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Michael Glimcher, chairman & CEO, Mark Yale, executive vice president, CFO & Treasurer and Melissa Indest, senior vice president, finance and accounting are presenting for Glimcher Realty Trust at NAREIT’s REIT Week.

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Below are notes from the session:

11:48: Glimcher: We’re coming off ICSC convention and it’s an interesting time. … It’s really the first time where we’ve seen some nice pricing pressure and a lack of development. … Retailers are concerned about getting space. Saw positive leasing spreads–expect 5 to 10 percent for the year. We have a sales goal of $400 per square foot goal. … We’re feeling good about the portfolio and that we’re upgrading it. … We’ve got significant lease roll and bringing in higher-quality tenants. … What’s really interesting is not just the Pearl Ridges, Scottsdale or Polaris … we’re seeing across the portfolio leasing activity. We’re seeing inline activity and good anchor activity.

11:50: Glimcher: We’re feeling good about the fact that it’s not just the top of the portfolio. With positive 1 percent NOI, with positive releasing spreads … the fundamentals keep getting better and the performance of the Glimcher portfolio keeps getting better.

11:53: Glimcher: (Responding to question about acquisition environment.) There are several opportunities on the market. There are two buckets. There are large groups of B or B- assets that are properties that are historically what we would be associated with that today don’t fit where we’re going. … The volume of what’s out there, we’re not looking at. … There are a few opportunities—less than a hand—with aggressive pricing (low single-digit cap rates) that might make sense. We could go alone or go with a joint venture. … There are few opportunities and a lot of people looking and you don’t know if the pricing is going to be beyond what you’re comfortable with.

12:04: Glimcher: (Responding to question about leasing activity and internal growth prospects.) In normalized times, we look at our leasing activity—2/3 is new deals and 1/3 renewals. When things were absolute worst, it was 1/3 new deals and 2/3 renewals. This year it is about 50/50. … I think we have a benefit of Polaris Center is on a 10-year anniversary and added an Apple, which will boost sales $50 per square foot overnight and that will benefit the center.

12:05: Yale: In 2008-2009, there was a lot of rent relief that we will now be able to recapture.

12:11: Yale: Our overall leverage—that gets into how you value assets. We are focused on debt-to-EBITDA. We are looking at 7X or 8X and would like to eventually migrate to 7X.

12:13: I think monikers have become much less important. It’s more about having a critical mass of great retail. We are doing a number of box deals in our enclosed regional malls. Part of it is that new power centers aren’t being built. Part of it is (coming from tenants). Part of it is that power center developers don’t want to put money into the box. … So there are a lot of things that are driving it. So we are seeing across the portfolio a lot of box activity—Dick’s Sporting Goods, Ulta are very active. … It’s about where are the people, what are the retailers there and what kind of business can they do?

Session ends. We’re heading into the lunch break now. The remaining live blogs for today will be some of the big regional mall players: Macerich at 2:15 PM, Simon Property Group at 3:00 PM and PREIT at 3:45 PM.

(There was a lot of discussion about the Scottsdale, Ariz., market and Glimcher’s Scottsdale Quarter that did not include in this live blog.)

Craig Macnab, chairman & CEO, Julian Whitehurst, president and COO Kevin Habicht, executive vice president and CFO are presenting for National Retail Properties at NAREIT’s REIT Week.

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Below are notes from the session:

11:05: Macnab: We have high levels of occupancy and very little volatility. In each of the last eight years, our portfolio has been more than 96 percent occupied.

11:07: Macnab: In terms of building value for shareholders, we need to make acquisitions. Every year–other than 2009–we’ve made more than $250 million in acquisitions. The triple-net space is a very large sandbox. We think making that level of acquisitions is very attainable. We have a target of $200 million of acquisitions in 2011. … Over a 15-year lease, our average yield from new acquisitions is 10.25 percent–clearly a wide spread over our cost of capital.

11:11: Macnab: (Are you seeing retailers asking for less space) While we do have some big-box tenants in our portfolio, we are not doing new business with those tenants. With an average of $2.5 million per property, we are doing business with tenants that are right-sizing their properties. With bigger shopping center owners, that is more of an issue. … When we are making acquisitions, by buying properties directly from retailer, there is a level of self selection at work. … Retailers entering 15-year leases have to have a high confidence that they are going to be in that space for a long time. … Given that we’re not in the development business, we’ve got to “catch as catch can.” One of the reasons we have high levels of occupancy is that our underwriting is looking at one property at a time and the tenant at hand has to be confident that they’re going to be in that location for a long period of time.

11:15: Macnab: Internally as management we take great pride that we’re in the real estate business. … Unlike some of our competitors, we have good in-house leasing capability, typically people that did this as big shopping center companies. If we have a vacant property, we lease it up before we sell it. We do not sell vacant properties. … Our strategy is to lease it up and maximize the value.

