This article was co-produced with Investing With Confidence.
If the word "optimism" was a person, who would it look like?
No doubt about it, the answer is Lou Conforti, the unconventional CEO of Washington Prime Group (WPG).
(Source: NAREIT interview)
Conforti is a standout personality amongst a parade of identikit types that normally grace REIT C-suites. Only he could boast on an earnings call:
"Give us the clumsiest multiple of a strip-center pier, and our assets are quite frankly better than anyone. Everybody stayed for a couple of fields and do that extrapolation and coefficient weight that's 40%."
Yes, it's unintelligible… yet somehow still curiously unambiguous. The message seems to be: "We at Washington Prime are miracle workers!"
Despite a conventional career in real estate investing - including his preceding role as global head of strategy at Colony Capital - Conforti is a delightfully-straight talker. It's a characteristic that's brought him a cult following amongst retail investors.
Of which IwC and I both belong.
WPG's True "Iconic" Image
Unfortunately, despite Conforti's perennially upbeat pronouncements, Washington Prime has been hard hit by the secular retail apocalypse. And then again by the tremendous consequences of the shutdowns.
Together, these have produced the following share price graph with its shown 96% decline (remember that I was bearish in early 2017).
(Source: Seeking Alpha / Trading View)
Those nasty numbers are forever burned in the minds of investors. And the concern applies to the preferred stock too, which recently slumped to a third of par, as shown here:
(Source: Trading view)
The two lines represent the "H" and "I" series.
It hardly matters which is which.
The Name Is Bond. 939648AE19 Bond.
iREIT's eyes are elsewhere though these days - up at the top of the capital stack instead on the market-traded bonds. They
Unmatched REIT Research
At iREIT, we're committed to assisting pre-retirees and retirees navigate the REIT sector. As part of this commitment, we decided to provide our readers with a 20% discount to our service and we will also be including a copy of my book, The Intelligent REIT Investor (mailing out 20 copies this week). Don't miss out on the opportunity as we are limiting the 20% discount to our first 15 new members.
* Limited to first 15 new members * 2-week free trial * free REIT book *
