Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Essential Properties Realty Trust third quarter twenty twenty-four earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press *0 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this call is being recorded, and a replay of the call will be available three hours after completion of the call for the next two weeks. The dial-in details for the replay can be found in yesterday's press release. Additionally, there will be an audio webcast available on Essential Properties' website at www.essentialproperties.com, an archive of which will be available for ninety days. On the call this morning are Pete Mavoides, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mark Patten, Chief Financial Officer, Rob Salisbury, Head of Capital Markets, Max Jenkins, Head of Investments, and AJ Peil, Head of Asset Management. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Rob Salisbury. Please proceed, sir. Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for Essential Properties' third quarter twenty twenty-four earnings conference call. During this conference call, we will make certain statements that may be considered forward-looking statements under federal securities law. The company's actual future results may differ significantly from the matters discussed in these forward-looking statements, and we may not release revisions to those forward-looking statements to reflect changes after the statements were made. Factors and risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations are disclosed from time to time in greater detail in the company's filings with the SEC and in yesterday's earnings press release. With that, I'll turn the call over to Pete. Thank you, Rob, and thank you to everyone joining us today for your interest in Essential Properties. On our last earnings call, we discussed how our portfolio continued to exhibit strong operating trends against a dynamic market backdrop. This resilient portfolio performance continued during the third quarter, with high occupancy, healthy same-store growth, and improving credit trends. As a long-term capital provider focused on owning real estate at a conservative basis, leased under our lease form to growing operators in service and experience-based industries, we expect our portfolio to perform at a high level. Maintaining relationships with and providing value to operators continues to drive investment activity as well. In the third quarter, 79% of our investments were generated from existing relationships, underscoring the value of recurring business with our tenant base. With quarter end pro forma leverage of 3.5 times and liquidity of $1.2 billion, our balance sheet positions us well to continue to grow our portfolio by investing in our core industries at attractive spreads, generating sustainably attractive earnings growth for our shareholders. We are establishing our 2025 AFFO per share guidance range of $1.84 to $1.89, which implies a growth rate of over 7% at the midpoint. Our guidance for 2025 reflects continued portfolio performance and a steady pace of investments, with cap rates expected to compress modestly over the coming quarters as competition reemerges through the continued normalization of capital market conditions. Specifically, we expect to invest between $900 million and $1.1 billion in 2025 at approximately 25 basis points below the pricing achieved in 2024. Additionally, we expect cash G&A expense to be between $28 million and $31 million, resulting in continued efficiency gains as a percentage of revenue, as the company is able to invest in its infrastructure while still scaling the platform to generate stronger margins for shareholders. We ended the quarter with investments in 2,053 properties that were 99.9% leased to 407 tenants operating in 16 industries. Our weighted average lease terms stood at 14.1 years at quarter end, which is up year over year, with only 3.9% of annual base rent expiring through 2028. From a tenant health perspective, our weighted average unit level rent coverage ratio was 3.6 times this quarter, indicative of the strong profitability of our tenants at the unit level. Same-store rent growth in the third quarter was 1.4%. Over the past month, 2 hurricanes hit the Southeastern United States. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the people, business owners, and operators impacted by these storms as they rebuild in the aftermath. Looking at our portfolio, we own 103 properties located in areas identified as severely impacted by FEMA, of which 5 properties reported damage causing substantial disruption and worrisome and warranting an insurance claim. As a reminder, as a condition to providing our capital in a sale-leaseback transaction, our tenants are required to enter into our lease agreement. which requires them to maintain property, rent, and business interruption insurance. This provides an important layer of safety for our portfolio in the event of property damage events such as hurricanes. On the investment side, during the quarter, we invested $308 million through 37 separate transactions at a weighted average cash yield of 8.1%, up slightly from last quarter and up fifty basis points from a year ago. Our investment activity in the quarter was broad-based across most of our top industries, with no notable departures from our investment strategy. This quarter, our investments had a weighted average initial lease, lease term of 17.2 years and a weighted average annual rental escalation of 2.1%, generating an average GAAP yield of 9.1%. Our investments this quarter had a weighted average unit level rent coverage of 4.7 times, and the average investment per property was $4.1 million. The vast majority of the investments in this quarter were originated through direct sale leasebacks. Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, our investment pipeline remains solid, reflecting M&A and new unit expansion activity across a variety of our targeted industries. As we have discussed in the past, we expect the normalization of the capital markets to result in increased competition, causing modest cap rate compression in the near term. We have not yet seen this in our current pipeline, which implies cap rates remaining similar to the past four quarters. From a tenant concentration perspective, our largest tenant represents 4.3% of ABR at quarter end, and our top 10 tenants now account for just 17.7% of ABR. Tenant diversity is an important risk mitigation tool and a differentiator for us, and it is a direct benefit of our focus on middle market operators, which offers an expansive opportunity set. Dispositions were in line with our trailing eight-quarter average in Q3. We sold nine properties this quarter for $17 million in net proceeds. This represents an average of approximately $1.9 million per property, highlighting the importance of owning fungible liquid properties, which allows us to proactively manage portfolio risks. The dispositions this quarter were executed at a 6.8% weighted average cash yield. Over the near term, we expect our disposition activity to remain in line with our trailing eight-quarter average, driven by opportunistic asset sales and ongoing portfolio management activity. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Mark Patten, our CFO, who will take you through the financials and balance sheet for the quarter. Thanks, Pete, and good morning, everyone. As Pete detailed, we had a good third quarter, highlighted by a strong level of investments and an 8.1% cash cap rate. Among the headlines from the quarter was our AFFO per share of $0.43. That's an increase of 2% versus Q3 2023. On a nominal basis, our AFFO totaled $77.9 million for the quarter, which is up $11.6 million over the same period in 2023, an increase of 17%. This AFFO performance was in line with our expectations, as reflected in our guidance range provided last quarter. A stronger than anticipated investment volume was partially offset by incremental dilution from the treasury stock method on our unsettled forward equity. Total G&A in Q3 2024 was $8.6 million, versus $7.6 million for the same period in 2023, with the majority of the increase relating to increased compensation expense as we continue to invest in our team. Our recurring cash G&A as a percentage of total revenue was 5.1% for the quarter, which compares favorably to the 5.5% in the same period a year ago. Our total G&A and recurring cash G&A were also in line with our expectations for the quarter and year to date. We continue to expect that on an annual basis, our cash G&A as a percentage of total revenue, will decline as our platform generates operating leverage over a scaling asset base, enabling us to manage a larger portfolio and invest at higher levels. We declared a cash dividend of $0.29 in the third quarter, which represents an AFFO payout ratio of 67%. Our retained free cash flow after dividends continues to build, reaching $26.8 million in the third quarter, equating to over $100 million per annum on a run rate basis. We continue to view our retained free cash flow as an attractive source of capital to support our investment program. Turning to our balance sheet, with the net investment activity in Q3 2024, our income-producing gross assets reached $5.8 billion at quarter end. The increasing scale of our income-producing portfolio continues to build, and we expect to approach and perhaps eclipse $6 billion by year-end. The significant diversity and increasing scale of our asset base continues to improve our credit profile. Turning to capital markets, we remained active on our ATM program in the quarter, completing the sale of approximately $312 million of stock, all on a forward basis, at an average price of $31.04 per share. With no settlements during the quarter, our balance of unsettled forward equity totaled $626 million at quarter end. We expect to begin drawing upon this unsettled forward equity in the fourth quarter as a source of funds for our investment activity and paying down any outstanding balance on our revolver. Similar to last quarter, our current share price remains well above the weighted average price of our unsettled forwards of $27.29 at quarter end. As a result, under the treasury stock method, the potential dilution from these forward shares is included in our diluted share count. For the third quarter, our diluted share count of 179.6 million included an adjustment for 2.7 million shares from our unsettled forward equity related to this treasury stock calculation. This represents a headwind of approximately $0.01 to AFFO per share this quarter, and we estimate the headwind to AFFO per share for the full year in 2024 will reach $0.02. As we begin to settle this equity in the near term, we expect the headwind to shrink to a de minimis amount in 2025. During the quarter, we closed on the previously announced $450 million term loan, which was fully drawn and swapped at an all-in rate of approximately 4.9%. Our pro forma net debt to annualized adjusted EBITDAre, as adjusted for unsettled forward equity, was three point five times at quarter end. We remain committed to maintaining a well-capitalized balance sheet with low leverage and significant liquidity to continue to fuel our external