Chris Volk, president and CEO of STORE Capital Corp. (NYSE: STOR), joined REIT.com for a video interview at REITWeek 2017: NAREIT’s Investor Forum at the New York Hilton Midtown.
STORE is an acronym for single-tenant operational real estate, which is the company’s target market.
Volk emphasized that STORE’s number one goal is to create an investment-grade contract lease stream.
At the same time, Volk stressed that STORE places a premium on tenant diversity. He noted that 80 percent of STORE’s revenue comes from tenants that individually represent less than 1 percent of the portfolio.
STORE’s top tenant represents about 3 percent of the portfolio, Volk said. “When you compare that to our gross internal rate of growth, it’s about the same thing. That’s totally by design,” he added.
Volk also said he sees broad opportunities for growth.
“The opportunities for growth are really all over the place. The marketplace we are addressing is in the trillions of dollars,” Volk said.
STORE has a database of potential tenants that exceeds 10,000 companies, according to Volk. Fewer than 400 of those companies are current STORE tenants, and many companies in the database aren’t even aware of the potential services STORE can provide, he added.
“Our opportunity is not just to gain market share, but really to create demand,” Volk said.
STORE announced on June 26 that Berkshire Hathaway has invested $377 million in the company, representing 9.8 percent of total shares outstanding.