Gladstone Land Corporation Price & Performance (LAND)

Thanks.

David.

Good morning, everybody. Today's report may include forward looking statements under Securities Act of 1933. The Securities Exchange Act of 1934, including those regarding our future performance, These statements involve certain risks and uncertainties that are based on our current plans, which we believe to be reasonable. The many factors may cause our actual results to be materially different from any future results expressed or implied by these forward looking statements including all risk factors in our Forms 10 ks, 10 Q and other documents we file with the SEC. You can go to our website, gladstoneland.com, specifically the Investors page or the SEC's website is www.sec.gov, and you can find them all there. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any of these forward looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise except as required by law. Today, we'll discuss FFO, which is funds from operations, Now FFO is a non GAAP accounting term. Definition is net income excluding the gains or losses from the sale of real estate and any impairment losses from property. Plus depreciation and amortization of real estate assets. We may also discuss core FFO, which we generally define as FFO with some adjustments for certain non recurring revenues and expenses, then adjusted FFO, which further adjusts core FFO for certain non cash items such as converting GAAP rents to normalized cash rents We do this because we believe these are better indications of our operating results allow better comparability of our period over period performance Now, we once again ask you to visit our website, that's gladstoneland.com Gladstone, While you're there, you can sign up for our e mail notification service.

You can also find us on Facebook, keyword there is The Gladstone Companies. And on X, which is formerly Twitter. Our handle there is gladstonecomps. Today's call is an overview of our results, so we ask that you review our press release and the Form 10 ks both issued yesterday for more detailed information. Now with that, I'll turn the presentation back to David Gladstone. Well, thank you, Michael. I'll start with a brief overview overview as I do each time. We have a lot of farmland. We currently own about 103,000 acres on 150 farms and over 55,000 acre feet, which is the way they measure water assets, one acre foot is equal to about 326,000 gallons So we own over 18,000,000,000 gallons of water.

And together the land and the water are all valued at a total of about $1,300,000,000 Our farms are in 15 different states and more importantly in 29 different growing regions and our water assets are mostly in California.

Farms are leased to over 65 different tenant farmers and people who manage the farms are a lot of people involved. And the tenants on these farms are growing over 60 different kinds of 60 different crops. Mostly of fruits and vegetables and nuts.

You can find this produce in other sections of the grocery store as well as in the produce section. Which is where most of the crops that are grown on any of our farms are sold. Mentioned in previous calls that we continue to be cautious with new investments because our cost of capital remains high. Cap rates on most row crops and farmlands are so low that today because of those situations the value of those crops and land remained very high We also believe it's a good time to conserve cash given the produce and nut marketplace And the Federal Reserve is holding interest rates too high today. So hopefully they'll changed their mind and reduce it down as time goes on. We completed some farmland sales recently. In December, we sold 11 blueberry farms in Michigan These are farms that have been giving us some problems We recorded an impairment charge on these farms in the third quarter then had a small loss in the fourth quarter when we completed the sale. But these farms had an These farms had a negative impact on net and net operating income of about $400,000 in 2024. We didn't see a clear path back to profitability, so we sold these farms.

In January, we sold five farms in Florida, at a sizable gain and represented about a 40% premium over what we had paid or at six point five years. Farmland values in most parts of Florida have continued to go up at a faster pace than the rest of the market, but it's still was a time for us to sell some of these. And finally, in February, we saw two farms in the Midwest for a total gain of about 9% over what we paid for them to We had originally budgeted these farms as potato farms, but market shifted more toward corn and soybean in this region. So we felt that resulting cap rates didn't make sense for us to continue holding them. We've executed four new lease and amended [indiscernible] [indiscernible] [indiscernible] On two of these leases, we adjusted the lease structure in a similar manner to what we done in a few other farms recently. That is eliminated the base rent or in some cases provided the tenants with some cash allowances to grow their produce In exchange, we significantly increased the participation rent component of these leases majority of which it will be recognized in the second half of twenty twenty five.

