EastGroup Properties Inc. BofA NY Global Real Estate Conference 2026

Overall goal, which we're proud of our track record over time, we got to keep that going. We would like to get you the as good or better returns in the industrial space at lower risk. We try to think of, okay, how can we protect ourselves risk-wise? What we like about the when you think of supply and demand, fast-growing markets, just with another 100,000-150,000 people a year moving to Austin, Texas, to Orlando, to Phoenix, to Dallas, that pushes that demand. We want to be where people are moving, Nashville, Raleigh, those markets. By building last mile, there's usually when you think there's land on the edge of town, and by being last mile, everybody wants the good or service, especially since COVID, but no one wants the trucks tearing up their streets, starting in their neighborhood.

When you look at the GDP of the markets we're in, because of that growth, it's rounded about 40% greater GDP growth, and our tenants are usually servicing the metro area, or maybe even they're part of the metro area. Our demand is 40% greater than the U.S. average historically. By what we build, we could go to fast-growing markets, but if we're building big box on the edge of town, that's more susceptible. We want that demand with a little bit of supply hedge to it, because it takes us a couple of years to put production in. With last mile, we do that. Stacy. Other ways as we think about the risk, our debt to EBITDA is right at the lowest in the sector.

It's 3 times and falling, and within our debt, it's fixed rate and it's laddered maturity. We want to have a safe balance sheet. We're geographically diversified, so we value that. Our top 10 tenants are 6.5% of our revenues, and that's probably half or a little below half our sector average. We want the balance sheet safe, we want the geographic, the tenant diversity. When we build, we'll build a business park, we'll build a campus as a developer, but we won't build the campus all at once. Again, what we'll do is kind of manage that risk. We'll build 2 buildings in maybe an 8-building park.

As those lease up, I'll compare it to our peers, where we could go build an 800,000-foot building on the edge of Charlotte, but you're hoping 3 or 4 people aren't doing that at the same time. Where we'll build 2 buildings, and as those lease up, we may give you a call and say, "Hey, I'm 50% leased. I've got prospects for the balance of the space. I want to get on the schedule for our own internal investment committee and build phase 2, 3, 4 of the park." We use the analogy, it's like a retail store, where as inventory runs low, we restock the shelves. By the same token, if inventory is not running low and we're not getting those calls from the field, then the calls are going the other way of, "Hey, what's going on with phase 3?

What can we do to get some leasing activity?" The market is pulling new supply, whereas most of our peers, public and private, are pushing supply into the market of, "Hey, the last building worked. Let's go build one interchange away," or where there's land readily available, and you're just hoping four people aren't doing the same thing at about the same time. There's cheaper space than what we would have available. But the other thing of being in fast-growing cities, when you think about it, the traffic, some of it's good or bad, traffic's terrible in all of our cities. It really makes that last mile more and more valuable because everybody wants the good or service delivered quickly.

You may have less expensive rents, but your delivery people or your customer service, you can't afford to be stuck in traffic in Nashville and in Orlando and in Arizona at the wrong time of day if your air's out or whatever that good or service is. There's a value where we can push rents and kind of work from that. We like the way as we kind of think, whether it's what we own or how we build it or how we're financing it, what we're leaning into or the geographic, the tenant diversity. I'll layer on kind of the last, and I'll let Samir and others have a word. Our G&A is the lowest in our sector as a percentage of revenues. We've purposely would rather put more of that, how do we get the returns out and at the lowest?

Again, we want to spend money in G&A where it's worthwhile, but we think we can do it with a We probably have the simplest balance sheet in our sector as well and things like that. How do we get you the return without adding complexity, without adding risk? That's our goal. We constantly are tweaking the model without changing it over our Someone kidded me at a conference recently. It's like, "I sat through your presentation and it could have been eight years ago and you were saying the same thing." Which is probably true. It's like, look, it's kind of worked. We've had a good return, our good FFO growth.

Yeah, we change and we tweak what we build, but there's no need for us to get into medical office or whatever the next new thing or jump around and do what we do. Usually in our markets, inherently, people get pushed to big box, whether it's the fees or the capital you're placing. I like where we fit on the playground.

Okay. So, maybe starting with Q2. That was a record quarter for us on leasing overall. We leased 3.9 million square feet. That's about 1.5 million of development leasing through the Q2 period, which, to put in perspective, that was more than what we leased in development all of last year. If you heard us talk about the business in 2025, we talked a lot about inconsistencies, where we would see a really good quarter followed by a weaker quarter. What we have now seen, really starting in Q4 of last year, is some consistent demand. That consistent demand has really been a big driver for us, both on the development side, where through Q3, in our update we provided the other day, we have leased 280,000 square feet of additional development leasing. That has allowed us to increase our development starts throughout the year.

We are now at $325 million. It feels like there is probably more upward pressure on that number as we sit today. Our occupancy numbers have also outpaced in July and August. We are sitting right at 96.1%, which is ahead of our plan that we had in Q1. The demand trends seem to be there. We are seeing that in a lot of different areas. We have talked a lot today about data center related uses. If you have not heard about it, but data centers are hot. The nice thing is that we are a benefit of that because a lot of the users that need to service data centers, be it HVAC, electrical or whatnot, have to have warehouse space to provide those services. So we are enjoying the increased demand in data center related uses.

All the other trends that we've been seeing over the years, be it advanced manufacturing, be it the e-commerce, all those tailwinds are still feeding us beyond just the general GDP growth in the metropolitan areas that we service. I feel like we're in a really good position in all the markets that we serve to continue to provide big growth in our assets, good same store growth, as well as what feels like an improving and more sustainable development business going into the rest of the year and into next year.