growth. As we noted last quarter, our leverage has trended below average levels over the past year, as heightened debt costs and capital markets volatility warranted a more conservative posture. With the first Fed cut materializing in September and capital markets normalizing, our funding costs have improved. Thus, we expect to carefully and prudently increase our leverage from here to levels more consistent with our average over the past several years. Lastly, as we noted in the earnings press release, we have reiterated our 2024 AFFO per share guidance range of $1.72-$1.75, and established, as Pete mentioned, our 2025 AFFO per share guidance range of $1.84-$1.89, representing over 7% growth at the midpoint. Importantly, both of these guidance ranges require minimal equity issuance in 2025, which we believe is a testament to our front-footed approach to capital raising. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Pete. Thanks, Mark. We are pleased with our third quarter results and remain optimistic about the prospects for the business. Operator, please open the call for questions. Thank you. We will now conduct a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participant users with speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star key. Again, that's star one at this time. One moment while we pull our first question. Our first question comes from Haendel St. Juste with Mizuho Securities. Please proceed. Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question and also for the early read into 2025. My first question is on the guide, which includes acquisitions, an acquisition guidance for the first time ever, I think. So, I guess I'm curious, why now in providing that acquisition guidance, and what gives you the confidence to put out a forward-year acquisition guidance at this point? And then do you think the upper single digit, 7-8% implied AFFO growth in that guide is a sustainable multiyear growth rate? Thanks. Great. Thanks, Handel. You know, listen, I think providing the acquisition guidance really just, you know, is a natural evolution in the maturation of the company. You know, we've grown our tenant base expansively from 100 tenants to 400 tenants. Our acquisition team has now been in their seats and seasoned over, you know, five years, and there's just more predictability in our forward pipeline than we've seen in the past. We also have a much more stable cost of capital that allows us to look at deploying capital more consistently and reliably. And so, I think it's just, it's a natural evolution. I think as you've been following us for many years, you've seen we've been pretty predictable, we've been pretty transparent, and I thought supporting the guide with some acquisition guidance was appropriate. As we think about the out years, you know, it's early, right? You know, we're just guiding for 2025, and you know, I would say we have a very robust business plan. We have a very you know, differentiated investment strategy that allows us to deploy capital accretively and are well positioned to continue to do that. But I would stop short of you know, trying to give growth rates beyond next year. I had to try. Appreciate the color. One more, maybe I was hoping you could talk about your bad debt or tenant credit assumptions embedded in the outlook for next year. I'm curious if there's any potential opportunity for upside or conservatism baked in, and maybe you can add some color around the watchlist and categories you're monitoring today. Thanks. Sure. Well, just the watchlist is easy. You know, as we define that, the intersection of tenant credit risk of single B and below, and the unit level coverage of 1.5 continues to be under 100 basis points and continues to be in a good spot, you know, historically. You know, generally, as I hope you've seen, there tends to be conservatism in all of our guidance and all of the assumptions that support guidance. And in past years, as we've indicated, you know, as we tighten guidance or increase guidance throughout the range, one of the main drivers is the lack of the materialization of credit events, you know, that we've budgeted for or provisioned for. You know, we provided some good credit loss statistics in our NAREIT deck. Up 30 basis points per annum, you know, is our historical experience. You can assume, you know, guidance has some conservative assumptions, you know, starting from there. And so, we'll see how the year plays and how we work through these scenarios that may come at us or if they come at us. But, you know, we feel like we're in a good spot and, yeah, certainly have the appropriate level of conservatism built into our guidance. Great. Great. Thank you. I yield the floor. Thanks. Thanks. The next question comes from Caitlin Burrows with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed. Hi, good morning, everyone. Maybe on the funding side, you guys were active with your ATM in the quarter, despite already having unsettled forward shares that you went through. So could you just go through the thought process of when to use the existing forward shares versus continue to issue more? I think, so when to use the existing forward shares. I think we may have mentioned in the remarks that our expectations into the fourth quarter, we'll begin to settle a fair amount of that equity going into the end of the year. That's both to address our investment pipeline as well as to pay down anything we have outstanding on the revolver. I think from there, I probably referenced it as well in the remarks that, you know, we've got a fair amount of dry powder. That dry powder is probably a good