4 REITs With Enormous Gains Over The Past Month And Year

When investors seek out stocks that show strong relative strength versus peers from the same sector, they look for those issues that have performed well over short and longer time frames.

If you wanted to purchase a stock that's made substantial gains over the past month, there's a group of 14 real estate investment trusts (REITs) that have gained between 8% and 36% over that time. That's commendable.

And if one sought out a stock that's made enormous gains over the past year, 29 REITs are up 25% or more during that time frame. Considering the high interest rate environment in the U.S. between 2023- 2024, that's remarkable.

But if an investor is looking for stocks that have gained over 8% within the past month and 25% or more over the past year, that would be a much shorter list. Just nine out of almost 200 REITs meet those criteria. Take a look at the four best REITs that have accomplished both of those remarkable feats.

SL Green Realty Corp. SLG  is a New York City-based office REIT and the largest office building landlord in New York. As of Dec. 31, SL Green Realty held interests in 58 buildings, totaling 32.5 million square feet.

Many income-oriented investors like owning SL Green Realty for its monthly dividend. SL Green Realty pays a monthly dividend of $0.25, but the dividend was recently cut from $0.2708. It was the second time since December 2022 that SL Green cut its dividend. 

Despite the cut, SL Green's story over the past year is amazing. Given up for dead in March 2023 when it bottomed out at $17.23, and despite declining funds from operations (FFO) and revenue over the past year, it's risen 116.55% in one year. Over the past month, it's up 8.78%.

Many analysts have erroneously called for Sell ratings and even a $17 price target on SL Green since a year ago. As recently as March 18, Evercore ISI Group analyst Steve Sakwa downgraded SL Green from In-Line to Underperform and announced a $44 price target — about $7 below its recent closing price of $51.04.

Reports of the demise of New York City office work are grossly overblown, and this best-of-breed office REIT continues to reward patient shareholders who refused to panic during the darkest hours or listen to many analysts who were wrong.

Uniti Group Inc. UNIT is a Little Rock, Arkansas-based specialized REIT that acquires and constructs mission-critical communications infrastructure in the form of fiber optics for data, copper and coaxial broadband networks. It owns and operates 140,000 fiber route miles covering 320,000 commercial buildings with over 28,600 customer connections in 300 metro markets. Most of its network is in the Eastern and Midwestern portions of the U.S. It's one of the 10 largest fiber providers in the U.S. today, and its fiber optic leasing generates the bulk of its revenue.

One year ago, Uniti was struggling with excessive debt and traded in the low $3 range. But the demand for data and fiber has been increasing because of the advent of 5G networks and artificial intelligence (AI) growth. Over the past year, Uniti has climbed 76.15%, and 20.2% of that gain has come within the last month.

On March 1, TD Cowen analyst Gregory Williams maintained an Outperform rating on Uniti Group and raised the price target from $9 to $10. 

Modiv Industrial Inc. MDV is a Reno, Nevada-based, internally managed diversified REIT with 42 single-tenant net-lease properties totaling 4.5 million square feet across 15 states. It has 39 industrial, four office and one retail property in a portfolio of about 30 tenants. The portfolio has an excellent weighted average lease term (WALT) of 14 years and includes average annual rental increases of 2.5%. It recently had a 100% occupancy rate.

Modiv Industrial was founded in 2015 and had its initial public offering (IPO) in February 2022. The original company name of Modiv Inc. was changed to Modiv Industrial Inc. in August 2023 to reflect its achievement of creating a portfolio with mostly industrial properties. That transition has helped Modiv to gain 60.01% over the past year, with 13.97% of that coming within the past month.

Iron Mountain Inc. IRM is a Portsmouth, New Hampshire-based specialty REIT with a focus on information management and storage, data center infrastructure and asset lifecycle management. Iron Mountain was founded in 1951 and has more than 225,000 customers worldwide, including about 95% of Fortune 1000 customers. In recent years, it shifted its focus from paper storage to data storage.

On February 22, Iron Mountain reported its fourth-quarter operating results. FFO of $0.83 per share beat the consensus estimate of $0.81 per share and its FFO of $0.74 in the fourth quarter of 2022. Revenue of $1.42 billion beat fourth-quarter 2022 revenue of $1.28 billion but could not meet the analyst estimates of $1.45 billion.

Analysts continue to be positive on Iron Mountain. On March 15, Wells Fargo analyst Eric Luebchow maintained an Overweight position on Iron Mountain and raised the price target from $80 to $90. Barclays' analyst Brendan Lewis also has an Overweight position from early March on Iron Mountain, with a $91 price target.

Over the past year, Iron Mountain has gained 58.44%, with a 17.21% gain in the last 30 days. 

These four REITs have been remarkable performers.

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