GLPI Stock: Dividend vs AFFO, Rent Coverage, Tenants and Debt (2026)

Which company is GLPI, and what has it filed?

GLPI is the ticker of Gaming and Leisure Properties, Inc., a Pennsylvania real estate investment trust based in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, listed on Nasdaq. EDGAR records the registrant as Gaming & Leisure Properties, Inc., CIK 1575965, with no former names. The company says its business is “acquiring, financing, and owning real estate property to be leased to gaming operators in triple-net lease arrangements.” At June 30, 2026 the portfolio was interests in 71 gaming and related facilities in 21 states: 34 operated by PENN, 16 by Bally's, 6 by Caesars and 4 by Boyd, plus Cordish, Strategic, Hard Rock-managed and American Racing properties and two developments. For how triple-net leases allocate costs, see our page on real triple-net lease clauses; for the other casino landlord, see VICI Properties.

The filing status matters for anyone checking the numbers. The latest 10-Q on EDGAR is for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, filed July 30, 2026, followed on July 31 by the 8-K with the earnings release; that 8-K is the latest filing in the EDGAR record we pulled. Last year the 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2025 was filed on October 30, 2025 and the release 8-K on October 31. As of October 18, 2026 the 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2026 is not filed, and the company has not given a date in any filing we read. A press release reported by news sites says the board declared $0.82 for the third quarter on August 31, payable September 25 to holders of record September 11; we could not save the release itself, so that figure is not in the filings and will appear in the Q3 10-Q. Everything below is as of June 30, 2026 unless stated.

The dividend against AFFO, quarter by quarter

GLPI reports funds from operations (FFO, net income plus real estate depreciation, excluding property gains and losses) and adjusted funds from operations (AFFO), which also removes stock compensation, straight-line and deferred rent, the non-cash provision for credit losses and other items, and deducts capitalized interest and capital maintenance spending. Both are the company's non-GAAP definitions and are shown per diluted common share and OP/LTIP unit (the operating partnership units that convert into shares). The table sets each quarter's dividend declared next to both.

Four readings the quote pages do not make.

The AFFO payout is stable at 76% to 81% and the company raises in May. The dividend was $0.76 for five quarters to Q1 2025, $0.78 for the next four, and $0.82 for Q2 2026, declared May 20 and paid June 26, 2026. The last four quarters sum to $3.16 of dividends against $4.01 of AFFO per share, 78.8%; the release's annualized $3.28 and 7.4% yield on the June 30 price are the company's figures. The Q2 release says the raise was “a 5.1% increase over the prior $0.78 dividend per share.” Because AFFO rose 7.3% in the quarter against a 5.1% raise, the Q2 payout moved from 81.2% a year earlier to 79.6%.

FFO is the wrong yardstick here, and the reason is one line. The credit-loss provision under the CECL accounting standard (an estimate of future losses on the company's investment-in-leases assets, driven by the economic forecast) was $53.7 million in Q2 2025 and a $46.9 million benefit in Q4 2025. FFO per share therefore ran from $0.79 to $1.16 while AFFO per share rose steadily from $0.95 to $1.03. On FFO the dividend was 98.7% in one quarter and 67.2% in another. Net income per share moved the same way ($0.54 in Q2 2025, $0.94 in Q4 2025).

AFFO has two features worth knowing. It subtracts capitalized interest ($8.5 million in Q2 2026 and $14.9 million in the half, interest on development spending that GAAP adds to the asset), which is conservative, and it adds back deferred rent, which is not a cash difference. The Bally's Chicago lease shows $13.8 million of cash income in Q2 2026 and an offsetting $13.8 million deferred, so it contributes nothing to GAAP revenue; the 10-Q says rental income on the land and development funding “is being deferred until the project is substantially completed.” Deferred rental revenue on the balance sheet rose from $28.7 million at December 31, 2025 to $53.0 million at June 30, 2026, a $24.3 million increase that matches the $24.4 million of Chicago cash income in the half (our arithmetic), which is consistent with the rent being received. On our reading, the AFFO add-back of deferred rent keeps it inside AFFO: $13.8 million is 4.6% of Q2 AFFO. The company does not say this in so many words.

