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ETFs, Disney, and CRE

Nov 09, 202334 min
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Episode description

David Bahnsen, founder and Chief Investment Officer at The Bahnsen Group, joins to talk about markets, stock picks, and the launch of his new ETF, the TBG Dividend Focus ETF. Michael Nathanson, Founding Partner and Senior Research Analyst at Moffettnathanson, joins to talk about the Hollywood strikes ending and Disney earnings. Francis Oh, Head of AI ETFs at Qraft Technologies, and Young Choi, Director at LG AI Research, joins to discuss the launch of their NYSE-listed AI ETF and outlook for artificial intelligence. Igal Namdar, founder at Namdar Realty Group, joins to discuss his strategy buying struggling malls, the legal battles it invites, and outlook for real estate, distressed debt, and the overall CRE sector. Hosted by Paul Sweeney and Matt Miller.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Speaker 1

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Speaker 2

Welcome to the Bloomberg Markets Podcast. I'm Paul Sweeney alongside my co host Matt Miller.

Speaker 1

Every business day we bring you interviews from CEOs, market pros, and Bloomberg experts, along with essential market Moven News.

Speaker 2

I'm the Bloomberg Markets podcast called Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts, and at Bloomberg dot com Slash podcast.

Speaker 3

All right, let's talk stocks.

Speaker 2

Let's talk stocks that pay dividends, and we do that with David Bonson. He's a founder and chief investment officer at the Bonson Group.

Speaker 3

David, We've got.

Speaker 2

Probably since the last time we talked had a nice move up and rates kind of you know, and I guess the question is, you know, dividend paying stocks. How do you think about dividen paying stocks in the context of, Hey, I can sit in a two year treasury and get four point ninety six percent here.

Speaker 4

Yeah, it's a very good question. And I think that when the two year is at zero percent for fifteen years, people got a feel for what my answer is going to be. The two year is not going to stay at four point nine cents, right, And if let's say you buy it and then in two years it's still at four point nine to six, it won't be and it isn't growing. That's the issue of dividend growth is the growth. Not only do you get something that is consistently going to be at the level which you enter,

it's going to grow year over year. With fixed income.

Speaker 3

They hopefully right.

Speaker 1

I mean, there have been companies like BP or Disney that have cut dividends.

Speaker 4

It would be very very important for a dividen growth manager to not allow dividen cuts to have and so in twenty five years, we've never had one, and I intend to go to the rest of my career without one. But there are certainly companies that cut dividends, and we really don't recommend people.

Speaker 5

You don't get blindsided by something like BP.

Speaker 4

I mean, yeah, BP gave plenty of forecast that what was happening. You had both President Obama and the former candidate John McCain recommending the same thing that they ring fenced twenty billion of liability damage around it. There was no way they were going to do that and keep the dividend, So it gave people months of time to sell before the dividend was cut.

Speaker 5

That's why I needed something like him, because I didn't know.

Speaker 3

I didn't know that a career maker for me was City Group.

Speaker 4

In two thousand and seven, they came out announced that they were continuing to pay the dividend. At that point, it was up to about seven percent yield.

Speaker 3

The stock was down, and.

Speaker 4

Then they borrowed eleven billion dollars from the Kuwaitis and Saudi Arabian Sovereign Wealth Fund. And I said, I don't think people taking advance on their credit card to pay a dividend counts. It has to come from free cash flow. They have to have lower leverage, you have to have a good balance sheet, you have to have a business model that leads to sustainable free cash flow. That's why we have to be actively managing.

Speaker 3

So how many names are in your portfolio right now?

Speaker 4

Thirty three names?

Speaker 5

Thirty three?

Speaker 4

I never had more than thirty five in my home.

Speaker 2

And again and you're focusing exclusively on dividend growth, right and what's how do you define what's a good policy if I'm a CFO to plan my dividends?

Speaker 6

Ash?

Speaker 2

Is it a percentage of earnings? Is a percentage free cash flow?

Speaker 3

Is it?

Speaker 7

How?

Speaker 5

Is It's interesting?

Speaker 4

Did payout ratios refer to a percentage of earnings that are paid out? But we like to look at the free cash flow and what percentage of that's being paid out. And I think most CFOs in America are used to annualizing a dividend, even if earnings or free cash flow may be somewhat lumpy throughout the year. I think it's a much better way to do it and affect their growth one time a year as opposed to kind of

going up and down. We have I think three companies in the portfolio and then it's Blackstone, Apollo, and Blue Out. They're asset managers that get carry and carry is intrinsically lumpy, so they tend to pay it a little lumpier, but most just pay it in a systematic quarterly way.

