W. P. Carey Inc. (WPC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending December 31, 2022

February 10, 2023 10:00 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Hello and welcome to W. P. Carey’s Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Donna and I will be your operator today. [Operator Instructions] 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

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning for our 2022 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 maybe 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 1 year and where you can also find copies of our investor presentations and other related materials.

And with that, I will pass the call over to Jason Fox, Chief Executive Officer.

Jason Fox

Thank you, Peter and good morning everyone. 2023 marks several anniversaries for W. P. Carey. It was 50 years ago that Bill Carey founded the company, 25 years ago that we became a public company. It was also 25 years ago that we began investing in Europe, where we pioneered sale-leasebacks. Company has evolved considerably over the last 50 years. The most recent development being our exit from the non-traded REIT business, culminating in our merger with CPA:18. The completion of our transition to a pure-play net lease REIT in 2022 reflects our focus on real estate AFFO growth, driven by accretive investments and rent escalations. And despite the challenging market backdrop in 2022, we generated real estate AFFO growth of 6.3% per share for the year.

This morning, I will focus my remarks on our recent investment activity and outlook and Toni Sanzone, our CFO, will cover our results, the 2023 guidance we announced this morning and our balance sheet positioning. We also have our President, John Park and our Head of Asset Management, Brooks Gordon, on the line to take questions.