Cash flow covers the dividend, but little is left for growth. Operating cash flow was $619.8 million in the first half of 2026 against $459.7 million of dividends paid, 1.35 times (our arithmetic), and AFFO left after dividends and OP unit distributions was $127.3 million, against $296.2 million of capital project spending in the same half. The first-half payout on that basis was 78.8% against 80.8% in 2025 (our arithmetic). The 10-Q describes the REIT rule that drives the floor: GLPI must distribute at least 90% of REIT taxable income, and it says “We intend to make distributions to our shareholders to comply with the REIT requirements of the Code.”

Guidance: three raises in 2026, mostly at the bottom

The 2025 result was $3.88, the top of both the first range and the last one. The 2026 low end rose $0.02 twice and the top rose one cent once, so the midpoint went from $4.085 to $4.10 to $4.11 (our arithmetic). The $4.11 midpoint is 5.9% above 2025's $3.88, and the annualized $3.28 dividend is 79.8% of it. The company states what the range leaves out: it “does not include the impact on operating results from any possible future acquisitions or dispositions, future capital markets activity,” and it includes development funding of $400 million to $450 million in the second half, which brings 2026 development spending to $750 million to $800 million. So guidance already assumes the company keeps spending, and that spending is financed with debt and equity the guidance does not include.

Rent coverage by lease: six dates

Each master lease defines a coverage ratio, the tenant's adjusted EBITDAR (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and rent) divided by rent for the properties in that lease. GLPI publishes the trailing-twelve-month figure the tenant supplies, one quarter behind. Two cautions come from the company itself: “GLPI has not independently verified the accuracy of the tenants' information and therefore makes no representation as to its accuracy,” and ratios are not reported for ground leases, development projects or leases under twelve months old.

Two different tests sit in each lease and the page keeps them apart. The escalator governor, 1.8 on four leases, is a threshold on the coverage ratio above: before the building rent can go up by as much as 2%, coverage must be at least 1.8. The default test is a floor on adjusted revenue to rent (revenue, not EBITDAR), between 1.1 and 1.4, below which a technical default occurs. The two ratios are not comparable, so a coverage of 1.58 does not sit “above” a 1.2 default test in any sense we can calculate.

The largest lease has never reached its governor in the six dates. The Amended Pinnacle lease, PENN's, is 21.0% of Q2 2026 cash income and its reported coverage was 1.69 to 1.73, against 1.8. The footnote says the figure for escalation purposes excludes adjusted revenue and rent attributable to the Plainridge Park facility as well as certain other fixed rent amounts. Consistent with that, its building base rent was $245.9 million in 2025 and $123.0 million in the first half of 2026, which annualizes to $245.9 million, a 0.0% change; the Amended PENN lease annualizes 1.7% higher, Boyd and Caesars 1.3% higher (our arithmetic). The filings do not say in so many words that the May 2026 escalator was withheld; the flat rent is what the table shows.

The company's own coverage statements are about tenants, not leases. The Q3 2025 release said “each of our five major tenants, which account for approximately 97% of our cash rent, exhibiting rent coverage of over 1.8x on a per tenant basis,” and the Q1 2026 release said “the vast majority of our leases' rent coverage in excess of 1.8x, despite a challenging environment for our tenants for much of 2025.” Both are compatible with the table: the lease table shows three PENN leases at 1.70, 1.82 and 2.10, a Caesars lease at 1.58 and a Bally's lease at 1.98, and we cannot rebuild a tenant-level figure from it.

Caesars is the declining line, and its owner is changing. The Caesars lease went from 1.87 to 1.58 over five quarters. Caesars' own June 30, 2026 10-Q says it leases six casinos from GLPI, that its GLPI leases require a minimum adjusted revenue to rent ratio of 1.20:1, and that it estimates lease payments to VICI and GLPI at about $687 million for the rest of 2026. Its May 28, 2026 8-K says Caesars agreed on May 27, 2026 to a merger with Fertitta Gaming Holdco, LLC at $31.00 a share in cash. GLPI's Q2 10-Q and release do not mention the transaction; we searched both. Caesars is 6.9% of GLPI's Q2 cash income, and our VICI page reads the same deal from the VICI side, where Caesars is far larger.

