Gramercy (GPT) Sells 3 Assets, 2016 Asset Sales Cross $1.5B

Gramercy Property Trust (NYSE:GPT) declared closing the sale of three properties, reaping gross proceeds of $106.3 million. The move comes as part of the company’s previously announced plan of disposing select non-core assets, subsequent to the merger with Chambers Street Properties.

The properties disposed this time, include three single-tenant office buildings in San Diego, CA, Lake Mary, FL and Las Colinas, TX. These dispositions bring the company’s year-to-date single and multi-tenant assets sold in the U.S. and Europe tally to over $1.5 billion. Further, the company has around $120 million of assets in the market for sale at present.

Notably, Gramercy Property Trust targets acquiring and managing single-tenant, net-leased industrial and office properties in key markets in the U.S. and Europe.

Earlier this month, Gramercy Property Trust reported third-quarter core funds from operations (FFO) per share of 18 cents, exceeding the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 5.9%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2016 FFO per share is currently pegged at 74 cents, reflecting a year-over-year growth of 36.6%, which is encouraging.

In addition, per its third-quarter earnings release, the company has acquired around $809.3 million of single and multi-tenant assets in the U.S. and Canada in 2016. The company acquired 16 properties in 11 separate deals, for a total of about $264.8 million in the quarter.

Going forward, the company is expected to benefit from improving fundamentals in the industrial real estate market. However, earnings-dilutive impact of disposition and any rise in interest rate remain potential headwinds.

Gramercy Property Trust currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

GRAMERCY PPT TR Price

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Investors interested in the REIT industry can also consider stocks like Mack-Cali Realty Corp. (NYSE:CLI) , Prologis, Inc. (NYSE:PLD) and Preferred Apartment Communities, Inc. (NYSE:APTS) . Each of these stocks has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

For Mack-Cali, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for FFO per share increased 2.4% to $2.16 for 2016 and climbed 4.5% to $2.32 for 2017, over the past two months.

Prologis has long-term expected growth rate of 7.2% against the industry average of 5.8%.

Preferred Apartment Communities has a four-quarter average positive earnings surprise of 4.64%.

Note: All EPS numbers presented in this write up represent funds from operations (“FFO”) per share. FFO, a widely used metric to gauge the performance of REITs, is obtained after adding depreciation and amortization and other non-cash expenses to net income.

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