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Text: Listeners to any replay should understand that the passage of time by itself will diminish the quality of the statements made.
Certain of these factors are described as risk factors in our Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the first quarter 2020.
Ultimately, our success through the pandemic lies in ample liquidity, excellence in the operations, business continuity and a strategic outlook for the future.
These four principles have driven what we have done and will continue to do throughout this pandemic and in the post-pandemic environment.
Led by an operationally hands-on, proactive, motivated and crisis-tested management team, we sit in a position of relative strength following a two-year transformation of our organization, our predominantly grocery anchored and value orientated portfolio and our flexible balance sheet.
Combined with recent actions, we believe that RPT will be able to weather the current storm and thrive once it passes.
In short, the actions we took increased our cash to over $320 million at the end of the first quarter, which should allow us to weather the downturn created by COVID-19.
As a management team, we see tremendous opportunity ahead and are in this for the long-haul and we felt that the salary adjustments were a proactive step that created alignment with our employees and our shareholders.
Combined, we expect to save about $1 million in cash from these actions.
Lastly, the Board recently made the decision to temporarily suspend the quarterly common dividend, preserving roughly $18 million per quarter.
No decisions regarding dividend payments beyond second quarter 2020 have been made.
Future dividend decisions will be made based on liquidity needs and REIT taxable income distribution requirements.
Management and the Board did not take the decision to suspend the dividend lightly.
And we are committed to providing investors with a healthy and sustainable dividend as cash flow visibility improves and the longer term impacts of COVID-19 are more apparent.
Currently, all 49 of our properties are open and operational.
As of May 7, 53% of our tenants by ABR are open.
As of May 8, we collected 58% of our April rent and reimbursements, largely from open tenants.
Of our top 25 tenants based on ABR, over 86% have paid or have agreed in principle to some form of short-term deferment.
The majority of April uncollected rent was tied to the non-essential and experiential tenant categories with whom we are in active conversations with.
Not surprisingly, these categories comprise the vast majority of our tamp relief requests that we have received today.
In terms of May collections, it is too early to comment given the fluidity of tenant negotiations.
While the segmenting of our portfolio has importance and provides transparency into our business, the single best predictor of collections remains whether or not the store is open for business.
As such, we are encouraged that some states have begun to lift lockdown orders, allowing more tenants to reopen their doors.
That said, every tenant has different circumstances, each rent deferment negotiation has different considerations and there are still elements of uncertainty in all cases given the rapidly changing health environment we are experiencing today.
In order for us to clearly evaluate our cash flows by risk level, we have classified our tenants into four tiers based on our assessment of their ability to pay rent near term and the sustainability of their rent payments long term.
In Tier 1 are tenants who have both good long-term business models and have largely been able to remain open through the pandemic.
These include essential businesses as well as QSR and fast casual restaurants remain open, even if only a takeout, drive-through or delivery basis.
87.9% of this tier remains open and 83.9% paid April rent as of May 8.
In Tier 2 are tenants with solid long-term business models and good balance sheets pre-COVID, but that sell more discretionary items.
The discount apparel retailers like T.J. Maxx and Ross fall into this category along with other investment grade quality tenants not included in Tier 1.
Our Tier 2 tenants paid 78.7% of April rent, but only 27.2% by ABR were opened in April.
Tier 3 tenants offer more commodity like products like full-line apparel and accessories.
And Tier 4 tenants are more experiential in nature, including full service restaurants and in many cases were key drivers of traffic pre-pandemic.
Collectively, Tier 3 and Tier 4 tenants paid 36.1% of April rent, 35.6% by ABR remained open.
Turning now to tenant negotiations.
I would characterize our approach as firm but fair.
Our size is an advantage right now as our top executives are directly involved in negotiations.
We understand that many of our tenants are in an extremely difficult position relative to their businesses and sales channels being turned off overnight.
We are working in good faith with them to get through the current turmoil in a way that both the tenant and landlord can be successful beyond the crisis.