three and a half quarters worth of liquidity to execute and still stay below end of our leverage range, so call it 4.6. And I think good news embedded in that as well is that our assumptions around equity needs in 2025, and they're pretty, you know, pretty low amount of equity needed. In fact, very low. And that's something we think we could address, you know, on a for- Got it. You're kind of breaking up for me. I don't know about for everybody else. Can you still hear me? Yeah, I can hear you. Okay, okay, and then maybe just moving over to the disposition side, maybe also, like, the watch list. As you guys are looking to sell properties, I guess, what's driving you to dispose of the properties you choose to pursue? Kind of who are the buyers? How deep is that pipeline of buyers, and is it generally other third parties? Yeah, it's always other third parties. You know, on occasion, it may be a tenant coming back to us, but mostly it's third parties. Really, there's three reasons we're going to sell an asset. One is to manage industry concentrations. As you can see, our car wash exposure has been high, and so we've been proactively trying to lighten up on that industry exposure, really to create some more capacity, continue to invest in that industry. Lightening up on individual tenants. In the quarter, we sold an EquipmentShare, and again, we really like that tenant, but, you know, to the extent that we're able to sell some assets off in the, you know, low sixes, mid sixes, we can redeploy that capital accretively to continue to support that tenant relationship. And then lastly, just selling assets that don't work for whatever reason, and you know, we see risk of you know, tenant continuing to be able to pay the rent or, you know, a lack of probability that they wouldn't renew as we see through the unit level coverage. And so, selling those assets is important to our business plan. You know, granularity and fungibility in our real estate is an important fundamental of our portfolio. So, we have good liquidity in our assets and there's a deep pool for us to dispose into to local and regional, sometimes 1031 motivated buyers. And we've demonstrated that, you know, since coming public, and we'll continue to do that. Got it. Thanks. Maybe just as an update, I could hear that response much better, so I don't know if you guys are together or sitting in different places or what, but that was very clear. Thank you. Great. I tend to be more clear than Mark anyway. The next question comes from Eric Borden with BMO Capital. Please proceed. Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe just on the remainder of the twenty twenty-four acquisitions, you mentioned, you know, some possible M&A opportunities, maybe some singles and doubles. You know, you've closed a little over $50 million today, which is above where you were the same time last year, and so investments seem to be tracking well. You know, maybe if you could talk about how much you have under LOI or PSA. Yeah, we, you know, listen, it's. There's a lot of time left in the quarter, and the fourth quarter tends to, you know, it has some volatility. You know, it could be, you know, a lot of deal volume or a few or a little. And so, you know, I think, you know, our general guide to the eight-quarter average is probably a good indicator and kind of 250-ish. But it's really too soon to put a pin in that. When we go out to NAREIT, we'll update our investor deck and give a good snapshot then, but it shouldn't be materially different from that. And to be clear, on the M&A, it's really supporting our tenant relationships in M&A, not us seeking to endeavor in any M&A transactions. All right. Thank you. And then looking to the twenty twenty-five acquisition guidance that you provided, you know, if we square that with your trailing twelve or trailing eight-quarter average, it seems to be implying that, you know, acquisitions are a little lighter than expected. So is there something that you're seeing in the market that is preventing you to acquire more, or is it potential conservatism, given that we're one month after closing the three-quarter books? ... Yeah, I think, you know, consistently over the last, you know, kind of three or four quarters, we've indicated it's been a unique buying environment with the dislocation in the capital markets and a lack of competition, where we really have been pressing our advantage to put capital to work at rates and levels that really are historic highs in my 20-year plus career of investing. And so we've been aggressive this year, and so I think that's part of it. Another part of it is, as we've always said, we want to communicate a business strategy that's de-risked from an execution perspective. And so, you know, supporting guidance with flat investments, I think is conservative and appropriate. You know, we're not going to come to the market with guidance that's predicated on us, you know, growing our activity 25%-50%. We just don't think that's prudent. So there's a number of factors going on there. I would also say, as we've said, you know, with the normalization of the capital markets, we expect competition to return to the market, which could lead to the mispricing of risk by aggressive competitors. And, you know, to the extent that deals get priced away from us, we want to be in a position where we can be patient, and prudent, and conservative. So we put a lot of thought into building this 2025 business case to support guidance, and we believe it's eminently achievable and conservative. All right. Thank you for the time. I'll leave it there. Thank you. The next question comes from Smedes