11:19: Macnab: In 2010, we had about 25 different leasing events—some of those were renewals and on our renewals we renewed at over 100 percent of what the base rent was previously. In terms of releasing vacancy, we didn’t have much of that. In some cases it was done at higher than the vacancy and in a few cases it was done at less than what the previous tenant paid. It was maybe 5. Given that we have 1,200 properties, it was not enough to move the needle.

11:21: Macnab: We have very little secured debt on our properties. Occasionally we buy a property that has existing debt. We have $24 million in secured debt. … We choose to not put property level debt on our assets. … Tenants like that if they want to do something, it’s just one phone call as opposed to having to bring in the secured lender into that conversation.

11:25: Macnab: (asked about the book category) Ten to 12 years ago we were doing some build-to-suit development work with Barnes and Noble. … In general, it’s extremely good real estate and Barnes & Noble is making money in those stores. Having said that, the category is under duress. … The long-term outlook for the book business is not promising. When we look at real estate where Barnes & Noble is located, the market rent is generally more than what they are paying. So we are in good shape. We have three Borders that are going dark. Two of them are going to retailer committees in the next 45 days. In both case we’re talking about A+ national retailers, excellent credits. We’re not putting any capital expenditures or TI dollars. We’re going to do just fine. On the third property, in Richmond, Va., it’s well-located. We have tenant interest, although we don’t have a letter-of-intent yet.

At broader level, with 1,200 properties there’s going to be some level of noise. A year from now might be talking about office supplies. But generally if you have well-located properties with rents at our about market and you have other potential tenants, you’re going to be just fine.

Session ends

President & CEO Dan Hurwitz and David Oakes, CFO and Senior Executive Vice President are presenting for Developers Diversified Realty at NAREIT’s REIT Week.

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Below are notes from the session:

10:11: Hurwitz: As a company, we’re very excited about where we sit today. … As a company, we’ve leased in 2009 and 2010 combined 22 million square feet of space and on track to do another 10 million square feet in 2011. That provides us with considerable organic growth. … We are no longer a company that’s just focused on FFO. We think it’s important and it’s a metric we track very carefully. But NAV growth is really the driver of decisions we make internally. … We’ve sold more than $2B in dispositions since 2007 and most recently we’ve become an acquirer and have made $100M in acquisitions in the last three quarters. … Our primary focus in the past two years has been to reduce the risk profile. Debt duration has been(lengthened) and we have been upgraded by Moody’s, S&P and Fitch.

10:15: Hurwitz: We are extremely optimistic coming out of Las Vegas. Tenant demand is extraordinarily high and clearly outstripping the supply for space. The positive trends that you have seen in our operating metrics … will continue for the foreseeable future.

10:17: Oakes: On leasing side, positive spread the last several quarters. … On new leases, high single digits and could go into double-digits. On renewals, low-to-mid single digits. … Seeing positive trends that are getting better in terms of headline rents and net effective rents.

10:18: Hurwitz: One of biggest surprises we had at RECon is view that reduction of store size is negative. We like smaller store sizes. (Greater efficiencies, higher merchandise turnovers, other positive factors.) … One of the things that is happening is that in our prime portfolio we are 94 percent leased and will be higher at the end of the year. So there’s not a lot of space to lease. So if you have tenants looking to reduce, you can free up space to bring in a new tenant at a higher rate. … The operating metrics, the financial metrics will improve for tenants and it will give us opportunity for organic growth on assets where it otherwise would be muted by the high occupancy rates.

10:25: Hurwitz: (Small shop space) has improved dramatically. … There’s a couple indicators that are very exciting. We met with a number of franchisees and franchisors and business is picking up in that area. Franchisors are offering a lot of financial stability to franchisees, which is important because it’s not easy to get a lot of financing today. … SBA loan volume is up as well. That’s good for us. Franchisee will use that to secure space and inventory. … Have to keep in mind that we’re coming off a low base. Numbers are positive, but we’re not quite back to where we were.

10:28: Hurwitz: It’s fashionable to talk about development, but don’t think we’ll see a lot of it. … We will have in our case some projects that we’ll proceed with where we already own the land. But overall to go out and find new sites to provide growth opportunities for retailers, it’s much wiser to do that in redevelopment play than a development play. … Projects are zoned and entitled. And retailers are being flexible in prototypes to accommodate redevelopment. … We’re better off focusing on redevelopment than development.

10:30: Oakes: We would lean more to duration issue than overall level of debt. The duration was what hit us harder than others. That’s huge focus and continues to be a huge focus. Taken duration out from less than three years to more than four years today. … We will push that out further. Our largest year of maturities is still 2012. … Still have more than $1 billion maturing in 2012. There is a $550 million term loan that is the major focus. … On overall leverage level, debt-to-EBITDA down from more than 10X to low 8X, with plans to bring it down further. … You’ll continue to see continued progress on that metric, largely driven by EBITDA growth.