Who pays the rent

GLPI publishes cash income by lease every quarter: building and land base rent, percentage rent and interest on real estate loans, before straight-line and other non-cash adjustments. Grouping the leases by tenant (our arithmetic, summing the company's rows, which add to the reported totals of $414.7 million for Q2 2026 and $1,505.3 million for 2025):

The company's own sentence is “Approximately 97% of our cash rent comes from five of the company's tenants, PENN, Caesars, Boyd, Cordish and Bally's.” The 10-Q's risk language on the largest one is plain: “Several wholly-owned subsidiaries of PENN lease a substantial number of our properties and account for a significant portion of our revenue.” PENN's share fell from 58.8% to 54.7% between 2025 and the second quarter because Bally's grew (the $700 million Lincoln purchase in February 2026, two Casino Queen properties moved into Master Lease II in July 2025, and Chicago rent), not because PENN's rent fell: its four leases annualize at $907.0 million of cash income against $885.0 million in 2025 (our arithmetic). The four PENN leases together are $226.8 million a quarter, and the largest, the Amended Pinnacle lease, alone is $86.9 million (21.0%).

Percentage rent, the part tied to tenant results, is small: 4.8% of total cash rental income in 2025 (5.0% in 2024), with resets every two years on the Pinnacle, Boyd and Belterra leases (next May 2028) and every five years on the Amended PENN lease (next November 2028), at 4% of the average net revenue above a contractual baseline. The rest is fixed rent with escalators, which the next section lays out.

Escalators and lease expirations

GLPI's rent grows through contractual escalators and through new money. The escalators are small, 1.5% to 2% a year, and several depend on coverage or on the consumer price index (CPI). The initial lease terms are long, and the renewals belong to the tenant.

The escalators depend on the tenants' results: a governor of 1.8 on four of the leases means the 2% depends on coverage, and a CPI that rises less than 0.5% pays nothing on the Bally's leases. Our arithmetic on the building base rent shows the effect (first half of 2026 annualized against 2025): Amended PENN +1.7%, Boyd +1.3%, Caesars +1.3%, Amended Pinnacle 0.0%. On the $1.66 billion of annualized Q2 cash income (4 x $414.7 million), 1% to 2% is $16.6 million to $33.2 million, while the 2026 guidance midpoint adds $0.23 a share over 2025, about $68 million at 294.5 million shares and units (our arithmetic). Escalators explain well under half of the growth; the rest is deployed capital.

Grouping Q2 2026 cash income by the year the initial lease term ends (our arithmetic):

Nothing ends before 2031, and 62.9% of cash income sits on the 2031 and 2033 groups, all PENN, Boyd and Caesars. Boyd exercised its first five-year renewal in February 2025, which moved its lease and the Belterra Park lease from 2026 to April 30, 2031; four more five-year renewals are left on each. The renewals are the tenant's option, and the page cannot say what rent a renewal would carry. For a reader holding GLPI, 2031 and 2033 matter less as cliffs than as dates by which PENN's operating results must still support the rent.

New money: what GLPI bought and what it still owes its tenants

Most of the AFFO growth guidance comes from three kinds of spending: buying a casino's real estate and leasing it back, funding a tenant's construction at a stated cap rate (rent as a percentage of the funded amount), and making loans to tribal developers. The company reports the yield on each. The cap rates below are initial cash yields as the company states them.

The company's Q4 2025 release said it executed three new transactions in 2025 totaling about $876 million “at a blended cap rate of over 9%,” and that its pipeline stood at about $2.6 billion of future capital outlays at December 31, 2025, at a blended cap rate over 8%. Against that, the $800 million of notes it sold on March 4, 2026 carry a 5.625% coupon (our arithmetic: the Lincoln yield of 8.0% is 2.4 points above it).

