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Text: First, let me say that our hearts go out to all the families affected by the COVID-19 coronavirus and the related economic dislocation across the country.
All of that steady execution occurred largely prior to the unprecedented spread of the coronavirus across the United States and the related global financial market instability that exploded in March.
Based on the current uncertainty about the depth and duration of the economic turmoil that almost all companies are enduring at the moment, we have withdrawn our guidance for 2020 results.
We hope to be able to provide updated guidance later in the year, but for now, there is simply too much uncertainty to project how 2020 will play out.
Before discussing our quarterly performance, let me highlight some of the attributes of our long-term strategy that have positioned National Retail Properties to weather the current disruption.
First, our balance sheet remains in excellent shape.
We ended the first quarter with $217 million cash on hand and a zero balance drawn on our $900 million line of credit.
Our next debt maturity is not until 2023 and we've taken a pause in our acquisitions in order to marshal our cash in this uncertain moment.
Second, our portfolio consist primarily of large, well-capitalized tenants.
Our largest tenants operate over 1,000 units each on average and are typically the leaders in their respective lines of trade.
These are large regional and national companies that are generally better positioned than smaller operators to withstand a major disruption in their business, such as occurring at the moment.
Third, our well-located real estate parcels remain integral to our tenants' business success once this disruption is passed.
As we've often said, National Retail Properties is at its heart, a real estate company.
Our properties were highly occupied before all this started and we're confident that those same well-located properties will continue to be in high demand after all this passes.
And lastly, we've been here before.
Our entire management team was with the company during the great recession in 2008 and most of us have been through a number of other major downturns in the past.
We're a seasoned real estate company with in-house expertise to handle all the issues that might arise.
Turning now to our first quarter 2020 results.
Our portfolio of 3,125 single-tenant retail properties ended the quarter with an occupancy rate of 98.8%, which is consistent with our long-term average occupancy.
We do expect our occupancy rate to fall in the second quarter, but we're working with many of our tenants to structure rent deferral programs that we hope will enable them to get through this period of business interruption and get their businesses back in full operation.
We acquired 21 new properties in the first quarter, investing slightly over $67 million at an initial cash cap rate of 6.9%.
As usual, about two-thirds of our investments were with our relationship tenants with whom we do recurring off-market business.
Our acquisition volume was muted compared to prior quarters.
We elected to postpone or cancel some acquisitions scheduled for late in the quarter as we saw the economic downturn beginning to grow.
We also sold 14 properties during the quarter, generating proceeds of just over $36 million at a cash cap rate of 4.7%.
Once again our ability to raise capital for accretive recycling highlights a strategic advantage of National Retail Properties over many other REITs.
Due to the sudden impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on retail businesses and the economy beginning in mid-March, we are reporting today that we received approximately 52% of our rents due for the month of April.
We also entered into rent deferral agreements or are currently negotiating such agreements with tenants representing approximately 37% of our annualized base rent.
While we are dealing with deferrals on an individual case-by-case basis, generally our rent deferral discussions involve deferring one to three months of second quarter base rent with the deferred rent to be repaid commencing in late 2020 through late 2021.
Generally, the tenants remain responsible for paying the triple net charges on a current basis.
We are not discussing or agreeing to rent forgiveness with tenants nor are we advancing funds to tenants to be repaid as rent.
As to the balance of the tenants, which did not pay or agree to deferral arrangements, we are pursuing our legal remedies.
Many of those cases involved tenants that we felt could pay some or all of their April rent, but have so far chosen not to do so or tenants that insisted on some immediate rent forgiveness, which as I said, was not the way we wanted to approach this fast moving and fluid situation.
We remain in dialog with many of these tenants and are hopeful about our ability to reach some agreement for payment with many of these tenants over-time.
Lastly, before turning the call over to Kevin, I want to remind you all that we declared our regular quarterly common stock dividend in April.
Our Board will continue to review our dividend policy as we work through the current economic turmoil and by no means is our dividend untouchable.
We do believe however that our impressive streak of consistently increasing the dividend for 30 consecutive years is a powerful indicator of the value of our consistent, conservative balance sheet philosophy and business model.
So with the first quarter behind us, you see National Retail Properties conserving its capital, working with its tenants to address the reality of their current business disruption and planning ahead for the new normal.
And just a couple of comments about the first quarter, which I'm guessing few are focused on at this point, but our AFFO dividend payout ratio for the quarter was 72.4% and that was consistent with full year 2019 levels.
Occupancy was 98.8% at quarter-end, G&A expense was 5.8% of revenues for the first quarter and that's flat with the prior fourth quarter and we ended the quarter with $677.5 million of annual base rent in place for all leases as of March 31, 2020.
As Jay mentioned, on February 18th, we issued $700 million of unsecured debt, $400 million with a 10-year maturity and a 2.5% coupon plus $300 million with a 30-year maturity and a 3.1% coupon.
We used about half of those proceeds to redeem our $325 million of 3.8% 2022 notes due in March -- we paid those off in March, they weren't due till 2022.
I will note that first quarter interest expense include $2.3 million of accelerated note discount and no cost amortization as a result of that early 2022 note redemption.
Absent this, incremental non-cash expense that would have allowed us to report $0.71 of core FFO per share, representing 6% growth over prior year results.
But more importantly though, this transaction enhance our liquidity, just as the flu pandemic was beginning to unfold in the United States and pushed down our next debt maturity to 2023.
We ended the quarter of $217 million of cash on the balance sheet and we have no amounts outstanding on our $900 million bank line.
These transactions pushed our weighted average debt maturity to 11.2 years with a weighted average interest rate of 3.7%.
So we're in a good liquidity position with very few capital obligations during the next three years.
Leverage metrics remain very strong, debt to gross book assets was 35.3% that was flat with year-end, net debt to EBITDA was 4.9 times at March 31, interest coverage was 4.6 times and fixed charge coverage was 4.1 times for the first quarter.
If you excluded the $2.3 million of note discount and note cost amortization, those two metrics would have been 5.0 times and 4.3 times respectively for interest coverage and fixed charge.
Only five of our 3,125 properties are encumbered by mortgages, totaling $12 million.
Till we get a better read on the duration of the shutdown, the shape of the recovery and what the new normal might look like, we're not able to reasonably predict how things will play out.
While we are dealing with these deferrals on an individual tenant basis generally, as Jay mentioned, they involve one to three months of rent deferral with that deferred rent to be repaid over a period of months from late 2020 to late 2021.
So we will be continuing to work with a number of our tenants to find a path forward for them to pay the rent owed to us.
Our approach has been to work with the tenants and allow rent deferrals to help them get to the other side of the shutdown and then get repaid in the not too distant future.
So much depends on the duration of the shutdown and the shape of the subsequent recovery.
This level of uncertainty does not make it clear if we may have done too much or too little with our rent deferrals, but we're hoping we struck a reasonable balance.
As we work through what undoubtedly will be a difficult 2020 for the global economy, we continue to work to give NNN the best opportunity to succeed in the coming years.
And Jes with that, we will open it up to any questions.

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qtrly affo per common share $0.71.
national retail properties - determined to withdraw previously issued 2020 earnings guidance.

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