Topic: How To Invest

Pat: Your advice on Partners REIT, please. Thank you.

Article Excerpt

Partners Real Estate Investment Trust, $3.66, symbol PAR.UN on Toronto (Units outstanding: 26.4 million; Market cap: $96.6 million; www.partnersreit.com), owns 36 shopping centres in B.C., Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec. In all, these properties contain 2.5 million square feet of leasable space. The trust’s occupancy rate is 96.0%. Partners’ malls are mostly in smaller cities, such as London, Ontario, and Selkirk, Manitoba. Its largest tenants include Shoppers Drug Mart, Wal-Mart, Metro, the Quebec government, Sears, Rona and Loblaw. The units dropped sharply in August 2014, from over $5 to $4, when the trust cut its monthly distribution by 50.0%, to $0.02083 from $0.04167. The units now yield 6.8%. The cut was necessary because Partners paid out 134% of its cash flow as distributions in the second quarter of 2014. That fell to 84% in the third quarter, after the reduction took effect. In September 2014, Partners sold three Ontario properties for $34.9 million and used the proceeds to pay down debt. In the three months…