10:35: Oakes: Are seeing more buyers and more capital being raised and debt being more available, so we will continue down a path to sell our non-prime assets.

10:37: Hurwitz: Seeing a lot more financial engineering coming back to the market. … We think the operational risk is sometimes being ignored. There’s a very good chance that there will be a decline in NOI on some of these assets. … What has encouraged us is that there are more people ignoring the operational risk and focusing on the financial risk and the financial risk is lower today than it’s been in a while.

10:40: Hurwitz: With the exception of Centro, there are no big portfolios. … Where you see people talking about selling lots of assets, it’s a process, not an event. … You have to be realistic about. Realistically, we are going to see many one-off transactions.

10:45: (What makes assets non-prime?) Hurwitz: They are the assets that do not meet our growth aspirations or won’t make the most money going forward. Some of them can be highly leased. Maybe we brought them from 85 percent to 92 percent occupied. But going forward, we may think it’s more likely that it goes back to 85 percent than it rises to 95 percent. … Very often the time it takes to work on non-prime assets is not appropriate for the return. … Retail is not a commodity. It is a build-to-suit business. … If an apartment or office goes empty, there is a big roster of tenants that can take that space. That is not true in retail.

Session ends

Steven B. Tanger, President and CEO, and James Williams, SVP and Controller are presenting for Tanger Outlet Centers at NAREIT’s REIT Week.

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Below are notes from the session:

9:30: Tanger starts off recapping details of a new line of credit that the firm announced yesterday.

9:33: Tanger: Growth strategy includes not only organic growth … but also ground-up developments in the United States and Canada. … (Tanger also recaps the firm’s recent development announcements, including its JV with Peterson Cos. for a project in National Harbor and its joint venture with RioCan REIT to build outlet centers throughout Canada.) … Tanger is pursuing acquisitions. It has entered agreements to purchases three outlets on deals it expects to close in the third quarter. Overall, it has transactions in the works worth $490 million that would expand its portfolio by about 2 million square feet. These deals are not yet finalized, however. (Tanger also runs through updates

9:42: Tanger: On new deals we target 10 to 12 percent cost of occupancy. When leases come for renewal–and you can see large spreads of 49 percent in first quarter–that’s our mark-to-market. We are able to bring in new tenants at market rents.

9:45: Tanger: Outlets are now a distribution channel for virtually every one of brand name manufacturers and retailers we work with. … We work with tenant partners to understand their long-term view. I’m interested in their three-to-five year strategic plan. .. Their plan is to grow outlet distribution along with … regular retail stores. The business model is simple and elegant for our industry. It is brand names sold directly to consumers. It cuts out the middle man and the consumer gets a great deal every day. … If five years ago there were going to open 10 stores, they may have opened three outlets and seven full price. Now they are talking about seven outlets and three full price. … IN our market, we are under-retailed. It’s probably the only sector that is under-retailed. … Our centers at the end of the first quarter were 97 percent occupied. … There is demand for new space. … The tenant partners we’ve worked with are happy to work with us and the one or two other specialists who know how to own and operate an outlet center, which is a different kind of skill than other centers.

9:52: Tanger: I can only worry about what our plans are. It’s relatively easy for someone to announce an outlet center. … If you are to go a year from now or two years ago and look, you’ll see maybe 5 percent to 10 percent of those actually built. … It’s a very specific industry with specific skill sets and with tenants that are major corporations. We are not dealing with mom & pops and entrepreneurs. We’re dealing with NYSE-traded retailers—the largest corporations in the world. … It’s much more difficult to build than it is to announce.

9:55: Tanger: (When asked about the potential for redevelopment.) We’re contrarian. In the time of 2005 to 2007, when everybody was building on speculation and money was cheap and they were leveraging, we did not. We could not make the returns we wanted. We put $60 million into portfolio with capital improvements, renovation and redevelopment. … We’ve already made that investment. We don’t have to do that again. … We have no plans to do a take down or major renovation. Our portfolio looks great. We’re way ahead of everyone.

10:00: Tanger: 2012 is an election year. All bets are off. Interest rates—because of the election—will stay stable and fairly low. I’m hoping people will go back to work and Congress will not overregulate and strangle the growth that’s going on now. We certainly feel that the markets will remain strong. There is virtually no new construction in our industry. The outlet center industry only has 150 quality outlet centers with 50 million square feet. … Compare that with 176 million square feet of total retail in Chicago market alone. … There is room for growth. … We’re all excited about the future. We’re a growth company. … We feel these are non-replaceable, world-class assets that—would they come to market—there would be a feeding frenzy.

Session ends.