Speaker 1

So you're so the ETF is TBG, the Bonson Group pretty easy to remember, and so I click TBG Equity DS into the Bloomberg and then I can click the holdings tab and I see Simon Properties as your top holding.

Speaker 5

Now, Paul and I, I don't.

Speaker 1

Know exactly what's in Simon Property's portfolio, but Paul and I talk about commercial real estate with angst and fear every day.

Speaker 4

Well, that's you're making a really bullish argument, by the way, for a contrarian investor, which is to say, a good investor. But let me explain what's going on with Simon Property. It's two hundred and seventy two of the best malls in America. They have given the keys back for four of them. They were non recourse, so they lost a little bit of equity and the lenders had to go fight. Okay, right now, they have the highest occupancy in the history of Simon Property, at the highest per foot in the

history of Simon Property. The ninety six point nine percent. They've taken positions and some of the retailers that have failed, there are going to be more that fail. Now they've learned to monetize that. They took jp Jcpenny for five hundred thousand dollars a box. It was trading at twenty million a box. They're selling some to Amazon, They're reconverting some into condos and mixed use. It's this massive collection of real estate that can be repurposed, monetized into something

more valuable. While they do that, we get over seven percent yield entirely covered by net operating income, and the leverage is at about forty seven percent. It was sixty five percent before the financial crisis.

Speaker 5

All right. Number two is Verizon.

Speaker 1

That makes total sense to me, obviously as a dividend play. Number three International business machine Big Blue.

Speaker 4

One of the great names people could buy.

Speaker 5

And this is an idea of a model.

Speaker 4

We like a lot. You have old businesses that don't grow a lot paying you a ton of free cash flow with new businesses that are sort of not priced in the represent a free call option. Will they become a real leader in artificial intelligence? I don't know. I think they will, but I do know this, it's not priced in the stock at all. The stock is entirely priced off a multiple of its book value of a

kind of more old, stodgier businesses. But they have basically turned most of the business into software and consulting recurring revenue. So we love IBM. You get five percent dividend yield. The Red Hat acquisition was expensive, but they're monetizing it, so IBM's a great dividend grower for years to come.

Speaker 2

All Right, I'm heading down to Duke University this afternoon, and I may or may not bump into Tim Cook, CEO of Apple.

Speaker 3

If I were to get you two guys.

Speaker 2

In a room talking dividends, what would you tell him?

Speaker 4

Well, I would not tell him anything that others much smarter and more prestigious than me have not also told him, And they have failed, and so I'm sure I would fail. But what Apple's doing is shameful, and the inability to monetize that level of enterprise value I think is unacceptable. They will not do something with that two hundred billion as profitable as returning it to shareholders. They bought Doctor

J's headphone company for three billion dollars. It wasn't worth nine hundred millions, soaking wet, But who cares.

Speaker 3

It's Apple.

Speaker 4

They make it in five minutes. My point is, in aggregate, you can set money on fire when you don't have an adequate shareholder return policy. They are a victim of their own success. This cannot be set as a criticism. They generate too much free cash flow to reinvest all of it. It has to be returned to shareholders. There ought to be a very large, juicy dividend coming back to shareholders. Now here's the thing. They're gonna do it. Steve Jobs wouldn't do it. Tim Cook did end up

doing a small one. Yep, they grew so much the yield is now half of a percentage point. I don't know if it's in a year or ten years, but every one of these arrogant cool tech companies finds out that at some point you have a higher return on equity returning this to shareholders.

Speaker 5

So all of the.

Speaker 4

Companies from the nineties that didn't do it, Cisco, Microsoft, Qualcom, they all became great dividend growers later Apple will as well.

Speaker 5

They're just not there yet. You're gonna you said you're gonna talk to them. I'm going to talk to them, and you're going to tell them.

Speaker 2

I'm want to say, I talked to this guy, David Bonson. He has a firm, it's his firm, Yeah, in Newport Beach, California.

Speaker 8

That's the beach.

Speaker 7

Yeah.