Rose with Citi. Please proceed. Hi, thank you. Appreciate the guidance around the acquisitions outlook. And you mentioned that you expect cap rate compression, I guess, over the course of the year, but you're not seeing it yet. And I was just wondering, could you just talk a little bit about sort of cap rate sensitivity on the short end versus maybe what we're seeing with an upward movement in the 10-year at this point, and maybe how you think that will play out for cap rates, maybe over sort of the first half of twenty-five? Yeah, sure. You know, we compete against alternative forms of capital on the short end of the curve, bank debt and the like, for our tenant relationships. More of our competitors on the investment side and the sale leaseback and net lease side are really competing against-- we're competing against them based on the long end of the curve, kind of the 10-year and long-term financing as they match fund these long-dated assets. You know, it's the 10-year's been volatile. You know, I guess, you know, three weeks ago, it was in the mid threes, now it's in the low fours, and that's you know, pretty volatile. I think a high 10-year supports us and limits competition. But to the extent that you see 10-year in the mid threes, you know, I think the leveraged private buyer is going to be more aggressive and create competition and downward pressure on cap rates. So, you know, it's going to be a while before the banks come back, and the low end is really in play as an alternative form of competitive capital. I think we're more sensitive to, you know, the 10-year and what that does for our private competitors. Okay. And then I just wanted to ask you on your ABR coverage levels, the coverage at under one times declined sequentially to 3% from, I think, over 4% last quarter. Can you just talk about what's going on there, if anything, and is 3% sort of where you think it would sort of stabilize in terms of ABR at under one times? Yeah. I would stop short of saying that that's our expectation to stabilize there. There's always going to be idiosyncratic ebbs and flows in that bucket. It's going to be, you know, less than a dozen tenants, and you know, when you have master leases, it could be multiple properties. Specifically in the quarter, we had an early childhood education operator that, you know, was of size, you know, i.e., 1% ABR, that was executing a turnaround play on some sites. And you know, we were glad to see him finally get traction and get those sites open and operating and profitable. It was a strong credit. We supported multiple times over the years, so it wasn't really a credit concern for us. It just took them some time to get those sites to the spot where they're out of that sub one bucket, and glad to see that. But it's going to be idiosyncratic. It never really gives us too much pause, because, you know, generally it's backed by strong credits and solid real estate, and we're likely to see some noise in that bucket. Great. Thank you, guys. Thank you, Smedes Rose. The next question comes from John Kilichowski with Wells Fargo. Please proceed. Hi, thank you. So, I'll start on the investment activity side. Just looking at the terms here. So cap rates ticked up a bit, you know, really strong on the lease escalations at 2.1%, and then great rent coverage. What allowed you to kind of get those terms here, especially the rent coverage step up versus, you know, your trailing eight quarters? Yeah, I wouldn't read too much into the rent coverage step up. That number is really an output of kind of the mix of industries that we do in any given quarter. And so some of our industries have higher coverage just by the nature of the industries, like medical, dental, you know, equipment rental and things like that, and some have lower, like gyms and things like in the entertainment bucket. So I wouldn't read too much into that number. That's really just an industry mix. I'd say big picture, you know, as has been the commentary, you know, there's just not a lot of capital providers out there in the middle market sale lease back space currently, and we're able to drive attractive terms with our counterparties, and that's what you see going on. Got it. And then maybe just jump into your top ten tenants. There seems to be a fair bit of shakeup there quarter over quarter. Maybe if you could just talk about strategically the new entrants and the exits, and how you think about shaping your book moving forward. Yeah, we always want to, you know, maintain diversity, and I think the bigger picture from my perspective is having, you know, 17.7% in our top ten represents good diversity and more importantly, having, you know, kind of 1-2% exposures through a bunch of tenants, you know, is good diversity, but also creates a good opportunity set to continue to invest. You know, the names that came into our top ten are operators that we've been investing with in a series of transactions over, you know, multiple years or years. And as we continue to invest, they grow, and as they grow, other guys where we've not invested just fall out. You know, every quarter, we're gonna have ebbs and flows in that. You know, Undefeated Tribe, the Crunch Fitness operator, is a great operator. We've been doing deals with him for a long time, and has done a great job, and we continue to see opportunities to grow with him and do that. So it's been nice to see them up there and, you know, certainly a name that we like and are comfortable with. But, you know, just given our diversity, it's natural to see, you know, movements in that top ten. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. Once again, to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from Ki Bin Kim with Truist Securities. Please proceed. Thank you. Good morning. I was wondering if you can just provide some data points on the ABS market and CMBS market pricing? And typically, in a normal year, how much of these capital sources are competitors to your business in terms of, like, a market share? Yeah, you know, generally, in my experience in the ABS market is, you know, structured bonds that are rated are gonna trade anywhere from 25-50 basis points wide of similarly rated corporate unsecured. So if you assume, you know, the triple B REIT index at, you know, 150, ABS is through a similar level, should be 25-50 basis points wide of that. And then, you know, you got to talk about attachment points and valuation and the like, which is beyond my expertise. Certainly, a lot of people are more active in that market and have better insight than we do at this point. So that said, we see those guys as competitors, you know, with an elevated ten-year and wide spreads, they're less competitive. As that market becomes more robust and tightens, they become more competitive, and it's really, it ebbs and flows. I would say there's been a trend of more and more capital, you know, supporting net-lease investing as the asset class has matured and, you know, demonstrated great cash flow stability. So there is more and more capital organizing to come into the space. So it's not a static, you know, competitive set. It's very dynamic, but it really just depends. They tend to be more competitive on the bigger transactions, which is why we're staffed and organized to transact, you know, at the $8-$10 million chunks that we transact. Thanks. And on the Cash G&A guidance for 2025, the slight increase is that driven by just more hiring on staffing or kind of inflationary pressures? Just curious, you know, what's driving that. Yeah. Thanks, Ki. I think if you look at our the guide on cash G&A, it's really a reflection of us investing in our platform, continuing to invest in our platform. You know, it's clearly gonna season into as a percentage of our total revenue, obviously continue to season favorably. As we think about investing in really non-executive hires, it's sort of an embedded normal inflation for a lot of the other G&A elements, even though we don't have a lot of G&A levers outside of our infrastructure. So, I think, you know, if you think about the range, it's gonna be issues around timing of the hire or hires and some of those normal kinds of puts and takes. Okay. Thank you, guys. Thanks, Ki Bin. The next question comes from Josh Dennerlein with Bank of America. Please proceed. Yeah. Hey, guys. I just want to follow up on Mark's comments that there's, I guess, some dilution from the Treasury Stock Method. I guess it's like $0.01 now, but reaching $0.02. I guess, can you just kind of give us more color on how that's showing up in the guide for this year? Then it sounds like, if I heard correctly, 2025 assumes no kind of dilution from that. Just trying to think through kind of, like, the trajectory of how this kind of fades out. ... Hey, Josh, it's Rob. So yeah, as Mark noted in the prepared remarks, the treasury stock method on forwards was about $0.01. Based on our current share price, it's likely to be around that same level in the fourth quarter, so that's what's assumed. As we look out into twenty twenty-five, of course, the calculation is based in part on where our share price will be, which is inherently hard to project. But as we continue to settle these forwards into year-end, we would expect our year-end forward unsettled balance to be a lot smaller. And so as you start the year in twenty twenty-five, we would expect that headwind to you know, based on our expectations, I think a $0.01-$0.02 range is probably reasonable. I think maybe from a modeling standpoint, $0.02 might be a good starting point as you think about building your 2025 estimate. But again, we'll continue to update you as the share price fluctuates, and, you know, we'll go from there. Oh, okay. Sorry, Rob, it was a little hard to hear you. It was breaking up. I'll follow up offline, so appreciate that. And then, Pete, you mentioned lightening up on car washes. Is that just a pure diversification play or something kind of specific to maybe your existing car wash portfolio, or maybe just the industry in general? Yeah, it's just portfolio management, portfolio construction. We generally have a soft ceiling of 15% for any individual industry concentration, and car wash is ticked above that, given the opportunity set. There's nothing inherently, you know, challenging in that industry that we see, and we have plenty of opportunities to continue to invest, but it's just, it's more portfolio construction than anything else. Okay, appreciate that. Thanks, Pete. Thanks, Josh. The next question comes from Michael Goldsmith with UBS. Please proceed. Good morning. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. First question is just, just on the acquisition guidance. You know, you've done $300 million a quarter over the last four. You're kind of pointing to $250-ish for the fourth quarter, and the guidance applies, you know, $250-ish a quarter going forward. Now, typically, the fourth quarter is when you've acquired the most, and you're expecting kind of a lower run rate going forward. So, like, is this kind of like the turning point where acquisition volumes will start to slow due to competition? Or is this just, you know, again, kind of like the theme of the call, is just being, taking a prudent, conservative approach, just given the lack of visibility and a lot of moving pieces in the market today? Yeah, I think it's certainly the latter. As we've always said, we generally don't have visibility in our pipeline beyond ninety days. And, you know, as that's the normal transaction cycle, and we do think, you know, we are at an inflection point in the capital markets that's gonna change the competitive landscape. And, you know, given that dynamic, we wanted to be conservative relative to our investment volumes. And, you know, historically, we haven't provided investment volumes, so it's safe to assume when we do start providing them, it's gonna have a appropriate level of conservatism baked in. Got it. And then, one thing we noticed was that there was a decrease in the percentage of sale-leaseback transactions this quarter. Is there anything changing specifically within the market there? Is that a reflection of, like, the greater competition? Just trying to get an understanding of the market overall. No, nothing. I mean, you know, it's not material. At 89% or 90%, we're still kind of, you know, vast majority of sale leasebacks. We just happen to have the opportunity to do some existing lease transactions that made sense during the quarter. You know, I think if anything, you know, that's probably a more normalized level, in that we've been heavy into sale leasebacks, given the dislocation in the capital markets in the past quarters. And so there's nothing really, you know, to read into that numbers changing materially. Thank you very much. Good luck in the fourth quarter. Thank you much. Thanks. The next question comes from Greg McGinnis with Scotiabank. Please proceed. Hey, good morning. I guess, given that 10-year Treasuries are back to levels not seen since July, what are you seeing in the capital markets, or amongst your competitive set, that's leading you to believe you're gonna have greater competition next year? Yeah, listen, it's, you know, it seems like the ten-year is high. It backed up, you know, three weeks ago in the mid-threes, and so there's certainly volatility. And, you know, I would expect, you know, it to level out. And so, you know, we're being conservative and, you know, we're assuming that the ten-year is gonna move around and may move against us, i.e., lower, such that competition reorganizes. I think the other part of it is, you know, spreads. Spreads have come in to historically tight levels across all fixed income instruments, which is, you know, an equally important component of that. So if the ten-year were to stick around this level or potentially move higher, do you think that leads to a more favorable competitive environment for you? I do, yeah. Yeah. Okay, just last one for me. Implied Q4 AFFO guidance, fairly wide, $0.03. Is that just potential treasury share dilution and equity issues timing, or are there other factors being taken into consideration there? ... I think that that's gonna be the biggest driver. You know, with $600 million of unsettled forwards, you know, and you know, not really sure about the timing of when that's going out, you can assume there's some decent volatility in that. Okay, thank you. The next question comes from John Massocca with B. Riley. Please proceed. Good morning. Good morning. On the competitive environment, are you seeing anything kind of tangible at this point? I mean, you mentioned it's not impacting the pipeline, but are there, competitors either bidding for deals or talking to tenants that maybe weren't in the space for the last couple of years, or that weren't even maybe in the space before that, that have now entered, just given, I know volatility, there's been volatility in the tenor, but maybe where expectations of where rates are gonna go? Yeah, yeah. It just is an overall feeling and sense. You know, when you're negotiating thirty-seven transactions in a quarter, there's a lot of different competitive dynamics in each of those transactions. And, you know, we're dealing with thirty-seven different counterparties who are out there sourcing capital through a variety of different sources. And, you know, it's not any one data point, but just the overall sense of the market. And I think you can see that and feel it when, you know, spreads come in and the Treasuries are in the mid threes. People are feeling a lot more bullish and bidding more aggressively. And when spreads gap out and, you know, Treasury rates gap out, you know, they back up. And so there's certainly natural ebbs and flows and competition in the capital markets, and we live it on a day-to-day basis. Okay. And then maybe on the tenant partner side, I mean, what's kind of, broadly speaking, the, the general driver of them seeking your financing today? I mean, is it more kind of refinancing, you know, existing liabilities, or is it, is it kind of growth still? It's the vast majority is gonna be growth, either supporting them in individual M&A activity or them developing sites and providing development capital. You know, very little of it is refinancing, you know, past liabilities. There's some, but not a ton. Okay. Given some of the broad pressures we're seeing in the restaurant industry, especially among smaller operators, how is tenant performance and coverage looking in the restaurant portion of the portfolio, both kind of on the QSR side and the casual dining side? I would start by saying most of the pressure in the restaurant industry is we're seeing in large operators. You know, you think of Red Lobster and TGI Fridays, you know, these large systems that are able to get unsecured corporate debt, which really becomes the catalyst that, you know, trips a lot of these companies. You