Retail REIT Taps CBRE To Sell More Than Half Of Its Assets
A grocery-anchored retail REIT tackling a quirk in its capital structure is looking for a buyer for more than half of its assets.
Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust, which owns 59 properties along the East Coast, retained CBRE to sell 35 of its assets in a portfolio deal, the company disclosed last week in regulatory filings.
The 35-asset portfolio Wheeler is selling is stabilized and 94% occupied, but the REIT declined to disclose the specific properties it is looking to offload. No timetable is set for a sale. Wheeler never declared any sort of strategic review of alternatives and plans to continue operating as a public REIT.
Wheeler pulled in $23.8M in revenue in the first quarter but ended the period with a $5.3M net loss, an improvement on the $6.8M loss during the same quarter a year earlier.
Revenue was down 1.4% year-over-year, and operating expenses came down 8.5%. The REIT sold four assets in the first quarter, generating a combined $5.9M in net proceeds, but it remains heavily levered, with $475M in total debt.
“We will continue to recycle non-core assets strategically, redeploying capital to strengthen the balance sheet and enhance value for our stakeholders,” CEO M. Andrew Franklin said in a statement released with the first-quarter results.
Holders of Wheeler’s Series D shares, which trade under a different ticker, have the right to request the REIT redeem those shares as common shares at a $25 face value plus accrued dividends, and the REIT can opt to meet the obligation with shares.
The firm on Monday published a preliminary prospectus for the issuance of up to 100 million shares to pay obligations on a rolling basis. Management has cut its Series D obligations for 3.5 million shares to around 1.8 million shares over the last few years, but conversion of the remaining shares means further dilution of common stock.
Shares in the REIT fell by more than 25% in early trading Tuesday, and the stock has lost 95% of its value since the start of the year. The REIT started the year with shares trading above $67, but its shares were trading for less than $3 Monday. The REIT has around 549,000 total shares outstanding after a 1-for-4 reverse stock split this month.
More investors have turned to grocery-anchored retail investments in the last year, with the necessity-based assets seen as a hedge against inflation that has also posted a healthy performance relative to the rest of the retail sector.
Most recently, TPG Real Estate partnered this month with PSP Investments, La Caisse, Norges Bank Investment Management and others to acquire Echo Realty and its 230 retail centers across the Midwest and Southeast in a $2B deal.
Bain Capital and 11North raised $1.6B for their joint venture targeting grocery-anchored retail in December, and Nuveen added $330M to one of its open-ended funds in March to target the asset class.