Speaker 2

Yet he spends three weeks a month here in New York. What are you doing, my man, it's your company. It's three weeks there, maybe a week here to talk to the eggheads.

Speaker 3

In New York.

Speaker 4

I really love to work and I think you'll find the work ethic is a little more impressive in Manhattan the Newport Beach.

Speaker 2

Are there other people that do like this intensive dividend strategy that you do?

Speaker 4

There are other divnent growth managers? There are not You mentioned this ETF that is active. Most ETFs that people own in the divid and growth space are passive, and I vehemently disagree with that approach. I think it's better than nothing. But we have built quite a business around active dividend growth and it's what I built my career around. I believe in it very much.

Speaker 5

Sold us the boxing.

Speaker 1

I'm trying to get him on the ETF OQ program.

Speaker 7

Do it.

Speaker 3

I think, do a little remote out there in l.

Speaker 5

We should definitely do it from Newport Beach.

Speaker 3

No, but instead we're going downtown to lower Manhat.

Speaker 7

You're listening to the Team Ken's are Live program Bloomberg Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business app, or listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2

Disney reported numbers last night. I thought pretty good. They're cutting costs, so the stocks up. But quite frankly, folks, I've been doing this media stuff for almost thirty years. I have no idea how these companies are going to transition to this new streaming model.

Speaker 3

But that who cares because we have somebody.

Speaker 2

Who's really, really smart on this stuff, Michael Nathanson. He's a founding partner and senior research channelist Moffatt Nathanson. Michael, thanks so much for joining us here. Again, I'm like most investors like I don't know where to go with these media stocks. What did you hear from Disney last night?

Speaker 8

Well, I think what we heard from Disney that made a difference was they gave you cash flow guidance that many people feel more comfortable with the valuation, and you also heard that they're going to spend less on content going forward, and again, like it feels, and you said this before bout streaming, there is just over spending on streaming.

People are throwing money at it left and right, and it feels to me that there's some rationality coming back and that Disney is going to spend less on cash content spend and that's going to basically drive free casheling. And to me, if you look at the Disney's earnings, it's essentially a parks company, So I don't want them blowing money on streaming if there's no return on capital.

So I'm pretty happy with this outcome because we've been saying forever like this is a parks company and media is becoming less and less important because it's going down every day and in terms of profitability, as you know very well.

Speaker 1

So is it important to you to know whether they're in or out of streaming. A lot of people have said I want to know their strategy in regards to streaming. Netflix obviously also spends like a drunken salor on content creating, but Netflix rules the roost, right, So I mean, what's the point of spending less?

Speaker 5

Why not just be out of it.

Speaker 8

We can't at this point, they can't be out of it. They you know, their view is that Disney Plus, that Disney should have a direct relationship with consumers as they do in the theme parks, right, and the long history of media, Disney never knew it's true consumer right. It was always a third party was doing distribution. So I think Disney can't be out of it. The question is how much should Disney be in it? Right, should they be competing with Netflix or should they be a smaller,

more targeted service for Disney super fans. And that's been our contention all along. You don't have to be Netflix. You have to make a Disney Plus product for your core fans. There's less of them, you can charge more money. That's probably a better business. And we've been saying that they do not be Netflix. It's not a business you

want to be in it, And they're listening. I think I think they're realizing that they have a great, great business model as is, and they need to basically just make sure their fans are being nourished, you know, and not overspend when things that are not core.

Speaker 2

All right, So if they're going to be focusing on their core fans, primarily through their parks business.

Speaker 3

What do you do with all the other stuff.

Speaker 2

They've kind of got a big studio operation that kind of got a bunch of linear cable and broadcast networks.

Speaker 3

What do you do with all that stuff?

Speaker 8

Okay, well, studio is key because you think about I mean, you've known this for your studio is a way to refresh the characters in the park, like the flywheel starts YEP, with studio and IP.

Speaker 5

It has to happen.

Speaker 1

I watched Cinderella last night, by the way, with my three year old daughter, and at one point one mouse says, let's lead the sewing to the women, and I thought, oh, I should not be showing her the nineteen fifty version.