So we won't have income from these leases, but in the near term, but when we sell the crops, we'll get a big piece of it. And I want to touch a little bit more. We started prior in prior calls marketing conditions around many of the permanent crop farms in the West, particularly nuts and some of the great have been hampered by lower crop prices and higher input costs that is fertilizer and those kind of things. And of course, the borrowing cost have remained high. As such, we decided to adjust the lease structure on five farms to help the growing minimize that fixed cost but also allow us to participate greatly in the upside. In essence, we're accepting a percentage of the gross crop sales instead of fixed rent payments. This may be a big win for us come next year come the end of this year. If we assume the worst case scenario and assume that we have a total crop loss, on five of on these five farms and we have no crops proceeds from the harvest We expect the crop insurance on these farms to pay us enough money to cover all of our costs and also provide us with a profit it would be a small profit, but nonetheless a profit And this is government insurance.

So as a result, we don't worry about them not being able to pay We've not done this that often. And of course, our hope so that we have good production overall and that we don't have to use the crop insurance at all. There are a few additional properties that we're looking at possibly doing similar structure on. We're still reviewing the projections and I think the projections will probably look good on another two or three of these So we may end in that Our current plan is to move forward with the structure for 2025 and harvest for these farms and then hopefully revert back to more traditional structure next year. Or we may sell some of these properties along the way. The other two leases we expect weeks executed recently on permanent crop farms are expected to result in a year over year decrease in annual NOI of about $180,000 The net operating income is how we measure most of the things in our business. So That's a hit. I hate to say it, It's not that much, but nonetheless, just hate to lose anything. And just as a note on our annual row crops, which make up about half percent, we continue to see a steady and consistent rent growth in this category during 2024 we renewed 12 different leases on annual row crops, not permanent crops and these renewals are expected to result in an aggregate increase in annual net operating income of about $556,000 or about 14 Looking ahead, we have three leases scheduled to expire over the next six months And in total, they only make up about 1.5%.

Of our total lease revenue. So we should get those done this year and and not lose anything there, I hope. We're in discussions with the current tenants and prospective new tenants to lease these farms [indiscernible] if the price is right, we may look at sell a couple of these farms to We believe we have some very valuable farms. So selling is an option for us.

And now I'll give a quick update on some of the remaining tenancy issues that we continue to work on. During the quarter, we executed lease agreements on certain farms and sold other farms that have previously been either vacant or direct operated by us. So we currently have five farms that are vacant One palm is in direct operation. Via a management agreement.

With an unrelated third party. I know some of the people in this business have their own way of doing it with the captive These are third parties, so we have some good good people in there. In addition, we're recognizing revenue from leases with three tenants who collectively leased six of our farms on a cash basis. It's usually done on accrual basis, but we're going to do cash on those just to keep them current.

Regarding these farms, we're in discussion with various potential buyers or tenants to buy or lease these properties and we hope to get these remaining issues resolved later this year. And if we're unable to come to an acceptable resolution, [indiscernible] end up listing some of these farms for sale. Pretty good way of going about getting out of them is listing them for sale. Total year over year impact of our operations as a result of tenant issues these properties will decrease in net operating income of about $236,000 I'm going to stop here That's just a tasting and I hope we get some good questions at the end. But Louis is going to take over now as the CFO of the company. He works with the numbers every day. So Louis, go ahead. Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone.

I'll begin by briefly going over our recent financing activity. We did not borrow any new money during the quarter, but during and since the fourth quarter, connection with certain property sales, we did pay off about $23,500,000 of loans Majority of these loans were scheduled to reprice later this year. On the equity side, since the beginning of the fourth quarter, we sold about $20,000 of our Series E preferred stock and about $4,700,000 of our common stock for the ATM program. Moving on to our operating results. On an annual basis, adjusted FFO for 2024 was approximately $16,700,000 compared to $20,300,000 in 2023. And AFFO per share was $0.47 in 2024, versus 55 versus 57% in 2023. Committances declared per share were $0.56 in 2024 and $0.55 in 2023. And our FFO is defined by NAREIT, was $0.58 $0.58 per share in 2024 compared to $0.62 per share in 2023. Primary drivers behind the decreases in AFFO were recent changes in lease structures on certain farms, lost income from the large farm in Florida that we sold in January of twenty four, and certain tenancy issues which has led to vacancies on several of our funds and resulted in both lost revenues and increased costs.

