As January comes to an end, many of the real estate investment trusts (REITs) that were substantially lower in 2022 have had remarkable comebacks this month. One very strong subsector has been storage REITs.
There were fears in 2022 that inflation and perhaps a subsequent recession would compel current customers to give up their storage units. But Wall Street seems less inclined to believe that over the past four weeks, as all of the storage REITs have performed well.
Take a look at the three best-performing storage REITs over the past four weeks:
National Storage Affiliates Trust NSA is a Greenwood Village, Colorado-based self-storage REIT that, as of the end of the third quarter of 2022, owned and operated 1,100 self-storage properties with 71.5 million square feet of rentable space in the largest metropolitan areas across 42 states and Puerto Rico.
In early January, National Storage Affiliates announced it had entered into a new amended credit agreement to expand its total borrowing capacity by $405 million to $1.955 billion, with an expansion of the previous maturity date of January 2024 to January 2027. Wall Street liked the news, sending the shares up nicely over the next few days.
In other recent news, analyst Keegan Carl of Wolfe Research initiated coverage of National Storage Affiliates with a Peer Perform rating.
National Storage Affiliates pays a quarterly dividend of $0.55 per share. The annual dividend of $2.20 per share yields 5.5%.
National Storage Affiliates was the leading storage REIT over the past four weeks with a spectacular return of 11.93%.
CubeSmart CUBE is a self-storage REIT with over 1,300 storage facilities across 39 states.
In December, CubeSmart raised its quarterly dividend from $0.43 to $0.49. The annual dividend of $1.96 presently yields 4.4%, and with an annual forward funds from operation (FFO) of $2.51, the FFO payout ratio is now 78%. While this is a bit high, it leaves plenty of room for future dividend coverage. The five-year average dividend yield is 3.76%.
On Jan. 18, Wolfe Research also initiated coverage on CubeSmart with an Outperform rating and a price target of $48. CubeSmart had the second-highest return among all storage REITs over the past four weeks, rising 11.08%.
Iron Mountain Inc. IRM is a Boston-based data storage REIT and member of the S&P 500, boasting more than 225,000 customers in over 60 countries around the globe. Iron Mountain has 70 years of expertise in information management and governance.
Over 94% of Fortune 1000 companies use Iron Mountain’s records management, information destruction, data backup and recovery services. The quarterly dividend is $0.6175 per share, and the annual dividend of $2.474 yields 4.5%.
There was a large insider sale on Jan. 11, as Director, President and CEO William L. Meaney sold 21,014 shares of stock for a total of $1.08 million, but this didn’t seem to affect the share price much.
Iron Mountain was third in storage REIT price performance over the past four weeks, gaining a strong 10.47%.
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