we view guidance and that led to a series of increases throughout the year and I think that’s our preference going forward. So you can think about our initial guidance as a starting point and our expectation is that as we progress through the year and get more visibility into the back half of the year we’ll refine that range and hopefully raise it as we did in 2025.

But it’s worth noting, and Toni mentioned this earlier, that even at the current midpoint of what I think could be characterized as conservative deal volume guidance, we believe we can achieve AFFO growth of over 4% and that should be very attractive relative to many of our net lease peers. I think also just look at where we’ve started the year. We’re off to a good start, a little over $300 million closed already. Mentioned earlier that we have about $200 million of capital projects that were delivered this year and then a sizable near-term pipeline that I would characterize as several hundred million dollars. So we’re probably ahead of pace of our initial guidance but again we don’t have visibility into the back half of the year to necessarily extrapolate this initial pace out for the full year.

So as we get more into the year we’ll continue to review it and hopefully be in a position to raise it.

Speaker 9: Okay. And you talked a little bit more about you’re leaning into more retail. You moved Life Time to your number three tenant. I’m just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the profile of that tenant. I don’t know if you can give kind of coverage levels. And I’m just asking because it seems like the fitness world I don’t know can be subject to maybe a certain amount of kind of fickleness on the part of consumers and things come and go. I realize this is a popular asset class among the large net lease companies, but I’m just sort of wondering if you could talk a little bit about your comfort level of moving them to such a large position within the portfolio.

Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations, W. P. Carey: Yeah, sure. I think first of all this is not a new tenant for us. We’ve done deals with them in the past and because of that had good access to management during underwriting both on the credit itself but also into the specific assets. We like Life Time as a credit. They’re one of if not the strongest of the U.S. fitness operators. They’re publicly traded. Have a $6 billion-$7 billion equity market cap. Have had a nice run since their IPO and they’ve been bringing leverage down as well. So it’s a good credit. We bought 10 facilities. These are all well located in affluent kind of highly desirable markets near dense retail. Very difficult to replicate these locations. I think our basis is very attractive. Well below replacement costs.

Low in-place rents and that’s both for these locations but also relative to the rents that Life Time pays on other properties throughout the country. We also have strong site-level coverage. I can’t get into the details on the specifics for it, but it’s quite strong and our understanding it’s better than the median within their portfolio. I think the other part about this deal is the seller is a group we know well and have transacted with before on other portfolio deals and they were exiting a fund and looking to make distributions to their investors by year-end. That drove a quick close and we think that dynamic contributed to the better-than-market economics. Overall I think fitness is something that we’ve done some deals over the last couple of years but clearly this is the largest one and we do like Life Time.

Look, I don’t live in the suburbs. I live in the city. But if I did and I lived near Life Time, I’d be a member. I have a number of kids and it’s a great model and it’s a very unique model relative to many of the other fitness operators out there. These are more like country clubs with outdoor pools and water slides and restaurants and obviously very large and modern fitness facilities and workout rooms, etc.

Speaker 9: Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations, W. P. Carey: Yep. You’re welcome.

Jason Fox, Chief Executive Officer, W. P. Carey: Your next question comes from Anthony Paolone with JP Morgan. Please state your question.

Brooks Gordon, Head of Asset Management, W. P. Carey: Thanks. Yeah. Just the first one on credit loss. The $10 million-$15 million, if I go back to last year at this time, I think the number you gave incorporated a couple of situations that maybe you wanted some room for, like true value perhaps and maybe another one. So just wondering if any of the $10 million-$15 million is spoken for at this point or if that’s just kind of the number you’re giving yourself cushion on.

Speaker 9: Yeah, I think we’re setting the range.

Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations, W. P. Carey: Or, Toni. Go ahead. Sorry. Go ahead, Toni.

Speaker 9: Yeah. We’re setting the range there really to capture a wide variety of scenarios there. I think there’s nothing really specific in the portfolio at the moment. We set this range last year and this year. Our objective is really early in the year taking a broad view so that we have no concerns around any AFFO impact from rent disruption. I think that again similar to what Jason said on the investment side our guidance is set at a level where we can achieve over 4% growth even with a range of rent loss at this level. So again nothing specific. It’s probably the only uncertainty out there is in the macro environment and it’s something that we feel comfortable with at this stage of the game.

But I think our goal here is to continue managing the portfolio seeing the same limited level of disruption that we’re seeing now and hopefully be able to reduce that and see some upside to our guidance.

Brooks Gordon, Head of Asset Management, W. P. Carey: Okay. Thanks. And then second question is just on the balance sheet. You have 2.25% euro bonds coming up. Where do those get refinanced today and just any other details on how you’re thinking about debt refinancing over the course of the year?

Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations, W. P. Carey: Yeah, sure. Maybe I’ll start here. I don’t know if there’s anything to add, Toni, but yeah, the 2026 maturities are very manageable. It’s 2 bonds. It’s 1 in each market, a euro bond and then later in the year US dollar bond. I think the balance sheet’s in great shape. We have access to multiple forms of debt and lots of flexibility right now given our liquidity. So I think our guidance assumes that we replace each bond coming due with unsecured debt probably in the same currency. I think that’s what we will do, but we have lots of flexibility. In terms of where things are pricing, a 10-year euro bond is probably somewhere in the low 4% range and US is maybe 100 basis points inside of that.

Obviously, we’ll think about which tenors we want to do, and to the extent it’s a little bit less than 10 years in Europe, which is maybe more the norm, we’ll pick up some basis points and get inside of 4%, is my guess.

Brooks Gordon, Head of Asset Management, W. P. Carey: Okay. Thank you.

Jason Fox, Chief Executive Officer, W. P. Carey: Your next question comes from Jim Kammert with Evercore ISI. Please state your question.

Speaker 3: Thank you. Good afternoon. Perhaps just an extension of that last topic. You obviously have done a very nice job. It’s been a benefit of the company having a lot of Euro debt exposure, but could you remind me where do you stand in terms of capacity in terms of it’s about two thirds of your overall debt. Can you do a lot more there or how do you think about that going forward in terms of the overall debt composition?

Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations, W. P. Carey: Yeah, Toni. Do you want to take that?

Speaker 9: Sure. Yeah. I’d say we still have room in our capital structure to issue incremental Euro-denominated debt. As Jason mentioned, we have a Euro bond that’s maturing this year as well, and a big part of our pipeline is denominated in Euros. So we’ll still have room beyond that. I’d say it still continues to create an effective hedge for us both on the foreign currency side, and it’s really, we’re benefiting from a lower-cost borrowing there. So I think you’ll continue to see us access those markets when the time makes sense for us, but overall we do see that there’s really no bright line at the moment. We have some room for additional capital there.

Speaker 3: Okay. Thank you. Then different question. Obviously you’re not going all in on retail investing assets but thinking about protecting your above sector average escalator weighted average escalator can you get industrial like escalators on C-stores in Europe or fitness centers in the U.S. etc. I’m just curious how that blend is incorporated into your numbers.

Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations, W. P. Carey: Yeah, certainly. I mean, in Europe I would say that retail like industrial typically has inflation-based increases. So I think that we’ll continue to get that whether we’re doing industrial or retail. I think in the US you’re right. We’ve always talked about this that the bump structures in retail deals tend to be a little bit lower. I think that it’s probably if we’re doing industrial deals in the 2.5%-3% range I would say that the retail deals are probably 50-100 basis points below that but it depends on the deal.

I mean, I think that sale-leasebacks a lot of times you can kind of play with the different economics, and there’s always trade-offs between going-in cap rates and what the bump structure is, which is why we’re always quick to remind people that it’s not just the going-in cap rate that matters. The cap rate plus the bump structure is important, and when we’re investing in the mid-7s based on a going-in cap rate with bumps that are in the mid- to high-2s on average, that puts us to average yields in the 9s, which I think is quite attractive, and there’ll be a mix of retail in there, but we don’t think it’s going to be overall impactful.

Speaker 3: Appreciate the comments. Thank you.

Jason Fox, Chief Executive Officer, W. P. Carey: Thank you. And your next question comes from Michael Goldsmith with UBS. Please state your question.

Speaker 9: Good afternoon. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. You talked about cap rates compressing this year to the mid- to low-7% range versus 7.6% in 2025. So are there specific areas where you’re not seeing that compression and does that help drive your acquisition strategy? Just trying to understand what the implications of the cap rate compression is for your acquisition strategy?

Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations, W. P. Carey: Yeah. I mean it’s a good question Michael and we tend to target a diverse set of opportunities. The cap rate ranges tend to be quite wide depending on lots of factors. Certainly the bumps that I just mentioned on the prior question are a factor in that as well. I would say that the more commodity driven net lease is going to have the most compression and I think that’s going to be investment grade retail is an area that we’ve seen that and it’s not something that we target. I would say mostly for that reason is that the cap rates and the bump structures are being driven down more and more there.

I think on the other side of that sale-leasebacks, which is maybe our specialty and where a large part of our deal volume is generated from, we’re able to maintain, I would say, cap rates that are closer to what we’ve done historically. I think there could be a little bit of compression there, but I think we’ll have more pricing power around there, and I think you’ll continue to see us have a bigger emphasis on sale-leasebacks as a means to source new transactions.

Speaker 9: Thanks for that, Jason. And then just as a follow-up, you guys cited a roughly 150 basis points spread between dispositions and acquisitions. Is that expected to be sustainable this year and just given what you’re disposing is that the right range to think about this and then does that still make sense in a more competitive net lease environment?

Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations, W. P. Carey: Yeah. I mean sure. I mentioned earlier that our dispo range is quite wide and where we shake out on cap rates is going to depend on what that mix is of what we actually sell and it’s a combination of our normal course dispositions which this year probably includes some Heldigs among others. It’s going to be some of these kind of accretive non-core assets that I listed off earlier and maybe we can probably factor in some vacant assets there as well like the JOANN’s asset that I mentioned. So when you put all that together we’re probably in and around where we were last year but again it’s really going to depend on the mix. I think where we started last year with spreads we talked about that we think we can achieve at least 100 basis points and then we dial that up through the year.

That’s probably a reasonable starting point for this year. I think that cap rates could come down but our equity price has gotten better to the extent we choose to fund deals with incremental deals above our investment volume with new equity. I think there’s also a number of assets we can lean into with very attractive pricing if we choose to fund incremental deals through asset sales. We feel pretty comfortable we could be in the same or similar ballpark to where we were last year and that certainly gives us a green light to keep on investing and driving earnings growth.

Speaker 9: Thank you very much. Good luck in 2026.

Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations, W. P. Carey: Yeah. Thank you.

Jason Fox, Chief Executive Officer, W. P. Carey: Thank you. Before we take the next question, just a reminder to the audience: if you’d like to ask a question, press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the star then 2. Our next question comes from Ryan Caviola with Green Street Advisors. Please state your question.

Speaker 7: Good afternoon everyone. There were four vacant warehouse sales in the fourth quarter and it sounds like there’s a fifth after the quarter end. Could you walk us through the decision on re-tenanting versus disposing of those properties? Were retention opportunities not there or is the choice to sell just opportunistic? Thanks.

Jason Fox, Chief Executive Officer, W. P. Carey: Brooks, do you want to take that?

Brooks Gordon, Head of Asset Management, W. P. Carey: Sure. Yeah. We look at vacancy just like we would any new investment. We want to understand what are the forward looking risk adjusted returns that we can underwrite to. Where those returns are sufficient and attractive on a risk adjusted basis we will aggressively lease properties up. When available disposition opportunities make those forward looking returns insufficient we won’t hesitate to sell and do so quite quickly. So that’s really the exercise we pursue. And so something like a JOANN where an owner occupier needed to own it and could pay a large premium that’s a very easy decision for us on a sale. But elsewhere we won’t hesitate to release properties where we see a direct path to leasing velocity and an ability to underwrite those forward looking returns.

Jason Fox, Chief Executive Officer, W. P. Carey: Thanks. Appreciate that. Then it was outshined by the Life Time purchase but there was the healthcare acquisition with New Era for $140 million during the quarter and I also noticed there is an expansion on the capital commitments with the same tenant. Just wanted to see if you could share color on the relationship there and if healthcare is a venue you view as attractive going into 2026.

Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations, W. P. Carey: Yeah, sure. Yeah. I mean, we’re always looking to expand our opportunity set. Healthcare is an area we’ve been tracking for a while, and we do have some in-house expertise as well. It’s a competitive space, but we do think that there’s probably opportunity to add some deal volume there over time, and it’s a diverse sector, lots of segments. I think broadly it continues to outperform. The real estate outperforms, and that’s probably supported by long-term dynamics of a growing and aging population. So, I think that what we target in healthcare, we still want to make sure it fits within our existing net lease framework. It’s going to be single-tenant. It’s going to be long-term leases, typically absolute net.

We’re going to focus on strong site level coverage and of course we’re going to want to partner with reputable operators and credit worthy tenants. So yeah. So example of what we’re targeting is what we recently closed and those are in the inpatient rehab facility space. I think to be clear we’re not looking at acute care hospitals just when I talk about healthcare more generally but on the New Era deals there’s one others we did earlier in the year called Earnest Health as well which is a large IRF operator at the same time. These were all kind of somewhat recently developed. They’re well located attractive basis as I mentioned earlier strong site level coverage and they’re good operators. So I think that the IRF model is one that we like and I think we could do hopefully more of those. And you’re right.

One of them did come with an expansion as one of the properties is performing quite well with a lot of demand and so that’s an easy thing to do if you have the land to expand these properties and get the kind of the operating leverage with additional rooms.

Jason Fox, Chief Executive Officer, W. P. Carey: Got it. Appreciate the commentary.

Peter Sands, Head of Investor Relations, W. P. Carey: Yep.

Jason Fox, Chief Executive Officer, W. P. Carey: Thank you. At this time I’m not showing any further questions. I’ll now hand the call back to Mr. Sands.

Speaker 10: Great. Thank you everyone for your interest in W. P. Carey. If anyone has additional questions please call Investor Relations directly on 212-492-1110. That concludes today’s call. You may now disconnect.