Year over year fixed base cash rents decreased by about $4,900,000 a quarterly basis and $9,700,000 on an annual basis, primarily due to the reasons just mentioned that is lost revenues from the Q1 farm sale and vacancies as well as structural changes to certain leases where as Dave mentioned, we reduced eliminated or in some cases provided lease incentives to certain tenants in exchange for significantly increasing the crop share of buildings in these lease results of the crop share components won't be known until the harvest is completed in the fourth quarter of this year. The decrease in fixed base cash rents is partially offset by an increase in participant recorded during 2024. During the fourth quarter, we recorded approximately $4,800,000 participation rents, compared to $3,300,000 in the prior year quarter. And for the year, we recorded participation rents of $9,400,000 versus $5,900,000 last year. The increase in participation rents was primarily driven by increased yields in certain of our almond and pistachio farms, partly due to the altered breeding nature of these crops and partially offset by lower prices during the twenty twenty three-twenty twenty four marketing period. We mentioned this on last quarter's call, but I think it's worth noting again and just providing an update the numbers.

As a result of the change in lease structures we've made on a few farms, we are expecting a total year over year swing in our fixed base rents of about $13,000,000 This is $25,000,000 versus 2024. Figure consists of the base rents that we recognized in 2024 under the prior leases, plus the cash allowances that we granted granted to these tenants for the 2025 crop year. This will be shown as a reduction in our fixed base rents of about during 2025 at a rate of between $3,000,000 to $3,500,000 per quarter. And then the majority of the resulting crop share proceeds from these leases will be recognized as participation rent in the second half of twenty twenty five. With the remaining smaller portion being recognized in the second half of twenty twenty six. Things play out as we currently expect them to, we'll essentially be just moving this money from the fixed base rent bucket into the participation rent bucket over the next couple On the expense side, excluding reimbursable expenses and certain non recurring non cash Our core operating expenses decreased for both comparable periods. Total related party fees decreased by $1,000,000 on a quarterly basis and $1,800,000 on an annual basis due to the incentive fees earned during each of the prior year periods.

On a quarterly basis, our remaining core operating expenses remain relatively flat with slightly higher property operating expenses were offset by slightly lower general and administrative expenses. On an annual basis, the increase in property operating expenses was primarily driven by the additional costs incurred on properties that we earned vacant direct operated or non accrual status at some point during the year. These costs included additional real estate taxes, legal costs, property management. A result of longer payments made over the last more than past year. With that, we'll move on to net asset value. We had 37 bonds revalued during the quarter and overall these valuation decreased by about $15,000,000 from the previous valuations a year ago. Decreases were limited to certain of our Prairie crop farms, as our annual row crop farms continued to appreciate value. So the December 31, our portfolio was valued at about $1,400,000,000 and based on these updated valuations and including the fair value of our debt in all preferred securities, our net asset value per common share at December 31 was $14.91 which is down from $15.57 at September 30. Majority of this change was due to the decreases in values valuations of certain funds that were reappraised during the quarter partially offset by the change in fair value of certain preferred securities due to changes in market rates.

That this will be the last time that we will voluntarily publish our NAV calculations quarterly reports. As our portfolio has grown in size, the cost the cost of these recurring appraisals has become quite substantial. As we look for ways to reduce costs, we no longer feel that time and money required for this process is in the best interest of our company or its shareholders. Turning to liquidity, including availability in our life of credit, and other undrawn notes, we currently have access to over $195,000,000 of capital including about $50,000,000 of cash on hand. We also have nearly $150,000,000 of unpledged properties. Over 99.9% of our borrowings are currently at fixed rates and on a weighted average basis, these rates are fixed at 3.35% for another three point six years. As a result, we have not experienced much of an impact on our operating results from increased interest rates over the past couple of years. Regarding our current borrowings, we believe we are well protected rates continue at elevated levels. Regarding our upcoming debt maturities, we have a $38,000,000 coming due over the next twelve months However, about $20,000,000 of that represents various loan maturities. And given the value of the underlying collateral, we do not foresee any refinancing any of these loans if we choose to do so.