To assist our tenants, we started the RPT Tenant Concierge Service to support our small business partners and gaining access to various government assistance programs by hosting educational webinars and providing and paying for direct access to legal resources.
Of the 275 tenants that we targeted, nearly two-thirds have told us they applied for the PPP loan.
Application for an SBA loan for eligible tenants is a prerequisite for consideration of any form of deferral.
That said, let me be clear.
While we are empathetic to our tenants' current situations, we are actively pursuing collections and will pursue all remedies where we believe tenants have the capacity to pay rent.
What we are not doing is sacrificing long-term cash flow just for short-term April-May rent gain.
April rent is still coming in and as I said earlier, we will continue to pursue collections aggressively.
Getting through this will take the collective efforts of the entire ecosystem.
There is no place for bad actors.
For our part, we continue to service our debt to pay our real estate taxes and insurance, and are maintaining the assets to operate safely during the mandated shutdowns while preparing for the reopening of the economy.
As we negotiate any form of rent relief, we are using our tiering process to guide our decision making process and focus on deferrals to support tenants in need or granting rent relief abatements judiciously.
To this point, while only 127 rent relief requests have been approved, 121 have been in the form of deferrals totaling $3.8 million and only six abatements have been granted totaling less than $71,000.
Typical deferral terms call for repayment by the end of 2020 and range from one month to three months.
Please know that neither deferrals nor abatements are being granted for free, and we're using them as currency to improve lease terms that will add significant value down the road.
Some examples include cleaning up co-tenancy clauses, eliminating no builds, and extending term to name a few.
We have proven to be exceptional on the operational side of the business and we will navigate this storm through that exact same lens.
Although much of this focus has been on who is not paying rent, I think it's important to keep in mind that the pandemic is also highlighting the importance of key tenant categories and specifically the grocery channel.
We are seeing incredible demand at our non-grocery anchored centers from grocers and are currently in negotiations with seven top tier grocers at non-grocery anchored centers in our portfolio that would improve the durability of cash flows at these centers if we -- if closed and increase the number of our centers with a grocer or grocery components by 14%.
Turning now to RPT's response to the pandemic at the organizational and community levels, which I believe is a strong reflection of the caliber and quality of the company.
At the organizational level, we responded quickly and definitively in response to what was a rapidly escalating situation to ensure the safety and health of our employees and to provide uninterrupted service to our tenants.
We shut down our New York office in early March, followed shortly by the closing of our Michigan office.
Our employees have now been working safely and efficiently from home for almost 10 weeks, but a year ago, we established an option to work-from-home day program, which made the transition to full work-from-home environment quite smooth.
Our technology, tools and processes allowed us to rapidly evolve with the situation real-time and with limited disruption.
While we are all looking forward to the day we can return to the office, we are prepared and ready to continue to work remotely as long as it takes to ensure the health and safety of our people.
In addition to our work-from-home programs, we have also been working diligently to protect the ongoing health and well-being of our employees through weekly wellness emails, COVID-related seminars and weekly companywide virtual happy hours.
At the tenant and community level, RPT has been actively engaging with and supporting both our tenants and those on the frontlines of the pandemic.
Today, we have donated over 20,000 meals to support school lunch programs, at-risk populations, essential workers and nursing home employees and local communities.
We have also matched employee contributions to support hospital workers and volunteers.
In anticipation and preparation of the reopening of many of our tenants in the coming weeks, we have developed plans for several key initiatives at our shopping centers to keep customers and tenants safe.
The current health crisis has caused us to reshape our business plans quickly and to refocus our efforts in the near term.
Our response to the pandemic has been focused on the health and safety of our employees and their families, our tenants and our shopping center customers, maintaining business continuity during and after the pandemic and increasing liquidity to withstand the near-term financial impact of the health crisis, while positioning the company for long-term success after the crisis passes.
Though the pandemic is having a profound impact on how we think about the business, we remain confident that at its core, the value and service-orientated as well as the grocery anchored shopping center model is one that will stand the test of time as we all seek out common ground, upon which to gather experience life and yes, shop.
