Ediston (EPIC)
Posted: July 9th, 2021, 2:13 pm
Ediston (EPIC) - Anomalously cheap & a secure high yield…
The REIT sector, provided you get the timing right, is the gift that keeps on giving. My last recommendation was for BREI just 2 weeks ago; and that is already yielding a useful profit.
I top-sliced a few at 75.6p; and reinvested the proceeds to top-up my holding in Ediston Property Inv. (EPIC).
EPIC is one of the smaller players with a MCap of just £143m. It is also pretty unique as it majors on Retail Warehouse – 66% of the portfolio. NB: This is NOT Retail. Retail Warehouse is a separate sector – out of town retail parks have done well during the pandemic as they have proved a popular shopping venue.
EPIC at 67.8p trades at a 19.5% discount to the 84.26p Mar’21 NAV. On the 5.0p annual dividend (paid monthly at the rate of 0.4167p) the yield is a securely covered 7.37%. It is the Board’s intention to increase the dividend and will consider the position after the 30th Sept year end. An increase to 5.5p looks pretty well baked in, so increasing the yield to a highly attractive 8.11%. In the meantime we will see an NAV & Trading Update later this month.
If you compare the charts of EPIC against others such as BREI, SLI, RGL & SREI you will see that they haven’t recouped the Mar’20 losses quite as well. There is a reason for this. A major shareholder has been reducing its stake through the Market – a tap seller holding the price down at around the 68p level for the past 8months. They held 14.5% in Sept’19; 10.51% in May’21 and still 6.13% at the end of June – 12.9m shares.
“Since the issue of the shares to Stadium Group in relation to the portfolio acquisition in December 2017, an orderly conduct agreement has been in place over the holdings of Stadium entities detailed above. Although the agreement that the vendor would not dispose of these shares expired on 8 December 2018, Stadium Group is still bound by an agreement to only dispose of their shares in an orderly and considered manner and after providing three business days’ notice to the Company. It is on this basis that Stadium has operated.”
A buyback of that stock is now unlikely due to LTV reasons; and the discount level at c20% would not really impact the NAV very much in that it would only add c1.2p. So the best outcome would be for the Company to find a couple of institutional holders to take the stock and remove the tap. Until then, EPIC is likely to flat-line…but provide a very healthy yield as it does so.
A removal of the tap would likely see the shares make a good move forward. IMO, without the overhang, they should be trading @ c80p.
The REIT sector, provided you get the timing right, is the gift that keeps on giving. My last recommendation was for BREI just 2 weeks ago; and that is already yielding a useful profit.
I top-sliced a few at 75.6p; and reinvested the proceeds to top-up my holding in Ediston Property Inv. (EPIC).
EPIC is one of the smaller players with a MCap of just £143m. It is also pretty unique as it majors on Retail Warehouse – 66% of the portfolio. NB: This is NOT Retail. Retail Warehouse is a separate sector – out of town retail parks have done well during the pandemic as they have proved a popular shopping venue.
EPIC at 67.8p trades at a 19.5% discount to the 84.26p Mar’21 NAV. On the 5.0p annual dividend (paid monthly at the rate of 0.4167p) the yield is a securely covered 7.37%. It is the Board’s intention to increase the dividend and will consider the position after the 30th Sept year end. An increase to 5.5p looks pretty well baked in, so increasing the yield to a highly attractive 8.11%. In the meantime we will see an NAV & Trading Update later this month.
If you compare the charts of EPIC against others such as BREI, SLI, RGL & SREI you will see that they haven’t recouped the Mar’20 losses quite as well. There is a reason for this. A major shareholder has been reducing its stake through the Market – a tap seller holding the price down at around the 68p level for the past 8months. They held 14.5% in Sept’19; 10.51% in May’21 and still 6.13% at the end of June – 12.9m shares.
“Since the issue of the shares to Stadium Group in relation to the portfolio acquisition in December 2017, an orderly conduct agreement has been in place over the holdings of Stadium entities detailed above. Although the agreement that the vendor would not dispose of these shares expired on 8 December 2018, Stadium Group is still bound by an agreement to only dispose of their shares in an orderly and considered manner and after providing three business days’ notice to the Company. It is on this basis that Stadium has operated.”
A buyback of that stock is now unlikely due to LTV reasons; and the discount level at c20% would not really impact the NAV very much in that it would only add c1.2p. So the best outcome would be for the Company to find a couple of institutional holders to take the stock and remove the tap. Until then, EPIC is likely to flat-line…but provide a very healthy yield as it does so.
A removal of the tap would likely see the shares make a good move forward. IMO, without the overhang, they should be trading @ c80p.