So removing those is coming due over the next twelve months or less than 4% of our current debt up. Finally, regarding our common distributions, in January, we declared a dividend of $0.0467 per share per month for the first quarter of twenty twenty five. At our current stock price of $11.52 this works out to a yield of 4.9% which is higher than the average dividend yield across the entire wheat sector. Given the changes we've recently made in restructures at certain properties, we believe it prudent to hold the dividend side of this time and we'll continue to reassess in the near future before any 2025 harvest becomes known. And with that, I'll turn the program back over to David. Thank you, Lewis. Nice report. We'll continue to stay active in the market should a good acquisition opportunity present itself. And so that we're ready if interest rates come down as well. But as mentioned in prior calls and today, we're still being more cautious on the acquisition front because our cost of capital remains high. And while we have seen a decrease in the pricing of certain permanent crops, Farms in the West valued most and most of the value of the farms like those growing strawberries remains high The cap rates on most of these farms are just high enough to cover our financing costs.

So it doesn't make it very advantageous to to somebody to rent them. So as a result, acquisition activity remains slow for us Probably we'll last for another couple of quarters. Interest rates are still too high today and projection for further rate cutting. Seem to be getting keep getting reduced. [indiscernible] So the amount and time of any additional rate cuts remains uncertain Well, we do hope that rates come down at some point in the near future, so that we can start looking at buying more farms. And just a few final points.

We believe that investing in farmland and growing crops that contribute to healthy lifestyles such as fruits and vegetables and nuts follows the trend that we see in the market today. Overall demand for prime farmland growing berries and vegetables remained stable to [indiscernible] in most of the areas that we're in. [indiscernible] mentioned earlier, crop prices are certainly [indiscernible] permanent crops particularly nuts, have been depressed lately. People just not eating enough nuts. We need more of that in order to push the price up. We have impacted the values of our underlying farmland especially nuts and groves, And we are seeing prices that are overall economies of some of these crops just start just starting to turn around. We got a report yesterday that Pretty much the country is out of all of the old nuts and pistachios and we've got new new feeling that things are going to go up because there are just not many left. When people stop eating, it doesn't mean the trees stop producing, they keep producing. So we ended up with prices being cut down to that didn't work very well for us. But please remember that purchasing stock in this company is is really a long term investment in farmland.

Historically speaking, long term returns remain strong but there are occasionally some ups and downs in the marketplace just like with any investment areas like this And now there's a portion of our portfolio in a down cycle that we're working to maneuver through We expect inflation, particularly in the food sector, to continue to increase over time. And we expect the values of underlying farmland to increase over the time as a result and fresh produce sector, all of those.

And trends as more and more people in The U. S. Eating healthy foods continue to And please keep in mind that an investment in our stock really has two parts. First, it's similar to gold in that it's a hard ass [indiscernible] It's dirt. Not going anywhere. It's an intrinsic value because there's a limited amount of good farmland in The United States and it's being used up by urban developments. The farm that we sold in Florida has got to be turned into some housing and while that's good for us on a one time basis, once they're gone, they're gone. And second of all, unlike gold and other alternative assets, it's an active investment with cash flows to investors So we believe farmland is better hedge against inflation than gold is for that Now we'll have some questions from those who follow us. Operator, if you'll come on, Would you please tell them how they can ask some questions and hope we get a lot of questions. Thank you. We'll now be conducting the question and answer session. Our first question comes from the line of Gaurav Mehta with Alliance Global Partners. Please proceed with your questions.

Thank you. Good morning.

I wanted to clarify your comments on the participation in fixed base rent amendment I think you said $3,000,000 to $3,500,000 lower fixed base rent. Is that $3,500,000 lower from what you guys reported in In 4Q, No, it's more the average base rents for the year in 2024 versus compared to the average base rate in 2025. So it's not Q4 versus looking forward, it's If you took the annual base rent from 2024 divided by by four, That was just the baseline number we're using for that $3,300,000 to $3,500,000 swing.

Okay. And so and then that lower base trend, majority of that you're expecting to get in 3Q and 4Q or '25, right? Yes.

The majority of that will be well, based on our current expectation, we do expect to recover the majority of that and hopefully more if the harvest turns out well.