What is still to fund at June 30, 2026, from the release's commitments table (the not-funded column is our arithmetic):

Chicago is the large one: $176.1 million was funded in Q2 alone and $464.3 million remains. The 10-Q says the Chicago funding “is expected to extend into 2027,” the company owns the improvements, the lease has a 15-year initial term, and rent runs at 8.5% as advances are made but is deferred out of revenue until the casino is ready for use. A corporate guarantee was added to the Chicago lease in October 2025, and GLPI's new $679 million term loan carries a conditional secondary guarantee from Bally's Corporation, so Bally's is both a tenant and a guarantor of GLPI's own debt. The company expects $400 million to $450 million of additional development funding in the second half.

Debt: $8.16 billion, nothing due until June 2028

At June 30, 2026 GLPI had $8,159.0 million of debt before unamortized costs ($8,077.7 million net), at a weighted average rate of 5.073% and 6.9 years to maturity, against 5.026% and 7.0 years at December 31, 2025 and 5.090% and 5.9 years at December 31, 2024. Standard & Poor's and Fitch rate the notes BBB- and Moody's Ba1. The release says “GLPI's leverage stood at 4.8x, below the low end of our target range of 5.0x to 5.5x net debt to adjusted EBITDA.” Of the total, $7,150.0 million is fixed-rate senior notes and $1,009.0 million is variable, the revolver ($330.0 million drawn of $2.09 billion, with $1,759.6 million available) and a $679.0 million term loan.

Four points from the filings.

• The 2026 and 2027 wall is gone and 2028 is the next one. The 10-Q's market-risk table shows no fixed-rate maturities in the rest of 2026 or in 2027; $500.0 million of notes plus $1,004.0 million of revolver and term loan fall in 2028 (18.4% of debt, our arithmetic), then $750.0 million in 2029 (9.2%) and $700.0 million in 2030 (8.6%). By the end of 2030, 36.3% of debt matures (our arithmetic). At December 31, 2025 a $600.0 million term loan was due in September 2027; the $800 million of notes sold in March 2026 were used in part to repay term loan borrowings, and a new $679.0 million term loan, borrowed on March 4 to repay bridge revolving loans, matures December 2, 2028.
• The cheap debt is 2030 to 2032. The notes due 2030, 2031 and 2032 total $2.2 billion at a 3.73% weighted coupon (our arithmetic); refinancing them at 5.625%, the March 2026 coupon, would add about $41.8 million of annual interest, $0.14 per diluted share and unit, 3.4% of the 2026 AFFO guidance midpoint (our arithmetic; a sensitivity, not a forecast). Interest expense was already $100.7 million in Q2 2026 against $89.9 million a year earlier, up 12.0%, while income from real estate rose 9.0%.
• Debt is mostly fixed. 87.6% of debt is fixed-rate notes (7,150.0 of 8,159.0, our arithmetic). The variable $1,009.0 million moves with SOFR; the facility fee on the revolver is 0.25%.
• The ratings sit at the edge of investment grade. BBB- is the lowest investment-grade rating and Ba1 is the first one below it, so the three agencies split across the line. That is a cost-of-capital point, not a maturity point, and this page does not model it.

How growth is funded: AFFO, debt and shares

Retained AFFO paid for about a tenth of the half's investing (127.3 of 1,262.8, or 10.1%, our arithmetic); the rest was net new debt and one equity settlement. Common shares rose from 283,037,310 at December 31, 2025 to 290,919,328 at June 30, 2026 (up 2.8%) and OP units were 8,473,163. On June 1, 2026 the company settled a forward sale and issued 7,589,487 shares for $351.0 million of net proceeds, $46.25 a share (our arithmetic); a year earlier, on June 2, 2025, it settled 8,170,387 shares for $404.0 million. In Q3 2025 it sold 7.59 million shares under new forwards for $363.3 million of gross proceeds. A $1.25 billion at-the-market program signed May 2, 2025 had $886.7 million left at June 30. Weighted diluted shares and units were up 2.9% in a year (294,542,822 against 286,129,746) while AFFO dollars rose 10.1%, which is how a 10.1% rise becomes 7.3% per share.

