Hope & Henry Plans Store Openings At Centers Of Simon Property

Retail REIT Simon Property Group, Inc. (NYSE:SPG) has recently announced that more than 15 stores will be opened by Hope & Henry by the end of third-quarter 2019 at Simon centers throughout the United States.

The move will help enhance Hope & Henry’s brick-and-mortar presence after its debut on Simon's turnkey retail platform — The Edit@Roosevelt Field — in 2018. The brand, which focuses on high-quality clothing, was previously restrained by online distribution. The locations of Hope & Henry will include Roosevelt Field, Aventura Mall, The Galleria, Fashion Valley, Del Amo Fashion Center and Sawgrass Mills.

Admittedly, declining mall traffic resulting from the e-commerce boom, store closures and retailer bankruptcies continue to affect retail real estate market fundamentals, and impact retail REITs, including Kimco Realty Corp. (NYSE:KIM) , Macerich Company (NYSE:MAC) and Taubman Centers, Inc. (NYSE:TCO) . Nonetheless, retail landlords are now making efforts to boost their asset productivity by trying to grab attention from new and productive tenants, and disposing the non-productive ones.

Simon Property is investing billions to transform its properties aimed at creating value and drive footfall at the company’s properties. The transformational plans include addition of hotels, restaurants, residences and luxury stores. Furthermore, the company is undertaking strategic measures to help online retailers fortify their physical presence, besides taking steps to support omni-channel strategy.

Particularly, Simon Property’s The Edit@Roosevelt Field is a retail platform enabling emerging brands to pilot new products in an interactive and experiential retail space as well help brands that currently have only an online presence to set foot in the physical-store space through pilot stores in the mall.

Such concepts for the retail real estate sector are aimed at grabbing interest of the tech-savvy population and driving foot traffic. However, implementation of such measures requires a decent upfront cost and therefore, may limit any remarkable growth in its near-term profit margins.

Simon Property currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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