In the second half of this year and then then after the marketing period is over, bonuses and adjustments will get recognized in second half of the following year. And so then in 2026, do the leases on these farms do they go back to how they were in 2024 or you expect them to continue like in 2025? It remains to be seen. Our hope is that we can [indiscernible] We're kind of going to be at the mercy of the market And like we were this time, we could have maybe leased it out for a very low base rent and very little if any upside. But when we ran the numbers, we thought this was a better option for us to take. So when these leases come due at the end of this crop year, we'll have to do that analysis again. Okay. And then maybe lastly on the sale of Florida Farm at think you mentioned you paid off some debt from the proceeds. What was the use of remaining proceeds from that sale?

Right now, it's part of the $50,000,000 that we have is cash on hand on the balance sheet. We're just holding that for other uses at this point.

Okay. Thank you. That's all I had.

Okay. Next question.

Thank you.

Our next question is coming from the line of Craig Cusera with Lusit Capital Markets. Please proceed with your questions. Yes. Good morning, guys. First one is for Lou. What are your expectations around interest patronage here in the first quarter?

We should be getting a similar percentage back from the Farm Credit borrowings, but we have paid off a portion of those loans over the past year. So If I had to ballpark it right now, I'd probably say about 10% less and that's just because I think we paid off about 10% of those loans from the past year.

Got it. That makes sense. You mentioned that you had three leases expiring here over the next six months. And a relatively small amount of rent, maybe 1.5%. But for the year, this is actually a pretty big year. I think in the K, you've got north of 17% expiring. You give us some color on the remaining lease expirations this year? Maybe a split between what's permanent versus row crop?

Yes. So the leases expiring in the next six months, those are most of those are real crop farms. But yes, as you said, that's a small percentage of the overall amount. The remaining leases that are expiring in the second half of the year the majority of those probably 60% to 70% are on farm to crop farms. Some of these are the leases that we discussed about where we have lease incentive and a high upside on the crop share So probably about half of the leases that are expiring falling to that bucket, the other half are from the crop farms are under traditional leases right now. The assets under traditional leases, we expect them to remain flat, maybe even can can negotiate a rent bump upwards, but remain to be seen at this point. And as we just answered, the remaining leases on the perm crop farms that are in the kind of lease incentive and high upside bucket remains to be seen. We like to be able to revert them back to traditional leases, but it's we can't say right now what direction we'll have to go on those.

Got it. That's helpful. I guess given where the preferred is trading been buying it I think in the 2,050 range, it's still kind of around there. Will we guys anticipate to continue to be out in the market? Buying back the preferred and maybe getting a small gain Yes, this is an easy way for us to make money.

And one more for me. Just looking at your real estate expenses here this quarter, there was a pretty decent increase Is that just related to the taxes and some of the incremental costs with the directly operated farms?

Anything else going on there? Yes, exactly.

It's that whole bucket of vacant, direct operating and non accrual properties, some tenants had to be terminated their leases early. They were they didn't make those tax payments. We had to make them on their behalf.

But yes, it is all related to the properties that have fallen into that bucket. Okay.

Thanks for the color. Our next question comes from the line of John Massocca with B. Riley Securities. Good morning.

Good morning, John. So maybe just going back to property operating expense, Again, I mean, is 4Q kind of the good run rate for going forward for the remainder of the year or was there something where either those leases didn't change over till kind of mid 4Q that could cause it to skew higher or some onetime expenses that could cause it to kind of skew lower? In the quarters of twenty twenty five. Our hope is that it comes down a little bit for a couple of reasons. One, properties, the Michigan blueberry properties that we sold, they contributed a decent amount to that increase throughout the year. I think they had negative NOI of about $400,000 over the course the year That should start to come down. Now we will we are going after the tenant for some additional rent owed. So some legal costs will remain related to those farms, but The cost related attributable to those farms should come down quite a bit And I think we also had to recognize some kind of catch up, let's say, taxes that in the fourth quarter.

I don't have the exact number here, but amounts that the tenant had owed, but was unable to make the payments, so we had to record those we had to make those payments on their behalf in the fourth quarter.

So I don't know exactly how can't say exactly how much, but we do expect that number to come down a bit in 2025.

