The Macerich Co. has had some good news in the market as of late.
Shares of the Santa Monica-based real estate investment trust closed at $16.75 on Jan. 29, a 52-week high. They have fallen slightly since then.
In that same period, the stock gained about 25 percent in value between Jan. 31 of last year, when it closed at $12.92, and Jan. 30, when shares ended trading at $16.12.
On Jan. 3, the day it announced the sale of a former mall property it owned in a joint venture with Hudson Pacific Properties Inc. for $700 million to the University of California Los Angeles, Macerich shares closed at $14.89, a decrease of just more than 4%. Shares had closed at $15.55 on the previous day.
The share price closed at $15.81 on Feb. 1.
The company reported on Oct. 31 a net loss of $263 million (-$1.22 a share) for the quarter ending Sept. 30, compared to a net loss of $15.2 million (-7 cents) in the same period of the previous year. Revenue increased by almost 4% from the third quarter of the prior year to $218 million. Macerich will report its fourth-quarter earnings on Feb. 7.
Macerich currently owns 47 million square feet of real estate consisting primarily of interests in 44 regional town centers. Its portfolio is concentrated in California, the Pacific Northwest, Phoenix/Scottsdale, and the Metro New York to Washington, D.C., corridor.
Tom O’Hern, the company’s chief executive, said during a conference call with analysts on Oct. 31 that the occupancy rate of its properties was at 93.4%, or close to the 94 percent of the pre-Covid era.
“We continue to see real strength in the leasing environment,” O’Hern said. “On the heels of a very strong leasing result in 2022, the 2023 leasing environment has been robust. Store openings are accelerating.”
The company opened 500,000 square feet more of space than it had in the third quarter of the previous year, he added.
Doug Healey, senior executive vice president of leasing at Macerich, said during the…
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