RioCan transforms its malls

Article Excerpt

RIOCAN REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT TRUST $25.96 (Toronto symbol REI.UN; Units outstanding: 324.9 million; Market cap: $8.5 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Average; Dividend yield: 5.4%; www.riocan.com) owns all or part of 302 shopping centres in Canada. That includes 15 under development. The trust’s biggest tenants include Loblaw, Canadian Tire, Wal-Mart and Cineplex. Online shopping continues to hurt demand for retail space in RioCan’s malls. In response, the trust is transforming more of its properties to include office and residential units, particularly in urban markets. RioCan now expects to spend $250 million each year for the next five years on these projects. That’s up from $100 million to $150 million in recent years. The trust can comfortably afford these investments: it generated cash flow of $254.8 million in the first half of 2016. That leaves it with enough cash to cover its monthly distributions of $0.1175 a unit; the annualized yield is 5.2%. RioCan is a buy. buy…