Okay. That's very helpful. And then on the dispositions completed in 1Q twenty five, Were those occupied in revenue producing assets? And if so, what's kind of the NOI impact from those sales? Yes, they were.

Revenue numbers for the farms that we sold in '25 I think was for the year, was about $1,500,000 $1,700,000 That's very helpful. And then kind of bigger picture, the what percentage of kind of the California portfolio, if you will, today is on this kind of prop share high upside lease structure and how much kind of remains in a more traditional structure And I guess what's the outlook for those assets to stay in the more traditional structure or move to this more of a flow through structure?

So right now we have five farms that are on this kind of hybrid structure if you will. As David mentioned, there's another couple two or three farms that we're looking at The other farms right now we believe the other farms that are the Permian crop farms there in the traditional e structure, we believe at this time that they will we will be able to keep them in the standard structure.

On a value basis, I'd don't have that number available or calculated right now, we can get back to you on that. But [indiscernible] in that bucket, two or three more might go there. The rest we expect to stay in the traditional That's very helpful. And that's it for me. You very much.

We have any other questions?

Thank you. Mr. Gladstone, there are currently no other questions in the queue. Okay. Thank you very much. I just want everybody to know that this change is hopefully going to be for one year, maybe a few farms will go over into the Next year, but our goal is to put everything back together This downturn in tree crop And just tour us into a different area, which is this area of Being able to grow the crops and get money out of the crops as opposed to leasing them to somebody who does all that work. We do have somebody in between us. We've people who do that for a living that is they go out and they produce [indiscernible] So we don't have anybody on our Our group of people working in this company that are out in the fields growing either strawberries or nuts. So It's almost the same as it was before. Except we put some money up, not a lot, helping the people who grow the crops, get them grown And then they will sell them as well. But that's the difference here. And while it looks like it's more chance of losing money is really not because the insurance policies that we get from The U. S. [indiscernible] so strong that I don't think we could lose any money on these five farms that we have going in that direction.

But never know. And right now, I feel very bullish that we're going to do good job this year. If there are no other questions, I'll call this at the end. You got another question?

And I'll just follow-up with a question that John asked earlier. The The five farms that are in this hybrid structure right now, they make up about 15% of the California the fair value of our California portfolio. On a total basis across the whole country, it's about 6% of our nationwide portfolio.

So if you think about that, we've got most of it covered in properties that are leased out on a monthly basis and rest of them that is the 6% is on this hybrid structure in which we put up some of the capital in order have the people who are growing the crops growth done And we'll see if we've made a good bet My My feeling is we're going to make some money on these crops and don't like to do that because we like things that happen on a monthly basis. So we can pay our dividend on a monthly basis and the idea that we get a a big whopping amount back when the crops come in.

Doesn't bode well for trying to be on time with dividends. So I think we're in good shape, but we have to wait and see what what we have as income in the end of the year toward the end of the year, we'll know how successful our How much we got to depend on our insurance? But that's the end of this When you got one more question? Mr. Glass, we do, yes, Next question is coming from John Massocca with B. Riley. Please proceed with your questions. Thank you so much. Sorry for coming in right at the end of the call. Just I had a quick question that I forgot With the NAV decision, is that something that's going to be provided semi regularly now, if not, quarterly or is the intention to stop providing NAVs at all going forward? Like is that considered like now annual or is that Is the thought process that that cost is too just in general.

It became really ridiculous, John. We couldn't find people things that we didn't feel reliable and so we started backtracking and getting a second and that second opinion. And as a result, we've been spending a lot of money trying find people that can do this. We still would be setting numbers for those internally. And maybe we'll go look at that. But generally speaking, trying to get brokers to value these things. We had one broker who was located in Indiana was doing some of the stuff in Florida, which just made no sense. He didn't know the Florida marketplace very well and as you can see, when we've done sales, we've beaten our valuation that's out there, but Just didn't seem to be logical to keep doing that and paying for that. So we will figure out something to do in April when we come back to you. The cost of those appraisals were running us about $300,000 per year.

I appreciate that additional color and taking that last one in the Okay. We're assuming there are no more questions.

No more at this time. Okay.

So we'll see you next quarter. Thank you all for calling in.