Speaker 8

Well, there's a long list of movies from that area should be showing her for that same reason. But the view is, look, we've been debating with the company openly that we don't know why ABC and ESPN need to be part of that new company, right, and the company has not really said what they want to sell. But like our theory is at the heart of Disney is

the IP. Then you have consumer products and theme parks and films, but that business is worth a lot, and then the other businesses that you see from valuations of all the peers doesn't worth that much. Right, They like sports, they like ESPN. That sounds like it's staying, but like they're still open debate about what do they do with ABC or the Fox assets they bought, and that's not

going to end anytime soon. But our point is being it doesn't really much matter because the core is you know, Studio Film, Disney Plus and those other assets are so lowly valued and it's not going to matter. You really need to stop the wasteful spending and streaming and focus on the core, which is what we heard last night.

Speaker 3

So another issue Michael is Bob Biger. We love him. He's been great for shareholders.

Speaker 2

He's kind of put himself in a box once again in terms of timing and succession.

Speaker 3

Anything new there?

Speaker 2

Do we read anything into this new external CFO being heard?

Speaker 3

How do you think about that?

Speaker 7

Now?

Speaker 8

Yeah, that's a good question. The CFO externally is interesting because they I don't think there's being an external CFO in twenty five thirty in a long long time. So I think that person is going to come in. You Johnson from a PEPSI don't coming to look at the cost structure. I don't see him, I don't know him, but I don't see that as an air replacement for Bob. I think the question is going to be for the new CFO where they're wasteful spending, what can he do

to bring kind of a Pepsi discipline to Disney. But I still think you still have an open, an open question about who replaces Bob. It's not easy because of the diversity of operations. You know, We've been saying, look, maybe break the thing into two again, and I think if that's the case, the Parkside will rise in value in terms of the management team. But I think as the company stays as Disney that it would change the structure.

It's a hard job to fill. Yeah, I don't think the new CFO is on that short list yet because he's never worked in this industry before.

Speaker 2

Sure, all right, it looks like everybody's back to work in Hollywood, first the writers and now the actors. How is this going to play out over the next several quarters in terms of production and releases and all that stuff.

Speaker 8

That's a good question. Amazed that it's been personally so long that the strike has taken so long to us all because it's been really damaging to the ecosystem. I think people get back to work in the next well Thanksgiving coming up, right, so probably December January. You probably get yourself a content slate and output that starts looking

more normal by the February timeframe. But you basically just had six months of training people not to watch broadcast TV for content, you know, not to go to the theaters anything besides Barbie and Oppenheimer. I think it's just really bad. I think people do change behavior and it's hard to get them back, and so, yeah, people will be back working, but I worry about what happened on the other side of this. I really do, all.

Speaker 2

Right, Michael, I always appreciate getting a few minutes of your time some of the really, really most thoughtful research out there in my opinion on the media entertainment space. Michael Nathanson, he's a founding partner and senior research analyst with Moffatt Nathanson.

Speaker 3

Good news from Disney last night.

Speaker 2

The stock is up seven percent here today, although it's only a four percent year today, kind of reflecting a lot of investors still remain really unsure as to the trajectory for this industry as it tries to pivot from the traditional.

Speaker 3

Media model that they had all enjoyed over the.

Speaker 2

Last thirty forty years, which is you and me paying eighty hundred bucks a month to our cable company and that a lot of that flowing right to the media company. So that model is no longer in the forefront here. It's all about streaming, and there are different economics there in these companies and these investors trying to figure out how that really plays out over time. Michael Methans and really one of the top folks on the street.

Speaker 7

You're listening to The tape cats are live program Bloomberg Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg Radio, the tune in app, Bloomberg dot Com, and the Bloomberg Business App. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station. Just say Alexa, play Bloomberg eleven thirty.

Speaker 2

The market loves AI.

Speaker 3

The market loves ETFs.

Speaker 2

So let's create an ETF because it is on AI. And that's what our next guests are doing. Have done, will do? Uh, Francis oh apac CEO and head of AI E TFS for Craft Technologies A pac A lot to go there, Young Child, Director of AI Business Development and Strategic Partnerships at l g AI Research. A lot of stuff going on here, gentlemen. Thank you for joining us here in our Bloomberg Interactive broker studio. What are

you guys building here? What are you guys launching off to let you guys figure it out right right?

Speaker 6

Thank you?

Speaker 9

First of all, thank you for let us sharing our stories. Then yeah, yeah, so the Craft techlounches and A and LGA Research, we just launched our latest AI powered et AF, the Taker l Q a I l Q Tuesday on

the New York Sticky Change. So this one is special because so far we have in the craft we had the full et apps in n C, but this one is first ETAP that co branded one together with lg so retake and leveraging on the LGAI is their own AI model combined you so delivering to the a new altnative to entering into the Yuslaska markets.