Over the last several weeks since the pandemic gained force, many of our key decisions have been through the land of liquidity.
Our goal is simple: focus on what you can control and prepare for what you cannot.
A significant contributor to this was our recent borrowings on our line of credit.
Out of abundance of caution and after analyzing our potential cash need, we drew down $225 million from our line during the quarter, bringing our total cost position to over $320 million at the end of March.
Based on all the steps we have taken over the last two years to solidify our balance sheet, we are fortunate to not have any debt maturing in 2020, only $37 million maturing in '21, and just $53 million in '22.
If our cash collections remained at the April level of 58%, we would be able to fund our ongoing operations without utilizing much of our cash on hand.
Our breakeven cash collection rate is roughly 61%.
In short, we believe we have more than enough liquidity to withstand the impacts of COVID-19 despite the severity of the situation.
While we have no material use for cash today, we will continue to balance our future cash needs and debt covenant compliance requirements to ensure we have optimal liquidity and flexibility to operate our business.
It is also important to note that 46 of our 49 properties are unencumbered, providing us with the optimal operational flexibility to make decisions quickly without the burden of servicers or lenders.
Quickly on our first quarter results.
Operating FFO for the first quarter was $0.26 per share, which was in line with our internal projections.
During the quarter, we recognized about $800,000 in costs related to the suspension of our acquisition and disposition program, which have been excluded from operating FFO as they are non-recurring in nature.
Same-property NOI growth for the first quarter 2020 was 2.3%, which included a 120 basis point drag from rent not probable of collection reflecting the initial impact from COVID-19 attributable to a conservative approach we took with an entertainment tenant that had a substantial open AR balance that we deemed uncollectible.
Absent this, same-property NOI growth for the quarter was in line with our expectation.
We ended the quarter at an occupancy rate of 93.3%, down 100 basis points sequentially given typical seasonality and recapture of an expected anchor space but up 150 basis points year-over-year.
On a leasing front, volume faltered in early March due to COVID-19, impacting our new lease volume.
As a result, we had a much higher mix of renewal activity during the quarter.
In total, we signed 46 leases comprised of 558,000 square feet of which 60,000 square feet were new leases and 490,000 were renewal leases.
We experienced blended releasing spreads of 6.2% and 36 comparable leases, including a 6.2% renewal spread and a 5.2% new lease spread.
Turning now to our outlook for the remainder of the year, in late March, we pulled our 2020 guidance given the lack of visibility created by the coronavirus.
While we are not reintroducing guidance today, we want to provide some additional points to think about as you attempt to model the balance of the year relative to our previously provided guidance.
We entered the quarter with signed not open ABR of about $2.1 million.
Despite the pandemic, we have been able to continue most of our construction activities associated with these leases.
While we have seen a slight delay with rent commencement dates, we expect the rents to commence over the next 12 months.
Regarding near-term rent expirations, we only have 3.4% of our ABR expiring over the balance of 2020, mitigating some near-term tenant retention risk.
From a capital perspective, we have only $14 million of remaining committed capital spend in 2020, of which $11 million is related to our signed not open backlog and residual capital for recently opened tenants, with the balance largely related to essential maintenance capital.
Turning to the common dividend, as Brian mentioned, once the dust settles from the current disruption and longer term implications for the market become more clear, subject to Board approval, we expect to reinstitute a sustainable dividend that will again provide a stable income stream for our investors.
Extrapolating the $18 million per quarter common dividend we were paying would equate to $54 million in potential capital preservation through the next three quarters.
Lastly, in the spirit of transparency, it's worth noting that we provided additional details on our tiers that Brian discussed earlier, in addition to more information on our merchandising mix and performance as it pertains to rent collections in our quarterly investor deck posted on our website.

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q1 operating ffo per share $0.26.
temporarily suspended payment of the common dividend.
withdrawn all previously provided guidance for 2020 as disclosed in q4 earnings press release.

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