The company's position is that leverage lets it grow without selling more stock now: it says its balance sheet “allows us to drive accretive and accelerating AFFO growth, without the need for additional equity,” with net debt at 4.8 times against a 5.0 to 5.5 target.

GLPI against a private or non-traded net-lease vehicle

Readers who found GLPI while comparing it with non-traded vehicles can use it as a disclosure benchmark: it publishes, every quarter, items a private sponsor often does not. How the two structures differ on exit and pricing is on our comparison page.

The comparison does not say listed is better. A listed REIT's price moves every day while its rent does not; a private vehicle's value moves less because it is appraised, not because it is steadier.

What a holder or reader can do with this

This page is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice. What the filings let you check yourself:

• Track the payout against AFFO, not FFO. It has been 76.5% to 81.2% in seven quarters. FFO moves with a non-cash credit-loss provision and has put the same dividend anywhere from 67.2% to 98.7%.
• Read coverage lease by lease. The Amended Pinnacle lease (21.0% of cash income) has sat at 1.69 to 1.73 against a 1.8 governor and its building rent is flat; Caesars' lease has fallen from 1.87 to 1.58. The next lease table arrives with the Q3 10-Q and will show coverage at June 30, 2026, one quarter behind the filing.
• Watch seven dated items. The Q3 2026 10-Q (last year's was October 30); the fourth-quarter dividend declaration (last year's was November 24); the Q4 release and 2027 guidance (last year's came February 20); the Chicago funding balance ($475.7 million of $940 million at June 30); the Caesars merger and any change in the Caesars lease; the May 2028 reset on the Pinnacle, Boyd and Belterra leases and the $500 million of notes due in June 2028; and whether the Pinnacle coverage reaches 1.8.
• Size the position. GLPI is one REIT with one dividend. 54.7% of its cash income is PENN and 95.4% is five tenants, and 62.9% is on leases whose initial terms end in 2031 or 2033. The 10-Q ties distributions to the REIT rules, and the board declares each dividend.

If a large part of your income depends on this one payer, or you are choosing between a listed REIT and a private vehicle for the same money, the filings above are what to bring to a conversation with a qualified adviser about how it fits with the rest of your holdings.

FAQ

All figures are from Gaming & Leisure Properties, Inc. (SEC CIK 1575965) filings read on EDGAR on October 18, 2026: Forms 10-K for 2024 (accession 0001575965-25-000008) and 2025 (0001575965-26-000032); Forms 10-Q for the quarters ended September 30, 2025 (0001575965-25-000045), March 31, 2026 (0001575965-26-000048) and June 30, 2026 (0001575965-26-000060, filed July 30, 2026); earnings releases attached to Forms 8-K for Q4 2024 (0001575965-25-000011), Q1 2025 (0001575965-25-000020), Q2 2025 (0001575965-25-000033), Q3 2025 (0001575965-25-000049), Q4 2025 (0001575965-26-000035), Q1 2026 (0001575965-26-000050) and Q2 2026 (0001575965-26-000062); the Form 8-K of March 2026 on the term loan amendment (0001193125-26-100314); and EDGAR's submissions record. Caesars Entertainment, Inc. (CIK 1590895) documents: Form 8-K of May 28, 2026 (0001193125-26-242995) and Form 10-Q for June 30, 2026 (0001590895-26-000028). The Q3 2026 dividend of $0.82 is from a company press release as reported by news sites, not an SEC filing, and is not in the data file's sourced rows except as a flagged secondary row. Payout ratios, shares of totals, growth rates, sums and the refinancing sensitivity are our arithmetic from those rows. FFO, AFFO, Adjusted EBITDA and cash income are the company's non-GAAP or supplemental definitions, and coverage ratios are reported by tenants and not verified by GLPI. This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.