Speaker 2

All right, so young what did you guys at LGAI Research, What do you guys do?

Speaker 3

What do you bring to the table here your model exactly?

Speaker 10

Yeah, So we basically power this product LGAI Research. Just to give you a little bit of background, we are institutional fundamental research for LG Group, which is the holdings company for LG Electronics, and we do various different researches in areas such as you know, text, image, vision, all the good stuff. And on the applied AI side, we have what's called a time series forecasting model powered by AI.

So we are using this model to basically forecast the future, and that's essentially the engine that powers this ETF.

Speaker 5

So what do you put into the model?

Speaker 1

I mean, first of all, the ETF invests I'm just looking at the description page here minimum of eighty percent of its assets in US list large.

Speaker 5

Cap companies, So what like S and P companies.

Speaker 9

Yeah, you can consider these large community verses around five hundred to seven hundred names, the largest market cap in the stock exchange. And this model is all having the different models to screening out one hundred names on a four week spasis. So by the process of the screening out and the weighting we are leveraging lgised technologies.

Speaker 1

And then so young, what do you put into your model in order to forecast how these companies are going to do.

Speaker 10

Yeah. So the data inputs are macro level data, fundamental ten k's and also the most recent price data and UH there are we we take what's called a multivariate approach when it comes to the model modeling. So it's not just the single model. There are multiple multiple models

that are specific to a task. So there's a forecasting process, there's a ranking process, there's a selecting process, and a waiting process and put all those things together where our goal is to find hidden alphas using deep learning models.

Speaker 3

Has this been tested yes? So and how how has the performance been so?

Speaker 10

Within within the group, we we move a lot of goods across the sea, and we have used this technology on the supply and demand forecasting side and and have seen a lot of good results on the supply chain management efficiency efforts and also on the purchasing of raw materials. So LG has a pretty big chemical business and they also purchased a lot of different raw materials such as lithium and and nafta and we UH saved a lot of money doing this UH using this AI part AH

forecasting model. And now we're sort of moving into the financial markets where there's very robust and an abundant amount of data that will better sort of optimize our our forecasting abilities.

Speaker 1

I see, so you developed a model to help l G say money in its business, and then you realize that this model was also applicable to the investment space, and that's where you team up with Craft and now you have essentially one hundred names, right, but it's an active ETF, so you can move in and things in and out exactly of the right now. I see Netflix

as your biggest holding. You've got Senkora, McKesson, United Health, Intel, Lily, Microsoft, these are all your top holdings and they're big, big companies, so they're going to be relatively stable.

Speaker 9

I imagine, yes, it is a letther stable, but at the same time enough active because out of the US lost k unifos, we only choosing the one hundred names in every four week spaces, so it is all our CAFT hold three hundred and fifty names. This almost will be more concentrated on hundred names too, so we are expecting the top names are we'll be in and out of the every four weeks of time.

Speaker 2

So is the LQAI is the AI ETF, which is different from your large cap etf qr FT. Yes, So is it focusing on companies that are going to benefit from AI?

Speaker 3

No, it's not. It's using AI to pick stocks exactly.

Speaker 2

Boom see all right, I'm it's all coming to me now, yeah, okay, So what does the model kind of solve for? Like, what is it it solves for? What are some of the big variables? Is a sales growth, earnings growth, revenue exactly?

Speaker 1

I mean, are you trying to look at companies like who's going to make the most money? Are you trying to look at companies you know, which consumers are gonna gonna pick this company versus that company?

Speaker 5

Or are you trying to look at you know, the stock market is going to.

Speaker 1

Rank this company highest because obviously just because a company does well doesn't mean that the stock market is going to agree that it's worth more.

Speaker 5

Right, It's it's it's really all weather.

Speaker 9

Right.

Speaker 10

So this AI agent uses neural network, which works like a human brain.

Speaker 7

Right.

Speaker 10

So if you if you think about the traditional quant approach of investing, it's a bit static, right, But on the neural network and deep learning side, the AI model chaininges in between cycles, right, so we rebalance every four weeks. Depending on the input data and the training that it goes through, it has the ability to adjust whether whether

that's taking more on more risk or less risk. We have different scoring systems that does that and depending on the cycle it'll it will actively and flexibly adjust the markets.

