Ramco-Gershenson (RPT) Closes $350M Amended Credit Facility

Ramco-Gershenson Properties Trust (NYSE:RPT) announced the closure of its $350-million amended and restated unsecured revolving loan facility. The extended credit facility will improve the company’s liquidity position.

The credit facility is slated to mature in September 2021 and can be extended by up to one year through two six-month options. The revised loan is priced at LIBOR plus 135 basis points (bps), in line with the company’s existing pricing grid. In addition, an accordion feature, which can potentially increase the total debt capacity to $650 million, is attached to the credit facility.

The aforementioned credit facility provides Ramco-Gershenson a cheaper line of credit and enables the company to stretch the maturities of its debts. This, in turn, will help improve its maturity profile.

The inflated credit facility also offers greater financial flexibility and will complement Ramco-Gershenson’s short- and long-term business plans. This will likely help the company execute its growth strategies, and drive the net asset value and dividend growth.

However, due to the gloomy environment in the retail real estate market, shares of Ramco-Gershenson have underperformed the industry it belongs to, year to date. The company’s shares have declined 18.5%, while the industry incurred a loss of 3.7%, during this time period.




Ramco-Gershenson currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the third quarter and full-year 2017 earnings remained unchanged at 34 cents and $1.37, respectively, over the past month. Moreover, the company has an expected long-term growth rate of 3.3%.

Key Picks

Better-ranked stocks in the REIT space include Getty Realty Corporation (NYSE:GTY) , Seritage Growth Properties (NYSE:SRG) and Communications Sales & Leasing, Inc. (NASDAQ:UNIT) . While Getty Realty flaunts a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), Seritage and Communications Sales & Leasing carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Getty Realty’s FFO per share estimates for the current year moved 3.1% upward to $2 in a month’s time.

Over the last 60 days, Seritage’s FFO per share estimates for full-year 2017 inched up 0.5% to $2.01.

Communications Sales & Leasing’s 2017 FFO per share estimates climbed 14.4% to $2.54 during the same time frame.

Note: All EPS numbers presented in this write up represent funds from operations (“FFO”) per share. FFO, a widely used metric to gauge the performance of REITs, is obtained after adding depreciation and amortization and other non-cash expenses to net income.

New Report: An Investor’s Guide to Cybersecurity

Cyberattacks have become more frequent and destructive than ever. In fact, they’re expected to cause $6 trillion per year in damage by 2020.
The cybersecurity industry is expanding quickly in response to these threats. In fact, a projected $170 billion per year will be spent to protect consumer and corporate assets. Zacks has just released Cybersecurity: An Investor’s Guide to Locking Down Profits which reveals 4 promising investment candidates.

Download the new report now>>

Ramco-Gershenson Properties Trust (RPT): Free Stock Analysis Report

Getty Realty Corporation (GTY): Free Stock Analysis Report

Seritage Growth Properties (SRG): Free Stock Analysis Report

Communications Sales & Leasing,Inc. (UNIT): Free Stock Analysis Report

Original post

Zacks Investment Research