Sumit Roy, president and CEO of Realty Income Corp. (NYSE: O), participated in a video interview at Nareit’s REITworld: 2018 Annual Conference in San Francisco.
Roy was appointed CEO in October 2018, succeeding John Case. He previously served as president and COO.
Roy stressed that a significant opportunity for Realty Income is its size and scale. “The relationships that we’ve built on the tenant side have been instrumental in continuing to help drive the growth of the company,” he said.
Ninety-two percent of Realty Income’s tenants are either service-orientated, or offer low-price point or non-discretionary products, Roy noted. As a result, “we’ve fared very well compared to our retail peers.”
Turning to acquisitions, Roy said Realty Income sourced $8.5 billion in the third quarter, or close to $26 billion year to date.
“The runway to execute our current strategy remains very strong and we feel very good about what we are seeing in the sourcing and the pipeline,” he said.
Roy added that Realty Income is one of only seven REITs that have A ratings from two of the major ratings agencies. The company just entered into a $3 billion credit facility, up from $2 billion previously, “so plenty of dry powder to execute the acquisition strategy that we have laid out for the market,” he said.