Speaker 9

So the model is actually the first step for model is doing is predicting for a target price for the next four weeks of time. In the rebalance, I see the same time estimating for volatility of the injurer stocks. The model will generating the millions of different path is pass for the next four weeks of time. And then there's another agent, AI models all trying to find out out of millions of a possibility, what will be the most likely change at the given the time of the

now casting. Then we choose the most likely one and that will be the basis of the full construction of the dismiss.

Speaker 3

Every four weeks it rebalances is our material change every four.

Speaker 9

Weeks, you're expecting on base on our the Baptist state, you are expecting around the twenty percent plus in and out of the names on every four weeks.

Speaker 3

Wow, fascinating stuff.

Speaker 5

It's only been only been active for two days.

Speaker 2

I know, yes, so l QA all right, so we want to once you to come in and maybe three to six months and tell us how performance has been.

Speaker 7

You're listening to the tape Catcher Live program Bloomberg Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg Radio, the tune in app, Bloomberg dot Com, and the Bloomberg Business App. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station Just Say Alexa playing Bloomberg eleven thirty.

Speaker 1

Eagle Namdar he is the founder of Naandar Realty Group, and if you know of him, it's probably because of his shopping mall purchases. Heos owns literally hundreds of shopping malls across the country. But more and more I've seen his name in among a very small list of office buyers, especially here in New York City. There's a big concern about the excess office inventory that we have and the

difficulty of repurposing it for anything else. Abigail Doolittle joins us as well, because Abigail, you've been talking to EGO about this market. Ego, what well, first of all, thanks for coming in. What do you think about this this office market? What would lead you to buy here when it seems like, to use a very cliched phrase, it would be an attempt at catching falling knives.

Speaker 8

Yeah.

Speaker 6

Well, for for the first thing, I'll tell you that as my philosophy into investments, were like a contrarian investor, and we kind of like always buy when everyone's selling, and we sell when everyone's buying. So that's our model. I agree that this is a right now. There's a lot going on in the office market, and I think

that there will be a recovery. I'm not sure exactly if we'll ever go back to pre COVID occupancies, but my thoughts are, if you can buy office buildings, avenue buildings, corner great light and air, prime sub markets, locations, high quality stuff, maybe A or a minus, there's going to be a flight to quality where a lot of the B, C and D office buildings will probably have to be repurposed.

And so between the contraction of all that office space and being able to people have to move to different buildings. As events come down, you start seeing a lot of people shifting from different buildings. Between that and hopefully more people coming back to the office. It's more big corporations will have their employees come back. We think it will come back, but I think that.

Speaker 5

But let me just to get it straight.

Speaker 1

Are you buying the AA minus buildings or are you looking lower down the ladder in terms of office, And then what are you paying compared to what the prices were pre pandemic.

Speaker 6

So I would say our first entry into office was intoenty twenty and at that point we were buying asset and asset that was priced at eight hundred and we bought it for four hundred. It was not an a it was a great location. But as time goes by, we think things have gotten worse since twenty twenty and twenty one, and now our focus is more into the

better quality assets. And of course we want to buy it at a steep discount, but you also don't want to buy something that's never going to turn around because you can get a big discount, and if it's never going to turn around as an office, then no matter what you paid between your carry and what will the time you have to put in it won't be worthwhile. So our focus now is the better quality assets. Like I said, Avenue Corners and hopefully that's going.

Speaker 11

To rebound so you got you know, your philosophy sound a little bit like Warren Buffett when you're saying basically that you like to buy when everybody else is running. He has a pretty famous statement that the time to be greedy is when everybody else is fearful, and be fearful when everybody else is greedy. And we talked, you said, we said that what you basically just said that you make your money where you buy it. So how many

properties have you bought so far? And in terms of the opportunity ahead, one point five trillion of CMBs is coming due by the end of twenty twenty five. You know, when you put that together with the fact that here in New York, working from home, you know the vacancy rates. And then we had a conversation with another office investor a number of weeks ago. We're talking about the value of Third Avenue. He wasn't willing to put a price on it because I didn't think he wanted to sell

out his friends so much. But you basically just said that there was a fifty percent haircut on that building. From a broad perspective, if you had to give not Class A and trophy, what's the opportunity ahead and for how long. I guess here in New York.