know, the smaller regional operators that we see are less likely to have that debt lever and really are capitalized mostly with equity capital and real estate financing. That said, you know, we are seeing some pressures in the restaurant space. You know, but I would say that you're seeing top-line sales pressures. You know, so the top-line sales are off, but, you know, they are seeing some expansion in margins as the inflationary pressures of labor and cost of goods, you know, fall off, such that I would expect overall our restaurant exposure to be roughly flat to maybe down, you know, 10 or 20 basis points on coverage. Okay, I appreciate the color. That's it for me. Thank you. Thanks, John. The next question comes from Jim Kammert with Evercore ISI. Please proceed. Thank you. Good morning. Perhaps just building on the last topic, if possible. It looks like your overall at the portfolio level, coverage, unit level coverage has drifted down modestly. Let's call it from 3.94 times to 3.6 here at 9:30 A.M. And were there other... You know, does that imply basically that the unit level cash flows are growing a little slower than your average 1.7% escalator across the portfolio? Or isn't that too generic, and it's more specific to certain industries. I'm just curious, you know, which sectors are doing a little better and which might be feeling a little more pressure? Yeah, I think it's gonna be specific to specific industries, particularly like, you know, building supply, which, you know, can go from a 20 to a 10 and really have an impact, or equipment rental sales, equipment rentals and sales, like, you know, EquipmentShare. They can go from a 12 to a 10 or something along those lines. Generally, in, you know, car washes, you know, they're flat to down 10 basis points. Early childhood is up 10 basis point coverage. Medical dental's flat. QSRs are down 10 basis points. I'm just ticking down our industry list here. So mostly, you're gonna see it flat to up, flat to either down 10 or up 10. But some of those different industries, like building materials and equipment supply, are gonna have more volatility. Oh, that's interesting. Thank you. And then just real quick before I let you go. Obviously, 7-Eleven has been reported to be out there and marketing a large portfolio. Do you feel you've added consistently to your convenience store sector segment? Do you think there's more just a 7-Eleven issue regarding maybe their health of those particular stores and not much of a read-through to the C- store industry overall? Just curious what color or thoughts you might have there. Thank you. ... Yeah, I think the 7-Eleven. I think that's more just capital allocation for that company than you know, anything going on systemically in the C-store space. Yesway is a community store operator that populated our top ten, that's growing and you know, seeking capital to facilitate their growth. Pop's Mart is a C-store operator that has been in our top ten, and they're growing. And so, there's nothing going on in the space that gives me concern, and we continue to deploy capital there. I think the 7-Eleven opportunity is more specific to that tenant. Great. Thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from Spenser Allaway with Green Street. Please proceed. Thank you. You know that the lion's share of your deals completed in the quarter was from recurring business. Can you just talk about some of the newer relationships in the quarter? What industries were these in? And based on our current portfolios, do you suspect that they're also going to become a source of recurring business? Yeah, that's our business model, you know, sourcing new relationships and continuing to grow with those relationships, and as I've said in the past, you know, relationships over time tend to outgrow us and find alternative sources of capital as they grow larger and have more diverse funding options. We generally source in all our industries. We conduct sourcing activity, we attend industry conference events and seek to build relationships and deploy capital in those industries, and so those sourcing efforts are really, you know, what brings the incremental investment opportunities. Over time, you know, we expect that to kind of be an 80/20 sort of mix, and so it's good to see, you know, 20% new relationships coming into a portfolio because, you know, there's certainly a cohort of tenants that are gonna move on and transact it somewhere else. Okay, great. That makes sense. And then, just as your asset base continues to grow and you're underwriting more and more deals each quarter, as you mentioned, it's quite an arduous endeavor. How comfortable are you with your current headcount, or does the acquisition and underwriting team, you know, need to keep growing? And when do you think that, you know, new headcount would be added? Yeah, that's a constant process, Spenser. We're always hiring, training, bringing new people online to build the organization, to both underwrite and process close and manage a larger portfolio. So you know, it's very much a dynamic organization and infrastructure that we're constantly investing in, and I think you see that in our G&A guide. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you very much. Thank you. At this time, to ask a question, that's star one on your telephone keypad. There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the floor back over to Pete Mavoides for closing comments. Please proceed. Great. Thank you all very much for your time today. We look forward to meeting with you all out in Vegas for NAREIT next month. And thank you very much. Have a great day.