JERICHO, N.Y. -- "I think it's genuinely impossible to overstate how remarkable the year 2012 was for us," president and CEO David Driscoll said during Getty Realty Corp.'s fourth-quarter 2012 earnings conference call.
"We became a fundamentally new company during 2012," he said in a press statement issued ahead of the call. "We largely completed a significant transformation resulting from the repositioning of our properties formerly leased to Getty Petroleum Marketing [Inc.]."
GPMI filed a voluntary petition for Chapter 11 reorganization in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York on Dec. 5, 2011.
"We have by re-letting our properties improved our overall diversification and credit quality having entering into 10 new long-term triple-net leases on more than 440 locations with eight tenants including three New York Stock Exchange-listed companies and three the other entities that leased existing portfolios from us and has proved to be good long-term partners," Driscoll elaborated during the call. "We sold 54 properties in 2012 for $15.5 million and thus far in 2013 we sold an additional 36 properties in including the one terminal of $16.2 million in aggregate value."
During the quarter, the company announced new leases with Capital Petroleum Group, Lehigh Gas Partners LP and BP for 161 properties. Combined with the six triple-net leases it signed in May 2012, the total number of locations it let to-date was more than 440. Of the remaining approximately 345 properties previously leased to GPMI, which Getty Realty reprocessed on April 30, it has sold approximately 90 locations, including one of its nine terminals.
"We are actively engaged in addressing the repositioning of the final approximately 170 properties operating with tanks in the ground. Virtually, all of these locations are leased to dealers operating and aligned with our interim fuel supply arrangement with global partners, thus they are generating revenues for us. Nevertheless, it is our intent to tackle the repositioning of these properties during 2013," said Driscoll.
He added that the company has made significant capital improvements on the properties and increased efficiencies.
Without naming possible targets, Driscoll also said Getty Realty is beginning to commit resources to pursing acquisitions. "We have more than $100 million right now of capital available to us ... with an accordion that takes it up $50 million over that. ... We are finding things that we think makes sense in light of our capital cost and capital structure. I am not going to suggest that it's absolutely certain and we are going to get transactions done, but we are certainly seeing things in the pipeline and in the portfolio that are intriguing to us."
Jericho, N.Y-based Getty Realty is the leading publicly traded real-estate investment trust (REIT) in the United States specializing in ownership, leasing and financing of convenience store/gas station properties and petroleum distribution terminals. The company currently owns and leases approximately 1,050 properties nationwide.
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