Speaker 6

I think if you take out the A assets and focus on the bn de cs, there will be a tremendous.

Speaker 11

There has been a bit more than fifty percent down.

Speaker 6

Yes, some assets are down seventy percent.

Speaker 11

That's what I've been hearing. On Third Avenue, somebody was saying that it's like twenty five cents on the dollar.

Speaker 6

Yeah, Third Avenue, carridor that area in the midtown that's been hit the most.

Speaker 11

They have a lot of space, and so are there a lot of other investors like you? I mean, I guess it's probably for the people who have the money and who have the ability to model it out. It's a great opportunity. Really, yeah, we just for other.

Speaker 6

People, but absolutely so. I'm not an institution. It's all

my own family money, so it's all sweat equity. So I really pay attention and I analyze deals and I look at the downside, and I think, like you said, the money is made in real estate on your purchase and if you can buy good assets at a good discount and you just have patient capital to wait for market to turn around, and hopefully I think the rates have a lot to do with it, because once the rates hopefully will go down, then you're going to see the asset values hopefully increasing.

Speaker 3

Well, do rates have to go down?

Speaker 1

Like if we're in a new normal and rates are going to stay where they are and Japowell is going to actually stick by higher for longer, at what point does that cause any break?

Speaker 6

Well, I mean the rates. My own humble opinion is they would have to go down in the future. It's just I don't know if they will be back to zero rates. I think it would be somewhere in between the five and a quarter that was raised and what it was before that. But I can't see the rates never going down. I mean home mortgages where people are paying to some percent another at seven percent. How could the average person survive with a five percent increase in the rates?

Speaker 11

I mean is called the nineteen eighties, Yeah, and eighties. You know something that we talked about also is so you, of course are known as a big distressed mall investor based on some of my work. You're known as one of the two big mall distressed investors. And you told me that people know when they have to sell something quickly without due diligence and turn around. That you are known as somebody who can do a cash deal pretty quickly.

But you were saying that for some of these properties that don't work out that you sometimes will then build, you know, tear the building down and read development. But that right now, because rates are so high, it's really hard to do construction. So what does that piece of your business look like.

Speaker 6

So regarding our mall business, I wouldn't say we're focused in distressed malls. I think we're focused on distressed loans, which are over leveraged. Our best purchases are maturity default loans that the assets are on their own doing well, but there's just too much data on it and the owner can't refinance unless they put a ton of equity. Therefore, the lenders are taking them back and they just want it off their books. And again the opportunity to buy

at the right basis we go in there. So we're focused on having that, and our main focus on our malls is to keep them as malls because we believe there's a future for brick and mortar. And in some events where obviously do some malls do go down, then we look at that as a redevelopment into something else.

And in our case, since we have patient capital, if we have to wait a little longer for the rates to go down, or find the right av partner to come and join us, or potentially sell it to another group, and then we do that.

Speaker 1

But you in malls, at least as far as I broad, you haven't been focused on the higher end properties.

Speaker 5

Right.

Speaker 1

It seems like you have a slightly different strategy in New York office than you do in your big mall business.

Speaker 8

So in.

Speaker 6

The mall business, again, when we started back in twenty twelve, we didn't know much about it. We were buying the c's ent ds as it categorized it. But I would say in the last four or five years, our strength is really B market.

Speaker 3

A malls are just overpriced.

Speaker 9

And it's just it's just not what we do.

Speaker 6

But our focus is more towards that B. Maybe maybe it's the best mall in in a smaller market. Maybe it's just you know, second mall in town. But we look at their sales and the health ratios of tenants, and we look at occupancy and kind of project out. You know, we want to buy assets that we feel have a longer, long term, you know, potential for to stay at some wall.

Speaker 1

All right, well, we're gonna talk to you on Bloomberg TV in just about an hour's time, so I'm really looking forward to that.

Speaker 5

Appreciate you coming in. And Abigail do a little as well.

Speaker 1

Abigail do little there, and Eagle Namdar, he's the founder of the Namdar Realty Group, talking to us about New York office. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Markets podcast. You can subscribe and listen to interviews at Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast platform you prefer. I'm Matt Miller. I'm on Twitter at Matt Miller nineteen seventy three. And I'm Fall Sweeney. I'm on Twitter at pt Sweeney.

Speaker 2

Before the podcast, you can always catch us worldwide at Bloomberg Radio

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